2:00PM Water Cooler 7/28/15

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1. Carla July 28, 2015 at 2:07 pm

   “Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said, ‘Giving countries with clear evidence of human rights violations, like Malaysia, a front-row seat to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership is unconscionable”

   To Senator Brown (MY senator): The whole danged TPP is unconstitutional. Would you just say so? And then please re-iterate for the TTIP and the TiSA?

   (I have just sent this message directly to Senator Brown as well.)
   1. Vatch July 28, 2015 at 2:21 pm

      I think he has said that, albeit indirectly. See the paragraph on ISDS, one of the most obviously unconstitutional parts of the trade treaties, here:

      http://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-to-offer-key-amendments-to-improve-fast-track-package-stand-up-for-workers

      Investor-state-dispute settlement (ISDS) is written into trade deals and provides for an extrajudicial way for corporations to sue governments for regulating or passing laws. Investor state provisions allow corporations – like tobacco companies – to use trade agreements to challenge laws that they argue undermine their investment in a particular country. State, local, and federal governments shouldn’t have to be looking over their shoulder every time they decide to pass a public health measure, or deny a permit for environmental reasons. Investor-state dispute settlement allows corporations to challenge laws using arbitration panels. ISDS represents another way for corporations to maximize profits by challenging government regulations they don’t like in an extrajudicial system with rulings that are divorced from precedent. Brown’s amendment would ensure that future trade agreements can be concluded without ISDS.
      1. Carla July 28, 2015 at 4:35 pm

         I want to hear our Senators, including my Senator, say it explicitly. I’d like to see our Senators start making the world safe for democracy.

         It’s clear, Vatch, that Sherrod Brown and probably many more Senators understand the implications of the ISDS and other toxic provisions of the TPP and its brethren. Is there any way that we citizens can make them feel safer to state the unvarnished truth? I would like to encourage them, but don’t know quite how.
         1. Vatch July 29, 2015 at 9:34 am

            I’m not clever enough to know how to elicit straight talk from a politician! I guess we need to praise them when they’re good, criticize them when they’re bad, and encourage our friends to do the same.
   2. JTMcPhee July 28, 2015 at 4:45 pm

      Folks, the word “unconstitutional,” as far as I can tell, has lost all power to inflame or intoxicate what so many of us think of as “real America,” or to influence or abate any of the many aspects about the Corporatized World where the US whatever-it-is gets to be the “sole remaining superpower” (another impotent meaningless term.) There’s some recognition here and elsewhere that national boundaries and even the “idea” of nations have been drowned in “trade” and the structural changes in the Great Game — where the Players are more visibly and pointedly death-wish-driven corporate entities that wear “national” affiliations as shabby masks and cloaks-of-invisibility and convenient and comfortable handles and prime movers attached to the levers of power.

      The only parts of the Constitution that seem to have any residual force are the Second Amendment (and that’s largely because the arms industry inflates its leaky envelope), and the bits about the Executive running foreign policy. It’s also helpful, apparently, to manage and herd us mopes by helping us pretend that there’s a Rule of Law that we can rely on to protect us against the impunity and predations of the Very Special Successful Few, and that the electoral process magically confers “democracy”-legitimacy on “the law” which patently is written and unwritten by corporate interests that dominate all the essentials of political economy and plain old life.

      Freeing the slaves was apparently “unconstitutional,” as was the outrageous intrusion into the rights of Capital to employ child labor and sell poisonous medications and machinery that would kill the user, and there’s dozens more examples. If what one means by “unconstitutional” is just that one disagrees with the outcomes that the actual workings of the power structure in the political economy is, ah, “disagreeable,” maybe that’s a sort of acceptable working definition. But in the Age of Arbitrary Power, of the Panopticon, uncaged monsters like GoldenSocks and JPMordorChaos, http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/02/11/john-mack-stop-beating-up-on-lloyd-blankfein-and-jamie-dimon/, of permanent war that ignores borders, and the casual Color Revolutions, and NSA and CIA and FBI funsies, “unconstitutional” might be a fine heady whine to go with a ripened cheese on toast points, but it don’t mean sh_t. In my little view. A pretty aspiration, but as the Neocons said of other “past restraints” on murderous excess in pursuit of “success,” nothing but “quaint.”

