Cap and Trade DID Not Go Away

Posted on August 25, 2016August 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

New Principles to Help Accelerate the Growing Global Momentum for Carbon Pricing

2015:

New report shows the number of implemented or planned carbon pricing schemes around the world has almost doubled since 2012, with existing schemes now worth about $50 billion.

About 40 nations and 23 cities, states or regions are using a carbon price. This represents the equivalent of about 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, or 12 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.

And new report lays out six key principles to put a price on carbon – the FASTER principles – for putting a price on carbon based on economic principles and experience of what is already working around the world

The spotlight is on New York now with the upcoming United Nations meeting on the new Sustainable Development Goals, Climate Week New York, and in about two months, global leaders will meet again in Paris for COP 21. More from the World Bank.

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California’s Cap-And-Trade Program Is Sick And Will Take High-Speed Rail Down With It

Chuck DeVore, Contributor

Forbes: California concluded its most recent cap-and-trade program auction last week. Out of 44,268,323 metric tons of carbon dioxide credits offered for sale by the state Air Resources Board, only 660,560 were sold, 1.5 percent of the total, raising a paltry $8.4 million out of a hoped-for $620 million. Last May’s auction was almost as bad, raising $10 million out of an anticipated $500 million.

California’s carbon dioxide cap-and-trade auction program was expected to bring in more than $2 billion in the current fiscal year that ends June 30, 2017, a quarter of which is earmarked for the high-speed rail project narrowly approved by voters in a 2008 ballot initiative. As a hedge against uncertainty, a $500 million reserve was built into the cap-and-trade budget. But, with the August auction falling 98.5 percent short, the entire reserve was consumed in the first of four auctions for the fiscal year.

Further complicating matters is a pending lawsuit against the legality of California’s cap-and-trade program. Business groups and fiscal conservatives claim the program amounts to a tax, under a 2010 ballot initiative that better defined what exactly constitutes taxes and fees under California law, thus would requiring a two-thirds majority vote of the legislature.

Further, with the program slated to end in 2020, many businesses that are forced to buy the carbon credits are conflicted by the risk that they may end up buying the California equivalent of Confederate bonds, doomed to be worthless when the state loses its cap-and-trade war.

In the meantime, the High-Speed Rail project, currently promised to cost “only” $68 billion to run from the Bay Area some 400 miles south to Los Angeles may be looking at $50 billion in overruns. To fund the costly train, which was sold to voters as not costing a dime in new taxes, the expected revenue stream from cap-and-trade has been securitized, putting the state on the hook to Wall Street for billions in construction money advanced on the promise of future cap-and-trade revenue.

But the cap-and-trade market is showing dangerous signs of weakness. Not only have auction revenues collapsed in the last two auctions in May and August, but the competitive landscape for the auctions has collapsed as well. The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), a commonly-used measure of competitive markets, signaled that last May’s auction was dominated by a sole market player. Last week’s auction improved somewhat, but was still moderately concentrated among a small number of buyers and sellers.

The lack of interest in California’s cap-and-trade carbon credits shows that the Golden State will likely have to come up with a significant amount of General Fund tax revenue, more than $2 billion annually, to build out its government-run rail project—something that isn’t likely to last much beyond the end of Gov. Jerry Brown’s fourth term in office in January 2019.

California’s Cap and Trade Auction is Collapsing

**** Back in 2014:

In part from Politico: Cap and trade was a key part of the George H.W. Bush administration’s strategy for reducing acid rain in 1990, and it would have been the centerpiece of the climate bill that stalled and died in the Senate in 2010.

Despite the concept’s bipartisan heritage, cap and trade has become politically toxic in some circles — especially among supporters of coal, the carbon-intensive fuel that would face the heaviest costs under any trading system. Republicans derided the climate bill as “cap and tax,” while West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin famously unloaded a rifle into a copy of the legislation during a Senate campaign commercial.

Still, cap and trade never went away.

With RGGI and California combined, about a quarter of the U.S. population lives in areas covered by trading programs designed to drive down carbon emissions, said Janet Peace, vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, at a Senate briefing Thursday.

