For one thing, the bill still bases its reductions on the 450 ppm (parts per million) carbon level, rather than the more realistic and recommended level of 350 ppm.  Then it goes a step further (maybe lower is a better word here), since, the way it looks now, the bill will help in making a big, no gigantic, reduction of about 4-5% by the year 2020.  The bill says its 17%, but that’s based on the 450 ppm level, which just won’t work.

The other problem is the amount of carbon allowances that will be given directly back to the companies who just paid them.  Polluting entities are set up to get all the way up to 85% back of the fines they will pay for excess emissions.

So how does a climate bill end up rewarding polluters more and setting pretty insignificant numbers for pollution reduction?  Wasn’t the point of this bill to begin punishing polluters who have gone too far and begin helping people who are in need in our country by helping provide new job opportunities and moving to cleaner energy?

This scenario with this bill has gotten so bizarre that my friend has begun calling it the Wackey-Merman bill, which, in his words, is, “like a mythic half/man, half/sea creature: the head has the science that tells us what is necessary yet the lower half of the body is the slimy political part that can’t seem to walk the talk.”

Despite that, green jobs advocates were able to help get $860 million put into the Green Jobs Act, which will help train local people in green skills.  Also, there was a demonstration program provision put in that will help ensure that green jobs nationally are local, good paying jobs.  There are more provisions to help clean up the environment, but these won’t kick in for a few years and the provisions will increase as time passes.  So thankfully we have some good things to highlight in the bill as it moves into the Senate.

The Waxman-Markey bill had the support of all three NM Representatives.  Congressman Teague stayed true to his word of fighting for local workers in his area, while also helping support renewable growth in his district.

Congressman Lujan has been cited by many top sources as a big advocate for worker’s rights in this bill.

So, yes we do have a long way to go, but like many have said, a climate bill in the U.S. is better than no climate bill.  It is a huge step for us, but we have the ability to take a large leap right now instead of just a step.

With the upcoming climate convening in Copenhagen at the end of year, we now need Senators Bingaman and Udall to step up to the plate and help make this a piece of legislation that will not make the rest of the world once again laugh at us.

Many countries scheduled to attend the Copenhagen convening are way ahead of in climate legislation.  As a world leader, the United States needs to step up.  Senators Bingaman and Udall are both in key positions to help not just our state, but our nation, move out of the backseat and into the driver’s seat on climate legislation.

It’s not a huge tax as many opponents claim, nor is it an attack on the rest of the energy producing industries.  These carbon based companies may see it as a threat since they weren’t as smart as the rest of the world to begin using renewable energy years ago, but should we have to pay for their mistake?

I think not.

It’s time for better climate legislation that benefits the American citizen and our environment, more than polluters.

In addition to causing consternation in the business community, the alliance also raises questions about whether it violates basic journalistic principles  – specifically, whether it compromises the sacred separation that is supposed to exist between an objective newspaper’s editorial content and its advertising.

Here are the details:  On July 13, the chamber will publish a quarterly report called “Business Plan” in the “A” section of the Albuquerque Journal.  In addition, beginning on July 27, the chamber will run a full-page “Business Plan” report every other week in the Journal’s Business Outlook.

In a letter to its members, the chamber pitches the new Journal sections as  “exciting new advertising opportunities” and notes that buying ads will give them access to the “Journal’s Average Weekday Statewide Readership of 260,925!”

Rates for the special section ads were not listed. It is also not clear whether the Journal or the Chamber of Commerce will write and edit content for the sections.

In 1999, a similar advertising/special section arrangement between the Los Angeles Times and the Staples Center caused a titanic uproar in the journalism world.  More than 300 Los Angeles Times employees – embarrassed at their editors’ breach of journalism ethics – signed a petition calling for an internal investigation into the arrangement.

The fallout from the incident and the widespread condemnation from other journalists later caused Times Mirror CEO Mark Willes to resign in disgrace.

The Chairman’s Table

According to the letter, chamber members who place ads in the Journal sections will become members of a new group called the “Chairman’s Table,” which the chamber says will “provide prominent recognition of companies which provide annual financial resources leading to the continued success” of the chamber.

