Let us start with a quote, often misattributed to Goethe:

“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

- William Hutchinson Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)

If you want a lesson in boldness, and to cross things off of your bucket list, there is no better teacher than Ben Nemtin.

His story, and that of the entire Buried Life team, is amazing.

It started with a list of 100 things and a planned two-week roadtrip. Along the way, Ben has somehow managed to play basketball with Obama, throw the first pitch at a Major League Baseball game, delivery a baby (not his), make the biggest roulette spin in Vegas’ history, and much more.

Most recently, they crossed off #19: Write a bestselling book. Their debut, What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?, just hit #1 on The New York Times, which will be announced officially April 15th. To celebrate? They’re sending a copy of the book into space.

It all seems unbelievable, which is exactly why I love this guest post from Ben.

This original content covers his 6 steps for crossing anything off of your personal bucket list. There is a method. Everyone needs a kick in the ass sometimes, and this did it for me.

Enter Ben

If there’s one thing I’m proud of, it’s being able to tell good stories.

Not because I’m a particularly good storyteller, but because I’ve been able to accumulate some amazing experiences in the last 5 and a half years.

It was 2006 when I first hit the road with my next-door neighbor, his younger brother, and a kid I knew from high school to accomplish a list we had created of 100 things to do before we died. We made a promise that for every item we crossed off, we’d help a total stranger do something they wanted to do before they died. To date, we’ve accomplished 81 items on our list and helped over 81 people.

In addition to those Tim mentioned in the intro, and among others, I’ve made a TV show, crashed the Playboy Mansion, streaked a stadium, been on Oprah, reunited a father and son after 17 years, made a $300,000 donation to charity, helped a girl find her mother’s grave for the first time, and am trying to help a college freshman find a new kidney (Need your help on this one: info here)…

Remember: 5 and a half years ago, I couldn’t tell any of these stories.

Our mission was supposed to be a two-week road trip. The four of us never expected it to be much more, and we certainly didn’t expect to be living it five years later. In the beginning, we didn’t tell our friends what we were doing because we didn’t know how to explain it. What we shared was really just a feeling: we were fed up and wanted something different. We decided to move forward without a real plan. A mechanic told us that the RV we’d borrowed wasn’t going to make it home; I had fabricated a wedding to get time off of work; and we pretended we owned a production company to raise money for a camera and gas for the RV. The only thing we knew for sure was that we would be taking two weeks off before going back to college. The plan: to try and accomplish as many items on our list as possible and help some people. We didn’t have a name for the project until Jonnie was assigned a poem in English 102 called “The Buried Life.” It was written 150 years ago but spoke to the same feeling we were having at the time: the desire to unbury our lives and do the things that were important to us, not what was expected of us. There were four lines that stood out from the rest:

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;

When I think back to this time now, I remember sitting on the curb beside our RV the night before we were supposed to leave. We were arguing about whether or not to cancel the trip, because if the camper broke down, we didn’t have enough money to tow it home. Five years later, I guess it’s safe to say we’ve gotten pretty good at accomplishing our dreams. I’d like to say that there’s something unique about us that makes us able to do these things, but the truth is the opposite. There is a formula and it’s simple.

The more items we cross off our list, the more we become convinced that anyone can do anything. The formula comes down to these six steps:

#1. Stop and think about it. Really think about it.

What is it that you really want to do with your life? Start a business? Reconnect with an old friend? Dive to the bottom of the ocean? Smoke a cigar with Castro? Forget what you think you should do, what excites you? What feels impossible? Be honest with yourself. Your answers don’t need to make an impression on anyone but you.

For many people, the four members of The Buried Life included, the impetus to make a life change only comes with crisis. The summer before we started The Buried Life, I was struggling with depression; Dave was struggling with his weight; Duncan had recently lost a close friend; and Jonnie was just plain angry and disillusioned with our generation (“No one protests anymore,” he used to say). The four of us were so beaten down that we had no choice but to reevaluate what was important to us. Our project grew out of that frustration. Sometimes it takes a debilitating low or a crushing loss to snap you back to reality, but don’t wait for it. Ferris Bueller put it well: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

#2. Write it down.

Simply put, it’s not real until you write it down. And by that I mean, take your dream and turn it into a project. Dreams have a funny way of staying dreams. But a project is something that needs to be done. Approach it as you would any other item on your daily or weekly to-do list. When you have a deadline— a presentation, a grocery list, a birthday gift you need to buy for someone–you find a way to get it done. Treat your dreams the same way. Add it to your list. You need to buy toilet paper. You need to spend the weekend in Paris with someone you love. When you write it down, you’ve taken the first step.

When we first started the project, we put things on the list almost as a joke. We didn’t think about whether they could actually happen; we just pretended that anything was possible. “#53: Make a TV Show” was a dream we’d shared since we were young. We had no filmmaking background and no connections in the business. And we lived on an island in Canada. We decided MTV in the States would be the place to have a show because it was the biggest and best platform we knew of for reaching people like us. So we wrote it down. And then we started filming it, because that was just the next logical step. Every step led to the next. Four years later, we were executive producers and creators of our own show on MTV.

