* only President Obama can produce meaningful climate change legislation

LMW COMMENT …

Two articles in the May 23, 2009 edition of The Economist deal with the progress of President Obama’s initiative to deal seriously with climate change issues after 8 years of the “head in the sand” Bush administration. The Economist is not optimistic about what it sees.

gas guzzling SUV

My own conclusion is that these issues can never be resolved by a Congress (Democrat or Republican) which is beholden to special interests and a limited constituency. There is never sufficient incentive for enough Congressmen and Senators to focus on the national or global interest as opposed to what they view (perhaps understandably) as more pressing concerns in their own districts.

Only President Obama can focus on the broader problem, move better legislation forward, and take what reasonable people everywhere believe are necessary steps to save our planet as we know it.

It is my hope that the president has delegated this issue to Congress only temporarily, while he deals with the plethora of other issues confronting him and us. Maybe, when the time is right, President Obama will re-enter the climate change fray and produce a meaningful result.

FROM THE ECONOMIST (1st article) … Weak medicine – Compromise has enfeebled America’s cap-and-trade bill. A carbon tax would be better

• FOR those who believe that climate change is a serious problem, the decisions that America makes now are of momentous importance.
• the fact that Barack Obama clearly intends to turn America from being a laggard into a leader in this task is therefore encouraging.
• Good intentions, however, are not enough. Moves in Washington over the past week have indicated the shape of America’s policy.
• “Oil lost and coal won,” was an insider’s verdict on the two big developments in Washington this week.
• If America insists on using fuel-efficiency standards to cut vehicle emissions, then tough ones are better than weak ones. Yet such standards are a poor way of reducing emissions.
• Far better to have a carbon price high enough to pinch, and then let companies and consumers decide where to cut emissions.
• But that, unfortunately, is unlikely to emerge from the cap-and-trade bill now in the House of Representatives, the details of which have been revealed by its promoters, Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. They have, it seems, granted some rather generous concessions to Midwestern Democrats from states dependent on coal or heavy industry.
• The weakening of this bill illustrates one of the central problems with cap-and-trade systems. They are complex, obscure and therefore susceptible to horse-trading.
• The corresponding attraction of a carbon tax, which this newspaper has always supported, is its simplicity. The government sets the rate. Everybody can see what it is. Voters get transparency. Businesses get certainty. And the government gets a large chunk of revenue—not to be sniffed at in these difficult times.

read the entire article at … http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13697284

FROM THE ECONOMIST (2nd article) … The first climate-change bill with a chance of passing is weaker and worse than expected

• AL GORE calls it “one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in Congress.”
• Joe Barton, a Republican congressman and global-warming sceptic, says it will put the American economy in a straitjacket.
• President Barack Obama has long argued that America should join Europe in regulating planet-cooking carbon. But he has left the details to Congress. And the negotiations to craft a bill that might actually pass have not been pretty.
• On May 15th Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, the Democratic point-men on climate change in the House of Representatives, unveiled a bill that would give away 85% of carbon permits for nothing, with only 15% being auctioned.
• Giving away permits creates several problems.
• First, it generates no money, thereby royally messing up Mr Obama’s budget.
• Second, it means that the permits go not to those who value them most (as in an auction) but to those whom the government favours.
• Another problem with Waxman-Markey is its complexity. It includes a dizzying array of handouts, mandates and technical standards.
• Meanwhile, Mr Obama continues to attack climate change from other angles.
• On May 19th he announced that he would impose tougher fuel-efficiency standards.
• Mr Obama admitted that more fuel-efficient cars might cost more. But he promised that motorists would save thousands of dollars by cutting their fuel bills. In fact, they can already cut their fuel bills by buying smaller cars, but most choose not to.
• Mr Obama could discourage petrol use more directly and efficiently by taxing the stuff, but that would be unpopular.
• Ideally, politicians who want to save the planet would be honest with voters about how much this will cost. But America’s leaders do not seem to think Americans are ready for straight talk about energy.

read the entire article at … http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13702826

* Frank Rich: Cheney lies and Democrats in Congress are cowed

Frank Rich writes in the New York Times (5-31-09) …

• Once again Cheney and his cohort were using lies and fear to try to gain political advantage — this time to rewrite history and escape accountability for the failed Bush presidency rather than to drum up a new war.
• Once again Democrats in Congress were cowed.
• even before Cheney spoke, Congressional Democrats were quaking in fear
  • purporting with straight faces that the transfer of detainees to “supermax” American prisons constituted a serious security threat.
  • Many of the same senators who signed on to the Iraq war resolution in the fall of 2002 joined the 90-to-6 majority that put a hold on Obama’s Gitmo closure plans.
• The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11.
• Obama is not making us less safe.
• If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.

