"That position runs contrary to both his party leadership and the Obama administration.... At the same time, Feingold said he's 'troubled' by some of his constituents’ refusal to accept the principles of global warming, but agreed with some critics who have said the bill could stifle job growth in the industrial sector and increase energy prices. 'Western Wisconsin is particularly strong in being concerned about this because of their reliance on coal... There is a real possibility ... that it will be unfair to Wisconsin and Wisconsin ratepayers.... Why should we leave ourselves completely exposed while [other nations] just get to go forward?'"
By the way, did you notice Feingold in the congregation during Obama's speech last night? I thought he looked unusually grumpy.
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I don't agree with Feingold on much, but like Paul Wellstone, he strikes me as a pretty principled liberal.
Feingold has a brain and sometimes he uses it. Hope he continues to on cap and trade, the single worst idea of the Obama administration. It has stiff competition.
Wisconsin needs nuclear power, to do its share in stopping both global warming and the strip mining of southern Illinois farmland.
If I had to guess, I'd say that Feingold was probably grumpy after hearing the oral arguments in Citizens United.
Wisconsin generates and consumes more power from nuclear than most states--considerably more.
The France of America--nukes and cheese.
OT, but you know, I thought Biden looked grumpy last night. He almost always has that sort of goofy half-grin, but during the speech there was nary a smile. I thought for sure this meant they were going to be giving up the public option. Alas...
Color me surprised.
From my position as fervent spokesperson for the "rustbelt," I think cap-and-trade will butcher states depending on coal fired electricity, and then just whack manufacturing, what's left of hard goods anyway.
Cap and Tax and spend on fake alternate energy sources sold by the Enviernmental-Industrial Complex with kick backs galore is actually a Crime far worse than what Blago tried to do with the Senate appointment in Illinois. That only hurt Illinois. Cap and Tax is a Taking Under False Pretenses from every person in America. A RICCO Statute prosecution is available here. There is no CO2 problem whatsoever. And every politician who rides that Faked Science Horse into town should be immediately prosecuted as an accomplice. There is a cooling threat from sun activity that no one can control, but everyone can store uo resources to survive the cold. No one can cause or stop a warming trend from sun activity if there is one later. The "CO2 is poison" illusion is a pure Disney World Fantasy Land con job. Belief in such fantasy land con jobs is a serious mental illness implanted in men's minds by those same High Priest of the Green Religion politicians that also want their Death Panels ASAP so that they can better "Stop the CO2 poisoning of the Globe" by the existence of men. the degree of ensorcelling behind this Fantasy Con is very great, but like all false idea emplanted in men's minds, it can be stopped cold by truth spoken using bold free speech. Someone alert Sarah Palin.
McCullough: ...he strikes me as a pretty principled liberal
This is a joke right? Snark? Tad over the top sarcasm?
Please say so. I mean because the fundamental, underlying point of this entire article is that Feingold is a sold-out whore without a shred of principle.
Feingold is a strong thinker and a bold speaker of his own thoughts, and that takes guts today. Congratulations to Wisconsin on making Feingold one of its Senators.
I’m not signing onto any bill that rips off Wisconsin,” Feingold declared...
Hello rock. I'm hard place.
At least he acknowledges that there is an heavy economic consequence to cap and trade. Going 'green' will take decades to accomplish in the meantime Congress fiddles while Rome burns. We are running into peak oil reality but congress critters remain asleep at the wheel.
Wisconsin needs nuclear power
Hyperion Power Generation
Like a battery, the HPM is a compact, transportable unit with no moving internal parts. It’s not to be opened once distributed from the factory.
Once sited safely in its underground containment vessel, an HPM is monitored but does not require a battery of operational personnel. It just quietly delivers safe, reliable power – 70 MW thermal or 25 MW electric via steam turbine – for a period of seven to 10 years.
The core of the HPM produces energy via a safe, natural heat-producing process that occurs with the oscillation of hydrogen in uranium hydride. HPMs cannot go “supercritical,” melt down, or get “too hot.” It maintains its safe, operating temperature without the introduction and removal of “cooling rods” – an operation that has the potential for mechanical failure.
