U.S. Nuclear Guarantee To Israel Makes No Sense
U.S. Nuclear Guarantee To Israel Makes No Sense
Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In a recent Brookings Institution report on Middle East strategy for the new administration, editors Richard Haass and Martin Indyk propose extending a nuclear guarantee to Israel in order to buy that country’s acquiescence for a lengthy period of engagement with Iran to bring Tehran’s nuclear program under international control. Along with Haass and Indyk, Bruce Reidel and Gary Samore, authors of the report’s chapter on non-proliferation, posit that Israel cannot abide by a nuclear Iran despite having adequate deterrent forces. Setting aside this debatable assumption about Israel’s own internal foreign and nuclear policy debate, there is little rational reason to believe that a U.S. nuclear guarantee would prove more reassuring to Israel than its own nuclear deterrent.
The United States has extended nuclear deterrent guarantees to other states — most notably NATO members and Japan — but these commitments existed in most cases to discourage allies from developing their own nuclear weapons programs. This is hardly the case with Israel, which it has its own highly developed, if undeclared, nuclear weapons program. A United States nuclear deterrent guarantee to Israel would be irrelevant to Israel’s overall strategic situation, and would likely have negative political repercussions for the United States in the region.
Israel’s nuclear deterrent is shrouded in secrecy, but it is estimated to have between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. Like the United States, Israel’s nuclear delivery forces are structured to form a “triad” of air, land, and sea-based systems. Israel’s long-range F-15I and F-16I strike aircraft are believed to be nuclear capable, and have the range to reach targets in Iran without refueling. More central to Israel’s nuclear forces are its Jericho-series of ballistic missiles. Israel is estimated to have between 50 and 100 Jericho II missiles with a range between 1,500 kilometers and 3,000 kilometers, and in January tested a new 4,000 kilometer-range missile. This new missile puts all of Iran in Israel’s nuclear reach. Finally, Israel’s three Dolphin-class submarines are reportedly capable of firing Harpoon missiles modified to carry nuclear warheads, and in 2000 Israel reportedly tested a 1,500 kilometer range cruise missile from one of its submarines. Two more submarines are on order from Germany. Israel therefore has a mature nuclear deterrent likely capable of launching a second strike against adversaries.
Iran, on the other hand, is not believed to possess nuclear weapons at this time and has very limited options for delivering a bomb. Its current long-range missile systems (the Shahab-3 family) have ranges comparable to Israel’s solid-fuel Jericho system, but are liquid-fueled and require greater time to launch. Tehran recently claimed to have developed a solid-fuel missile with a 1,900 kilometer range, but questions remain as to exactly what kind of missile was actually launched. Even if Iran does develop nuclear weapons, its ballistic missile force remains relatively undeveloped, and Iran will likely not have a second strike capability similar to Israel’s for several years. In addition, there are reports that Ukrainian smugglers transferred nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran. More »
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Restoring America’s Academic Competitive Edge
Restoring America’s Academic Competitive Edge
Our guest blogger is James Kvaal, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
America’s prosperity was built partly on its strong schools. For most of the last century, America led the world in educational achievement. Our academic edge drove the United States’ exceptional economic growth and low income inequality, according to Harvard professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz.
The rapid increases in schooling were impressive. In only 30 years — between 1910 and 1940 — the number of 18-year-olds with high school diplomas increased from 9 percent to 50 percent. And 30 years later, about half of American students were attending at least some college — leading the world.
But since the 1970s, the U.S. educational system has rested on its laurels, and we are losing ground. Educational achievement among young workers (between the ages of 25 and 34) has slipped to tenth in the world, according to new analysis from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
In part, that’s because tuition has grown by 439 percent over the past 25 years while family incomes have increased by only 147 percent, according to the Center. More resources are needed to keep tuition low and expand scholarships. The College Board makes a compelling case for financial aid reforms that could help more students earn their college degrees.
But there are broader problems as well. We also need to raise high school graduation rates, which average only about 73 percent by some estimates. Stronger academic preparation is needed, particularly in struggling urban schools. And we need to raise students’ aspirations and help them navigate the complicated college and financial aid systems.
The Economic Imperative For Clean Energy
The Economic Imperative For Clean Energy
Our guest blogger is Brian Levine, a Senior Policy Adviser at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The United States faces an economic imperative to develop reliable, affordable, clean sources of energy and use them more efficiently. In the face of deep economic challenges and a rising federal budget deficit, some have argued that the United States should postpone its investments in a clean energy supply. But the opposite is true. There is widespread agreement that running a deficit to pay for an economic stimulus and recovery plan is necessary now. Investing in clean energy creates jobs in the short run, helps combat global warming, spurs long-term growth, and ultimately helps restore fiscal balance by improving our economic circumstances.
Our dependence on oil leaves us vulnerable to higher and higher prices in the coming decades, continued price volatility and shocks, and the demands of hostile and unstable countries. Climate change caused by reliance on fossil fuels is leading to stronger hurricanes and other storms, floods caused by rising sea levels and massive precipitation, droughts, and heat waves that will ultimately cost trillions of dollars a year.
