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McCain's Emission-Reduction Plan Receives Favorable Review

by: Frank Carlson

Posted August 11, 2008 | 11:43 AM (EST)

As U.S. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain begin their long descent into tit-for-tat rhetorical games, it's easy to forget key issues the two still broadly agree on: federally funded stem-cell research; nuclear nonproliferation; comprehensive immigration reform; faith-based social services; and global warming.

Obama and McCain agree that human-induced global warming exists and even on the system America should adopt to counteract it -- cap and trade, a plan that sets a limit (cap) on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by manufacturers and power plants, for example, and then hands out credits that polluters can trade among themselves to pull themselves within the legal limits. Heavy emitters of greenhouse gases have to buy credits from low-level emitters. Cap-and-trade plans reward all sides for reducing emissions. Low-level emitters reduce in order to pile up additional credits to sell and high-level emitters reduce in order to spend less on credits.

Where Obama and McCain disagree on the plan concerns the role of the government, specifically how the government should allocate permits to companies. And unlike the current, silly spat over tire pressure gauges, this one matters.

Obama favors a full auction of the credits, which would act like a tax on companies, collecting a great deal of money right off the bat for the government to redistribute. This cash, he says, could go to alternative energy research and projects, then the credits would go to markets.

McCain says he would dole out permits in much the same way proposed by the Climate Security Act of 2007. That act failed in June to receive enough Senate support to even bring to a vote, but the basics are the same: Give the great majority of the permits away, and let the market set the price to support investment.

Here is where conventional political lines become blurred.

If you favor a more free market approach, McCain's plan may be for you because the government would collect far less money from businesses for redistribution. But if you're spooked by special interests, political favors for lobbyists and political corruption--as McCain says he is--then perhaps you side with Obama's strategy.

So what does Richard Sandor, architect of the wildly successful cap and trade system for reducing sulfur dioxide(SO2) and now CEO of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), say?

He's for a partial auction of credits like the one McCain is backing.

"If you look at full auctioning of permits, what happens?" Sandor asked reporters during a recent interview at his office near the Board of Trade in downtown Chicago. "The day that they are auctioned, you have a net transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector at that moment. What, then, happens to climate change? Nothing has happened. You have just had a transfer of wealth.
Climate Exchange, the first voluntary but legally
binding market for trading emissions in North America.

It's better to let the private sector decide where the money should go, Sandor says, which is why he's against a carbon tax. And, he adds, there is precedent for believing so.

"The program that's worked is SO2," Sandor said. "Some amount of auctioning is, I think, OK. We will implement whatever the government does. We don't have an official opinion, but I'm guided by the SO2 program and how it accomplished its objectives so cheaply that that's the way to do it."

Sandor insisted the CCX is not a policy-making entity and that it will implement any system lawmakers put forth. Much like pilots, he said, the CCX will fly whichever planes the engineers--or rather, politicians--design.

"If you design it wrong," he said, "you may have to go 30 extra miles, you may have some accidents, or crashes, and we really speak to the efficacy of the design and leave public policy to the people who are policy makers in Washington. We're not advocates."

The CCX is currently North America's only voluntary but legally binding platform for trading carbon and other emissions. Even without a mandatory cap and trade system in the U.S., many companies have already begun to reduce their emissions in the hopes of improving their public image and perhaps reaping revenues through emissions reductions.

While Sandor explains why he's against Obama's plan for the full auction of credits, his greatest priority is getting mandatory cap and trade in place, whatever the framework. Undoubtedly, this would be a great boon to the CCX, and Sandor believes it is coming.

"Both candidates, McCain and Obama, have publicly embraced it," Sandor said. "I believe in their hearts that they're committed to reducing global warming and see it as a major threat. Is it inevitable? I think so. Could there be bumps? Yes."

Those bumps, worries Sandor, include a terrorist attack that could dislodge global warming from the political agenda in favor of dealing with more immediate problems.

"And that's the nightmare scenario that I worry about because it's easy to not worry about intergenerational problems when you have immediate security needs," he says. "And I'm not suggesting that they aren't more important. In fact, they are. But the thing that will slip will be the longer-based horizon, and I think that's a danger that we have."As U.S. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain begin their long descent into tit-for-tat rhetorical games, it's easy to forget key issues the two still broadly agree on: federally funded stem-cell rese...

If this man will lie about a GI bracelet, what WON'T he lie about? Come on, y'all! Wake up!