A good bit bigger than the typical consumer battery, HPMs are, however, just a fraction of the size of conventional nuclear power plants. About 1.5 meters across, the units’ size can be compared to a deep residential hot tub. It’s the size, along with the transportability and ease of operation, that make the self-contained HPM such a desirable choice for providing consistent, reliable, affordable power in remote locations.
Anyone feel a draft?
Did we forget to close the hole in the ozone layer again?
Haha. A senator admits he really really likes his job so he will do the right thing.
Why don't we admit we really really don't need these windbags they call senators?
Jeez with the internet, most Americans have the technical resources to cast votes up or down on proposed laws.
Let's change the constitution ASAP!
yeah... Wisconsin appears to have chosen a representative. Bully for them.
Dirtying our world is a bad thing, clearly, but cap and trade is about power, not the environment. Health care reform is about power, not improving health care. It's sad that it had to get to this point before people realized it.
Imagine how much good the democrats could do if they wanted to improve things instead of control as much money as possible.
Heh. I liked that, "congregation." Double heh.
*sound of heavy assisted breathing*
"I find your lack of faith disturbing." '
So even Feingold is smart enough to understand that dumb liberal policies can have disastrous consequences. I guess this puts him a step above Barry, Nancy and Harry.
restfu
It can't hurt that he's up for re-election next year
So, if it "rips off" other states or the whole country, it's cool?
Will Al Gore give Russ a call to discuss?
Who will be the Robber Barons of the 21st century?Al Gore is poised to become the first climate billionaire
Would Feingold vote for cap & tax if it didn't rip off Wisconsin?
You betcha.
I'm happy to see opposition to Cap-N-Tax, wherever it comes from.
Sometimes I think Feingold's head is full of cheese curds.
Since I'm been in the mood for predictions lately, here's another - cap and trade won't pass during this Congress, and probably won't even go up for a vote. These are the reasons: (i) there are a lot of Democrats who are against it or are ambivalent about it, like Sens. Finegold and Landrieu, (ii) it's a big piece of legislation, and the White House won't want to put the full court press behind it, given other priorities, and (iii) there isn't a mass movement of voters pushing it (like health care reform), because, like it or not, hardcore environmentalist voters are a small portion of the voting population, centered in the urban liberal upper middle classes that will vote Democratic anyway. Item (iii) is a big reason why item (ii) is a political reality. There may be some smaller-scale environmental legislation passed soon, but I suspect cap and trade will find itself pushed to the back burner.
Ack, that should have said "Feingold", obviously, though the Senator is a fine man, who is worth his weight in gold.
former law student said...
Wisconsin needs nuclear power, to do its share in stopping both global warming and the strip mining of southern Illinois farmland.
You can't stop global warming any more than you can stop plate tectonics. You can't stop global cooling anymore than you can stop a volcano from erupting. Be that as it may, nuclear power plants should be dotting the American landscape. Hell, even Molten Salt Reactors should be dotting the landscape and they eat nuclear waste too. But to use nuclear power as a means to 'stopping' global warming is fantasy land material. Besides, it's your ilk that continually harps on nuclear power as a viable electricity producing substitute to coal. Fight them instead because they are the ones that are going to foist this horror of a piece of legislation onto you.
One of the best Peggy Noonan columns I've ever read, and I don't even like her:
http://lornakismet.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/coruscating-on-thin-ice/
__________
...Feingold said he's “troubled” by some of his constituents’ refusal to accept the principles of global warming, but agreed with some critics who have said the bill could stifle job growth in the industrial sector and increase energy prices.
In other words he's caught smack dab in the middle of a cognitive dissonance moment, torn between on the one hand his feelings about liberal orthodoxy and the junk science supporting it, and the hard realities of what it means for his constituency on the other. Oh what to do, what to do.
Underpants Gnomes Health Insurance Economics.
Unicorn Farts Energy Policy.
WV rearmod
the coming inflation and higher taxes require a rearmod...because we are going to have to just bend over and take it up the tailpipe
Hector Owen said...
I'm happy to see opposition to Cap-N-Tax, wherever it comes from.
Cap and trade has far bigger problems than taxes that Democrats deliberately staggered to phase in over many years.
It is the immediate impact of it on America's near-desperate financial and jobs competiveness situation. China and India are opting out of any caps...China projects it will burn at least 30% more coal. Japan and the little Dragons are going with gas and nukes. From the industral age onwards, they had less access to oil than we did and built their infrastructure for the last 100 years to be more compact, effecient, more reliant on natural gas, coal gas..then nuclear.
