Blog

<!–break–>

PRESS STATEMENT
-For Immediate Release-
April 7, 2010

Contact: Brian Gumm, (202) 683-4812, [email protected]

One Small Policy Step, but One Huge Leap for Government Openness

Statement of Gary D. Bass
Executive Director, OMB Watch
On Release of Open Government Plans and other Transparency Actions

WASHINGTON, April 7, 2010—The Obama administration took several actions today that will likely have a lasting and positive impact on government transparency. Each federal agency announced its Open Government Plan, complemented by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policy changes to reduce certain impediments to transparency and to improve both regulatory and federal spending transparency.

These actions were required under the Obama administration’s Open Government Directive, which was issued on Dec. 8, 2009. At their best, the Directive and the actions taken today represent a process that could become as important to government transparency as enactment of the Freedom of Information Act. Even at their worst, today’s actions represent solid progress toward meaningful government transparency, with many details still needed.

Agency Open Government Plans
Some agency Plans appear impressive for their ambitious goals, the scope of issues tackled, and obvious commitment to transparency. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services offers five “flagship” initiatives and promises to make available by year’s end a dozen high-value datasets that have never been public before. Other agency Plans appear less impressive, with fewer concrete deliverables and less grand vision. Moreover, a number of the agencies say they will be providing certain types of information in the future, which skeptics can easily criticize as “planning to plan.”

The inconsistency in agency Plans, despite being almost expected due to resource differences and agencies’ varied experience with openness, can be maddening to those of us in the open government community. Advocates want more than statements and rhetoric; they want actual data that is timely, high-quality, searchable, and meaningful to all Americans.

To objectively assess the agency Open Government Plans, advocates such as OMB Watch will work collaboratively through the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition to report on the good and the bad in these Plans.

Federal Spending Transparency
The OMB announcements on spending transparency and policy changes to reduce barriers to transparency are not monumental. The steps to begin disclosing on USAspending.gov information about sub-recipients of federal grants and contracts by Oct. 1 is already mandated by law. Additionally, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the administration already proved it could successfully collect sub-recipient information. However, OMB also announced it will develop a long-range plan on federal spending transparency. We applaud this first step and look forward to assessing the completed plan when it becomes available.

Reducing Impediments to Meaningful Transparency
Likewise, the policy changes to reduce impediments to meaningful transparency are modest. OMB issued three documents dealing with implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) and federal regulations. The first is a primer to help agencies with implementation of the PRA; the second clarifies that certain uses of social media and web-based tools by agencies are excluded from OMB PRA reviews. A third memo encourages agencies to use a Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) throughout the regulatory process to give the public a common identifier to track regulations. All of these documents are useful, with the clarification on social media tools being the highest priority. At the same time, there are many other policy impediments that OMB must address, many of which were noted in recommendations provided by a diverse group of 350 individuals and groups in November 2008.

The Big Picture
Collectively, today’s actions signal something quite profound: the sum is much greater than the parts. Never before has there been an administration as vocal about openness and transparency as the Obama administration. Never before have agencies been tasked with creating Open Government Plans. Never before has an administration committed to a comprehensive plan for federal spending transparency. Never before has there been a White House team of top-level staff with transparency issues as part of their work portfolio.

The White House has brought such an infectious enthusiasm and energy to the Open Government Directive that it appears transparency is going viral inside government. As one federal employee noted, transparency is now being raised in meetings that have nothing to do with the Open Government Directive. To the extent this behavior continues, it has the potential to be a truly transformational culture change.

President Obama is putting in place the policies and technologies that are needed to strengthen transparency. No doubt they will need to be tweaked and expanded. But from a broader perspective, the actions today represent the beginnings of a meaningful shift from a government perceived as secretive to one that makes openness an essential element of its operations.

For all of the above reasons, OMB Watch concludes that the Open Government Directive and today’s actions are only one small policy step, but one huge leap for government openness.

# # #

OMB Watch is a nonprofit government watchdog organization dedicated to promoting government accountability, citizen participation in public policy decisions, and the use of fiscal and regulatory policy to serve the public interest.

To access the transparency recommendations referenced in this statement, visit http://www.ombwatch.org/renewinggovernment. For updates and additional analysis, visit our blog, The Fine Print, at http://www.ombwatch.org/the_fine_print.

Here comes Bridezilla!

Katy Perry has been warning anyone that will listen that her fiance, British comedian Russell Brand, is more involved (and by involved we mean obsessed) in planning their upcoming wedding than she is — and she’s got proof. Early Wednesday, Katy uploaded this TwitPic of Brand playing dress-up in a white wedding gown!

