Oct. 17
Los Angeles Times on carbon tax for California:
Exxon Mobil made a bit of a splash Tuesday when it announced a $1-million, two-year donation to the Republican-led Americans for Carbon Dividends, an organization pushing for a national tax to help curtail emissions of atmosphere-warming carbon. A carbon tax is aimed at making the burning of fossil fuels - which releases carbon - more expensive, and thus directing consumer behavior away from carbon-spewing energy and driving investment toward carbon-free alternatives. It’s a sound approach, one this page endorsed more than a decade ago, and better than the related cap-and-trade plans, which California has used since 2012.
But the plan that Exxon Mobil is throwing its money at - pocket change, really, for a corporation that made nearly $20 billion last year - is less than it seems. Called the Baker-Schultz plan after two of its authors, former Republican secretaries of State James A. Baker III and George P. Schultz, the plan calls for gradually increasing the per-ton carbon tax to reduce the risk of market shock, and for returning the proceeds to consumers on a per-capita basis through the Social Security Administration. Everyone gets the same amount of cash, but those who use less carbon-emitting energy will pay less tax - giving them a powerful incentive to conserve. So far, all good. And a set rate helps companies better anticipate their costs; businesses like stability and predictability.
But there’s always a but, it seems. The Baker-Schultz plan also includes a waiver that would let oil companies and other emitters off the hook for past acts contributing to global warming, preempting the many lawsuits filed against them. And it would undo the Clean Power Plan and other federal regulations covering carbon dioxide emissions. That makes this sound less like a smart plan to reduce carbon than a toxic quid pro quo - “OK, we’ll go for a carbon tax if these lawsuits go away and we get sharper deregulation.” Another plan, pushed by the Citizens Climate Lobby and other groups, would similarly escalate the per-ton tax over time and return the proceeds in a per-capita dividend, without the corporate giveaways. That’s a better option.
Whatever approach might ultimately gain traction, it will be a useless gesture unless the tax is sufficiently high to compel changes in producer and consumer behavior. How much is too little? How much is too much? We’re not going to pretend we know - there are experts who can make that calculation. But this is an area in which compromise isn’t much of an option. As the recent Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change warned, without near-immediate and drastic action to curtail the rise of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mankind faces a dire environmental future. Rising seas, more severe weather patterns - a lesson just reinforced by Hurricane Michael - deep agricultural impacts and worse droughts and flooding.
We’ve known about this problem for decades. Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius predicted nearly 120 years ago (building on earlier work by Irish-born scientist John Tyndall) that warmer temperatures would follow increased levels of human-generated atmospheric carbon. Over the subsequent few decades scientists recorded changes in carbon levels, and by the early 1970s there were international calls for research into the phenomenon. The world - particularly the industrialized world - has known this reckoning was coming yet has done little more than wave at it. It’s like a homeowner who ignores the leak in the upstairs bathroom until the house’s structural integrity begins to get compromised. Well, the bones of this building are weakening.
The problem confronting us is that understanding the threat and the available solutions - both technological and behavioral - does nothing for us unless we find a way to overcome the enormous political hurdles posed by self-interested polluters, self-centered consumers and the climate skeptics controlling the levers of government. The science and the already evident effects of global warming haven’t moved the needle on global action enough to stop the needle on the global thermometer.
It might be tempting to sigh and give up, but that would be just as foolish as continuing the disastrous policies that are imperiling the health of the very environment that makes life possible. There’s an adage that “it’s an ill bird that fouls its own nest.” If so, we’re some rather sick birds.
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Oct. 16
The Press Democrat on Trump dialing up the judicial wars with California snub:
Partisan rancor over federal judicial nominations isn’t likely to calm down anytime soon. The Trump administration assured emotions will run even hotter after moving forward with a slate of California nominees without engaging the state’s U.S. senators in good faith.
Home-state senators used to be given enormous deference in the selection of judicial nominations - too much deference, in our opinion. Unless they signed off on a nominee, by submitting a blue slip of paper to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the nomination would not move forward.
This was too much power - often wielded anonymously - to put in any one senator’s hands. When both Oregon senators refused to submit blue slips for controversial nominee Ryan Bounds, selected by President Donald Trump to serve on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Senate Republicans threw out the blue slip rule entirely, as they had earlier nuked the 60-vote filibuster for U.S. Supreme Court nominees.
The blue slip process was undemocratic and unnecessary. Bounds, for instance, was forced to pull his nomination when controversial writings of his were made public. The facts and public scrutiny of those facts, not one senator’s peeve, scuttled his judicial career.
But that doesn’t mean a president should completely ignore the wishes of home-state senators, as Trump did here.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein had been working on an agreement to nominate a slate of candidates that included at least one recommended by the Democratic senator. “I repeatedly told the White House I wanted to reach an agreement on a package of 9th Circuit nominees, but . the White House moved forward without consulting me,” Feinstein said in a statement.
The White House abruptly submitted a list of three candidates that didn’t include anyone recommended by Feinstein.
The Constitution gives Trump the authority to nominate justices. But it gives the Senate the responsibility to “advise and consent” to those nominees. The advise portion of that responsibility should not be ignored, especially in these hyper-partisan times - not if the judiciary’s reputation for nonpartisan impartiality is to survive.
Republicans have eliminated many of the rules that encouraged moderation on the part of the president in judicial nominations - rules, it should be noted, that they abused to prevent confirmation of many of President Barack Obama’s nominees.
We weren’t sad to see blue slips go, but there should be some room in the process for home-state senators and the president to have productive, respectful conversations about who should serve on the federal bench.
Despite this snub, Feinstein and Kamala Harris, California’s junior senator, should avoid the temptation to vote against these nominees out of spite. Trump’s nominees should be assessed fairly by the Senate and judged on their merit after due consideration and hearings.
The necessity of maintaining an independent, fair, impartial and nonpartisan judiciary in this nation cannot be overstated. It is a linchpin of our democracy, and citizens need to be able to trust that cases are decided based on the law and the Constitution, not partisan interests.
That can only be maintained if the nomination and confirmation process works with far more respect, cooperation and dignity than has been demonstrated in recent years.
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Oct. 15
The San Diego Union-Tribune on why California needs new DMV director - but not one named by Brown:
The California Department of Motor Vehicles’ year from hell keeps getting worse. First came reports of massive waiting lines around the state because of the DMV’s failure to prepare for its new responsibility to issue federal IDs under the Real ID law - despite more than a decade of advance notice. Now come reports that keep increasing in severity about how DMV workers have botched the state’s “motor voter” program, under which those who get driver’s licenses are automatically registered to vote. According to The Sacramento Bee, 77,000 people were double registered, 23,000 were registered with incorrect information, and as many as 1,500 ineligible voters were registered.
In sharp contrast, Oregon’s 2016 launch of “motor voter” was widely hailed. So how could California have botched implementation of its almost identical law on top of its Real ID fiasco? Pending investigations will provide more specific answers, but the initial focus has been on DMV Director Jean Shiomoto, who has worked at the agency for nearly 30 years and who downplays its woes. Veteran columnist Dan Walters also blames Gov. Jerry Brown and his “lack of interest in managerial duties.”
This history is why Brown should leave much of the DMV cleanup to his successor. The agency needs a new director who hasn’t spent decades immersed in the DMV’s culture of sluggish complacency, but that appointment should be made by the next governor. The DMV is one of the few state agencies that almost everyone has to deal with, so having it be competently managed must be a top priority.
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