Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Spending deal to lift oil export ban

By Devin Henry - 12/15/15 09:48 PM EST
Lawmakers have agreed to lift the four-decade-old ban on crude oil exports as part of a spending and tax package announced by congressional leadership on Tuesday night, according to a GOP lawmaker.
In exchange, Republicans agreed to extend a series of expired or expiring renewable energy tax breaks. Both the wind production tax credit and the solar investment tax credit won five-year extensions in the tax and spending package unveiled on Tuesday, the GOP lawmaker said.

Lifting the crude oil ban was a key goal for Republicans, who have said American oil producers should have expanded access to the international market at a time of low prices and new competition from Iranian oil. Democrats have long proposed trading the renewable energy credits for crude oil exports, though until recently there was little movement on getting an exports-tax credit package to the Senate floor.
But Republicans were aggressive in pushing to including the crude oil bill in the end-of-the-year tax overhaul and spending bills. Democrats worked to tie exports to renewables in the package, with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) saying Tuesday morning that Republicans were weighing a Democratic offer to accept either both provisions or neither of them.
Export supporters say the possibly of Iranian oil hitting the global market as sanctions are lifted on the country would hurt American producers. Ending the export ban, a policy instituted to respond to the OPEC oil embargo in the 1970s, would help level the playing field, they said.
The White House has opposed lifting the export ban on its own, saying the Commerce Department already has the right to approve exports on a limited basis.
Even so, officials didn’t rule out this week some type of compromise on the matter, implying they supported bringing renewable energy credits into the mix.
“We oppose legislation that would lift the ban on the exporting of American crude oil,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday.
“But we certainly do want to see Congress — and hopefully they will in the context of this budget agreement — make the kinds of investments in renewable and clean energy that are good for our economy and have the potential to create good American middle-class jobs down the line.”
Green groups have opposed lifting the ban at all, warning about the impact it would have on the use of fossil fuels around the world.
Bill McKibben, the co-founder of the climate change group 350.org, called lifting the ban hypocritical in light of the climate agreement leaders reached in Paris this weekend.
“Doing it the week after the solemn and pious talk about saving the planet is not like some parent who smoked dope in the ‘70s warning their daughter about drugs — it’s like a parent who is currently high warning their daughter about drugs,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Hill. “You might as well hold the launch party for your vegetarian cookbook at a steakhouse.”
—Scott Wong contributed. This report was updated at 10:24 p.m. 

Above is from:  http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/263371-spending-and-tax-deal-ends-crude-oil-export-ban-extends-renewable

Anti-WInd power groups full of hot air


Anti-wind power groups full of hot air



12
The wind industry’s growth is an American success story, and should be celebrated.
Unfortunately, fossil fuel-funded special interest groups like Americans for Prosperity are working to mislead the public and elected officials regarding the wind industry. In a recent column in The Hill, Americans for Prosperity claimed the wind industry is relying on backroom deals and that the Production Tax Credit (PTC) has provided little in return on investment for taxpayers.
The wind PTC and solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) have fueled a new American energy industry, with which AFP’s fossil fuel beneficiaries do not want to compete. Instead, the fossil fuel industry funds front groups to push their political goals – groups like AFP, which we have documented extensively in our report “Attacks on Renewable Energy Policies.”
In reality, the wind Production Tax Credit has helped spark technological innovation, expand high-tech manufacturing in the United States, and create jobs. As a result of the tax break and good, old-fashioned American ingenuity, wind’s costs have fallen 66% in the last six years. Each day, 73,000 people work in all 50 states and in over 500 wind-related manufacturing facilities to expand the use of clean wind energy.
By continuing to support the PTC and ITC, our country can speed the transition from fossil fuels to clean technology while supporting private sector investment and economic opportunity.
Let’s recall that Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a front group that refuses to disclose its major contributors. AFP was founded and is funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the owners of Koch Industries, a major fossil fuel conglomerate with a direct financial interest in stopping the growth of clean energy. In the 2012 presidential election, AFP was a significant component of the Koch’s $400 million political operation, receiving large amounts of money from Koch-linked dark money groups like Freedom Partners, American Encore, and DonorsTrust. This year, Politico reported that the Koch brothers’ political network plans to spend $889 million in the run-up to the 2016 election, including an estimated $125 million for just AFP in 2015. Yet, AFP is taking issue with the clean energy industry’s political deal-making?
AFP also recently spearheaded a letter calling for the elimination of the crude oil export ban and advocating against tax credits for wind and solar. An Energy & Policy Institute investigation revealed that 19 of the 21 organizations signing the letter have either received funding from fossil fuel interests like the Koch brothers or ExxonMobil or have ties to the Koch political network.
All forms of energy in the United States benefit from federal incentives. Conventional fuels have received taxpayer handouts for 100 years, with American taxpayers spending hundreds of billions and counting on subsidies for fossil fuels. Overall taxpayer handouts for dirty fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal dwarf the incentives provided for renewable energy and energy efficiency deployment.
Lawmakers should ignore fossil fuel special interests like AFP that have a financial interest in eliminating clean energy tax breaks. Instead, elected officials should support tax breaks and incentives that will help continue the expansion of clean energy industries and support hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Elsner is executive director of the Washington, D.C.,-based Energy & Policy Institute, which works to expose attacks on clean technology and counter misinformation by fossil fuel and utility interests.

