When your TeaParty friend starts up again this fall, calling for deep federal discretionary spending cuts, here's a great example to (figuratively) shove in her face of an industrial regulation that we may not be able to live without.
This gas pipeline example involves faulty welds holding together the Millenium Pipeline Company's line through the southern tier of New York State. Cities I know well -- Spencer, Oswego to name two --are in the pipeline's path. For a map of the track of the pipeline through New York's southern tier, see NaturalGasWatch.org.
ProPublica has a good article on how bad the situation with the pipeline is. If you know people who live in the southern tier of NY State, pass this information on.
We should start a catalogue of federal government "discretionary" programs that are endangered by steep budget cuts. I betcha our teaparty friends would say, well, of course not THIS program, but the other, wasteful, programs are the ones that need to go. Or, maybe they would say this is just an outlier situation that the company will handle on its own quite nicely. (I wish the company had addressed the issue somewhere in its web site. I would sleep better at night on behalf of my friends in Oswego and Spencer if I thought the company was taking safety issues seriously enough to inform the public.)
We middle-of-the-roaders should start to catalogue federal discretionary programs, especially regulatory ones, that are worth their costs beyond a shadow of a doubt. And, ask our teaparty friends to start listing the specific programs or regulations that are not worth their costs. Let's see what we all come up with.
Aug 3, 2011
Details of the Budget Deal in (sort of) plain language
CBO's cost estimate lays out the essence of the provisions, and also a concise description of how the process going forward will work. Even better is the CBO Director's Blog. There is no mention of the CPI change as described in my previous post. So, that provision appears not to be in the current agreement. Perhaps it will come in the next one, if there is ever an agreement at any time ever again over anything.
Jul 31, 2011
The budget deal will include a hidden Social Security benefit decrease
[Update Note 8-3-2011: This provision was not included in the Budget Agreement of 8-1-2011. It may come up again in the further cuts implied by the agreement.]
I'm not against the benefit decrease that I'm about to explain. It's relatively minor. But, it's emblematic of the snookering job our pols give us through legislative deals that are too arcane for us to understand. When the Pols tell you they haven't touched Social Security or government pensions with the deal now in the making, you can say, "sure, buddy,...just keep passin' the kool-aid so's I can drink."
My trip to Wegmans yesterday to buy raw frozen shrimp for a casserole will explain all, if you stay through the arcania of the next paragraph or so.
In a nutshell, the budget deal will change the basis for the annual COLA update from the current Consumer price index (CPI) to a Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI). I've heard several experts, including democratic pundits (see NPR program), say that this is a "more accurate" way of measuring the update than is the standard CPI. I say "Hooey".
The government calculates the CPI each month by using a careful sample of a defined "market basket" of goods and services that consumers buy to keep themselves going. This market basket is set every 5 years or so. It includes our purchases, ranging from toothpaste and broccoli to automobiles and housing. The price of each component in the market basket is measured each month, and the overall CPI index value is based on the price today as a ratio of the price in a base year (say 1983) for each item. Every item in the sample is weighted by its percentage of spending in a "weighting year," which is different from the base year. Though the weighting years change from time to time, years can go by before new products are added into the market basket and new weights are calculated.
The weighted average in a particular base year (say, 1983) is given an index value of 100, and today's value is calculated as the current weighted average of prices divided by the weighted average of prices on that base date. The CPI for 2010 was 218 (compared with 100 in 1983). That means that prices more than doubled in the 28 years from 1983 to 2010. (See The Economic Report of the President 2010 for a table of CPI over the years.)
The chained CPI plays with the weights in a way that lowers the measured CPI. Here's how. Whereas the regular CPI uses weights for some prior year -- say, 5 years ago -- which reflect the choices consumers made among all these items back then, the C-CPI keeps changing the weights to reflect the current distribution of expenditures across items. So... let's say that the price of one item goes up radically while the prices of all other items increase only slightly. What usually happens is that people stop buying so much of that item and its weight in the index declines while others go up. Best example is steak vs hot dogs. Let's say the price of beef is going up faster than other things (due to all those Chinese rich people who suddenly want to get fat on steaks). Now, instead of our tasty filets every Saturday night, we have a nice hot dog with kraut and ketchup. We aren't thrilled, but we adjusted, right? And we lived within our budget. Our quality of life has gone down, at least by a smidgen. And lots of us do this, so that the value of steaks in our market basket today is now lower than it was last month. So, the government "rewards" us by reducing the weight placed on the price increases for steaks and increasing the weight on all other items, including hot dogs, which haven't increased so much.