“Bridezilla much,” Katy Tweeted, linking to a photo of her bedazzled Rusty.

(Let’s hope they don’t show up to the altar wearing the same Vera Wang gown!)

In an aggressive new tack in the city’s crackdown on drug-dealing on skid row, L.A. prosecutors on Wednesday announced a criminal injunction targeting "commuter dealers” who come into downtown from other parts of town to sell their goods.

The L.A. City Attorney’s Office said this is the first time they have aimed an injunction at drug dealers rather than gangs. The injunction would ban 80 drug dealers from entering skid row, and would allow prosecutors to ban up to 300 additional dealers who police identify in the future.

The 80 men and women already identified are affiliated with 31 gangs and have come to a “mutual understanding” to forgo rivalries, keep the peace and share business, according to Peter Shutan, the deputy city attorney.

The ban still requires a judge’s OK, but it has already reignited the debate over the role of police on skid row, where distinguishing between addicts and dealers can be difficult.

Critics say that some of the people included in the injunction may be addicts themselves who sell drugs to support their own habits. Skid row is the last stop for many, they say, and the bans could end up separating addicts who sometimes carry or sell drugs from the rehabilitation services they need.

Of particular concern to the activists is the part of the injunction that would allow police and the city attorney to ban up to 300 more people — now identified in the injunction simply as “John Does” — so long as they can prove to a judge that the people targeted are dealing drugs.

“If you see a guy committing a crime, you arrest him, you don’t put him on a list and say, ‘I think this guy is going to commit a crime,’ ” said gang expert Alex Alonso. “Now if a ‘John Doe’ is hanging out with one of the 80 people on that list, he better watch out. He could get served, he probably will get served.”

Alonso said the injunction would give the police too much discretion in skid row, an area that has been home to the city’s most concentrated police presence since 2006, when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-LAPD Chief William Bratton deployed 50 extra officers there as part of the controversial Safer City initiative. Dozens of undercover narcotics officers were deployed to the same area.

In 2009, the LAPD made 3,638 drug arrests on skid row, according to the LAPD. Roughly 38% of those were for sales activity, and 45% were for possession.

The city attorney’s office says the injunction is designed to protect people like Iris Mingo, a skid row resident and former crack user who says she has been sober for 18 months. Mingo says she faces temptations every time she walks out of her door because dealing is so rampant in the neighborhood.

“Now I’m free, but don’t think it don’t come up on me,” said Mingo, 56. “It can be very trying.”

Several social service providers welcomed news of the injunctions. Although banning the 80 alleged dealers will likely create “a vacuum” that new dealers will fill, getting current dealers off the street will give former drug addicts a better chance at recovery, said Andy Bales of the Union Rescue Mission.

“This is the best news we’ve had in a while,” Bales said.

Although skid row arrest rates have soared and most crime rates have plunged — LAPD statistics show that property crime dropped 44% and violent crime dropped 40% between 2005 and 2009 — the drug problem persists.

At the Union Rescue Mission early Tuesday morning, one man died of a suspected heroin overdose in the shelter’s overflow dormitories. The same morning, another man died of a suspected overdose at the Midnight Mission across the street.

Much violence on skid row is drug-related.

Last year the area was rocked by a double homicide that police say was linked to the drug trade inside the Lamp Lodge, a respected facility that provides shelter and counseling to the homeless.

Commander Blake Chow of the LAPD’s Central Division called drugs “probably the biggest threat to the community right now.”

The injunction, Chow said, would help police “protect the homeless from the predators coming from other parts of the city.” Of the dealers, he said, “we can arrest them and arrest them and arrest them, but what we need to do is keep them away.”

Gary Blasi, a UCLA professor who studies homelessness, said injunctions might allow police to stop anyone on the street without probable cause so long as they look like one of the 80 people on the the list.

The ban if approved, would not take effect for months. The people listed in the junction will have a chance to challenge it at a preliminary hearing that will be held in the next few weeks or months, said Bruce Riordan, the city attorney’s director of anti-gang operations.

Another two to three months after that there will be another hearing in which a judge can choose to make it permanent.

Violating the injunction would be a misdemeanor offense.

— Kate Linthicum

Photo: Arrest on skid row. L.A. Times file.

