Peter Bearse - Protecting Human Life From Coal-Plant Air Pollution: Mitt Romney's Got It Wrong

The centerpiece of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent Fosters op edit is his attack on air pollution regulations under the Clean Air Act.  He claims that cleaning up power plant air pollution would cost jobs and damage the economy. Candidate Romney gets away with these claims by looking only at compliance costs. He ignores benefits, particularly the benefit of the human lives saved by cleaner air.

Volumes of robustly peer-reviewed analysis show that cleaning up air pollution creates jobs. Not only does it not retard economic growth, it helps to promote it. Above all, clean air saves lives. Since 1970, the Clean Air Act has reduced smog and air particulate pollution by more than 60 percent while the economy [real GDP in 2005 dollars] has more than tripled. Since the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, electricity production is up by 33 percent. Electric rates are down by 10 percent. 

As required by law, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has conducted two major studies of the costs and economic benefits of the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970 as amended. According to Alan Krupnick, former senior economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, “[t]hese studies are probably the most intensive and expensive cost-benefit analyses ever done at the agency.” The first CAA cost/benefit study found that benefits, including improved worker productivity, increased agricultural yields, and reduced mortality and illness, exceeded regulatory and compliance costs by a ratio of 42:1! This represents a $22 trillion net gain to the US economy over the period 1970-1990.

The second study examined the 1990 “acid rain” amendment to the CAA. It found that, over the past twenty years, estimated benefits exceed costs by 4:1! This yields an additional net gain of over $500 billion dollars. Over this period, our economy grew by over 60 percent while emissions of six major air pollutants dropped by over 40 percent.^[1]

Has the Clean Air Act adversely affected U.S. jobs? NO; rather, the opposite. According to another independent report prepared for the EPA, the CAA has spurred innovation and made the U.S. a global leader in pollution control technology. This induced a gain of nearly 2 million direct and indirect jobs over the period 1977-2002. Many of new jobs involve manufacture and export of pollution control technology to Asian markets.

But our air is still not clean enough. U.S. coal-fired power plants alone are still releasing air pollution causing $53 billion in economic damages annually.^[2] This amounts to one-quarter of the total of such damages afflicting the entire US economy -- overwhelmingly the single largest cause. Due to a massive loophole in the Clean Air Act, the oldest, dirtiest coal-fired power plants have never been required to install scrubbers. Thus, they continue to spew soot, smog, mercury, and other toxic chemicals into our air. This is why the EPA, after years of delay, is finally readying new standards for these pollutants – and why the coal industry and its political supporters continue to cry foul even as they continue to emit foul crap into our air.

The lion’s share of the economic benefits of cleaning up dirty coal plants would come in the form of reduced early mortality among young children and the elderly. Perhaps candidate Romney is arguing that we should ignore the lost and shortened lives caused by dirty coal plants.  But if the life involved was you, your child, spouse, parent, or close friend, the high value of cleaner air is instantly clear. Protecting lives is why voters support the new Clean Air Act regulations by 3 to 1, even in these tough economic times.

Most troubling to me as a pro-life Republican is why so many Republican candidates for President, including candidate Romney, seem to value the human lives taken by coal-plant air pollution at zero. If, instead, they honored their words and valued human lives as price-less, then the benefit-cost ratios would be even more huge than those reported earlier.______________________________________________________________________

Peter Bearse, Ph.D., International Consulting Economist, is a resident of N. Hampton with an office in Danville. He was an independent-conservative Republican candidate for Congress in the Republican in Republican primary race of 2010 who has not endorsed any Republican candidate for President.

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Acknowledgement: My colleague Jim Rubens of the Union of Concerned Scientists originally brought this matter to my attention. We discussed a draft of this piece over the phone.

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^[1] “The Clean Air Act’s Economic Benefits: Past, Present & Future.” Washington, D.C.: Small Business Majority and The Main Street Alliance (Oct., 2010).

^[2] Muller, Nicholas Z., Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus. 2011. "Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy." American Economic Review, 101(5): 1649–75.

Peter Bearse - FRANK GUINTA: NOT YOUR CUP OF TEA

The Tea Partier facade that Rep. Frank Guinta cultivated during his 2010 campaign has been fractured. He voted for the Boehner compromise during the debt limit debate, better known as a boner bill. This vote revealed Mr. Guinta’s true identity -- that of a go-along/get-along [GA/GA] Member of Congress who, as one Tea Party member remarked, is already “getting too comfortable with Washington,” unwilling or unable to risk his political career for the sake of principle.

