Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 14
March 17, 2011
Gaddafi's speech
Did you catch Gaddafi's speech? This is from Al Jazeera English:
"They are finished, they are wiped out. From tomorrow you will only find our people. You all go out and cleanse the city of Benghazi. A small problem that has become an international issue. And they are voting on it tonight ... because they are determined. As I have said, we are determined. We will track them down, and search for them, alley by alley, road by road, the Libyan people all of them together will be crawling out. Massive waves of people will be crawling out to rescue the people of Benghazi, who are calling out for help, asking us to rescue them. We should come to their rescue.
"And I, Muammar Gaddafi, I will die for my people. With Allah's help.
"No more fear, no more hesitation, we are no longer reluctant. The moment of truth has come. If you see the cars with loudspeakers, destroy them, destroy their communications points that are spreading lies to you. Our children are the one's who have destroyed these planes.
"Just like Franco in Spain, who rolled into Madrid with external support. And they asked how did you manage to liberate Madrid? He said: 'There was a fifth column, the people of the city.' You are the fifth column within the city. This is the day on which we should liberate the city. We've been looking forward to that day. And tomorrow we will communicate again, and our cause will continue towards the south.
"With our bare chests and heads we were confronting the dangers, facing the challenge, we did not initiate this violence, they started it. Of course, these words will have an impact on the traitors and infidels. Tonight they will panic and they will collapse.
"You are capable of doing it. You are capable of achieving this. Let's set our women and daughters free from those traitors.
"God is great."
Doesn't sound like the sort of fellow who'll willingly give up power.
The UN is proceeding, meanwhile, and we'll have a resolution sometime tonight, perhaps within an hour or two of this post going up (2200 GMT according to the BBC, which I think means 5 pm my time). I see also that Al Jazeera is reporting that certain unnamed "capitals" in the Arab world are prepared to bomb Libyan military targets within hours of the passage of any resolution. Is one of those capitals Cairo?
It would be quite something if the Arab world takes it upon itself to oust Gadaffi. Or mostly upon itself - say, Egyptian and Tunisian troops, and Qatari I suppose, with western air support. That could actually be a watershed moment of some kind.
Why am I talking myself into this? It all seemed such a clearly bad idea last week. But I guess the Arab League participation changes things a lot. And a speech like that quoted above, which shows he's prepared to sack his own city. For better or worse America's third war is going to start happening very fast, it would seem.
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An amazing Republican vote | Michael Tomasky
Wanted to draw your attention to this little vote that took place at the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce committee yesterday:
All 31 Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee declined on Tuesday to vote in favor of a series of amendments acknowledging the scientific consensus around climate change.
The three amendments were attached to a bill aiming to curb the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate greenhouse gasses. They posited that "Congress accepts the scientific finding ... that 'warming of the climate system is unequivocal'"; that the scientific evidence regarding climate change "is compelling"; and that "human-caused climate change is a threat to public health and welfare."
The committee passed the measure, but voted down the amendments, with 30 of the 31 Republicans voting against them and one - Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee - declining to vote either way. Democrats unanimously voted in favor of the amendments.
Republicans, who have strongly opposed Obama administration efforts to regulate greenhouse gasses, have been pushing to strip the EPA of its regulatory power. The party blocked Democratic efforts last year to pass climate change legislation.
Here's a little bit on the scientific consensus, which of course is in fact rather vast.
Liberals are always being mad at and disappointed in Obama, and yes, he's disappointing in some ways. He's too above it all, won't take tough stands on things like the budget that matter.
But liberals should remember that Barack Obama isn't the reason common-sense reforms can't happen in this country. We have a situation in which 95% of the scientific community thinks A, and roughly two-thirds of Americans agree about A. Then we have a small but tenacious faction that has disproportionate power in Washington and that insists A is a socialistic plot. It's that last bunch that is the real problem.
The substance of what the House GOP is doing, by the way, is to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. You know, doing the kind of job it was created to do.