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Wednesday for an investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the recent conflict between the government of Yemen and Shiite Huthi Rebels. According to HRW’s report, “All Quiet on the Northern Front?: Uninvestigated Laws of War Violations in Yemen’s War with Huthi Rebels,” the February truce between the factions has not resulted in any meaningful inquiry into air strikes on populated villages, indiscriminate violence, summary executions, and child soldiers, among other alleged violations:
The elements of this shaky truce – the sixth in almost as many years – do not include investigations into alleged violations of the laws of war. … The continuing failure of both the Yemeni government and the Huthi rebels to investigate alleged violations by their forces prevents perpetrators from being held to account, denies compensation to victims of abuses, and complicates efforts to reach a long-term political settlement.HRW also accused the UN of failing to provide an organization tasked with monitoring the crisis and the possible human rights abuses. HRW is petitioning concerned governments to encourage Yemen to increase access and transparency in order to hold perpetrators liable for crimes.The Yemeni war against them Shiite Huthi Rebels, termed the Sa’dah insurgency, began in June 2004 with the uprising lead by Zaidi religious leader Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi against the Yemeni government. That time period was marked with five distinct phases or cycles of violence. Yemen has alleged that the Huthi Rebels have continuously received support from Iran and other sympathetic governments. The lack of transparency and the remoteness of fighting make it difficult to ascertain causalities in which estimates range from the hundreds to the thousands.

Lisa Paquette is a junior at American University and an intern at the Religious Action Center.

Equality in the workplace is an
issue that women have been struggling with and continue to deal with. I grew up
with a mother who holds a high-ranking position in the company she works for;
it never occurred to me that this was not the norm. As part of an assignment
from the professor overseeing my internship here at the Religious Action
Center, I had to read a book called Leveling
the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life by
Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, and Marty Linsky. This book brings to light
the startling lack of women in high-ranking positions as well as gender equity
within Jewish organizations and is meant to be
used as a physical guidebook to mentor organizational leaders as they attempt
to make changes within their organization.

One organization featured in the
book is Advancing Women Professionals (AWP), whose mission is to “advance women
into leadership positions in Jewish life; stimulate Jewish organizations to
become more equitable, productive and vibrant environments; and promote
policies that support work-life integration and flexibility for professionals
and volunteers.” Leveling the Playing
Field discusses much of the work AWP does in order to achieve its goals,
using statistics, personal accounts, and studies to demonstrate the situation
in the Jewish organizational life. Expanding upon content provided on AWP’s
website, the book suggests some strategies for change that organizations can
implement in order to create gender equity in their workplaces, including
organizational evaluations and goal-setting,

However, the sole purpose of the
book is not to promote women into higher ranking positions but also to further
discussion about creating gender equity in Jewish organizational life. As a
Jewish female working for a Jewish organization, I was intrigued by the book
and by AWP. Having been involved in various Jewish organizations throughout my
life, I reflected back on the leadership of these organizations and realized
that, at the majority of them, men held the highest ranking positions. From my
personal knowledge of some Jewish organizations, it seems as though many are
taking the necessary steps toward the goal of gender equity, including closing
the salary gap between men and women, hiring women to fill top jobs, and
creating new opportunities for women to excel within these organizations.
Slowly, Jewish institutions are providing opportunities for women to advance
within the organization.

Here at the Religious Action
Center, one of the leading positions is held by a woman – our Legislative
Director, Barbara Weinstein, directs legislative policy and oversees the RAC’s Eisendrath Legislative Assistant program, a one-year
fellowship for recent college graduates focusing on Jewish values and social
justice. On a similar note, the ratio of men to women in the office is
well-balanced, and rather than focusing on whose position is higher than
another, everyone at the Religious Action Center works as a strong team. I
believe that the Religious Action Center is a great example of a Jewish
organization that is successful at achieving gender equity within the office.

Besides our own opinions on
equity, what does Judaism have to say about the subject? There are a few places
in the Torah which point toward equity. Genesis teaches us that men and women
were created equally in the image of God. If this is the case, men and women
should be treated equally in the workplace, as well. This idea is also
mentioned is Leviticus 19:13, which states, “You
shall not defraud your neighbor.” All workers deserve to be paid fairly for the
job they perform, regardless of gender. These two examples from the Torah show
that gender equity is an important issue which Reform Judaism values.

Want to do your part to promote
gender equity? Write
to your Senators now in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182),
which would strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to provide effective
protection against sex-based pay discrimination.

Both within and outside of Jewish
organizational life, it is essential that gender equity is at the forefront of today’s
social and political issues. Women will never receive equal pay and higher
ranking jobs if we do not fight to make it so. Books such as Leveling the Playing Field and
organizations such as AWP are here to help facilitate the process, providing
insight into the steps that must be taken in order to ensure gender equity in
the work force. It is now up to us to take these steps forward.

The NFL has already banned tweeting before, during, and after games, but what about MOTOBLUR? The athlete formerly known as Chad Johnson announced today that he will be using a Motorola Devour with MOTOBLUR to power his citizen journalism company aptly named OCNN (Ocho Cinco News Network).