#3. Talk about it.

Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone.

After you’ve come up with your list and written it down, start talking. Tell everyone you know. Tell your parents’ friends. Tell new people you meet. Talk to your cabdriver. Talk to your boss. You never know whose uncle’s wife may be able to help you. And don’t just talk about it, but talk about it passionately. Enthusiasm is infectious, and people want to help when given the chance. Help can show up in the most unusual places, oftentimes the least expected ones.

We didn’t come from money. We had an idea, we talked about it, and people showed up in incredible ways help us. Our first lawyer was our parent’s friend who had heard about what we were doing and offered to lend a hand; our first manager was my godmother; I met my first Hollywood contact while traveling in Mexico; we cold-called local companies in our hometown to raise money for our first tour. Help often came in strange places. In 2007 we were able to finagle a five-minute meeting with Jann Wenner, legendary founder of Rolling Stone magazine, in order to discuss what it would take to cross #15 off our list, “Get on the Cover of Rolling Stone.” The five-minute meeting turned into a 45-minute meeting (after Jann threatened to kick us out and asked his assistant for a knife), during which time we talked about everything from protests to Bob Dylan to the difference between our two generations. We told him about some of our most ambitious dreams, including “#19: Write a Bestselling Book.” Jann was later instrumental in helping us get our book published—introducing us to a company where we met the smartest, most talented, best-looking book editor alive (hi Lia), who eventually offered us a deal.

#4. Be persistent.

Most people give up just before they reach their goal. We all hear “No,” a lot, but we’ve come to realize that “No” usually just means “Not now.” Be creative in your persistence. Don’t piss people off by nagging them—think of innovative and clever ways to grab their attention. Be different, and never say die.

Last year, we broke into the Playboy Mansion. We rented a giant stripper cake and decorated it like it was for the Willy Wonka–themed party. Two of us dressed up like Oompa-Loompas and hid in the bottom of the cake, which was then delivered to the back door of the Playboy Mansion in a rented delivery truck. Security saw our homemade Playboy logo on the cake and allowed it to pass through the gates. After waiting inside the cake for six long hours (peeing in bottles and filming in night-vision), we hatched out unnoticed and partied at the Mansion all night with free rein. Security assumed we were just very rowdy employees.

Playboy had no idea we had been in and out, or that we had filmed our first episode. But when we went back a month later to ask for permission to air, they said, “If you air the episode, we’ll sue you and have you charged with breaking and entering.” We got ahold of the company’s vice president, and he echoed that sentiment. MTV told us to move on and film another episode. Our production company said there was nothing we could do. In a last ditch effort we decided to send Hugh Hefner a handwritten letter along with the rough cut of the episode. A week later, we received this response from Mr. Hefner himself: “You can air the episode. Just know I’m not very pleased with you boys.” I always thought that crashing the Playboy Mansion was my dream, but getting scolded by Hugh Hefner was way better.

#5. Be ballsy.

The majority of people don’t go after their wildest dreams because they think they’re unrealistic. Tim says it well: “Ninety-nine percent of people believe they can’t do great things, so they aim for mediocrity.” The level of competition is highest for realistic goals because most people don’t set high enough goals for themselves. But not only do you statistically have a better chance of achieving what may seem like an unrealistic goal, doing so fuels you. Once you feel the first high of accomplishing something major and seemingly unattainable, you want to go bigger and badder, and you force yourself to fulfill the need all the more. Even better, the technically smaller goals suddenly seem less daunting.

We put “#95: Play Ball with the President” on the list because it was literally the most unattainable goal we could think of. I remember Jonnie called me from his dorm room in Montreal in 2008 right after Barack Obama had been elected and Jonnie said, “We should add ‘Play Ball with Obama’ to the list.” I chuckled because it was so absurd and agreed. I found it humorous not only because the idea was so outrageous but also because I knew Jonnie was calling me from his “room,” a tiny space he was renting for $200 a month, which he shared with a washer and dryer. Of all people, we weren’t the best candidates for a pick up game with the leader of the Free World. Nonetheless, two years later we found ourselves shooting hoops with the President in the backyard of the White House. It’s a long, complicated story, and I don’t want to bore you with the details, but this is the kind of thing that the four of us chuckle about sometimes. It’s as if we have horseshoes up our butts, but it’s also happened too many times to be luck. When you dream big, you surprise yourself.

