The video is of Don Beyer speaking in support of Trade Promotion Authority, aka “Fast Track,” earlier today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. In contrast, see below for Rep. Bobby Scott’s statement explaining why he voted against “Fast Track.” I haven’t seen a statement yet by Rep. Gerry Connolly, who supports “Fast Track,” but I’ll post it when I get it.

Today, the House separately voted on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and Trade Promotion Authority (aka Fast Track), which were together apart of one bill – the Trade Act of 2015 (H.R. 1314).

While I am a strong supporter of Trade Adjustment Assistance that provides needed support to workers who have had their jobs shipped overseas, I was unable to vote for today’s TAA title of the Trade Act. When taken into context, this TAA authorization fell woefully short in our duty to support American workers. It lacked adequate funding, left out a large sector of the economy, and is tied directly to Congress granting the President Trade Promotion Authority.

Separately, I voted against Trade Promotion Authority title of the Trade Act, because it lacks sufficient safeguards to ensure that labor standards, environmental standards, and consumer protections are respected in partner countries and here at home. Past trade agreements have provided empirical evidence showing that our economy suffers through job loss and downward pressure on wages, underscoring what’s wrong with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. When measuring income inequality across the globe, after accounting for taxes and transfers, the United States ranks second worst in income inequality across developed countries. Entering into another large-scale trade deal at a time when income disparities in the United States are the worst since the 1920s is not the best course of action for our nation.

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, June 12.

*McKibben to Obama: You still have time to be a climate champion – but not much

*White House launches frantic campaign to save trade deal (“Trying to close out a tight game after a day when his trade agenda reached the brink of failure, President Barack Obama made a last-minute, unscheduled run to the congressional baseball game Thursday night.”)

*Obama’s Trade Bills Face Battle Against House Democrats (Here in Virginia, two out of three House Dems – Don Beyer and Gerry Connolly – support “fast track” legislation.)

*James Murdoch Reportedly Taking Over As CEO Of Fox News’ Parent Company (“Roger Ailes Still Reporting Directly To Rupert Murdoch; Lachlan Murdoch Appointed Exec. Chairman”)

*Krugman: Seriously Bad Ideas (“… the ultimate example of a seriously bad idea is the determination, in the teeth of all the evidence, to declare government spending that helps the less fortunate a crucial cause of our economic problems. In the United States, I’m happy to say, this idea seems to be on the ropes, at least for now.”)

*Ted Cruz is on a kamikaze mission: How his Obamacare extremism exposes the GOP’s healthcare crackup (“Republicans agree that Obamacare should go, but Ted Cruz won’t agree to any plan that isn’t maximally painful”)

*Who Do the Justices Want to Be President? (“The answer to that question may impact how they vote in two huge cases.”)

*May report shows brighter picture for Virginia’s budget (“May report shows brighter picture for Virginia’s budget”)

*Kaine Not Surprised More Military Advisers Going to Iraq

*NAACP wants role in fight over congressional boundaries

*Maureen McDonnell says convictions violate her due process rights

*Virginia’s economy flatlines, despite Gov. McAuliffe’s best efforts (It’s going to take years to retool Virginia’s economy away from heavy dependence on federal spending…)

*Mountain Valley Pipeline drama continues in Roanoke County

*Dems file suit on Virginia photo ID, other voting rules

*Dems tap vet to challenge Norment (Norment is the pits: right wingnut AND the epitome of “legal corruption” in Richmond.)

*Transgender student files lawsuit against schools over bathrooms (“The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Gavin Grimm, contends that the policy violates the constitutional rights of the student, a rising junior at Gloucester High School, about 65 miles east of Richmond.”)

*Charges dropped against black U-Va. student arrested by white cops

*Norfolk police officer is charged in mentally ill man’s death

*Beach must DARE to find an effective replacement

*Bullpen costs Nationals again in 6-5 loss to the Brewers (Wow, they were leading 5-1. Not acceptable to blow that.)

