October 14, 2009 12:49 PM

Saudi Arabia Wants Compensation if Global Warming Bill Passes

Joe Romm, over at Climate Progress, passes on the news that Saudi Arabia has been lobbying for compensation to offset their financial losses if the world begins to wean itself off of oil. He finds it outrageous.

I do as well. But could someone explain how this is really any different than what the coal industry has successfully done? Like Saudi Arabia, they have profited mightily for decades in selling a product that is a prime contributor to global warming. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars successfully bamboozling the press into thinking for years that the climate scientists weren't sure. And now they want to be compensated, to the tune of literally tens of billions of dollars. And they convinced the House of Representatives that they were right.

As someone once said, where is the outrage about that? It is not as if the House legislation is going to take care of the mineworkers - that would be more just and far less expensive.

October 12, 2009 1:49 PM

Kerry Compromises Before Climate Bill Even Introduced!

Insiders are all abuzz about a joint opinion piece in the Washington Post by Senators Kerry and Graham (Republican of South Carolina). In it, they write of their shared commitment to address global warming. Kerry, whose name has best listed as the primary author on the almost introduce Kerry-Boxer global warming legislation we wrote about last week, now comes out in favor of adding more subsidies to nuclear power, the coal industry, and expanding off shore oil and gas development. For this concessions, he got a leading Republican senator to say global warming is real. Joe Romm, over at Climate Progress, thinks that this is the compromise that just might make legislative approval happen.

Count me as skeptical. If we compromise on three terrible things just to get an op - ed piece, where will it go to get something passed.

September 30, 2009 9:11 AM

Boxer/Kerry Climate Bill Defends EPA

Unlike the climate change legislation passed by the House, the bill introduced today does NOT hamstring EPA by explicitly eliminating it's Supreme Court confirmed ability to regulate greenhouse gases. Defending this power has been the central theme of CREDO's global warming campaign because we know that the coal, oil, and other polluters are more powerful in Congress than at EPA.

September 21, 2009 5:30 PM

First Senate GOP Move to Gut EPA

As reported over at the Wonk Room, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R, Alaska) has introduced an amendment to the bill that funds the Interior Department that would prevent EPA from spending any money regulating global warming gases, as explicitly permitted in a 2007 Supreme Court decision.

This is a terrible idea, though effectively on already included in the landmark Waxman/Markey global warming bill that squeaked through the House. We have always known that this attack would come, but it is actually good news that it is done publicly rather than slipped in a side door by unnamed senators.

September 17, 2009 3:40 PM

Defund Blackwater, Not Acorn!

Congress, driven crazy so easily by Fox News, is in a tizzy and eager to prevent Acorn from receiving any federal funds to help poor and working class people avoid mortgage foreclosure. This is the same Congress that voted against President Obama's proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to have the power to restructure mortgages to keep folks in their homes.

And this is the same Congress that does not even bat an idea when both the Bush and Obama State Departments keep renewing multimillion dollar contracts to Blackwater, the right wing, anti-Muslim, shoot at will mercenary firm.

Count me as disgusted. Talk about falling for the bait.

September 15, 2009 9:26 AM

Blue Dogs Shill in Writing

These guys are shameless.

As reported over at FiredogLake, the Blue Dogs are explicitly demanding that Henry Waxman remove the language on drug pricing passed out of his committee, and replace it with language demanded by the drug companies.

September 14, 2009 9:07 AM

The Never Ending Fight on the Public Option

This is yet another important moment in the battle for real health care reform, as pressure is mounting for progressives to abandon their already compromised position on a strong public option as a condition for a yes vote.

If you have not yet contacted your representative and asked them to pledge a no vote without a strong public option, please do so now. If you have already done so, even if they agreed, it is time to do it again, as they are under severe pressure to cave in.

September 11, 2009 12:04 PM

EPA Shows Some Strength on Coal

This is the best news on climate change and the environment in a long time.

Mountain top coal mining is one of those abominations that must be seen to be understood. Coal companies blow up the top of a mountain, push the debris into downhill streams, and generate CO2 all along the way.

The Bush Administration's EPA approved essentially every request to do so. That is finally changing.

September 8, 2009 10:05 AM

The Cost of Abandoning Van Jones

The wonderful Holly Near song of solidarity - "it could have been me, instead it was you" captures my feeling about the resignation of Van Jones in the middle of the night after a month long smear campaign that was not countered in any way by the White House.

When someone as fine as Van Jones does not inspire a White House defense, one can be sure that others are next. Indeed, rabid television personality Glen Beck promised as much in attacking "Van Jones and others".

Presidential advisor Axelrod and chief spokesperson Gibbs each issued desultory comments thanking Jones for his decision to resign. It is hard to imagine a more fundamental miscalculation. The country has lost a powerful advocate, but the White House has revealed itself as a weakling, and easily intimidated by a mere television pundit.

It is important for progressives to understand the Van Jones episode, for it speaks volumes about how the right wing media echo machine works.

Jones had been under attack since April by the far right website World Net Daily for putting a green face on a red - that is socialist or communist - agenda. This attack got no traction - or pushback. Glen Beck used his platform at Fox to bring this fringe wingnut attack into the nation's mainstream news.