According to the letter, Chairman’s Table members will agree to sponsor a program or event or advertise in the quarterly Business Plan in the Albuquerque Journal, or in the bi-monthly editions of the Business Plan in the Business Outlook. In exchange, Chairman’s Table members will get access to exclusive invitation-only events, including bi-annual events with the former board chamber chairman where they will receive “special updates on timely and current issues facing the business community.”

The coziness of the arrangement between the state’s largest paper and the city’s biggest business group is angering some chamber members, who say it seems to give new meaning to the concept of pay to play.

One business owner who chooses to remain anonymous said the chamber told her to “pick up her membership check” when she raised objections to buying a Journal ad.  Other chamber members are wondering: Does this mean all chamber members who don’t agree to buy Journal ads will be asked to leave?  Will chamber members be pressured to advertise in the special sections?

In addition, this breach of journalism’s most sacred separation raises so many journalistic questions. Will chamber members who decline to buy ads for the new sections be denied stories or be covered negatively in the Journal? Will businesses that do buy ads get better coverage?

What if a negative story emerges about an advertiser – will readers of the Journal get the full story? Will the Journal do puff pieces on those who do advertise – and will readers know the difference?

The whole episode seems similar to another recent breach of journalistic ethics that made the news.

In a effort to raise money for her paper, Washington Post publisher Katherine Weymouth recently offered to give  lobbyists, members of Congress, and Administration officials  direct access to the paper’s editorial staff during special off-the-record  “salons” at her home. Sponsoring a salon would cost $25,000 – $50,000.

In the face of a huge outrage over whether the officials would in essence be “buying” access to reporters, Weymouth dropped those plans.

Hard economic times or not, such financial arrangements between newspapers and sources are wrong. Getting into bed with advertisers does a disservice to the business community and to journalism ethics. The Journal and the Chamber should be ashamed.

By now, those familiar with the Journal will recognize its tactics:

1. Story placement: Publishing a “story” about a new nonprofit in yesterday’s edition – the story was placed on the front page, above the fold.
2. Juicy headline: You can almost hear Ron Burgundy reading this one –“Conservatives Look to Nonprofits, Move a Response to Liberal Efforts.”  Really.  Is that the title of a guest opinion piece?  No, it’s the title of a “news” story.
3. The follow-up editorial in today’s edition: “Real Voter Education.”
4. The inability, or refusal, to acknowledge thirty years of established Supreme Court legal precedent on the First Amendment.

This final tactic (the refusal or inability to actually discuss First Amendment law) is what is most damning to the Journal’s credibility.  In fact, it’s really an affront to Journal readers.  To treat readers like adults and actually analyze well-established law would be diametrically opposed to the Journal’s political agenda.  It’s that simple.

But, it gets even more bizarre.

As I discussed in an earlier post, top brass at the Journal have been heavily involved with a local nonprofit called the Foundation for Open Government.  As you can see here, the first and perhaps most important charge for FOG (as listed on their own site) is to help the public “understand and exercise their First Amendment rights.”  I wonder how the Journal editor squares the FOG mission with his paper’s year long Jihad against the most basic of American rights.

Really.  On the one hand, there’s the “promotion” of the First Amendment through FOG, while at the same time a concerted effort by the state’s paper of record to avoid a thoughtful discussion of First Amendment law.

It’s the kind of cognitive dissonance that leaves one speechless.

– Thomas Jefferson

Let ‘em know, Mr. Jefferson.  As one of the most respected statesmen in our history,  it’s not surprising that he had to deal with folks of the teabagger variety.  His quote sounds like it was made just for them.  He obviously was one of those crazy, socialist types.

Because as much as they try to make it seem like they’re against government spending and taxes, I’m sure the teabaggers will be enjoying their ride to their July 4th Albuquerque event on the tax funded roads, or maybe some will use the city-funded, free park and ride up to Balloon Fiesta Park.  Or how about the fireworks show that night which I’m sure many of the patriotic, teabaggers will take time to enjoy.

But I know they’d rather not have the option to use public transportation and would rather be driving on pothole-ridden, dirt roads.  I’m sure many, like them, feel that the many social services helping U.S. citizens (especially during times of recession) and their families need to be stripped away.  Hell, why not go ahead and get rid of public libraries, public swimming pools (we don’t need these this summer), and let our entire police force go while we’re at it.  We all know these things are not worthy enough to pay taxes for.