      One of those lines from Frank Herbert’s exegesis of imperial power in a universe that runs on “trade,” the “Dune” series, was the observation by old nasty Baron Vladimir Harkonnen that even in the free-for-all of grabbery and commercial-political murder, “The forms must be observed…”

      You want to fight ISDS and the rest of the corporate putsch, you gonna have to unlimber some weapons and words with some actual potency. In other places where the reality and the political discourse are a little closer, and more honestly congruent, one sees AK-47s and RPGs as agents of change and public debate… None of any of this, the Brownian motions of near 8 billion humans and their limbic systems and tribes, appears to be “trending” in the direction of a future where humans get to live in their better-nature raiment…
      1. Ulysses July 29, 2015 at 9:34 am

         “Folks, the word “unconstitutional,” as far as I can tell, has lost all power to inflame or intoxicate what so many of us think of as “real America,” or to influence or abate any of the many aspects about the Corporatized World where the US whatever-it-is gets to be the “sole remaining superpower” (another impotent meaningless term.) There’s some recognition here and elsewhere that national boundaries and even the “idea” of nations have been drowned in “trade” and the structural changes in the Great Game — where the Players are more visibly and pointedly death-wish-driven corporate entities that wear “national” affiliations as shabby masks and cloaks-of-invisibility and convenient and comfortable handles and prime movers attached to the levers of power.

         The only parts of the Constitution that seem to have any residual force are the Second Amendment (and that’s largely because the arms industry inflates its leaky envelope), and the bits about the Executive running foreign policy. It’s also helpful, apparently, to manage and herd us mopes by helping us pretend that there’s a Rule of Law that we can rely on to protect us against the impunity and predations of the Very Special Successful Few, and that the electoral process magically confers “democracy”-legitimacy on “the law” which patently is written and unwritten by corporate interests that dominate all the essentials of political economy and plain old life.”

         These two pithy paragraphs say it all! The transnational kleptocracy is now large and in charge, and people from Athens, Greece to Albany, Georgia know that fact all too well. We need to learn how to resist effectively– it is foolish to pretend that there are ways to fix this without very radical changes to the status quo. Gibson’s projected “jackpot” is disturbingly vague– today’s violent kleptocratic outrages are all too obvious, and getting worse by the minute.
2. voxhumana July 28, 2015 at 2:42 pm

   “It’s important to understand that Berman is retailing a self-serving and self-exculpatory Democratic lie myth. 308,000 Florida Democrats voted for Bush; that’s two orders of magnitude greater than the voters Jebbie disenfranchised. Democrats lost Florida for Bush, and nobody else. And the party has never been able to look itself in the mirror on this. Never. It’s always somebody else’s fault with these guys.”

   !!!!!
   1. ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© July 28, 2015 at 3:51 pm

      It’s certainly true that corporatist Dems and their apologists love to blame Nader (“Thanks Ralphing”) and by extension silence their current critics on the left.

      But I won’t forgive Kitty Harris or ¡Jeb! for cheating, or our corporate media and Supreme Court for aiding and abetting same.
      ~
      1. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 28, 2015 at 6:43 pm

         Nobody said you had to forgive Harris, but let’s assign responsibility for the debacle appropriately.
         1. Vatch July 28, 2015 at 10:32 pm

            There is shared responsibility for what happened in Florida. The Republicans committed some severe ethical violations (and possibly broke the law). The Democratic voters simply exercised their right to vote for whom they chose, and the Democratic politicians were inept. In this series of events, the Republicans deserve far more blame.
3. Jim Haygood July 28, 2015 at 3:02 pm

   Background from the Jerusalem Post on the impending parole of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, quoting from a declaration filed in 1987 by then-SecDef Caspar Weinberger:

   The obvious result of Mr. Pollard’s largesse [in supplying classified documents to Israel] is that US bargaining leverage with the Israeli government in any further intelligence exchanges has been undermined.

   http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Three-decades-of-US-lies-about-Jonathan-Pollard-unmasked-392355

   Nothing has changed. Pollard’s release shows the “world’s only superpower” groveling for mercy before a nation of 7 million, because it “lacks bargaining leverage.”

   Has anybody seen our missing cojones?
   1. JTMcPhee July 28, 2015 at 4:11 pm

      It seems our imperial Rulers also sent their schlongs to Tel Aviv too, and not for circumcision…
   2. jo6pac July 28, 2015 at 5:32 pm

      If this happens there will be a lot of unhappy old guard CIA do to the fact that israeli sold the Russians the list of cia spies/vendors in Russia at the time that they received from pollard.

