Speaking Of The Legislature…

Indiana’s legislature is in session, demonstrating that it isn’t only Republicans in Washington who are more interested in protecting favored industries (aka donors)than the public or the environment. (I know, you’re shocked!)

Hoosiers and regular readers of this blog may remember the 2017 bill that made it much less advantageous for homeowners in Indiana to install solar.

Homeowners selling excess power generated by their solar panels back to the utility lost most of the benefit of doing so under Senate Bill 309. Prior to its passage, if you had rooftop solar, “net metering” allowed you to send any excess energy you generated back into the grid, with the utility crediting you for that excess at the same rate that you pay the utility for power when you aren’t generating enough to cover your needs.

Even if it was an even swap, however, you still had to pay the utility an amount sufficient to cover its overhead costs–billing, meter reading, etc. Fair enough.

After passage of SB 309, you were forced to sell all the electricity you generated to the utility at a much lower price than the utility charged you, and then buy back what you need at their substantially higher “retail” price.

Solar energy may be good for the environment, and good for consumers’ pocketbooks, but it had begun to cut into the profit margins of the big electrical utilities. Friends at the legislature to the rescue!

This year, the legislature is showing its solicitude for coal.

Credit where credit is due; the Indianapolis Star, which rarely covers government these days, had the story:

Hoosiers’ electricity bills could rise and several state utilities may face obstacles in their plans to phase out coal-based power generation in the coming years under politically charged legislation that would help a struggling Indiana industry.

House Bill 1414, filed last week by state Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, would require Indiana utilities to prove that any plans to shut down a power plant are either required by a federal mandate or otherwise in the public interest.

But not just any plants. Though the word “coal” does not appear once in the language of the bill, advocates and analysts say the legislation specifically targets coal-burning plants.

Utilities in the United States have been responding to market forces and (to a lesser extent) environmental concerns, and have been transitioning from the use of coal as an energy source in favor of natural gas and various renewables. In the past few weeks, at least two utilities in Indiana have announced their intention to shut down coal generating plants.

One state utility–northern Indiana’s NIPSCO– predicts that the shift could save customers billions of dollars in coming decades. NIPSCO is one of the Indiana utilities that has announced its intent to significantly diminish its use of coal and substitute renewable resources.

Typically, utilities have made their own decisions about their energy use, but Soliday’s House Bill 1414 allows the state to override those decisions. (I thought Republicans wanted government to “get out of the way” of business–silly me!)

Keeping coal plants running comes with a huge cost, according to Citizens Action Coalition’s Kermit Olson.

If coal plants are not able to be retired and if they have to be maintained — as another part of the bill suggests — then those costs will be passed down to customers.

“The idea that we are trying to, as a state, to undo a utility like NIPSCO’s current business plan, which is based on economics and least costs of service to customers is just absurd if not downright unethical,” Olson said.

He is referring to NIPSCO’s planning process in the last few years that determined accelerating the closure of all its coal plants and a transition to renewable energy sources, particularly wind, would save its customers nearly $4 billion over a few decades.

The utilities oppose this bill. Environmentalists oppose this bill. Consumers get screwed by this bill. But yesterday, it emerged from committee.

Coal companies– unable to compete in the marketplace– are lobbying hard, hoping their friends in Indiana’s General Assembly will put a very heavy thumb on the policy scale….

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Now It’s Coal Ash

The Trump administration has announced its intention to roll back an Obama-era regulation that limited the leaching of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury into water supplies–heavy metals that are produced and leach into groundwater from the ash residue produced by coal-fired power plants.

I wrote about the dangers of coal ash back in 2015, quoting the Hoosier Environmental Council when they were bringing in a coal ash expert to speak at their annual “Greening the Statehouse” event.

Coal ash has special significance for Indiana, since the state leads the nation in the number of coal ash waste lagoons. There is arguably no person better in America to speak to this issue than Lisa Evans. As a coal ash expert with twenty-five years of experience in hazardous waste law, Lisa has testified before the U.S. Congress and the National Academies of Science about the risks of coal ash and federal & state policy solutions.