These are the reasons why we need action on clean energy, and it should proceed in two stages. First, we should act immediately to invest in a green stimulus and recovery plan, creating desperately needed jobs and beginning the transition to a clean and more efficient energy future. Second, in 2009 we must begin putting in place an economy-wide greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program—the best long-term solution to catastrophic climate change—as a central component of a comprehensive clean energy strategy.
Yesterday, Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA), New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, and Obama transition adviser Carol Browner met at the Center for American Progress to discuss these challenges and opportunities. The complete session, introduced by CAP’s Joe Romm and moderated by Bracken Hendricks, can be watched online here. In the following excerpt, Rendell discusses the future of renewable energy, coal, and regional transport, and Friedman explains the meaning behind the title of his new book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded.”
Watch it:
Our nation faces great economic challenges. Immediate government investments will help put us on a path to recovery while also speeding the arrival of an economy powered with clean, sustainable, and secure sources of energy. We cannot be confident of sustainable economic growth in the future unless we also move ahead with the important structural transformation to a low-carbon economy.
Read the full memo on the Economic Imperative for Clean Energy.
It’s Time To Restore Rules For America
It’s Time To Restore Rules For America
Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, a documentary filmmaker whose film, “A Snow Mobile For George,” is a cross-country look at how deregulation affects individuals and the environment.
For eight years the Bush Administration’s chief domestic priority was to deregulate everything they could get their hands on. In the Bush view, the free market, left unregulated, would solve anything that needed solving; the rich would get richer, and, as Grover Norquist put it, the federal government would shrink down to be “small enough to drown in a bath tub.” So they worked to remove regulations that safeguarded the public’s control over the myriad resources and concerns from the airwaves and energy, to land, water, wildlife, drugs, pesticides, and toxic waste, all the way to the public’s money in the banking and financial system.
Watch one rancher’s story of the effects of the Bush rampage, taken from my documentary, A Snow Mobile For George: More »
Pakistan’s Growing Insurgency
Pakistan’s Growing Insurgency
Our guest bloggers are Caroline Wadhams, National Security Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Jenny Shin.
In more disturbing news for Pakistan’s security situation and the U.S.-NATO mission in Afghanistan, yesterday, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials are now looking to find safer alternative routes into Afghanistan for strategic supply lines that pass through Pakistan. The Taliban have been attacking these supply lines, which deliver about 75 percent of NATO and U.S. supplies, at unprecedented levels, stealing military equipment, ammunition and arms, and food, valued around $13 million. New routes through Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are being considered by the Department of Defense to protect these convoys and secure the flow of supplies for NATO and U.S. forces.
The Taliban have also begun to target Western aid workers and journalists with increasing ferocity in Pakistan, as well as in Afghanistan. This past week, in Pakistan, two journalists were attacked; a USAID contractor was assassinated, and an Iranian diplomat was abducted.
The backdrop for these incidents is a steady stream of violent clashes, bombings and assassinations by insurgents in Pakistan against Pakistanis themselves. On Wednesday, General Amir Faisal Alvi, the former chief of Pakistan’s elite commando unit, was shot dead. On Tuesday, Taliban and tribal elders clashed in the Bajaur Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan; ten members of the Taliban and four elders were killed. And on Monday, at least four paramilitary soldiers of the Pakistani Frontier Corps were killed when a suicide bomber drove a car into a security checkpoint.
As security deteriorates in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States finds itself increasingly drawn into military action in both countries. Yesterday, for the first time, the United States conducted an attack with a Predator drone outside of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan– deeper inside Pakistan territory than ever before. More »
The Three Nos From CNAS: Sloganeering Is No Substitute For Actual Policy
The Three Nos From CNAS: Sloganeering Is No Substitute For Actual Policy
Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In a recent post, our good friend Ilan Goldenberg over at the National Security Network recommended the “three nos” on Iraq advanced by the Center for a New American Security as a guide to U.S. policy: no regional war, no al Qaeda safe havens, and no genocide. This of course has a lot of rhetorical appeal – who can be in favor of those three things? The problem is that the three no’s really aren’t very helpful when it comes to addressing the challenges posed by Iraq and examining ways to advance U.S. national security interests globally.
The overall problem is that the three nos framework constitutes mostly a wish list not unlike the Bush administration’s early fantasies of a secular, pro-Israel democracy on the Tigris. As the old saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Beyond this basic conceptual problem, there are three main problems with the three nos.
First, it ignores the fact that large scale sectarian cleansing, if not outright genocide, has already occurred in Iraq and is even occurring TODAY, with the U.S. troop presence at its likely maximum. Most people are aware of the Sunni-Shi’a sectarian cleansing that happened at the height Iraq’s civil war in 2006-2007, which led to the murders of tens of thousand and displacement of millions — even while the surge was being implemented. But less visible is the plight of Iraqi minority groups, particularly Christians. Just last month sectarian violence forced large numbers of Iraqi Christians from Mosul, their last major safe haven. Canon Andrew White, the vicar of St. George’s church in Baghdad, estimates only 200,000 Iraqi Christians of a population of 800,000 remain in the country. All of this has occurred despite the presence of 140,000-plus U.S. troops in Iraq; the three nos ignore the fact that massive sectarian cleansing has already occurred despite the presence of hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq –- and this of course raises the question of how useful the three no’s framework is beyond a rhetorical device and mantra Americans can repeat to make themselves feel better. The tough work is actually in crafting a policy that simultaneously advances U.S. interests and actually improves the situation for Iraqis. More »
New Thinking for the Next Science Adviser
New Thinking for the Next Science Adviser
Our guest blogger is Rick Weiss, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Fund.