Chad Ochocinco (@OGOchoCinco) is nearing 1 million followers on Twitter as he covers football, music, shopping, and his daily life. OCNN has already launched an iPhone app, but there are no current plans for Android (I bet that changes soon).

Related Posts

• VP of Motoblur shows off the Verizon Devour
• Motorola teases MOTOBLUR Super Bowl ad
• Motorola Devour now available in Verizon stores
• Motorola Devour unboxing (video and gallery)
• Motorola Backflip gets some AT&T love

I have not yet seen “Wonders of the Solar System”, because it hasn’t aired in America yet. It’s a BBC astronomy documentary hosted by my friend Brian Cox, and from what I have heard is an extraordinary event. I can’t wait to see it.

Some folks, though, have a different opinion. Brian, like me, is an outspoken skeptic, and will brook no nonsense. In one episode of the show, he said, “…astrology is a load of rubbish.”


This is, of course, completely accurate. Astrology has no mechanism, no predictability, and no physical way of working. When tested even using its own standards it fails miserably.

Astrology doesn’t work, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Just as obviously, those people who are selling something have taken umbrage at Brian’s impolitic uttering of truth. They have started a Facebook page where they can get together and reinforce their silliness, make fun of Brian, and grossly misrepresent science. My favorite bit is this, in the page description:

His careless assertion was unresearched, unsubstantiated and unscientific. Has he done any empirical studies? Has he explored his birth chart? Can he cite any scientific studies disproving astrology that are not fundamentally flawed? Of course not. I have certainly never seen him at an astrology conference or read anything written by him about astrology. Cox is simply not qualified to speak on astrology and his comments amount to no more than prejudice.

Yes. Brian, a PhD physicist with decades of training in the scientific method, research, analysis, logic, and critical thinking, who has written a book on relativity and works at CERN on the Large Hadron Collider, is not qualified to speak on astrology. Heh.

By the way, astrologers: in the link above I do cite scientific studies that are not flawed and show astrology to be nonsense, just as they trash flawed studies that support astrology. I have explored birth charts and found them to be nothing more than tarot cards/Ouija boards/tea leaves/cold reading tools. I have seen empirical studies, and they all show astrology = nonsense.

And “prejudice”? No, it’s not prejudice. You just assume that because we disagree with you. But I’ve studied astrology, and I conclude that it’s garbage. That’s not prejudice. That’s reality.

And don’t forget:

The Federal Reserve could increase key rates toward 1% from near zero as a ward against inflation and possible bubbles in financial markets without hurting the nascent economic recovery, a Fed official said Wednesday.

The lone dissenter on the rate-setting Federal Open Markets Committee said 1% rates, which the Fed could move toward “sometime soon,” would still represent “highly accommodative” monetary policy.

“This would require initiating a reversal of policy earlier in the recovery, while the data are still mixed but generally positive,” said Thomas Hoenig, the president of the Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Current Fed policy, which states that key rates will remain ultralow for an “extended period” is no longer needed, Hoenig spoke at a luncheon in Santa Fe, N.M., delivering a speech from a prepared text entitled, “What About Zero?”

“By itself, the current state of the economy warrants an accommodative monetary policy,” Hoenig said. “However, as the economy continues to improve, risks emerge around the act of holding rates low for an extended period.”

Hoenig dissented from the “extended period” language at the past two FOMC meetings because of concern that artificially low rates can create fiscal imbalances, leading investors to invest cheap money based on the expectations of the key Federal Funds rate being held near zero.

The market, Hoenig said, interprets “extended period” to mean at least six months.

Interest rates set near zero for too long could lead to a new bubble and an inevitable bust, or even financial collapse, he said.

While Hoenig said he could not “reliably identify” or “prick” an economic bubble in a timely fashion, holding rates at ultralow levels for an extended period “encourages bubbles because it encourages debt over equity and consumption over savings.”

With the U.S. economy likely to grow around 3% for 2010, and with the weak labor market seen as stabilizing, the Fed could initiate an increase in key rates to 1%, ending the “borrowing subsidy” more quickly, and moderating credit conditions, he said.

Raising key rates also would lessen the chance of inflation, though Hoenig said inflation would likely remain low for the next year or two.

“Under this policy course, the FOMC would initiate some time soon the process of raising the federal funds rate target toward 1%,” Hoenig said. “I would view a move to 1% as simply a continuation of our strategy to remove measures that were originally implemented in response to the intensification of the financial crisis.”

KNOXVILLE — The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will close Estabrook Drive between Neyland Stadium and Cumberland Avenue on Saturday, April 10, and Sunday, April 11, as part of the construction of the Min Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building.