Other programs exist in Alberta, Canada; Australia; New Zealand; Norway; and South Korea. Next year, cap-and-trade programs are expected to launch in Switzerland, Tokyo, the United Kingdom and South Africa. Others are in development or undergoing pilot tests in Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico and even Kazakhstan.

“Eventually, 250 million people will be covered by a carbon price in China,” Peace said. The full article here.

*** The New York Times stays current on Cap and Trade.

How and When the $1.7 Billion was Paid to Iran, Database Item

Posted on August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Note the date and this money was assigned to the State Department Account in the graphic (screen-shot below the text)

Riddle of $1.3 Billion for Iran Might Relate to 13 Outlays Of Exactly $99,999,999.99

NYSun: Congressional investigators trying to uncover the trail of $1.3 billion in payments to Iran might want to focus on 13 large, identical sums that Treasury paid to the State Department under the generic heading of settling “Foreign Claims.”

The 13 payments when added to the $400 million that the administration now concedes it shipped to the Iranian regime in foreign cash would bring the payout to the $1.7 billion that President Obama and Secretary Kerry announced on January 17. That total was to settle a dispute pending for decades before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in at The Hague.

Mr. Kerry told the press at the time that the settlement included $400 million that Iran under the Shah had paid into a U.S. trust fund for an arms deal that collapsed after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Plus, said Kerry, the U.S. had agreed to pay “a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on the interest.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon and Carole E. Lee broke earlier this month the news that on the same day that Mr. Obama announced the settlement, his administration secretly sent Iran the $400 million payment in cash. Last week, the State Department finally confirmed that the January 17 cash shipment was used as “leverage” to ensure Iran’s release that same day of four American prisoners — fueling questions about whether the Obama administration, despite its denials, had paid ransom.

Yet more questions surround the administration’s handling of the remaining $1.3 billion. Could this have been drawn from a fund bankrolled by American taxpayers and housed at Treasury, called the Judgment Fund? And why were the 13 payments in amounts of one cent less than $100,000,000?

The Judgment Fund has long been a controversial vehicle for federal agencies to detour past one of the most pointed prohibitions in the Constitution: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

The Judgment Fund, according to a Treasury Department Web site, is “a permanent, indefinite appropriation” used to pay monetary awards against U.S. government agencies in cases “where funds are not legally available to pay the award from the agency’s own appropriations.”

In March, in letters responding to questions about the Iran settlement sent weeks earlier by Representatives Edward Royce and Mike Pompeo, the State Department confirmed that the $1.3 billion “interest” portion of the Iran settlement had been paid out of the Judgment Fund. But State gave no information on the logistics.

The 13 payments that may explain what happened are found in an online database maintained by the Judgment Fund. A search for “Iran” since the beginning of this year turns up nothing. But a search for claims in which the defendant is the State Department turns up 13 payments for $99,999,999.99.

They were all made on the same day, all sharing the same file and control reference numbers, all certified by the U.S. Attorney General, but each assigned a different identification number. They add up to $1,299,999,999.87, or 13 cents less than the $1.3 billion Messrs. Clinton and Kerry announced in January.

Together with a 14th payment of just over $10 million, the grand total paid out by Treasury from the Judgment Fund on that single day, January 19, for claims pertaining to the State Department, comes to roughly $1.31 billion.

Treasury has provided no answers to my queries about whether these specific payments were for the Iran settlement. Nor why these transfers comprised 13 payments, each of which was a cent under $100,000,000. Nor whether the $10 million related to the same matter.

The Judgment Fund database contains over the past year no other payouts pertaining to State that come anywhere near the scale of $1.3 billion of the announced with Iran. And it contains no details on what the State Department might have done with the $1.3 billion.

It does say, as a general matter, that “Defendant Agency Name is the same as the Responsible Agency Name.” It leaves open the question of whether it was State rather than Treasury that determined by what route and in what form the funds would reach their final destination.

State has refused to disclose even such basic information as the date on which Iran took receipt of the $1.3 billion. As recently as August 4, a State spokesman told the press: “I don’t have a date of when that took place.”

