Posts Tagged ‘Massachusetts’

The Elizabeth Warren Quote That Has Everyone Talking

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the Senate in Massachusetts as a progressive Democrat, has caused controversy between the right and left with the following statement: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. “But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate. Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Speaking at a small gathering at a supporter’s house, Warren also said “My favorite part of looking at this hole, we got in this hole, one billion dollars, uh, one trillion dollars, on tax cuts for the rich under George Bush. We got into this hole two trillion dollars on two wars that were put on a credit card for our children and grandchildren to pay off. And we got into this hole one trillion on a Medicare drug program that was not paid for and was 40 percent more expensive than its needs to be because it was a giveaway to the drug companies. That’s just four trillion right there. So part of the way you fix this problem is don’t do those things! I hear all this, oh this is class warfare, no! You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory. Now look.”

Warren, a Harvard law professor, is leading in polls in Massachusetts. Brown showed no interest in discussing politics on the day when the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling survey showed him behind Warren for the first time in a general election match-up. “There’s going to be plenty of polls. I don’t think about polls. Never been a big poll guy,” Brown said.

The website Behind Blue Lines takes an opposite approach. It notes that “Ah, Professor, have you ever heard of property taxes, excise taxes, income taxes, fuel taxes – and on and on? The entrepreneur pays them too, I can assure you. They pay for the roads, schools, firemen and police – often several times over. And who’s this ‘we’, anyway? Would that be ‘we’ as in know-betters like you? Or would it be ‘we’ in the sense of all the people who pay taxes, including the miscreant who ‘builds a factory’ (and creates valuable products and services benefiting all) and ‘hired workers’ (and paid them taxable wages and benefits). The ‘work the rest of us did’, indeed. What stinks the most about her tirade, however, is the arrogant assumption that we are all state property. That everything we are, including our very selves, belongs to government. I feel obliged to point out that her campaign was forced to admit that she was paid $192,722 for her ‘services’ on the TARP panel.

North Dakota’s Booming Economy Grew 7.1 percent in 2010

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

Guess which state’s economy grew at a significantly faster pace than the nation’s measly 2.9 percent?  According to a report from the Department of Commerce, it’s North Dakota, whose economy expanded a robust 7.1 percent in 2010.The key driver behind both North Dakota’s success is drilling for oil.  Historically, North Dakota’s mining sector — which includes oil — was quite small compared to its overall economy.  That has undergone change in recent years due to new technology that makes it possible to tap billions of barrels of oil in a remote area of North Dakota known as Bakken. American oil demand was relatively flat last year — but that made no difference in North Dakota.  Mining surged 59 percent, primarily because businesses were working to build the infrastructure to support this young industry in the Bakken region.  “North Dakota has a lot of untapped shale oil, and developing that field may have attracted a lot of investment and a lot of employment into the state,” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association.

By 2015, the new fields could yield as much as two million barrels of oil a day — more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.  This new drilling is expected to raise American production by a minimum of 20 percent over the next five years.  Within 10 years, it could reduce oil imports by more than half.  “That’s a significant contribution to energy security,” said Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Credit Suisse.

Among the other states, one of the prevailing themes impacting growth is the ongoing housing slump – which was most evident in Nevada and Arizona.  Several states — including Indiana, Massachusetts and Oregon — saw a manufacturing comeback for autos, high-tech equipment and machinery.

The states seeing the greatest growth in 2010 after North Dakota include New York at 5.1 percent; Indiana at 4.6 percent; Massachusetts at 4.2 percent; and West Virginia at 4.0 percent.

Wyoming was the loser with its $34 million GDP falling 0.3 percent in 2010. It’s because the majority of Wyoming’s coal is used to generate electricity — and when demand for energy declined. last year, it was a setback for Wyoming’s mining industry.  With the energy sector rebounding and coal prices soaring, Wyoming is likely to fare better in 2011. Wyoming performed very differently from North Dakota in 2010.  Mining is a well established segment of the economy, accounting for approximately one third of the entire state’s GDP.  When energy demand fell and oil prices barely picked up in 2010, Wyoming’s GDP was badly hurt.  “When the economy is just flat or just limping along, you can expect a state like Wyoming to really take it hard,” Popovich said.

After Wyoming, the slowest growing states are Nevada at -0.2 percent; Arizona at 0.7 percent; Oklahoma at 0.7 percent; and Montana at 1.1 percent.  States like Delaware, which rely heavily on manufacturing of soft goods such as plastic, struggled due to weak consumer demand and competition from producers overseas.

“It’s only been fleshed out over the last 12 months just how consequential this can be,” said Mark Papa, chief executive of EOG Resources, the first company to use horizontal drilling to tap shale oil.  “And there will be several additional plays that will come about in the next 12 to 18 months. We’re not done yet.”