Construction crews will close the road from 8 a.m. April 10 until 6 p.m. April 11 in order to dismantle and remove a large crane from the job site.

Estabrook Drive is expected to reopen on Monday, April 12.

Previously set for April 10 and 11, construction work on a section of Andy Holt Avenue has been rescheduled for Saturday, April 17, and Sunday, April 18. The eastbound lane of Andy Holt Avenue between Volunteer Boulevard and Phillip Fulmer Way will be closed after the end of the Orange and White Game on April 17 and will remain closed until approximately 6:30 p.m. April 18. Workers will make infrastructure improvements to the water and sewer lines serving Neyland Stadium.

The westbound lane of Andy Holt Avenue next to the University Center and the Haslam Business Building will remain open to one-way traffic from Phillip Fulmer Way.

The section of Andy Holt Avenue is expected to reopen on Monday, April 19.

—

C O N T A C T :

Jeff Maples (865-974-3061, [email protected])

Brian Browning (865-974-3061, [email protected])

Mary Lynn Holloway (865-974-6031, [email protected])

We hear stories all the time about people who are having trouble paying their mortgage, call the bank for help, and are then told there’s nothing the bank can do unless they stop paying their mortgage. Well, one couple is suing Chase after they followed that advice, and then got foreclosed on.

“When they called the 800 number, they were specifically told that as long as they were current on their mortgage they wouldn’t even be considered for a loan modification,” the couple’s attorney, Piotr Reysner, said, according to Courthouse News.

The couple then fell into the blackhole of paperwork that makes it damn near impossible to actually get a mortgage modification. Months of torture passed, and at the end, the house was sold at auction without their knowledge. Then the bank allegedly denied that it had been sold. From Courthouse News:

The Jahanis say strangers came to their house and told them that “the property had sold at auction, that plaintiffs no longer owned the property and that they (meaning the unnamed persons) were interested in buying the house from the bank.” (Parentheses in complaint.)

The Jahanis say they immediately called Chase, which told them that their house “had not been foreclosed and that the people who were approaching the property were doing so illegally.”

The Jahanis say this insanity continued for months. They called the bank again in February 2010, and asked why their house was still listed as having been foreclosed in October 2009.

Chase told them it was all a “mistake” and that the bank simply had not updated its records, according to the complaint.

“During that same conversation, plaintiffs asked why defendants continued to accept mortgage payments from plaintiffs if the house had been foreclosed. Plaintiffs demanded to know where their payments were going and demanded a payment history from defendants. Plaintiffs further demanded to know why defendants’ REO department had indicated that plaintiffs no longer owned the house and that it was now in fact owned by the bank.”

They say the bank rep, “Janet,” “again reiterated that this was a mistake and that she would take care of it. Janet further claimed that she, at that moment, was sending e-mails and correspondence ‘everywhere’ within the company to rectify the situation and to please allow her 10 days to clear up the mess. The mess, in fact, was never cleaned up. Janet further promised in that same conversation that someone would review the file and get back to them within 10 days. No one did.”

We hate to say it, but yeah, that level of insanity is apparently pretty common.

Thanks a Lot, JP Morgan Chase [Courthouse News via HuffPo] (Thanks, Augus99!)

Alan Greenspan Ben Bernanke is delivering a speech in Dallas right now, creatively titled: Economic Challenges: Past, Present, and Future.

Obviously it’s the future we’re most concerned with, so we jumped down to that part, which was in fact interesting:

What about the longer term? The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead.⁵ If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare. That brings me to two interrelated economic challenges our nation faces: meeting the economic needs of an aging population and regaining fiscal sustainability. The U.S. population will change significantly in coming decades with the combined effect of the decline in fertility rates following the baby boom and increasing longevity. As our population ages, the ratio of working-age Americans to older Americans will fall, which could hold back the long-run prospects for living standards in our country. The aging of the population also will have a major impact on the federal budget, most dramatically on the Social Security and Medicare programs, particularly if the cost of health care continues to rise at its historical rate. Thus, we must begin now to prepare for this coming demographic transition.

His concern is in the right place… but is there actually a solution to an aging population? Demographics, it would seem, is destiny.

And thus we go back to this chart we published yesterday on the civilian employment ratio. Even if the economy recovers and headline unemployment goes up, Bernanke is telling us that the number of civilians actually working (as a percentage of the total population) will go down.

Join the conversation about this story »

by David Roberts

So I’m reading a story about what effect the recent West Virginia coal mine disaster will have on national energy policy, and I run across this jaw-dropping quote:

“This is a mining accident,” says Bill Wicker, communications director for the Senate Energy Committee. “This issue involves the health and safety of our miners, not our energy future.”