Here’s a wild proposition for the transition: Choose a life scientist or a climatologist for the presidential science advisor.
Maybe that doesn’t seem like a radical move to you, but in fact it would be a major break with tradition. The presidential science advisor (who doubles as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) has traditionally been a physicist or nuclear scientist. After all, the biggest science-based threat to the nation has long been the threat of nuclear war. So of course the president needed someone at his side who knew about bombs and fallout and such.
But while atomic physics is still a field with great national security import (think dirty bombs and the suitcase-sized nuclear devices that terrorists are purported to be trying to get their hands on) there is a good case to be made that molecular biology (which has so simplified the tools for making bioterror weapons, for example) or even ordinary earth science (the specialty that best understands global climate change) are the fields that are today most relevant to our national and economic security concerns.
The presidential science advisor (which used to be a cabinet level position until Bush demoted it, but is likely to get elevated again under Obama) is just one of hundreds of science policy-related openings that the new president and his appointees will soon be filling and that officials in the new administration need to think about in new, out-of-the-box ways.
Imagine a surgeon general selected from one of the nation’s gang-busting food activist groups, ready to take on obesity the way C. Everett Koop took on smoking. Or a Food and Drug Commissioner who’s maybe not a medical doctor (as is usual) but has great expertise in international trade law (trillions of dollars-worth of food and drugs are today imported from abroad with precious little inspection or oversight). Or a Secretary of Energy who has real business experience and expertise in cap-and-trade economics or in solar or wind technology or low-loss transmission lines—the keys to an energy-independent America.
Now multiply that times all the science-based openings in Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior and even Defense. To learn more about what the Obama administration has to think about when filling out its technical ranks, see below, drawn from my recent column on Science Progress, “A Taxonomy of Scientific Appointments:” More »
Pakistan’s Economic Crisis
Pakistan’s Economic Crisis
Our guest blogger is Caroline Wadhams, National Security Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
While much of the recent attention on Pakistan has been focused on the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Pakistan’s economic crisis has largely been under the radar screen. This crisis has the potential to be even more destabilizing to Pakistan’s democratically elected government and the population than the terrorist threat.
Pakistan’s economy is in free-fall. Inflation is at 25 percent, causing dramatic food price spikes and hitting Pakistan’s poor the hardest. Pakistan’s government faces mounting fiscal and trade deficits, and Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have fallen to $6.9 billion, enough to pay for only an estimated nine weeks of imports. The repercussions of bankruptcy could be devastating for Pakistan’s efforts to combat the militant groups, to provide for its people, and to move forward in its democratic transition.
On Monday, the Center for American Progress released a report (pdf), Partnership for Progress: Advancing a New Strategy for Prosperity and Stability in Pakistan and Region. We argue that the United States has failed to focus on the other drivers of Pakistan’s instability apart from the militant threat, such as its economic problems. Nor has the US leveraged the resources, influence and expertise of other countries, including China and Saudi Arabia in tackling Pakistan’s challenges. We propose that the U.S. assist Pakistan through an integrated, international effort rather than trying to impose U.S. solutions. Not only do we have our own economic crisis to deal with, Pakistanis perceptions of Americans are so dismal as to often discredit any American efforts in Pakistan.
Fortunately, it appears that the United States and the international community are beginning to recognize that Pakistan’s problems affect us all, and that they need urgent assistance. Yesterday, the Friends of Pakistan group, which includes the U.S., Saudi Arabia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, the United Nations, the European Union and others, met for the second time in Abu Dhabi to discuss ways to assist Pakistan economically. While no aid was pledged at the meeting, officials at the session drafted a framework to promote economic development and financial stability in Pakistan, and agreed to follow-up sessions in January and February. On Saturday, the International Monetary Fund agreed to provide a $7.6 billion emergency loan to Pakistan, contingent on Pakistani economic reforms that will hopefully restore some measure of investor and donor confidence.
Our report contains a series of recommendations to assist Pakistan in addressing its economic problems, such as creating a comprehensive inter-agency development strategy that focuses on Pakistan’s education and vocational skills training, health care quality and access, the energy sector, and water shortages. We propose convening an economic donors’ summit with key regional investors to facilitate increased trade between Pakistan, its neighbors and other key countries. While no Pakistani or American administration can afford to ignore the immediate short-term threats posed by militants based in safe havens on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, addressing Pakistan’s long-term economic challenges will be a crucial task for the incoming administration and new Congress.
The U.S. Chamber of Chicken Littles
The U.S. Chamber of Chicken Littles
Our guest blogger is Peter Altman, Climate Campaign Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Over the last several months, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been holding “State Climate Dialogues” around the country, ostensibly to “stimulate a national discussion on key climate change issues.” These are much more monologue than dialogue though, and the punchline is pretty consistently a prediction of economic disaster if the Congress creates a serious climate policy.
