Joe Manchin PRANKS US ALL AGAIN!

But meanwhile, Good Ol’ Charlie Brown keeps plugging away at things that need to be done.

Rick Brown

Jul 20, 2022

CATCH THIS TWEET HERE: ... Mr. McGee was reacting to a radio appearance of West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin. (From Twitter July 15, 2022)

Yeah, but no, Lucy, no thanks, and never mind, since there’s this old saying made famous by American President GW Bush: “Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. ... [pretty long pause, tries to remember it, finally gives up] ... Ya fool me, you can't get fooled again!”

(Wait! What?)

But a question for the rest of you at home: Wouldn’t you love to be the president right now?

I mean, how bad could it be to follow the only American president ever to end his one and only term by trying to overthrow the government? Am I right?

Wow! Cakewalk! The American people can’t help but treat you like a savior!

No, no, I guess that’s not right either. This was on NBCNews.com last Thursday, announcing a new CNBC poll finding:

President Joe Biden’s overall approval rating sinking to 36% among all adults, while his approval rating for handling the economy has fallen to 30% — both all-time lows for the president in CNBC polling.
What’s more, Biden’s ratings are lower than the worst scores ever for Donald Trump (37% job rating, 41% economic handling) or Barack Obama (41% job rating, 37% economic handling) during the entire course of their presidencies ...

Yet oddly, the economy lately has been showing some good signs:

These rough numbers for Biden — as well as pessimistic attitudes about the economy — come as the U.S. economy continues to add hundreds of thousands of jobs each month, plus as the unemployment rate has declined below 4.0%.
But they also come as inflation increased by 9.1% over the past year, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So what would you do to fix inflation? That’s what I thought! Hey, exactly what I’d do! (I don’t know either.)

But while Biden was over in Saudi Arabia, cautiously fist-bumping through his face-to-face with that country’s de facto autocrat, a prince he’s accused of being a murderer but who he now needs to coax into pumping more planet-killing gunk out of the ground to help ease the pain of a war-weary world, one of his fellow Democrats back home pulls the rug out from under him.

This just hasn’t been Biden’s day, week, month, or even his year:

It was a familiar, if excruciating, position for Democrats.
A day after pulling the plug on his party’s plans to pass a climate, energy and tax package this summer, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the conservative-leaning Democrat who has repeatedly flirted with compromise only to scuttle his party’s highest ambitions, called in on Friday to a West Virginia radio show.
Perhaps, he suggested, in another month or so, he might see his way clear to salvaging the last bits of President Biden’s domestic agenda.

What? No, no, no, no you don’t!

This time, Democrats had had enough.
Rather than engage in another round of will-he-or-won’t-he negotiations with Mr. Manchin, Mr. Biden let it be known that he was done trying to secure his climate agenda in Congress.

But is there nothing Biden can now do, due to the intervention of Joe Manchin or whatever else, about helping to save the planet?

And what is it with this Manchin guy, anyway? Can there be any good reasons behind what he’s doing?

I looked that up.

No, wait! I almost forgot to tell you! “History” called in sick today!!

Said it’s because of “all the craziness lately”, simply exhausted, requesting a “mental health week”!

I said, okay, we can do without your old-timey perspective and those nice old paintings – for maybe a week, but please try not to make this a habit, and come back, all rested and relaxed, once when you’re ready!

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This is how the New York Times very nicely summarized the tenuous “progress” of Biden’s plans, under the headline “Understand What Happened to Biden’s Domestic Agenda”:

‘Build Back Better.’ Before being elected president in 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. articulated his ambitious vision for his administration under the slogan “Build Back Better,” promising to invest in clean energy and to ensure that procurement spending went toward American-made products.
A two-part agenda. March and April 2021: President Biden unveiled two plans that together formed the core of his domestic agenda: the American Jobs Plan, focused on infrastructure, and the American Families Plan, which included a variety of social policy initiatives.
A $6 trillion budget. June 2021: President Biden proposed a $6 trillion budget for 2022. The proposal detailed the highest sustained levels of federal spending since World War II, with the goal of funding the investments in education, transportation and climate initiatives articulated in the two plans.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Nov. 15, 2021: President Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law, the result of months of negotiations. The president hailed the package, a pared-back version of what had been outlined in the American Jobs Plan, as evidence that U.S. lawmakers could still work across party lines.
The Build Back Better Act. Nov. 19, 2021: The House narrowly passed a $2.2 trillion social spending bill intended to fund a package of initiatives from the American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan. But on Dec. 19, 2021, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said he would not support the bill as written, dooming his party’s drive to pass it.