You could not ask for a more craven illustration of the bankruptcy of national energy politics and the obeisance national legislators still must pay the coal industry, no matter what havoc it wreaks.

This particular energy choice—coal—involves destroying land, polluting air and water, impoverishing communities, sickening tens of thousands of people a year, and yes, killing the people who dig it up. The industry has a long history of safety violations, environmental violations, lying to regulators, bribing public officials, busting unions, and violently suppressing local protests.

Are we just supposed to consider each of those discretely, as marginal side issues? Is coal’s purported “cheapness” really the only consideration that bears on national energy policy?

Right now the energy we use kills people. If we keep using the same kinds of energy, we’re going to kill even more people. Seems to me that’s germane to our energy future.

Related Links:

This week in comically evil corporate behavior

Do coal companies put profit over human life?

Massey’s mine in Montcoal has been cited for over 3,000 violations, over $2.2 million in fines

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow producer Dave Cox doesn’t think Naughty Dog’s PS3 exclusive Uncharted 2 redefined action games. His reason? Because it wasn’t multiplatform.

No matter what your opinion is of David Ortiz(notes) as a fantasy commodity — or as a designated hitter, corporate pitchman, or motivational speaker — you need to accept the fact that his recent profanity-enhanced comments were completely reasonable.

After Tuesday’s loss to the Yankees, Ortiz was asked about the slow start to his season … which happens to be only seven at-bats old. This was his response, via the Boston Herald:

"(Bleep) happens. Then you guys talk (bleep)," Ortiz said. "Two (bleeping) games already. (Bleepers) are going crazy. What’s up with that, man? (Bleep). There’s (bleeping) 160 games left. Y’all (bleepers) go ahead and hit for me."

In fantasy leagues right now, (bleepers) are also going crazy, and not just about Ortiz.

Adam LaRoche(notes) was dropped 2,128 times in Yahoo! leagues on Tuesday, presumably because he’s 0-for-8. Erik Bedard(notes) was dropped 2,122 times, even though he’s DL-eligible. Carlos Zambrano(notes) was fired 1,895 times after his horrid opener. (OK, that drop probably felt good. But still, Carlos has useful days ahead. It’s not unusual for him to be a mess in the season debut). Julio Borbon(notes) was cut 1,679 times after going 0-for-4. Jason Frasor(notes) was canned by 1,614 of you after blowing a save. Stephen Strasburg(notes) was dropped 1,580 times, apparently because fantasy owners didn’t like the way he handled media day at Double-A Harrisburg.

We often tell you to manage your fantasy teams aggressively, but we don’t endorse vengeful or reckless management. There are, as Ortiz mentioned, 160 games left. Baseball is a game in which it takes long stretches of time for a player’s true talent level to become apparent. One of the habits possessed by all losing fantasy owners is their tendency to infer too much from too little information. Don’t be that gamer. Please understand that (bleep) happens.

Of course if it’s clear that you have a panicky owner in your league, then now would be the time to pick clean their roster. Those managers generally lose interest by mid-season when they’re no longer in the trophy hunt and football sign-ups open. 

—

Photo via Getty Images

Despite growing internal criticism of Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, the RNC raised $11.4 million last month, its’ most ever in March of a congressional-election year.

The National GOP headquarters has $11.3 million in the bank for the coming 2010 midterm election campaign.

Last month’s haul was the biggest single month for donations since Steele became chairman, 4 million more than February.

Nonetheless, Steele remains under fire for what many republicans think has been wasteful and inappropriate spending habits at headquarters that undermine the GOP campaign message of fiscal and personal responsibility.

The RNC has purged several top staffers in recent days hoping to surround Steele with a new team that can better administer RNC operations and help Steele manage the GOP message.

Across the aisle democrats had a banner month too, better than republicans.

The Democratic National Committee raised at least $13 million last month in March besting the GOP during a year in which republicans are heavily favored to enjoy a net gain of seats that could threaten the democrats congressional majorities.

Through the end of February the RNC raised $120 million. Democrats raised only $100 million.

The DNC was carrying over three million in debt, the RNC had none.

In recent months some major republican donors have decided not to give to the RNC but instead contribute to the National Republican Congressional Campaign (NRCC) or the National Republican Senatorial Campaign (NRSC) as well as the republicans Governors association (RGA.)

The shift of donations away from the RNC is considered by many to be yet another sign of discontent with Steele and RNC management.

The final deadline for the parties and candidates to submit detailed financial reports to the Federal Election Committee is two weeks after the end of a month, or quarter.

For now we have mostly bottom-line figures about money raised and cash on hand…in a matter of days we’ll see more details of HOW, WHERE and, on WHAT it was SPENT.

