Raphael and Trump

If you have been following the National Hurricane Center’s coverage of Raphael for the last couple of days, you can see how difficult it is to predict the future. A storm that was originally ‘predicted’ to possibly hit the Southeast coast of Louisiana this weekend, now looks to be headed to the Bay of Campeche. This morning, the NHC noted:

“This steering evolution would cause Rafael to turn more southward, and this is shown by the dynamical model consensus track prediction.  The new official forecast is adjusted to the left of the previous NHC track but is not as far south as the consensus.  The motion is likely to be quite slow during the latter part of the forecast period.  There remains significant uncertainty [emphasis added] in the future track of Rafael over the Gulf of Mexico and additional adjustments to subsequent official track forecasts are likely.”

The National Hurricane Center has gotten much better with its forecasts of the last couple of years, but forecasting is still less than an exact science. They look at a complex mix of atmospheric and oceanic forces, try to determine what interactions are going to have what effect, and then make a seven day prediction of the future. The important thing, however, is that once the prediction is published, they start all over working on the next one.

The people on the central Gulf Coast have been watching Raphael with trepidation, but as the track has shifted, they have become less concerned about the possible future effects of the storm. But, the more experienced know that hurricane prediction is fraught with complexities, and know that they will have to keep an eye on Raphael until it dissipates. And meanwhile watch out for the potential storm that may be forming further to the East.

Political forecasting has many of the same problems. There are a wide variety of elements that go into political forecasting, and the interaction of those elements changes daily, and frequently more often. To make matters worse, most of those elements track changes in their environment and make decisions that further change over time. Anyone that tells you that they know what is going to happen in the future is fooling themselves. The most any of us can do is look at the past and present and make some level of educated guess about what people are going to do tomorrow. And watch what changes on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis and make revisions as necessary.

A lot of people are disappointed, and even fearful about what happened on November 5^th. There are a lot of dire predictions about what the political future will bring. All of those predictions are based on past statements and actions, all of which have probative value. But the future is more complex than the past. People are going to react in different ways based upon their judgements of past and present actions. All of that is going to have an effect (positive and negative) on the future. And those effects are going to have further effects down the line.

Take a deep breath, hold and exhale through your mouth. Make the best judgments that you can but be prepared to revise as the situation changes over time. Remember, nothing is constant except change. 

