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Lisa Desjardins:

Right.

Tomorrow, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said the Senate will vote to begin debate on the infrastructure deal. That's one of those Senate votes that needs 60 votes. Now, this is plan A for the Democrats. The hope that they want is that they will get those 60 votes and that they would have a bipartisan infrastructure deal written by Thursday. But, right now, those 60 votes are not there.

So, let's talk about what plan B is if this vote fails tomorrow. The vote fails. And then Leader Schumer could just move that deadline. Some Republicans tonight are asking him to move it to Monday, saying they will vote no tomorrow, but perhaps they would be ready by Monday.

Now, what if even then the infrastructure deal doesn't come together? That's a possibility. Now we're talking about plan C. Then there would be no bipartisan deal. And many Democrats now, including the budget chairman, Senator Sanders of Vermont, says that the infrastructure deal could go into or some sources near him infrastructure deal could go into a large reconciliation bill.

That's my reporting tonight, is that many Democrats expect that would be sort of like the fallout the fallback plan, if all of this infrastructure talk, if it all falls apart. But the timing is very important here.

Link:
Why the bipartisan infrastructure deal may be in jeopardy - PBS NewsHour

WASHINGTON Democrats are preparing to muscle through the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to head the Bureau of Land Management, despite united opposition from Republicans who have branded her an eco-terrorist because of her involvement in a tree-spiking episode as a graduate student in the 1980s.

The vote over her nomination, scheduled for Thursday in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, sets up a battle between Republicans and Democrats over an agency at the center of climate policy.

The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the Interior Department that oversees grazing, logging and drilling on 245 million acres of public land and manages 700 million acres of mineral rights. It is responsible for balancing oil, gas and coal extraction with recreation and the protection of natural resources. It also is key to President Bidens goal to phase out oil and gas drilling on federal lands a plan that is being challenged by 15 states led by Republican attorneys general.

The concerns that many folks have about Stone-Mannings nomination is that shes going to be more on the side of protecting public lands for public uses, and the folks who want public lands to be used for more development dont like that, said Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado Boulder.

These other issues are being used as a way to block her confirmation, he said. I dont think anybody really cares what she did 32 years ago.

Ms. Stone-Manning, 55, has built a career in environmental policy, working as an aide to Senator Jon Tester of Montana and as chief of staff to former Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, both Democrats, as well as the head of Montanas environment agency, where she gained a reputation as a bridge-builder among environmentalists, ranchers and fossil fuel interests. She is currently the senior adviser for conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit conservation group.

But Republicans argue that her actions in 1989, and her account of that episode in the intervening years, make her unfit for the post. They wrote to President Biden asking him to withdraw her nomination and they plan to vote against her as a bloc in the committee.

Republicans also fought the choice of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary, because of her opposition to expanded oil and gas drilling on public lands. While Ms. Haaland narrowly won confirmation, that process morphed into a proxy fight over climate policy.

Conservatives were more successful in March in forcing the Biden administration to withdraw its pick for deputy interior secretary, Elizabeth Klein, after senators from coal and oil states objected to Ms. Kleins belief that the nation needs to curb its use of fossil fuels.

Oil and gas, coal, those industries are declining or facing serious declines, said John Leshy, an emeritus law professor at the University of California Hastings.

He attributed that to market forces more than government policies, but said the Interior Department had become the place where the fiercest battles over the future of those industries are currently playing out.

Theres a lot of frustration connected with that, Mr. Leshy said. And were at a moment when those frustrations have come to the fore.

Ms. Stone-Manning has never been charged with a crime and did not participate in the effort three decades ago to drive 500 pounds of metal spikes into trees in the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho, federal crimes for which two men were later convicted.

Tree spiking is a tactic to try to prevent logging by inserting metal rods into trees that could damage the blade of a saw. It was used in the 1980s by activists who hoped to make it uneconomical to cut down trees but the practice was dangerous; spikes can injure or kill loggers.

Ms. Stone-Manning, then a 23-year old graduate student, retyped and mailed a profanity-laced letter to the United States Forest Service on behalf of one of the activists who spiked the trees. Ms. Stone-Manning has described her act as an effort to warn authorities and protect people from harm.

Republicans have accused Ms. Stone-Manning of lying to lawmakers about whether she had ever been a target of an investigation, an accusation the administration has denied.