      Then again I won’t be surprised.
   3. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 28, 2015 at 8:01 pm

      My understanding is that Bibi has a custodial relationship with them.
4. Tertium Squid July 28, 2015 at 3:22 pm

   There’s our superior culture at work. Women in football is as inspiring as women starting wars, or chopping off heads. Now they can handle thanatos as well as eros, or even better maybe.
   1. PQS July 28, 2015 at 3:39 pm

      Ugh. I think I upchucked a little this morning during the NPR segment on this woman’s hiring. The team hiring manager checked with the “senior players” first before bringing her onboard – just to be sure they were going to be OK with it. You know, must make sure the Men who Run Things are going to be good with a woman doing something besides cooking and cleaning up. (Oh, and don’t forget, cheerleading for free).

      Afghanistan and the NFL – where their paths converged: running right over the top of a woman’s body….
      1. Jess July 28, 2015 at 5:24 pm

         Having once worked in pro football, I think that checking with the senior players was a good thing. It gave management a chance to outline their reasoning, relate her qualifications, specify what input and responsibilities she is going to have, etc. Consulting senior leadership players is often done to assess the merits of a planned move. Top QB’s are frequently consulted on possible trades or free agent acquisitions at various positions, esp. on offense. Defensive stars are similarly consulted regarding changes or upgrades to the defense.

         These kinds of consultations serve to prepare the players so they are not blindsided in ambush interviews and say something that doesn’t come out, or come across, the way they wanted it to. It also allows management to get a feel for questions the players may have that will have to be addressed when they come up in the press.

         Make no mistake about it; Bruce Arians is considered a “player’s coach” but he also runs the show…with an iron hand when necessary.
   2. hunkerdown July 28, 2015 at 4:34 pm

      Handling thanatos comparably well to The Other Gender seems to be sufficient for them.

      Eros don’t enter into it, except as a resource to privatize.
5. Cugel July 28, 2015 at 3:42 pm

   The critics of Nader are right and these pointless “Gore lost the Democrats” arguments are not only wrong, but so naive by 2015 that it’s shocking to see them repeated.

   Yup. Gore lost the White working class. In 2004, Kerry lost it worst. In 2008, Obama won election with 53% to McCain’s 45%, essentially with the McGovern coalition, women, especially single women, minorities, non or seldom church-goers, northern liberals and unions, but he won only 47% of the white working class. And Hillary will probably do worse with white workers who make under $50,000 a year than Obama did.

   They will agree with her on economic issues over Jeb or Walker or Rubio, and they’ll vote Republican because . . . reasons.

   “Using the income definition, all white voters with annual household incomes of less than $50,000 are said to be “the white working class.” This white working class was 25% of all voters in 2008, and only 47% of them voted for Barack Obama. Looking at these same voters state-by-state, however, shows a wide variation – from 68% for Obama in Massachusetts to 11% for Obama in Alabama.”

   Majority in Massachusetts down to 11% in Alabama, eh? So, racism explains most of the difference, just as it has for 200 years. The only reason that southern white working class voters joined the New Deal coalition from 1932 to 1968, is that blacks were specifically excluded from participation. The minute the Democratic party became associated with civil rights in the 1960s the white working class switched to supporting the Republicans.

   “If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.”—Lyndon Johnson

   For 200 years Progressives have been trying in vain to solve this problem, that poorly educated and low income whites see minorities as a threat to their incomes. When push comes to shove, they have always lined up with the 1% because of racism. It’s been much worse in the South of course, which blocked unionism when unions in America were at their most powerful. Today, unions are almost extinct in the South, many states of which have “right to work” laws.

   Today’s Democratic party has won with minority and middle class support while the white working class joins the Tea Party.

   I don’t see that changing any time soon just because Democrats adopt a more progressive stand on issues. In fact, all such attempts simply cause the fault lines in American society to widen, with resentful white workers arguing that the Democrats only favor “welfare” for minorities. The “Black Lives Matter” campaign – which I support, plays into these racial resentments, which increase whenever economic times are hardest – like now.

   I remember vividly in 2012 having these arguments with a working class white friend. I pointed out every aspect of how corrupt and useless Romney was, how he made tens of millions of $ from the auto industry bailout he publicly opposed, how he was a vulture capitalist down to the bone, who was bound to make things vastly worse. He agreed with everything – and then he said “yes, but if Obama gets elected all the blacks will be on welfare.”

   There’s just no arguing with this stuff. Racism just trumps every other consideration.

   They’re the ones who are talking about Mexicans “with cantaloupe thighs” from running drugs across our borders. They’re the ones who agree with Trump that immigrants are “rapists and murderers.” They don’t just want to deport “illegals” they want to deport ALL Latinos – because they’re all really “illegal.”