read Frank Rich’s entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/opinion/31rich.html?ref=opinion

 LMW COMMENT … There is clearly a lack of courage among Democrats in Congress. This was evident in the last two years of the Bush administration, when majority Democrats led by Namcy Pelosi and Harry Reid did as little as they possibly could to advance issues critical to our nation. Now, with an intelligent courageous Democratic President, the Congress still dithers. It will take all of Obama’s enormous leadership skills to bring the Democrats in Congress to positions they should recognize as being in their own interests, as well as the countries.

* are the Senate Republicans stupid enough to oppose Sonia Sotomayor?

Julie Hirshfeld Davis, Associated Press, writes (5-27-09) …

• The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee (Sen. Jeff Sessions) said Wednesday he doesn’t foresee a filibuster against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
• The GOP faces an uphill battle in defeating the New York-born daughter of Puerto Rican parents, but Republicans are promising a thorough and perhaps lengthy hearing process that delves into her record and judicial philosophy.
• Any Republican effort to block Sotomayor’s confirmation could be risky for a party still reeling from last year’s elections and struggling to gain back lost ground with Hispanics, the fastest-growing part of the population and one that is increasingly active politically.

read the entire article at … http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090527/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_sotomayor_14

LMW COMMENT … In choosing Sonio Sotomayor, President Obama has, in addition to naming a superb individual, challenged the Republicans to continue their stupid “policy of NO,” which in this case would alienate any Hispanic voters still in the GOP camp. Are the Senate Republicans smart enough to stay out of this trap, when their right wing ideologues are already running ads against Sotomayor? Or will they continue to lower the political debate to the level of “cultural” issues that should mostly be personal rather than political matters? And, whatever happened to having the confirmation hearings BEFORE deciding?

* let’s help President Obama invest in America’s future; the alternative is truly frightening

Sharon Begley writes in Newsweek (3-23-09) …

• Even if we scale up existing technologies to mind-bending levels, such as finishing one nuclear plant every other day for the next 40 years, we’ll still fall short of how much low-carbon energy will be needed to keep atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide below what scientists now recognize as the point of no return.
• Hence the need for Nobel-caliber discoveries.
• Yet despite the pressing need, DOE spent a pitiful $2 billion to $3 billion on nondefense, basic energy R&D last year, less than one fifth what we spent in the 1970s and 1980s. A new report from the Brookings Institution calls for $20 billion to $30 billion a year and—to improve the odds of success—revamping the nation’s energy labs, which today are “too far removed from the marketplace to produce the kind of transformational research we need for new energy technologies,” says Brookings’s Mark Muro.
• The clock is ticking.

LMW COMMENT …

Similar articles could be (and have been) written about our thus far pathetic efforts to control healthcare costs and educate our population, the other two prongs of President Obama’s plans for investing in America’s future.

Obama’s talk last night emphasized that the alternative of not investing in our future is a sure path to the continued decline of America’s standard of living, our ability to lead the world, and although the president did not go this far, to our very existence as a force of civilization (think Egypt! Think Rome! Think the British empire!).

How different is Obama’s perspective from the ideological Republicans and some conservative Democrats who oppose him, from the Wall Street and other corporate folks whose primary motivation is the blatant greed to take what they can from this year’s profits, however transient and destabilizing such actions may be.

How fortunate for America that we elected a president with vision, patient and persistence. Now our job is to support him, not mindlessly in every detail, but enthusiastically in terms of his overall perspective and direction.

The leadership we need is now in the White House. Let’s do everything we can, in each Congressional district, to get the Obama budget passed, and to avoid the politics-as-usual, small-minded distortions that Congress so often epitomizes.

This is our moment. This is our chance to restore the American dream. We cannot afford to blow this opportunity. Here’s what you can do (and it will make a difference) … 

CALL or EMAIL your Representative and Senators and tell them you want them to support President Obama’s budget.

 

Read the entire Begley column at … http://www.newsweek.com/id/189293

* Obama … doing the best that can be done to play a very bad hand; we need patience not destructive criticism

Joe Nocera writes in the NYT (3-21-09)

• Can we all just calm down a little?

• Yes, the $165 million in bonuses handed out to executives in the financial products division of AIG was infuriating.

• But how does outing these executives fix skewed compensation incentives, which have created that unjustified sense of entitlement that pervades Wall Street?

