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Demeter
Demeter's Journal
Demeter's Journal
December 14, 2011
You don't have to make a million to rate as an all-star greedster. You do have to be ruthless, self-absorbed and grossly insensitive. The greediest among us in 2011 probably haven’t been any greedier, as a gang, than any greedy of the recent past. They just seem that way.
Why so? We have a whole new frame of reference. This fall’s sudden — and exhilarating — rise of the Occupy movement has helped us remember what we, as a society, had sadly forgotten: that decent, smart societies never let the few grab away rewards that ought to be shared among the many.
LIST FOLLOWS
Sam Pizzigati: Presenting the Ten Greediest Americans of 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153418/presenting_the_ten_greediest_americans_of_2011?page=entireYou don't have to make a million to rate as an all-star greedster. You do have to be ruthless, self-absorbed and grossly insensitive. The greediest among us in 2011 probably haven’t been any greedier, as a gang, than any greedy of the recent past. They just seem that way.
Why so? We have a whole new frame of reference. This fall’s sudden — and exhilarating — rise of the Occupy movement has helped us remember what we, as a society, had sadly forgotten: that decent, smart societies never let the few grab away rewards that ought to be shared among the many.
LIST FOLLOWS
December 14, 2011
...The public understands correctly that Wall Street’s financial elites dominate politics. How else can we account for the fact that the financial sector was rewarded for gambling our economy into debt and killing 8 million jobs in a matter of months? At the same time, wages are stagnant, benefits are being cut right and left, public sector workers are under attack, and unemployment remains above 8 percent. No wonder Americans believe that both parties are beholden to the 1 percent.
To be sure, the 99 percent framework, so magnificently popularized by Occupy Wall Street, will be deployed by just about everyone to energize the base. Yet, we’re hearing arguments that Occupy Wall Street should occupy the Democratic Party...If Occupy Wall Street has anything at all to do with the 2012 elections, I hope it will organize large demonstrations at both conventions to dramatize the well-documented fact that both parties care more about financial elites than they do about the 99 percent. Of course there are worthy Democrats who have shown the gumption to take on Wall Street. But their power is muted as the Democratic Party overall defers to Wall Street’s lobbyists and campaign funds...For over a generation, we’ve watched the Democratic Party move steadily to the right and increasingly accommodate the top 1 percent. (In case you have any lingering doubts, read Winner Take All Politics, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.) The Wall Street orgy of the last 30 years was built upon the deregulatory push initiated by Jimmy Carter and then accelerated by Bill Clinton. Wall Street–friendly policies continue today, actualized by Obama’s appointment of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Even after the enormous crash, born and bred on Wall Street, the needs of the financial elites still come first. The banks who caused the crash, we recently discovered, had access to $7.77 trillion in secret bailouts, while the real economy languished....Nevertheless, labor and progressive organizations see no other option save the Democrats. They believe it’s a fool’s errand even to consider a political alternative because, they argue, third parties always fail, sometimes miserably. (They feel particularly burned by Ralph Nader’s run, which they believe put G.W. Bush into office.)
So what’s to be done? For starters, we should investigate carefully the last massive movement that explicitly challenged the one percent and that demanded a democratization of high finance — the Populists of the late 1880s...This made-in-America movement grew out of the horrendous conditions faced by small farmers, especially in the South. In order to survive through the winter, farmers had to pledge their future crops to one dominant local merchant in exchange for food and supplies. The merchant (then called “The Man”) would charge outrageous interest rates, insuring that eventually farmers would have to sign over title to their land in order to settle their debts. As a result, thousands of independent farmers turned into impoverished sharecroppers. All the necessities of farming, from the grain elevators to farm implements to the railroads were run by monopolies that squeezed the farmers dry. To compound these problems, the U.S. money supply was limited to a fixed quantity of gold, as demanded by Wall Street. This insured that as the population grew, the money supply would remain fixed, leading to enormous downward pressures on farm prices. It was a continuous rural depression as black and white farmers drifted into peonage. (Will rising student loans do something similar to the next generation? Will all of us be indebted to a handful of Wall Street banks?)
...Out of these conditions grew the People’s Party, one of the most powerful third party alternatives in U.S. history. But it didn’t end well. In 1896 the People’s Party was hijacked by a group of ambitious politicians who rammed through a fusion ticket behind the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. That retreat, combined with Bryan’s defeat, alienated the farmer base within the National Farmers Alliance. With the failure to achieve political power, the cooperative movement was starved to death due to lack of credit and faded away. More and more small farmers lost their land and slipped into abject poverty as the elites tightened their grip on political power and held it, with few exceptions, until the New Deal. (See Lawrence Goodwin’s The Populist Moment for a definitive account.)