The now discarded "Green jobs czar", a leftist black with no technical or business education...was running around assuring everyone that Cap 'n Trade would create zillions of "great, exciting, green energy jobs".
Which ignored European data that showed 2.4 jobs lost for each "green job" created...and the "exciting green jobs paid far less than the "old, boring industrial jobs lost".
The western Europeans also played games to get close to Kyoto "goals" on CO2. They simply shipped their high energy need basic materials production to E Europe, Turkey..while insisting that the power from Bulgarian coal plants they financed, Azerbaijan refineries product, aluminum from old Soviet plants they refurbished, the Turkish and Egyptian cement factories they outsourced - be shipped or sent by power line to W Europe for most value-added work into finished goods from the high-CO2 generating raw materials. Under EU rules.
The US has no such luxury.
And Obama's man "Van" neglected to say that "exciting green jobs" come from EU rules keeping manufacturing inside EU countries to qualify for EU investment, favorable tax treatment as they build those "wonderful windmills" and "glorious", but enormously expensive and pitifully small net energy production solar cells and thermal gen plants.
"Van the man", lawyer and community organizer, was ignorant that the US has outsourced the source of a significant part of Europe's "exciting green jobs" already.
The two largest makers of solar panels in the US moved production to China in the last 3 years. And while Americans make the low tech bases and many of the blades of "wonderful wind turbines" - the electrical & electronic guts are mostly French, German, Japanese.
It is not taxes that is the problem. I know it is all some conservatives can think about....the real problem is competiveness and good jobs lost.
If we decide wrong in addressing the crises in finance, healthcare, immense corruption in our main and State Imperial Capitals.., America's lack of educational attainment and competiveness, and dependence on foreign energy - we are poised to go from a 1st world nation to a 2nd World one. Much as Argentina did in the 40s. And never recovered the gap in standard of living that formed between Argentina and other nations, even ones devestated in WWII.
Feingold sounds like he's not just an automatic "Yea" for whatever risky scheme the White House dreams up.
Listen, it's about only one principle - the re-election of The Honorable Russel Feingold (D-WI).
Anyone with half a brain understands that if he votes for cap and trade he'll likely not be re-elected.
Feingold is no idiot, although some of his positions are idiotic. This changed position is self-preservation.
Gov. Jim Doyle, a classic big spending, big taxing Dem has seen the poll numbers and has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2010.
Wisconsin politics are undergoing a change. Liberal tax and spenders are becoming less welcome as elected representatives.
The only thing Feingold has established is what he is and now we are negotiating the price.
Gov. Jim Doyle, a classic big spending, big taxing Dem
What on Earth are you talking about? I am no Jim Doyle fan, but the notion that he has increased taxes is unfounded. Fees yes. Taxes no.
@MadisonMan - No tax increases? You're kidding, right?
Maybe you have forgotten these items form Gov. Doyle's 2010-2011 budget.
Extend Sales Tax to Digital Personal Property.
Cigarette Tax Increase.
Tobacco Products Tax Increase.
Very High Earner Income Tax increase.
Reduce Capital Gains Exclusion to 40%.
Nonresident Pass-Through Withholding.
Affiliated Entities Sales Tax Treatment.
Dairy Cooperative Tax Credit Reduction.
Meat Processing Facility Tax Credit Reduction.
Hospital Assessment Tax.
Nursing Home Bed Tax.
Oil Company Profits Tax.
...and you know what? Not one of those affects me. In fact, I think some taxes aren't high enough. The cigarette sales tax, for example. Or the Beer Tax. Tax those sinful indulgences! We have to pay for all those new roads that donors want.
Wisconsin's budgetary process has been broken for years. McCallum was saved by the tobacco settlement. Doyle is using smoke and mirrors to get by. I pity the next Governor.
In fact, I doubt they effect most people in the state. I think one thing Doyle is very good at is targeting tax increases so that his base is unaffected, and most businesses don't screech too loudly either. WMC sure has shut up about things -- though it helps that Epic told them to. If only Doyle's voice wasn't so grating. Nails on the chalkboard.