   Democrats are going to have to openly stop worrying about the white working class. They have to adopt programs that will create jobs, but they cannot be naive enough to believe that that’s going to get lower class whites, especially rural whites, and even more so in the South, to vote Democratic because it’s not. Democrats focus on middle class voters because that’s who’s going to vote for them. The guys with pickup trucks are not.

   Gore may have been wrong about a lot of things, but it wasn’t an accident that he lost Tennessee. That state has been going further and further right. It will probably be another 30 years before a Democrat would stand a chance of winning a Senate seat there.
   1. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 28, 2015 at 6:46 pm

      So it’s not the Democrats’ fault they couldn’t display adaptability when the electorate changed. Oh-k-a-a-y.

      And man, do I hate that “white working class” formulation. Seems to me if we didn’t want to divide the electorate, we’d just say “working class.” Seems to stick in Democrats’ throats, for some reason. In other words, I feel that your comment restates their myth, albeit at greater length.
      1. DJG July 28, 2015 at 7:02 pm

         Every time the Democrats get out the crying towel to tell us about the perfidious Nader, I have to find an ancient WWW article about the missing mayor of Miami:

         http://www.newsweek.com/missing-man-156117

         This guy could have had the Penny-Loafer Rioters arrested. This guy could have presssed for a recount. But like so many Democrats, when it gets truly tough, he’s off somewhere else, “fighting” for us or running off copies of his résumé.

         Nader?

         And now the Democrats have Wasserman-Schultz. But it’s Nader’s fault that they rely on the likes of Wasserman-Schultz. No wonder the Dems can’t take on a clown like Scott Walker.
6. Bunk McNulty July 28, 2015 at 3:49 pm

   Link for the New Zealand TPP story.
7. grayslady July 28, 2015 at 4:20 pm

   Wretched Excess: Turns out the killer of Cecil is a dentist from the wealthy Eden Prairie suburb of Minneapolis. Claims he didn’t know Cecil was protected (even though Cecil was wearing a radio collar). Says he trusted his guides.

   Problem is, this isn’t the first time he’s lied to authorities about shooting an animal. Last time, it seems he lied to authorities about where he shot a black bear in Wisconsin. Then there’s the issue of the money. Why do you need to pay a local $50,000 for something if it’s legal? This is a guy with a serious ego problem–running around the world shooting protected species with his bow and arrow–and then having pictures of himself taken standing next to some poor dead animal looking as though he’s just achieved something brave and heroic.
   1. JTMcPhee July 28, 2015 at 7:52 pm

      Yep, grayslady, Heroic, all right.

      Anyone remember when CBS did “reporting?” The network put up a documentary in maybe 1975, titled “The Guns of Autumn,” of course not any kind of play on Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August.”

      “Commenting on “The Guns of Autumn,” Bill Leonard, CBS News senior vice president, said, “this is purely and simply a broadcast about hunting … It is not for the faint-hearted, but neither is hunting.” Irv Drasnin, the writer, producer and director, noted:

      “Millions of people regard hunting as recreation … Yet most people don’t realize what is really taking place, or why, or even what the rules are. We’ve tried to find out.” http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9904E1DF163FE034BC4D53DFBF66838E669EDE, and http://www.worldcat.org/title/guns-of-autumn/oclc/317343586 Don’t find the whole piece in free video.

      There’s a ton of hate pieces in the gun-n-bowhunt fanzines, keeping the faith and trying to shoot holes in the awful facts and images, bolstering that Belief Structure of “God, Guns and Guts,” attacks that can’t quite undo the reality — that includes, as I recall, a Brave and Daring White Hunter in his safari duds paying what, $10,000, in 1975 dollars, for the Big Game Hunting Adventure of a Lifetime. Creeping along a dusty farm road in the Jungle Vegetation beside a field fence in Texas or somewhere, under the watchful eye of his faithful Safari Guide/ranch hand, to poke his .308 or maybe it was a .600 Nitro Express rifle through the weeds and shoot a placid buffalo standing a few yards away, in a herd kept on the ranch range for just such Bravos to “hunt.”

      And yes, as I recall, the Bucko Bravo posed with White Hunter stance with his gun and his “kill.”