[TIM: I prodded Ben for the details about Obama, and it's anything but boring. Here's how it happened. First off, Obama only plays when Reggie Love is on the court. Reggie Love is the President's "body man" or, more formally, "special assistant and personal aide," and this b-ball detail made Reggie the man to look for. The gents called everyone they could think of (senators, legislators, etc.) who could e-mail or otherwise contact Reggie. He ultimately liked the idea, but, when passed up the flagpole, it was vetoed by the White House press team. The Buried Life had to end the "Obama" episode on a disappointing "To Be Continued..." Then, the crazy part: The President is up late one night, flips on the TV and randomly sees the end of the episode. Soon thereafter, someone approached Reggie at the White House: "POTUS is pissed." When Reggie asks POTUS what's wrong, he replies: "Why haven't I played basketball with The Buried Life guys?" Reggie explains that he ran it through the press team and they refused, to which Obama replies, "Let's make it happen." The next time the boys are in DC, Reggie invites them to check out the White House courts. While casually shooting around, the President strolls up and surprises all of them. After 20 minutes of hoops together, they ask the President, "What do you want to do before you die?" The answer? "Be an anchor on SportsCenter for a day."]

#6. Help others.

We’ve crossed off more than 80 list items over the last six years, but the moments that stand out the most are the ones when we’ve been able to step into someone’s life and share something real with them. I’ve been surprised by how little it takes to impact someone’s life. Something as simple as asking the question, “What do you want to do before you die?” and taking the time to listen is often all it takes. If you’re feeling lost or depressed, you might find what you’re looking for in someone else. Into the Wild said it best: “Happiness is only real when it’s shared.”

The first person we ever helped was a guy named Brent. He wrote to us in broken English saying his biggest dream was to bring pizzas down to the nearby homeless shelter. Brent had himself spent three years living in that shelter and remembered fondly the days people brought in food because those were the times it felt like someone gave a damn. When we talked with Brent in person, we learned that what he really needed was a truck. He had pulled himself out of the shelter by starting a business that relied on his truck, but it had just broken down. We knew we needed to help him find a new vehicle, but we didn’t have the money ourselves. This is the very first video we ever made, trying to track down a truck for Brent.

#7. Your Turn.

Your dreams are closer than they appear. There’s nothing about us four guys that makes us more able than anyone else to accomplish our goals, other than the simple fact that we’ve decided to go after them. George Elliot said, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Don’t wait. Why not start now? Post one thing you want to do before you die in the comments below.

The Buried Life is a community of 1,286,399 people answering the question: “What do you want to do before you die?”

How will you answer it?

Tim Ferriss

Go to Source

The 2012 campaign season is well under way, and we could use your help monitoring the candidates and potential candidates running for president, Congress and governor. We are asking you to consider becoming a “Spin Detector” for FactCheck.org. We want you to send us campaign materials — videos, robocalls, campaign fliers — that you suspect may contain false or misleading information, and we’ll check it out. We may even write about it.

For instance, we’re looking for videos of candidates making dubious claims at campaign appearances in your area. What events could you videotape? Candidate forums, stump speeches, campaign events or even casual conversations the candidates have with you and your neighbors as they walk about town shaking hands and kissing babies.

We also want to know about questionable claims made in campaign fliers mailed to your home, fundraising solicitations emailed to you, or robocalls left on your voice mail.

Click here to upload your videos. Directions and technical requirements can be found on the upload guidelines page.

Our staff regularly monitors the major public affairs programs; nationally televised speeches, debates and interviews; and the TV ads run by presidential, House and Senate candidates. Where we need your help is in covering local campaign events, and gathering targeted fundraising solicitations or voter persuasion messages that go unnoticed by the national press corps.

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Read the story

Keeping both sides honest

Looking back at the whole recession, men have lost many more jobs than women. But the biggest job losses for men came earlier in the recession, and recovery for men has come faster than it has for women.

With Romney under attack from the Obama campaign for policies it says are anti-woman (such as Romney’s opposition to abortion rights and support for federal de-funding of Planned Parenthood), Romney has tried to turn the tables, pointing to a statistic that shows the unemployment rate for women is recovering more slowly from the recession.

Here’s what Romney said in a Fox News interview on April 11 (at about the 5:45 mark):

Romney, April 11: He [Obama] has lost 800,000 jobs during his presidency. And by the way, do you know what percentage of those jobs lost were lost by women? Over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women. His policies have been, really, a war on women.

Romney’s statistic is accurate. It’s true, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that between January 2009, when Obama took office, and March 2012, there has been a net decline of 740,000 jobs for both men and women, and that among women there has been a net loss of 683,000 jobs. The Romney campaign did the math and calculated that 92.3 percent of the jobs lost under Obama were lost by women.

But is that a result of Obama’s policies, as Romney says? A look at this chart — which we created based on official Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly figures for seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment (the standard measure for jobs) — tells another story.

What the graph shows clearly, and the numbers back up, is that men took a bigger hit than women, and the decline in jobs for men began much earlier. The downturn in male employment began in May 2007 — a full seven months before the official start (in December 2007) of what became the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Female employment continued to rise for 10 months after the downturn in male employment, and it peaked in March 2008.

By the time Obama took office in January 2009, both male and female employment were in a steep decline that continued for over a year. Male employment hit bottom in February 2010, and female employment continued to slump for another seven months, bottoming out in September 2010. And as the chart clearly shows, the job recovery for women not only started later, the rate of recovery has been slower.