So the tension of those seemingly-endless Manchin negotiations were put off until this year, and finally came to their dénouement just last week, with this added update:

A new attempt. July 15, 2022: Efforts to revive the bill, in a much smaller form, ahead of the midterm elections were dealt a severe blow when Mr. Manchin told Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, that he was unwilling to support funding for climate or energy programs or raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations.

(“Lucy”, she of the famous football, “strikes again!”)

Manchin may not seem like a powerful person – he represents a state with a population of less than one-third the number of people who live in my home Atlanta metropolitan area – but I imagine negotiating with him would be

... like juggling a family of affable rattlesnakes. You’d be just fine as long as the snakes don’t mind, but you should still try your best to keep them on your good side.

The danger, I would think, would be that if you push him too hard, he might just move slightly over onto the Republican team, bringing down Democratic control of the Senate and all Biden’s hopes of, among other things, ever repairing our world’s broken climate.

But how likely is that to happen? For example, there’s this from 2013 (emphasis mine):

In 2013, the National Journal gave Manchin an overall score of 55% conservative and 46% liberal.

Scary, but other people seem to show that Manchin may not be quite as Republican as Democrats seem to think he is:

The American Conservative Union gave him a 25% lifetime conservative rating and the progressive PAC Americans for Democratic Action gave him a 35% liberal quotient in 2016.
In February 2018, a Congressional Quarterly study found that Manchin had voted with Trump's position 71% of the time in Trump's first year in office, but by the end of Trump's presidency, Manchin had voted with the president only 50.4% of the time.

But would he really leave? There’s this from Wikipedia:

Before his Senate swearing-in in 2010, rumors suggested that the Republican Party was courting Manchin to change parties. Republicans later suggested that Manchin was the source of the rumors ...
As the 2016 elections approached, reports speculated that Manchin would become a Republican if the Senate were in a 50–50 tie, but he later said he would remain a Democrat at least as long as he remained in the Senate.

Maybe we can hold him to that, but I personally know people who don’t trust one word that comes out of his mouth.

But the question remains: Why is Manchin doing all this?

JOE MANCHIN’S FOSSIL FUEL CONNECTION

Come to think of it, yeah, that might have something to do with it!

With Enersystems, Inc., the little coal company he founded (although after becoming West Virginia Secretary of State, he handed control over to his son, Joe the fourth), Manchin has been helping fossil companies everywhere heat up the whole planet, but not in a good way.

When Joe Manchin was a West Virginia state senator in 1987 – which was, according to this New York Times story by Christopher Flavelle and Julie Tate, a “part-time job with base pay of $6,500” – developers approached him needing help building a power plant in nearby Grant Town:

Then he did something beyond routine constituent services. He went into business with the Grant Town power plant.
Mr. Manchin supplied a type of low-grade coal mixed with rock and clay known as “gob” that is typically cast aside as junk by mining companies but can be burned to produce electricity.
In addition, he arranged to receive a slice of the revenue from electricity generated by the plant — electric bills paid by his constituents.

You might think that’d be illegal, but apparently it’s not. But still, unethical? Could be, depending on who you ask.

This seems to have been “the beginning of a beautiful friendship” (assuming you speak Casablanca) that somehow grew into a life-long sweetheart deal with the whole fossil fuel industry that made him sort of rich, but still, you’d think, might be seen as a glaring conflict for a public official who regularly votes on issues involving keeping his planet clean.

According to the article on Manchin in Wikipedia, his political campaigns were also taken care of:

Manchin received the most funding from the oil and gas industry of any senator from May 2020 to May 2021, including $1.6 million in donations from fossil fuel PACs.