      One is a Believer, or one is not and is maybe sickened by the thought processes: “What caliber gun is used to kill an elephant? ” https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090202130421AAeIoTS Read it yourself — I’ve done a little bird shooting and some shooting at humans, a very long time ago, and gotta say it looks every day more and more like I ought to clean the shootin’ irons and go to the range for some practice… Like maybe some of this, mah fellow Amuricans? http://www.oklahomafullauto.com/ , or this, http://fullautoevents.com/, or this, http://www.lesjones.com/2011/05/31/luckygunner-machinegun-shoot-2011-full-auto-videos-and-pictures/

      And one has to really love the proud parents that set this 3-year-old up to shoot a few thousand rounds out of a 7.62 Minigun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNbBYwD472w Or this, for people in Boswash who have maybe gotten out of touch with so many of the folks we share this despoiled continent with, the ones that live “out there,” west of the Oranges and the Jersey shore — http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-347797.html

      There used to be a group of rich folks that had a running competition going to see who would be the one to kill the most “last specimens” of the of various vanishing species… or maybe that was just in a sci-fi story I read. But probable? Certainly not impossible…
8. optimader July 28, 2015 at 4:29 pm

   .. If so, I hope more European readers will take a moment to send in photographs of European plants. We’ve had Dimitri’s olives, and now Isabel’s pears, but more would be nice!

   Lambert..

   Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
   I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
   This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.

   :
   98.136.216.25 failed after I sent the message.
   Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd This user doesn’t have a yahoo.com account (lambert_strether2006@yahoo.com) [0] – mta1135.mail.gq1.yahoo.com

   it would seem to be an unhappy email address..
   1. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 28, 2015 at 7:56 pm

      Try my contact form.
9. afisher July 28, 2015 at 5:05 pm

   More from the TTP front:
   1. Romania is being sued by Canadian Corporatation: http://www.euractiv.com/sections/trade-society/rosia-montana-omen-ttip-316594

   2. John Keys PM of New Zealand: Mr Key told reporters this morning that it was “highly probable” that drug patents would last longer under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and that meant Government would have to pay for the original drug – as opposed to the cheaper generic version – for longer.

   “But for consumers that won’t make any difference because on subsidised drugs you pay $5 for your prescription. So the Government may incur slightly more costs there.” (now about that swamp-land)…

   http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11488109
10. Paul Tioxon July 28, 2015 at 5:32 pm

    Scott Walker on the campaign trail in South Philly, stopped by the Twin Peaks of Cheese Steaks, Geno’s and Pat’s. He is not getting the best of reviews for his street cred when it comes to ordering, eating, or walking away from out door tables leaving his trash. It’s all self service and you pick up after yourself. His advance team did not get the memo on how not to piss off Philadelphians. The tweets are entertaining all by themselves.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/trending/Wisconsin-Gov-Scott-Walker-visits-Pats-and-Genos-amid-protests-bad-cheesesteak-orders.html

    But don’t worry, even John Kerry couldn’t please us when he asked for some snooty cheese other than provolone. He asked for Swiss and immediately I knew he was a doomed pol.

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=108×20569
11. ex-PFC Chuck July 28, 2015 at 6:11 pm

    Here’s the correct link for the IB Times piece on the Women Who Code organization. For good measure I’m including the link to its home page as well.
    1. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 28, 2015 at 6:41 pm

       Thanks!
12. 98 July 28, 2015 at 7:28 pm

    ILO standards? The US government does not begin to comply with ILO standards. Not on paper, not in fact, not in Obama’s wildest dreams.

    http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Weissbrodt_Mason_MLR.pdf
13. Kurt Sperry July 28, 2015 at 7:51 pm

    “The Pencilsword: Who’s afraid of the TPPA?” link broken.
    1. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 28, 2015 at 7:55 pm

       Thanks; here you are. Dammit, I’ve been copying and pasting since I got the first Mac 512KE. It’s like there’s a disturbance in the force…
14. RWood July 28, 2015 at 11:16 pm

    Re: TPP is pro-slavery: “It appears Malaysia will be given a free pass on human trafficking in order to protect the controversial trade deal” [The Nation]. So “America’s first Black President” reinforces slavery in South East Asia. Nice. “[T]he move suggests the administration isn’t serious about enforcing other areas of fast track and the TPP when it comes to other human-rights, environmental, or labor standards.”