Why is that? “If you look back to the start of the recession, many of the industries (construction and manufacturing) that were very hard hit initially were male-dominated,” said Margot Dorfman, CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, in an interview with FactCheck.org.

It wasn’t until later that jobs like retail and government jobs, particularly teaching jobs, began to take a hit, affecting women more, Dorfman said. Those jobs have been slower to recover.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under George W. Bush, says Romney’s statistic isn’t properly focused. She notes that the unemployment rate for women has been about one full percentage point below the unemployment rate for men for much of the recession. It is only fairly recently that the gender gap has begun to close. The unemployment rate is now 8.3 percent for men, 8.1 percent for women.

“That’s why many people have called this a man-cession,” said Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Men have fared worse in the recession, she said, mainly because industries such as construction and manufacturing – male-dominated industries – have been harder hit than education and health care – female-dominated sectors.

Furchtgott-Roth said she couldn’t think of any Obama policies that have led to a slower recovery for women.

“Obama’s policies have been anti-growth,” she said. “But if anything, they have been anti-male jobs.”

For example, she said, his policies have hurt coal mining and oil drilling, which are typically male-dominated jobs, whereas the health care law will expand the health care industry, which should disproportionately help women.

“There’s an argument that some of the recent job losses have been from state and local governments,” said Dan Mitchell, an expert on fiscal policy issues at the libertarian Cato Institute. He said “women are disproportionately affected” now that federal stimulus funds no longer support state and local payrolls.

“At the same time, as the private sector slowly but surely gets back on its feet, men are benefiting since they suffered a disproportionate share of the jobs losses in recent years,” Mitchell said. “In other words, people are making too much out of short-term factors.”

Betsey Stevenson, a former chief economist for the Department of Labor under Obama, said that while men have fared somewhat better than women in the private sector, most of the phenomenon cited by Romney can be tied to a loss of government jobs.

About 78 percent of the decline in people on payrolls has been a decline in government employment, said Stevenson, now an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. And, she said, women have absorbed 76 percent of the net decline in government jobs.

“The recovery has not been particularly good for women, but a primary reason is the unprecedented decline in government jobs, particularly the loss of workers in education,” Stevenson wrote to us in an email. “It’s also the case that men bore the brunt of the job losses in the depths of the recession and are now yielding more of the benefits of jobs being added back in manufacturing and other areas where they experienced massive job loss.”

In addition, she said, men are also starting to compete with women in traditionally female jobs, “a transition that is necessary for our economy, but may cause some short run changes in employment.”

We asked the Romney campaign which policies Romney was specifically referring to when he said Obama’s policies amounted to a “war on women.” We got this response from campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul:

Saul, April 12: While women were losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands, President Obama chose to focus on an agenda of more taxes, more regulations, and more expensive energy that only made our economy weaker. When Obamacare discourages employers from hiring and raises taxes on innovative medical companies, women are hurt. When Dodd-Frank prevents banks from making loans to small businesses, women are hurt. When EPA regulations drive up electricity prices and the Department of Interior prevents oil drilling, women are hurt. Of course, all Americans want a strong, prosperous economy and opportunity for themselves and their families, and men have been hurt by the President’s agenda as well. The reality is, on the issues that matter to the American people, President Obama has been a total failure.

We’ll let readers judge the extent to which Obama’s tax policy, energy policy, financial services regulation and health care legislation have affected the economic recovery. In none of that, however, could we discern an explanation for why women would be affected more than men.

– Robert Farley

Read the story

Keeping both sides honest

Great surgeons don’t need to be respectful or have a talented, kind or alert front desk staff. They’re great at the surgery part, and you’re not here for the service, you’re here to get well (if you believe that the surgery part is what matters). In fact, gruffness might be a clue to their skill for some.

Great opera singers don’t have to be reasonable or kind. They sing like no one else, that’s why you hired them, and why they get to (are expected to) act like divas. Get over it.

So the thinking goes.

The traditional scarcity model implied some sort of inverse relationship between service and quality. Not for service businesses like hotels, of course, but for the other stuff. If someone was truly gifted, of course they didn’t have the time or focus to also be kind or reasonable or good at understanding your needs. A diva was great partly because, we decided, she was a jerk.

I think that’s changing, possibly forever, for a bunch of reasons:

• The state of the art is now easier to find. Word spreads about behavior and service faster than ever. As a result, customers quickly become aware of what a raw deal they’re getting from this supposedly gifted individual.
• It’s so much easier to deliver better service (Dr. Diva, please send me an email if you’re running late!) that we’re far less forgiving.
• Since just about any intelligent and caring person can use technology and a bit of humility to deliver better service (see above), we start to wonder whether that diva provider actually is intelligent and caring. And if he isn’t, it doesn’t really matter if he has some sort of skill, because uncaring hands are worth avoiding.
• With fewer great gigs available (even in opera), it’s not so easy act like a jerk (or be insulated and uncaring) and still get work.

by Seth Godin
Go to Source

Wrestling with a puzzle, a project or a problem, the likeliest reason to give up is the belief that it can’t be done. What’s the point of persevering if it’s actually impossible to succeed?