A meeting of about 25 political activists from around the 1^st Congressional District was convened by Rep. Guinta in his Manchester District Office on August 10^th. Most of them were Tea Party folks. One of them, Ray Shakir, had come all the way from N. Conway for the meeting. He swore that “All of the Tea Partiers were against Frank’s vote.” They left dissatisfied with his lengthy explanation of why he voted as he had. The “explanation” amounted to an unconvincing rationalization. A recognized NH Tea Party leader noted that the Boehner bill established an unconstitutional “Super Committee”. Another attendee said he felt that Frank had voted for a “bad bill.” He was “struggling to understand why.” The only reason he could imagine was “fear.” Frank denied this but didn’t explain why even though he was aware that the fear factor had been played up by the mainstream media and Pres. Obama.

Perhaps the main reasons were unspoken. That Frank is attempting to be a Rep. to all of his constituents. He is focused on reelection [Aren’t they all?]. And so he lost the courage of his convictions and/or bought into the Dem’s view that getting identified with the Tea Party is a “poison pill” that makes him unelectable -- “dead meat.” We don’t share that view, but note again Ray Shakir: “He (Frank) tried to play the candle’s middle by burning both ends.” Even his usually astute political judgment here is open to question. U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte has gotten a lot of praise for her vote vs. the “boner” bill.

Frank Guinta’s future as a Member of Congress [MoC] is intertwined with two other big issues:

* What it means to be a Rep. really committed to changing the way Washington does “We the People”’s business, not just a Rep. of the same old/same old [SO/ SO] type; and

* The power of the Tea Party in NH.

On 1.: Frank has abdicated a leadership role. He’s in danger of becoming a GA/GA, SO/SO MoC. The only plus that he has demonstrated, as an editorial in the Union Leader recently recognized, is an ability to listen. But these days, listening is not enough. Voters need a lot more information on tough issues like the debt limit if they are not to be led astray by fear-mongering and misinformation from the liberal media. Frank has failed to sufficiently inform his constituents as to what was really going on and what was at stake.

On 2.: Frank’s vote puts him on the side of the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party {TP}. If the former prevails here in NH during a Presidential election year, then the forces of real change to “take back our government” in NH and countrywide are weakened. Jack Kimball, the TP-favored NH GOP Chairman, is now under pressure to resign. His NH GOP HQ Exec. Director is on the way out. A TP-favored candidate lost to a liberal democrat in an Aug. 9^th special election. The battle for the future of both the NH TP and GOP is now joined.

At this point, we can only hope that Mr. Guinta comes to his senses, regains some “testicular fortitude,” and reasserts his determination to fight for those principles that got him elected -- the Tea Party goals of freedom, liberty, personal responsibility and limited government. If not, then we’d like to see a Tea Party conservative run against him in the 2012 Congressional primary election. There are individuals out there who are willing to run but are in the process of taking stock in the midst of a fast-changing political and economic climate. The key question is whether “We the People”, as represented by a majority of NH CD 1 voters, are still willing to support those fighting to “take back” their government from political careerists, big-money, special interests, elitists and bureaucrats.

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Peter Bearse, Ph.D., and Rick Parent, both Tea Partiers and former candidates for Congress during last year’s Republican primary.

Peter Bearse - THE DEBT LIMIT, A VOTE TO SEPARATE THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS

Now we know, at last. The vote to exorcise the media-Halloween specter of “economic Armeggedon” or “Global Meltdown” has been cast. All the hue and cry ended in a whimper. Except for cries of default by “Tea Party” Republicans -- default of courage.

