House passes historic climate legislation

by Joel Wendland

After a contentious debate, during which the main Republican position seemed to be that global warming isn't real and that freedom equals the right to pollute unhindered, the House tonight passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES).

The bill would create a cap and trade system in which polluters will buy pollution credits. The goal is to create an incentive for them to change their ways and find cleaner methods of production. In addition, the bill mandates a gradual increase of electricity production from clean resources, like wind and solar power instead of coal-fired energy plants. The ultimate goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and limit its worst effects.

The funds raised by the cap and trade system will be in the hundreds of billions over the next ten years and will fund investments in clean energy production, and along with it millions of so-called green jobs. Put simply, if a similar bill passes in the Senate and becomes law, we are quite possibly looking at the end of the monopoly Big Oil and Big Coal have on energy production. The transition will be gradual, but it will be ongoing.

Some of the resources will be used to offset higher energy costs for working families.

Barack Obama had originally planned that some of the funds raised would also finance making his working families tax cuts permanent after 2010. It passed as part of the economic recovery act, but they expire after 2010. That tax offset hasn't shown up yet.

ACES has the support of labor and environmental coalitions like the Blue-Green Alliance and the Apollo Alliance. Some on the left in the Democratic Party opposed the bill because it didn't go far enough, and others like Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, wanted stronger guarantees in the bill itself for new investments in revitalizing the manufacturing sector with subsidies that will offset the impacts of the cap and trade system in ACES. A Senate bill, known as IMPACT, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, would take those steps.

The most drama came from Republican Minority Leader John Boehner, a well-known drama queen, who filibustered with an hour-long speech after he realized his side didn't have enough votes to block it. That's what it feels like to be on the wrong side of history, I guess.

Now the fight turns to the Senate. A Democratic majority of 59 or 60 doesn't guarantee easy passage, however. Time to step up the fight.

NAFTA destroyed auto in Ohio

by Joel Wendland

NAFTA has moved front-and-center in the race for the Democratic nomination, not because any one candidate moved it there, but because free trade policies have hollowed out Ohio's manufacturing industry. Workers have forced the issue back into the spotlight.

According to a brief report by the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, Ohio has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000.

EPI admits that since NAFTA was implemented about 15 years ago, the automotive trade, a sector crucial to the economies of states like Ohio and Michigan, between the US and Mexico has grown. But "the effects on Ohio and other industrial states have been overwhelmingly negative."

In auto parts, for instance, the U.S. had a $2.4 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993; by last year the deficit was $12 billion. The auto deficit in total, reports EPI, stood at about $31 billion 2007.

EPI doesn't really get into finger-pointing, which is fine. But a little more analysis would be helpful.

NAFTA eliminated trade barriers between Mexico and the US. This fact made it profitable for GM, for example, to close factories in Ohio and Michigan and other places and move production to Mexico.

In the process good union jobs with good benefits were killed here – with attendant ripple effects like a weakened tax base for stable communities and public services, growing unemployment problems, internal migration etc. – in favor of low-pay and weak labor rights in Mexico.

Only the labor movement and the UAW have stood in the way of a complete breakdown of unionized auto production in the US.

While right-wing xenophobes are quick to blame Mexico and Mexicans, the real culprits in this affair are the corporations and the profit system that puts profits before our communities and our needs. Additionally, politicians who side with corporate interests and fail working families are also culpable.

The NAFTA debate in Ohio is crucial because both Democrats (Clinton a little more recently than Obama) are promising to renegotiate NAFTA in order to stem the flow of jobs out of the economy.

By contrast, John McCain traveled to Ohio and told voters there that they should just get used to it and kiss good paying jobs good bye.

No more stark difference ever existed.