The 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats on the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee are expected to split evenly along party lines. That would force Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, to discharge the nomination, a rare move that would bring it before the full Senate for a vote. If the Senate also divides along party lines, Democrats would need Vice President Harris to break the tie.

The White House issued a statement this week in support of Ms. Stone-Manning.

Tracy Stone-Manning is a dedicated public servant who has years of experience and a proven track record of finding solutions and common ground when it comes to our public lands and waters, said Vedant Patel, a White House spokesman. She is exceptionally qualified to be the next director of the Bureau of Land Management.

Republicans say that new statements from figures involved in the spiking episode indicate that Ms. Stone-Manning was more involved than she claimed.

We now know that President Bidens nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management lied to the Senate about her alleged participation in eco-terrorism, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a statement. The White House should immediately withdraw her nomination.

Mr. Tester said the accusations against Ms. Stone-Manning smack of political smear.

The Tracy Stone-Manning I know is someone who spent the last 20-years-plus bringing people together from both sides of the aisle from all components of industry, he said.

According to court documents, in the spring of 1989 when Ms. Stone-Manning was an environmental studies graduate student at the University of Montana in Missoula, activists with Earth First!, including John Blount and Jeffrey Fairchild, drove nails into old-growth trees in the Idaho forest in an attempt to stop a timber sale.

Afterward, Ms. Stone-Manning testified, Mr. Blount asked her to mail a letter he gave her warning the Forest Service, which she did after retyping it. She later told prosecutors that was the first time she learned about the tree spiking and was shocked by it.

In 1993, Ms. Stone-Manning testified against Mr. Fairchild and Mr. Blount in exchange for immunity.

Last week, Michael W. Merkley, a retired U.S. Forest Service investigator who was the special agent in charge of the case, wrote to Senate lawmakers and said that when the government initially investigated the tree-spiking crime Ms. Stone-Manning was unhelpful and combative. He also said that she received a target letter indicating she would be indicted in connection with her participation.

Ms. Stone-Manning came forward only after her attorney struck the immunity deal and not before she was caught, Mr. Merkley said.

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, cites that and a 1990 interview that Ms. Stone-Manning gave as evidence that she lied in response to written questions from the committee asking if she had ever been the target of a criminal investigation.

Shes an eco-terrorist, Mr. Barrasso said in an interview, adding, Shes lied to the committee, misled the committee in terms of her past behavior and investigations.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas companies, said opposition to Ms. Stone-Manning is based on her behavior in 1989, not her opposition to expanding fossil fuel drilling on public lands. Its not like were going to get someone from industry if we get rid of Tracy Stone-Manning, Ms. Sgamma said. This is about her judgment.

Mr. Fairchild, who spent time in prison for his role in the tree-spiking incident, defended Stone-Manning when reached by telephone.

Having been one of the main participants in that event and one of the main planners, to the best of my recollection she knew nothing about it beforehand, Mr. Fairchild said, adding that Ms. Stone-Manning was known for opposing violence.

Tracy was always a moderating voice, he said. We were talking about ending the logging of old growth forests, and she was the first one to say Yeah but loggers have families, too.

Mr. Tester said he also was not worried about the allegations. We have the votes to get her confirmed, he said.

Here is the original post:
Democrats Prepare for Vote on Tracy Stone-Manning to Lead Bureau of Land Management - The New York Times

From a political perspective, the fact that Democrats run everything in Washington means they get the blame for everything that goes wrong.

And many, many things are going wrong.

The Nationals game was suspended on Saturday night because a drive-by shooter on South Capitol Street was confused for a terrorist. Drive-by shootings have become all too common in the nations capital, lately. A six-year old girl was gunned down earlier in the week.

Democrats want to blame guns for violence, but the guns dont shoot themselves. What causes the violence are violent criminals who arent prosecuted by a criminal justice system that has been systemically dismantled by a woke leftist mob.

This surge in violence isnt contained to the nations capital. Indeed, it has suddenly become endemic to big cities across the country. And it is a direct result of two progressive campaigns, one to defund the police and the other to fund the campaigns of left-wing pseudo-prosecutors who refuse to prosecute actual crimes.

The American people arent stupid. They get what the Democrats have been up to. And while they may have been asleep at the switch in the last couple of years, when these progressives sneakily used George Soros money to win down-ballot elections, I think most voters will start to wise up. The message is simple. There are no law-and-order Democrats left. Vote them all out.

