Build Bunkum Better

[LDAHL]

I saw the President’s pitch for the scaled back spending package he was hoping would soothe the sensitivities of the “moderates” enough to make the “progressives” consider providing proof of life for the (real) infrastructure bill they’ve been holding for ransom. He couldn’t answer questions because he had to catch the next train to Europe, where he will try to determine if the Pope is still unreasonably Catholic, or if there might be some wiggle room on the sanctity of life thing.

It doesn’t seem to have worked so far. But at least they have ventured to release some text to flesh out the details of the Christmas list. That’s progress of a sort. The revenue side is a bit unclear to me, beyond a lot of fulminating about the unworthy wealthy. Right now, it’s brackets, rates and surtaxes, but they also have some exciting new ideas about taxing unrealized gains. Basically this will allow them to tax income that hasn’t been earned yet, sort of like “Minority Report”. Not sure how this would work in practice, but I’m sure if they put enough lawyers on it they will be able to secure an injunction against the space-time continuum and seize the future by eminent domain.

[ApatheticNoMore]

who can care much if that garbage watered down bill passes or the infrastructure garbage either. What started out as a real bill that would genuinely improve people's lives (the original BBB bill - medical leave (although even this was implemented in the worst most complex way), lowering the medicare eligibility age to 60, drug pricing reform, some climate policy that actually had a tiny bit of enforcement) is now weird pork and programs almost nooone will qualify for because you have to be born on exactly this date at midnight in a snowstorm to qualify or something. Talk about making people not care. Lowering medicare eligibility age and having medical leave would have changed people's lives. Maybe they shouldn't have promised anything much if they couldn't deliver anything much.

[Teacher Terry]

Totally agree APN!

[Rogar]

If it doesn't get cut, I figure a half trillion dedicated to climate change is better than a poke in the eye even if it does seem watered down. It beats the lip service of past presidents. I read something about a "climate conservations corps", which seems like a good idea if it's carried out right. Humble opinion that I was no fan of some of the other expanded social programs, but most of them have been cut or significantly peared down. I was pulling for some sort of free tuition for community colleges, but that's seems to be gone. And expanded medicare for vision seemed like a good thing, but also gone.

The whole tax issue seems way off track. I don't know what sort of policy making or compromises might come about, but it would seem like anything beyond a form of more progressive tax on income and maybe capital gains is too much change and may not work. Even the wealthy seem to have an agreement that they should pay more, or at least the news leads me to think that. But then balancing or paying down debt doesn't seem to be a big concern for either party.

[LDAHL]

I think if the Democrats were seriously committed to establishing a European-style welfare state, they would propose a European-style tax regime of middle class taxation and VATs. This magical thinking about getting billionaires to pay for everything strikes me as mere performance art. I recently read in Forbes that the total net worth of American billionaires was a bit less than $5 trillion. Even if you cleaned them all out, you wouldn’t get enough for more than a few years of what the party is promising to spend. It’s all about as honest as Trump’s narrative of the 2020 election.

[ApatheticNoMore]

If it doesn't get cut, I figure a half trillion dedicated to climate change is better than a poke in the eye even if it does seem watered down. It beats the lip service of past presidents. I read something about a "climate conservations corps", which seems like a good idea if it's carried out right.

I don't think whether a bill is beneficial for the climate can possibly be measured by money spent. I want real benchmarks. The only benchmark that matters is reduced greenhouse gasses. Money isn't the relevant benchmark. That doesn't mean that money IS UTTERLY UNABLE to help with meeting the only relevant benchmark of course, I mean of course it could, but I'd need to be sold that it is being spent in a way that actually WILL do so.

The relevant provisions, those with some teeth to switch over to non-GHG electricity production (which is necessary) were gutted. You could probably spend the entire of the 1/2 trillion on say green energy for California (and CA is good on building green energy), and not even make up for closing the nuclear power plant at El Diablo. But never even mind that as it's getting very far afield, we have the CBO to measure the fiscal impact of bills, I suggest we need something to measure the climate impact of bills (a CCO I guess). Is BBB even climate-neutral, is BBB especially WITH the infrastructure bill even climate neutral. I don't even say "do no bills that aren't climate neutral", although kinda, but explain yourself.

[Rogar]

Given some thought and research I might come up with my own ideal climate agenda. But this is politics. What I know of the current plans, I could use an expression I just recently ran across, don't let perfect ruin good. I mostly just see it as progress. It seems like one of the major components is incentives for carbon offsets rather than real life reductions, which seems like sinning and then going to confession. When one of the deciding democratic votes represents the fossil fuel rich West Virginia there are going to be compromises.

I have wondered what the bean counters would come up with with a reasonable flat tax on income and capital gains. Maybe I've heard too many stories of mister billionaire paying less tax than his secretary.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Well I'd first have to be convinced it does *any* good for reducing green house gas emissions (the goal). Some analysis seem to think so. I just don't automatically take it as a given that expansion of green energy say does this, because green energy expansion could proceed right along side fossil fuel expansion and has.

And then perfect and good, well actually we are talking very bad and catastrophic when it comes to climate change, so perfect and good doesn't really enter into it. But the degrees of warming and greenhouse gas emissions have been attempted to be quantified by the IPCC etc. It's very severe reductions in greenhouse gas emissions very fast to limit degrees of warming to the merely very bad. So perfect and good hmm don't really enter into it.

And then it's not even climate science at a certain point, it's basic benchmarks and meeting a goal - it's project management at a certain point. What are the benchmarks (they are all about CO2 and GHG emissions), what is the target, how do we know they are being met? Money is not the relevant measure or pretty much anything, which isn't to say money can't be useful.

In truth I'm pretty fatalistic (fatalistic but I contacted the city council about something this week, yea I like banging my head against walls), humanity does not seem to be up to avoiding collapse, I'd just like more honesty in the discourse about what policy does and does not accomplish.

[Yppej]

The solution to the environmental problems is to reduce human population, but we have expanded tax credits to encourage people to have more children and we're spending all this money fighting covid which is nature's way of dealing with overpopulation.

[jp1]

and we're spending all this money fighting covid which is nature's way of dealing with overpopulation.

You finally went there…. I guess being honest that you just don’t care about people dying from covid must be freeing?

[Yppej]

You finally went there…. I guess being honest that you just don’t care about people dying from covid must be freeing?

It's a better way to go than dying of starvation because the planet can't support its population. It's fairly quick and you get drugs for the pain.

[ApatheticNoMore]

this is climate journalist and analyst Dave Robert's (wrote for Vox, is not at all a radical in the scheme of things, does climate policy analysis) take on the BBB climate agenda and new proposed plans (Manchin again) to eliminate the reduction of methane leaks from the BBB bill:


there is NO path to the US hitting its climate targets that does not involve rapidly shutting down all coal power plants & sharply reducing methane leaks. None. This isn't a subject of reasonable debate. Manchin is rendering Biden's stated target unreachable.

[LDAHL]

I see the House has passed a BBB bill. Nancy Pelosi billed it as “deficit reducing” and “inflation crushing”. The CBO begged to differ, but mundane factuality can’t be expected to compete with reducing the SALT burden on all those hardworking bank executives and orthodontists in high tax states.