• I’m worried that the political response is making the crisis worse. The Obama administration appears to have lost its grip on Congress, while the Treasury Department always seems caught off guard by bad news.

• it is in the taxpayers’ best interest to position A.I.G. as a company with many profitable units, worth potentially billions, and one bad unit that needs to be unwound. Which, by the way, is the truth.

• What the country really needs right now from Congress is facts instead of rhetoric.

LMW COMMENT …

Nocera’s article shows uncommon good sense. But I fear he is spitting in the wind.

Congress, elected every two years in 435 districts, is structurally incapable of acting professionally and responsibly, in the manner Nocera (and I) would prefer. Our form of government specifically prohibits the Obama administration, or any administration, from “controlling” Congress.

The individual greed and lack of responsible financial behavior on the part of many Americans is as much to blame as similar qualities on Wall Street and AIG, because it is all part and parcel of the same thing.

We have collectively lived beyond our means for many years and now we must pay the price.

President Obama is, as some are starting to say, and even his fervent supporters (like me) have always known, inexperienced. He has not run companies and he has not run government. But so what? Have those who did run our financial companies and did run our federal, state and local governments show any particular skills that should now be emulated? Does anyone think the McCain/Palin/right wing ideologues would be doing any better?

Obama was handed an incredible mess by the Bush administration. His power to get things straightened out is constrained, by Congress and many other factors over which he nor anyone else will never have control.

However, the most intelligent politician any of us has ever seen is patiently working his way through the issues, with imperfect but still discernible results. I think he is by far the best bet we have of getting to a better if still imperfect place.

Obama is a great threat to the “politics as usual” crowd on both sides of the aisle, which is why the opposition is so fierce. In my view, the political opposition and the 24 hour news media are a counter-productive disgrace, committed as they are to petty argument and destruction. They should be ignored to the greatest extent possible.

We should instead, as responsible citizens, try to consider rationally and generally support the steps Obama is taking, both to solve the financial mess he inherited from those who are now so critical, and to move this country forward toward energy independence, healthcare reform and educational excellence, all of which are essential to our future success as a nation and as a leader of the world. 

                                         

Read Nocera’s entire article at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/business/21nocera.html?_r=1&hp

 

* Obama’s outreach to America … just beginning

 

• Americans have organized Economic Recovery House Meetings in all 50 states — including 382 in California, 255 in Florida, 115 in Ohio, 199 in New York, 105 in Washington, and 149 in Texas.
• That’s more than 3,587 meetings in 1,579 cities and 429 congressional districts.

The message of this particular email from Organizing for America is  …

• President Obama’s recovery plan will help struggling families right now by saving or creating up to 4 million jobs. But it will also help strengthen our economy for the future by investing in crucial infrastructure projects in health care, education, and energy.
• Share your story about how this economic crisis is affecting you and your family and join your fellow Americans in supporting bold action to speed our recovery.

After President Obama spoke in Indiana today, and answered questions, Roger Simon of politico.com, speaking on MSNBC, suggested that, if Congress does not support his plan, Obama will board Air Force One and go to one congressional district after another, to seek support and also to let the constituents know that their representative is standing in the way of the help they need.  

LMW COMMENT … and don’t think members of the House and Senate are not taking note. Obama is new and he has made some mistakes, mainly under-estimating the degree to which Republican ideologues would oppose him. But the President has unsurpassed resources with which to convince the country to support his plans, and this President is a fighter who has just begun to fight.

* Senator Arlen Specter … wisdom and courage when it counts

Senator Arlen Specter writes on REAL CLEAR POLITICS (2-9-09) …

• I am supporting the economic stimulus package for one simple reason: 
  • The country cannot afford not to take action.
  • The unemployment figures announced Friday, the latest earnings reports and the continuing crisis in banking make it clear that failure to act will leave the United States facing a far deeper crisis in three or six months. 
  • By then the cost of action will be much greater — or it may be too late.
• The legislation known as the “moderates” bill, hammered out over two days by Sens. Susan Collins, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and myself, preserves the job-creating and tax relief goals of President Obama’s stimulus plan while cutting less-essential provisions — many of them worthy in themselves — that are better left to the regular appropriations process.
• The moderates’ compromise, which faces a cloture vote today, is the only bill with a reasonable chance of passage in the Senate.

LMW COMMENT … Senator Specter has demonstrated wisdom and courage when it counts.