If the Chamber’s Chicken Littles stay on message, anyone attending today’s event in Detroit, Michigan is likely to hear the same old message. But many experts disagree with this view of gloom and doom.
For instance, Dr. Martin Kushler, director of the Utilities Program at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, says:
The claim that taking steps to address climate change would be bad for the economy is simply not true. We know from proven experience that we can save electricity through energy efficiency programs at one-third the cost of a new power plant. With a strong energy efficiency policy we can save money and reduce carbon emissions at the same time.
Dr. Andrew Hoffman, associate professor of management & organizations, associate professor of natural resources and associate director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan, said:
Think of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions as a market shift, one driven by regulations at the city, state, national and international levels. But one also driven by consumer, investor, insurance and energy markets. Any company executive who ignores these shifts does so at their peril.
This week’s event in Detroit is just the latest stop in the Chamber of Commerce’s Chicken Little Roadshow to gin up worries about efforts to solve our energy and climate problems. Speakers at these events rely on questionable assumptions and even more questionable results to make their case. More »
Progressives Won. Now What?
Progressives Won. Now What?
Our guest blogger is Brian Levine, a Senior Policy Adviser at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Last week, progressives won a resounding victory. The question is: Now what? Today, the Center for American Progress released its own recovery strategy for 2009 and beyond. The CAP report cautions against being “penny wise and pound foolish” as we confront large budget deficits in the short-term. We must invest immediately in health care, energy and education to help our economy through this crisis and lay the groundwork for future growth.
The report lays out a strategy that begins with stabilizing the economy by ensuring the solvency of financial institutions, restoring confidence to the credit and stock markets, and ending the housing crisis, while jumpstarting the recovery with an intelligently crafted stimulus package.
These steps must be accompanied by a sustained economic agenda that focuses on building the foundation for a brighter future. As the report points out:
Today’s crisis is not just the failing economy but the looming barriers to future prosperity in the form of unsustainable and growing levels of health care costs, the lack of adequate clean, dependable energy, and our inability to educate our children for the needs of our economy.
We must slow the growth of health care costs, which will require an upfront investment, partly because it requires universal coverage. In addition to covering everyone, we must incorporate new medical technologies into the system and promote more efficient delivery of care.
We need to invest in a new green energy infrastructure to create jobs now and begin the shift to clean, sustainable energy. Using energy more efficiently makes our economy as a whole more efficient. And renewable energy and efficiency are growth industries that can drive American economic leadership well into the future.
And the economic crisis must not prevent us from transforming the public education system to one that prepares our children to compete for high-quality jobs in the global economy and tackling the problem of college affordability.
After the period when deficit spending is needed to strengthen the economy, we must restore fiscal discipline as quickly as possible.
Dingell’s Climate Plan Is A Good Start, but Not Good Enough
Dingell’s Climate Plan Is A Good Start, but Not Good Enough
Our guest blogger is Robert M. Sussman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and former Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Sussman is now overseeing EPA transition planning for President-elect Barack Obama.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairmen John Dingell (D-MI) and Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) unveiled their long-awaited draft of climate change legislation early last month. Longtime allies of the auto and coal industries, Dingell and Boucher have nevertheless produced a thoughtful and serious effort to grapple with the complexities of creating a cap-and-trade system. As they say in their memo to the full Energy and Commerce Committee, “politically, scientifically, legally and morally, the question has been settled: regulation of greenhouse gases in the U.S. is coming.”
The draft bill has a number of strengths for which Dingell and Boucher deserve credit. It is economy-wide, covering 87 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. It sets a long-term target of reducing emissions by 80 percent of 2005 levels by 2050 that corresponds with prevailing scientific consensus. It contains strong energy efficiency programs. It uses the allowance allocation process both to stimulate low-carbon energy technologies and provide consumers relief from high energy prices. It provides for strict oversight of the carbon markets to prevent manipulation and assure transparency. And it creates a “strategic reserve” of allowances that would be auctioned if allowance prices are too high, but avoids a “safety valve” that would suspend the emission cap if allowance prices exceed a predetermined level.
Despite these positive features, two aspects of the bill—the absence of allowance auctioning in the cap-and-trade program and weak emission reduction targets for 2020—raise serious concerns and should not be the starting point for legislative action in the new Congress. More »
Still Looking For The Pony In Iraq
Still Looking For The Pony In Iraq
Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In a short piece for his website critiquing the two main competing ideas for President-elect Obama’s future Iraq policy –- the Center for a New American Security’s ‘conditional engagement‘ strategy and CAP’s own Strategic Reset strategy -– the normally astute Reidar Visser makes two critical errors. While we largely agree with his critique of the CNAS strategy, Visser subtly misreads CAP’s strategy while proposing a course of his own that does little to remedy the deficiencies of those he critiques.