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Libya: in we go | Michael Tomasky
The prospect of a deadly siege of the rebel stronghold in Benghazi, Libya, has produced a striking shift in tone from the Obama administration, which is now pushing for the United Nations to authorize aerial bombing of Libyan tanks and heavy artillery to try to halt the advance of forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The administration, which remains deeply reluctant to be drawn into an armed conflict in yet another Muslim country, is nevertheless backing a resolution in the Security Council that would give countries a broad range of options for aiding the Libyan rebels, including military steps that go well beyond a no-flight zone.
Administration officials — who have been debating a no-flight zone for weeks — concluded that such a step now would be "too little, too late" for rebels who have been pushed back to Benghazi. That suggests more aggressive measures, which some military analysts have called a no-drive zone, to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from moving tanks and artillery into Benghazi.
The United States is insisting that any military action would have to be carried out by an international coalition, including Libya's Arab neighbors.
First of all, when did it stop being a no-fly zone and become a no-flight zone? But anyway. I have taken as you know a stern line against the no-fly zone. At the same time I've watched the Gaddafi forces inflict their damage and at times thought the same thing a lot of people have, i.e. maybe we really should do something.
But now, is it too late? This is really a Tevye situation. On the one hand, I can understand the administration's thinking to some extent. Hillary Clinton said on NPR this morning that the Arab League statement for a no-fly zone last Saturday was a turning point, in terms of giving the western powers cover to proceed. I'm sure many Arab League heads of state want rid of Gaddafi for their own reasons, but still, a statement is a statement.
On the other hand, a no-fly zone couldn't be implemented until April. Benghazi might well be back in the regime's hands by then, and it's all moot, and what are we bombing then, and why?
On the other hand...
...it still seems to me that the karma and symbolism of the US implementing a unilateral no-fly zone, or even with England and France, would have been potentially very negative, so it was necessarily to wait for the Arab League.
On the other hand, waiting helped make a Gaddafi victory more likely, and isn't a Gaddafi victory over the rebels potentially very negative too? Not only for Libyans, but in terms of the aspirations of the whole region? There were protests, barely noticed in the press, in Damascus and Aleppo the other day. The Assad regime is a long distance from threatened, I understand this. But if, if, if, somehow in some way, this democratic activism could spread to Syria, a linchpin in the region in so many ways, things really could change in the Middle East. But does a victory for the Libyan regime just send the protesters home in resignation?
Maybe this can be kept short. Obviously, Gaddafi lacks the means to attack the US (or does he? Wasn't the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing an attack?). A drawn-out ground war seems at most a remote possibility, and in any case it's something the US doesn't have the boots even to do at this point.
But we're going to be drawn in here. Once this starts, it can't end with Gaddafi staying in power. It's like Serbia in the 90s in that way. That wasn't really terribly heavy lifting in military terms. An 11-week aerial bombing campaign.
But this is unlike Serbia in crucial ways that we would all do well to remember. Importantly, that NATO air campaign did not remove Milosevic from power. He stayed. Declared victory, in fact. It was only the following year, once he'd been indicted at the Hague, that he was finally overthrown. That had to be done by the Serbian people themselves, after an obviously rigged election in September 2000. In the face of the protests, Milosevic willingly gave up power the next month. Think Gaddafi is going to do that?
I'll say it again: we're going to be drawn in. This is a very fraught course. There is immense potential domestic political peril for Obama, whose base will run away from him if this leads to serious commitment of US troops. But that's a secondary matter. The primary matter is whether this helps or hurts the brave democrats in that region. You're going to hear a lot of bluster to the contrary, but no one knows. If the Gaddafi family is willing to fight to the last man, woman and bullet, we have to be too. Yikes.
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March 16, 2011
And now, Michigan workers | Michael Tomasky
And now, the anti-worker spaceship touches down in Michigan, where the new Republican governor wants virtual single-handed control over state contracts and bargaining rights. Reuters:
The Michigan bill allows a governor-appointed emergency manager to modify or end collective bargaining agreements. With the governor's approval, the emergency manager also could dissolve a city government or recommend consolidation.Democrats called the bill an attack on public sector unions similar to legislation signed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker last week and said the changes would add to pressure on cities and school districts.