Above is from:   http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/262957-anti-wind-power-groups-full-of-hot-air

Voters define party, what it stands for

I listened to Paul Ryan explain Donald Trump's latest bigotry as "not what conservatism is."

Rep. Ryan is an Ayn Rand libertarian who is working for the Koch brothers to redefine what conservatism is; their golden boy as others have described him. It is pretty obvious the Koch Brothers want this guy to be the standard bearer of conservatism. Most people who pay attention to what is going on in the political arena are well aware the Koch Brothers are longtime libertarians, who were not able to gain traction with their Libertarian Party so they resorted to buying out the Republican Party via the tea party challenge to advance their libertarian agenda.
                                                                                   

With the great influx of the Koch brothers money, in this time of 'money rules' political culture, not only do we see conservatism being redefined but also what it means to be a Republican redefined.
Mr. Ryan may believe Trump does not represent the party, but the voters obviously do. I thought it was interesting that Bobby Jindal garnered less than 1 percent of the vote and had to drop out. It was Jindal who said, "We have to quit being the party of stupid. We have to stop fielding these offensive and bizarre candidates." Steven Colbert pointed out that when Jindal dropped out, offensive (Trump) and bizarre (Ben Carson) were in first and second place. The voters are the ones who ultimately will define the party and what it stands for.
My own personal opinion of what the Republican Party represents is a last-ditch effort for the big oil oligarchs, like the Koch brothers, to maintain control of Washington. The Democrats seem to be consolidating the support of the Wall Street oligarchs. Their president has served them well. He handed over a gargantuan sum of taxpayer money to them after his election in 2008, wouldn't let any of them go to jail and managed to repeal the reforms to prevent them from handing over more money in the future, while successfully making it look like it was the Republicans' fault.
Why the Republicans think this president is stupid is beyond me. Bill Moyers, a great champion for social justice, once said he thought President Barack Obama underestimated his opponents. I think the Republicans underestimated and misrepresented the president to their base and Trump is the backlash from their failed political strategy to 'oppose everything Obama' and become the party of obstruction.
It will be interesting to see if Trump's latest bigoted rhetoric will be his undoing, or if it will be just another boost in the polls. A boost in the polls seems unfathomable, but to a Bernie Sanders supporter like myself, I thought calling immigrants "rapist and murderers" would not be something I would ever hear coming from someone campaigning for president. I heard the new leader in the Iowa race (Ted Cruz) say this morning that while he doesn't support the ban on Muslims, he never the less likes Trump. All the Republicans I have asked, "if it came down to Trump or Hillary Clinton who would you vote for?" All of them, to the last person, said Trump. Most of these people are Christians!
I will not vote for any, as Ralph Nader would call them, Corporate Democrat or Corporate Republican. Like I said before, I am a staunch supporter of Sanders who has been a champion for the working class his entire career. Why any voter in this great nation would trust the likes of Trump or Clinton over a man like Sanders is beyond me. In Sanders, we have the opportunity to envision a government who will once again, as stated in the Constitution's preamble, "promote the general welfare" of this great nation rather than promoting the welfare of the oligarchs. To me, and many other Americans like myself, the choice is simple and clear. The media is painting Sanders as someone who is very Clintonesque. That portrayal is betrayal of the public trust. Sanders gets very little press in regard to what is at the heart of his campaign, but he gets ample opportunity to answer questions about Clinton and Trump.
There was a fellow who once said, "Americans have a great thing going, they can have whatever they want, but it does not occur to me that they want much of anything at all." I emphatically agree with this statement. We should want more, rather, we should demand more, more from the press and especially more from our politicians. If the oligarchs that rule this country, both Democrats and Republicans, are allowed to continue down this path of excessive greed at any cost, I'm afraid our heritage as a great nation is the price we ultimately will pay. Who am I trying to kid? We are paying it already.
Regards,