    A part of the statement of brotherhood among the cloaked and naked tyrants:

    Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, in their 2007 paper “Silencing Dissent”, argued: “States that establish restrictive media environments aim to suppress dissent and to provide positive messages about the regime, rallying support for the authorities, as well as generating more feelings of patriotism and spreading ideological values favorable to the regime. “If state control succeeds in its objectives, we would expect regular exposure to the news media to generate relatively high levels of confidence in the authorities, encouraging relatively negative attitudes towards democratic values and reinforcing feelings of nationalism. This is the sector of the mass media where the state usually exercises the greatest control.” Much of the criticism stems from the current administration’s aggressive prosecution of leakers of information. –

    See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/opinion/khoo-ying-hooi/article/in-times-of-crisis-truth-is-first-casualty#sthash.5DxC1sz1.dpuf
15. TimmyB July 28, 2015 at 11:16 pm

    Bush would not have been appointed president unless African Americans were illegally disenfranchised in Florida. That is a fact. Blaming Gore or the Democrats for not attracting enough voters to nullify the effects of this disenfranchisement doesn’t mean the disenfranchisement didn’t take place. Nor does it mean the disenfranchisment had nothing to do with Bush being appointed president.

    In this instance, it is completely irrelevant that a large number of Democrats voted for Bush. African Americans were disenfranchised and this cost Gore the election.
    1. hunkerdown July 28, 2015 at 11:27 pm

       How many?
16. Paul Tioxon July 29, 2015 at 1:30 am

    POLICY: Hillary’s Solar Gambit

    Let’s look at the capacity to manufacture 500 million PV panels. Domestically, the Chinese crushed our defenseless industry and created the legend of Solyndra, the government corporate welfare crony gone belly up due to not being purely market driven. The year was 2010 and the CCP finally realizing the major problem of having no air to breathe for its citizens as well as ground visibility reduced to less than the length of a football field invested $45Bil in the construction of PV panels. This of course resulted in the unanticipated drop in price and the dumping of their product into our market. Combined with juicy state and federal tax incentives, projects jumped out by the smart money in the USA. The NFL stadium in Philly is covered with them, more than enough than needed for games. Pocono Raceway did likewise for the Nascar set. A supermarket down the street from me gets a 1/3 of the electricity from their rooftop, which is a lot if you realize the store is really a warehouse of freezers and refrigeration cases for 2/3 of the store. But, in response to the dumping, a complaint was filed and the Chinese realizing they were facing import levies, cranked up exports and warehouses in the USA became vast holding areas for cheap imports more than we could use right away.

    By 2013, with import duties in place, Chinese imports were cut in half. Canada, along with the EU and the US are united in anti-dumping policies against Chinese solar imports and Taiwan as well, but a lower rate than the barriers erected to defend against China.

    What happened to the huge stock pile of Chinese panels? They were exported South to Central America and other places while more efficient state of the art panels made here were used by American installation firms. Right now, SolarCity, is building a huge PV plant that will produce 1
    Gigawatts worth of PV panels per year. You can read about this here:

    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/11/elon-musks-biggest-challenge-yet-recharging-buffalo-ny.html

    This level of production coincides with the Hillary promise of 500mil panels in a decade. This plant would absorb most if not almost all of that initiative by it lone self. The state of NY is paying to build the facility and paying for the equipment inside that will do the manufacturing. And there are hiring and job creation metrics to be met for other considerations. But if SolarCity fails and bails or succeeds and tries to run away to Mexico or where ever, the state will have its own trained workforce and ownership of the factory and equipment to keep on operating. So Hillary’s plan is analogous to the Department of Agriculture buying up milk and cheese to support prices and keep the farmers in business so we can eat. The company has built in demand if Hillary gets in and won’t fail. NY has all the reason in the world to support Hillary. And Hillary also gets to agree with Pope Francis, which doesn’t hurt in heavily Catholic Iowa. It also doesn’t hurt with a large contingent of pissed off TEA Party Libertarians who want to install solar power on their roofs and sell excess electricity to the power grid, but are being stymied by government laws that are protecting the utilities from the this new threat to their monopoly. Hillary looks good to tree huggers, Catholics, Sierra Club types as well as creating a wedge issue splitting off some angry Tea Party types who want Solar Power and see it as way to live with personal independence but maintain a 21st Century standard of living with all of the electrical gadgets, internet etc.

    And, since 90% of the energy sector’s political contributions go exclusively to republicans, it’s not much skin off of the national democratic party’s back. Big Oil just can’t leverage dems when they give so little to them. On the other hand, solar gets huge support for tax credits for PC, wind turbines etc. Solar is a mom and apple pie issue with little downside for Hillary. The real question is how hard is she willing to charge to get this done on the scale and time line necessary for it to have real impact environmentally and also to stimulate jobs for people with real paychecks for decades to come?
    1. rusti July 29, 2015 at 3:31 am

       I hope environmentalists aren’t dumb enough to let Hillary anoint herself as their champion, in the same way that NC readers understand that her facade as an economic populist is utterly unconvincing. The idea that we can just install a bunch of rooftop solar to avoid climate disaster is on par with the fantasy that we’ll retrofit a bunch of brown coal burning plants with carbon capture and storage and ride happily into the sunset.