*D.C. area forecast: Summer sizzle continues into the weekend

Paging Gov. McAuliffe, paging Gov. McAuliffe, check this out! 😉

We’ve written numerous times about the Orwellian “Thomas Jefferson Institute.” For more For more on that far-right-wing, fossil-fuel-funded, climate-science-denying (hence: completely bonkers) organization, see here:

The Thomas Jefferson Institute is a libertarian/right-wing think tank committed to “free markets, limited government and individual responsibility.”  It is funded heavily by the Roe Foundation, a South Carolina-based which provides “financial support to free-market policy groups across the country” and which gives out its annual Roe Award to the likes of Grover Norquist and to others from right-wing groups like the Independence Institute (proud global warming deniers), the Reason Foundation (for years, global warming deniers who received funding from ExxonMobil), and the big-time global warming deniers at the Heartland Institute. Sensing a pattern here?

These tools are also funded by the State Policy Network, the Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State

Politics and Government “with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders.” Anyway, the bottom line is that these folks have absolutely ZERO credibility, nor does any “analysis” they put out on any subject, certainly not on energy or environmental matters, given their broad and deep ties to far-right-wing and fossil fuel interests.

All of which brings us to their latest hack job, a “study” called Virginia Can Lead the Nation’s Nuclear Renaissance that is wrong on just about every level. As Peter Galuszka explains at Bacon’s Rebellion:

…I note that the authors of this industry-happy report are members of an “authority” made up only of nuclear industry proponents and was created by disgraced former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, who had a penchant for creating one-sided commissions.

A few points:

(1) “No radiation has ever leaked in the U.S. Yes, it did at Three Mile Island, apparently in a small amount, but the monitors did not report emissions accurately.

(2) Radiation sure as hell leaked at Chernobyl. The plume traveled all the way to Sweden. At Fukushima, radiation was enough to kill someone in a few hours…

(3) Talk about minimizing North Anna! Vepco, Dominion’s predecessor, was fined for lying about putting he power plant on a fault line. The 2011 earthquake shook the reactor far past its design specs. It shut down for three months and the NRC studied it for national Repairs. Jim Bacon and the report he quotes minimize the incident. It was very serious.

(4) True nukes don’t emit the CO2 that fossil fuel plants do. But how about the cost of a third nuke at North Anna? Is $15 billion too low? Dominion won’t discuss. Don’t get started about subsidies.

As usual, Galuszka nails it. The guy is sharp, no doubt about it.

Meanwhile, the Thomas Jefferson Institute dudes are also utterly, wildly wrong that “nuclear power generated in Virginia was the least expensive of any power generation source.” To the contrary, as a recent analysis by Lazard, one of the world’s leading financial advisory and asset management firms, found, the capital cost of “current U.S. new nuclear construction” amounts to a whopping $7,591 per kilowatt (kw), or 4-5 times higher than onshore wind power’s $1,400-$1,800 per kw, about 5 times higher than utility-scale solar power’s $1,500 per kw cost, and about 6 times higher than a gas combined cycle plant’s $1,318/kw cost. And that’s not even looking at energy efficiency, which Lazard estimates at $0-$50/megawatthour (Mwh), compared to nuclear’s $124/Mwh (note: onshore wind costs $37-$81/Mwh; utility-scale solar $60-$86/Mwh; gas combined cycle $61-$87/Mwh).

In short, nuclear is not even close to being competitive with energy efficiency, utility-scale solar, onshore wind or natural gas-fired power. And, unlike solar and wind, whose costs keep falling, nuclear’s costs keep rising (“Between 2002 and 2008, for example, cost estimates for new nuclear plant construction rose from between $2 billion and $4 billion per unit to $9 billion per unit”). In turn, that’s why “nuclear power has failed to attract private-sector financing-so the industry has looked to government for subsidies, including loan guarantees, tax credits, and other forms of public support.”  How much taxpayer-funded corporate welfare, aka “subsidies,” are we talking about? According to the Union of Concerned Scientists: “Using conservative capital cost estimates ($7,085/kW including financing) and assuming eight new reactors are built over the next 15 years, we estimate that the nuclear industry could obtain new subsidies worth in excess of $40 billion, or $5 billion per reactor, if a broad range of industry handouts are included in pending climate and energy legislation.”

Or take a recent example, Vogtle Reactors #3 and #4 in Georgia. As nonpartisan federal budget watchdog organization Taxpayers for Common Sense writes:

In August 2008, it was originally estimated that Plant Vogtle reactors 3&4 would cost $14.3 billion and begin commercial operations in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Today, the estimate of the project’s cost has reached $15.5 billion and the reactors are projected to come online in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Pending lawsuits between project partners and the construction contractors could push the project’s final costs even higher to $16.5 billion.