 

The acid test vote on the federal debt limit indicates just how far we’ve got to go -- those of  us who spoke about and supported “real change in the way Washington does “We the People”s business.” The Republican veto-proof majority did well to approve a “Cut, Cap and Balance” [CC&B] approach to the issue. Only nine Republicans, including Michelle Bachmann, defected -- because they thought the CC&B cuts didn’t go far enough! Even with this, backed by support of CC&B by nearly 3/4 of Americans polled, the U.S. Senate voted down the initiative with a thud.# House leadership, however, didn’t have the “stones…testicular fortitude” to then draw a line in the sand and say to the Senate and its President: “Enough is enough; this is our position; DEAL WITH IT!”#

 

Thus, as of Friday, “We the People” were confronted with yet another bill and another House vote. The Boehner bill that finally passed was “Dead on Arrival” in the Senate, to become the subject of a backroom deal cut by the Senate President [still smarting from a Tea Party that had the temerity to challenge his senile eminence in 2010], the U.S. President [Teleprompter Reader-in-Chief] and the Speaker of the House [prime sponsor of the boner bill]. So we could look forward to another piece of major legislation cooked up through “secretive deals, gimmicks and tax increases.”#

 

Opportunities -- for the Tea Party to change the GOP or take it over -- all these were highlighted by the tiring debate, fear mongering and “political posturing” over the debt limit. The ultimate possibility, as advocated by several TP-associated Members of Congress (MoCs) led by Rep. Ron Paul, would have been to refuse to vote to increase the debt limit. This would have provided the kind of real barrier to increased federal spending and debt that most people voted for in 2010.

During his July 19th floor speech, Rep. Paul stated: “If the debt is the problem…how is raising the debt limit the solution”? Our current federal deficit is $1.6 trillion [T]. So, we owe the Federal Reserve $1.6T. This is not real debt subject to default. Let them eat it. Then we can get down to serious business. Default is not a matter of “failing to send out checks.” We’ll do that. Effective default is lose of people’s purchasing power and depreciation of their incomes via higher prices & interest rates (&c). This looms whether or not the current debt limit is increased. 

 

According to the mainstream media, compromise failed; Obama won; the GOP and TP lost. But the real losers are “We the People.” For the public was never well-informed. We got a pile of hype and fear mongering, as noted earlier. This included releases from two leading bond-raters, Moody’s and S&P -- whose misrepresentations helped cause the Great Recession! -- that “default” would spell a down-grade of the U.S. government‘s Triple-A-rated debt. What the agencies really stated was that there was a 50:50 chance that they would downgrade the debt within 90 days even if a “technical default” were avoided, if there was no credible plan to reduce the federal debt over the “long term.”

Opponents of the limit increase had repeatedly stated, and proponents had not denied, that failure to increase it by Aug. 2nd need not lead to a technical default. Why? -- Because the Federal Reserve could rearrange the government’s accounts payable enough so that interest payments on the debt would continue to be made in the short term. The President could instruct the Treasury to pay Social Security recipients on schedule [Aug.3rd]. In the meantime, up to three months, ways could be found so that the federal government would “live within its means” as established by the current, un-raised, debt limit. 

 

Was this scenario feasible? Yes, but here again, the public was ill-informed. On the one hand, media “economics” commentators were talking about anemic GDP and “jobs” reports, how government cutbacks and the threat of “default” were already starting to take the economy back down. On the other, they failed to specify precisely what default meant and what its implications might be, including short-term and long-term impacts on government spending and jobs. MoCs also seemed to be poorly informed except by “BeJesus” reactions to the media and ratings agencies’ fear-mongering.

 

Was the opponents’ scenario also credible? Yes. It is credible as the only position that really comes to grips with the basic problem of national over-spending and huge intergenerational accumulation of unsustainable debt. Over-reliance upon debt had become addictive. Like Nancy Reagan on drugs, somebody had to stand up and insist: “Just say NO!” TP Rep.’s were not altogether “somebody”. With some exceptions, they failed to fulfill a fundamental responsibility  -- to provide full, timely information to their constituents. When push came to shove, many lost the spines shown in their campaign advertising. Had they had forgotten the Biblical question: “Are we like sheep…?”

 

The GOP/TP overlap/on-again/off-again alliance failed again to face down Obama. Although the President bears responsibility for immediate negative impacts of the failure to raise the debt limit,  it is the GOP’s new, spine-less TP members that should pay the piper in 2012. If the TP is to regain its credibility, it should prepare to run candidates in primaries against those who voted for the “boner.” Like someone vs. Guinta in NH CD1. He was not among the 22 who had the courage to vote against the “boner.”

 

PETER BEARSE, Ph.D., International Consulting Economist and author of A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION: How “We the People” can truly “take back” our government (forthcoming).

 

BEWARE VICTORY!

Advisory Note to the GOP

You know the old saw: “Beware of what you wish for.” We Republicans wished for a sweeping victory. We got it, nationwide. Now we need to govern.