       Rooftop solar on an American home is the utility-bill equivalent of driving a two-ton electric car with 85 kWh in battery storage and thinking that you’re an environmental champion because the ugliness was abstracted away with the removal of the tailpipe. The raw material requirements for scalability are gigantic, the installation costs are nearly twice that of utility scale deployments and most importantly it doesn’t address seasonal variation or base load requirements. Nor does it address how this is going to propagate to the rest of the world to compensate for the 80% of emissions that aren’t on US soil.

       If we’re using her analogy of Kennedy’s moonshot, she’s aiming to burn out somewhere in the Stratosphere before crash landing off the coast of Florida. Probably even lower when she inevitably swings right after winning the primary and even further right as President.
       1. Paul Tioxon July 29, 2015 at 9:43 am

          So when Hitlery marches Israel to the oven doors, the ovens will be solar powered? I can only hope we can be so smart as to see through all of facades including yours, of not doing anything at all but make empty complaints. This site is no different than most others when it comes to politics, bathed in darkness with some scattered light. America doesn’t have to shove anything down the rest of the world’s throat when it comes to climate change, most of the world doesn’t use as much fossil fuels to maintain their lifestyles as we do. The largest nations that are comparable, China, India, Japan and Germany are all heavily investing in solar, wind, etc. Only a nation of fools wants to be beholden to Russian, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela for oil til the end of the century. Oh, you forgot to whine about all of the birdies that die when they hit the wind turbines and concentrated solar arrays. And clean coal is hard to accomplish when coal plants are just being abandoned. As usual, this is another uninformed denouncement whose ideas are clashing with the facts as they present themselves.

          Coal plants will not have air scrubbers, they will just be closed down. They are closing down, many are already closed, and this will continue unabated because it simply is being abandoned due to the costs. The demands for coal scrubbing clean coal technology were just too expensive for most utilities and the money could be invested in other alternatives including conservation with promotion of more efficient household appliances, solar, wind and unfortunately, natgas. I guess you can’t always get what you want. Coal was given an impossible task as an industry, so you may think it was a delusion. I think it was a way to kill it off without looking like it was being shoved aside for natgas and renewable, sustainable replacements. The business news services are being flooded with obituaries for bankrupt coal companies and massive losses due to prices collapse of 70% from just a few years back. No delusions here buddy, coal is a goner.

          http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/coal-miners-going-bankrupt-does-the-road-end-here/

          http://www.rtcc.org/2015/07/29/coal-giant-peabody-posts-1bn-second-quarter-losses/

          ———————————————————————————————————————–

          What I find most disturbing with your blurting out of sheer nonsense is some sort of obligation on your part to not only ferret out the slightest hint of political approval of Hillary, tacit or otherwise, in my policy analysis of her newly announced solar stance, but some sort of purity litmus test to equally disavow any industrial replacement of burning fossil fuels for energy. Considering that America has de-industrialized to such a great degree, perhaps you have read some of those pathetic deluded articles on this site as well, an entire new generation of 21st factories are being built on a massive scale to provide the alternatives to replace the coal plants, the internal combustion engines, the inefficient heaters and the energy leaking construction techniques for a world of cheap fuels that are cheap no more and polluting the air and changing the climate.

          Tesla’s mammoth battery plant in Nevada will have solar panels on its roof and wind turbines on its property, providing it with most of the energy it will need. It will then manufacture batteries which will help to store energy when its alternative sources fall short. As all new enterprises undergo the early pump priming stage, the burn rates of cash until profitable, solar and wind operate under the aegis of a power grid fueled by coal, nuclear, natgas as well as hydro and other sources. But it will manufacture its own platform of power generation that will push aside the fossil fuels one by one until it will operate in a self sustaining manner, as hoped for. It is now going through a stage of development that is without doubt wholly dependent on the existing mix of energy. Not unlike childhood. At some point it will stand up on its own 2 feet and move on its power.