[…]

DOE conditionally offered Southern Co. and its partners $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees in February 2010 – $3.46 billion to Georgia Power Company, $3.06 billion to Oglethorpe Power Corporation, and $1.81 billion to the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia. Since then, the Department of Energy has extended its $8.33 billion loan guarantee offer multiple times. The most recent deal between DOE and project partners was reached in January 2014, when the offer was extended until February 28, 2014.

On and on it goes, but the bottom line is simple, and one that anyone who supports a “free market” should agree with: nuclear power is not even CLOSE to being economical without massive, taxpayer-funded government subsidies. It’s also not even close to being competitive with other, currently existing alternatives such as onshore wind, utility-scale solar, energy efficiency, or natural-gas-fired power plants. So why on earth should we listen to the Koch-funded tools at the “Thomas Jefferson Institute” and push for a lot more nuclear power plants in Virginia? Short answer: we absolutely should not, unless we really enjoy wasting billions of dollars on taxpayer-funded corporate welfare and boondoggles.  

From House Minority Leader Del. David Toscano: 

 

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Thursday, June 11. Also, here’s some video from yesterday evening of Arlington County Democratic Committee Chair Kip Malinosky explaining why local elections are so important.

*The Curious Way New York Times Columnists Are Covering Hillary Clinton (“That level of oddly-personal vitriol targeted at Clinton, and certainly the sheer repetition of the vitriol, simply doesn’t exist when Times columnists ponder GOP performances and even belittle them.”)

*Religion Is Disappearing. That’s Great for Politics.

*Bernie Sanders offended by Diane Rehm’s Israeli citizenship question (As well he should be, that’s really outrageous…and I say this as someone who generally likes Diane Rehm a lot.)

*How Jeb Bush’s 2016 bid faltered before it began (“Strategic errors by his campaign and unexpected stumbles by the would-be candidate have defined Bush’s past six months, leaving his standing considerably diminished ahead of his formal entry into the race on Monday.”)

*Marco Rubio’s financial woes are a perfect microcosm for GOP hypocrisy (“Marco Rubio’s head-scratching financial habits come during an era when his party fetishizes business acumen”)

*Kaine’s push for war vote moves ahead, just a little

*Editorial: Tme to redraw districts to reflect Virginia’s electoral reality

*Primaries settle certain elections (“Incumbents and the well-seasoned lost in central Virginia and throughout the commonwealth, but none of the races proved as shocking as Dave Brat’s defeat of Eric Cantor in the 2014 GOP primary in the 7th Congressional District.”)

*Low turnout exposed incumbents vulnerable to upsets (“In contests such as Amanda Chase’s upset of Sen. Stephen H. Martin, R-Chesterfield: ‘Challengers don’t win, incumbents lose,’ analyst say”)

*Another lawsuit coming in Virginia redistricting fight (“Virginia’s General Assembly districts, already under attack from a federal lawsuit, will face a new challenge in coming months: A lawsuit in the state courts questioning their fitness under the state constitution.”)

*GOP ponders: Primary or convention in 2016 presidential race

*Primaries set up both parties for general election in November (“Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe saw his preferred candidates win a crucial state Senate primary and knock off a conservative Democrat House delegate who often sided with Republicans.”)

*Our view: Reading the tea leaves from Tuesday’s primaries (“But expand the electorate ever so slightly, and here’s what happens: In scattered places across Virginia on Tuesday, Republicans actually held primaries…And in most – though not all – cases, the most conservative candidates lost.”)

*Incumbent’s voting record cited as factor in Heretick’s upset win (Most obvious headline of the day?)

*Primary winners show Arlington County’s new political landscape (“Dorsey and Cristol won nominations for the county board without support from the Democratic establishment.”)

*How Alexandria’s longtime mayor was upset by a relative newcomer (“The three-way primary’s surprise winner impressed some residents by standing up for the little guy.”)

*What Alexandria’s mayoral upset may mean for development (Del. Rob Krupicka says Silberberg “has a history of not working with other council members and of building coalitions outside of the council and in the community to undermine the council.”)

*Montgomery County supervisor recommends pipeline route through Craig County

*Fairfax prosecutors summon witnesses in John Geer police shooting

*Prepare to sweat as heat wave hits D.C. for the next three days