Poised For Progress At The U.N. Climate Summit In Copenhagen
Poised For Progress At The U.N. Climate Summit In Copenhagen
While Mother Jones’ David Corn is an excellent reporter, he is a lousy tealeaf reader. Mr. Corn misread a recent article by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and myself in advance of the G20 summit, incorrectly concluding our purpose was to downplay expectations on behalf of the Administration. Mr. Corn’s interpretation of our piece is inaccurate. Dr. Pachauri, one of the world’s foremost advocates for strong global action on climate change, and I both recognize that significant challenges remain in advance of the U.N. summit in December. But we are confident that the international community is poised to make substantial progress on climate change in Copenhagen, and that the U.S. is now in a position to exercise renewed leadership in pursuit of a best-case climate scenario.
The purpose of our September 23 piece was to emphasize the importance of climate change in advance of the G20 meetings and encourage the world’s top emitters to seize an important opportunity to take concrete steps to move forward in advance of December’s summit. It is not news that the divide between the unwieldy groups of developed and developing countries have stalled climate talks in the past and that they are drifting again. It is, however, noteworthy that major emitters have recently utilized new channels — the Administration’s Major Economies Forum, for example, as well as the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue — to lay the groundwork for a new climate agreement in Copenhagen. We think this is an important development and should be pursued whenever opportunities, like this week’s summit, arise. Our piece urged leaders at the G20 to pursue concrete actions prior to Copenhagen on issues such as financing arrangements, technology cooperation, and deforestation prevention to increase the chances of success in December.
Even in the midst of global economic crisis, climate change has remained at the top of the agenda both in the United States and in key countries around the world. There is broad consensus that the effects of climate change are not only real, but will be devastating to developed and developing countries alike if the international community fails to agree on a global emissions reduction strategy soon. The road ahead is not without obstacles, which our piece pointed out. But the fate of Copenhagen is far from sealed — and it is my strong belief that the Obama Administration is committed to doing all it can to lead the world into a low-carbon, clean energy future.
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John Podesta: Clean Energy Bill Is ‘Imperfect In Its Means,’ But ‘Revolutionary In Its Intent’
John Podesta: Clean Energy Bill Is ‘Imperfect In Its Means,’ But ‘Revolutionary In Its Intent’
John Podesta, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress, is calling on progressives to support the passage of “revolutionary” global warming legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454). The bill has received some criticisms from progressive bloggers and activists. A vote in the House of Representatives is expected this Friday, June 26th.
Once again, Mick Jagger is right: “You can’t always get what you want/ But if you try, sometimes you just might find/ You get what you need.” The House of Representatives is poised for its first ever floor debate on legislation to reduce global warming pollution. This landmark bill is revolutionary in its intent and, while imperfect in its means, deserves the support of progressives.
For about the cost of a postage stamp per day, the bill would lay the foundation for a thriving clean energy economy, by establishing greenhouse gas pollution limits, setting the first national renewable electricity and efficiency standards for utilities, and improving efficiency standards for buildings and appliances.
The original draft included a more aggressive 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target and a higher renewable electricity standard, which if restored would create more clean energy jobs than the current compromise.
Unfortunately, Senate passage of similar legislation will be more difficult, and the Senate Energy Committee is off to an inauspicious beginning by passing an energy bill that would do little to boost investments in renewable electricity. The Senate bill is weak, toothless, and unacceptable.
The Congressional will to act lags far behind the scientific evidence that there is little time left to avert the worst impacts of global warming. But passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act this week by the House will give us a chance to start the critical transition to a low-carbon economy.
Prayers For Elizabeth
Prayers For Elizabeth
I was saddened to hear today that Elizabeth Edwards’s battle with cancer is not yet over. But I was not surprised to hear that she and John will continue their efforts to stand up for their beliefs and vision for the country.
Elizabeth is truly a remarkable, dynamic and courageous woman. From her life story, we know that, above all, she is a survivor and a person of deep moral conviction.
Her grace and strength through this battle will continue to serve as an inspiration to us all.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Edwards family.
Has Rove’s Security Clearance Been Revoked?
Has Rove’s Security Clearance Been Revoked?
This morning, the White House announced that Karl Rove will step down from his policy post and resume his focus on the midterm elections. An important question has not been asked: Will Rove also give up his security clearance?