VARIOUS TENTATIVE IDEAS FOLLOW....A MUST-READ FOR THE 99%
Don't 'Occupy the Democratic Party' -- Four Lessons From the Populist Movement
http://www.alternet.org/story/153354/don%27t_%27occupy_the_democratic_party%27_--_four_lessons_from_the_populist_movement?page=entire...The public understands correctly that Wall Street’s financial elites dominate politics. How else can we account for the fact that the financial sector was rewarded for gambling our economy into debt and killing 8 million jobs in a matter of months? At the same time, wages are stagnant, benefits are being cut right and left, public sector workers are under attack, and unemployment remains above 8 percent. No wonder Americans believe that both parties are beholden to the 1 percent.
To be sure, the 99 percent framework, so magnificently popularized by Occupy Wall Street, will be deployed by just about everyone to energize the base. Yet, we’re hearing arguments that Occupy Wall Street should occupy the Democratic Party...If Occupy Wall Street has anything at all to do with the 2012 elections, I hope it will organize large demonstrations at both conventions to dramatize the well-documented fact that both parties care more about financial elites than they do about the 99 percent. Of course there are worthy Democrats who have shown the gumption to take on Wall Street. But their power is muted as the Democratic Party overall defers to Wall Street’s lobbyists and campaign funds...For over a generation, we’ve watched the Democratic Party move steadily to the right and increasingly accommodate the top 1 percent. (In case you have any lingering doubts, read Winner Take All Politics, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.) The Wall Street orgy of the last 30 years was built upon the deregulatory push initiated by Jimmy Carter and then accelerated by Bill Clinton. Wall Street–friendly policies continue today, actualized by Obama’s appointment of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Even after the enormous crash, born and bred on Wall Street, the needs of the financial elites still come first. The banks who caused the crash, we recently discovered, had access to $7.77 trillion in secret bailouts, while the real economy languished....Nevertheless, labor and progressive organizations see no other option save the Democrats. They believe it’s a fool’s errand even to consider a political alternative because, they argue, third parties always fail, sometimes miserably. (They feel particularly burned by Ralph Nader’s run, which they believe put G.W. Bush into office.)
So what’s to be done? For starters, we should investigate carefully the last massive movement that explicitly challenged the one percent and that demanded a democratization of high finance — the Populists of the late 1880s...This made-in-America movement grew out of the horrendous conditions faced by small farmers, especially in the South. In order to survive through the winter, farmers had to pledge their future crops to one dominant local merchant in exchange for food and supplies. The merchant (then called “The Man”) would charge outrageous interest rates, insuring that eventually farmers would have to sign over title to their land in order to settle their debts. As a result, thousands of independent farmers turned into impoverished sharecroppers. All the necessities of farming, from the grain elevators to farm implements to the railroads were run by monopolies that squeezed the farmers dry. To compound these problems, the U.S. money supply was limited to a fixed quantity of gold, as demanded by Wall Street. This insured that as the population grew, the money supply would remain fixed, leading to enormous downward pressures on farm prices. It was a continuous rural depression as black and white farmers drifted into peonage. (Will rising student loans do something similar to the next generation? Will all of us be indebted to a handful of Wall Street banks?)
...Out of these conditions grew the People’s Party, one of the most powerful third party alternatives in U.S. history. But it didn’t end well. In 1896 the People’s Party was hijacked by a group of ambitious politicians who rammed through a fusion ticket behind the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. That retreat, combined with Bryan’s defeat, alienated the farmer base within the National Farmers Alliance. With the failure to achieve political power, the cooperative movement was starved to death due to lack of credit and faded away. More and more small farmers lost their land and slipped into abject poverty as the elites tightened their grip on political power and held it, with few exceptions, until the New Deal. (See Lawrence Goodwin’s The Populist Moment for a definitive account.)
VARIOUS TENTATIVE IDEAS FOLLOW....A MUST-READ FOR THE 99%
December 14, 2011
They won't tell us who they are, but they are spending tens of millions as part of 'Americans Elect' to nominate and to field an 'Independent' presidential candidate in 2012...There’s an increasing amount of buzz around Americans Elect, a peculiar Internet-based effort to shake up presidential politics. But dig a bit beneath the surface and there’s reason to be deeply skeptical of the endeavor. The basic pitch of Americans Elect goes like this: We’ll go through the expensive and time-consuming process of getting ballot access in all 50 states. Then we’ll hold an online convention in June in which any registered voter can participate. Participants will nominate a presidential ticket including one Democrat and one Republican who will then enter the general election fray...Here’s what the group is not so upfront about: It’s fueled by millions of dollars of secret money, there is a group of wealthy, well-connected board members who have control over Americans Elect’s nominating process, and the group has myriad links to Wall Street...So here are some facts about the group to keep in mind.