          Until that happens, the pseudo intellectuals of the world will always complain about the contradictions of a “Green” technology that has to use more energy than it produces currently to be manufactured! It will smirk at the hypocrites who drive their cars to air pollution protests. Then, they will administer the coup de gras when they point out all of the styrofoam cups littering the ground after the pro-environment rally. Materials and factories that will be built to produce the solar and wind products will use the same industrial by products that they are meant to replace. Glass, metals and plastics will be used!! Don’t environmentalist know you can’t do that and still be an environmentalist? As any organizer knows, you use the resources, materials and people at hand, and organize with what you’ve got. Waiting for the messiah is not in any play book worth mentioning.

          I am talking about the policy, not Hillary and I don’t care who brings the policy to actualization, as long as its a policy that gets the results. Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee would be just as good if they announced a bigger, better policy of 1 billions PV panels, because you know, Trump’s a billionaire and he does big better than any body. And a billion panels would be reflective of his net worth! But, alas, they have not announced their climate change policy. And Lambert keeps posting her policy. So, that is what I will comment on, since solar power is near and dear to my heart. And has been since Earth Day 1970. So I’ve seen all of the windbags give their denouncements from the left, the right and the moderate middle. But now, the world is going my way, and I will report the facts as presented. The facts are looking good for solar, bad for coal and are undermining oil demand for an eventual exit from the energy mix.
          1. rusti July 29, 2015 at 5:46 pm

             Uh, well, that was certainly a long-winded rant. Apparently you’ve projected onto my post the image of some other boogey-men from your past and don’t realize that our differences in opinion are not nearly as large as your angry tirade indicates.

             I spend a lot of time reading sites like Green Tech Media and Green Car Congress and while they’re full of fantastic technical information and insightful commenters, the idea that we’re just going to continue to live lives of absurd material excess and replace the fossil fuels with some fancy new gadgets doesn’t seem to stack up well with the timeline for massive droughts and sea level changes throwing a wrench in the works of global political and finance systems already fraught with risks and showing signs of breaking. There’s a lot of triumphalism about the relative cost per kilowatt for solar and wind being cheaper, but go look at the projections for the biggest polluting countries and their timelines for reducing emissions when they already have incentive to fudge the numbers.

             Realistic solutions start with energy conservation and massive R&D for new power generation, building materials, city design, and transport fuels & powertrain architectures. It means installing much more cost efficient utility-scale solar and not the Libertarian symbolic approach of having it on rooftops. If the primary-season version of the energy plan doesn’t even mention anything else, then it is woefully inadequate and it shouldn’t be mistaken for progress just because the Republicans manage to be even worse.

             As far as the Gigafactory goes, I sure hope they succeed in getting the Lithium-ion cost per kilowatt hour down past some economic tipping points, but those don’t have anything to do with nature’s tipping points. I live in a small condo, commute by bicycle and buy things second-hand. My monthly energy bill is about the same as a single charge of a Model S, but not nearly as sexy.
          2. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 29, 2015 at 5:59 pm

             “I don’t care who brings the policy to actualization”

             Exactly. It doesn’t make me unhappy that Clinton sees political advantage in doing this; but I’d like a bit of “both/and” on Keystone, because the place for oil is in the ground. (I realize it will take a generation or two for this religious taboo to “take.”)

             Adding… I don’t have a car or ride a bike, because if I fall of my bike (again) and break a hand, I can’t type. So on the one hand, I’m doing my little bit on carbon, but on the other, I don’t see “doing without” as a virtue in itself (cue the American lifestyle discussion over there).

             What I would like to see — and Paul may have this information at his fingertips — is some sort of total lifecycle analysis of the panels. I mean, do they use rare earths hacked from the Earth by slaves? What happens when they wear out? Do we dump them in landfills? Et cetera.
       2. Lambert Strether Post authorJuly 29, 2015 at 5:58 pm

          This is really interesting. Thanks!
17. vidimi July 29, 2015 at 4:54 am

    the bush dynasty was built on the “merger” of the bush and walker families. i wonder if scott walker comes from that same walker clan? would be quite cosy if he did. maybe a bush walker 2016 repug ticket?
18. John Zelnicker July 30, 2015 at 8:46 am

    Lambert – Yes, it is true that Europe virtually shuts down for August (at least it did in 1971 when I was there). Most countries there require 4 plus weeks of vacation and the majority of the workers take off in August, leaving a skeleton crew that took their vacation in July. I was in Bergen, Norway, and my girlfriend needed emergency dental work. There were only 4 dentists working in August in a city of 100,000 or so. Also, the root canal she had with a temporary crown cost $9.75, which was double the cost for citizens. Ahh, the horrors of single payer health care.

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