New PIRG Report

Yesterday the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) published a new report as part of a continuing campaign to convince Congress to pass comprehensive chemical security legislation that includes a requirement for high-risk facilities to consider possible inherently safer technology. Along with other members of the Green Coalition, they also want that legislation to include authority for DHS to be able to require the highest risk facilities to implement such IST techniques. Most of the chemical facility information included in this report is simply an updating of the information that was included in a two year old report by the Center for American Progress, Chemistry 101. In fact this report credits the author of that earlier report, Paul Orum, for the facility information in this report. As in the earlier report the information has been compiled from information provided by the facilities to the Environmental Protection Agency as the facility ‘worst case scenarios’. Decrying Political Spending What is relatively new in this report is the compilation of information on lobbying efforts by the chemical industry. The information is a compilation of reported spending by the chemical industry (in particular the most ‘dangerous’ 14 companies identified in the report) and their political action committees. In particular the report looks at spending intended to influence the two House Committees and two Senate Committees looking at chemical security legislation. There is no claim of illegal spending in this report. But the authors do complain at great length about the ability of corporations to spend money to influence law makers that potentially can control the business environment in which the companies must operate. They failed to note that the ‘corrupting influence’ of this spending completely failed to stop the House Homeland Security Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee from passing HR 2868. HR 2868 was vociferously opposed by the ‘big spending’ chemical industry, even in its ‘weakened’ final form and still it passed. So much for the influence of industry and its big money. Revolving Door Lobbyists The final area that this report addresses is the influence of former congressional aids and staff working for chemical lobbying organizations. They list 20 former committee staff members or congressional staff members that work for the lobbying organizations representing the 14 ‘dangerous’ companies, chemical trade organizations, or their political action committees. Looking at the list of 20 former staffers provided in the report, it is interesting to note that only three of them came from offices of Republican legislators. Presumably the staffers of Democrats are not only selling their influence but they sold their souls to get these jobs, forgoing the ‘liberal’ agenda that they supported while working for members of Congress. It would be interesting to see how many former congressional staffers currently work for the various members of the Blue-Green Coalition that recently petitioned the Senate Homeland Security Committee to support HR 2868 as passed in the House. Now I can certainly agree that there is some concern with people in the Executive Branch going from a regulating agency to working for companies that they used to regulate. That calls into question the fairness of the regulation process, wondering if the regulators were shopping for jobs by going easy on their prospective employers. I can even understand (though I’m not sure I share the same concerns) why people might get concerned about powerful politicians retiring and going to work for lobbying organizations. The friends and contacts that a politician builds up over a lengthy political career would certainly give that person an advantage over other lobbyists. I’m not sure that their former political influence still transfers to the new job. What I do not understand is the concern about staffers working for lobbyists. The process knowledge and networking connections that staffers bring to the lobbying process is certainly valuable for the lobbying firm. And staffers certainly have some influence on the thinking of the Congressperson that they work for, but that influence would not be expected to extend much beyond that single office. Even then it would be diminished after the staffer leaves for private employment. Political Process I always get concerned when someone involved in the political process starts to complain about the influence of lobbyists, or lawyers, or corporations, or labor, or environmentalists on the legislative process. All of these groups have legitimate interests in the various laws and regulations established by the government. They all try to influence the process to obtain an outcome in line with their particular interests. That is the way that politics works, the way that it is supposed to work. Ideas compete in the political market place and are modified in the process. Different groups use different methods to advance their point of view; methods appropriate to their message and ideals. The political discussion is supposed to be about the message, the ideas. When those involved in the political process start to concentrate on the personalities or methods of the opposition, one begins to wonder about the convictions of their ideas. Complaining about the political tools used by the opposition will have no affect on the discussion of the issues. This document will certainly be talked about in the process. I don’t think that it will have as much influence on the discussion at the CAP document did two years ago. That earlier document pointed out the same problems at chemical facilities, but offered practical solutions. It even acknowledged that those solutions would not be applicable at all facilities. This report does not spend as much time on the issue at hand and only briefly addresses the proposed alternatives, so it will have less of an impact on the discussion of that issue. And that is a shame since the issue of alternative chemicals and processes certainly needs to be discussed.

Adjourned Sine Die

Congress finally completed their work on December 24th and adjourned for the remainder of the year. Unfortunately the only work they completed on the chemical security front was to include a one year extension of the authorization for the CFATS regulations in the DHS budget bill. The House did pass two authorization bills for DHS components (TSA and the Coast Guard) and HR 2868, the Chemical and Water Security Act of 2009. With Congress adjourned and members back in their districts, many of my readers will be taking a vacation for the next two weeks. I’ll be spending more time on some other projects that I have been working on. But this blog won’t be adjourned. There could still be significant news in chemical security to look at, so I’ll still be watching for that. CFATS Legislation The Senate Homeland Security Committee staff will continue working on HR 2868 in the coming weeks. The staffs of Sen. Collins and Sen. Lautenberg are supposed to be working on preparing CFATS re-authorization of their own to counter their very divergent views of the problems with the House bill. The issue that will continue to be the most contentious in this area will be the Inherently Safer Technology (IST) requirements. Last year, before the HR 2868 language became available, I wrote a series of blogs about the IST issue. This week, I will be re-posting those blogs. I think that they can contribute to the work that continues to be done in the (at least) three Senate staffs currently working on this issue. Politics of Re-Elections One last political reminder to readers of this blog; if you thought politics was contentious this year, you haven’t seen anything yet. The first session of the 111th Congress was marked by party division. The second session of any Congress is always more affected by pre-election posturing by both parties; this one will certainly follow that model. The party-line division will, if anything, get worse in the lead up to October. While major issues drew a lot of ‘conflict press’ in the first session, there were a number of issues where there was bipartisan support for less controversial legislation. The number of such bipartisan bills will probably be reduced during the second session and will draw even less press coverage. What were minor disagreements last session will become ‘stands on principal’ this session as part of the Congressional re-election process. Fortunately for the chemical security community, this will be less evident in the Senate because less than 1/3rd of the Senate is up for re-election this year. That means that most Senators will probably not be looking at their short-term re-election benefit when deciding how to vote on HR 2868. Hopefully, that will allow for some reasonable compromises on IST and other issues.