SECRET MONEY
The group is hoping to raise $30 million for its effort. It has already raised an impressive $22 million as of last month. So where is all that money coming from? Americans Elect won’t say. In fact, the group changed how it is organized under the tax code last year in order to shield the identity of donors. It is now a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group whose contributors are not reported publicly. What we do know about the donors, largely through news reports citing anonymous sources, suggests they are a handful of super-rich Americans who made fortunes in the finance industry. (More on this below.) But it’s impossible to fully assess the donors’ motives and examine their backgrounds and entanglements – important parts of the democratic process – while their identities and the size of their donations remain secret. In response to critics, Americans Elect official Darry Sragow argues that the donors fear there will be a backlash if their names are public. “Cross those who hold power and you are banished to political Siberia, or targeted not by the Molotov cocktails conjured up by the professor, but by unresponsive or hostile government actions,” he wrote in a recent column. HUH?
ANTI-DEMOCRATIC RULES
Americans Elect officials often tout their “revolutionary” online nominating convention, which will be open to any registered voter. But there’s a big catch. Any ticket picked by participants will have to be approved by a Candidate Certification Committee, according to the group’s bylaws...Among other things this committee will need to certify a “balanced ticket obligation” – that the ticket consists of persons who are “responsive to the vast majority of citizens while remaining independent of special interests and the partisan interests of either major political party,” according to the current draft of Americans Elect rules. Making these sorts of assessments is, of course, purely subjective. And who appoints the members of the Candidate Certification Committee? The board members of Americans Elect....In response, Americans Elect’s Sragow has written that some of these rules are still subject to change. And he has defended the board, comparing them to the Founding Fathers. “While we don’t mean to put the board in the company of the Founding Fathers, we’d point out that nobody picked the Founding Fathers, either,” Sragow argues. “They took it upon themselves to turn a popular dream into a shared reality. And they, too, had debates over how much control should be centralized. They knew that too much power in the hands of too few isn’t real democracy, but that power too diffuse is anarchy.”
WALL STREET CONNECTIONS
So who is on the Americans Elect board, and where is the money coming from? Thomas Friedman reported over the summer that the group is “financed with some serious hedge-fund money,” which has paid for, among other things, prime office space in New York and Washington. A spokeswoman for the group did not respond to a request for comment about Friedman’s report. At one point over the summer, the group was claiming that none of its funding comes from “special interests” – a difficult-to-define term that, if it has any meaning at all, would have to include the hedge fund industry...We do know that Peter Ackerman, chairman of the board of Americans Elect, has given over a million dollars to the group. A wealthy investment banker, he has been a donor to both President Obama and Republicans over the years. He was also on the board of the CATO Institute’s Social Security Choice project, which advocated for a Bush-style scheme to dismantle and privatize social security...According to the Guardian, other funders include Melvin Andrews of Lakeside Capital Partners and Kirk Rostron of an investment firm called the Mt. Vernon Group. Rostron formerly worked as a director at Merrill Lynch’s hedge fund group. Another reported funder is Jim Holbrook, chairman of the Promotion Marketing Association, the trade association for the marketing industry. And the list of political operatives who have signed on to the effort – including former McCain aide Mark McKinnon, Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman, and Bloomberg pollster Douglas Schoen – suggest the group will promote a kind of pro-establishment, “why can’t we just all get along by agreeing to dismantle Social Security”-style centrism.
The blog Irregular Times has been providing very close coverage of Americans Elect, so keep an eye over there as the group continues its rise to prominence.
Secretive Millionaires Funding Online Primary For 'Independent' White House Run
http://www.alternet.org/story/153412/secretive_millionaires_funding_online_primary_for_%27independent%27_white_house_run?page=entireThey won't tell us who they are, but they are spending tens of millions as part of 'Americans Elect' to nominate and to field an 'Independent' presidential candidate in 2012...There’s an increasing amount of buzz around Americans Elect, a peculiar Internet-based effort to shake up presidential politics. But dig a bit beneath the surface and there’s reason to be deeply skeptical of the endeavor. The basic pitch of Americans Elect goes like this: We’ll go through the expensive and time-consuming process of getting ballot access in all 50 states. Then we’ll hold an online convention in June in which any registered voter can participate. Participants will nominate a presidential ticket including one Democrat and one Republican who will then enter the general election fray...Here’s what the group is not so upfront about: It’s fueled by millions of dollars of secret money, there is a group of wealthy, well-connected board members who have control over Americans Elect’s nominating process, and the group has myriad links to Wall Street...So here are some facts about the group to keep in mind.
SECRET MONEY
The group is hoping to raise $30 million for its effort. It has already raised an impressive $22 million as of last month. So where is all that money coming from? Americans Elect won’t say. In fact, the group changed how it is organized under the tax code last year in order to shield the identity of donors. It is now a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group whose contributors are not reported publicly. What we do know about the donors, largely through news reports citing anonymous sources, suggests they are a handful of super-rich Americans who made fortunes in the finance industry. (More on this below.) But it’s impossible to fully assess the donors’ motives and examine their backgrounds and entanglements – important parts of the democratic process – while their identities and the size of their donations remain secret. In response to critics, Americans Elect official Darry Sragow argues that the donors fear there will be a backlash if their names are public. “Cross those who hold power and you are banished to political Siberia, or targeted not by the Molotov cocktails conjured up by the professor, but by unresponsive or hostile government actions,” he wrote in a recent column. HUH?
