Cross posted from The Checks and Balances Project. Written by Scott Peterson, Executive Director of The Checks and Balances Project

Professor Michael Karmis is evading basic questions about whether clean energy experts were consulted in his critical cost-benefit analysis of how Virginia can meet its federal Clean Power Plan (CPP) goals.  This raises the possibility that Dr. Karmis, director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, is shielding donors from legitimate public scrutiny.

The cost-benefit analysis was mandated by the legislature, is relied upon by the Governor, and is included in the Virginia Energy Plan. As we’ve reported before, Karmis is a curious choice to author this foundational document. The Clean Power Plan gives states wide flexibility on how to meet standards. Logically, such an analysis should consider a variety of solutions to cut power plant pollution, including fast-growing renewable energy sources that have created 290,000 jobs in neighboring mid-Atlantic states in recent years.

Yet, Karmis’s Coal Center is heavily oriented to only one, highly-polluting energy source – coal. The Center’s website lists a number of significant players in the coal industry as Sponsors that provide “generous financial contributions.” High ranking members of those same companies serve on the Center’s Advisory Board. Of its eight in-house “experts,” seven have strong financial ties to the coal industry – but none to clean energy sources.

State law mandated that Karmis’s Center be consulted, but not be the lead author of the analysis – a big difference in the level of power a coal-centric perspective would have in driving the process.

Evasion of Basic Questions

On Oct. 9, Karmis told me by phone in my only conversation with him, just as he was about to leave for a “site visit” to a West Virginia coal mine, that he had consulted renewable energy experts, but was unable to say who they were due to a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) signed with Virginia’s Dept. of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME). Professor Karmis said that if DMME’s Energy Director Al Christopher, who “coordinated” the study, gave him permission to tell me who he consulted with, then he would be “glad to tell me.” Unfortunately, several subsequent attempts to obtain that permission from Mr. Christopher went unanswered. Here’s an example:

The Plot Thickens

A Freedom of Information Act request sent to DMME on Sept. 29, 2014, produced records showing that an unusual non-disclosure agreement was the result of a request from a Mr. Hayes Fromme to Mr. Christopher. Fromme is an advisor to the Secretary of Commerce and Trade, and the McAuliffe Administration’s point person in creating the Energy Plan. The purpose was to prevent “outside people seeing the study prior to release.”

Professor Karmis, on the other hand, could see reasons of his own for a non-disclosure agreement. In the following Sept. 15 email, Karmis’s top aide John Craynon explains Professor Karmis had “already had a contact” about the cost-benefit analysis his Coal Center and hand-picked consultants were producing and wanted an NDA to “minimize what we need to say.”

In response to a FOIA I sent to Virginia Tech on Oct. 3, the justification for not providing me with the information I requested was the non-disclosure agreement.

Major Questions Remain

Is Professor Karmis shielding his Center’s coal industry donors from scrutiny about their involvement with the analysis of how Virginia can meet its Federal Clean Power Plan goals? If so, this is a highly inappropriate action.

It raises important questions about who hired Dr. Karmis to author the document, if others were allowed to bid, and how much Professor Karmis’s Coal Center was paid? More on that soon.

Scott Peterson

Executive Director

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Wednesday, November 19.

*Senate narrowly rejects Keystone energy pipeline

*The moral issue of climate change (“Is this a moral issue? After reading Mitchell’s stark novel, and imagining the world of 2043, I am beginning to think the answer is yes. If the future quality of life around the world is at stake, people who resist action are not just misguided, they’re wrong.” Worse than “wrong,” actually.)

*Why Democrats need rich people, too (Dana Milbank goes from probably his stupidest column ever back to his usual high standards.)

*Obama order could protect 525,000 illegal immigrants in Maryland, Virginia, Pew report says

*The New Republican Plan To Rig The 2016 Presidential Election

*Virginia’s Republican House speaker stands accused of insufficient conservatism (“… in pushing the GOP further to the right, ideological purists like Ms. Stimpson may do their party no favors”)

*The Virginia Way, Part 4: Working for voters – and for clients

*Schapiro: Va’s salesman-in-chief (“Flashing a toothy, knowing grin, McAuliffe appreciates the political perils for Republicans in attempting to foil him on the economy.”)

*Kaine, Warner praise George Washington forest fracking decision (“Officials are pleased that most of the George Washington National Forest is off-limits.”)

*Belleville: Trail guardians worried about pipelines

*Five steps to doom for Arlington streetcars (Those were actually not the “five steps,” but whatever.)

*Arlington officials pull the plug on Columbia Pike, Crystal City streetcars (Huge mistake for the future of Arlington.)