Its not just crime that has reared its ugly head. Its inflation. My wife tells me that the two New York strip steaks she bought at Costco used to cost 30 bucks and now costs $52. You cant get a gallon of gas anywhere for under $3 a gallon, when just last year, when the mad-tweeter was president, you would routinely find it for 2 and half bucks. That leaves a mark for family budgets that were already struggling to get by, post-pandemic.

Spending like a drunken-sailor, which seems to be the current fiscal policy of the Biden administration, is no way to hedge against inflation. It actually makes things worse. So, on this key quality of life measurement, the Democrats are going to get blamed. There are no fiscally responsible Democrats left. Vote them all out.

Sending your kids to school in the fall used to be the best, happiest moment for parents all over the country. That is going to change this year, sadly. In most blue-dominated areas, kids will be forced to wear masks, after going through the summer largely mask-free. And who knows, the unions might be successful in again in getting the politicians that they largely fund to keep education virtual, the way the COVID-19 hysteria is trending lately.

And once the kids are in school, who knows what nonsense they are being taught. Is America irredeemably racist and incapable of doing great things? Thats what the school board in Loudon County and other progressive enclaves want the kids to believe. Thank God that parents have decided to stand up and stop this nonsense. But the fight wont be easy and it will remind those who live in the suburbs what the stakes are in this next election. There arent any Democrats who are willing to take on the teacher unions anymore. Vote them all out.

President TrumpDonald TrumpOn The Money: Schumer pressured from all sides on spending strategy | GOP hammers HUD chief over sluggish rental aid | Democrat proposes taxes on commercial space flights Overnight Health Care: Fauci clashes with Paul - again | New York reaches .1B settlement with opioid distributors | Delta variant accounts for 83 percent of US COVID-19 cases Overnight Defense: Military justice overhaul included in defense bill | Pentagon watchdog to review security of 'nuclear football' | Pentagon carries out first air strike in Somalia under Biden MORE decreed during his time in office that consumers have the right to a good shower. The Biden administration reversed Trumps decision, because in their opinion, nobody should be able to get a fully functioning shower.

Its a small thing, really, but emblematic of the progressive mindset. You cant escape violence. You must pay more for basic consumer products. Your kids cant escape leftist indoctrination and they must wear a mask while they listen to it. And you cant even get a good shower. Thats the Democratic dystopia in a nutshell. Running against the Democratic dystopia should be an easy campaign for the GOP. Vote them all out.

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at http://www.thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) when he was majority whip and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).

Go here to see the original:
Feehery: Running against the Democratic dystopia | TheHill - The Hill

I have continued to be astounded by the behavior of Groton officials, both elected politicians and town staff members, as the debacle of trying to give away a prominent property in town to someone with a criminal history of bribing New York City officials and a spotty record of development in Connecticut, where one of his three principal projects remains unfinished after 11 years, continues to unfold.

You would think, as unsettling as it may be that both the town and the state made elaborate deals to give Jeffrey Respler the former Mystic Oral School and its 40 acres and help him overdevelop it, that the freshly revealed truth about his criminal history and development failings would at least trigger some soul-searching.

But, no, instead it's all been denial,finger-pointing orthe attempted laying of blame on others.

And it's not clear to me how the state and town are going to back out of the signed deals in which the state has agreed to sell Respler the property for $1 and the town has promised to help him at every stage of carrying out the overwrought and massive development he has proposed.

The only glimmer of good government in all this was an advisory from the town's volunteer Planning & Zoning Commission, that it would reject the ridiculous scale of the project being cultivated by the town staff and proposed by a developer with a criminal history of bribing public officials.

The people of Groton are largely represented by Democrats, both in town government and in Hartford, and, I'm sorry to say, as a Democrat, that one-party rule is proving in this instance to not work very well.

One of the few Groton Republicans in town with authority, however, hasn't done much to help, either.

State Sen. Heather Somers certainly hasn't called for accountability or an investigation of the state Department of Economic and Community Development for developing a contract with Respler that doesn't even hold him accountable to do anything with the state property after he buys it for $1.

"I've been contacted by many, many individuals, and I have encouraged them to contact their town councilors and local town leaders," Somers told The Day earlier this month.

State government is equally responsible for this mess and the state senator representing Groton should be insisting that they clean it up, not just pass the buck to the town.