“It can’t be done,” we say, throwing up our hands. Not “I can’t do it,” or “It’s not worth my time,” but “It can’t be done.”

In the year after Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, the record was broken again and again. Once people realized it could be done, it wasn’t an impossible task any longer. And that’s why there’s a flood of tablets on the market, many from companies that had what they needed to build the first one, but didn’t until Apple showed them the way.

Two things you might take away from this: First, there’s solace in finding someone who has done it before, whatever “it” is you’re trying to do. Knowing that it’s possible and studying how it was done can’t help but increase the chances you’ll stick it out.

Second: huge value accrues to the few able to actually do a thing for the very first time.

by Seth Godin
Go to Source

In a move that could impact non-labor groups engaged in direct action, picketing, or protest, Georgia’s Senate Bill 469 includes felony penalties for “criminal trespass” and, unbelievably, “conspiracy to commit criminal trespass”–the punishment being a $10,000 fine or a year in jail, or possibly both. That this is specifically included in a bill that cracks down on organizations’ right to picket outside a workplace or company seems to indicate that a union or other group engaged in picketing could be charged with a crime for the activity of one member who crosses the line.

And in the bill, the line is pretty nebulous. The bill has this to say about what would constitute “unlawful” picketing:

It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in mass picketing at or near any place, including private residences, where a labor dispute exists in such number or manner as to obstruct or interfere with or constitute a threat to obstruct or interfere with the entrance to or egress from any place of employment or the free and uninterrupted use of public roads, streets, highways, railroads, airports, or other ways of travel, transportation, or conveyance.

What’s that mean? “Constitute a threat to obstruct or interfere with” could be interpreted pretty broadly, and leaves a lot of discretion up to police on the scene–or to business owners, who could have picketers removed by claiming they presented a “threat.” But that’s not all:

A person, or organization that he or she is affiliated with or acting on behalf of, commits an offense when he or she engages in targeted picketing of a private residence that has or intends the effect of interfering with the resident’s right to quiet enjoyment, or when such targeted picketing has or intends the effect of violence or intimidation.
I wasn’t aware that one’s right to “quiet enjoyment” trumps the First Amendment. These provisions would seem to target, in addition to labor unions, movements like Occupy that have engaged in actions both at businesses and at private residences.

Along with the attacks on unions and other protest groups’ right to peaceably assemble, the bill also includes a slew of provisions to make it clear that the already right-to-work-for-less state isn’t going to make it easy for workers to join unions. “Right-to-work” already makes sure that workers don’t have to even pay their share of the costs of representation, despite requiring the union to bargain for all employees in a union shop. The new bill would reiterate this, and require private employers to post notices in the workplace reminding workers that they have the “right” not to join the union. (In other words, it mandates anti-union information being posted in the workplace; management will no doubt be happy to comply.)

It also requires workers to certify in writing every year that yes, they really do want their boss to deduct their union representation fees and dues from their paycheck.

Eric Robertson, Georgia Teamsters Local 728 Political Director, told AlterNet, “This bill is obviously a an attack on working people and anyone who believes in organizing for justice. It undermines civil liberties, and clearly is designed to cripple working peoples’ ability to organize and build organizationations to improve their working conditions. Labor, civil rights and community organizations, and our allies are going to have to play hardball to beat this bill.”

Thanks to @JimNichols and @erictheteamster via Twitter for bringing this to our attention.

The wind-power lobby is spinning the facts in a $1.4-million TV ad campaign aimed at extending a lucrative tax break worth billions to the industry.

• Its ads claim that Congress is “threatening new taxes” targeting wind power, which isn’t true. No “new taxes” are envisioned. Instead, Congress is considering whether or not to renew an existing $1.3-billion-a-year tax break that expires at the end of 2012.
• The industry is also claiming that wind energy is “on track” to support half a million new jobs within 20 years. Maybe so. But those jobs “would displace jobs and economic activity elsewhere,” according to the very study cited by the wind lobby.

The debate over the tax break couldn’t be coming at a worse time for the wind-power industry. Falling natural gas prices are already bringing stiff competition from gas-fired electric plants, making some wind-power projects economically uncompetitive even with the advantage of a tax subsidy.

And although there is some bipartisan support for extending the tax break for wind power, several Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Paul Ryan, are pushing to repeal all existing tax breaks for “renewable” energy sources — including the credit for wind power.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s scandal-plagued loan guarantee to Solyndra Corp. has made federal support for renewable energy projects in general a political target for Republicans. Already the Republican-leaning Crossroads GPS group is running ads calling the president’s green-energy program a “disgrace” and calling on Congress to “shut it down.”

But the Crossroads ads also strain the facts. For example, they cite an inflated figure for the Obama administration’s loan guarantees and grants to “clean energy” firms owned by Obama campaign backers. The figure came from a conservative author, but Crossroads misleadingly attributes it to a respected news magazine.

Note: This is the first in an occasional series of stories on deceptive advertising campaigns by lobbying groups.