How much is he personally worth? According to Wikipedia:

In Manchin's financial disclosure for 2020, he reported that his non-public shares of Enersystems were worth between $1 million and $5 million and that between 2011 and 2020 he was paid $5,211,154 in dividend income from them.
In 2020, he received over $500,000 in dividends. Enersystems is 71% of Manchin's investment income and 30% of his net worth.

Since joining the Senate, he has also listed AA Properties as a non-public asset on his annual financial disclosures, reportedly controlling 50% of it, which is invested in a company that owns an Elkview, West Virginia, La Quinta Inn.

But also:

As of 2018, according to OpenSecrets.org, Manchin's net worth was more than $7.6 million. Manchin drives a Maserati and lives on a [high-priced] houseboat in the Potomac River when in Washington.

Yeah, but as a Democrat, Manchin’s probably a big supporter of cleaning up the environment, right?

(Should I assume by that question that you’re just trying to piss me off?)

In fact, Manchin is Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (I wonder if the Republicans would let him keep that job if they take over the Senate?) and he apparently “supports a comprehensive, ‘all-of-the-above’ energy approach that includes coal.” (Surprise!)

Here’s what he’s been up to, not just energy but also environmentally speaking:

“Manchin's first bill in the Senate dealt with what he called the EPA's overreach. After the EPA vetoed a previously approved permit for the Spruce Mine in Logan County, West Virginia, he offered the EPA Fair Play Act,” ... to prevent the EPA from "changing its rules on businesses after permits have already been granted."
“On October 6, 2010, Manchin directed a lawsuit” that "asks the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia to throw out the federal agency's new guidelines for issuing Clean Water Act permits for coal mines."
“Environmentalists have criticized Manchin for his family ties to the coal industry. ... Critics have said his opposition to health regulations that would raise industry expenses are due to his stake in the industry”, although back home in his state, The Charleston Gazette wrote, "the prospect that Manchin's $1.7 million-plus in recent Enersystems earnings might tilt him even more strongly pro-coal might seem remote, given the deep economic and cultural connections that the industry maintains in West Virginia."
“Manchin supports building the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada. He has said, ‘It makes so much common sense that you want to buy oil off your friends and not your enemies.’”
“In 2011, Manchin was the only Democratic senator to support the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which sought to prohibit the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas.”
“He was also one of four Democratic senators to vote against the Stream Protection Rule.”
“In 2012, Manchin supported a GOP effort to ‘scuttle Environmental Protection Agency regulations that mandate cuts in mercury pollution and other toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants’, while West Virginia's other senator, Jay Rockefeller, did not”.
“Manchin criticized Obama's environmental regulations as a "war on coal" and demanded what he called a proper balance between the needs of the environment and the coal business.” (Wouldn’t that be something like setting a “proper balance between the needs” of murder victims and their killers?)
“[He] has consistently stood up for coal, saying ‘no one is going to stop using fossil fuels for a long time.’”
“Manchin supported Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, saying he supported ‘a cleaner energy future’ but that the Paris deal failed to strike ‘a balance between our environment and the economy.’”
“In April 2018, Manchin and [fellow West Virginia Senator] Capito introduced” a bill to provide temporary tax credits to “existing coal-fired power plants”.
“In February 2021, Manchin was one of seven Democratic U.S. Senators to join Republicans in blocking a ban of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking”
“In 2021, Manchin opposed the ‘Clean Electricity Performance Program’ in the reconciliation bill, leading to its removal.”

I’m guessing he took offense to the word “Clean”?

And while we’re on the subject of being opposed to cleanliness, let’s look into the “Gob” that Joe Manchin’s company supplies to the Grant Town power plant (per Wikipedia):

Coal refuse (also described as coal waste, slag, coal tailings, waste material, culm, boney, or gob) is the material left over from coal mining, usually as tailings piles or spoil tips. ...
Piles of coal refuse can have significant negative environmental consequences, including the leaching of iron, manganese, and aluminum residues into waterways and acid mine drainage. The runoff can create both surface and groundwater contamination. The piles also create a fire hazard, with the potential to spontaneously ignite. Because most coal refuse harbors toxic components, it is not easily reclaimed by replanting with plants like beach grasses.
Gob (short for "garbage of bituminous") has about four times as much toxic mercury and more sulfur than typical coal.