Read the entire column at … http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/08/AR2009020801710.html

 

* Democrats should pass the stimulus bill they believe in and dare the obstructionist Senate Republicans to filibuster

Paul Krugman writes in the NYT (2-9-09) …

• Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.
• One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.
• The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut.
• All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.
• But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.
• Mr. Obama’s postpartisan yearnings may also explain why he didn’t do something crucially important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy.
• And Mr. Obama got nothing in return for his bipartisan outreach. Not one Republican voted for the House version of the stimulus plan.
• Mr. Obama may be able to come back for a second round. But this was his best chance to get decisive action, and it fell short.

LMW COMMENT …

President Obama’s first attempt to engage Republicans in a bipartisan approach to the stimulus package has failed. Republicans refused to support the bill or offer constructive alternatives other than their tired mantra of cutting taxes which they view as a way to reduce government, but which instead led to the trillion dollar deficits and the de-regulation disasters of the Bush years.

Will this failure get reversed in the joint committee? I doubt it. The Republicans smell blood and are more than willing to tromp on the national interest in the pursuit of damage to Obama and hope for their election success in 2010 and 2012.

The country very much wants an end to partisan bickering, but no such end is in sight. Maybe the country will reject the re-election bids of those obstructionist Republican who are so focused on political infighting. Based on the past week or so, I think that’s more likely than Obama winning them over to a more responsible approach. Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Meanwhile the Democrats in Congress should pass the stimulus bill they (and the President) believe in, and just dare the Senate Republicans to filibuster.

Read the entire column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09krugman.html?ref=opinion

* Charlie Cook: Obama needs to call the plays

Charlie Cook writes in The National Journal (2-7-09) …

• If Obama plays his own game, he can win. But if he plays someone else’s, he loses.
• To make real change, you have to try to do big things with broad-based support. 
•  Congressional Democrats are understandably anxious to put into place those programs and priorities that got nowhere while Democrats chafed under Republican rule. 
• For that very reason, the Obama White House must begin sending in the plays, or it risks having Hill quarterbacks call their own in ways that run counter to the president’s game plan and have much less likelihood of success.

LMW COMMENT … The President, and his Chief of Staff, will squeak through on the stimulus package with the help of two nice ladies from Maine and Arlen Specter. But they will also have learned a valuable lesson. Charlie Cook is so right. Obama needs to draft and send legislation to Congress, then negotiate with both Democrats and Republicans. Letting Congress have the first draft courts disaster.

Read the entire column at …http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cr_20090207_8246.php

 

* Obama: what do you think stimulus is (if not spending)

Bob Herbert writes in the NYT (2-7-09) …

• It was good to see the president, ordinarily so cool, so accommodating, exhibiting some real fire the other night.
• With the economy in deep, deep trouble, and Americans suffering by the tens of millions, the Republicans spent much of the week doing their same-old, bad-faith Neanderthal two-step: trying their best to derail the economic stimulus package working its difficult way through Congress.
• President Obama went out of his way to get a substantial number of Republicans to make a genuine effort to move the economic revitalization process along, but was rebuffed, and in some cases contemptuously.
• On Thursday night, he struck back, attacking Republican intransigence and its failed policies of the past.
• It’s been clear for years that the G.O.P. is a party without a heart. 
• But its pointless obstructionism, its overall lack of any serious response to what is a clear national economic emergency, seems to indicate it’s also a party without a brain.
• President Obama addressed Republican inflexibility on Thursday night when he said at a gathering in Williamsburg, Va., “Don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.”
• Senator John McCain echoed many of his Republican colleagues on Friday when he indignantly asserted, “This is not a stimulus bill; it is a spending bill.”
• It was an objection that had been addressed by an incredulous President Obama on Thursday night. “What do you think a stimulus is?” the president asked, his voice rising. Spending, he said — to laughter from his audience — “is the whole point.”

LMW COMMENT …

Assuming the Senate holds and passes the bill, the fight is still not over. There remains the joint House-Senate committee to resolve the differences between the two versions, and more votes in each house for final approval. Chris Matthews yesterday echoed a theme I wrote about, which is why not bring the vote to the floor in the Senate and dare the Republicans to stand up and filibuster, while more jobs are lost and they offer no reasonable alternative legislation. That has been avoided for the moment, but may still happen on the next round, and with other issues.

The Republican use of the filibuster in the past two years has been an obstructionist disgrace that I believe will be furiously rejected by the American people when they fully understand what has been going on. The Senate rules which allow filibuster need to be modified if not eliminated so that a minority of ideologues can no longer prevent the will of a clear majority. Of course, the alternative is to vote even more Republican Senators out of office.

Read the entire Bob Herbert column at … http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/opinion/07herbert.html?ref=opinion