Soon thereafter, Beck pronounced that President Obama hates white people, and is a racist. He has not backed down on this claim.

The fine group Color of Change (full disclosure, I am on the email list of Color of Change and my company provides funding to Color of Change, along with many other nonprofit organizations), which was co-founded by Jones, launched a campaign to alert Beck's advertisers to each hateful rhetoric and ask if they wished to associate their brands with the bile. Most, upon reflection, pulled their ads.

Beck accelerated his attacks on Jones, devoting parts of 23 shows to attacking Van Jones, and bits and pieces of Jones's activist past would emerge.

Van Jones spent the last decade as an advocate and organizer. He fought on behalf of those without power, including unarmed African Americans gunned down by police, school children without books, and the urban underclass looking for a way out. He created organizations, spoke at countless rallies, taught classes in prisons, and wrote a best selling book.

Van Jones did not play the game of Washington politics. He did not become advocate with one business card, and lobby for corporations with another. He shared the anger of those he sought to support. He did not trade away the best interests of those behind bars or in need of jobs to be polite. He used strong language in tough times. Like every single person I know, he made mistakes.

I was surprised when Van accepted a position in the Obama administration. The Administration was noteworthy for how few progressives it recruited. For all practical purposes, the foreign policy team had endorsed the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Most of the economic team had supported the disastrous prohibition of regulation of credit default swaps in the waning days of the Clinton Administration. Most appointees were respectable by Washington standards in how they had opposed the worst abuses of the Bush Administration.

We may never know who told Van he had to go, or who made the repeated choice never to defend him during the weeks of vicious smears. Why would a Van Jones have to apologize for calling Republicans, prior to his appointment, a colorful barnyard epithet when the Obama Chief of Staff considers the F word half of the English language? And why might Van's mistakes be worse than those of say, Timothy Geithner, who took tax free income from the IMF and did not report it? And why is Van Jones more troublesome than say, Joe Lieberman, who constantly slandered candidate Obama, and was rewarded by a clear direction from President Obama that Lieberman was to be welcomed back to the fold?

Joshua Micah Marshal has written eloquently elsewhere of the horribly named "bitch slap theory of politics", in which the Right and their Republican friends repeatedly attack progressives and Democrats with demonstrably false and outrageous claims, but can count on those attacked to ignore the attacks, as if it is somehow beneath them. The press, like moths to a flame, reports the conflict while failing to report the facts.

In Marshall's theory, this simply demonstrates to the public that progressives and Democrats are weak. If they won't defend themselves, how could they be expected to defend the country or, say, the interests of those watching?

With this in mind, what are the consequences of failing to defend Van Jones, and no doubt, of stabbing him in the back and pushing him out the door?

1. Someone will be next. Beck has already mentioned presidential buddy Cass Sunstein, nominated to head a regulatory office in the White House, but blocked from even a vote for eight months by cowardly senators.
2. Increased reluctance on the part of progressives to trust President Obama. If a known star with a huge progressive following like Van Jones won't be defended at all, what progressive would be? Most movement progressives spent the last eight years fighting against the Bush Administration, and Glen Beck and friends, by their low standards, will have plenty of fodder.
3. Members of Congress facing tough votes. Though the White House characterized the Van Jones situation as a distraction from weightier matters, who can trust the White House? Does anyone really think that someone who might have supported the White House on health care or global warming would have changed their vote if Jones had not left the scene?
4. Green jobs. Who will speak for bringing together the needs of the urban poor with fighting our looming environmental disaster? Traditional environmental groups have never quite pulled it off, though some have tried mightily, like the Sierra Club and the Apollo Alliance.

Van Jones, freed of the constraints of the White House, will no doubt resume his efforts as a movement progressive. He is much needed.

But the Obama Administration has lost more than a brilliant advocate. By failing to stand up and to call out Glen Beck for his smears, it has lost power at a time when it needs every ounce of power. It misunderstood, as have so many before it, the fundamental tactics of the right wing media machine. Bullies never are appeased by victory. We will all pay the price.

September 2, 2009 2:49 PM

Former Nixon Aide to be Next ABC Anchor

Diane Sawyer, just named to anchor the nightly ABC newscast, has come a long way from her days as an aide to disgraced former president Richard Nixon. She was close enough to Mr. Nixon that she helped write his memoirs.

September 1, 2009 7:28 AM

Congratulations, Vermont

Today, Vermonters have full freedom the marry. Vermont was the first state in the union to legislatively enact - that is, through democracy - marriage equality. And today, gay and lesbian Vermonters can marry each other and enjoy equal status. I am proud that CREDO Mobile was an active participant in supporting the efforts of many in Vermont to bring about this day.

August 24, 2009 8:37 AM

Admiral Mullen Says We Are Losing in Afghanistan

This is not a surprise. While Admiral Mullen does not actually use the "losing" word, he uses the somewhat longer "deteriorating".

The problem is that the admiral draws the wrong conclusion - that more troops is the answer. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of history that says that more foreign troops eventually makes matters much worse in Afghanistan - ask the Russians and the British (who are making public statements about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan while we are adding soldiers).