Yet, “to govern” presents a high hurdle. For the problems to be faced and resolved are not only complex, they are wickedly so. The odds of failure over the next two years are high. As an economist, let me say that the odds are also high that the economy will be little better two years from now than now. Incomes will still be low and unemployment still unacceptably high.  For the economic grist for the GOP campaign mill -- “cut spending, reduce taxes” -- is not up to the challenges of our troubled economy. Thus, it is likely that another wave of resentment to “throw the bums out” will emerge during 2012. The “bums“, however, would be Republican bums, as in ‘06.

So what’s to be done so the Republicans can take some credit for economic revival, jobs’ creation and unemployment reduction over the next year or so? After all, we were largely correct in our claims that Osama’s “stimulus” has failed. Pure government spending, as if government is a productive sector, is largely waste from the standpoint of what are the three prime drivers of economic growth and development -- entrepreneurship, innovation and productivity. Yet, there is potential that government spending might have positive impacts to the extent that it: (1) is not “pure” but rather directed to spurring the latter three and (2) provides incentives to private sector investment spending.

Several guidelines, advisories or suggestions emerge from this line of thinking, as follows.

ü      Think long term. Try to put aside the inevitable temptations of Members of Congress  to look for stimuli in the form of “quickies”. This advisory implies major job-creating public infrastructure projects in the areas of transportation, science and technology, water, renewable energies and the environment.

ü      Raise productivity: With the help of people from business, labor and the inter-disciplinary research community, formulate and implement a strategy to foster productivity improvements.

ü      Spur entrepreneurship and innovation: For example, see my “Strategy to Increase Entrepreneurship and Innovation…” Note that 64% of net new jobs arise from science or technology-based enterprises no more than five years old.

ü      Consider a carbon “tax” [actually, a fee on emissions of carbon pollutants]: This is a market-perfecting device that provides real incentives for accelerated development of renewable energy sources. “Real” means prices that account for the external costs of our over-dependence on carbon fuels. Remember what happened in the ’70’s when the price of oil declined? -- Conservation efforts were canned and renewable energy projects went by the boards. Our dependence on foreign oil has been increasing ever since. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiatives like that in New England have demonstrated that a few cents’ increase in electric power bills provide millions of dollars’ worth of investment in renewable energy. Part of the fee’s yield could also help to reduce governments deficits.

ü      Remove regulatory impediments to entrepreneurship and innovation at all levels. 

These sorts of initiatives call for significant communication, cooperation and collaboration [3Cs] between the executive and legislative branches of our government, giving new life to bipartisanship. Without such new life, those of us who look forward to a new Congress to “get things done” will be sorely disappointed. The most significant threat, however, would be to the economy. As a commentator in “Moneynews” remarked online on election day in an article entitled “Gridlock in Congress Will Threaten Economy“:

              “A standoff between the Obama administration and emboldened Republicans will probably block any new help for an economy squeezed by slow growth and high unemployment.”

If the old political power and ego games reign in the new Congress, we all lose. There is a lot more at stake than Congressional egos. Let us hope that the 3Cs approach can prevail.

The new Republican-dominated Congress, for example, should be open to supporting President Obama’s new $50 billion dollar “Stimulus II” package -- to the extent that its transportation and any other infrastructure projects help to improve productivity as well as provide jobs.

The 3Cs, therefore, amount to a basic guideline for the new Congress. The great American majority of “We the People” expects their elected and unelected officials to work together for the good our country. That is the main challenge. That is primarily “What’s to be done.”

            PETER BEARSE, Ph.D., International Consulting Economist, 11/3/10. Send questions or feedback to pjbearse@gmail.com or by way of a call to 382-8079.



IS THE GOP A DINOSAUR or AN ENGINE OF REAL CHANGE

IS THE GOP A DINOSAUR or AN ENGINE OF REAL CHANGE, EVOLVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?

When a political party thinks that “the wind is on our backs”, one should ask which way the wind is blowing. Over the long run, the historic opportunity facing the GOP this election year is more likely to weaken the Republican Party than strengthen it.

Unlike Bob Dylan, the GOP needs “a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.” Republican candidates fail to appreciate the fact that most voters do not view the GOP favorably; they primarily would be voting against Democratic policies. Thus, the 2010 November elections would be a inverse replay of those in 2006 and 2008, when most voters voted for Democrats and against Republican policies. The Party sees itself as solving a self-defined problem: “The wrong party is in control.” Wrong. This attitude is an illustration of what a new book describes as “How we trick ourselves and others into solving the wrong problems….”^[1] Upon returning to power (if they do), Republicans are no more likely to change Congress than the Democrats.

