Two-tiered justice

On the recent Stanford rape case, I think Scott Lemieux makes a valuable point that helps clarify something I've been struggling with: does asking for a stronger sentence for a privileged person who has gotten off lightly undermine the broader push to make the U.S. criminal justice system less punitive?

Lemieux argues that it doesn't. Indeed, he suggests that the two are complementary goals: If you hold privileged (read: white and rich) defendants to the same standards the you hold underprivileged ones, people with power won't be able to ignore how draconian the system is and push to change it, instead of being able to close their eyes to it because those close to them escape its clutches. Think about the differences in the ways we've treated the opioid addiction problem and cocaine (abused broadly by middle and upper-class whites) in comparison to the way we treated the meth, heroin and crack problems (used disproportionately by the poor and/or minorities).

Finally, good on the survivor for her statement to the court and defendant during the sentencing. I have much respect for her.

GOP's near-total blockade on Obama's appointments continues -- but you can help a bit

While we were all focused on the primary elections on Tuesday, something interesting happened on the Senate floor when Democrats made a conscious, polite and ultimately futile effort to get a few judges confirmed.

Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked for unanimous consent to vote on Obama's eleven district court nominees that have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee -- without objection -- and have been awaiting the action of the full Senate (see the full Senate Calendar here).

Sen. Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky)  objected to the request.

Then Chuck Schumer (D- New York) asked for unanimous consent to vote on the seven that have been approved by Judiciary -- again without opposition -- and have been waiting on the floor since November 5. 

McConnell again objected.

Then Ben Cardin (D - Maryland) said, OK, could we vote on the four that have been  waiting on the floor since  October 29 -- six months ago. Those are

Paula Xinis, District of Maryland,
Brian R. Martinotti, District of New Jersey, 
Robert F. Rossiter, Jr., District of Nebraska,
Edward L. Stanton III, Western District of Tennessee

John Cornyn (R-Texas) objected.

Finally,  Cardin said, could we maybe just vote on the Xinis nomination, since she was approved by Judiciary in September, no one has raised any opposition to her and she has been awaiting floor action for seven months?

Cornyn objected again.

We all know about the near complete refusal of Senate Republicans to even meet with, let alone hold hearings for, vote on or even, gasp, approve President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. 

But we can't forget about the rest of these nominations either that are facing nearly a complete blockade by Republicans. In addition to the eleven awaiting floor action, 41 nominees are awaiting action in the Judiciary Committee.

In the 2015-2016 Congress to this point, the GOP-controlled Senate has only confirmed two circuit court appointments and fifteen district court judges.

For comparison, in the 2007-2008 Congress through April 30, the Democratic-controlled Senate had confirmed seven of George W. Bush's circuit court nominees and 38 of his district court nominees.

And in 2013-2014, by April 30, the Democratic controlled Senate had confirmed fifteen nominations to the circuit courts and 54 to the district courts.

It's reasonable that the GOP wants to scrutinize Obama's appointments a bit more (and even reject a few),  but these 11 judges have had been scrutinized. They've been waiting for confirmation between seven and 14 months.  They have all cleared a GOP-controlled Judiciary committee by voice vote. There is no opposition -- reasonable or otherwise -- to giving them their commissions. This is only about delay.

These are judges that are uncontroversial and needed to help the government perform their basic functions. Unlike Garland, they don't represent huge ideological stakes in themselves, so a bit of pressure might get the Republicans to let a few go.

Consider calling your state's Senators, especially if they are Republicans -- and especially if you're from Texas and have Cornyn as your Senator. (Don't e-mail, that's useless). Here's a list of numbers for their Washington offices. State your name, and give  a brief, polite (don't be a jerk) message asking them to hold a vote on the 11 district court nominees that await floor action.

The 11, including their numbers on the executive calendar are:

#307 Paula Xinis, District of Maryland,
#357 Brian R. Martinotti, District of New Jersey, 
#358 Robert F. Rossiter, Jr., District of Nebraska,
#359 Edward L. Stanton III, Western District of Tennessee
#362 Julien Xavier Neals, District of New Jersey
#363 Gary Richard Brown, Eastern District of New York
#364 Mark A. Young, Central District of California
#459 Marilyn Jean Horan, Western District of Pennsylvania,
#460 Susan Paradise Baxter, Western District of Pennsylvania,
#461 Mary S. McElroy, District of Rhode Island
#508 Clare E. Connors, District of Hawaii

Saving the world one state or province at a time: a look at existing carbon-pricing schemes in North America

With the Paris climate accord in place, now comes the hard work of actually implementing emissions reductions goals to, well, save civilization. There are many, moving parts to making this work; one of the largest set of which involve putting a price on emitting carbon.

There are two major ways to do this: cap-and-trade program, and a direct carbon tax. Cap and Trade sets a total cap on emissions for regulated sectors then lets enitities purchase emissions credits they can cash in for their emissions or sell on a secondary market if they don't exceed their cuts. Carbon taxes, in contrast, directly place a levy on carbon emissions from regulated sources. Both have their supporters and detractors, and I'm not going to wade into that debate here (personally, I'd support a well-designed plan of either).