Republican Rep. Al Pscholka, the bill's sponsor, said on Tuesday that the changes would give emergency managers more tools to turn around failing schools and cities.
"For years we have allowed cities and schools to be on the verge of bankruptcy without any intervention," Pscholka said. "When the state finally does arrive, in many cases we find the financial records in disarray and leave emergency managers with very few good options to balance the books."
The bill expands the powers for the state to name emergency overseers and gives them powers over academics and finances in the case of school districts. The emergency manager also could close schools and buildings.
This kind of thing could well be called for with regard to some Detroit schools. But an emergency overseer accountable only to the governor? A protest today in Lansing, the capital, drew what looks like a few thousand people.
In Wisconsin, they're going to recall Scott Walker next year, and they just might succeed. In Ohio, new GOP governor John Kasich is in the toilet - 35% approval already, and he'd lose a rematch against Democrat Ted Strickland by 15 points based on what voters have seen of him so far. Also in Ohio, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, a liberal who faces reelection in 2012 and was neck-in-neck in polls with plausible GOP foes, now leads them by 15, 18 points.
These aren't exactly flaming liberal states, but they're not right-wing states, and two of the three (Michigan and Wisconsin) are normally Democratic states at the presidential level. What these governors think they're doing politically is beyond me.
And yet, they will win these concessions, as Walker won in Wisconsin, and even if Walker is recalled and Kasich and Michigan's Rick Snyder are defeated and all three states go for Obama in 2012, it'll still be hard to round up the votes in those states to undo the damage these people are doing. A reminder that there are political stakes for the political class and real-life stakes for the working and middle class.
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Is rock'n'roll running out of hall of famers? | Michael Tomasky
This year's class of the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame was inducted the other night. Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, Dr. John, Leon Russell and Darlene Love.
I've got nothing against these people. I've enjoyed a lot of their songs. Of the bunch, probably Neil Diamond is the biggest. He may not be everyone's cup of tea, and isn't really mine, but his reach and influence are undeniable; writing "I'm a Believer" alone gets him halfway home (no, I'm not being ironic). I know Waits has many ardent devotees among the intellectual set. But it's Cooper who came up with one of the greatest verses of lyric in rock'n'roll history, in "School's Out":
Well we got no class
And we got no principals
And we got no innocence
I can't even think of a word that rhymes
This is really brilliant on several levels. First the double-entendres of class and principals. Then, innocence; how did he choose that word? That's the word that adds depth; it lifts the discussion from the concrete to the abstract. It's all a joke until that word; suddenly, dark things are suggested.
And then the brilliant last line, the only such admission I'm aware of in the entire corpus of songwriting history. It's hilarious and it lets us in on the process. You can picture old Alice (Vincent, actually) sitting there, puzzling and puzzling. Principal? What rhymes with principal? What have I done here? Maybe I have to change principal to something else.
He opens a beer. You know what? F--- it. I'll just write this! Great stuff, ingenious, irreverent, and very rule-bending, especially for an alleged conservative Republican (though I'm not sure he was back then).
But I'm wondering overall whether these people are really hall of famers. As I said, Diamond, sure; scoff if you must, but objectively undeniable. The others are great in their way, but...where I come from, a hall of fame is a really big deal. No? Have their originality and influence really been that vast? I mean, we're on a course for REO Speedwagon to get in there someday.
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Evan Bayh, a model for us all | Michael Tomasky
Evan Bayh, the recently retired Indiana Democratic senator, was once a darling of the Beltway media. He was all that was right with Washington. A "serious" Democrat who wasn't off in left-wing Pelosi-stan, who supported the Iraq war strongly, who sang from the oh-my-God-the-deficit hymnal. He dabbled in pre-presidential water testing in 2007, and while he never had much of a real shot, a handful of responsible centrists promoted him.
When he retired, he spoke actually rather poignantly about how Washington in general and the Senate in particular had grown dysfunctional; how citizens no longer respected the institution, and why they had a point. He spoke of maybe investing some post-retirement energy in filibuster reform, so that the Senate might function better, and he talked wistfully of wanting to teach, to shape young Indiana minds, which he intimated was a far more rewarding way of life than glad-handing lobbyists and rich donors all day long.