To this day, Rove has maintained his security clearance in spite of evidence that he mishandled classified information regarding Valerie Wilson’s position at the CIA. Rove was named as in the indictment of Scooter Libby as “Official A.”
An Executive Order 12958, signed by President Clinton in 1995, states disclosure of an undercover agent is grounds for, at a minimum, losing access to classified information:
Section 5.1: Violation means: any knowing, willful, or negligent action that could reasonably be expected to result in an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
Section 5.7.d: The agency head, senior agency official, or other supervisory official shall, at a minimum, promptly remove the classification authority of any individual who demonstrates reckless disregard or a pattern of error in applying the classification standards of this order.
In November, Newsweek wrote, “Having his security clearance yanked would not require Rove to resign as deputy chief of staff to President Bush. But it would prevent him from taking part in policymaking that relates to national-security issues, which would mean a much-reduced role in the Bush White House.”
Rove has now resigned his policy-making post and is focusing primarily on politics. Given Rove’s public intentions to make national security the focus of the 2006 elections, the White House should reveal whether Rove will be doing his political job while holding a security clearance.
Podesta: In Support of Christmas Trees, In Opposition to Budget Cuts Targeting the Vulnerable
Podesta: In Support of Christmas Trees, In Opposition to Budget Cuts Targeting the Vulnerable
Tens of millions of Christians decorate Christmas trees each year to celebrate the marking of Jesus’ birth. They perform generous acts of kindness for their family, friends and the less fortunate, mindful of the Christian teaching that “faith without works is dead.”
House Speaker Dennis Hastert has decided to mark the season by loudly insisting that the Capitol’s decorated spruce be called a “Christmas tree,” as opposed to a “Holiday tree.” He is right on this point. It is a Christmas tree. And while the Speaker may consider his action a “work,” the message of Jesus means more.
If Speaker Hastert really wants to put Christ back into Christmas, he should start by joining a long list of religious leaders in supporting a budget that isn’t balanced on the back of the poorest and most vulnerable.
Before the House went on Thanksgiving break, it passed $50 billion in spending cuts that target millions of poor and working-class Americans. The budget’s Medicaid provisions “would allow state governments to impose co-payments even on the poorest beneficiaries for emergency room visits for non-emergency health problems and for drug prescriptions not on a list of preferred treatments.” The Congressional Budget Office estimated the House bill “would cut food stamp benefits by about $45 a month for 225,000 people” and that 40,000 children would lose their eligibility for free meals at school. At the same time, conservatives are seeking to “extend several of Mr. Bush’s biggest tax cuts, including those on stock dividends and capital gains” — over half of the benefits from those cuts go to people earning over $1 million per year.
Hastert should heed the true spirit of Christ by caring for the vulnerable. As Jesus reminds us in Luke 4:18-20, by following his example we can “bring good news to the poor.”
Podesta: The Right Holds Women Nominees to A Different Standard
Podesta: The Right Holds Women Nominees to A Different Standard
Harriet Miers’ nomination fell victim to a right-wing double standard.
In his confirmation hearing, John Roberts affirmed the right to privacy, agreed with the conclusion of Griswold, and told the Judiciary Committee that he considered Roe v. Wade “settled as a precedent.”
There is much in Harriet Miers’ record to suggest she fell to the right of Roberts’ on the question of abortion rights. She does not consider Griswold settled law and had a record of supporting anti-choice causes.
John Roberts was enthusiastically embraced by right-wing conservatives eager to overturn Roe v. Wade. Harriet Miers was vilified by the exact same people.
Harriet Miers’ nomination has always been controversial, but it was not until comments from a 1993 speech surfaced where she said she believed in “self-determination” that Miers was presumably forced to withdraw.
It is clear that, absent an unambiguous pledge to overturn Roe, the right holds women nominees to a different standard. They do it because they fear a woman justice will feel empathy towards other women making the agonizing choice of whether to have an abortion. They fear that a woman justice would not be willing to use criminal sanctions to regulate other women’s decisions.
No nominee should be subject to a litmus test, especially one that discriminates based on gender.