Follow me below the fold for a brief look at the carbon-pricing landscape in North America. I don't have detailed looks at the programs (though I do link to formal reports that detail each of the existing or proposed programs). What this should serve as is a basic lay of the land and give an idea of how these already successful programs lay an extremely important groundwork for the deeper emission cuts that will need to come.

California's Aliso Canyon Disaster and Regulating Methane Leaks

The big news from California regards a massive leak from Southern California Gas Company's Aliso Canyon storage well. The leak, which has been ongoing since October 23, is accounting for roughly a quarter of California's methane emissions.

This is bad news for numerous reasons: Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its heat-trapping effect over a 100-year period (and 75 times as potent over 20 years). Unburned hydrocarbons are also a noxious pollutant in their own right, causing respiratory distress, headaches and other health problems.

Worse yet, is that that SoCal Gas has proven unable to plug the leak and expect that it will continue until the spring of 2016.

What's perhaps the most infuriating for me is that this sort of leak doesn't appear to be covered by the state's Cap-and trade apparatus designed to limit emissions, since methane leaks from wells do not need to be reported as emissions under state law.  That's too bad, because as EEnews  notes, the leak is the equivalent to about three percent of the state's TOTAL annual greenhouse gas emissions.

If the leak had been covered under the California Air Resources Board's last auction (which calculates methane's impact at 20 times the, SoCal Gas would have needed to purchase SoCal Gas approximately 1.67 million permits at $12.73 per ton of CO2 equivalent to cover the amount of methane leaked at the time writing this. That's $21.3 million. Of course, applicable environmental damage and public health fines, compensation for victims, as well as medium-sized terms in state minimum-security prisons for relevant SoCal Gas executives would be layered on top of that. 

I'm not holding my breath -- though California is much more diligent about these sorts of things than my current residence of Texas.

The good news is that the state has been thinking very concretely about these sorts of emissions and I would imagine they likely will be deploying regulations and countermeasures on leaks in the near future. Colorado was the first state to regulate well and pipeline leaks in 2014.  The federal government is finalizing regulations (though these will certainly be challenged in court) as well. However, the federal regulations apply to new pipelines and wells and not existing ones.

Obamacare is about People, not States

On January 30, Ezra Klein posted an insightful Vox piece about one of the great ironies of the Affordable Care Act.  After a lot of thought of my own, however, I don’t think it’s much of an irony at all. 

Klein’s analysis noted that the original ACA – supported heavily by Democrats – featured a massive redistribution of wealth from Blue States to Red States.  The people helped by Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies were disproportionately concentrated in the states of the ex-Confederacy that had low-wage economies with skimpy existing Medicaid programs. (An old joke in Mississippi claims that you have to be legally dead to qualify).

The irony that Klein points out has been that Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to turn the ACA into a program that drains money from Red states and transfers it to Blue States. When the Supreme Court held that the Medicaid Expansion had to be optional for states, many states dominated by Republicans declined the expansion while Blue States snapped it up, shifting the benefits flow from Red States to Blue States If the Supremes decide the case of King vs. Burwell in favor of the forces of darkness, it will declare subsidies on exchange marketplaces illegal – but only in the states on the federal exchange, which of course are disproportionately Red States. As a result, higher earners in Texas will be sending their increased Medicare taxes to poor and working-class people in states like New York and California while their own states lose out.

It’s an interesting puzzle, but I think it can be explained quite easily – at least on the liberal side of the equation – by changing our unit of analysis. Klein looks at states, but I think it makes more sense to look at people to explain this paradox. On some issues, perhaps it makes sense to look at issues as state vs. state.  If a major manufacturer decides to leave one state and move to a second, for example then pretty clearly the second state is better off relative to the first. Politicians will act accordingly and line up state against state.  

But the motivating purpose behind the Affordable Care Act wasn’t about New York vs. Texas, it was about 48 million people in the United States who didn’t have health insurance. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown didn’t refuse to take federal health insurance because Florida got more Medicaid dollars than Ohio, but rather in solidarity with millions of Floridians and Ohioans who didn’t have access to health care at all. If Mississippi took $14.5 billion in federal money over the next decade to expand Medicaid, I wouldn’t be mad that that money wasn’t going to Pennsylvania, my latest state of residence; I’d be celebrating because 169,000 of my fellow citizens got access to health care.

On the flip side, the logic is perhaps more difficult to explain for a Red State GOP governor like Rick Perry or Mississippi’s Phil Bryant. There’s the potential that they just don’t understand it. Perry recently suggested that millions of Texans liked not having insurance, which may represent a weak dodge or actual ignorance of reality. But there’s also the possibility it’s about people for them too – specifically “those people” who are poor and likely have a darker hue of skin and are viewed as undeserving of federal benefits. Politicians used to be able to wrangle earmarks and pork for their state , which reduces the role of ideology, but ideological sorting and polarization has been getting stronger over the last 40 years. As a result, politicians who rely on bringing home federal dollars to get votes find themselves facing tough primaries – like the one Thad Cochran barely survived in Mississippi in 2014.

We can solve Klein’s puzzle then by re-imagining the pieces. It’ not about cash flows to states, it’s about people – and whether a state official’s ideological blinkers permit those without access to health care to be seen as human beings deserving of compassion or dignity.