One expert, Dean Baker, says that this switch to the chained CPI will likely reduce social security and other pension benefits with COLAs (e.g., federal employees) by about 0.3% a year, or roughly 3% over 10 years. That's not very much, and it's the result of our resilience as Americans in learning to cope with adversity. But, IT IS A REDUCTION IN BENEFITS! So, don't let anyone -- Dem or Republican or TeaParty -- tell you that you haven't already given.
Now to Wegmans and my shrimp. I have a very good recipe for Sullivan Island Shrimp, which needs a pound of raw shrimp. So, I went to Wegmans, found a bag of frozen raw shrimp, couldn't find the price, and finally with help learned that 2 pounds would cost me 29 bucks. I couldn't believe it. Rechecked. Sure enough. Well, just six months ago, I could get 2 pounds for about 16 bucks. After much back and forth -- I put it in my cart twice before finally putting it back -- I decided that the nice chicken pot pie in my freezer would do just fine. "Wow!," I thought. "I've reached that point -- can't (or don't want to) afford my signature shrimp dish. Oh, well, I'm coping." And, of course, I'm helping the government reduce my social security payment in the coming year.
I'm not against the benefit decrease that I'm about to explain. It's relatively minor. But, it's emblematic of the snookering job our pols give us through legislative deals that are too arcane for us to understand. When the Pols tell you they haven't touched Social Security or government pensions with the deal now in the making, you can say, "sure, buddy,...just keep passin' the kool-aid so's I can drink."
My trip to Wegmans yesterday to buy raw frozen shrimp for a casserole will explain all, if you stay through the arcania of the next paragraph or so.
In a nutshell, the budget deal will change the basis for the annual COLA update from the current Consumer price index (CPI) to a Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI). I've heard several experts, including democratic pundits (see NPR program), say that this is a "more accurate" way of measuring the update than is the standard CPI. I say "Hooey".
The government calculates the CPI each month by using a careful sample of a defined "market basket" of goods and services that consumers buy to keep themselves going. This market basket is set every 5 years or so. It includes our purchases, ranging from toothpaste and broccoli to automobiles and housing. The price of each component in the market basket is measured each month, and the overall CPI index value is based on the price today as a ratio of the price in a base year (say 1983) for each item. Every item in the sample is weighted by its percentage of spending in a "weighting year," which is different from the base year. Though the weighting years change from time to time, years can go by before new products are added into the market basket and new weights are calculated.
The weighted average in a particular base year (say, 1983) is given an index value of 100, and today's value is calculated as the current weighted average of prices divided by the weighted average of prices on that base date. The CPI for 2010 was 218 (compared with 100 in 1983). That means that prices more than doubled in the 28 years from 1983 to 2010. (See The Economic Report of the President 2010 for a table of CPI over the years.)
The chained CPI plays with the weights in a way that lowers the measured CPI. Here's how. Whereas the regular CPI uses weights for some prior year -- say, 5 years ago -- which reflect the choices consumers made among all these items back then, the C-CPI keeps changing the weights to reflect the current distribution of expenditures across items. So... let's say that the price of one item goes up radically while the prices of all other items increase only slightly. What usually happens is that people stop buying so much of that item and its weight in the index declines while others go up. Best example is steak vs hot dogs. Let's say the price of beef is going up faster than other things (due to all those Chinese rich people who suddenly want to get fat on steaks). Now, instead of our tasty filets every Saturday night, we have a nice hot dog with kraut and ketchup. We aren't thrilled, but we adjusted, right? And we lived within our budget. Our quality of life has gone down, at least by a smidgen. And lots of us do this, so that the value of steaks in our market basket today is now lower than it was last month. So, the government "rewards" us by reducing the weight placed on the price increases for steaks and increasing the weight on all other items, including hot dogs, which haven't increased so much.
One expert, Dean Baker, says that this switch to the chained CPI will likely reduce social security and other pension benefits with COLAs (e.g., federal employees) by about 0.3% a year, or roughly 3% over 10 years. That's not very much, and it's the result of our resilience as Americans in learning to cope with adversity. But, IT IS A REDUCTION IN BENEFITS! So, don't let anyone -- Dem or Republican or TeaParty -- tell you that you haven't already given.