*McAuliffe wants risks shared for future rocket launches at Wallops Island

*Sessoms takes heat, and praise, at crowded, lively council meeting

*In pursuit of progress, Beach harms its identity

*Less punishing winds today, but temperatures almost as cold

(UPDATE 6:20 pm: It looks like this boondoggle, polluting monstrosity/project from hell has gone down to defeat in the U.S. Senate. Great work by everyone who cares about our planet; shame on everyone who doesn’t! – promoted by lowkell)

I’ll post video when it’s done uploading. It’s great to see real leadership on this issue from Sen. Kaine. As for Virginia’s other Senator…not so much, it would appear.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the bill mandating approval of the Keystone Pipeline. I oppose the project because accelerating the development of tar sands oil is contrary to our national interests, our economic interests, national security interests and environmental interests.

I believe there is no way to fully analyze this question without grappling with another question-is carbon pollution from human activity affecting the world’s climate in a negative way? Because, if carbon pollution doesn’t affect the climate, then tar sands would not be a significant issue for me. But, if we accept the general scientific consensus-and Virginians do-that carbon pollution does cause negative changes in climate, stopping or even slowing the development of tar sands oil is good for the United States and good for the world.

Some who have encouraged me to support this project, duck when I ask this question: Do you think manmade carbon pollution affects our climate? One Virginia CEO, whose company is filled with scientists, basically told me, “I don’t know, I’m not a scientist,” and a representative of the United States Chamber of Commerce testified similarly before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year. But those of us who take an oath to serve here have a responsibility to consider the scientific evidence.

In Virginia, the second largest region is Hampton Roads comprised of 1.6 million people living in numerous cities and counties along the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Coast. Hampton Roads is a thriving economy and it’s also the home of the largest concentration of naval power in the world. It is also, next to New Orleans, the region most directly affected by rising sea levels, and all agree that rising sea levels are caused, in part, by carbon pollution. Climate changes are not a tomorrow issue in Virginia. They are a today issue. Throughout Hampton Roads, rising sea levels are causing significant challenges-flooding roads, homes and neighborhoods damaged, some even unmarketable, economic harm to families and businesses. At current projections, the main access road into the U.S. Navy’s principal base in Hampton Roads will be flooded and impassable three hours a day by 2040. With an economy so dependent upon the naval presence, anything that threatens this military investment is potentially devastating. I sponsored a symposium on sea level rise in Hampton Roads this summer, attended by hundreds with bipartisan representation from local, state, and federal officials and members of Congress. The concern is real, and virtually all estimates of sea level rise in this community pose staggering challenges to every aspect of life here for years to come.

And it’s not just Hampton Roads. Virginia’s largest industry is ag and forestry, very affected by climate. Tourism is a major industry, very affected by climate. Aquaculture, an important industry, very affected by climate. So those who would want to duck the question of climate change or challenge the scientific evidence-I say to them, “Come to Virginia with me and talk to people whose lives are being seriously affected today by climate changes caused in part by escalating carbon pollution.”

So what’s the answer to this problem, and how does it relate to the Keystone Pipeline?

We have to continue to move toward a cleaner energy economy. We can’t throw the brake on the use of fossil fuels; that would be unrealistic and would hurt our economy. As governor of Virginia, I supported building a state-of-the-art coal plant in exchange for converting a plant that predated the Clean Air Act to natural gas. I support development of offshore energy.

We can use a phased approach to produce energy cleaner tomorrow than today, reducing pollution caused by energy sources through innovation and creating jobs. And guess what, Mr. President? As you know, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Wind power involves no carbon pollution and it’s the fastest growing energy source in America, cleaner tomorrow than today. Utility scales solar electricity output has increased 23-fold in the last decade. Cleaner tomorrow than today. The revolution in natural gas production in the U.S. has turned our country into the world’s leading energy producer and helped us reduce carbon pollution. Cleaner tomorrow than today. Innovation driven by smart regulations in the American auto industry means we’re producing cars that go much farther than ever before, and these developments help reduce the demand for foreign oil and prices that consumers experience. Cleaner tomorrow than today. Virginia rate-payers are supporting nuclear investments over the years that have enabled us to generate 40% of our power through non-carbon technology. Cleaner tomorrow than today. And just as new technologies helped us make coal plants cleaner in the ’80s to battle acid rain, there are ways to make our existing and future coal plants emit less carbon pollution. Cleaner tomorrow than today. And with the U.S. taking significant leadership steps, it’s more likely that other nations will do so, as well. I believe our innovative path forward is one of the reasons why China was willing to announce recently that they will take similar steps. Cleaner tomorrow than today. The U.S. is now becoming a global leader in reducing carbon pollution and we’re there because of smart regulations and especially American innovation.

We always have to make sure that regulations strike the right balance, but by becoming cleaner tomorrow than today, we’re creating jobs, protecting the environment, reducing our trade deficit and ending our overdependence on energy from foreign nations. And, as members of the armed services committee-the members here on the floor-the reduced energy independence is great for American national security.

And, Mr. President, this is why I oppose the Keystone project. Tar sands oil is dirty energy producing significantly more carbon pollution than conventional petroleum. After all we have done to be cleaner tomorrow than today, why would we embrace the technology that is a huge backslide, that produces more, not less, carbon pollution than conventional sources? Embracing a dirtier energy technology moves us precisely in the wrong direction.

Now, Keystone is a simple project; it is neither the environmental game-over that some would suggest, nor the energy panacea that others promise. But whether or not we embrace tar sands oil development does send a message about how we intend to meet American global energy needs. We can either send the message of “cleaner tomorrow than today” or send a message “anything goes.” Because U.S. innovation is helping us lead the world to “cleaner tomorrow than today” energy future, we shouldn’t turn back now. There are those who say that the tar sands fields of Alberta will be developed anyway, so why doesn’t the U.S. Just go along? The owners of the resource may well develop it and find alternate routes to ship it through Canada. They can make that decision on their own, although falling oil prices may make the relative costs of such investment non-competitive. But even if the owners of those fields decide to move forward in this development, the official policy of the United States should not, in my view, be embrace, promote and accelerate tar sands oil. Our official policy should be “cleaner tomorrow than today,” not “anything goes.”

For these reasons, Mr. President, I oppose the bill to force approval of the Keystone Pipeline project and make accelerated tar sands oil development the official policy of the United States, and I yield the floor.

As a strong supporter of smart growth and transit-oriented development, I find this announcement to be very disappointing. Beyond that, I hate to say “I told you so,” but I’ve been warning for a LONG time now that the pro-streetcar folks needed to get their act together, that the opposition to the streetcar was a serious threat, and that there needed to be a seriously ramped-up effort to fight for the streetcar (a la “TysonsTunnel.org”) and against the anti-streetcar arguments.

For whatever crazy reason, none of that happened. Instead, as Arlington County Board Chair Jay Fisette stated a few minutes ago, pro-streetcar Democrats (Fisette, Mary Hynes, Walter Tejada, Alan Howze, etc.) were caught “flat footed.” To me, that’s just mind boggling, as many of us in the community were NOT caught “flat footed” at all. So what about pro-streetcar members of the Board, who are in the community all the time? Is this about arrogance? insularity? incompetence? overconfidence? all of the above? I’m just beyond frustrated with these people. Now, the question is whether this is not just bad policy but also “too little too late” politically for Mary Hynes and/or Walter Tejada. We’ll see in the next few months…

P.S. Miles Grant and I were just chatting, and were both looking forward to the anti-streetcar folks pushing for the “BRT” option they’ve been pushing, even though BRT is not feasible on Columbia Pike, as there’s no chance for a dedicated lane. Details, details. Anyway, let’s see how serious they were about what they kept referring to as BRT.

This doesn't look good to me, but let's hope the details are better than the "top line" appears. Bottom line: of course there should be no “fracking” in the GW National Forest, that’s just crazy. Why do I say that? See the presentations by Earthworks and DC Water and I think you’ll quickly get the picture.

New George Washington National Forest Plan Balances Multiple Uses

Provides for Recreation, Wildlife and Water Quality, Sets Oil and Gas Availability

ROANOKE, Va., November 18, 2014 – Today, the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Regional Forester released the Final Forest Plan that will direct management of the George Washington National Forest. The plan revises the 1993 plan, as required by the National Forest Management Act, and contains guidance for managing nearly 1.1 million acres of national forests in Virginia and West Virginia.

“This forest plan provides a balance of management direction that addresses both the long-term ecological sustainability of the George Washington National Forest, as well as the long-term social and economic needs of those that depend on or are impacted by the Forest,” said Southern Regional Forester Ken Arney.

The plan works to fulfill the Forest Service’s mission of managing national forests for multiple uses and reflects extensive input from many deeply committed individuals, organizations, and communities representing diverse interests and uses, who have worked closely together over six years. As a result of this collaborative input, implementation of this plan will:

·         Assure water quality with increased streamside protections

·         Improve wildlife habitat, healthy forests, and local economic opportunities with prescribed fire and timber harvest

·         Enhance and protect recreation opportunities, including recommending for congressional designation a 90,000 acre National Scenic Area on Shenandoah Mountain located in Rockingham, Augusta, and Highland counties and 27,000 additional acres to the Wilderness Preservation System

·         Provide a comprehensive, balanced strategy for energy development consistent with other resource values, including for wind and oil and gas.

The plan reflects thousands of comments from the public, including local communities.    

“Our work does not end with approval of this plan,” said Tom Speaks, forest supervisor of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. “The next step is to work together to develop and implement projects that move us toward the vision described in the plan. We are looking forward to furthering the relationships built during the plan revision process and continuing to work together to address complex social and environmental issues.”

The plan includes a decision that limits availability for new oil and gas leasing, while establishing a comprehensive framework for potential development on about 10,000 acres where there are existing valid leases, as well as on 167,200 acres with existing private mineral rights. Presently, none of the existing federal leases or existing privately owned mineral rights on the Forest are active. There is also no mineral development occurring on adjacent private lands. The decision does not prohibit any specific technology for developing oil and gas resources, including hydraulic fracturing.  Any proposal to develop existing leases on the Forest would undergo additional environmental analysis and provide opportunities for public comment and engagement.

Approximately 2.7 million people in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. rely upon the George Washington National Forest for a portion of their water supply. The Forest is the largest federal landholding in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and is the direct source of drinking water for about 262,000 people in local communities in and around Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

The area also contains four of the top 10 agriculture producing counties in Virginia and, with over a million recreation site visits a year, the Forest contributes more than 10 million dollars to the local recreation and tourism economy.

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, November 18. As for the video, gotta love the stark contrast between Ronald Reagan, who granted mass “amnesty” to “illegal immigrants,” and today’s “illegals”-bashing Republicans.

*Boehner’s immigration inertia forces Obama to act (“The only reason President Obama has to act on immigration reform is that House Speaker John Boehner won’t. I repeat: That’s the only reason. The issue could have been settled a year ago. It could be settled in an afternoon. The problem is that Boehner refuses to do his job, preferring instead to spend his time huffing and puffing in simulated indignation”)

*D.C.’s mayor rejected plea deal in federal probe (First Virginia, now DC, next…???)

*Japan recession, Europe stagnation cast pall over global economic outlook

*GOP seeks creative ways to avert a shutdown (“Republican leaders are trying to redirect their members’ immigration rage.” How about allow a vote in the House right now on the bipartisan Senate immigration bill?!?)

*The greening of Barack Obama (“He didn’t set out to be an environmental president. He is now.” There’s no serious choice but to confront global warming.)

*Here’s What’s Happening With the Big Keystone Pipeline Vote

*Backstabbing in Hillaryland: Here We Go Again (It’s time for “no drama Clinton” in 2016; we can’t afford this kind of crap.)

*The worst two paragraphs about American politics you’ll read today (Ron Fournier is a right-wing hack, nothing more.)

*Virginia’s senators differ over Keystone pipeline

*The Virginia Way, Part 3: The big money in running – even unopposed (“‘Campaign contributions certainly buy access,’ said ODU’s Richman. ‘Sometimes they seem to buy more, though it is often very difficult to tell just how much more.'”)

*Our view: Ethics are coming! (We’ll see if they crack down on stuff like in the previous item.)

*State agriculture chief says Virginia farmers need wider market

*Kerr: National Republicans neglect Virginia at their own peril

*Va. woman accused of attempting to support Islamic State militants

*New U.S. Forest Service plan retreats from ban on fracking in national forest in Virginia (Crazy if that’s the case.)

*Judge: Life in prison is too good for child porn maker (100% agree, this guy is evil.)

*Virginia day cares anxious over local zoning laws

*Prelude to winter? Biting winds. Bitter cold. Wind chill in the teens. (“Today will be 20 degrees colder than normal, with temperatures around freezing.”)

(Note: I began this last week but have a problem with my hand that makes typing difficult and painful. Apologies for posting this late.)

Election Day is two weeks behind us, but the conversation and finger pointing will go on for quite a while, if, that is, it is still acceptable to finger point in today’s absurd world (snark–you know finger pointing is still OK, but they don’t know that at FAUX or in  Minneapolis).

It’s safe to say that if the national Democratic leadership, by which I mean the DNC, DSCC and DCCC, along with the major campaigns, don’t understand what actually happened on Nov 4th, nothing will change. And the leadership has no clue. So we will have more of the the debacles we had last week. It is clear that they don’t get it. And if they persist in their cluelessness, then rank-and-file Democrats need to figure out how to function around them.

It is safe to say that Nov 4th:

1. Everyone lost. But we the citizens lost big time. The 1% has gerrymandered and vote-suppressed us in numerous ways. If only they turned their creativity into solving real problems. But this is a post-Citizens United world and the GOP and their voters are too obtuse to know they lost too. More on this in a moment.

2. Kindler said it on Twitter and I second it as the main story behind Democratic losses. Everyone who ran away from Obama’s and Democrats’ accomplishments reinforced GOP lies and provided voters no reason to vote for them. They are the biggest losers. Our Congresssional and Senate candidates ran from their values and everything else that made sense for them to run on. In NC that means Hagan and Aiken and others ran like hell from a long list of accomplishments, you know, “little” things such as righting the economy after the worst recession in almost a century. The Bush recession hurt so many people.  Countless millions more would have been hurt had not Barack Obama been president. She and Clay didn’t even mention the long list of Democratic values either. Hagan may try to run for Burr’s Senate seat in 2016. Lucky us. I feel bad that I wasted donations to their campaigns. I will focus on down-ticket races next time.

Next door in VA, Mark Warner almost lost by once again appealing too much to Republicans. But he doesn’t get it and never will. He also fails to recognize the emptiness of his so-called radical centrism.

3. The truth lost. We just witnessed the most deceptive campaign run in the past fifty years. The GOP and its megaphone at Fox don’t even try to tell the truth. They just repeat deceptions over and over and hope everyone forgets what the facts are. Here in NC, the Gophers pretended to support education (while massively de-funding public schools and skewering teachers who have been on the job ten years or more). They pretended they had nothing to do with the destruction of our state’s budget while making massive tax cuts for the rich. And they blamed it on, you guessed it, Kay Hagan,who wasn’t even a state rep dealing with the state’s budget, but in a US senator in Washington dealing with the nation’s problems! Her campaign never even dealt satisfactorily with the idiotic accusations. Mostly, though, Republicans tried to persuade the voters that Kay Hagan “did nothing,” even as the GOP obstructed just about everything n Washington. Did she mention that? No! It takes real gall to play that hand and the voters fell for it (sort of).  Certainly Tillis would have gotten few to no votes, from rank-and-file voters, if voters really knew what he actually did. It was Thom Tillis, as leader in the House of Delegates, who lead the GOP in its vote suppression. His margin was the approximate number of votes he axed by NC’s new vote suppression law. And so…

4. The electoral process lost. It’s so much worse than having to produce a voter ID (they kicked in in VA this year and do so in NC in 2016). Many onerous NC provisions kicked in this year–so much to tell about at. I have blogged about this issue before, because the NC law has been suggested as a national template for other states. You know about gerrymandering. In the middle-of-the-night attempt to redraw the maps outside the census year, Virginia has already experienced some of the most extreme attempts at gerrymandering ever.

In NC the Republicans used fictional “voter fraud” to peel away legitimate voters from voting rolls. They stepped up the effort to challenge individual voters at the polls. They moved precincts without proper notification to voters.  Students at NC State awoke election day expecting to vote on campus and could not. After protracted legal action, App State voters got their polling place back, but only at the last minute, so there was much confusion. There was confusion about whether IDs were necessary this year (they aren’t).

Reports of vote flipping occurred here. (Voters in Greensboro, where Kay Hagan lives, found their votes for Hagan showed Tillis on the next screen). And what do you know, Hagan only got 55% in her own county! I do not know how much vote flipping occurred or to what extent that was a factor. But it is curious.

5. Democracy. If the electoral process is harmed, then, thanks to Koch, Peterson, and Rove, democracy is dead. And it is almost dead. The majority of Americans did not vote.  

6. The American collective brain didn’t just lose. It may no longer exist. Americans care about issues, and care in a direction that mostly favors Democrats in polls, so they chose those who would destroy what voters want?

7. Consultants. The extant way of running campaigns and the GOTV model are worthless.  Their adherence to simplistic, poorly researched and blatantly wrong communications “truisms,” which defy actual human behavior, must end.  Their shaming letters to voters who haven’t voted in recent elections shows how truly soulless, stupid and immoral they can be. Do they really think that playing Big Brother is the way to go to encourage voters to show up?  Damn them for every vote they lost because of this crazy awful nonsense. Give voters a reason to vote, don’t act like the closest thing to a police state. A diary on this is forthcoming.

8. Phone banking and brochures lost. Phone banks do nothing but tick people off. I stopped answering my phone because it was so sickening. Why should we have to refrain from answering our own phones for two or three months of every election year? If I hate this, and other steadfast Dems I know hate it, then this method is questionable.

Professional Dems have to get out ahead in defining themselves, refute every lie and run from the strength of the Dem platform and Dem values. But stop the onslaught of phone calls.

Their glossy brochures and flyers are worthless.  The materials do not give a single reason to vote for the candidates. Fire the media consultants. Nearly all of them.

9.  I must separately mention email fundraising.  See also Jon Stewart segment on the “all is lost” email. There is a special place hell for these guys.  The DCCC and DNC border on acting as extortionists. “OFA” is not far behind. You can’t even unsubscribe from the DNC. You would have to either open an account or update your info to do that. And you know what happens if you give it anything. I now only donate to individual candidates. Why should we let the DCCC decide who gets our $? A Wall Streeter is poised to become the new DCCC chair. Imagine what candidates he would fund with our money! It is further reason that organization is lost. The media consultants cripple our personal communications systems, make it impossible for us to get through the hundreds of emails, and think we will be able to encourage voters to support them? And then they try shaming for donations sending “why haven’t you donated?” emails. It is now a shakedown. Talk about unethical. Two Democrats, one of whom had donate many times, were so sick of this practice they  threatened not to vote. When will our fellow Dems learn? I will have more to say on this topic in future diaries.

10. MSNBC is dead. Done. Put a fork in it.  Bizzarely, progressives don’t even watch it anyway. For some reason, they watch CNN. It turns out progressives still believe CNN, NPR and PBS. MSNBC was attracting a somewhat more conservative audience thanks to the AM Scarborough block. And so two weeks ago, MSNBC folks started parroting the corporate line too. Even Maddow and Hayes spoke of GOP inevitability. Inevitability or the perception of it, suppresses the vote. They apparently got their marching orders from their Comcast bosses. And so they helped create movement, if any, or the appearance of it.

11. Young people. Again. While their lives are being played with and ruined, they stayed home.  They have been and are being abused by the privateers and testing fanatics; hoodwinked into becoming fodder for corporate wars for oil overseas, committing in advance as young as 14 (and thanks to abusive laws, the contracts are considered binding); injured and traumatized in war and not cared for afterward by a VA crippled by the GOP repeatedly underfunding it and also fighting reforms Democrats like Jim Webb fought for; cheated by payday lenders while they are overseas; crippled by usury following college; limited by increasingly low-paying jobs; and worried they will never own their own homes. They were a major focus of vote suppressionists, but too many gave up and let the vote suppressors get away with it.  

12. Seniors.  Boy, are seniors screwed. They voted for those who plan to privatize Social Security and turn Medicare into a voucher program. But blame also the Americans for Prosperity Dems who support cuts to Social Security, while Karl Rove was just waiting to turn their backstabbing of seniors against them in Crossroads GPS ads. You can almost see the smirk on old Karl’s face.  

He ran such an ad with much success against Hagan for supporting COLA cuts. He also lied that she cut Medicare. As for Medicare, in a privatized world, wait till my cohorts try to buy an affordable policy on their own.(It’s not going to happen.  That is why Medicare was needed in the first place.) Piecing together all the pieces of health care is expensive even with Medicare (Premiums for part B, Part D and Medigap) is costly to individual seniors, even with Medicare. It would be so much worse without it.

But the privateers and cutters persist. If they “succeed,” many more seniors will lose their homes and go hungry.  The majority will live in poverty as they did before the advent of those two programs. How could seniors vote against their interests like that? Oh, yeh, they voted their worst selves, against gays and minorities and “big guvment.” They did it because the GOP pushed their buttons.  They did it in support of war without end. And they did it despite their knowing their GOP is attempting to destroy the public education of most of their grandchildren. Of voters like that, I am ashamed.

13. Republicans lost.  Their party is gone, a mere shadow of what it was decades ago.  The clown car can go with Tillis, LaPage, Ernst, Perdue, Cruz and the rest of the ultimatum swilling, hostage-taking lot if they choose. But they can only win key states like NC by cheating. What is left is not the GOP.  The GOP is now done.

14. Hillary. One exit poll pretends she could win in 2016. (If she won we would be hosed too.)  She’s to the right of Obama for Christ’s sakes.  If Democrats continue to pretend they are Republicans (and Hillary is one of the old DLC Democrat and super hawks, then we might as well pack up and go home.  (And KathyinBlacksburg certainly does not recommend that!)

There are many  more losers.  I will have more to say about some of them in the coming days.

PS There were winners in my area of NC.  Our state delegate and state senators were reelected.  Both are Democrats. In my county, we took over the County Board of Commissioners. We won the school board. We re-elected our sheriff. We got three judges on the state Supreme Court (one is in recount). In adjacent Wake County, a fantastic Democratic town councilwoman was elected to the House of Delegates.  She defeated one of the GOP’s supposed rising stars.  Wake County flipped the County Commission to Democratic. Building up the farm team matters.  All of these individuals will be tomorrow’s leaders.

None of this good news means I take lightly the results of two weeks ago.  It has been a difficult two weeks. But today I got an email from our neighborhood Democratic Club president, who lead us in a remarkable GOTV operation.  In the letter he said we would hear from him Jan 1.  We can rest now he says.  But Jan one the sleeping giant awakes!  Indeed.

At least one of Virginia’s U.S. Senators gets it on the Keystone XL dirty Canadian tar sands export boondoggle.

Sen. Tim Kaine sent an e-mail to supporters Monday morning, telling them he opposes Keystone and urging them to show their opposition.

“As a nation, we need to take a stand to support clean energy, create green jobs, and reduce pollution. That’s why I hope you’ll join me in opposing the Keystone project.

The main issue isn’t the pipeline itself. The problem is that the pipeline would transport tar sands oil, fuel that is 15-20% dirtier than conventional petroleum.“

Exactly right, and very much in line with what Kaine talked about two years ago at Tigercomm:

*It’s time for opponents of clean energy to stop acting like the reign of fossil fuels as our dominant energy source constitutes some sort of inviolable theology.

*Even for those who don’t “believe” in climate science, or who think clean energy is a science project, it’s still common sense to move ahead aggressively with energy efficiency and clean energy. Unless, of course, they want America assigned permanent international follower status on the technologies other counties want to lead.

*If we find out in 50 years that the climate science was wrong, we’re still ahead by getting off the dirty stuff. If the 98% of practicing climate scientists were right and we let clean energy pass us by, we’ll deeply regret it.

As for Virginia’s other Senator, the one who loves to blame “both sides” for everything and pretend to be what he calls a “radical centrist” (reward to anyone who can get a clear answer out of Warner about what that means?), he’s just completely wrong when it comes to Keystone XL, making the bizarre claim that somehow Keystone’s spur to tar sands development is needed “to make sure we decouple Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas so they can become more independent.” WTF?  I mean, I worked on international oil markets for 17 years, and I really have no idea what he’s blathering about on this. Regardless, any spur to development of the Canadian tar sands would be a huge mistake if we care about, ya know, the planet not burning up and stuff? Apparently, Warner’s more concerned with more important things, like…uh….

I just finished reading the fascinating new book More Awesome Than Money: Four Boys and Their Heroic Quest to Save Your Privacy from Facebook by Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer. The Wall Street Journal describes the book as the efforts of “four idealists frustrated with Facebook’s control over our personal data…to create an alternative,” and why they didn’t ultimately succeed. Other than being a fascinating story, with drama and even tragedy (specifically, the suicide of brilliant, charismatic co-founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy), the book covers important issues facing all of us in the age of social media, the “cloud,” etc.: privacy, the digital “Panopticon,” the profit motive vs. creating something socially beneficial, how promising technologies do or don’t end up getting funding to move forward, implications for society, even human identity itself. I make absolutely no pretensions to being an expert on any of this, just someone interested in the subject. So, I asked my friend Yosem Companys — who teaches high-technology entrepreneurship at Stanford University, runs social media for Stanford’s Program on Liberation Technology, and previously worked as consiglieri and CEO of Diaspora (with a crucial role to play in “More Awesome than Money”) – whether he would be willing to answer a few questions. He graciously agreed. Here’s the interview, edited for conciseness and clarity. Note: I’ve decided, due to the interview’s length (16 questions and answers), to break it up into four parts. The first four questions and answers are available here. Now, here are #5-#8.

Question #5: So how did Diaspora ever think they could get masses of Facebook users to switch over to Diaspora, despite the fact that all their friends, family, and other contacts were at Facebook, not on Diaspora?

Yosem Companys: To the guys’ credit, they spent long hours trying to create their own network effect, spending time trying to build “killer apps.” Some of these apps, like cubbi.es, were extremely popular among our user base and did significantly increase engagement. But the guys initially spent little time thinking about how to overcome Facebook’s network effect. I did the opposite, by asking our users about what would make them stay on Diaspora. The market research suggested  a dual strategy that I persuaded the guys to pursue.

First, Diaspora would be like Hootsuite, allowing you to post and receive messages from “public” networks such as Twitter and Facebook, while still affording you the possibility of posting and receiving “private” messages through Diaspora.

Second, Diaspora would present itself as a network for discovering people you don’t know, something that made sense because the network effect is rendered irrelevant if your user base consists of people who want to meet interesting alters rather than hanging out with their friends. The first allowed Diaspora users to remain connected with their friends so they felt comfortable enough to do the second, i.e., make new friends.

Question #6: So why did this strategy fail?

Yosem Companys: I don’t think it failed. The data suggests the strategy is still an effective one. The problem was with the execution of the strategy, because Diaspora, unfortunately, suffered from what some in the study of organizations have dubbed “organizational schizophrenia”. That’s a phenomenon characterized by impulsive behavior, mixed messages, and lack of a commitment to promising strategies. The guys would fully commit to following the strategy and business model but then back away and try something else. As the academic literature on organizations shows, experimentation, or “morphing,” is important in entrepreneurship given the high degree of uncertainty. However, given the limited resources of a startup, the process has to be focused and ideas must be appropriately tested and fleshed out before moving to the next ones. But this is an area where the guys struggled, most likely due to their entrepreneurial inexperience.

For example, even though we had the data suggesting that we had found a profitable business model; that venture capitalists were interested in once they saw the data; and that the guys had committed to pursuing it; they would  back away and want to try something else.

Similarly, the guys would not fully commit to building the HootSuite-like capability that users asked for. Instead, they opted to focus on exploring killer apps, wanting Diaspora to be both a place for hanging out with existing friends AND meeting new ones. That’s something the market research had shown was somewhat contradictory.

In a more inadvertent case, the decision by the guys not to start with the business model of providing personal servers from the very beginning sent mixed messages to users. By creating their own centralized server and, as in the example above of a family server, admitting thousands of alpha users through this server, it made it quite difficult for the guys to explain the decentralized approach to media outlets and investors. Why? Because it was difficult for external observers to distinguish between that centralized server and the decentralized ecosystem of servers as a whole. This led to considerable confusion among users, as Diaspora sometimes presented itself as a centralized model, other times as a decentralized one.

Ultimately, the guys’ pursuit of a killer app killed the Diaspora star, you could say. It did not, however, kill Diaspora itself, as that still exists and continues to grow. But it did lead the guys to devote more time to developing little apps that were basically plug-ins to Diaspora, rather than to developing the core of Diaspora itself. (Remember, we’re talking about four guys coding a network for hundreds of thousands of users, so coding one thing necessarily entails the opportunity cost of not coding something else.) Ultimately, the guys went to Y-combinator to develop one of these killer apps, made it a free-standing app independent of Diaspora, and quit coding on Diaspora altogether.

Question #7: So, based on what we’ve discussed so far, would it be fair to say that there are inherent problems with the centralized and/or for-profit model of social networking? Are there plausible alternatives?

Yosem Companys: The problem with the centralized model is that the employees of the supposedly privacy-friendly startup could read all of your messages, whether private or not, because they run the server on which your data resides. So, there is an issue of trust, and there is no technical way that you can control your data under those circumstances, unless you encrypt everything. But then, that would slow the server down significantly, which can worsen the user experience. Without full encryption, the only difference between a centralized site with a privacy promise on the one hand, and Facebook on the other, is the vague promise of the executive-management team that they will protect the privacy of your data. Of course, in practice, you have no way of knowing whether they will do that or not, particularly when their code is not open source.

Second, the problem with being a for-profit (or even a non-profit) is that the shareholders and the board of directors that own and control the firm can, at a moment’s notice, easily change the management team and renege on its privacy promise. Remember: legally, a for-profit firm exists to make money for its shareholders and is controlled by its board of directors, which is elected by shareholders. (The same applies to non-profits, except that non-profits don’t have shareholders.) There is no legal compact binding a firm to its users, such that it is forced to fulfill promises of privacy or whatever else to its users. The only promises it has to fulfill are to its shareholders and board of directors.

Question #8: Could there ever really be a way for people to truly “trust” a for-profit company’s promises that it will protect their privacy?

Yosem Companys: One of the only ways I know of to hold a for-profit firm accountable to its promise of providing privacy to its users is for that firm to make money off of privacy. Extensive research in the field management shows that firms rarely change their business models once they are in place and profitable because investors expect firms to perform in a reliable and accountable fashion. If firms do not behave in this way, shareholders punish them, for example, by selling the shares they own. That, of course, also implies that firms rarely change once they have found profitable business models, whether in the privacy space or elsewhere. (See, for example, Hannan and Freeman)

To overcome this, I tried to get Diaspora to commit to a privacy business model from the start, through the provision of easy-to-set-up and easy-to-use personal servers. Diaspora offered a software package that would allow you to run Diaspora on your own server; to connect to other people via your own server (as in the case of your whole family sharing your server); and to connect to other servers (say, for example, as in your family members all individually having their own servers and connecting to yours). You could then also use these servers to run any other software packages, say, for blogging.

The problem is that setting up your own server is a difficult and arduous task — even experienced developers had difficulties setting up Diaspora on their own servers. And, by solving that “pain,” the data suggested, we would have created value for users and, in turn, generated revenues and, ultimately, profitability.

We had a couple of venture capital firms and an investment bank that had lined up angel investors, all of whom were quite interested in this model. Unfortunately, Max’s filibustering and the guys’ inability to manage Max, prevented us from completing a deal.