So now that he's actually an ex-senator, what's he actually doing? Ezra Klein delivers the sad and not very surprising news:
Bayh did not return to Indiana to teach. He did not, as he said he was thinking of doing, join a foundation. Rather, he went to the massive law firm McGuire Woods. And who does McGuire Woods work for? "Principal clients served from our Washington office include national energy companies, foreign countries, international manufacturing companies, trade associations and local and national businesses," reads the company's Web site. He followed that up by signing on as a senior adviser to Apollo Management Group, a giant public-equity firm. And, finally, this week, he joined Fox News as a contributor. It's as if he's systematically ticking off every poison he identified in the body politic and rushing to dump more of it into the water supply.
The "corrosive system of campaign financing" that Bayh considered such a threat? He's being paid by both McGuire Woods and Apollo Global Management to act as a corroding agent on their behalf. The "strident partisanship" and "unyielding ideology" he complained was ruining the Senate? At Fox News, he'll be right there on set while it gets cooked up. His warning that "what is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest" sounds, in retrospect, like a joke. Evan Bayh doing performance art as Evan Bayh. Exactly which of these new positions would Bayh say is against his self-interest, or in promotion of the general welfare?
Great. Klein called McGuire Woods to get Bayh's comment. He didn't hear from them, but he did get a call back from a flack at Fox, who declined an interview on Bayh's behalf.
The most shocking thing here to me is not that Bayh decided the hell with it I'll just get rich, or even that he agreed to go on Fox (he's a perfect Fox Democrat), but that he is letting Fox News Channel handle his p.r. Of all the people he could choose to speak for him these days, that's really who he wants representing him to the outside world?
The real moral here is not about Bayh but about the Beltway establishment. Always beware those whom it anoints as wise.
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What if China became the world's policeman? | Michael Tomasy
David Ignatius has an interesting column in The Washington Post this morning explaining why Bahrain might be the issue that has the most dramatic impact on the future of US foreign policy. Why Bahrain? Because Saudi Arabia cares a great deal about what happens there, and Saudi Arabia is rather important. Ignatius:
U.S. officials have been arguing that Bahrain's Sunni monarchy must make political compromises to give more power to the Shiite majority there. The most emphatic statement came last weekend from Defense Secretary Bob Gates, who said during a visit to Bahrain that its "baby steps" toward reform weren't enough and that the kingdom should step up its negotiations with the opposition.
This American enthusiasm for change has been anathema to the conservative regimes of the Gulf, and on Monday they backed Bahrain's ruling Khalifa family with military force, marching about 2,000 troops up the causeway that links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. A senior Saudi official told me the intervention was needed to protect Bahrain's financial district and other key facilities from violent demonstrations. He warned that radical, Iranian-backed leaders were becoming more active in the protests.
"We don't want Iran 14 miles off our coast, and that's not going to happen," said the Saudi official. U.S. officials counter that Iran, so far, has been only a minor player in the Bahrain protests and that Saudi military intervention could backfire by strengthening Iran's hand.
Well, first of all, it always surprises and depresses me that people like this Saudi official can't see that creating some room for reform and dissent strengthens a society instead of weakening it. It's only when people feel completely shut out and oppressed that they turn to others. If they felt they had a stake in the society, they'd contribute to it.
We had our own version of this debate in the US in the 1950s. American cold war liberals generally said: let socialist governments govern. As long as they're anti-communist - and usually, socialists were the biggest anti-communists of all, because they knew the bastards the best - let them take the helm if they win. With no basis on which to appeal to socialists for solidarity, communists will be that much more shut out.
Conservative said horse manure, socialists are communists in sheeps' clothing. So, when in real life a socialist non-communist, Mossadegh, won an election in Iran, we at first let him govern (Truman and Acheson) but eventually and inevitably overthrew him (Eisenhower and Dulles). The results, you will all agree, have been absolutely wonderful to this day.