Reader Comment – 11-23-09 – SOCMA Reply

It did not take long for William Almond, a Vice-President for SOCMA, to reply to yesterday’s blog about the efficacy of their recent efforts to block the passage of HR 2868. Since legislative liaison is one of his responsibilities with SOCMA, his comments are well worth reading. Bill’s comments are too lengthy to be totally reproduced here, but they are available at the end of yesterdays post and should be read by anyone interested in the politics of chemical security or HR 2868 in particular. Political Efficacy Bill did write, in the beginning of his response, that:

“The fact that any Democrats voted against HR 2868 was a welcomed development. You are the only one that I know of who seemed to think that it wasn't particularly surprisingly. If SOCMA had members in all 21 Democratic districts, perhaps our success rate would have been higher. But we are quite pleased with our ability to utilize our grassroots to help swing votes in districts where we do have members [emphasis added]. We don't have members in all 21 districts that voted against HR 2868, so, of course, we can't make a case that we helped impact the vote for the other districts.”

No, I wasn’t surprised that there were Democrats that voted against the bill. The chemical industry is large (very large when you define chemical facilities the way that CFATS does) and employees large numbers of people around the country. The chemical industry has done a good job of making their opposition to HR 2868 well known, especially its potential impact on jobs. Right now jobs are a pretty big issue. The Democratic Party has seldom been able to muster total control of their legislators on any measures other than those at the very core beliefs of their members. Chemical Facility Security has never been that high a priority for the House Leadership. With more than enough votes to pass the bill, there was no major effort to maintain a party line vote on this measure outside of the two committees drafting the legislation. I will admit that I did not take into account the number districts that were involved in the grassroots lobbying effort when I calculated the efficacy of the SOCMA effort; that number was not available in the article that I was looking at and was not mentioned in Bill’s response. That number would certainly give a better analysis of the efficacy of that effort. If 20 representatives had been targeted and 2 changed their votes, that would have given some heart to the other participants in the program. But, then again, that wasn’t what the article was bragging about; it bragged about the changing of two votes. As I was pointing out, changing two votes out of more than two hundred was not particularly impressive, especially since a total of 40 Democratic votes were needed to change the outcome. Bill does make the point that the “fact that Democrats voted against HR 2868 gives us momentum going into the Senate”. I’m not sure that I agree with that political calculus, particularly in regards to grassroot efforts like the one mentioned in the referenced article. Grassroot efforts by smaller organizations, businesses or political interest groups, do not have as much sway in Senate campaigns as they do in House races; too many votes and too much money to run a campaign. That, of course, changes in very close races, especially if the targeted member is influential. If SOCMA has a couple of member facilities in Nevada, for instance, their talking to Sen. Reid may be more effective than pressuring a Senator that road into office on President Obama’s coat tails and won’t be up for re-election for five more years. Political Strategy One of the things that has concerned me about SOCMA’s campaign against HR 2868 (and the Greenpeace campaign in favor of the bill) is that, publicly at least it has been an all or nothing effort. SOCMA has been very vocal in support of a straight re-authorization of §550. They have been equally adamant in their opposition to HR 2868 with special attention against IST and Citizen Suits. While I understand their position, and in fact agree with large portions of it, I am also aware that politics is the art of the achievable. In the current world, there is no way that Congress is going to re-authorize CFATS as it stands today. There are just too many dangerous holes in the coverage of that program and almost no protections of legitimate worker’s rights. What industry needs to do is look at the provisions of HR 2868 that offend them, and there were certainly some doozies included in the original draft, and find a way to make them practical. One example is the changes made to the citizen suit provisions. This is one of the areas where ACC has taken some credit (which has been acknowledged publicly in committee and on the floor of the House) for helping to get rid of some potentially disastrous language. Bill takes me to task for not acknowledging SOCMA’s contribution to this change; saying “It goes without saying that we have achieved much more than you have selectively pointed out in your blog that, because it hasn't been publicly reported, you are unaware of.” Everyone who has followed this bill in the news knows that SOCMA has been vocally opposed to this language, but I have seen nothing in the press that SOCMA has been working with the committees to achieve modification of the language. If SOCMA has been working behind the scenes to get these changes made, bully for them. But, I can only report on what I see in the press and on the net. I am not an investigative reporter with personal contacts on the Hill. If SOCMA wants public credit for their work behind the scenes, they need to let the press (including bloggers like myself) know about that work (which of course, Bill has just done). LATE NOTE: I just got additional confirmation of that work by a long term reader who was involved in the process. There may be more on that in a later blog. Highlighting SOCMA To Bill’s credit, he doesn’t make much of my attention to SOCMA over other industry organizations. I do pay more attention to what SOCMA does than any number of the other pro-industry groups. The reason for that is that SOCMA represents that portion of the chemical industry where I spent my chemistry career, the smaller specialty chemical manufacturers. I understand their concerns, limitations, and motivations on a personal level that I cannot feel for the major refiners or the large commodity chemical manufacturers. I have friends and neighbors that still work in that industry. I want the industry to survive and thrive. So I suppose that Bill and I will be having more of these discussions in the future. BTW: On a personal note, Bill, can you get Joe to change the link to my blog on his web site; I haven’t been on AOL for over a year now. I left numerous messages on the site, but have gotten no response. He was one of the first in the industry to post a link to this blog on his site and that means a bunch to me.