The Memo on Iraq the President Needs To Read
The Memo on Iraq the President Needs To Read
President Bush and his followers have now launched a full-scale defense of his policy in Iraq and a full-on assault on his detractors. And yet their weapon of choice is spin, not strategy. Listening to the president speak about Iraq this week, one had the feeling that he must be living in a parallel universe. Is he unwilling to level with the American people about the cold reality that is Iraq today? Or is he unaware of the minefield he has walked the country into?
The truth hurts. More than 60 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since President Bush went on vacation. Iraq’s interim government has twice missed the deadline for presenting a constitution. The current draft of the constitution not only threatens to create an illiberal Shia theocracy that doesn’t respect the rights of women and religious minorities, but also risks intensifying the current undeclared sectarian civil war. And the president’s approval rating has dropped to an all-time low of 36 percent – lower than Richard Nixon’s approval rating at the height of Watergate. Cindy Sheehan is not the only American who thinks that things aren’t going so well in Iraq.
The White House’s solution to its problems? Sending the president to the friendly environs of Utah and Idaho and putting its spinmeister Dan Bartlett on television to simply insist that “we have the right strategy to prevail.â€
As a former White House chief of staff, I can say that the most important duty of a senior advisor is not to say “yes, sir,†but to honestly present the facts and the options available to the country. If the president’s advisors can’t confront the truth or don’t have the courage to tell the president the truth, they shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.
Instead of spending time plotting motorcade routes to avoid Cindy Sheehan protests, the president’s advisors should be spending their time laying out the situation on the ground and the impact the war is having on terrorist networks, regional stability, sectarian conflict within Iraq, our overstretched ground forces, and U.S. security.
The Center for American Progress has drafted a memo that outlines the facts and challenges in Iraq. This is the memo that the White House Iraq Group should – but probably won’t – send the president.
Read it here.
Join The Virtual March To Stop Global Warming
Join The Virtual March To Stop Global Warming
Stopglobalwarming.org is organizing a virtual march to raise awareness on global warming and to urge our leaders to put the country on a path towards a renewable energy future. There could not be a more important time to join this effort. The Senate just moved on this issue. The G8 is moving on this issue. Tony Blair is moving on this issue. Only President Bush and Vice President Cheney are still sitting on their duffs.
We can all get off ours and sign up for the virtual march. Please join the effort.
Something’s Fishy In the Magic Kingdom
Something’s Fishy In the Magic Kingdom
Just in case the kids were thinking of taking Dad to Disneyland this weekend, stop and read this story:
Donald Duck and friends are being drawn into an unusual showdown between Western sensitivities and Chinese tradition, setting off a debate that has this city buzzing.
It all began when Hong Kong Disneyland, a new theme park scheduled to open on Sept. 12, announced that it would serve shark’s fin soup – a chewy, sinewy, stringy dish that has been a Chinese favorite for two centuries.
But plans for the culinary delicacy, to be served at wedding banquets, have drawn an outraged response from environmentalists. They say that so many sharks wind up floating in soup these days that there are not enough left swimming in the world’s oceans.
If this concerns you, T-shirts are available:
In this simmering shark-eat-shark dispute, one group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has printed T-shirts showing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck brandishing knives and leering sadistically over three bleeding sharks that have lost their fins.
Podesta Strategy Memo: The Bankruptcy Bill
Podesta Strategy Memo: The Bankruptcy Bill
[Ed. note: This memo was co-written by American Progress CEO John Podesta and Senior Fellow Robert Gordon.]
In the past, some in Congress have viewed “bankruptcy reform” as an easy “pro-business” vote that won’t really hurt working families and won’t matter to Americans anyway.
That’s wrong on all accounts. Proponents say the bill will stop bankruptcy abuse, but the bill lets the biggest and wealthiest abusers off the hook. Even more important–and this is the point proponents are hoping to obscure–the bill does nothing to address why millions of middle-class Americans are going broke in record numbers. In fact, the bill makes life tougher on families who have done everything right but suffered because of structural problems in our economy.
If progressives press these points, Americans will see the fight over bankruptcy reform for what it is: a struggle between progressives defending families who play by the rules and conservatives standing with wealthy individuals and corporations that break those rules. More »
Quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Bush ended with a quote from FDR. I’m reminded of FDR’s 1941 State of the Union, know as the Four Freedoms Speech. That night, FDR said:
The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world.