Analysis

The American Wind Energy Association’s ad, titled “Weld by Weld,” has been running in 11 states at an estimated cost of $1.4 million so far, according to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. Variations of the ad target specific Republican House members with the anti-tax, pro-jobs message.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏

AWEA Ad: Weld by Weld

Announcer: Piece by piece. Weld by weld. American manufacturing jobs are coming back. With tens of thousands of new jobs from wind energy. But now, these jobs could vanish. Congress is threatening new taxes, targeting the wind power industry; crippling an American manufacturing success story, and sending our jobs to foreign countries.

A bipartisan team is fighting to save American wind power jobs. Log on. Join us. Fight for American  jobs.

(On screen: “STOP THE JOB-KILLING TAX www.SaveUSAWindJobs.com”)

No ‘New Taxes‘

Despite the claim of the AWEA, Congress is not “threatening new taxes” against wind energy. Congress is considering H.R. 3307, which would extend tax credits for energy production from a variety of renewable energy sources, but most immediately for wind power.

This tax credit, first enacted in 1992, offers a tax rebate of 2.2 cents for each kilowatt-hour of energy produced for the first 10 years of electricity production from utility-scale turbines powered by renewable sources. Wind farms put into service after the end of 2012 won’t qualify for the credit under existing law. H.R. 3307 would extend that deadline by four years.

The tax credit is a multibillion-dollar prize for the industry. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation projects that it will reduce federal revenue by $1.3 billion in the current fiscal year, $1.4 billion in fiscal 2013 and $1.5 billion the following year.

Losing this benefit for future wind farms almost certainly would hurt the industry’s business. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists — which backs federal support for renewable energy — the credit has been allowed to expire for a while on three occasions in the past, followed in each case by a sharp drop in installation of new generating capacity. “This ‘on-again/off-again’ status contributes to a boom-bust cycle of development that plagues the wind industry,” the UCS states.

This time the industry faces stiff opposition from many free-market conservatives. A bill by Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas would repeal all such energy tax credits — including the one for wind power. That bill now carries the names of 18 additional cosponsors, all Republicans, including Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The repeal also has the support of the anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform and several other conservative groups.

Support for extending the credits is bipartisan, but leans heavily Democratic. The legislation is sponsored by Republican Rep. Dave Reichert of Washington state, but only 15 of the 64 additional cosponsors are Republican. So the wind lobby is scrambling to pick up additional GOP support with its “new taxes” pitch.

The most recent variation of the wind lobby’s ad targets freshman GOP Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas, for example. The 15-second spot started running in Little Rock on Feb. 6, asking “Where does Congressman Tim Griffin stand?” An on-screen graphic asks, “Is he protecting American wind jobs?”

Similar 15-second versions began running earlier in the districts of freshmen GOP Reps. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania and Bobby Schilling of Illinois (a Tea Party favorite). In all, according to CMAG, the main 30-second ad or shorter versions have run in 11 states — Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and West Virginia.

But however much the wind lobby feels the need to line up Republican support in the House, in our judgment it does not justify the deceptive tactic of passing off an expiring tax break as “new taxes.”

Inflated Jobs Claim

The wind lobby is also making puffed-up claims about jobs, based on a 2008 study that the industry itself helped put together. It focuses only on potential winners — and ignores the potential losers.

The claim appears on the AWEA’s website (to which viewers of its TV ads are directed) and also popped up Feb. 8 in a print ad that ran in the newspaper Politico, which is widely read in Washington and on Capitol Hill.

“[E]xperts say half a million more jobs could be created here in the next 20 years,” the ad says. The website urges visitors to “Join the fight to protect 500,000 new American jobs.”

But that figure is exaggerated, in a number of ways. Most important, it is a projection only of jobs directly and indirectly supported by a vastly expanded wind industry — without accounting for the many jobs that would be lost in other industries, such as the mining and transportation of coal and the production of natural gas.

The half-million estimate comes from a 2008 report issued by the Department of Energy, and it was never intended to be an official prediction. It was, to quote the report, a “scenario” produced in a “joint effort with industry” (including the AWEA), asking whether it would be “feasible” for 20 percent of U.S. electricity to come from wind power by the year 2030.

That would be a huge increase. Wind power supplied less than 3 percent of the nation’s electricity in the most recent 12 months on record, according to a report issued in January by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, even after several years of rapid growth fueled by the tax credit and by funds from the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus bill.

The 2008 report concluded that the 20 percent goal was “ambitious” but “could be feasible” if “significant challenges” could be overcome. And in that case, the report said, “the wind industry could support 500,000 jobs” in the years after 2020. (See page 209, figure C7.) Only 150,000 of those would be “direct jobs” such as construction or operation of wind farms, and the rest would be from presumed “ripple effect” jobs in other industries.

But even assuming the “optimistic” prediction turns out to be accurate, it doesn’t mean that anywhere near 500,000 jobs would be added to the U.S. economy. As the study itself said, rapid growth in wind-power jobs will come at the expense of other jobs.