Congressional Agenda and CFATS

There is an interesting article on GovExec.com about the general Congressional agenda for the remainder of the year. It looks at the major actions that the Obama Administration and the Democratic leadership hope to get passed this year. From the point of view of this blog, there is an interesting topic missing, HR 2868, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009. It is easy for those of us in the chemical security community to loose track of the uncomfortable fact that the reauthorization of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards is not a major political issue as far as the President, the Speaker, or the Majority Leader are concerned. Because of the current economic problems and higher priority agenda items, it is becoming less certain with every passing week that a comprehensive chemical facility security bill can pass this year. The Negatives Early this Spring Obama’s commitment to “work with all stakeholders to enact permanent federal chemical security regulations” disappeared from the White House web site. The appearance of a one paragraph extension of CFATS in the Department of Homeland Security budget request made it apparent that the President was putting this issue on next year’s list of priorities. This was confirmed by DHS testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee. While Chairmen Waxman and Thompson worked out the different views of their Committees on how to address chemical security at water treatment facilities, Speaker Pelosi has remained silent on CFATS reauthorization. Chairman Waxman’s commitment to HR 2868 is becoming less clear; his House Energy and Commerce Committee has yet to schedule a single hearing to look at regulating security of chemicals at water treatment facilities. Even Chairman Thomson’s staff may realize the chances of passage are slim; they removed reference to Title II (for water treatment facility security) from the April draft of HR 2868. And don’t forget that the HR 2868 committee report has yet to be filed. Finally, the Senate is studiously ignoring the issue completely. The Homeland Security Committee has not addressed chemical facility security since passing the current CFATS authorization in 2006. Certainly, no chemical facility security legislation has been introduced in the Senate in the last two years; the memories of the 2006 IST fight are still painful. Senator Reid has taken the same hands-off tact taken by Congresswoman Pelosi. The Potential There is still the possibility of passing HR 2868 during this session of the 111th Congress. CFATA is not anywhere near as complex as the Economic Stimulus Package, Cap and Trade, or Health Care. While IST and Citizen Suits are controversial, they are not hot button issues on par with Government health insurance, the automotive bailout, or global warming. If Waxman’s committee can get a reasonable wording crafted for chemical security at water treatment plants in the next couple of weeks, this bill could get to the floor of the House before the August recess. If the opposition of Dent and King to the bill could be reduced by some minor changes to the IST and law suit provisions, the floor debate might be controllable enough for this bill not to interfere with the other priorities of the Democratic Leadership. That would allow this bill to come to a vote. If the Speaker were to fear that a fight over this bill would derail consideration of higher priority agenda items before the recess, this bill will have very little chance to come to a floor vote. Pelosi will not allow this bill to upset the progress on more important (to her) bills, especially since a one year extension will certainly pass with the Homeland Security Appropriations bill. Passage in the Senate late in the session (after higher priorities are dealt with) may be more problematic, but a lot of will hinge on how the chemical industry deals with this bill. They have raised some legitimate concerns about the IST provision, but their political advisors need to remind the business people that further delays only favor increased anti-chemical rhetoric. Next Year Could be Worse for Industry This year’s HR 2868 added Citizen Suits and much more complicated preemption language (which has been ignored during the debate so far) favoring State and local security rules to the language found in last year’s HR 5577. Next year’s bill will have even more objectionable (from the industry’s point of view) provisions, perhaps adapting the language from HR 261 requiring the Secretary to take into account State and local security provisions when approving site security plans. Another possible addition would be the inclusion of Local Emergency Planning Committees in the security planning process. Further complicating next year’s bill will be how well industry and DHS can work out approval of site security plans under the current rules. If industry fights with DHS over implementation of the risk-based performance standards, there will be an administration backed move to specifically remove the restrictions on what security measures the Secretary can mandate. Industry reluctance to use armed security guards at higher-risk facilities is one potential point of conflict with DHS. All sides are going to have to work together to get comprehensive chemical security legislation passed this year. There are problems with the current CFATS authorization that need to be resolved. The rules need to apply to all high-risk chemical facilities so that all communities are protected.