My hope is the next Governor figures out a way to fund schools. I don't think the present way is working. It's true I only have 4 more years in public schools for my kids, so in theory I won't care in 4 years, but if a Wisconsin education is perceived to be sub-standard (I don't think it's there yet) then I think businesses will be less likely to stay or relocate here.
I also appreciate that Doyle, having made himself a lame duck, is sticking around to do the job for which he campaigned and was elected. A weaker man would just run away from the State's problems.
"My hope is the next Governor figures out a way to fund schools. "
fuck the schools. cheap beer is better. only a silly prig would call tobacco and alcohol "sinful indulgences". me paying for your stupid kids is the real sinful indulgence.
"...fixing the bill's carbon allocations to put the Midwest on better economic footing with the rest of the country"
A ploy to negotiate for more carbon allocations.
Funny thing is the Dems are emmulating the Euros when the Euros have admitted that cap-and-trade did not work. And are ready to go onto carbon tax. It's tragic that the liberals want so much to be Euro-wannabes.
"Feingold was among 10 senators to recently raise the possibility of levying tariffs on other nations -- including China..."
Someone is delusional. We are begging the Chinese to buy our treasuries. The Chinese buy our treasuries, then unload them back on us to buy our foreclosing prime properties on the cheap. The senators should know that we are too damned poor to have much bargaining powers. Donald Trump can declare bankruptcy to restructure his debts. We can't. We can inflate the greenback to death. Meanwhile, the Chinese are busying themselves to help us along, to get rid of the greenback as the reserve currency. They pay the Brazilians RMBs for the Brazilian oil, and invest billions in the Brazilian and emerging economies. They also issue sovereign bonds to compete with the US Treauries.
Our politicians are ignorant fools.
http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/2811/Porter_Stansberry
China Investment Corp. (CIC), China's $300 billion sovereign wealth fund, is considering buying huge swaths of distressed U.S. real estate, via the U.S. government-sponsored Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP). PPIP, you may recall, was created to rid banks of toxic mortgage assets by luring private investors to buy the assets with financing from the U.S. government. CIC is in talks with BlackRock, Invesco, and Lone Star Funds about buying real estate assets – including commercial mortgage-backed securities. Because most of the equity in these buildings has disappeared, buying the debt and foreclosing is the easiest way to gain control of the real estate.
Just take a minute and think about this... First, for the last 20 years, we've filled China's coffers with our paper receipts (dollars). In exchange for several future generations of savings, we got cheap furniture, children's toys, and electronics we didn't deserve. Now, we're going to finance – with future generations of taxes – China's purchases of our trophy properties.
Gee, a politician representing his constituents. It's like the system is working.
"My hope is the next Governor figures out a way to fund schools."
My hope is that the next governor figures out a way to fund state government without a state income tax. Other states do it; it's not impossible.
Although the other states may not have the same staggering debt load as Wisconsin.
Cap and trade will do more than stifle job growth, it will undeniably result in a net decrease of jobs in the industrial sector. Make sure Congress continues to listen http://tiny.cc/pxIgi.
bearbee said...
" We are running into peak oil reality but congress critters remain asleep at the wheel."
Peak Oil is a demonstrable fantasy. It is a FACT that we have enough oil shale and coal that can be converted to oil at less than 50 dollars per barrel to last many hundreds of years.Peak oil exists only as an intentionally self induced crisis. Anyone who subscribes to this fantasy is hoping for crisis and the fall of America.
Peak Oil = Peak Easy Oil
Peak oil = global demand increasing while production lags.
Peak oil does not maintain that the world is running out of oil.
"You can't stop global warming any more than you can stop plate tectonics."
Ha!!! A hundred gazillion miles of 10-foot wide duct tape would do it.
Alternatively, 3 chrome-plated vanadium steel bolts, 8000 miles+ long with 10 mile diameter and adequate washers and lock nuts placed through the Earth spaced 90 degrees apart would also work.
And my plans are just as likely to succeed as anything I've seen on 'fixing' Global Warming, er Global Climate Change, er whatevertheheck they're calling the weather crisis of the day.
Peak Oil = Peak Easy Oil
Not true. As I witnessed on a trip through western Canada and Alaska this summer, there is so much oil in some areas that it weeps out of rock cuts along the highway.
And the oil reserves in the Baaken Range (ND, SD, WY) are larger than the known reserves in the Middle East.