ANTI-DEMOCRATIC RULES
Americans Elect officials often tout their “revolutionary” online nominating convention, which will be open to any registered voter. But there’s a big catch. Any ticket picked by participants will have to be approved by a Candidate Certification Committee, according to the group’s bylaws...Among other things this committee will need to certify a “balanced ticket obligation” – that the ticket consists of persons who are “responsive to the vast majority of citizens while remaining independent of special interests and the partisan interests of either major political party,” according to the current draft of Americans Elect rules. Making these sorts of assessments is, of course, purely subjective. And who appoints the members of the Candidate Certification Committee? The board members of Americans Elect....In response, Americans Elect’s Sragow has written that some of these rules are still subject to change. And he has defended the board, comparing them to the Founding Fathers. “While we don’t mean to put the board in the company of the Founding Fathers, we’d point out that nobody picked the Founding Fathers, either,” Sragow argues. “They took it upon themselves to turn a popular dream into a shared reality. And they, too, had debates over how much control should be centralized. They knew that too much power in the hands of too few isn’t real democracy, but that power too diffuse is anarchy.”
WALL STREET CONNECTIONS
So who is on the Americans Elect board, and where is the money coming from? Thomas Friedman reported over the summer that the group is “financed with some serious hedge-fund money,” which has paid for, among other things, prime office space in New York and Washington. A spokeswoman for the group did not respond to a request for comment about Friedman’s report. At one point over the summer, the group was claiming that none of its funding comes from “special interests” – a difficult-to-define term that, if it has any meaning at all, would have to include the hedge fund industry...We do know that Peter Ackerman, chairman of the board of Americans Elect, has given over a million dollars to the group. A wealthy investment banker, he has been a donor to both President Obama and Republicans over the years. He was also on the board of the CATO Institute’s Social Security Choice project, which advocated for a Bush-style scheme to dismantle and privatize social security...According to the Guardian, other funders include Melvin Andrews of Lakeside Capital Partners and Kirk Rostron of an investment firm called the Mt. Vernon Group. Rostron formerly worked as a director at Merrill Lynch’s hedge fund group. Another reported funder is Jim Holbrook, chairman of the Promotion Marketing Association, the trade association for the marketing industry. And the list of political operatives who have signed on to the effort – including former McCain aide Mark McKinnon, Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman, and Bloomberg pollster Douglas Schoen – suggest the group will promote a kind of pro-establishment, “why can’t we just all get along by agreeing to dismantle Social Security”-style centrism.
The blog Irregular Times has been providing very close coverage of Americans Elect, so keep an eye over there as the group continues its rise to prominence.
December 14, 2011
The presidential campaign season keeps getting longer, and more expensive, allowing the uber-rich to effectively control our democracy...Think about that. You vote for the president to spend some part of 20% of his days raising money for his own future from the incredibly wealthy. Or put another way, the Washington Post now estimates that if you add in the non-fundraising, election-oriented events that involve him -- 63 so far in 2011 -- perhaps 12% of his time is taken up with campaign efforts of one sort or another; and this is what he’s been doing 12 to 24 months before the election is scheduled to happen.
...In this age, our rulers, the 1% whose money has flooded the electoral cycle, are turning the election itself into our extended circus....The only problem: however strange all this may be, it’s not, at least in the old-fashioned sense, an election nor does it seem to have much to do with democracy. The fact is that we have no word for what’s going on. Semi-democracy? Unrepresentative democracy? 1% democracy? Demospectacracy?
...It's an ever-expanding system, engorging itself on money and sucking in ever larger audiences. It’s the Blob of this era. In fact, the next campaign now kicks off in the media the day after (if not the day before) the previous election ends with speculation (polls soon to follow) handicapping the odds of future candidates, none yet announced...
On money, the sky’s the limit. In 2000, the total federal election season cost $3 billion; in 2008, more than $5 billion, of which an estimated $2.4 billion went into the presidential campaign. With the Supreme Court having made it easier for outside money to pour in, thanks to its Citizens United decision, funding for campaign 2012 is expected to pass $6 billion and could even top $7 billion. The Obama campaign, which raised $760 million in 2008, is expected to pass the billion-dollar mark this time around (with money already pouring in from the financial and banking sector on which candidate Mitt Romney is also heavily reliant). TV advertising alone, which topped $2.1 billion in 2008, is expected to reach or exceed $3 billion this time around...For comparison’s sake, back in 1976, in the era when pundits were first beginning to write about presidential elections as perpetual campaigns, the total spending of presidential candidates Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter was $66.9 million.