So, what is the truly “historic opportunity” of this election year? It is that, after decades of decline in political participation, “We the people”, representing a good cross section of the electorate, have finally woken up, and seeing how badly off our nation has become, said: ‘We’ve got to get involved -- to take our government back.’

With the election-year opportunity recast in these terms, we can begin to see to what degree the GOP is, like the Congress it seeks to control, a dinosaur rather than an institution offering even evolutionary change. For the Republican mantra is ‘lower taxes, less spending, smaller government and free markets. Nothing here about helping people to ‘take back our government’. Just change the seats from ‘D’ to ‘R’ and all will be well!

If the Party was really listening, its emphasis would shift from the conventional headline issues (symptoms) to the underlying factors affecting issues (causes). These include:

«     Congress-as-an-institutional-dinosaur, implying that issue #1 is none of the above but rather the need to change the way Congress does the people’s business on any of the headline issues. The last such effort was made by Congress’ “Class of ‘94” under the leadership of Newt Gingrich.

«     The dominance of big money over people: Campaign finance reform (CFR) a la McCain-Feingold has failed, and a recent Supreme Court decision allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns. “Big money” has corrupted the Congress.

Ä     The need to empower people to take back what, indeed, should be their politics and their government. Lacking this, new Members will revert to SO/SO [Same-Old/Same-Old] Congressional behavior dictated by Lady GA GA [Go-Along/Get-Along] pressures -- as if “change” is simply a game for insiders only. Congress has proven unable to reform itself. 

The exception is the Tea Party, a radical departure from the GOP in terms of structure and organization. Contrast flat with hierarchical organization, democracy with oligarchy, newness with SO/SO, dynamics with statics, and individualism with GA/GA. Tea Party candidates’ positions overlap the GOP Platform on headline issue #1, deficits and spending. Otherwise, they represent the empowerment of people who either have not been politically involved or who do not represent the ‘establishment’ of any established party. In other words, they represent a new, conservative populism.^[2] As Peggy Noonan has written: “The populist movement is more a critique of the GOP than a wing of it.”^[3]

The GOP is caught in a contradiction. On the one hand, the Party needs to co-opt the Tea Party in order to engage the new political energies that it has mobilized. On the other, the self-organizing, populist dynamic of the Tea Party is utterly foreign to the good old boy network that dominates the GOP. How and whether the GOP can bridge these gaps may well determine whether the Party makes history by leading American politics into a new, conservative political realignment, or whether the party becomes history.

Whether the GOP is really open to the change that the Tea Party represents is very much open to question. The acid test will lie with candidate recruitment and financing. The GOP has a greater chance of bringing Tea Party folks into its ranks to the extent that it:

Ä     Rebrands itself as a “Party of People” and begins to throw off the image of the Party as a party of big money. This implies not favoring “big money” men and women for candidate recruitment, and rebuilding the Party from the ground-up. 

Ä     Offers an alternative way to reform the so-called “reform” of CFR, one that for the first time values people’s contributions of time over big money donations. 

Ä     Substantially revamps Party structure and functions in terms of leadership, hierarchy, decentralization, financing, membership training, and use of new Internet or ‘Web-based technologies.

Ä     Recruits candidates who have proven themselves to be innovators and change-agents at the local and state levels of government.

Fundamentally at issue in all of this is whether our democratic Republic can be saved. Real change is required in the place where it most counts -- in the Congress, the branch of government that, under our Constitution, is the only branch constituted to work for us, “We the People”. If the GOP cannot change, we may have a dinosaur party in control of a dinosaur Congress. This is a formula for failure of our Republic.   [Sept. 20, 2010]

            PETER BEARSE, Ph.D., former Republican Candidate for Congress in NH CD 1

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^[1]  See Mitroff, Ian and A. Silvers (2010), dirty rotten strategies, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press

^[2]  See Bearse, Peter (2004), WE THE PEOPLE: A Conservative Populism. Lafayette, LA: Alpha Publishers, Inc.

^[3] Noonan, Peggy (2010), “Why It’s Time for the Tea Party,” WALL St. JOURNAL (Sept.18-19)