Great fun for a political voyeur – in West Hollywood – or anywhere else.

I’m thrilled and proud to introduce the newest member of the TWI team, Annie Lowrey. Annie is wrapping up her illustrious stint as an assistant editor at Foreign Policy; previously, she worked in the Washington bureau of The New Yorker.

With the health care debate now (more or less) behind us, lawmakers and the public are turning their attention to financial regulation and job creation. Annie’s sharp journalistic instincts and firm grasp of the workings of this city we call home will serve her well as she tackles these and other issues.

Officially, her first day at TWI is tomorrow, but she couldn’t quite wait that long to get started — be sure to read her post on Goldman Sachs from this morning.

And join me in welcoming Annie to TWI!

by Lester Brown

As economic decisionmakers—whether consumers, corporate planners, government policymakers, or investment bankers—we all depend on the market for guidance. In order for markets to work and economic actors to make sound decisions, the markets must give us good information, including the full cost of the products we buy.

Unfortunately, markets largely ignore the indirect costs of goods and services, thus grossly distorting the structure of the economy. The market price of burning coal, for example, includes only the direct costs, those of mining the coal and transporting it to the power plant. By neglecting the substantial indirect costs of burning coal—the costs of air pollution, acid rain, devastated ecosystems, and climate change—the market is giving us bad information. As a result of this and other distortions, we are making bad decisions.

The most effective way to correct this massive market failure is to restructure taxes—lowering taxes on income while raising those on environmentally destructive activities. Widely endorsed by economists, tax shifting helps make sure the price of products reflects their full costs to society.

The first step in creating an honest market is to calculate these indirect costs. Perhaps the best model for this is a U.S. government study on smoking from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2006 the CDC calculated the cost to society of smoking cigarettes—including both the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses and the lost worker productivity from these illnesses—at $10.47 per pack.

This calculation provides a framework for raising taxes on cigarettes. In New York City, smokers now pay $4.25 per pack in state and local cigarette taxes. Since a 10 percent price rise typically reduces smoking by 4 percent, the health benefits of tax increases are substantial.

The many indirect costs of using gasoline—including climate change, oil industry tax breaks and subsidies, oil supply protection, and treatment of auto exhaust-related respiratory illnesses—total around $12 per gallon ($3.17 per liter), based on a conservative estimate by the International Center for Technology Assessment. If this external or social cost were added to the roughly $3 per gallon average price of gasoline in the United States, a gallon would cost $15. These are real costs. Someone bears them. If not us, our children.

Gasoline’s indirect cost of $12 a gallon provides a reference point for raising taxes to where the price reflects the environmental truth. Gasoline taxes in Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—averaging more than $4 per gallon—are a good start. That the average U.S. gas tax is less than 50 cents per gallon helps explain why the United States uses more gasoline than the next 20 countries combined. The high gasoline taxes in Europe have contributed to an oil-efficient economy and to far greater investment in high-quality public transportation, making it less vulnerable to oil supply disruptions.

Phasing in an incremental gasoline tax rising by 40 cents per gallon per year for the next 10 years and offsetting it with a reduction in income taxes would raise the U.S. gas tax to the $4 per gallon tax prevailing today in Europe. This will still fall short of the $12 per gallon indirect costs, but combined with the rising price of producing gasoline, it should be enough to encourage motorists to use improved public transport and to buy plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars as they come to market.

If gasoline taxes in Europe, which were designed to generate revenue and to discourage excessive dependence on imported oil, were thought of as a carbon tax, the $4 per gallon would translate into a carbon tax of $1,650 per ton. This is a staggering number, one that goes far beyond any carbon emission tax or cap-and-trade carbon-price proposals to date. It suggests that the official discussions of carbon prices in the range of $15 to $50 a ton are clearly on the modest end of the possible range of prices.

Tax shifting is not new in Europe. A four-year plan adopted in Germany in 1999 systematically shifted taxes from labor to energy. By 2003, this plan had reduced annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20 million tons and helped to create approximately 250,000 jobs. It also accelerated growth in the renewable energy sector.

Between 2001 and 2006, Sweden shifted an estimated $2 billion of taxes from income to environmentally destructive activities. Much of this shift of $500 or so per household was levied on road transport, including hikes in vehicle and fuel taxes. France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom are among the countries also using this policy instrument. In Europe and the United States, polls indicate that at least 70 percent of voters support environmental tax shifting once it is explained to them.

Some 2,500 economists, including nine Nobel Prize winners in economics, have endorsed the concept of tax shifts. Harvard economics professor and former chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors N. Gregory Mankiw wrote in Fortune magazine: “Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming—all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer.”