Its funny that the teabaggers are suddenly up in arms, when actions during the past 5 years should have been something that had them pissed off and protesting too, if not even more.  Why aren’t they protesting against big business that helped put us in the economic situation we are in (Bernie Madoff should be getting heckled non-stop by these folks)?

Where were the teabaggers when billions of dollars were being spent on a war that has only made us more enemies than friends on the global level?  Or is government spending on things like education and social services a bigger threat to our people than war spending?

But we all know this is just all about taxes and government spending, and not a free for all for these “fed up” people to go off on say - abortion, or the crazy notion of Obama as Hitler, and us his Jews.

Fortunately, there were some other folks who pointed out the absurdity the events.

Yet they, like anyone else, they have the right to freedom of speech, as well as the right to celebrate Independence Day (which I hope we all enjoy this weekend).  But I hope that they cover their eyes and ears when that tax-funded fireworks show goes on across from their event.  Because I know they wouldn’t want to support any government spending that is hurting Americans on Independence Day.

In pledging his commitment to health care reform, Obama spoke favorably of the so-called public option, a government-sponsored health care plan that would operate in competition with private insurance.  Recent polls show an overwhelming number of Americans favor the public option when considering health care reform.

Public forums like the one the president held today have given Americans a high-profile way to air their troubles – and have distinguished Obama as a great “Listener In Chief.”
But at the risk of overplaying the dreaded empathy card, Obama is doing even more to highlight Americans’ agonizingly real problems with the cost, availability and quality of their health care.

The folks at Organizing for America, Obama’s grassroots political organizing arm,  have compiled an archive of personal stories from regular Americans who share their health care horrors.  Organized by city (there are a number of Albuquerque ones),  the archive chronicles real problems from real people, in their own voices. It’s a great outlet for people who want to talk about why our health care system is screaming for reform -  and a handy resource for those who still need convincing.

Check it out.

How about insulting and xenophobic?

Local advocates may have held back a bit last week when they condemned Republican Albuquerque mayoral candidate Richard “R.J.” Berry and the New Mexico Republican Party for blaming a brutal murder on the city’s existing immigration policies.

Albuquerque police have charged suspected members of a hardcore El Salvadoran crime gang with murdering cook Stephanie Anderson on June 20 as they robbed a crowded Denny’s Restaurant on the city’s West Side.

In the aftermath of the crime, Berry and state Republican Party executive director Ryan Cangliosi blamed the city’s police policies regarding immigrants for the murder and called Albuquerque a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants.

Berry and Cangliosi said they were lamenting the fact that since 2007, city policy bars police from questioning a person about his or her immigration status unless the person is already under arrest or the officer feels their immigration status may be relevant to a criminal investigation.

The city adopted the policy in connection with a 2005 civil rights lawsuit brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund involving three Del Norte students who were detained at their school until immigration officials could question them.

In the days since the murder, Albuquerque police revealed that they had arrested one of the suspects, Pablo Ortiz, for DUI in 2008. He served time in jail and was then voluntarily deported to El Salvador. Police don’t know how Ortiz got back into the country and came to commit the murder. But city policies on immigration don’t appear to have anything to do with it.

Late last week, a coalition of advocacy groups expressed outrage that Berry and the Republican Party would attempt to use the murder as a pawn in their political chess game.

“Campaigns like this (against immigrants) have had a chilling impact on Hispanic/Latino communities across the country, resulting in increased discrimination, hate crimes, and racial profiling,” Adrian Pedroza, executive director of the Albuquerque Partnership, a Latino-led advocacy-based coalition, told the New Mexico Independent.

“At a time when we should be coming together to mourn the tragic death of a community member, it is unfortunate that there are those who would use this issue to further a political agenda,” Barbara Dua, executive director of the statewide New Mexico Conference of Churches, told NMI. “This is a time for us to unite, not be divided by fear mongering.”

Advocates say what Berry and the Republicans are claiming is unfortunate and chilling.

But let’s also call it what else it is – a xenophobic attempt to insult people’s common sense by confusing the facts and blurring the line between immigrants and the kind of ganged-up criminals who shoot a woman in cold blood.