Buried on page 199 of the study, in “Appendix C” is this admission (with our emphasis added):

Energy Department Study, July 2008: Ramping up wind capacity and electricity output from wind would displace jobs and economic activity elsewhere. However, identifying such transfers accurately would be very difficult. Therefore, the impacts cited here do not constitute impacts to the U.S. economy overall but are specific to the wind industry and related industries.

Those job costs could be significant. The AWEA’s website contains a one-page summary of the study, saying that if wind power expands to supply 20 percent of U.S. electricity, that would displace about half the natural gas used to generate electric power, amounting to 11 percent of all natural gas used across all industries. Coal consumption would be affected even more dramatically, reduced by 18 percent. The report didn’t attempt to estimate the direct and “ripple effect” job losses in those industries.

And it’s not certain that the industry can reach its ambitious 20 percent goal, even if the tax credit is renewed. Since 2008, the supply of natural gas has grown dramatically, pushing down prices and making gas-fired electric plants “the cheapest option for new power generation,” according to a recent report by Bloomberg News. The wholesale price of electricity has plunged 50 percent since 2008, and some wind projects are already being cancelled. Bloomberg reported that the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc., “has shelved plans for new U.S. wind projects next year.”

Conservative Counter Spin

Meanwhile, conservative opponents of federal help for renewable energy are engaging in some spin of their own.

Pompeo, for example, says his bill, H.R. 3308, will repeal “all energy tax credits.” In an op-ed piece he co-authored after he introduced the bill, he said: “It is equal opportunity — not one single solitary tax credit would survive this bill.” But that’s not the whole story.

He’d repeal all “credits,” maybe, but not all energy tax breaks. He would still leave intact some long-standing tax preferences for the oil and gas industries, including the expensing of exploration and development costs, the depletion allowance, and amortization of geological expenses. Those three are worth a total of $1.8 billion to the oil and gas industries this year alone, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (page 34). So when Pompeo writes that he’d “do away with energy subsidies once and for all,” he doesn’t include some valuable breaks that benefit the “drill, baby, drill” crowd.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s Solyndra scandal is encouraging partisan attacks on “green” energy subsidies in general. A new ad from Crossroads GPS claims that President Barack Obama’s administration awarded “billions” to clean energy companies that backed his 2008 campaign, which is true enough. But the ad deceptively attributes some dollar figures to Newsweek, when, in fact, they come from a conservative author’s book. Newsweek ran an excerpt. 

This is the second ad from the Republican-leaning Crossroads GPS attacking Obama for his involvement with Solyndra — the now-bankrupt solar company that got a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. This one is titled “Every Level” and is backed by a $500,000 buy on national cable TV.

⬐ Click to expand/collapse the full text ⬏

Crossroads GPS ad: “Every Level”

Narrator: He [Obama] promised …

Obama: We’re investing in a clean energy economy, with the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs …

Narrator: Then he gave his political backers billions, a big government fiasco, infused with politics at every level. $500 million to Solyndra, now bankrupt. Nearly $100 million to a pet project teetering on default. Laid off workers forgotten. Typical Washington. Tell President Obama we need jobs, not more insider deals. Crossroads GPS is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

The TV ad’s claims are echoed in a print ad that Crossroads GPS ran in The Hill and in Politico — two newspapers widely read by members of Congress and their staffs. The print ad makes a lobbying pitch: “Investigate It. Clean It Up. SHUT IT DOWN.”

The “it” in the print ad refers to “President Obama’s ‘green energy’ program,” which the ad calls “a disgrace” that is “sticking taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans.”

$16.4 Billion?

Central to both ads is a claim that Obama gave “$16.4 billion … to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” But we find that figure is both inflated and from a partisan source that Crossroads obscures with deceptive attribution.

The ad cites Newsweek as the source of the figure, but the magazine was just publishing an excerpt from the book “Throw Them All Out,” by conservative writer Peter Schweizer. A former foreign policy adviser for Sarah Palin and speech-writing consultant for the George W. Bush administration, Schweizer is now a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.

In checking Schweizer’s $16.4 billion claim, we found it to be too high by nearly $6 billion. In his book, Schweizer lists 25 companies he says were headed by “Obama bundlers, large donors and supporters” who he said received a total of $16.4 billion in loan guarantees.

Schweizer says in his book that all of that came from the Department of Energy’s 1705 program (which awarded stimulus dollars for renewable energy systems, electric power transmission systems and leading-edge biofuels projects). But by our count, only seven of the 25 companies on Schweizer’s list got 1705 loan guarantees. And they totaled about $3.7 billion, not $16.4 billion.

We did find that some companies on Schweizer’s list got aid from other federal clean-energy programs, but not enough to total $16.4 billion. For example, two firms got DOE loan guarantees through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program. But those companies — Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors — secured less than $1 billion.

In all, the Department of Energy reported clean energy loans of only about $4.7 billion to firms on Schweizer’s list. Some others on the list got loans or grants through other programs with the Department of Agriculture and Treasury Department.