But this is the way it is. Conservatives fear any unknown. They raise bogeymen (in Iran in 1953, communists; in Bahrain today, Iran) and scare people and it works nearly every time. But all this is not even the real reason I'm writing this post, so let's get to that, shall we?
Farther down, Ignatius writes that Bahrain is "the most important U.S.-Saudi disagreement in decades" and unless resolved (and "resolved" of course means to the Saudis reverted to the status quo) will open up a major chasm:
The Obama administration, in effect, is altering America's long-standing commitment to the status quo in the Gulf, believing that change in Bahrain — as in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya — is inevitable and desirable.
The split reflects fundamental differences in strategic outlook. The Gulf regimes have come to mistrust Obama, seeing him as a weak president who will sacrifice traditional allies in his eagerness be "on the right side of history." They liken Obama's rejection of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt to Jimmy Carter's 1979 abandonment of the shah of Iran.
The crackup was predicted by a top UAE sheik in a February meeting with two visiting former U.S. officials. According to notes made during the conversation, the UAE official said: "We and the Saudis will not accept a Shiite government in Bahrain. And if your president says to the Khalifas what he said to Mubarak [to leave office], it will cause a break in our relationship with the U.S." The UAE official warned that Gulf nations were "looking East" — to China, India and Turkey — for alternative security assistance.
This got me wondering. America of course is called the world's policeman. What if, 25 years from now say, that were China?
I'm asking out of genuine curiosity. I'm sure some of you will think of ramifications that elude me. We begin with the obvious downside that the US will no longer be the world's #1. Well, the neocons will thunder about that, but the rest of us might welcome some aspects of it. It would surely force Europe to spend more on military matters, if the US were no longer the feudal lord and protector, and America could spend less, maybe. It could also force the US and the EU to coordinate more.
What it would mean for the people of the world could depend to some extent on what sort of society China itself is in the future. People who disparage American imperialism tend to forget that the US spends many billions on democracy and civil society and the promotion of women's rights and other things through quasi-governmental endowments and agencies. China has a big Africa investment fund, but I doubt much of it goes toward those sorts of things.
Of course, the world's policeman also tends to get to be the world's banker, and that's the rub, really. What happens if China starts running global monetary policy? (Or is it already?)
This very idea is going to provoke howls from the right, but I think that's alarmist twaddle. England once ran the world. Then it didn't. It's still a strong and wealthy and important country, and I'm sure some of you are prepared to point out ways in which it's better off without those obligations.
Of course, I fear that in the end here, the Obama administration will capitulate to the Saudis and let the Bahrain regime have its way. For good or ill, the US will do whatever it has to do to prevent Saudi and the UAE from "looking east." But it's an interesting thought experiment. Have at it.
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March 15, 2011
Wage stagnation, plus more on inequality | Michael Tomasky
Here you will find a new issue brief from the good folks at the Economic Policy Institute - yes, a progressive think tank, but (or shouldn't that just be an "and"?) a highly respected one whose experts are quoted and cited everywhere. I think this is worthy of your attention because it highlights the fact that the question isn't whether public employees are doing better than their private-sector counterparts, but why all of them are being screwed.
From the report:
• U.S. productivity grew by 62.5% from 1989 to 2010, far more than real hourly wages for both private-sector and state/local government workers, which grew 12% in the same period. Real hourly compensation grew a bit more (20.5% for state/local workers and 17.9% for private-sector workers) but still lagged far behind productivity growth.
• Wage stagnation has hit high school–educated workers harder than college graduates, although both groups have suffered—and a bit more so in the public sector. For example, from 1989 to 2010, real wages for high school-educated workers in the private sector grew by just 4.8%, compared with 2.6% in state government. During the same period, real wages for college graduates in the private sector grew 19.4%, compared with 9.5% in state government.
• The typical worker has had stagnating wages for a long time, despite enjoying some wage growth during the economic recovery of the late 1990s. While productivity grew 80% between 1979 and 2009, the hourly wage of the median worker grew by only 10.1%, with all of this wage growth occurring from 1996 to 2002, reflecting the strong economic recovery of the late 1990s.