Recent comments from state Rep. Joe de la Cruz, a Groton Democrat, that he's "100% for the project" are even more troubling. Could his head really be buried that deep in the sand?

I think maybe the most shocking comments about the unfolding disaster came from Town Councilor Lian Obrey, who actually sat on the committee that chose Respler in the first place.

"I don't want to be swayed by someone digging into somebody's past," Obrey told The Day this month about revelations that Respler plead guilty to crimes prosecuted by the New York attorney general's office task force againstorganized crime.

Councilor Obrey should resign immediately if she's not concerned about the town helping a developer with a criminal record of giving $40,000 in cash bribes to public officials. The implication is she believes his criminal history should have remained buried.

Conrad Heede, Democratic town chair and a town councilor who served with Obrey on the committee that selected Respler, should also resign, as he, too, has refused to acknowledge the mistake.

"I believe the project is dead," Heede wrote to Town Manager John Burt in an email in May, as he referred not to the revelations about the bad choice made by the committee he served on but to the protests by neighbors alarmed by what was being foisted on them.

"Opposition is too loud, too mean spirited and too well organized ... Better to walk away if possible than spend more political capital to make it happen," the party chairman wrote to the town manager.

The town manager also has been practicing a lot of laying of blame, including finger-pointing at the poor residents whose beloved neighborhood has been under attack.

Town Manager Burt, in a long, rambling email to town councilors in May, portrayed himself and his staff, incredibly, as victims.

"We are all getting hammered on this project and feeling the stress," Burt wrote to councilors. "The staff has to worry about this directly affecting our careers when people call for our resignations or say we're taking bribes."

"(The town attorney,) after hearing comments from the public, said they are on the verge of the legal definition of defamation against the staff. We are getting singled out by name or title regularly," he wrote.

I don't see where anyone has learned any lessons from the terrible consequences of not listening to residents and their reasonable concerns about one of the largest developments ever proposed in the town.

Maybe some lessons will be learned from what seems like a predictable political realignment in Groton.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

See the original post here:
Groton Democrats preside over a broken government - News from southeastern Connecticut - theday.com

The Democrats fragile package of sweeping climate and infrastructure legislation might end up being held together by a technology known as carbon capture and storage. That is, if it doesnt pull it apart.

The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on a bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes billions in government support for carbon capture, which pulls carbon dioxide out of smokestack emissions or straight from the air and pumps it underground. But on Monday, a coalition of hundreds of progressive environmental groups sent an open letter to President Joe Biden and Democratic Congressional leaders calling on them to reject the technology.

Carbon capture is not a climate solution, the groups wrote in the letter, which was accompanied by an advertisement in the Washington Post. To the contrary, investing in carbon capture delays the needed transition away from fossil fuels and other combustible energy sources, and poses significant new environmental, health, and safety risks, particularly to Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities already overburdened by industrial pollution, dispossession, and the impacts of climate change.

The letter reflects a split that has emerged in the advocacy community and among Democrats. Many of the nations most influential, mainstream environmental groups did not sign the letter, while those organizations that did sign included more left-leaning, justice-focused and local groups.

Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, has taken on an increasingly central role in climate policy discussions over the last couple of years. It is one of the few climate actions that draws bipartisan support. Most major labor unions also support CCS, arguing that its deployment could provide new jobs and help extend the life of some gas or coal-burning power plants, which often provide high-paying union jobs. And the fossil fuel industries have promoted the technology for decades.

Some environmental groups have also thrown their support behind carbon capture technology, arguing that it could prove critical to meeting ambitious climate goals. Global emissions have continued to rise, they note, and the world is already experiencing dangerous impacts of warming like the heat waves, fires and floods that hit North America and Europe in recent weeks. In particular, these organizations say, CCS could be attached to industrial sources like steel and cement manufacturing, which do not currently have good emissions-free alternatives, and might allow carbon dioxide to be pulled straight from the air to help bring atmospheric concentrations back to safer levels.

But some progressive groups, and many that are focused on environmental justice, have opposed carbon capture, saying that it only serves to extend the life of fossil fuels when those fuels should instead be phased out as rapidly as possible.

If the argument is, we should not stop burning fossil fuels, were finished with the conversation, said Natalie Mebane, policy director for 350.org, which was among the groups that signed the letter. Because we are going to stop burning fossil fuels.