Using the specter of crime and public safety to elicit knee-jerk reactions during political season is an old trick.

Did any of you fall for it?

Turns out I’m not the only one watching the Journal’s puzzling coverage of health care reform.

New Mexico Independent columnist Arthur Alpert aptly picks up on the Albuquerque Journal’s gaming of national health care news.  In a column published in today’s Independent, Alpert points out the common Journal editorial practices of using skewed headlines and reproducing only select parts of national stories.  Alpert carefully sources his column, providing multiple pieces of evidence to support his opinion.  Go check it out, it’s a good read.

Unfortunately for readers of the Albuquerque Journal, using questionable headlines and splicing stories aren’t the only ways editors game the paper’s health care coverage.  The nonexistent firewall between editorial content and news gathering at the Journal gives editors additional tools for foisting their political agenda on readers.

Let’s start with a recent editorial, and then trace the arc of coverage – both in the news section and on the editorial page.

In an editorial published on June 17, Journal editors expressed dismay over the Veteran’s Administration treatment of sick and wounded veterans.  This is not a new story.  For all the Bush Administration’s rhetoric of troop support, they really didn’t live up to their purported values when it came to funding the VA.

Yet, the Journal used this story to bash away at “government run health care.”  Here’s the closing line…

The rest of us might start worrying about the future under a “reformed” system of health care, if this is the best the federal government can provide to meet its obligation to veterans.

Veterans Deserve Safer Medical Procedures, Albuquerque Journal, June 17, 2009.  (You may need a subscription).

That line set the tone for the following nine days of opinions and “news” on the health care reform debate.

On June 21, two guest opinions appeared on the editorial page, one from Senator Jeff Bingaman, the other from Presbyterian Healthcare Services CEO Jim Hinton.  Each piece identified well-known problems with the current system, but both steered clear of what most Americans want to know more about – namely, the public insurance option.  It’s almost as if editors began to employ the old false equivalence trick by publishing Bingaman and Hinton opinions on the same day.

The shades of false equivalence found in Sunday’s editorial page became clearer in the June 22 “Up Front” opinion by sometime reporter and sometime columnist Winthrop Quigley.

Here are the money segments of the column…

There is an awful lot of propaganda out there, which keeps the public in thrall to ideologues and to political cynics who are protecting turf. A national health plan would not be nirvana, nor would it signal the collapse of Western civilization, but you wouldn’t know that if all you listened to was Air America or Fox News. Neither lawsuits nor care for immigrants nor insurance company profits account for a national health care bill of $2 trillion a year, though partisans of various stripes try convince us otherwise.

There are many people who thrive in the current environment and have no interest in change, and they will spend a lot of energy and money to stymie reform. USA Today reported earlier this month that the health insurance and drug industries have spent 41 percent more on lobbying this year than in the same period last year.

Public Must Step Up in Health Care Debate, Albuquerque Journal, June 23, 2009.   (subscription)

It’s as if Journal editors used the company line (“an awful lot of propaganda out there about health care”) as cover for what we all know to be true – those interested in the status quo (insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and some doctors) have a lot to lose financially if the system is changed.

Over the next three days, the Journal sprinkled two national stories (using skewed headlines and splicing content that clearly showed an infusion of a political agenda, as Mr. Alpert pointed out in his column) and one opinion piece.  The national stories ignored separate poll results from both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that showed north of 70% support for a public insurance option.  Instead, they reprinted polling numbers from a Washington Post poll that tested only negative messages – messages being largely used by Republicans on Capitol Hill – about the public insurance option.

The last nine days of health care coverage by the Albuquerque Journal reinforce what more and more New Mexicans are coming to understand.  The Journal takes extraordinary liberties with its nonexistent firewall between editorial content and actual news reporting.  It’s not enough that editors express opinions on the editorial page.  Editors clearly do not feel a responsibility to critically examine nuance, or all sides of a news story.  Coming from the state’s paper of record, that’s just wrong.

Readers of the Albuquerque Journal, remember this: when it comes news and editorial content, the arc of coverage by the Journal always bends in the direction of the newspaper’s political agenda.