The Obama Administration addressed those very real risks by passing new regulations in 2015; now, a series of newer rules expected from  the Environmental Protection Agency (courtesy of the former lobbyists now running the agency) will substantially weaken  regulations meant to strengthen inspection and monitoring at coal plants, and requiring plants to install new technology to protect water supplies from contaminated coal ash.

The E.P.A. will even exempt a significant number of power plants from any of the remaining requirements, according to quotations from people familiar with the Trump administration plan.

According to one report, 

Coal ash, the residue from burning coal, is stored at more than 1,100 locations around the nation, with about 130 million tons being added each year. Unlike emissions of carbon dioxide, which many climate science deniers consider a good thing, nobody doubts the dangers of the chemicals in coal ash—including arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium, among others. All are associated with birth defects and stunted brain growth in children. But the list of damages they can cause is far longer and includes cancer, heart damage, lung disease, respiratory distress, kidney disease, reproductive problems, gastrointestinal illness, and behavioral problems.

Hundreds of ash storage pits don’t even have a simple liner to help prevent toxins from leaching into waterways. According to a 2010 EPA assessment, people who live within a mile of unlined coal ash ponds have a 1 in 50 risk of cancer. That’s more than 2,000 times higher than what the EPA considers acceptable. Tainting of the water mostly happens in a trickle. But, occasionally, as in the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant’s sudden release of 1.1 billion gallons of coal slurry in Tennessee, or the leakage of 82,000 tons of coal ash into North Carolina’s Dan River, the contamination comes in a catastrophic rush.

Environmental activists criticized the 2015 rule, arguing that it fell short of what is needed to effectively deal with coal ash, and failed to classify the ash as a hazardous waste, which it obviously is. It was a step forward, however.

For every forward step taken by the Obama Administration, however, Trump’s “best people” take two steps back.

Like so many efforts being made daily by the Trump Administration, this move prioritizes the bottom line of industry over the health and welfare of citizens. In this case, that preference is especially galling, because it is intended to help an industry that is dying–and dying  thanks to market forces, not excessive regulations. Nor should its death be lamented: coal is a contributor to climate change, and the relatively few remaining jobs in coal mining are unacceptably dangerous.

Once again we are reminded that nothing this administration does–nothing–advances the common good, or makes environmental or even business sense.

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It Just Goes On And On

This time, it’s Rick Perry. (Mr. “Oops”)

Watching the Trump Administration cabinet reminds me of going to the three-ring circus when I was a girl: it was impossible to watch what was happening in all three of the rings at the same time. And there were lots of clowns.

The New Yorker has turned its attention to Rick Perry, who has always struck me as one of the clowns. 

On March 29, 2017, Robert Murray, the founder and owner of one of the country’s largest coal companies, was ushered into a conference room at the Department of Energy’s headquarters, in Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Secretary Rick Perry. When Perry arrived, a few moments later, he immediately gave Murray a hug. To Simon Edelman, the Department’s chief creative officer, who was on hand to photograph the event, the greeting came as a surprise. At the time, Edelman did not know that Murray’s political-action committee and employees had donated more than a hundred thousand dollars to Perry’s Presidential campaign, in 2012, and almost as much to Donald Trump’s, in 2016.

At one point in the meeting, as Edelman recalls, Murray handed Perry a document titled  “Action Plan for reliable and low cost electricity in America and to assist in the survival of our Country’s coal industry.” Edelman snapped a closeup.

According to the article, it was barely six months later that Perry sent a letter directing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue a new rule. The ostensible reason for the rule was “to protect the resiliency of the electric grid” from what he described as vulnerability to power disruptions. (Interestingly, barely a month before Perry sent the letter,  Perry’s own staff had issued a report concluding that “reliability is adequate today.”)

Perry’s letter instructed the Commission to emphasize “traditional baseload generation”—in other words, coal and nuclear.