As with so many national policy discussions this year, much may revolve around Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who is a moderate, a long-time supporter of the fossil fuel industry and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Last week, that committee approved legislation that will serve as language for the energy sections of a larger infrastructure package. The bill includes billions of dollars to support CCS, including measures that aim to finance and speed development of infrastructure to transport carbon dioxide from industrial capture sites to underground storage locations and money for producing hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture technology.

Thats a huge first, said Brad Crabtree, who runs the Carbon Capture Coalition, which includes companies from the coal, oil and other industrial sectors, as well as unions and some environmental groups. It would be a policy of global significance if it is adopted.

The carbon capture provisions could prove critical to maintaining Manchins support for a separate, more expansive budget deal that would address climate change and other issues, and would require the support of all 50 Senate Democrats to pass. Climate advocates have been pushing for that deal to include a clean electricity standard that would require utilities to move to carbon-free sources of energy, and a major question has been what types of energy could count as clean. Last week, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) issued a statement saying her proposed clean electricity standard, which counts fossil fuel plants with CCS as clean, had made it into the agreement.

A spokeswoman for Smith declined to comment further.

Energy companies have been lobbying for increased government support for carbon capture and storage. In June, Greenpeace UK released an interview it had conducted undercover with an ExxonMobil lobbyist, Keith McCoy, who identified the technology as one of the companys top lobbying priorities. McCoy, who believed he was speaking with a recruiter looking to hire a lobbyist, said Exxon was seeking support for the technology in the bipartisan infrastructure package.

Were entering into the carbon capture space, so now were talking about how do we get the government to support some of our activities, McCoy said, according to a transcript of the interview provided to Inside Climate News.

McCoy identified a tax credit known as 45Q, which can be claimed by companies that capture carbon dioxide from their operations, as a key component of that government support.

Lawmakers have introduced several bills this year that would extend and increase the value of that tax credit, and Crabtree said his group hopes to see elements of those bills included in the Democrats budget deal.

As Inside Climate News reported last year, Exxon has probably benefited more than any other company from the tax credit, and may have received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax benefits from it over the last decade, according to estimates based on public records. While the IRS said last year that $1 billion had been claimed under the credit, it does not disclose which companies have claimed the credit or how much any individual company has received.

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Some advocates have pointed to Exxons use of the tax credit to argue that carbon capture and storage is an example of how the fossil fuel industry has manipulated policy in its favor. One of the only current markets for captured carbon dioxide is the oil industry, which injects the gas into depleted oil wells to squeeze more petroleum from the ground. Under the tax credit, companies are allowed to claim it even if they sell the CO2 for this use, and that is exactly what Exxon does with the carbon dioxide captured from its natural gas processing plant in Wyoming.

How in the world is that a climate-related tax credit? Mebane said. The letter sent to Biden and the Democratic leaders by the progressive groups calls for lawmakers to prohibit the use of the tax credit when carbon dioxide is used for oil production. The letter was also signed by some Canadian environmental groups and sent to leaders in that country, where the oil industry is pursuing plans to build carbon capture plants.

A spokesman for Exxon declined to comment.

As oil companies have come under pressure from investors and advocates to transition their businesses, many have turned more attention to CCS. In April, Exxon announced a proposal to create a CCS hub in Houston, where industrial plants would be fitted with the technology and linked together with pipelines to carry the gas to underground storage sites. The company said the effort could cost $100 billion, and would need government support.

The proposal highlighted another concern of some environmental groups: Even if such a CCS hub was able to eliminate all the carbon dioxide from industrial sources, it might do little about the toxic pollution emitted by the refineries, petrochemical plants and other sources that have burdened environmental justice communities with unhealthy air.

Crabtree said that because the government will play a role in financing and supporting its development, policymakers could require that carbon capture deployment be paired with other technologies to address these harmful pollutants, too. And he pointed to the technologys bipartisan support as evidence that it ought to be part of any climate bill.

Its not an either or proposition here, he said. It has to be an and.

Nicholas Kusnetz is a reporter for Inside Climate News. Before joining ICN, he worked at the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica. His work has won numerous awards, including from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and has appeared in more than a dozen publications, including The Washington Post, Businessweek, The Nation, Fast Company and The New York Times. You can reach Nicholas at nicholas.kusnetz@insideclimatenews.org and securely at nicholas.kusnetz@protonmail.com.

More:
Will the Democrats Climate Legislation Hinge on Carbon Capture? - InsideClimate News