“A version of this article appeared in Salon”

Reporting on the Biden administration’s Build Back Better Bill — aka the infrastructure bill — has been is particularly uninformative, Paul Krugman thankfully aside, on the crucial issue of what, besides a massive economic stimulus, America will get out of it. What are the long-term returns on these massive investments? Indeed, one major Washington Post article referred to all the actual economic or social value of the proposed investments as “ancillary” to the number of dollars expended and jobs created.

We need to be analyzing and debating what this will all mean…

“A version of this article appeared in The Bulwark”

by JOSEPH MAJKUT AND CARL POPE

Hot on the heels of the large COVID recovery package, President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a major new policy priority: infrastructure. Looking to make good on his campaign promise to “build back better,” the president is proposing a package of spending and investments totaling $2 trillion across this decade, with a particular focus on climate change. …

White supremacy and the filibuster: From John C. Calhoun to Mitch McConnell

“A version of this article appeared in Salon”

Mitch McConnell’s claim that “the filibuster is the essence of the Senate” has been tossed aside by his opponents as bad history, violently inconsistent with how Jefferson, Hamilton or Madison aimed to structure the Senate, and perhaps even unconstitutional. All true. But what McConnell’s screed should remind us is that the filibuster has always been the essence of the politics of white supremacy — even as it now poses a broader threat to democracy itself.

McConnell draws on a playbook…

Why Texas froze (and California fried): This disaster was 90 years in the making

“A version of this article appeared in Salon”

The catastrophe that swept Texas last week was 90 years in the making. Its roots lie in a decision during the 1930s to escape federal regulation of power rates under the terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal by forcing all Texas utilities to avoid importing or exporting power across state lines, thereby pretending that Texas electricity was not actually part of the national economy.

As the biggest oil and gas producer in the world, Texas had already set itself up in the business of regulating the global price of oil through…

Watching the latter portion of the House Impeachment Manager’s Wednesday case against former President Trump, I was struck less by the argument Trump’s lawyers — and Congressional Republicans — wanted to make — that the President is not guilty as charged of incitement of insurrection because a portion of his supporters (and those of the GOP) were dead set on insurrection prior to January 6, and perhaps even prior to the election. In this narrative Trump might have inadvertently fired up the mob, but it had already planned to assault the capitol, so he merely lit tinder ready to explode…

“A version of this article appeared in Salon”

Just 10 days after the Biden administration took over, in alignment with the new president’s overall blitz strategy, a flabbergasting phalanx of U.S. climate policies have been turned smartly on their heels and are marching toward the future. President Biden has returned the nation to the Paris Agreement, required truth-telling in government reporting, enforced a regulation that government purchases must feed U.S. supply chains rather than imports, terminated the massive giveaway of taxpayer property to coal, oil and gas extractors, restored the integrity of federal climate science, frozen a horde of horrible…

“A version of this article appeared in Salon”

Fifty years ago, as a young environmental lobbyist, my first big assignment came to fruit: Congress passed, and President Nixon signed, the Clean Air Act of 1970. That bill made the nation a promise: By 1977, the air in every community would be safe to breathe.

That deadline was missed and extended. Every subsequent extended deadline for air safe to breathe been missed. While the act is usually described as being a success, it has failed to achieve its fundamental purpose; clean air for every American. …

“A version of this article appeared in DesMoines Register”

By: James L. Witt and Carl Pope*

The last three years should have taught Americans an important lesson:

With Western wildfires, heartland flooding and hurricanes becoming more frequent and more severe because of climate change, the time has come for the federal government to establish a trust fund with a dedicated funding source that provides communities around the country reliable funding for risk reduction and hazard mitigation investments.

And at a time when Washington cannot agree on how to finance badly needed programs, it’s a remarkable truth that protecting communities against…