Nor has the administration answered whether the $1.3 billion was transferred to Iran via the banking system, or, like the $400 million, in cash. According to the Judgment Fund web site, the “preferred method” for payments is “by electronic fund transfer,” approved by the relevant government agency, to the party receiving the award.

But, the Weekly Standard noted last week, President Obama recently defended his $400 million cash shipment to Iran on the grounds that “We don’t have a banking relationship with Iran… We could not wire the money.”

The Judgment Fund’s public database provides no information about where precisely the $1.31 billion in January payments went, or how. The Fund’s web site does provide blank “Voucher for Payment” forms, requiring administration officials to provide such details, and sign off on them.

These payouts from the Judgment Fund were made within days of the announcement of the Iran settlement. The Judgment Fund’s web site states that while its bureaucracy has recently become more efficient, “processing times” for payments still take “6 to 8 weeks.”

If the multiple 10-digit payments of January 19 do turn out to be connected to the Iran settlement announced January 17, that would suggest that the Judgment Fund completed its processing for Iran in a mere two days one of which — Monday, January 18 — was a federal holiday.

Ms. Rosett, a Foreign Policy Fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, a columnist of Forbes and a blogger for PJMedia, is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.

Great Legal Decision on Obama’s Genderless Bathrooms

Posted on August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Post from: Washington Blade, America’s Leading LGBT News Source

Judge blocks guidance on bathroom access for trans students

A federal judge has blocked the enforcement of guidance from the Obama administration prohibiting schools from discriminating against transgender students, including denying them access to public restrooms consistent with their gender identity.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, issued the preliminary injunction late Sunday in response to a lawsuit filed in May by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of 12 states and two school districts.

In the 38-page order, O’Connor writes the case “presents the difficult issue of balancing” the rights of transgender students and privacy concerns, but he nonetheless sides with states suing the Obama administration.

“The sensitivity to this matter is heightened because defendants’ actions apply to the youngest child attending school and continues for every year throughout each child’s educational career,” O’Connor writes. “The resolution of this difficult policy issue is not, however, the subject of this order. Instead, the Constitution assigns these policy choices to the appropriate elected and appointed officials, who must follow the proper legal procedure.”

In May, the Departments of Justice and Education said schools are barred from discriminating against transgender students, including in bathroom use, under the prohibition of gender bias in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. That means schools refusing to allow transgender students to use the restroom consistent with their gender identity are at risk of losing federal funds.

The court order doesn’t devote significant discussion to why transgender students should be subjected to schools barring them from restroom use consistent with their gender identity, but cites the intent of Congress in passing Title IX and portions of the law that allow schools to segregate students by gender.

“Without question, permitting educational institutions to provide separate housing to male and female students, and separate educational instruction concerning human sexuality, was to protect students’ personal privacy, or discussion of their personal privacy, while in the presence of members of the opposite biological sex,” O’Connor writes.

Critics say Paxton and the states he represents lacked standing to sue the Obama administration over the guidance, but O’Connor writes they’re able to sue because the guidance is “clearly designed to target plaintiffs’ conduct.”

“Guidelines will force plaintiffs to consider ways to build or reconstruct restrooms, and how to accommodate students who may seek to use private single person facilities, as other school districts and employers who have been subjected to Defendants’ enforcement actions have had to do,” O’Connor writes. “That the guidelines spur this added regulatory compliance analysis satisfies the injury in fact requirement.”

O’Connor writes the injunction “should apply nationwide” and states that don’t wish to comply with the order “can easily avoid doing so by state law that recognizes the permissive nature.” The injunction, O’Connor writes, shouldn’t interfere with similar cases pending before federal courts on transgender bathroom use and “parties should file a pleading describing those cases so the court can appropriately narrow the scope if appropriate.”

Kasey Suffredini, chief program officer for Freedom for All Americans, called the ruling a “step back for transgender protections,” criticizing O’Connor for the decision and refusing to hear from a single transgender student during court proceedings.