Now to Wegmans and my shrimp. I have a very good recipe for Sullivan Island Shrimp, which needs a pound of raw shrimp. So, I went to Wegmans, found a bag of frozen raw shrimp, couldn't find the price, and finally with help learned that 2 pounds would cost me 29 bucks. I couldn't believe it. Rechecked. Sure enough. Well, just six months ago, I could get 2 pounds for about 16 bucks. After much back and forth -- I put it in my cart twice before finally putting it back -- I decided that the nice chicken pot pie in my freezer would do just fine. "Wow!," I thought. "I've reached that point -- can't (or don't want to) afford my signature shrimp dish. Oh, well, I'm coping." And, of course, I'm helping the government reduce my social security payment in the coming year.
Jul 12, 2011
Vitamin D and Diabetes: New evidence
It appears that vitamin D supplementation may help with pre-diabetic conditions. See the news item from the National Library of Medicine's Medline Report.
Apr 1, 2011
Tales of Two Fracking States: PA and MD
I just read a ProPublica report on Pennsylvania's department of environmental protection's new rule requiring inspectors to get all violations of natural gas drilling operations approved by the head of the agency. Implication: this is bad for the environment. But I'm not so sure. If human being regulators are susceptible to corruption, isn't it better to have one central actor to blame when the stuff hits the fan? Having a lot of manipulatable inspectors with the power of the citation is not my idea of responsible regulation. Nevertheless, PA seems hellbent on sucking the stuff out of the bowels of the earth.
Maryland, on the other hand, is delaying, studying, etc., according to the Washington Post's article a few days ago. Will that be any better in the end?
Oh, we of little faith -- science is our hope. science is our folly. Which?
Maryland, on the other hand, is delaying, studying, etc., according to the Washington Post's article a few days ago. Will that be any better in the end?
Oh, we of little faith -- science is our hope. science is our folly. Which?
Feb 27, 2011
Natural gas Fracking in Pennsylvania could ruin New York's Finger Lake
Friend Mary let me know that today's New York Times Article on natural gas fracking wells and their impact on the environment is a must read for anyone who loves the still relatively pristine beauty of New York's Finger Lakes, particularly Cayuga.
Put it together with the ProPublica report mentioned in my previous post, on what the fracking technology has done to water in Wyoming, and it's scary that, once again, we seem unable as a society to limit our use of energy and abuse of the environment.
Put it together with the ProPublica report mentioned in my previous post, on what the fracking technology has done to water in Wyoming, and it's scary that, once again, we seem unable as a society to limit our use of energy and abuse of the environment.
Feb 26, 2011
Fracking for natural gas, or conserving at the pump?
The new fracking technology proposed by the natural gas industry promises to reduce energy costs in the near term, but at what cost to the environment? Fracking began in the US in Wyoming, and the current action is in Pennsylvania, New York State, and even Maryland. Here is a ProPublica article on the impact of fracking on fresh water in Wyoming. It's long but gripping.
Meanwhile, I'm cheering the rising price of oil, due to international events and China's demand, which may lead us Americans to start conserving at the pump. There's nothing like $4.50 a gallon to get one to start thinking about high-mileage cars. A gas tax that would get us there-- coupled with fixed dollar relief through payroll tax holidays and social security checks -- is what I think is the only sensible long-run energy-related response to so many problems: balance of payments, federal deficit, national security, and global warming,
Especially if you live in New York, Maryland or Pennsylvania, and are alarmed by what's happening in the shale bed regions of those states, you can pass on the Propublica article. People should start contacting their state legislators about this before it's permanently too late.
ProPublica is an on-line experiment in investigative journalism that is independent and thorough. You can subscribe to email alerts -- I do.
Meanwhile, I'm cheering the rising price of oil, due to international events and China's demand, which may lead us Americans to start conserving at the pump. There's nothing like $4.50 a gallon to get one to start thinking about high-mileage cars. A gas tax that would get us there-- coupled with fixed dollar relief through payroll tax holidays and social security checks -- is what I think is the only sensible long-run energy-related response to so many problems: balance of payments, federal deficit, national security, and global warming,
Especially if you live in New York, Maryland or Pennsylvania, and are alarmed by what's happening in the shale bed regions of those states, you can pass on the Propublica article. People should start contacting their state legislators about this before it's permanently too late.
ProPublica is an on-line experiment in investigative journalism that is independent and thorough. You can subscribe to email alerts -- I do.
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