Congressman Peterson is protecting the exact companies (i.e. coal and ethanol plants) that this bill is trying to force to make more cleaner and more efficient.  Of course he shouldn’t expect good favor from this bill (i.e. tons of money).  Yet, by some twisted logic, that’s exactly what he’s asking for.

Peterson wants electric producers who burn coal and ethanol (see how the San Juan Generating plant is holding up in NM with their emissions production) to get back 100% of the allowances they pay for excess emissions.

To me this is like taking away your kid’s allowance because he’s bad, then giving it right back to him because he needs the money to be good.

Seeing how the fine paid by San Juan (which is owned by PNM) was the largest in state history, it is mind boggling to think how much money would be given away via 100% allowances nationwide.

Secondly, Peterson argues that many of the low-income people in his Farm Belt region would be affected more than others in the nation.  While there may be a small increase in his constituents’ rates (mostly a result of electric generators in this area not being clean or efficient enough and thus they have to spend large amounts of money to get their plants in order) it will not add up to the thousands of dollars that these dirty energy representatives claim it will.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report last Friday that estimates that the total costs passed on to households from the Waxman-Markey bill will be a whopping $175 a year.  And, the report says, the low-income consumers that Peterson talks about won’t have their rates raised – instead, they’ll actually get back about $40 a year.

So once again, I have to ask the question:

Why are they really asking for 100% allowances back?  They obviously are not trying to protect consumers, since many electricity providers in the regions that Peterson is representing, including our own PNM, have already raised their rates this year.  So much for consumer protection.

Peterson also talks about protection for rural energy producers, but these producers live in the exact area where more efficient and cleaner renewable energy sources are all around.  The fact that they think they’re being left behind must have something to do with the fact that they aren’t using these great sources of cheap energy right in front of them.

What’s really going on is that these energy producers finally have to pay for something they should have been doing all along -  making their generating plants (most of which are coal-fired) efficient enough so that a ton of excess emissions are not produced.  But instead these companies have let their generating stations degrade to the point where plants like San Juan are getting record fines for something they could have avoided.

I for one don’t want to reward bad energy producers like bad parents do their bad kids.  Instead, we need to show some tough love right now. Because while they may need a small amount of help to get on the right track, surely they’ve known this time would come. And so far they’ve essentially done nothing but ask for as much money as they can back from us consumers.

Their public relations campaigns actually worked pretty well on Capitol Hill.

But, the truth about tobacco and its effects on the human body eventually reached a critical level of understanding and acceptance.  The consensus about tobacco is now so broad that Congress voted last week to bring tobacco under the auspices of federal regulation.  The truth was eventually undeniable.

Today’s health insurance companies are kind of where the tobacco companies were 15-20 years ago.  They’re becoming increasingly unpopular because of their profit model – a model that maximizes the collection of premiums and minimizes (sometimes through very dubious means) actual coverage of claims made by their customers.  Like the tobacco industry denials before them, the insurance industry has refused to cop to an open secret about their treatment of consumers.

That is, until now.

This morning’s LA Times describes in stark detail how three of the largest health insurance companies have been systematically denying coverage to patients that develop cancer or lymphoma.  They even deny coverage to women who get pregnant.  The three insurance companies (they’re the only three that have admitted to this practice) routinely pull the rug out from under their own customers when they are most vulnerable.

From the Times…

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

Despite claims to the contrary, insurance companies are actually looking for ways to back out on commitments to their customers, just so they can increase their profits.  They make money by denying coverage to sick people – sick people that were making premium payments when they were well.

And that’s not the end of it…

But they (insurance executives testifying before the committee) would not commit to limiting rescissions to only policyholders who intentionally lie or commit fraud to obtain coverage, a refusal that met with dismay from legislators on both sides of the political aisle.

Experts said it could undermine the industry’s efforts to influence healthcare-overhaul plans working their way toward the White House…

Rescission was largely hidden until three years ago, when The Times launched a series of stories disclosing that insurers routinely canceled the medical coverage of individual policyholders who required expensive medical care…

Late in the hearing, Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show “intentional fraud.

“The answer from all three executives: “No.”

-Health Insurers Refuse to Limit Rescission of Coverage, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2009.  Click here for the full story.

The word hubris keeps repeating in my head, over and over again.  This is shameful.