Perpetual National Elections Make the Top 1% Richer
http://www.alternet.org/story/153395/perpetual_national_elections_make_the_top_1_richer?page=entireThe presidential campaign season keeps getting longer, and more expensive, allowing the uber-rich to effectively control our democracy...Think about that. You vote for the president to spend some part of 20% of his days raising money for his own future from the incredibly wealthy. Or put another way, the Washington Post now estimates that if you add in the non-fundraising, election-oriented events that involve him -- 63 so far in 2011 -- perhaps 12% of his time is taken up with campaign efforts of one sort or another; and this is what he’s been doing 12 to 24 months before the election is scheduled to happen.
...In this age, our rulers, the 1% whose money has flooded the electoral cycle, are turning the election itself into our extended circus....The only problem: however strange all this may be, it’s not, at least in the old-fashioned sense, an election nor does it seem to have much to do with democracy. The fact is that we have no word for what’s going on. Semi-democracy? Unrepresentative democracy? 1% democracy? Demospectacracy?
...It's an ever-expanding system, engorging itself on money and sucking in ever larger audiences. It’s the Blob of this era. In fact, the next campaign now kicks off in the media the day after (if not the day before) the previous election ends with speculation (polls soon to follow) handicapping the odds of future candidates, none yet announced...
On money, the sky’s the limit. In 2000, the total federal election season cost $3 billion; in 2008, more than $5 billion, of which an estimated $2.4 billion went into the presidential campaign. With the Supreme Court having made it easier for outside money to pour in, thanks to its Citizens United decision, funding for campaign 2012 is expected to pass $6 billion and could even top $7 billion. The Obama campaign, which raised $760 million in 2008, is expected to pass the billion-dollar mark this time around (with money already pouring in from the financial and banking sector on which candidate Mitt Romney is also heavily reliant). TV advertising alone, which topped $2.1 billion in 2008, is expected to reach or exceed $3 billion this time around...For comparison’s sake, back in 1976, in the era when pundits were first beginning to write about presidential elections as perpetual campaigns, the total spending of presidential candidates Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter was $66.9 million.
December 13, 2011
The public is being kept in the dark about the viability of solar photovoltaic energy, according to a study conducted at Queen’s University. “Many analysts project a higher cost for solar photovoltaic energy because they don’t consider recent technological advancements and price reductions,” says [co-author] Joshua Pearce, Adjunct Professor, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. “Older models for determining solar photovoltaic energy costs are too conservative.”
Dr. Pearce believes solar photovoltaic systems are near the “tipping point” where they can produce energy for about the same price other traditional sources of energy. That’s the news release for a new journal article, “A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity” (subs. req’d). The analysis concludes:
Solar Power Much Cheaper to Produce Than Most Analysts Realize, Study Finds By Joe Romm NO DUH!
http://www.nationofchange.org/solar-power-much-cheaper-produce-most-analysts-realize-study-finds-1323623695The public is being kept in the dark about the viability of solar photovoltaic energy, according to a study conducted at Queen’s University. “Many analysts project a higher cost for solar photovoltaic energy because they don’t consider recent technological advancements and price reductions,” says [co-author] Joshua Pearce, Adjunct Professor, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. “Older models for determining solar photovoltaic energy costs are too conservative.”
Dr. Pearce believes solar photovoltaic systems are near the “tipping point” where they can produce energy for about the same price other traditional sources of energy. That’s the news release for a new journal article, “A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity” (subs. req’d). The analysis concludes:
Given the state of the art in the technology and favourable financing terms it is clear that PV has already obtained grid parity in specific locations and as installed costs continue to decline, grid electricity prices continue to escalate, and industry experience increases, PV will become an increasingly economically advantageous source of electricity over expanding geographical regions.
That argument is one Climate Progress and others have been making for a while (see ‘Ferocious Cost Reductions’ Make Solar PV Competitive and Utility CEO on Solar: In “3 to 5 Years You’ll Be Able to Get Power Cheaper from the Roof of Your House Than From the Grid”.)...
Analysts look at many variables to determine the cost of solar photovoltaic systems for consumers, including installation and maintenance costs, finance charges, the system’s life expectancy, and the amount of electricity it generates.
Dr. Pearce says some studies don’t consider the 70 per cent reduction in the cost of solar panels since 2009 . Furthermore, he says research now shows the productivity of top-of-the-line solar panels only drops between 0.1 and 0.2 percent annually, which is much less than the one per cent used in many cost analyses.
Equipment costs are determined based on dollars per watt of electricity produced. One 2010 study estimated this cost at $7.61, while a 2003 study set the amount at $4.16. According to Dr. Pearce, the real cost in 2011 is under $1 per watt for solar panels purchased in bulk on the global market, though he says system and installation costs vary widely.
(Chart from Emanuel Sachs of MIT. Note: Even this data is already two years old.)
That argument is one Climate Progress and others have been making for a while (see ‘Ferocious Cost Reductions’ Make Solar PV Competitive and Utility CEO on Solar: In “3 to 5 Years You’ll Be Able to Get Power Cheaper from the Roof of Your House Than From the Grid”.)...
Analysts look at many variables to determine the cost of solar photovoltaic systems for consumers, including installation and maintenance costs, finance charges, the system’s life expectancy, and the amount of electricity it generates.