Perry proposed that all coal plants in certain areas, including many that do business with Murray Energy, be required to keep a ninety-day supply of coal onsite to provide “fuel-secure” power. Edelman was alarmed: the language in Perry’s letter clearly echoed Murray’s “action plan.” ..Edelman shared his photos of the March meeting with reporters from the progressive magazine In These Times and, later, the Washington Post. The photographs were published on December 6th. The next day, Edelman was placed on leave.

Edelman has since sued Perry and the Department of Energy, and the remainder of the article analyzes the evidence and the federal laws that would seem to have been violated both by Perry’s issuance of the letter and his dismissal of Edelman. Not surprisingly, it concludes that both were wrongful.

The degree of corruption that characterizes this administration is breathtaking. Trump and his “best people” seem utterly oblivious to ethical principles, let alone the legal constraints that govern their operations. I suppose we should be grateful for their overwhelming incompetence–the bumbling that opens windows into their ethical and legal transgressions and mercifully undercuts the efficacy of their efforts to roll back regulations and initiate policies to enrich their benefactors. (Last Sunday, the New York Times had an article about Scott Pruitt’s rush to undo EPA regulations, and quoted  environmental lawyers to the effect that persistent, sloppy legal work and inattention to detail has made it much easier to challenge his efforts in court–and win.)

American citizens need to use the next two and a half years to demand a great cleansing of federal agencies. If the predicted “blue wave” materializes in November, Congress will need to initiate a thorough and bipartisan audit of compliance with government’s settled ethical obligations.

Donald Trump didn’t appear out of nowhere. This corrupt, unhinged ignoramus and his “best people” circus are the result of several decades during which plutocracy grew and voters were apathetic. It will take a sustained and determined effort to right the ship of state.

If that blue wave doesn’t materialize, the U.S. will join a list of failed democracies that is getting longer every year.

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If Jobs Were Really What Mattered….

I’m one of the people who watched with disbelief as the GOP tax “reform” bill was loaded up with provisions that any sentient human would know to be counterproductive. There are two possible explanations why lawmakers might support this disastrous legislation, and they are not necessarily incompatible: the sponsors of this piece of excrement really believe–in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary–that it will spur economic growth, or they are obeying the demands of their donors/masters.

I say the two explanations aren’t necessarily incompatible because humans have an infinite capacity for self-delusion. It is entirely plausible that our elected Representatives and Senators prefer not to acknowledge, even to themselves, that they have been bought and paid for, and instead have convinced themselves of the merits of policies that have ushered in disaster every time they’ve  been tried.

In fact, as I have watched members of a once-responsible political party disintegrate into delusion and corruption, I’ve noticed their growing preference for make-believe rhetoric over reality. Ryan and McConnell, especially, have been displaying a decidedly Trump-like belief that assertions can shape reality–that saying it will make it so.

Increasingly, Republicans in both the legislature and Administration live in La La Land.

Case in point: the repeated Republican refrain about job creation. Listening to the rhetoric, you’d think that the retention and creation of jobs was really an important focus of GOP policy. (Of course, if you’d been listening to Republican rhetoric since well before Reagan, you’d have thought deficits were a concern– in the wake of the tax bill, we can see how bogus that was.)

So–how’s that “jobs focus” thing working out?

Well, here in Indiana, Carrier Corporation is continuing its move to Mexico, despite Trump’s boasts about preventing the move, and despite the company’s extraction of some seven million dollars in “economic development” money from the state.

And from The Hill, we learn

An analysis of Labor Department data by the labor coalition Good Jobs Nation found that more than 93,000 U.S. jobs have been eliminated since Trump’s election due to foreign trade.

That’s roughly on par with the previous five years, which saw an average of 87,500 jobs per year eliminated.

The coalition’s analysis also found that the number of jobs outsourced by federal contractors has actually risen since Trump was elected. Since November 2016, some of the biggest federal contractors have offshored some 10,269 jobs, making up 11 percent of trade-related layoffs, compared to 4 percent in the previous five years.