ACC Continues Political Push

As the year end quickly approaches and the new session of Congress gets ready for its first meeting on January 6th, the American Chemistry Council is continuing their preparation for the upcoming debate in Congress on chemical facility security legislation. Last Friday I commented on VP Marty Durbin’s contribution (see: “Chemical Facility Security Legislation”). Today we look at an article by Cal Dooley, the organization’s President and CEO. Chemical Facility Security The article does not just address the chemical facility security issue, but rather looks at a variety of challenges that face the chemical industry in general over the next year. One of those is the future of the chemical facility anti-terrorism standards (CFATS) that expires in October. As is usual with any chemical facility security discussion with the ACC, Dooley starts out with an affirmation of the industry’s concern about security and the $6 Billion spent so far. Actually, I am beginning to get a little concerned about that figure. It hasn’t changed over the last year. The ACC member companies have either stopped spending (not likely with CFATS implementation under way) or they have stopped counting. In either case it would be much more impressive if ACC were to update that figure periodically. The only other part of this article that addresses chemical facility security is Dooley’s pledge to work with Congress to make CFATS permanent, emphasizing the risk-based performance standards of the current program. No mention is made of the IST issue or of Federal pre-emption; both were areas of ACC concern last year. ACC vs Railroads Over the last couple of years there has been an increasing animosity between the railroads and the chemical industry. Last year the American Railroad Association joined in the call for mandatory IST to sharply reduce the amount of PIH chemicals shipped by rail. In this article Dooley calls for Congress to “pass reform legislation to promote competitive rail service, end rail monopolies and restore a healthy, reliable, competitively-priced freight-rail system.” Interestingly, this may put the ACC on the side of a variety of advocacy groups that are pushing for routing PIH chemicals around urban areas. One of the things that railroads have used to justify routing through urban areas is that they would have to shift such loads to other carriers to get around cities. This may make for some interesting debates in Congress. Interesting Political Year The coming year is shaping up to look like an interesting political year. The economy will, of course, be the main focus, but there are enough other issues facing chemical facilities and chemical transportation that companies and organizations are going to have to watch the 111th Congress a little more closely than they have in the past.