Dr. Pearce says some studies don’t consider the 70 per cent reduction in the cost of solar panels since 2009 . Furthermore, he says research now shows the productivity of top-of-the-line solar panels only drops between 0.1 and 0.2 percent annually, which is much less than the one per cent used in many cost analyses.
Equipment costs are determined based on dollars per watt of electricity produced. One 2010 study estimated this cost at $7.61, while a 2003 study set the amount at $4.16. According to Dr. Pearce, the real cost in 2011 is under $1 per watt for solar panels purchased in bulk on the global market, though he says system and installation costs vary widely.
(Chart from Emanuel Sachs of MIT. Note: Even this data is already two years old.)
December 13, 2011
...Last week a broad coalition of patient-focused groups launched its “I Am Essential” campaign in an effort to make sure that when all of us have to buy health insurance in 2014, we will be getting good value....When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act last year, it included a provision requiring that all health insurance plans sold a little more than two years from now must contain “essential health benefits.” It established 10 categories of required coverage: ambulatory patient services; emergency services; hospitalization; maternity and newborn care; mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management and pediatric services, including oral and vision care. The Department of Health and Human Services has the responsibility of determining, with input from the respected nonprofit Institute of Medicine, just how comprehensive the coverage will have to be in each of those categories.
Insurers and employers who offer coverage to workers have been lobbying both the IOM and HHS to make the coverage requirements as narrow as possible. They want to continue marketing plans with skimpy benefits because they are less costly to employers and potentially more profitable to insurers. The problem with that approach, of course, is that millions of Americans will be forced to the join the ranks of the underinsured—already estimated at 30 million—if coverage they must buy is inadequate to meet their needs. That would not only be a nightmare for many American citizens but, I’m betting, for any politician who is on the record supporting “Obamacare.” If people find out that the coverage they have to buy is of limited value to them when they get sick, they’re not going to be very inclined to vote for Democrats come 2016, especially if insurance firms continue their long-running streak of record-setting profits.
I wrote last month that an insurance industry-backed group called the Essential Health Benefits Coalition had been formed to persuade Obama administration officials to consider “affordability” first and foremost—not comprehensiveness—as they flesh out the benefit requirements. As is typical of such industry groups, this one was set up and is being run out of a big PR firm, Ogilvy Washington. The budget for it is ample enough to pay the salary of its executive director and spokesman, Brendan Daly, a former aide to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In contrast, the “I Am Essential” coalition doesn’t have a budget. “Oh, no, no, we don’t have any money at all,” I was told by Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of The Aids Institute, one of the coalition members. “This is all pro bono.” Other members of the group, which last week sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, include the Lupus Foundation of America, the Men’s Health Network, Mental Health America, the National Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs and the National Minority Quality Forum. The only other action the coalition has taken so far is to send out a news release announcing the group and its letter to Sebelius. The letter pointed out that the organizations comprising “I Am Essential” serve many of the nation’s most vulnerable patient groups. “There are tens of millions of Americans who, like the people we advocate for, live with chronic disease and disability,” they told Sebelius. “We are writing to urge you to make certain that the Essential Health Benefits package fully meets the needs of American health care consumers, particularly those who have chronic health conditions… A benefit package too narrowly drawn runs the risk of not adequately covering patient needs.”
The group’s letter came a few days after another group of patient advocates—doctors and nurses—sent a letter to Sebelius making the same plea. Sent by Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that supports a single-payer health care system for the U.S., the letter also blasted the IOM panel for siding with the insurers suggesting that HHS consider affordability first. “We protest the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that cost rather than medical need be the basis for defining the ‘essential benefits’ that insurance policies must cover,” the doctors and nurses wrote. “The IOM proposal would base the required coverage on the benefits typical of plans currently offered by small businesses – enshrining these skimpy plans as the new standard. These bare-bones policies come with a long list of uncovered services and saddle enrollees with unaffordable co-payments and deductibles… If adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services, this recommendation will sacrifice many lives and cause much suffering. We call on Secretary Sebelius and President Obama to reject them.”...
Who is Essential? Insurers or Consumers? By Wendell Potter (GRAMMAR CRINGE)
http://www.nationofchange.org/who-essential-insurers-or-consumers-1323708363...Last week a broad coalition of patient-focused groups launched its “I Am Essential” campaign in an effort to make sure that when all of us have to buy health insurance in 2014, we will be getting good value....When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act last year, it included a provision requiring that all health insurance plans sold a little more than two years from now must contain “essential health benefits.” It established 10 categories of required coverage: ambulatory patient services; emergency services; hospitalization; maternity and newborn care; mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management and pediatric services, including oral and vision care. The Department of Health and Human Services has the responsibility of determining, with input from the respected nonprofit Institute of Medicine, just how comprehensive the coverage will have to be in each of those categories.