• The fading momentum of the 1990s recovery failed to propel real wage gains for college graduates employed by private-sector firms or states from 2002 to 2010, despite productivity growth of 20.2% over the same period.
So you can see from these points that public-sector workers have indeed done better than private-sector ones in terms of non-wage compensation in recent years (the first bullet point). Okay, fair enough, so there is indeed something to the argument that public-sector employees have done pretty well benefit-wise, which your correspondent has long acknowledged.
But the rest of it tells a larger story. Getting private-sector median-wage earners livid at their public-sector counterparts while they have confiscated ever larger piles of wealth since 1980 has been among the top earners' neatest tricks.
But wait - they haven't done it themselves. It's our political system that has done it. I was trying to say this in the Kardashian post, but now let me say more.
Economists point to many reasons for the growing income inequality in the US. This Wikipedia entry is actually pretty accurate and thorough.
I'm not so interested in the concrete causes. That's a question of economics. What I am interested in is the question of why, upon seeing such a dramatic growth in inequality for whatever reason, we don't do more about it. And that is a question of politics.
There was a time when the Kardashians of the world - and I don't mean to pick on them; choose your symbol, Wall Street fat cats or NBA stars or whatever - made a fraction of what they make now. A fraction. Yet they were still rich. Very rich indeed.
And American society as a whole thought: well, they should give more of that back. We will tax them more and distribute goods more equitably. That was done, of course, through politics.
Through the last 25-odd years, politics in the US has largely looked after the interests of the top 1%, or maybe 5%. And so we have even more inequality. The US is the outlier among advanced countries; far more inequality than Britain or Germany etc. The explanation for that is political, not economic. Our political system - the modern right, the GOP, the thousands of handsomely remunerated lobbyists - exists to sustain inequality and indeed to exacerbate it.
People of the middle class, private and public, are being robbed in plain daylight. It is not sustainable. I understand our conservative commenters taking issue with this, but I was surprised the other day that even many of you on my side seem resigned to this being the way things naturally are. It isn't. From the Wikipedia entry cited above:
As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing.
The speaker was discussing inequality. It was Alan Greenspan. Not that he did much about it, but if even he thought it, then it's not some radical Kenyan point of view.
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Obama's budget silence | Michael Tomasky
Now, via Politico, comes the counter-intuitive argument that Obama is just being cagier than the rest by not publicly weighing in on the question of the budget:
Administration aides said Obama fully supports efforts to tackle the country's long-term budget problems but that it is Washington — not the public — that is agitating for the president to wade into every legislative debate. This is a subtle shift in strategy from the past two years, when the president could be mistaken for a prime minister, expending much of his political capital in ushering bills through Congress.
The gripes, which have flowed steadily from Capitol Hill regardless of the level of White House immersion, are really more a plea by lawmakers for presidential cover on tough decisions, aides have said.
"This is a process. It is not a one-act play," said Geoff Garin, a pollster who has done messaging work on the deficit debate for Senate Democrats. "We are early in Act 1 of a four-act play."
Well, I'm not so sure. The House is set to vote today on another continuing resolution to fund the government for another three weeks, until April 8. This one cuts, I believe, another $6 billion in domestic discretionary spending. Mind you, that is during the three weeks of the resolution's life, not over the course of the whole year. So that's a lot. And still, GOP opposition is mounting, because the cuts aren't severe enough.
The first CR, in early March, cut $4 billion. This one cuts $6 billion. Pretty clear which way this is going, during these weeks when the White House isn't taking a position on anything.
Now it may come to pass that the GOP runs itself into the ditch here. I'm looking at some Texas GOP web site that naturally stakes out the most extreme plausible position and sees the House GOP panjandrums as a bunch of sellouts:
Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) had said he didn't want the bill to contain language defunding public broadcasting or Planned Parenthood, which were included in the long-term CR passed by the House, because it would run into trouble in the Senate. Clearly, the Republican Leadership in the House has no stomach for a real budget fight with the Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said "I am glad that we were able to come to an agreement with Republicans on a three-week continuing resolution made up of cuts already proposed by Democrats that will also be free of any ideological, special-interest legislation." Clearly, a victory statement by Senate Democrats!