There are other problems as well. Four of the companies on Schweizer’s list received conditional commitments for loan guarantees but never ultimately got the money (either because they were unable to provide necessary documentation in time to meet application deadlines, or because they decided to seek private, commercial financing). Schweizer told us he included them because “that doesn’t undermine the point that political connections helped at the federal level.” That may be, but the ad claims the companies received the money, and they did not. Schweizer also claimed Summit Texas Clean Energy got $1.5 billion in federal aid, which isn’t so. In fact, the Department of Energy provided the company $450 million in grants, for a $1.7 billion project financed mostly by industry. Together, those factors inflated Schweizer’s figure by nearly $6 billion.

We asked Schweizer about the problems with his figures. He responded via email: “There are other companies besides those mentioned in the book that got money. It’s not presented as a complete list.” But he did not supply the “complete list” for us to validate.

One more thing: Some of those listed as Obama backers also gave substantial sums to Republicans.

Pay to Play?

The Crossroads ad correctly cites a Washington Post analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal emails that concluded the green-technology program was “infused with politics at every level.” But the Post story didn’t document any corrupt pay-to-play scheme, as viewers might well be led to think from the ad. Instead, the “politics” described by the Post involved the backing of financially shaky companies to push the administration’s green agenda, not rewarding campaign donors. The story says: “The records do not establish that anyone pressured the Energy Department to approve the Solyndra loan to benefit political contributors.”

There’s a criminal investigation under way of Solyndra’s executives, and Republican-led House investigators are still on the case. So new revelations could emerge in the future. But so far what’s been documented is evidence of questionable business judgments or wishful thinking about the economic viability of solar energy, not of any outright payola or quid pro quo.

A final comment: The sort of exaggerated claims we document here, on both sides, have been common fare in Washington lobbying battles for decades. And in recent years, these deceptive tactics have increasingly spilled out in advertising aimed at the public, in the hope that constituents will be persuaded to pressure their senators and representatives to vote the way the special interests want. So we are launching with this piece a new “Lobby Watch” series. We’ll follow up with other articles as the occasion warrants.

– by Brooks Jackson, Rob Farley and Scott Blackburn

Sources

The Library of Congress. “Bill Text, 112th Congress (2011-2012) H.R.3307.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Taxation. “Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 2011-2015.” 17 Jan 2012.

Union of Concerned Scientists. “Production Tax Credit for Renewable Energy.” 13 Sep 2011.

Govtrack.us. “H.R. 3308: Energy Freedom and Economic Prosperity Act.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

U.S. Department of Energy. “20% Wind Energy by 2030; Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to U.S. Electric Supply.” July 2008.

Johnson, Julie and Mark Chedia. “Electricity Declines 50% as Shale Spurs Natural Gas Glut: Energy.” Bloomberg News. 17 Jan 2012.

Rep. Pompeo, Mike and Rep.Raul R. Labrador. “Era of energy subsidies is over: American consumers, not Congress, should choose best power sources.” The Washington Times. 26 Nov 2011.

U.S. Department of Energy, Loan Programs Office. “Solyndra, Inc.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

Crossroads GPS. “Crossroads GPS Launches New TV Ad on Solyndra Fiasco,” press release. 1 Feb 2012.

Schweizer, Peter. “Obama Campaign Backers and Bundlers Rewarded With Green Grants and Loans.” 12 Nov 2011.

Vogel, Peter. “Sarah Palin PAC fundraising craters.” Politico. 31 Jan 2012.

U.S. Department of Energy, Loan Programs Office. “Our Projects.” Accessed 8 Feb 2012.

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance. “EIS-0444: Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP), Ector County, Texas.” Final Environmental Impact Statement. 5 Aug 2011.

Restuccia, Andrew. “First Solar CEO steps down.” The Hill. 25 Oct 2011.

Stephens, Joe and Carol D. Leonnig. “Solyndra: Politics infused Obama energy programs.” Washington Post. 25 Dec 2011.

Restuccia, Andrew and Ben Geman, “White House sends GOP another batch of Solyndra documents.” The Hill. 13 Jan 2012.

Woody, Todd. “Why A Solar Developer Turned Down $2.1 Billion From The Government.” Forbes. 18 Aug 2011.

Department of Energy. Press release: DOE Offers $2.1 Billion Conditional Commitment Loan Guarantee, Support Solar Thermal Power. 18 Apr 2011.

Martin, Christopher. “SolarCity Loan Guarantee Rejected by U.S. in Wake of Solyndra’s Bankruptcy.” Bloomberg News. 24 Sep 2011.

Department of Energy. “Obama Administration Offers $59 Million in Conditional Loan Guarantees to Beacon Power and Nordic Windpower, Inc.” 02 Jul 2009.

Department of Energy. Secretary Chu Announces Two New Projects to Reduce Emissions from Coal Plants. 01 Jul 2009.

Restuccia, Andrew. “First Solar CEO steps down.” The Hill. 25 Oct 2011.

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