I didn't copy the entire thing (no no, right?). It appears that you'd have to go to the site to download it. Keep an eye out to see if the drivebys (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, NYT, etc.) mention it. I'm hoping they'll have no choice. There will be a ton of crying and hand wringing beforehand, you can be sure if it ever happens at all.

http://tinyurl.com/45q5r6
or:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/09/28/family-told-obama-not-wear-soldier-sons-bracelet-where-media
Family Told Obama NOT To Wear Soldier Son's Bracelet... Where is Media?
By Warner Todd Huston
September 28, 2008

Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek of Merrill, Wisconsin.
Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.
Radio host Glenn Moberg of the show "Route 51" asked Mr. Jopek, a man who believes in the efforts in Iraq and is not in favor of Obama's positions on the war, what he and his ex-wife think of Obama continually using their son's name on the campaign trail.
Jopek began by saying that his ex-wife was taken aback, even upset, that Obama has made the death of her son a campaign issue. Jopek says his wife gave Obama the bracelet because "she just wanted Mr. Obama to know Ryan's name." Jopek went on to say that "she wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event" and "just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Apparently, they were all shocked it became such a big deal.
But, he also said that his ex-wife has refused further interviews on the matter and that she wanted Obama to stop wearing the reminder of her son's sacrifice that he keeps turning into a campaign soundbyte. This begins at about 10 minutes into the radio program. (Download radio show HERE) (H/T D. Keith Howington of www.dehavelle.com)

I had posted this a few days ago; it's down the page somewhere, but, in true Bush style, he is taking care of his "base" right up until the end. I apparently failed to provide the link when I posted it, but anyone interested can just Google the title below, and multiple links will pop up.

I'm thinking the "trickle up" theory is how things SHOULD be. ALLOW the little guy at the bottom to be ABLE to afford a 1989 clunker; allow the guy who's a little above that to be ABLE to afford maybe a 2000 Chevy Cavalier, and ALLOW the guy who's standing on the next rung of the ladder upward to buy a new Mustang. The guys who are standing at the top can still afford their Porsches and Benzes, but EVERYONE would have access to some things in life that most of us feel are essentials, not luxuries. Probably won't be too many new American cars to buy, though, because there isn't a level playing field when it comes to "free trade." I personally think this whole "free trade" thing should be scrapped and reinvented so that it benefits American CITIZENS and not just American EXECUTIVES.

Instead of sneaking a little "P.S." in the middle of the night like Bush did to make sure his rich criminal buddies get their bonuses, why NOT start the "trickle-up" program and make them work for their bonuses?

"Trickle down" simply doesn't work because nothing is "trickling." The greediest at the top (Bush's base) are the ones who are benefiting, and the most needy (formerly known as the "middle class" and Obama's "base") are being stomped on BIG TIME.

Frequently, this whole mess reminds me of the movie "Trading Places," where two rich old men play with and manipulate the lives of two people and create havoc -- all for a ONE-DOLLAR BET. If it didn't feel and sound so familiar to what Americans are experiencing today, it might even be funny. Instead, it feels like we're all being manipulated on a much more sinister level.

I think someone should force Bush, Cheney, Paulson and a few other "elites" on Wall Street to empty their pockets before they leave Washington, since one of the conditions of the Wall Street bailout was that it would all be done in secret, with no transparency, and no list of the recipients of what is now trillions of dollars.

I can remember my mortgage when trickle down Reaganomics was going strong. The interest was 16-1/2%. This is how we got here. Time to trickle up.

The Bush Administration inserted an eleventh-hour provision into the $750 billion bailout bill to protect executive bonuses, a single sentence that will torpedo efforts to reduce bonuses even as companies slash tens of thousands of jobs and use taxpayer money to gobble up other companies at fire-sale prices.

Pressured by constituents who worried that companies would take government aid and continue to pay their executives eye-popping bonuses, Congress inserted a provision that would penalize companies who took taxpayer money and shelled out outsized bonuses.

But at the last minute, Bush officials insisted on a one-sentence provision that stopped the measure in its tracks, according to congressional aides who spoke to the Washington Post.

The change stipulated that the sanction would only apply to firms that sold mortgage backed securities to the government at auction, which the Bush Treasury Department said would be the method they'd use to infuse troubled companies with bailout cash.

"Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts" who spoke to Post reporter Amit Paley. "In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future. Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives."

"The flimsy executive-compensation restrictions in the original bill are now all but gone," Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, told Paley.

According to Paley, "The final legislation contained unprecedented restrictions on executive compensation for firms accepting money from the bailout fund. The rules limited incentives that encourage top executives to take excessive risks, provided for the recovery of bonuses based on earnings that never materialize and prohibited 'golden parachute' severance pay. But several analysts said that perhaps the most effective provision was the ban on companies deducting more than $500,000 a year from their taxable income for compensation paid to their top five executives."

This amendment to the Internal Revenue Code was the only part of the bailout measure that had an explicit enforcement mechanism.

Bush officials initially opposed executive compensation rules. Banks, in particular, had been taking heat for "golden parachute" cases, where top executives received lavish pay upon their departure even if they'd done a poor job leading their company.

It remains unclear whether the Administration ever intended to limit executive pay -- if perhaps they knew in advance that Treasury didn't intend to buy mortgage assets at auction all along -- as they'd told Congress.