Offshore Cape Wind Farm Gets the Go-Ahead

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

The controversial Cape Wind Energy Project – to be constructed in Nantucket Sound between Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts – has been given the green light by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.  “The Department has taken extraordinary steps to fully evaluate Cape Wind’s potential impacts on environmental and cultural resources of Nantucket Sound,” Salazar said.

The nation’s first offshore wind farm Cape Wind will see 130 wind turbine generators constructed; each will have a maximum blade height of 440 feet and will be arranged in a grid pattern several miles offshore.  When completed, Cape Wind will produce enough electricity to power about 400,000 homes on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.  Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement approved the wind farm’s construction and operation.

Cape Wind – which was first proposed 10 years ago — has faced opposition from everyone from local Indian tribes to fishermen to the Kennedy family, whose six-acre compound in Hyannis Port overlooks Nantucket Sound.  “Taking 10 years to permit an offshore wind project like Cape Wind is completely unacceptable,” Salazar said.  Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) said “Let’s get this wind project built, and keep this American clean energy momentum pushing us ahead like a down east breeze.”

The opposition did not resonate on the national level and so the Interior Department used Cape Wind as a test case for offshore energy projects and green-lighted one major regulatory step after another.  Those who forcefully opposed the wind farm include The Cape Cod Times, Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, and the government of the Town of Barnstable.  Many older residents say resistance to Cape Wind was an exact copy of the opposition to the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore Park 50 years ago.

According to Salazar, the Cape Wind project could create as many as 600 to 1,000 jobs, and jump start a network of similar renewable wind farm projects up and down the Atlantic coast, which has the potential for tens of thousands of new jobs for Americans.  He criticized the process, which delayed the construction of America’s first offshore wind farm for 10 years, saying, that the Obama administration wants to streamline the permitting process in the future.  “After a thorough review of environmental impacts, we are confident that this offshore commercial wind project — the first in the nation — can move forward,” said Michael Bromwich, who directs Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation, and Enforcement.  “This will accelerate interest in the renewable energy sector generally and the offshore wind sector specifically, and spur innovation and investment in our nation’s energy infrastructure.”

While Cape Wind has found a buyer for 50 percent of its output, it has not for the other half.  Dennis Duffy, Vice President, said the company was “confident” it would find a customer for the other half.  The approval comes as the state proposed to redefine a different federal ocean area that also is under consideration for offshore wind.  The state wants the federal government to remove approximately half of a 3,000-square-mile area south of Massachusetts from potential wind development to protect vital fishing grounds.

“We submitted a proposal that would move the Commonwealth towards (making Massachusetts the nation’s offshore wind energy leader) while safeguarding waters important to our commercial fishing industry,” said Richard K. Sullivan Jr., state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Barney Frank: Scrap Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) wants to scrap Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in favor of an entirely new mortgage-financing system. According to Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and who previously supported the programs, “The committee will be recommending abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their current forms and coming up with a whole new system of housing finance.”Congressman Barney Frank wants to start an entirely new mortgage-financing system.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which back a majority of the nation’s home loans, buy mortgages from lenders, insure them against default and supply new money to create new loans. Thanks to growing losses on these loans that threatened the health of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal government took control of the programs in September 2008.  Since their seizure, Fannie and Freddie have been run by regulators and kept alive by $110.6 billion in taxpayer money.  Frank says that Congress needs to decide what to do with Fannie’s and Freddie’s remaining shareholders, as well as investors in the companies’ $5.4 trillion in mortgage bonds and $1.7 trillion in unsecured corporate debt.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profit by financing mortgage-asset purchases with low-cost debt and on guarantees of home-loan securities they create out of loans from lenders.  They currently own or guarantee more than $5 trillion in U.S. residential debt, and were responsible for as much as 75 percent of the new mortgages made in 2009.

“We’re going to look at the whole question of housing finance,” Frank said.  “Sorting out the function of promoting liquidity in the market, and also the secondary market in general but then also doing some kind of subsidy for affordability.”

Fannie/Freddie were caught in the eye of the subprime meltdown.  In February of 2007, the residential mortgage-backed securities market crashed with sales plummeting 90 percent.  While reform is needed, Fannie and Freddie operate like a public option – by making home ownership more affordable and creating competition to commercial banks.  A positive step is the Deed for Lease program.  After foreclosure – at 57,000 homes in the first half of 2009 – the new program allows owners to lease their homes and avoid foreclosure.

Artificially creating/guaranteeing a market for home loans has lost billions. Hopefully, whatever entity replaces Fannie and Freddie will be prohibited from contributing to congressional campaigns and PAC’s.