First, Visser argues that CAP’s recommendation to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq as rapidly as possible is based on a possibly mistaken premise: that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will only make compromises if it no longer can rely on the United States to shield it from the consequences of its actions. But our proposed strategy is not premised on using withdrawal as “leverage” against Maliki; it is rather premised on withdrawal changing the political incentives for Iraqi political actors. Whether or not Iraqis act on these changed incentives is left up to the Iraqis themselves. Rather than presenting a substantive criticism of the logic of CAP’s strategy, Visser relies on the prediction that Maliki will not change his overall behavior. While this continuation is possible, it is beside the point -– as we point out in our recent report on Iraq’s political transition, the United States needs to recognize its limited leverage and accept suboptimal outcomes. We argue that changing Iraqi political leaders’ incentives through the withdrawal of U.S. troops stands the best chance of the remaining bad policy options of leading to broad political accommodation in Iraq.
Second, Visser argues for “singling out the 2009 parliamentary elections as the key to reform and Iraq’s last chance to repair itself.” This advice ignores the failures of 2005, when the Bush administration based its Iraq policy on the premise that elections would serve as a panacea to the country’s violent power struggle. He further advocates that the United States somehow ensure free and fair elections by maintaining a large troop presence in Iraq. Again, if the United States could not accomplish free and fair elections in 2005 with equal numbers of troops, how will things go any different this time? Additionally, Visser posits that ensuring free and fair elections will somehow make the United States “quite immune against accusations of meddling in Iraqi affairs” when ensuring free and fair elections is precisely meddling in Iraqi affairs!
Moreover, Visser ignores his earlier critique of CAP’s strategy that Maliki has consolidated enough of a power base to resist reform. If Maliki indeed has consolidated such as base, will he not also be in a position to win even “free and fair” elections? In the end, Visser’s own recommendation to stick around Iraq just a bit longer -– echoed by so many in the Washington establishment -– suffers from the same problems he identifies with CAP’s strategy, only it provides no incentives whatsoever for Iraqi politicians to campaign or act on accommodationist platforms. It is no more than another attempt to “find the pony” in Iraq.
Heritage’s Broken Conclusions On A Green Recovery
Heritage’s Broken Conclusions On A Green Recovery
Our guest blogger is Dr. Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
In a November 5 blog post, Dr. David Kreutzer, Senior Policy Analyst for Energy Economics and Climate Change in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, claims that policy initiatives to advance a green investment agenda necessarily hurt economic growth and employment. In particular, Kreutzer claims the report I co-authored, Green Recovery, suffers from a “broken windows” fallacy:
The authors of this study fall prey to the classic “broken windows” fallacy whereby spending money creates jobs as the expenditure multiplies throughout the economy. The fallacy comes from ignoring the equally large destruction of jobs (actually larger because of something called “deadweight loss”) from taxing the $100 billion, which eliminates a similar cascade of job creation elsewhere.
Kreutzer reaches this broken conclusion by ignoring all the findings in Green Recovery. Contrary to Kreutzer’s claim that green jobs require the “equally large destruction of jobs” in other sectors, green investments are all potent sources of net job creation relative to spending on traditional fossil fuels, including oil, coal and natural gas. Our research found that green infrastructure investment program would create nearly four times more jobs than spending the same amount of money on oil energy resources. For each $1 million of green investments paid for by cutting oil subsidies, a net 12.5 jobs are created. Green investments produce net job creation because their labor intensity and domestic content are significantly higher than investments in fossil fuels.
Labor Intensity: With green investments, more money is being spent on hiring people and less on machines, supplies, and consuming energy. Imagine hiring construction workers to retrofit buildings or install solar panels, or bus drivers to expand public transportation offerings, as opposed to drilling for oil off the coasts of Florida, California, and Alaska.
Domestic Content: When we retrofit public buildings and private homes to raise their energy efficiency, or improve our public transportation systems, virtually every dollar is spent within the U.S. economy. By contrast, only 80 cents of every dollar spent within the oil industry remains within the U.S.
Through public investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy, we overturn the long-held conventional wisdom reflected in Kreutzer’s critique — that we can have a green economy or a growing economy, but we can’t have both. In fact, not only can we have both, but green public investments to fight global warming are, at once, a powerful engine of job creation and a necessary instrument for achieving environmental sustainability.
Read an extended response from Dr. Pollin, in which he also discusses the question of energy costs and how Kreutzer overlooked the economic impact of global warming.
UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm offers a detailed critique of Kreutzer’s blog post, writing that it is a “truly bizarre disanalysis that conflates greenhouse gas regulations with a green recovery or green economic stimulus.”
A Letter To Obama: Build A 21st Century Transportation System
A Letter To Obama: Build A 21st Century Transportation System
Our guest blogger is David Goldberg, Communications Director at Transportation For America.
Congratulations! Your election, and results from down-ballot votes around the country, represents a resounding call for a new direction.
The Transportation for America campaign, representing more than 100 organizations and thousands of energized citizens around the country, salutes you. And we join you in seeking infrastructure investment that will stimulate the economy now and lay the groundwork for a clean-energy future that is less dependent on oil.
Americans are ready for this bold vision. Even in this tattered economy, citizens in California, Washington, Hawaii, Colorado and at least 10 other states voted themselves a tax increase so they could jumpstart construction of light rail, commuter train service, high-speed rail and other clean transportation options. Now they, and dozens of other communities, need a federal partner that can step up and do its part.