Insurers and employers who offer coverage to workers have been lobbying both the IOM and HHS to make the coverage requirements as narrow as possible. They want to continue marketing plans with skimpy benefits because they are less costly to employers and potentially more profitable to insurers. The problem with that approach, of course, is that millions of Americans will be forced to the join the ranks of the underinsured—already estimated at 30 million—if coverage they must buy is inadequate to meet their needs. That would not only be a nightmare for many American citizens but, I’m betting, for any politician who is on the record supporting “Obamacare.” If people find out that the coverage they have to buy is of limited value to them when they get sick, they’re not going to be very inclined to vote for Democrats come 2016, especially if insurance firms continue their long-running streak of record-setting profits.
I wrote last month that an insurance industry-backed group called the Essential Health Benefits Coalition had been formed to persuade Obama administration officials to consider “affordability” first and foremost—not comprehensiveness—as they flesh out the benefit requirements. As is typical of such industry groups, this one was set up and is being run out of a big PR firm, Ogilvy Washington. The budget for it is ample enough to pay the salary of its executive director and spokesman, Brendan Daly, a former aide to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In contrast, the “I Am Essential” coalition doesn’t have a budget. “Oh, no, no, we don’t have any money at all,” I was told by Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of The Aids Institute, one of the coalition members. “This is all pro bono.” Other members of the group, which last week sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, include the Lupus Foundation of America, the Men’s Health Network, Mental Health America, the National Association of Nutrition and Aging Services Programs and the National Minority Quality Forum. The only other action the coalition has taken so far is to send out a news release announcing the group and its letter to Sebelius. The letter pointed out that the organizations comprising “I Am Essential” serve many of the nation’s most vulnerable patient groups. “There are tens of millions of Americans who, like the people we advocate for, live with chronic disease and disability,” they told Sebelius. “We are writing to urge you to make certain that the Essential Health Benefits package fully meets the needs of American health care consumers, particularly those who have chronic health conditions… A benefit package too narrowly drawn runs the risk of not adequately covering patient needs.”
The group’s letter came a few days after another group of patient advocates—doctors and nurses—sent a letter to Sebelius making the same plea. Sent by Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that supports a single-payer health care system for the U.S., the letter also blasted the IOM panel for siding with the insurers suggesting that HHS consider affordability first. “We protest the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that cost rather than medical need be the basis for defining the ‘essential benefits’ that insurance policies must cover,” the doctors and nurses wrote. “The IOM proposal would base the required coverage on the benefits typical of plans currently offered by small businesses – enshrining these skimpy plans as the new standard. These bare-bones policies come with a long list of uncovered services and saddle enrollees with unaffordable co-payments and deductibles… If adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services, this recommendation will sacrifice many lives and cause much suffering. We call on Secretary Sebelius and President Obama to reject them.”...
December 13, 2011
A Romance With Risk That Brought On a Panic
OR---BEWARE BEARDED FINANCIERS
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/a-romance-with-risk-that-brought-on-a-panic/
CORZINE
...Dozens of interviews reveal that Mr. Corzine played a much larger, hands-on role in the firm’s high-stakes risk-taking than has previously been known...An examination of company documents and interviews with regulators, former employees and others close to MF Global portray a chief executive convinced that he could quickly turn the money-losing firm into a miniature Goldman Sachs...
AND THERE WE HAVE IT, MOTIVE, MEANS AND OPPORTUNITY--FOR GOLDMAN TO PUT A HIT OUT ON CORZINE!
He pushed through a $6.3 billion bet on European debt — a wager big enough to wipe out the firm five times over if it went bad — despite concerns from other executives and board members. And it is now clear that he personally lobbied regulators and auditors about the strategy.
His obsession with trading was apparent to MF Global insiders over his 19-month tenure. Mr. Corzine compulsively traded for the firm on his BlackBerry during meetings, sometimes dashing out to check on the markets. And unusually for a chief executive, he became a core member of the group that traded using the firm’s money. His profits and losses appeared on a separate line in documents with his initials: JSC...The review of his tenure also sheds new light on the lack of controls at the firm and the failure of its watchdogs to curb outsize risk-taking. The board, according to former employees, signed off on the European bet multiple times. And for the first time it is now clear that ratings agencies knew the risks for months but, as they did with subprime mortgages, looked the other way until it was too late, underscoring how three years after the financial crisis, little has changed on Wall Street...
IT'S A DUZY OF A READ
December 12, 2011
(As first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
The easiest way to understand Europe’s financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a banker’s dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to risk submitting their plans to democratic vote after Icelanders twice refused in 2010-11 to approve their government’s capitulation to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses run up by badly regulated Icelandic banks operating abroad. Lacking such a referendum, mass demonstrations were the only way for Greek voters to register their opposition to the €50 billion in privatization sell-offs demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) in autumn 2011.
