Tuesday

Tuesday May 13, 2009

Today's playlist: it's Red Dirt Tuesday. Red Dirt bands are based out of the Oklahoma/Texas border and almost universally answer the question "Are you a rock band or a country band?" with the same answer. "Yes".

. . . .Pet Peeve: "I don't like my job" - just ask the 5.1 million who've lost theirs since this recession began whether or not they'd like a paycheck, even for a job they didn't "like". That's why it's called "work" for those nitwits who don't get that. The other one, where we get to do what we like, when we like, without the pressure of deadlines or expectations or producing something is called "time off". That would be time without pay, OK?

. . . . .#2 Pet Peeve: Entitlement - That would be the one where someone who has some bare minimum level of education, some skills (of any kind), and 10 fingers and toes and is able-bodied does nothing at all, but expects that the money will keep coming in from some agency, some branch of government or an individual to enable them to continue to do what they like, when they like, at their own pleasure and pace. That's my, and other people's like me, money, that I've sweated for and earned. I realize jobs are few and far between right now, and many people got put on the street, but for God's sake, don't just sit and expect it, and act like you're entitled to it, pitch in, volunteer, go help at the church, the shelter, the mission, somewhere, anywhere, there's so many people in need right now.

. . . .Cognitive dissonance - Liz Cheney comparing her father, Dick Cheney's waterboarding fight to Al Gore's climate change fight

. . . .Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post this morning on Cheney - "The Old Faithful of Nonsense"

This is the crux of Cheney's "argument," and I put the word in quotation marks because it isn't really a valid argument at all. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration approved programs and methods that previously would have been considered illegal or unacceptable: arbitrary and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, waterboarding and other abusive interrogation methods, secret CIA prisons, unprecedented electronic surveillance. Since 2001, there have been no new attacks on what the Bush administration creepily called the "homeland." Therefore, everything that was done in the name of preventing new attacks was justified.

The fallacy lies in the fact that it is impossible for Cheney to prove that anti-terrorism methods within the bounds of U.S. law and tradition would have failed to prevent new attacks. Nor, for that matter, can Cheney demonstrate that torture and other abuses were particularly effective.

Other high-ranking officials from the previous administration, including George W. Bush himself, have had the manners and good sense to follow long-established custom and refrain from attacking the new president and his policies. Cheney, however, is not only accusing President Obama of knowingly putting American lives at risk -- an outrageous charge -- but also diving headlong into partisan politics.

Schieffer asked him about Rush Limbaugh's assertion that the Republican Party would be better off if Colin Powell left and became a Democrat. One would think that Cheney would have at least a measure of respect for a longtime colleague with whom he had served in two administrations. But one would be wrong.

"Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh, I think," Cheney said. "I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

Let's see: Given a choice between a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state who has given to his nation a lifetime of exemplary public service or an entertainer who brags about how much money he makes from bombast and bluster, Cheney would go with the gasbag. This is advice that's supposed to help the Republican Party?

I really think Cheney would be happier if he were home on the range. I'm sure the deer and the antelope would enjoy listening to what he has to say.

. . . .Paul Abrams on Cheney's lifetime pattern of sabotaging the security of the United States in reverse chronological order:

#4. Releasing the detainee memos
#3. Outing Valerie Plame
#2. As CEO of Halliburton, carrying on (illegal) business with Iraq and Iran
#1. As Congressman, voted against banning plastic guns

. . . .Go back to shooting your friends whilst on hunting excursions Dick and leave the rest of us along, we've got a country that we're trying to repair from your 8 years of Darth Vader imperialist rule from an undisclosed location.

. . . . .From NPR, Part 4 of the on-going series on repairing/renovating/upgrading the national electrical grid:

Tammy Yeakel had an unusual request for her 44th birthday present: a storm door. This stay-at-home mom from Allentown, Pa., got the idea from the Web site of her electric company, PPL Corp.

When PPL put a smart meter on Yeakel's house, she didn't even notice at first. But when the company launched the Web site to help customers use information from the meters to save money, it brought out the passionate kilowatt-pincher lurking inside her. It's become her new obsession.

"I love this site," says Yeakel as she clicks through bar charts of her family's energy use. "I called PPL and said, 'Did you design this for me?' Because I'm one of these people who love to know where my dollars [are] going and how can I save."

President Obama wants to use stimulus money to help install 40 million smart meters nationwide to help Americans save electricity and money. Smart meters can track energy use daily, hourly, monthly and even instantaneously, and send that data to power companies. The advanced meters can save companies money, because they no longer need meter readers, and they can fix outages more efficiently.