“It is shameful that opponents of equality have forced this lawsuit forward in an attempt to make transgender Americans pawns in a political game; but this ruling will not stand the test of time,” Suffredini said. “All transgender Americans – particularly transgender youth – deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. No singular court ruling negates the right of all Americans to receive equal treatment under the law – that’s one of our nation’s founding values.”

Paxton in a statement after the ruling said the plaintiff states are “pleased” with the decision and it restricts “the Obama administration’s latest illegal federal overreach.”

“This president is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform,” Paxton said. “That cannot be allowed to continue, which is why we took action to protect states and school districts, who are charged under state law to establish a safe and disciplined environment conducive to student learning.”

Dena Iverson, a spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department, said the Obama administration is considering the order and whether to appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The department is disappointed in the court’s decision, and we are reviewing our options,” Iverson said.

Given the broad nature of the litigation — which sought not only to bar enforcement of the Obama administration guidance, but general enforcement of federal laws against gender discrimination to protect transgender people — the nature of the injunction is sweeping and one that defies years of legal precedent establishing transgender discrimination amounts to gender discrimination.

Five civil rights organizations that had submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in the lawsuit – Lambda Legal, American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Texas, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Transgender Law Center and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders — issued a joint statement in the aftermath of the injunction saying nothing has changed.

“A ruling by a single judge in one circuit cannot and does not undo the years of clear legal precedent nationwide establishing that transgender students have the right to go to school without being singled out for discrimination,” the statement says. “This unfortunate and premature ruling may, however, confuse school districts that are simply trying to support their students, including their transgender students. So let us make it clear to those districts: your obligations under the law have not changed, and you are still not only allowed but required to treat transgender students fairly.”

The statement also criticizes O’Connor for a decision the organizations say “targets a small, vulnerable group of young people – transgender elementary and high school students – for potential continued harassment, stigma and abuse.”

This ruling isn’t the first anti-LGBT decision made by O’Connor. Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court decision last year in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide, O’Connor issued an injunction allowing married same-sex couples to access benefits under the Family & Medical Leave Act in states without marriage equality.

Deportation is Almost at a Full Halt

Posted on August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Interior Enforcement Plummeting Under Obama Admin’s New Deportation Program

DailyCaller: The Obama administration’s new program to work with local and state law enforcement on deportations has resulted in a dramatic decrease in interior immigration enforcement, government data reveals.

Detainer requests to local and state law enforcement are down across the board for aliens who have committed violent, drug, and sex crimes. The data comes from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse which obtains government statistics through Freedom of Information Act requests. A detainer request is when Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) asks a state or local jail agency to hold an alien in custody so ICE is able to take them into custody.

ICE shifted from the Secure Communities program to the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) in the beginning of Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. In FY 2014, ICE had 159,210 requests to local and state law enforcement agencies to detain non-citizens for up to 48 hours. That number dropped 41.3 percent to 95,085 in FY 2015.

The purpose of the PEP is to focus on deportations of aliens who have committed serious “Level 1 offenses.” But, comparing FY 2014 and FY2015, data shows a decrease in detainer requests for aliens who have been convicted of assault, driving under the influence, selling cocaine, robbery, and sexual assault. The amount of detainer requests for aliens convicted of murder dropped from 603 to 343, a 43.2 percent drop.

At the same time as detainer requests have decreased, ICE “notices” have increased. With the announcement of the PEP, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that ICE is phasing out detainer requests and instead using requests for notifications. These are “requests that state or local law enforcement notify ICE of a pending release during the time that person is otherwise in custody under state or local authority.” (RELATED: ICE Gets Extra Billion To Deport Illegals, Deports 200,000 FEWER)

While notices were supposed to replace detainers, ICE continues to use the latter. In November 2015, a year after PEP was put in place, ICE had 4,942 detainer requests and 1,204 requests for notice.
With the new program in place ICE’s total requests for detainers and requests for notices have plummeted. In October 2014, the last month of the prior Secure Communities program, there were 11,201 detainers. A year later there were 6,146 detainers and requests for notice combined in October.