The problem is that Greece lacks the ready money to redeem its debts and pay the interest charges. The ECB is demanding that it sell off public assets – land, water and sewer systems, ports and other assets in the public domain, and also cut back pensions and other payments to its population. The bottom 99% understandably are angry to be informed that the wealthiest layer of the population is largely responsible for the budget shortfall by stashing away a reported €45 billion of funds stashed away in Swiss banks alone. The idea of normal wage-earners being obliged to forfeit their pensions to pay for tax evaders – and for the general un-taxing of wealth since the regime of the colonels – makes most people understandably angry. For the ECB, EU and IMF “troika” to say that whatever the wealthy take, steal or evade paying must be made up by the population at large is not a politically neutral position. It comes down hard on the side of wealth that has been unfairly taken.
A democratic tax policy would reinstate progressive taxation on income and property, and would enforce its collection – with penalties for evasion. Ever since the 19th century, democratic reformers have sought to free economies from waste, corruption and “unearned income.” But the ECB troika is imposing a regressive tax – one that can be imposed only by turning government policy-making over to a set of unelected technocrats.
To call the administrators of so anti-democratic a policy “technocrats” seems to be a cynical scientific-sounding euphemism for financial lobbyists or bureaucrats deemed suitably tunnel-visioned to act as useful idiots on behalf of their sponsors. Their ideology is the same austerity philosophy that the IMF imposed on Third World debtors from the 1960s through the 1980s. Claiming to stabilize the balance of payments while introducing free markets, these officials sold off export sectors and basic infrastructure to creditor-nation buyers. The effect was to drive austerity-ridden economies even deeper into debt – to foreign bankers and their own domestic oligarchies...
MORE GLOOMINESS AT LINK
REALITY CALLS URGENTLY TODAY...I WILL DO BETTER TOMORROW, GET BACK LATER TODAY IF I CAN...I SLEPT IN...BOTH CONCERTS WENT WELL, THE PAPERS DIDN'T, AND IT NEVER GOT ABOVE 19F YESTERDAY...
Europe’s Deadly Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy MICHAEL HUDSON
http://www.philstockworld.com/2011/12/10/europe%E2%80%99s-deadly-transition-from-social-democracy-to-oligarchy/(As first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
The easiest way to understand Europe’s financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a banker’s dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to risk submitting their plans to democratic vote after Icelanders twice refused in 2010-11 to approve their government’s capitulation to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses run up by badly regulated Icelandic banks operating abroad. Lacking such a referendum, mass demonstrations were the only way for Greek voters to register their opposition to the €50 billion in privatization sell-offs demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) in autumn 2011.
The problem is that Greece lacks the ready money to redeem its debts and pay the interest charges. The ECB is demanding that it sell off public assets – land, water and sewer systems, ports and other assets in the public domain, and also cut back pensions and other payments to its population. The bottom 99% understandably are angry to be informed that the wealthiest layer of the population is largely responsible for the budget shortfall by stashing away a reported €45 billion of funds stashed away in Swiss banks alone. The idea of normal wage-earners being obliged to forfeit their pensions to pay for tax evaders – and for the general un-taxing of wealth since the regime of the colonels – makes most people understandably angry. For the ECB, EU and IMF “troika” to say that whatever the wealthy take, steal or evade paying must be made up by the population at large is not a politically neutral position. It comes down hard on the side of wealth that has been unfairly taken.
A democratic tax policy would reinstate progressive taxation on income and property, and would enforce its collection – with penalties for evasion. Ever since the 19th century, democratic reformers have sought to free economies from waste, corruption and “unearned income.” But the ECB troika is imposing a regressive tax – one that can be imposed only by turning government policy-making over to a set of unelected technocrats.
To call the administrators of so anti-democratic a policy “technocrats” seems to be a cynical scientific-sounding euphemism for financial lobbyists or bureaucrats deemed suitably tunnel-visioned to act as useful idiots on behalf of their sponsors. Their ideology is the same austerity philosophy that the IMF imposed on Third World debtors from the 1960s through the 1980s. Claiming to stabilize the balance of payments while introducing free markets, these officials sold off export sectors and basic infrastructure to creditor-nation buyers. The effect was to drive austerity-ridden economies even deeper into debt – to foreign bankers and their own domestic oligarchies...
MORE GLOOMINESS AT LINK
REALITY CALLS URGENTLY TODAY...I WILL DO BETTER TOMORROW, GET BACK LATER TODAY IF I CAN...I SLEPT IN...BOTH CONCERTS WENT WELL, THE PAPERS DIDN'T, AND IT NEVER GOT ABOVE 19F YESTERDAY...
December 12, 2011
Well, I found you all
and I have one comment to make about DU3--
It's ugly! UGLY UGLY UGLY! It has all the charm and visual appeal of barracks leftover from World War II when you've been evicted from a charming cottage in the Cotswolds with mod cons.
Kind of like the economy today, now that I think of it. I doubt that this will provide enough sustenance to keep the intellect alive...and I devoutly hope that it will get better, but I really doubt it.
Got Today's FUNNY COMIC RIGHT HERE!
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