More Than Just Meters

But PPL and other utilities that have begun installing the smart meters are finding that you need more than just the meters to help customers save power — there needs to be some kind of informational device, like a Web site, that will tell customers how much power they're using.

For Yeakel, PPL's site helps her analyze her family's energy use and gives her lots of tips on ways to cut back. She got that storm door, she switched to compact fluorescent light bulbs, she wrapped her water heater and hot water pipes with insulation, and she keeps going back to the Web site for more ideas.

"I went around with the foam insulation, and where I could see leaks outside from my basement, I squirt them," she says energetically. Her electric bills are about 20 percent lower than they used to be, and she's beating the competition.

"This is one of my favorite things," Yeakel says, reading from the computer screen. "How does my home compare to similar homes in my area? And I'm always about $120 less than everybody. So that's kind of neat. That's like vacation."

Monitoring Home Usage

One recent afternoon, Tom Stathos from PPL is looking over Yeakel's shoulder as she clicks through the site. He notices that Yeakel's electricity use surges upward around 8 p.m. and asks her to explain what happens in her house at that time.

"My husband comes home," she says. He turns on the television and lights, leaves doors open and starts cooking. "We're always behind him turning everything off," Yeakel says with a giggle, adding that even her 4-year-old twins pitch in.

Stathos says that so far, Yeakel is unusual. Overall, PPL customers use 20 percent more electricity than they did 20 years ago. Many people don't realize how much charging iPods and cell phones adds to their electric bills. And some new products, like flat-screen plasma TVs, are electricity hogs, even when they're not being used.

Yeakel says PPL's site has changed the way she thinks about energy.

Making Smart Choices

"For Christmas, we got one of those nice digital pictures. And everyone says 'Why don't you leave it on?' Cause it's an energy sucker, right? I learned that on the Web site."

Stathos says that's a great example of how the site can help people save power.

"It's not a matter of doing without — it's just a matter of making smart choices," he says. "The meter is the absolute direct connection with the customer. So this is definitely the start of a smart grid," Stathos says. With information from the smart meters, PPL is launching a new pricing program. It's offering two rates — one during times of peak energy use, and a cheaper, off-peak price. The company hopes this encourages customers to use less power when electricity is priciest. And Stathos says that's just a beginning.

"I've got some brainstorms about the things I'd really like to do," he says. For instance, Stathos wants to give customers handheld devices — similar to TV remotes — that they could use to monitor their energy use and scale it back without leaving their armchairs. "I don't think that's far-fetched," he adds.

Some electric companies say they hope to use smart technologies to reach into their customers' homes and actually turn thermostats up or down, change settings on water heaters or tell refrigerators not to defrost.

In fact, in the future, when electric cars are popular, some utilities even hope to be able to store power on their customers' electric vehicles and put it back on the grid when they need it.

. . . .From CNN, top Administration officials say that 750,000 new jobs will be created from the stimulus package by the end of the President's next 100 days.

. . . . .Again, from CNN, this interactive at the jump here shows where the approximately $2.7 trillion spent so far to fix the economy has gone, or is intended to go.

.. . . From Open Congress, H.R. 1728, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act passed by roll call vote on May 7.
. . . .Again, from Open Congress, S.414 the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, the one sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut is still in committee. I like this one, it's a little stiffer with the credit card companies than the House version, and one provision says that if you miss a payment, and the company jacks your rate to an unbelievable rate, it must go back to it's original if you make your payments on time for 6 months.

. . . .From the Nation, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the original sponsor of the House bill (H.R. 627) for Credit Card Reform and her views on "Credit Card Holders Have Rights Too":

Momentum has shifted in Washington toward credit card reform. After passing the House last fall, the confluence of Barack Obama's longtime interest in credit card reform, federal regulators' implementation of new regulations, Senator Christopher Dodd's renewed championing of the issue, and the massive bipartisan margin of victory in the House (357-70) on my Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights two weeks ago, the Senate is, as I write, grappling with the task of finding sixty votes.
The sensible, balanced provisions in my bill are the result of well over two years of coalition-building and negotiation begun after Democrats regained the majority in the House in 2007. I held numerous roundtables, six Congressional hearings and many individual meetings to determine how Congress, federal regulators and credit card companies could work together to help improve services and protections for card holders. On a parallel track, after an administrative finding that card company practices were "unfair" "deceptive" and "anti-competitive," the Federal Reserve drafted new rules governing card issuers. When posted for the comment period last summer, these garnered over 60,000 public comments, leading to the Fed's vote last December to implement their new regulations in July 2010.