Global Energy Monitor, according to Wikipedia, “catalogs fossil fuel and renewable energy projects worldwide. GEM shares information in support of clean energy and its data and reports on energy trends are widely cited by governments, media, and academic researchers.”

In fact, GEM has an interesting webpage on the Grant Town plant, although its last update was in January of this year, including a section headlined “Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Grant Town Power Plant”:

In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants. ...
The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions.
These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal's external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities.

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from the Grant Town Power Plant

Type of Impact / Annual Incidence / Valuation
Deaths 9 / $63,000,000
Heart attacks 14 / $1,500,000
Asthma attacks 130 / $7,000
Hospital admissions 6 / $150,000
Chronic bronchitis 5 / $2,200,000
Asthma ER visits 6 / $2,000

(I’m not sure, but those do seem to be estimates, not actual instances of death and disease.)

But, as was noted on that same page, the plant has not been doing well, having lost $117 million over the last five years, so:

In November 2021, the plant’s owner revealed a proposal in state documents to continue burning a mix of discarded shale, clay, and slurry dug out of nearby coal mines that closed years ago.
The electricity would be used to power high-speed computers for online cryptocurrency mining.

Yikes!

But then, in January, they announced that the crypto deal fell through.

Extreme heat and fires gripped other parts of Europe, too. [Photo captions]

“People look on as smoke rises from a wildfire in Faramontanos de Tábara, Spain, on Tuesday.”
“A nursing home resident with a drink in Chatelet, Belgium, on Tuesday.”
“Firefighters work to extinguish a forest fire near Thiendorf, north of Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday.”

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BUT HERE’S THE THING ...

All may not yet be lost (although that may just be wishful thinking), as reported by Bloomberg five days ago.

Biden Pushed to Seize 'Climate Emergency' Powers After Manchin Blocks Support

“With legislative climate options now closed, it’s now time for executive Beast Mode,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, in a tweet late Thursday.
Biden vowed Friday that he would “not back down” on climate action. “If the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” Biden said in a statement. “The opportunity to create jobs and build a clean energy future is too important to relent.”
But Biden faces a harsh truth: Federal regulations likely aren’t enough to meet the US pledge to at least halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Biden is also running out of time to advance new regulations. The 2024 presidential election is two years away, yet major rules targeting methane from oil wells and carbon dioxide from power plants are still in the planning stage.

And there’s even more optimism, although just a little, that renewable energy is finally becoming cheaper than the dirty scarce stuff that Republicans (and Manchin) keep promoting!

Here’s my favorite economist, Paul Krugman, discussing why some people, Republicans and otherwise, never seem to like good ideas for solving climate problems that you’d think both parties would jump at:

The good news is that spectacular technological progress in renewable energy may offer a foundation for an alternative political strategy, one based on carrots rather than sticks.
The idea — which underlay Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan — was to rely not on taxes but on subsidies and public investment to encourage a transition to clean energy. That way climate action could be framed not as sacrifice but as opportunity, a way to create new jobs wrapped up in a broader program of much-needed public investment.
The theory, which I naïvely subscribed to, was that such a strategy, while it might be less efficient than one centered on carbon taxes, would be much easier to sell to the American people, and that there would be at least a few Republican politicians willing to sign on to policies that promised concrete rewards for workers, contractors and so on, without imposing new burdens on their constituents.
But Republicans — and, of course, Manchin — were unmoved. I don’t think they were solely motivated by the desire to see Biden fail. They’re just deeply hostile to clean energy.

Maybe, as I reported recently, it’s because of their inherited red genes!

But what should we do with Manchin in the meantime? Krugman:

I don’t want to talk much about Manchin. In a few months he’ll probably be irrelevant, one way or another: The odds are either that Republicans will take the Senate or that Democrats, aided by the awfulness of many G.O.P. candidates, will gain some seats.

Oh, true! By then, Manchin should be finally out of the limelight and not so newsworthy.

Maybe after that, he can kick back, relax, and give us all a rest.

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