It is becoming more apparent by the day that Trump’s loyal core–around 30% of the electorate–desperately wants to believe even his most obvious and embarrassing lies. They’re like the boyfriend who really does realize that his lover is cheating, but who nevertheless talks himself into believing her increasingly unlikely alibis. Trump loyalists desperately want to believe that this pathetic buffoon can reverse global realities, make “great deals” in which business enterprises and other countries will miraculously ignore their own interests, and–most important of all– take the country back to a coal-fired past in which white Christian males were dominant (and could grab p**sy with impunity).
Just like that boyfriend, they want him to keep lying to them.
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Policy For Dummies

Permit me to channel–okay, parody– Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

How do I ridicule thee? Let me count the ways.
I sneer to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach…

President Trump–in his obsessive effort to eradicate anything and everything that his predecessor did (he was black, you know)– has reversed Obama’s moratorium on new leases for coal mining on federal lands.

Although that moratorium was good for the environment, the impetus for it was actually financial. As Think Progress has reported,

Taxpayers are estimated to be losing $1 billion a year in revenues because coal companies are not paying royalties on the actual market price of coal extracted from federal lands. Royalty payments are split between the federal government and the state where the coal is mined, and coal lease sales in the in the past decade garnered close to $1 per ton in bids.

This is above and beyond the so-called “royalties loophole,” which allows coal companies to sell publicly owned coal to subsidiaries at artificially low prices. An Obama-era rule had closed that loophole, but the Trump administration has already stayed the legally binding rule, and has initiated court proceedings to throw it out entirely. Under the loophole, taxpayers lose millions of dollars annually.

So–let’s just “count the ways” that this latest impulsive eruption was both stupid and venal.

As noted, it will cost taxpayers. And it will cost us without doing anything at all for coal miners.

Even if new leasing goes forward, critics say Trump’s order to lift the moratorium will do more for coal industry executives than it will for coal communities. Coal jobs have been in decline for decades — and not just because coal production is falling. Automation and new mining processes have diminished the number of jobs per ton of coal.

“This order won’t bring the coal industry back, but it will ensure coal companies rip off American taxpayers for years to come,” said Jesse Prentice-Dunn, advocacy director for the Center for Western Priorities.

Trump has already loosened regulations that prohibited coal companies from polluting the nation’s drinking water, alarming public health officials, among others. But his love affair with coal also ignores market economics. Between coal companies’ massive amount of reserves (over 20 years worth) and the rapidly declining use of coal, the market has sent a strong signal about coal’s future.

Receiving such signals–or, let’s face it, comprehending reality–isn’t Trump’s strong suit.

Reporting on the move, Reuters made similar observations.

Since 2012, coal production has plunged more than 25 percent to the lowest levels since 1978 due to falling prices. The industry has been hit with massive layoffs and bankruptcies.

Even if the rollback of the moratorium helped coal miners– an outcome analysts uniformly dispute–the number of Americans employed as coal miners is far fewer than Trump evidently believes. According to the Washington Post, more people work at Arby’s than in coal mines.

Experts in the industry have already pointed out, repeatedly, that the coal jobs are extremely unlikely to come back. The plight of the coal industry is more a function of changing energy markets and increased demand for natural gas than anything else.

Another largely overlooked point about coal jobs is that there just aren’t that many of them relative to other industries. There are various estimates of coal-sector employment, but according to the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns program, which allows for detailed comparisons with many other industries, the coal industry employed 76,572 people in 2014, the latest year for which data is available.

That number includes not just miners but also office workers, sales staff and all of the other individuals who work at coal-mining companies.

Although 76,000 might seem like a large number, consider that similar numbers of people are employed by, say, the bowling (69,088) and skiing (75,036) industries. Other dwindling industries, such as travel agencies (99,888 people), employ considerably more. Used-car dealerships provide 138,000 jobs. Theme parks provide nearly 144,000. Carwash employment tops 150,000.

Maybe we can get Trump to turn his attention to carwashes. Used-car dealerships would be a natural fit…

Or maybe he can enlist a new ghostwriter and publish another book; it could be titled The Art of the Very Bad Deal or Policy for Dummies.

 

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