Ink-Stained Irony
Ink-Stained Irony
While I truly admire the courage of the people of Iraq for going to the polls on Sunday, watching members of the house hold up their ink stained fingers is ironic since Tom DeLay won’t let them vote on anything.
Listening to the World
Listening to the World
The Iraqi people showed great courage and faith in democracy during Sunday’s election. The election was something the Iraqis insisted on, not something that was part of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s original plan for Iraq. Let’s hope that Sunday’s step forward indicates the administration is now more willing to listen to the world rather than dictate to it.
The Real Clinton Record on Social Security
The Real Clinton Record on Social Security
The President’s staff has tried to invoke President Clinton’s record on Social Security to sell President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.
I was there in the Clinton White House. Let me tell you what actually happened. President Clinton enacted fiscally responsible policies that strengthened Social Security and kept it solvent for more years than anyone thought possible. He made it very clear to the Congress and conservatives there who wanted to send surpluses on tax cuts that we had a moral obligation to “save Social Security first.” That’s what we did.
President Bush has pursued the opposite policy: raid Social Security first. In the first term, he squandered two trillion dollars of the surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy. Now he wants to take us two trillion more dollars into debt to pay for the dismantling of Social Security.
As President Clinton himself was fond of saying — “Mr. President, that dog won’t hunt.”
The New Three-Legged Stool
The New Three-Legged Stool
Progressives often talk of retirement security as a three-legged stool – Social Security, personal savings, and private pensions.
Listening to the speech, it occurs to me that President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security offers an entirely different a three-legged stool – an additional two trillion dollars in debt, big cuts in benefits and risky privitization carve-out accounts.
Important safety tip: don’t try sitting on President Bush’s stool.
I thought this was 2005 not 1984
I thought this was 2005 not 1984
You know the president has hit full Orwellian stride when he starts invoking deceased Democratic icon Patrick Moynihan to defend privatization and goes out of his way to praise Bill Clinton.
Real Tax Reform
Real Tax Reform
The President promised a tax code that is “pro-growth, easy to understand and fair to all.”
Since 2001, President Bush added 10,000 pages to the code and other tax regulations, shifted the burden to the middle class and created new corporate tax loopholes.
So when the President promises “tax reform” hold on to your hat.
For tax system that’s fair, that’s simple, that shrinks the deficit and will be a job creator not a job killer see the American Progress Plan.
OJ Flashback
OJ Flashback
There was some speculation in the press today that coverage of the Pope’s health might overshadow the President’s speech tonight.
Fortunately, the Pope’s health seems to be improving — but as a former White House official, I can empathize with the Bush staff.
I remember during President Clinton’s 1997 State of the Union, the verdict of the second OJ Simpson trial came in mid-speech. It was the first time in television history that they “split the screen” during a Presidential State of the Union.
It’s hard for even a great communicator to compete with the White Bronco
Sixteen Word Contest
Sixteen Word Contest
Everyone remembers the classic “sixteen words” from the 2003 State of the Union that came back to haunt the Bush Administration — “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
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What sixteen words from tonight’s State of the Union will come back to haunt President Bush tonight? Use this post to nominate your sixteen words. We will pick and post the winning submission tomorrow.
Let’s Get it Started
Let’s Get it Started
According to the White House’s “State of the Union Message Points,” the President is going to lay out a “blueprint” for the second term. But here’s the problem. The bad policy choices the President made in the first term — irresponsible tax cuts, the mismanaged war in Iraq, billions sunk into an ineffective Medicare bill — are going to severely limit his policy options in the second term, whether he realizes it or not.
Here’s why. This President has the worst fiscal record of any President in the history of our country. Period. He has presided over a ten trillion dollar swing from record surpluses to record deficits. The President may try and gloss over his reckless record of deficit spending tonight. But when you are talking fiscal policy, fundamentals matter and there are some facts even this Administration can’t dismiss. The US dollar is on shaky ground. To paraphrase Tennessee Ernie Ford (I’m showing my age): another day older another billion in debt. Over 90 percent of the increase in the debt under Bush has been bought up by foreigners.
He may lay out what sounds like a bold agenda, but he is going to have a hard time marshalling any of the resources to get it accomplished.
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