We call on you to follow through on the vision you offered in the campaign by acting rapidly, starting with the transition and during the first 100 days, to urge Congress to pass a smart package of stimulus investments as well as a new national transportation program. Appoint a Secretary of Transportation with a proven record of understanding both urban and rural needs, as well as how transportation, growth and development, the economy and the environment interact.
By fixing our highways, bridges and transit systems, and pushing ahead with ready-to-go rail projects, we can create millions of jobs that can’t be outsourced, launch a clean, green economic recovery, and get started on building a 21st century transportation system.
To quote our next president: “Yes, we can!”
Join Transportation for America in sending this letter with your own thoughts to the President-elect.
Are You Better Off Than You Were Eight Years Ago?
Are You Better Off Than You Were Eight Years Ago?
Our guest blogger is Adam Jentleson, the Communications and Outreach Director for the Hyde Park Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked America, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
After eight years of conservative rule, it’s worth posing a similar question – are Americans better off today than they were eight years ago?
As our new memo shows, unless you happen to be a big corporation or make enough money to be in the top percentage of earners, the answer is probably no:
A variety of metrics can be used to judge this question and assess what eight years of conservative policies have wrought. The picture painted here is clear: from job growth to debt, and from income disparity to national poverty indices, the conservative approach of putting big corporations and the very wealthy ahead of the middle class has failed to create prosperity that can be shared by all Americans.
Reynolds’ Rant
Reynolds’ Rant
Our guest bloggers are Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, senior fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Alan Reynolds accuses us of being lawyers, not economists. We are guilty as charged. But the rest of Reynolds’ rant is wrong.
Reynolds disputes our organization’s estimate that John McCain’s tax plan is worth $3.8 billion to the five largest American oil companies. He claims that we excluded the oil companies’ deductions and credits from our analysis. But we did include deductions. And though we excluded credits — because they are not publicly available — they would have only increased the size of our estimate.
Our estimate is conservative in other ways as well. It used 2007 profits, even though oil companies are breaking all the records this year. It did not count McCain’s big expansion in deductions for business investment. And it did not include oil companies’ foreign profits.
We analyzed 200 companies last spring, and our results have been featured in millions of dollars worth of advertising. None of these companies have disputed our results. In fact, no one did until Reynolds wrote his column three days before the election.
Reynolds gets the big things wrong as well. There is little reason to think corporate taxes put American businesses at a competitive disadvantage. Corporate tax collections are among the lowest in the world because our code is riddled with special interest deductions, credits and exemptions that shield corporate profits from tax. While corporate tax reform is overdue, John McCain’s plan would drive up the deficit, shift the tax burden onto middle-class wages, and harm the economy.
Bombings in Somalia: The Blowback Continues
Bombings in Somalia: The Blowback Continues
Our guest blogger is David Sullivan, a research associate at the ENOUGH project.
What distinguishes the recent coordinated car-bombings across northern Somalia from the steady stream of bad news to which we have become accustomed coming out of this part of the world? Is this any worse than the civil war, occupation, rendition, targeted assassinations, mass displacement, and epidemic of piracy that have occurred since the United States supported Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia in December 2006?
Unfortunately, it is. The location, targets, and tactics employed in yesterday’s tragedy suggest a dramatic turn for the worse in Somalia. Diplomats, humanitarians, and security professionals must urgently reexamine the policy missteps behind this crisis.
Some important details to consider:
Location – The attacks took place in Somaliland and Puntland, autonomous regions that have functioning civil administrations and have largely been spared from the worsening insecurity and violence in Mogadishu and south-central Somalia. The self-declared independent state of Somaliland had until now provided refuge both to refugees fleeing the effects of the insurgency in the south and international aid workers for whom the rest of the country had become too insecure. This expansion of the battlefield may rapidly destabilize the rest of the Horn of Africa.
Targets – The bombings targeted government officials, the Ethiopian mission in Hargeisa, and the headquarters of the United Nations Development Program in Somaliland. This effectively paints these diverse actors with one brush as elements of an occupation approved by the United States and implemented by Ethiopia. The attack on UNDP threatens to cut off international access to 3.5 million Somalis in need of humanitarian assistance. The targeting of aid workers, an alarming trend that has picked up alarming pace lately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, continues.
Tactics – The use of highly coordinated large scale suicide attacks against high profile international targets illustrates the spread of Al Qaeda inspired technology and tactics from Iraq and Afghanistan to east Africa. This follows the pattern set by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide attacks, all of which used to be quite rare in Somalia.
The blowback from the Bush Administration’s narrow fixation on certain counterterrorism priorities in Somalia continues. In March 2008 the United States designated the Somali Islamist militant group the Shabab as a terrorist organization, a designation that offered little advantage to U.S. goals in the region but did inflame anti-American views in Somalia. That designation, and the subsequent killing of a Shabab leader with a Tomahawk missile strike, precipitated the Shabab’s decision to widen its targets to include anyone associated with the West. Yesterday’s bombings demonstrate the consequences of this decision are actively worsening.
A wholesale reexamination of U.S. policy could change these dynamics, and create a fresh opportunity to align U.S. interests with those of the Somali people. Unfortunately, time is not on our side.