Environmental taxes are now being used for several purposes. For example, a number of cities are now taxing cars that enter the city center. Some governments are simply imposing a tax on automobile ownership. In Denmark, the registration tax on the purchase of a new car exceeds the price of the car by 180 percent. A new car that sells for $20,000 costs the buyer $56,000. In Singapore, the tax on a $14,200 Ford Focus, more than triples the price, pushing it to $45,500.

Cap-and-trade systems using tradable permits are sometimes an alternative to environmental tax restructuring. The principal difference is that with permits, governments set the allowed amount of an activity and let the market set the price of the permits as they are auctioned off or given away. With environmental taxes, in contrast, the environmentally destructive activity’s price is incorporated in the tax rate, and the market determines the amount of the activity that will occur at that price.

The use of cap-and-trade systems with marketable permits has been effective at the national level, ranging from restricting the catch in an Australian fishery to reducing sulfur emissions in the United States, but it also has serious limitations. Edwin Clark, former senior economist with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, observes that tradable permits “require establishing complex regulatory frameworks, defining the permits, establishing the rules for trades, and preventing people from acting without permits.” While economists largely prefer tax shifting for its efficiency, transparency, and predictable prices, both carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes are likely to result in a higher cost for burning carbon, thereby helping to correct the current market failure.

A market that is allowed to ignore the indirect costs in pricing goods and services is irrational, wasteful, and self-destructive. The key to building a global economy that can sustain economic progress is the creation of an honest market, one that tells the ecological truth. To create an honest market, we need to restructure the tax system by reducing taxes on work and raising those on carbon emissions and other environmentally destructive activities, thus incorporating indirect costs into the market price. If we can get the market to tell the truth, then we can avoid being blindsided by a faulty accounting system that leads to bankruptcy.

Stay tuned for a discussion of another tool to correct market
failures—shifting subsidies—in Earth Policy Institute’s next Plan B Book
Byte.

To read about the Plan B proposal for phasing in a carbon tax of $200 per ton by 2020 to help stabilize climate, visit www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4/PB4ch8_ss4.

Adapted from Chapter 10, “Can We Mobilize Fast Enough?” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4

Related Links:

A lesson from California’s bad ballot measure

Can we get some attention for our issues now?

Louisiana environmental racism case gets hearing from Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

And we were always told in the US that we spent too much time worrying about which politician was having affairs, while in France, it was pretty much expected that politicians had mistresses. Yet, apparently, Nicolas Sarkozy is so upset about online rumors, repeated on blogs and on Twitter, that both he and his wife have had affairs, that a criminal investigation has been kicked off. Under what law? Apparently the claim is that this would be a “fraudulent introduction of data into a computer system.” That seems like a stretch. These are just internet rumors. Most people let them go. At the very least, I could see a libel claim — but a criminal investigation for “fraudulent introduction of data into a computer system” just seems like massive abuse of power and overkill.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Filed under: Car Buying, Budget, Hatchback, Ford, Mazda

The 2011 Ford Fiesta and Mazda2 come to market this summer with attractive looks and plenty of available features. The two models also have a lot in common, as both vehicles are based off the same B-Segment platform and engage in a good bit of parts-sharing. But which vehicle is the better value?

The folks over at TrueDelta attempted to solve that equation, and according to the research firm’s blog, the answer isn’t as simple as “which vehicle is cheaper.” Sticker price is, however, a good place to start. A base Fiesta hatch stickers at $15,795, while the Mazda2 totals $14,730 (both prices include destination charge). That’s a $1,065 win for Mazda, no doubt, but TrueDelta claims that figuring in the value of standard equipment in the Fiesta that doesn’t exist in the Mazda brings the price gap down to about $300. A loaded Mazda2 Touring is $1,880 cheaper than a loaded Fiesta, but again, with equipment differences figured in the chasm, the gap reportedly shrinks to a mere $200.

After figuring in all the variables, TrueDelta feels the Fiesta wins out in spite of the fact that the Mazda2 is still cheaper – even when factoring in available equipment. Why? The answer is fuel economy. The most efficient Mazda2 promises 28 miles per gallon in the city and 34 mpg on the highway. The thriftiest Fiesta comes in at a far more impressive 30/40 city/highway mix; more than enough fuel savings to offset a few hundred bucks.

But that doesn’t make the Fiesta a superior deal in our estimation; at least not yet. If the Mazda2’s engineers deliver plenty of added “Zoom-Zoom,” we may be able to forgive and forget about the Fiesta’s on-paper fuel economy advantage.

[Source: TrueDelta]

Sibling Rivalry: What’s the better value play, Ford Fiesta or Mazda2? originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments