Democratic Primary Day: Vote For Nydia Velazquez Today!

I've cut and pasted some details below from an email from Brad Lander.  For my own part, I can say that Nydia has been a tireless advocate for our borough, our city , our state, for working people, for our kids, for small businesses. She's everywhere, and she brings it home for Brooklyn. 

I met her challenger, who seems like a nice enough guy but was unable to articulate any credible reason why we would abandon a veteran lawmaker who votes the right way on every issue for a totally unknown quantity.  I'll confess I am baffled by his campaign. 

I was only the second person from my ED at 9:20 - so get out there and vote !

From Brad:

There are a few Congressional primaries around the city tomorrow and that includes one here in Brooklyn (you shouldn't be embarrassed if you didn't realize!)  Nydia Velázquez is running for re-election in the 11th Congressional District (including Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Gowanus, and some of Park Slope) and the primary is tomorrow.

Nydia has been a great partner in our Bridging Gowanus effort (as a reminder, our next community planning meeting is this Wednesday from 6:30-9:00 at the Wyckoff Gardens Community Center, 280 Wyckoff Street) and in efforts to secure equitable development of our waterfront.  I hope you will join me in supporting her.  Either way, I hope you will exercise your right to be heard and go to the polls tomorrow.

You can can look up your address here to see if you're in the 11th Congressional District and confirm your poll site.  Polls are open from 6:00am-9:00pm.

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Tea Party Grifters

How do these people sleep at night?

The Grift Pays

"In from Georgia, Martin has been spending much of the past three weeks in the state, holding conferences, making fundraising calls, meeting with local chapters of the tea party, and yes, walking door-to-door to turn out the vote for conservative Senate hopeful Chris McDaniel. But unlike most volunteers here, as the head of the national Tea Party Patriots, a group she co-founded and helped bring to national prominence, she's on track to make $450,000 this year doing all this, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service filings. And to top that off, the group's latest disclosures also note that she is allowed to travel first-class on any domestic flight she takes as president of the organization — although her lawyer says she doesn't take advantage of the perk."

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/06/23/the-grift-pays/

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Krugman on Paulson, Carbon Tax, Climate Change

Paul Krugman responds to Hank Paulson's call for a Carbon Tax this morning.  Krugman points out the unlikely passage of such a tax in the current environment and proposes some "second best" alternatives to deal with the urgent problem in the interim. 

But note what's not on his list: the odious cap and trade flim-flam.  Cap and trade is a grift, a rip-off, snake oil.  That's why the Third Way types love it.

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First, consider rules like fuel efficiency standards, or "net metering" mandates requiring that utilities buy back the electricity generated by homeowners' solar panels. Any economics student can tell you that such rules are inefficient compared with the clean incentives provided by an emissions tax. But we don't have an emissions tax, and fuel efficiency rules and net metering reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So a question for conservative environmentalists: Do you support the continuation of such mandates, or are you with the business groups (spearheaded by the Koch brothers) campaigning to eliminate them and impose fees on home solar installations? Second, consider government support for clean energy via subsidies and loan guarantees. Again, if we had an appropriately high emissions tax such support might not be necessary (there would be a case for investment promotion even then, but never mind). But we don't have such a tax. So the question is, Are you O.K. with things like loan guarantees for solar plants, even though we know that some loans will go bad, Solyndra-style? Finally, what about the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal that it use its regulatory authority to impose large reductions in emissions from power plants? The agency is eager to pursue market-friendly solutions to the extent it can — basically by imposing emissions limits on states, while encouraging states or groups of states to create cap-and-trade systems that effectively put a price on carbon. But this will nonetheless be a partial approach that addresses only one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Are you willing to support this partial approach? By the way: Readers well versed in economics will recognize that I'm talking about what is technically known as the "theory of the second best." According to this theory, distortions in one market — in this case, the fact that there are large social costs to carbon emissions, but individuals and firms don't pay a price for emitting carbon — can justify government intervention in other, related markets. Second-best arguments have a dubious reputation in economics, because the right policy is always to eliminate the primary distortion, if you can. But sometimes you can't, and this is one of those times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/23/opinion/paul-krugman-conservatives-and-climate-change.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

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We Need A Carbon Tax, Not Cap and Trade

Kudos to Hank Paulson, late as he is, for stating explicitly that a carbon tax is what's needed. The LAST thing we need is "cap and trade", which is a regulatory shell game for grifters to loot money from the system with little benefit to show for it. 

Cap and trade is a Rube Goldberg policy approach that is designed to avoid taxes and generate profits under the fig leaf guise of cutting carbon emissions. 

What we need is a carbon tax, not another skim operation. 

Why a Carbon Tax is Better Than Obama's Cap and Trade

"We need to craft national policy that uses market forces to provide incentives for the technological advances required to address climate change. As I've said, we can do this by placing a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. Many respected economists, of all ideological persuasions, support this approach. We can debate the appropriate pricing and policy design and how to use the money generated. But a price on carbon would change the behavior of both individuals and businesses. At the same time, all fossil fuel — and renewable energy — subsidies should be phased out. Renewable energy can outcompete dirty fuels once pollution costs are accounted for… A tax on carbon emissions will unleash a wave of innovation to develop technologies, lower the costs of clean energy and create jobs as we and other nations develop new energy products and infrastructure. This would strengthen national security by reducing the world's dependence on governments like Russia and Iran."

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/why-carbon-tax-is-better-than-cap-and-trade.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

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Weekend Subway Service Advisories

Looking good in our neck of the woods:

From 11:15 p.m. Friday, June 20 to 5:00 a.m. Monday, June 23, Coney Island Stillwell Av-bound F trains are rerouted via the E line from Jackson Hts-Roosevelt Av to 5 Av/53 St due to Second Avenue Subway construction work.

From 11:45 p.m. Friday, June 20 to 5:00 a.m. Monday, June 23, Coney Island Stillwell Av-bound F trains skip Sutphin Blvd, Briarwood-Van Wyck Blvd and 75 Av due to rail work south of Parsons Blvd.

And the citywide situation and MTA news over at Ben's:

http://secondavenuesagas.com/2014/06/20/mta-board-happenings-ac-line-review-weekend-service-changes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SecondAveSagas+%28Second+Ave.+Sagas+%7C+Blogging+the+NYC+Subways%29

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Sewer Work On 3rd Place At Henry Street

It's an old city.  Stuff breaks down.

Today was not the day to drive or bike down 3rd Place.

Esquire: Chris Christie Is In Deep Samson

Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.  I still blame Jon Corzine for being a lousy governor and allowing the rise of Chris Christie as a result.  But Corzine looks like a prince next to the amoral back-slapping crook that succeeded him:

Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, wades through the sewage of Christie’s stewardship. Two sources with intimate knowledge of the case say Fishman’s pace is quickening -- he has empaneled a second grand jury, and the U.S. Justice Department has sent assistant prosecutors and FBI agents to work the case.  

“What’s taking the most time,” according to one source, “is separating what's viable from all the bad stuff they’re finding that may not be viable.”

Fishman’s challenge is to nail down specific criminal charges on several fronts -- the diversion of Port Authority money to fund New Jersey road and bridge projects; the four-day rush-hour closures of George Washington Bridge lanes in Ft. Lee; and a web of real-estate deals spun by David Samson, long a Christie crony, when he chaired the PA’s Board of Commissioners as Christie’s appointee. (One such deal, a stalled office-tower development in Hoboken, New Jersey, is central to a claim that Christie’s lieutenant governor told the town’s mayor that the state would withhold Hurricane Sandy relief aid from Hoboken if the mayor didn’t sign off on the development project.)

 And then there is this:

Fishman has cut no deals with anyone so far, and the looming indictments have encouraged Christie’s PA appointees to sing. “Don’t underestimate what Wildstein has on Christie,” says one source. “And Wildstein and Baroni have both turned on Samson. If Samson doesn't give Fishman Christie, Samson is toast.” 

. . . .

 “They’ve got [Samson] cold,” says one source. “He got sloppy, arrogant, and greedy. Samson will want a deal. This way, he’d get one or two years. He’d have a future on the other side. He won’t want to die in jail.”  

These guys are as dirty as it gets.  And they're going to go down for it.

Now, supposedly we're going to get a bi-state report on suggested reforms for the Port Authority Christie abused so baldly and badly.  Any substantive effort to change the authority should be free of any influence from the corrupt influence of the Chris Christie administration.

The PANYNJ is a vital and important organization; what this region needs is more interstate cooperation, not less.  It takes regional planning and regional cooperation to effectively manage the needs of the New York City metropolitan area.  We need to prevent more Chris Christies from raiding the Port Authority for their own selfish purposes, but we also need strong bistate cooperation to further the PA's core mission of moving people and goods efficiently through the region.  Our port and transportation infrastructure is the vital economic engine of the region.  We can and must do better.  The Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel (freight) and the Gateway project (passenger) are vital to the future prosperity of New York City.  With the WTC project finally nearing substantial completion, the PANYNJ must return to its roots and drive the next phase of economic growth with a focus on those two key infrastructure projects.