Detainer requests during the Obama administration peaked with 309,697 in 2011. That same year there were about 225,000 interior deportations. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, ICE is on pace to complete 63,700 interior deportations in 2016.

**** Remember this past June and the Supreme Court decision:

ABAJournal: The U.S. Supreme Court has split 4-4 in a challenge to President Barack Obama’s power to implement a deferred deportation program, leaving in place a nationwide injunction blocking the initiative.

The New York Times calls the tie vote “a sharp blow” to Obama’s program and “a rebuke to his go-it-alone approach to immigration.” The Washington Post called the deadlock “a significant legal defeat” for Obama.

Obama told reporters that the deadlock is “heartbreaking” for millions of immigrants and its effect will be to freeze his deferred immigration program until after the election.

Obama’s program offers deportation deferrals to immigrants who have lived here since at least January 2010, have no serious criminal record, and have children who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. The program is known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA.

Challengers had claimed Obama’s executive action violated the Administrative Procedure Act and Obama’s constitutional duty to “take care” that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. Texas was one of 26 states that challenged the program.

“Today’s decision keeps in place what we have maintained from the very start: one person, even a president, cannot unilaterally change the law,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “This is a major setback to President Obama’s attempts to expand executive power, and a victory for those who believe in the separation of powers and the rule of law.”

The case is United States v. Texas.

Did Hillary Lie to the FBI?

Posted on August 15, 2016August 15, 2016 by Denise Simon

It is unlikely Hillary lied to the FBI during her three hour interview. Why? If she was asked easy questions including questions where she could claim no memory, then the entire interview was purely theater. It is important to note that the Director of the FBI, James Comey was not in attendance for this interview. It is stunning that a presidential candidate and a top government official was being interviewed and the FBI Director was not a participant. Why? Again, the questions were thin on substance and hardly probing and perhaps pre-planned. But Congress is about to have possession of the records.

His July 5 announcement – which led to the Department of Justice officially dropping the case – also resulted in Comey having to testify before Congress, which he did two days later.

There, he was asked about Clinton’s interview with the FBI.

Comey divulged that the three-hour interview hadn’t taken place under oath and thus no official transcript would be available.

Notes from the interview, however, existed and Republicans have been trying to get their hands on those for the past month. More here.

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Congress could get record of FBI’s Clinton interview over emails by this week

FNC: Some of the FBI files on the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server exclusively for government business while serving as secretary of state could be given to a House oversight committee as early as this week, a congressional source confirmed with Fox News on Sunday.

The matter has been progressing since early July, when a formal request was made by Congress for the file, the remaining block appears to rest within the Justice Department.

The FBI, after interviewing Clinton last month, concluded its investigation of Clinton’s use of a private server, confirming publicly that 113 classified emails were sent and received by Clinton, as well as 2,000 that were classified after the fact.

FBI Director James Comey said investigators found at least three emails that contained classified markings, adding that the Democratic presidential nominee was “extremely careless.” However, he did not recommend criminal charges, and the Justice Department closed the case.

While Clinton has insisted nothing was marked classified at the time, the investigation found otherwise, with the emails containing a portion marking (C for confidential, the lowest level of classification). Fox News first reported that some of the emails were marked classified in June.

The Oversight Committee has formally asked if Clinton committed perjury during her Benghazi testimony in October 2015, because her statements to Congress appear to conflict with the FBI’s findings. Clinton has maintained she was truthful in her FBI interview.

Fox News is told that the FBI and Justice Department have confirmed the receipt of the committee’s request.

Congressional investigators — led by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah — have been aggressively seeking the entire file, including a summary of Clinton’s interview, known as a “302.”

However, the document is considered highly classified, because Clinton’s FBI session included questions on the 22 top secret emails that are too damaging to national security to make public.

Note that, it is standard for FBI interviews not to be recorded, so there is no transcript, but agents take extensive notes and they form the basis for the written report known as the “302.”

The possible release of the file to congressional investigators was first reported by CNN.

The House Oversight Committee questioned Comey for over five hours in July after he said no reasonable prosecutor would pursue criminal charges.