A vivid example of the dangers of Fracking

Is there any such thing as "adequate" regulation of an environmental hazard?  My friend with an insider's knowledge of FDA says no, and she peppers me with stories about how politics have made the job of reviewers difficult.  (Her experience dates back to the Bush years, so I calm myself by thinking that all of this has changed since the new leadership at the FDA has arrived.  (Some of those higher ups are holdovers, however, so why should I think they've changed their spots?) 
Well... this post is about hydraulic fracking, the environmental issue du jour for Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.  Here is an article about some of the health problems that westerners in the path of fracking have experienced, brought to you by ProPublica, that innovative on-line source of investigative journalism.
Of course, I sit here with my new hip, wondering whether it's one of those metal-on-metal things that are failing at a rate of about 29% so far (based on British data...we Americans don't have registries, being ostriches as we are).  So, maybe FDA is more important than the future of the planet. 

Find your Congressman on Twitter

Here is the list of Twitter Addresses for members of the House of Representatives.

If you use Twitter, it might be a good way to send your opinions in.  Short and sweet.

Dems help keep low tax rates on wealthy.

We expected it of the Republicans, but this Washington Post Article reviews the voting patterns of many Democratic legislators (and President!) who created and protect the very very low (now 15%) capital gains tax.  Only the wealthy have substantial capital gains that are not sequestered in tax-deferred or tax-free IRAs or 401-Ks.  It takes a wealthy person to benefit from the low capital gains tax.  If we need to raise revenue, we should start there.

How bad is your State's credit risk?

Barron's  has a great article this month on the state of our States' credit ratings. Whether you're an investor or not, it's worth a look to see how your own State fares in the "best" list and the "worst" list. After all, in the end the taxpayer will pick up the tab, and that's all of us one way or another.
Little Delware (the Blue Hen State) turns out to have the strongest credit position among all states. How do they do it, considering that they must spent gadzillions rebuilding the beaches every spring to keep the ocean from washing it away?
I very much like the layout of criteria for assessing a State's credit health. Hope this link to the article works. Good, Bad and Ugly. If not, go directly to Barron's and search for the article.

Imagine the USA without regulators of gas pipelines.

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.

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.

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.