The First Dude, Snowmobilin’ Mainers, And The Divisive Politics Of Karl Rove
The First Dude, Snowmobilin’ Mainers, And The Divisive Politics Of Karl Rove
Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, director of the documentary “A Snow Mobile for George,” a tour of deregulation in America. He owns a snow mobile.
As Politico’s Jonathan Martin tells us, “Iron Dog champ Todd Palin makes his direct mail debut in a piece aimed straight at the gut of a rural Mainers.” The letter warns snowmobiling Mainers, “Obama’s Extreme Environmental Policies” could make this “The Last Winter To Ride In Our National Parks?” The Maine Republican Party flier includes this edited quote from a Sierra Club blogger Pat Joseph:
In the end, the point that snowmobiles are loud and obnoxious and polluting seems obvious to everyone save perhaps the person actually astraddle the beast. . . . They just don’t have any business in our national parks.
Todd Palin’s flier dives straight into a barrel of red herrings.
In this flier, Palin is attempting to stoke a culture war between freedom-loving snowmobilers and tree-hugging environmentalists. But snowmobilers care about pollution and preserving the outdoors. And environmentalists love having fun. See how the flier edits the Sierra Club quote? Here’s what that dot-dot-dot eliminated from Pat Joseph’s criticism of snowmobiles in National Parks:
They are also fun. No doubt about it, they’re an absolute blast.
Mr. Palin says his wife and Senator McCain will protect snowmobile access with “practical standards.” But they don’t believe in regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, even though global warming has meant the Iron Dog competitors have raced in the rain — and in 2003, the race was even totally cancelled because of the extreme heat. It’s sure hard to protect the fun of snowmobiling if your “standards” mean the end to snow. More »
Is Palin Using Cheney’s Climate Change Playbook?
Is Palin Using Cheney’s Climate Change Playbook?
Our guest blogger is Jason Burnett. Burnett was most recently the Associate Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he coordinated energy and climate change policy across the EPA and led the development of greenhouse gases regulations.
As head of climate and energy policy for the Environmental Protection Agency, I witnessed first-hand the dangers of a Vice President who has a disregard for the balance of powers in our Constitution and a disdain for inconvenient facts.
Vice President Cheney has worked hard to cast doubt on the science of climate change. The Vice President’s office wanted my help censoring the Congressional testimony from the Centers for Disease Control to eliminate any references to how climate change endangers human health. I refused. The Vice President’s office later wanted me to water down congressional testimony on the strength of the science by not acknowledging that greenhouse gases “harm” the environment by causing climate change. Again I refused.
Having heard the words “the Vice President’s office is on the phone” many times over the past few years I could not agree more when Senator Joe Biden called them “the eight most dreaded words in the English language” for those trying to uphold our nation’s laws and respect our Constitution.
Given my experience with the dangers of an unaccountable Vice President, it sent shivers down my spine during the Vice Presidential debate when I heard Governor Palin say she’s “thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the Vice President also, if that Vice President so chose to exert it, in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president’s policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.” A bit more authority than our current Vice President has wrestled away from the President and Congress?
A strong Vice President is a great thing, but that strength should primarily come from being a trusted advisor to the President, not a separate power center somewhere between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch. Governor Palin is fortunate her smile and wink won’t remind voters of Vice President Cheney’s smirk and grimace; maybe people won’t notice that her dismissal of science and views on the power of the office are quite similar to Vice President Cheney’s? More »
Responding To Iraq’s Refugee Crisis
Responding To Iraq’s Refugee Crisis
Our guest blogger is Natalie Ondiak, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The humanitarian situation for Iraqis is dire. Since 2003, about 5 million Iraqis have been displaced: more than 2 million of these Iraqis are refugees, the majority of whom are in the region and 2.8 million are internally displaced persons. This number of displaced Iraqis represents nearly one-fifth of the entire Iraqi population. This past weekend, 13,000 Iraqis Christians in Mosul fled their homes after several weeks of violence and intimidation and were forced to seek sanctuary in neighboring areas and, in some cases, Syria.
On September 30th, the State Department announced that 13, 823 Iraqi refugees had been resettled in the US in fiscal year 2008, exceeding their 12,000 person goal. While this suggests a concerted effort by policy makers to take action to help Iraqis, the 13,823 number is not sufficient. The US has been shirking its responsibility in the face of a displacement crisis in Iraq. The number of Iraqi refugees offered US resettlement has been woefully low. Between March 2003 and 2007, the US resettled fewer than 8000 Iraqi refugees. The State Department missed its resettlement figure targets in both 2006 and 2007. In 2007, the modest Iraqi resettlement target was 5000 people, but the US resettled only 1,608 Iraqis.
The February 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra marked the beginning of an increase in sectarian violence. As the conflict has devolved into a civil war, displacement has rapidly increased. In addition to violence and insecurity, the economic situation in Iraq has continued to deteriorate. Indeed, standards of living are below what they were prior to the war and unemployment is rampant.