The Fed's finding confirmed what many of us in Congress have been saying for years: responsible re-regulation of the financial services industry is needed to correct unfair and deceptive practices. I reintroduced the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights (HR 627) this year with House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) and 128 cosponsors.

HR 627 draws a line in favor of consumers by banning most retroactive rate increases on existing balances (except where the card holder is thirty days late in making payment) and increasing notification of any interest rate hikes going forward to foty-five days. It also stops the annoying tricks and traps that cost card holders money: due-date gimmicks, misallocation of payments on balances with different interest rates, double-cycle billing; and it bans issuance of cards to minors.

It goes further than the Federal Reserve's rules by banning so-called "pay-to-pay" fees, by giving cardholders the right to set a "hard" limit on their credit line if they choose (or if they'd prefer, allowing them to opt in to an over-limit program for a specific fee) and establishing new data-reporting requirements for the industry so that regulators, legislators and the public may monitor the impact of card-holder and industry practices.

The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights would also be better than the regulators' rules simply by virtue of being in statute--with the full force of law--changeable only by the courts or future legislation, and immune to the pressures of any future administration that might prefer more lax enforcement and oversight of the credit card industry. In opposing HR 627, card issuers argue they will be forced to cut credit lines, increase rates and restrict issuance of new cards. But who are they kidding? Card issuers are already massively reducing credit lines and increasing interest rates, even on customers with good credit scores and flawless histories of paying on time. And their use of fear-mongering rings hollow: these companies also opposed this measure in good times, using different arguments, long before the current economic crisis.

The Senate is poised this week to begin debate on their version of credit card reform, where Senator Christopher Dodd's Senate Banking Committee reported his "Credit CARD Act" (S. 414) to the Senate floor by a one-vote margin in March.

American credit card holders need the protections from arbitrary rate hikes and exorbitant fees now more than ever, as many turn to their credit cards to help pay bills, buy groceries and make ends meet in this economic crisis.

There's still more Congress can do to help consumers. I've reintroduced my Banking Hotline bill (HR 1455), which establishes a single toll-free number and website to help consumers register complaints about their banks. And my Overdraft Protection Act (HR 1456) brings overdraft fees--which have exploded with the rise of debit cards--under the Truth in Lending Act, has already had a hearing in March before the Financial Institutions and Consumer Finance Subcommittee.

. . . .Slate, today launched a new women's website, DoubleX, in their own words a "new site for smart women"

. . . .I've held off just a bit from publishing anything about the marijuana legalization debate for a while now. To me, it's a simple proposition, legalize it, period. I say that as someone who's been clean and sober for over 28 years now, who does smoke cigarettes (far more deadly) and drink coffee, and gets headaches when he's not had enough caffeine. Alcohol is legal if you're over 21, and again, alcohol is addictive, and deadly. A large chunk of my friends (in their late 40's and early 50's) still smoke dope, and they don't have a problem with it. My addictions and my problems with mood-altering substances are precisely that, my problems. What I will say is this, when I was younger and getting high, the most violent I ever got when smoking dope was shoving someone out of the way because they were going for the last box of Bugles. Drinking was an entirely different story, I drove drunk, drove in blackouts, endangered others, and the surest way in my community to see a fight was to follow me through a night of drinking. Legalizing what is right now the largest cash crop in California, Alabama, Kentucky and countless other states would lead to a revenue tax stream that would pull a lot of states out of their budget problems. Do you know that the Mexican drug lords fear far more than the U.S. Army? Legalization. The simple fact is that legalizing the sale and use of marijuana would cause an instant drop in the murders on the Mexican border as the cartel leaders down there found themselves in competition with American farmers. As for any other practicality, America still leads the world in two things, drug use, and number of people in prison (yes, we beat Russia and China), most of them, over 68% there for non-violent drug related offenses. I sooner my tax money go to something else. Is it a gateway drug? I don't know, I'm not qualified to say, but I know this, regardless of whether or not it's legal, it's use will still continue, and I dare to surmise, the number of people entering treatment programs and joining 12-Step groups for their addictions won't probably spike upwards, but would stay about steady.

. . . .Outta here, I may add more later on today. Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they fall through your hands. This rodeo is a one-way ticket, and no one gets out alive, and there ain't no tomorrow. It's about right fuckin' here and now, this ain't no dress rehearsal. Go change your life, and you'll change the world.

Love y'all, got your back out there in the night

The Desolation Angel
[where: Hell, Michigan]