If the GOP leadership loses enough of their radicals that they do shut goverment down or fail to raise the debt limit, then maybe (even then it's hardly a given, but maybe) Obama looks smart. But if they cohere and pass $60 billion in cuts and he and the Senate end up having to accept $40 billion, that isn't going to look very smart to this boyo.
I think...well, I said it two weeks ago. This passivity is kind of stunning to me, and I think it's losing him ground in the polls, where he's dropped a bit this past month. He's out talking about education yesterday, and I can see how that's good and that's geared toward independents, because No Child Left Behind is pretty widely unpopular, but I still find it weird that he says almost nothing on the issue that is consuming the city he works in.
Deep thought: He is an over-learner of lessons. He over-learned from the Clinton mistakes on healthcare, i.e., the Clintons wrote a bill and told Congress to pass it, and it didn't, so Obama thought, well, I'll let Congress take the lead, and that became a huge mess. Now, he's maybe thinking, okay, for the first two years, I was too much a prime minister, too involved with party-line legislation, so now I'll step back from Capitol Hill altogether. A good instinct in general, but he's overcompensating.
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The difficult truth about nuclear power | Michael Tomasky
This may turn out to be the very worst day in recent human history to say this, I am aware, but I'll say it anyway. The Obama administration is correct to say that the US needs to continue to pursue building more nuclear power plants.
I'm first and foremost for expanding wind and solar and other alternatives. If I lived in a rational country, we'd have a policy in place on a national level like Gainesville, Florida's evidently successful solar policy, but by Washington standards that's socialism, so we can't have that.
But even if we did do something rational around solar and wind and other alternatives, given energy needs we'd still need to expand either fossil fuels or nuclear, and nuclear doesn't contribute to global warming. Nothing is without risks in life, and as we might learn soon here, nuclear carries with it very high risks indeed. You can see on this map that they don't like nuclear plants much in our own earthquake-prone west.
Obama has wanted more money for investment in nuclear. From NPR:
President Obama has expanded on Bush's nuclear energy push. Last year, the Obama administration used $8.3 billion from funds set aside by the Bush administration to help construct two reactors in Georgia.
Obama's budget, released last month, calls for $36 billion in loan guarantees for further nuclear power plant construction.
It's that pot of money that will now be subject to greater scrutiny in Washington. On Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which had already been set to look into energy and nuclear funding, is set to question Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and other administration officials about the incident in Japan and its meaning for the U.S.
The new House Republicans want more, I see:
It's been 24 long years since Congress designated the [Yucca Mountain] site in the southern Nevada desert as the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste.
While opponents have gained the upper hand in trying to block the project in recent years - in 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table" - a group of House Republicans is fighting back. They want to revive the site as part of a broader plan that calls for building 200 nuclear-power plants by 2030.
Under that plan, the nation would begin building nuclear plants on an unprecedented scale. Currently, the nation gets 20 percent of its electricity from 104 nuclear reactors.
The desire to revive Yucca Mountain is probably driven by politics, i.e., it will embarrass Harry Reid. And these Republicans, being extremists in general, are probably being extreme in calling for 200 plants. But it is true that new nuclear facilities are and can be far, far safer than old plants like the one now on the edge in Japan, which is 40 years old. Will Saletan of Slate does a good job here of explaining how much safer in general things have become.
I'm sitting here at my computer at home, drinking the coffee I brewed this morning on my plug-in maker, using a lamp, even a little space heater for my feet. I don't regard any of these things as luxuries, particularly, and I and many millions like me are probably unwilling to give these things up. One of these days, I am indeed going to put solar panels on my house. The only reason I haven't done so yet on this house is that we may move. So I'm prepared to spend many thousands of dollars to do my part. But everyone can't do that (because it's socialism etc.). We basically have to chose whether to expand in fossil fuels or nuclear, and while both have downsides, the latter is the less bad choice.
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