And there is so much natural gas in upstate New York that it could fuel the lower 48 for many decades.
If the gummint would just stop bowing to the snail protectors.
OMG, some here actually believe Russ Feingold is a "principled" liberal. There is no such thing. Think Teddy boy's a "principled" liberal? Then why did he live his life enjoying the fruits of his father's ill-gotten fortune, rather than condemning same and getting down and dirty with the down trodden masses he faked into voting for him all those years? I'll tell you why: he wanted the power those poor fools afforded him to make himself feel important and relevant. Nothing more, nothing less. That's all any of these "principled" liberals are about. They cannot compete in the private sector but they crave attention and power.
Alternatively, 3 chrome-plated vanadium steel bolts, 8000 miles+ long with 10 mile diameter and adequate washers and lock nuts placed through the Earth spaced 90 degrees apart would also work.
Been tried and failed. Hubble pic of bolt floating loose in space
Peak Oil = Peak Easy Oil
Not true
Conventional oil is easy oil.
Oil shale is non-conventional and while there are enormous deposits, my understanding is that extraction is energy intensive.
"Oil shale is non-conventional and while there are enormous deposits, my understanding is that extraction is energy intensive."
The point is we can get it for less than we are paying for conventional oil now, therefor Peak Oil is meaningless.
Also we wouldn't be sending our money to places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
You can't stop global warming any more than you can stop plate tectonics.
The only thing that can really stop either one is Mother Nature. But then, She is the cause of both too.
That is, of course, assuming that there is any real Global Warming going on right now. It looks to me like people are having to work harder and harder to overcome the evidence that Global Warming has pretty much stopped. It also assumes that it is good to stop Global Warming, even if we could. And that is just as questionable.
C4,
The conservatives have been complaining about the lost jobs in cap and trade since the bill even came up in the first place. We were then told by the Magic One that any jobs lost would be replaced by green jobs. How is that working out.
Why on Earth would anyone in Wisconsin do anything but pray for global warming? Y'all spend half the year ass deep to a tall Indian in snow already.
SEriously, until someone gives me a good explanation for why humanity didn't all die off when there were vineyards in Greenland during Lief Errickson's day, I am going to fight any of these lame attempts to make us all alarmed about climate change.
Yes the climate changes. It always has, it always will. So what? Humans rule the earth because we can adapt, remember?
Bruce Hayden said...
The only thing that can really stop either one is Mother Nature. But then, She is the cause of both too.
That is, of course, assuming that there is any real Global Warming going on right now. It looks to me like people are having to work harder and harder to overcome the evidence that Global Warming has pretty much stopped. It also assumes that it is good to stop Global Warming, even if we could. And that is just as questionable.
My contention is that if global warming is a reality, then it isn't caused by man, but as a product of the climate cycle that earth has always undergone. My other contention is the baseless presumption by the envirokook activist left that wants to see all manner of commerce, business, manufacturing, industrial and monetary progress absolutely stifled and laid to waste at the altar of mother nature for the transgressions that humanity has put upon her for making her a little warmer than usual. It's bills that promote the absolute fraud and hoax that is cap and trade and how it's tied to this absolute nonsense of an idea that stopping the earth from warming by egregious if not illegal taxation in this regard will do anything, while at the same time nearly every other country on earth gets a pass. Simply because of the leftist need to exude their envy/feelings based ideology onto legislation and the rest of us that think they are fucking nuts for even having these ideas to begin with.
The arrogance and hubris required to A) claim that humanity is causing a cycle or pattern of long term warming across the surface of the earth through our mere living, and B) thinking that literally finding ways to remove money from our pockets and forcing us through government backed social engineering to stop what they consider to be the source of that warming is mind numbingly stupid. The universe in it's totality has been dumbed down at the sheer stupidity of it all and yet these people breath the same air that I do. There is no justice in the world afterall.
the notion of peak oil has always been meaningless. The argument of peak oil has been going on through the 60's until now and every time new deposits are found that flip it on it's ear. BP just found a gigantic deposit in the Gulf of Mexico. They had to drill on of the deepest wells on earth to get it, but it's there and they got it and who knows how many other untold trillions of barrels are sitting under the earths surface while we commit national suicide to pretend that 'green' is somehow a viable alternative. It's all a bullshit shell game.
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