The majority of displaced Iraqis since 2003 have ended up in nearby countries in the region. Syria and Jordan host the most Iraq refugees — about 1.5 million between them. However, many Middle Eastern countries are also hosting large numbers of Iraqis: More »
In Search Of An Honest Debate On Health Care
In Search Of An Honest Debate On Health Care
Our guest blogger is James Kvaal, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
How much will Sen. John McCain cut from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for his new tax credits? McCain advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin said that our estimate of $1.3 trillion – based on the work of the Tax Policy Center – is “false.” But he has refused to provide his own number or to endorse any of the independent estimates.
Holtz-Eakin also claimed that he could save “on the order of $2.6 trillion over 10 years” by cutting wasteful Medicare spending, without affecting benefits at all. If that’s true, than Obama’s plan – which costs $1.6 trillion – could provide universal health care coverage while saving $1 trillion.
There are only 10 days until the election. If the McCain campaign successfully avoids all the difficult questions on who, exactly, is paying for its trillions in tax breaks, than no future presidential candidate will have any reason to be honest in their budgeting. And if McCain actually becomes president, then he will have learned that he can put out whatever numbers he wants, or not, and leave all of us guessing about his true policies.
For more on this, read the new analysis released yesterday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
I Was A Global Warming Terrorist
I Was A Global Warming Terrorist
Our guest blogger is Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
Letter from Maryland State Police to Josh Tulkin, former deputy director of CCAN. Click to download (via Andy Revkin).
Since 2001, I have devoted my life entirely to the peaceful promotion of windmills and solar panels to solve global warming. Apparently not everyone liked my work, however. Believe it or not, the Maryland State Police put my name in their criminal intelligence database as a “suspected terrorist” as part of their larger program of collecting information about political activists in 2005-2006. I was on this outrageous “watch” list apparently because of a single act of peaceful civil disobedience I participated in outside a coal-fired power plant in 2004.
CCAN’s former deputy director, Josh Tulkin, was also put in the database as was another former CCAN staffer who has chosen to remain anonymous. Neither of these people has ever been arrested for anything in their entire lives.
In all, about one third of the entire Maryland CCAN staff — one of the largest environmental groups in the state — was officially spied on by the police while we peacefully promoted clean electricity and clean cars for Maryland. This is, of course, an outrage and a threat, not just to civil liberties in Maryland, but to the state’s entire environmental community. When people who are trying save the climate and save the Bay are considered terrorists, the world has truly been turned upside down.
Watch the rally we held yesterday:
Please, write an email to Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD) asking him to release all surveillance files kept on CCAN staff and other activists statewide. Presently, the police want to destroy the files without releasing printed copies — another outrage. Ask O’Malley to support comprehensive legislation to prevent similar abuses from happening again.
Help end forever these police abuses in Maryland that threaten our climate and clean energy movement, and our right to organize for causes we believe in. Why has our state wasted precious resources creating a “terrorist” watch list of innocent people instead of devoting maximum resources to solving real environmental problems? The real terror in Maryland is the threat of 20 feet of sea-level rise. The real violence is the burning of coal to create electricity while wrecking the climate.
Top Bush Pentagon Appointee Rejects Key McCain Counter-Terrorism Initiative
Top Bush Pentagon Appointee Rejects Key McCain Counter-Terrorism Initiative
Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In a statement reminiscent of the “first art critic” scene in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part 1, the civilian head of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command Michael Vickers today soundly rejected a core idea put forth by John McCain for meeting the threats posed by global terrorist groups.
John McCain has called for the creation of a new espionage agency patterned on the Office of Strategic Services, a World War II-era agency that conducted operations behind enemy lines.
Speaking at an event (pdf) at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Assistant Secretary of Defense Vickers, one of the most important figures in the Bush administration’s efforts to address global terrorism, criticized McCain’s proposal, essentially saying it would be a big waste of time while “we’re at war.” Vickers stated his view clearly: “We have the institutions we need.”
McCain has advocated for his new OSS in speeches, and in his Foreign Affairs essay last year. He insists such a new agency “could take risks that our bureaucracies today are afraid to take.”
A cadre of such undercover operatives would allow us to gain the intelligence on terrorist activities that we don’t get today from our high-tech surveillance systems and from a CIA clandestine service that works almost entirely out of our embassies abroad.
McCain national security advisor Randy Scheunemann reiterated McCain’s support of the idea, telling the Washington Times that “while there may be some that think the status quo is just fine, John McCain has seen past failures of the intelligence community firsthand.”
But just as McCain’s half-baked League of Democracies idea is criticized by democracy promotion experts, intelligence and counter-terrorism experts have rejected McCain’s OSS idea as a structural solution. Robert Grenier, a former CIA official, criticized the idea, saying “as so many have before him, Senator McCain is trying to use a structural fix to solve what is fundamentally a leadership problem… To suggest that we could eliminate that by creating a new organization to pull all those elements together is completely unrealistic and in the short term would be enormously destructive.”
This flat-out rejection of a core McCain idea by a top defense and counter-terrorism official in the Bush administration exposes the emptiness of McCain’s national security proposals, something that frankly hasn’t gotten enough scrutiny from the media. John McCain might bluster that he would “follow Bin Laden to the gates of hell,” but his main idea on terrorism is simply to move some bureaucratic boxes around unnecessarily.
Transcript below: More »