Helicopter Ben
by digby
Busy day in DC. C-Span 3 is streaming the Bernanke hearings live. There have been some fireworks so far with Republican Jim Bunning calling bernanke “the creature from Jekyll
Island.”
Meanwhile the PCCC is collecting signatures to thank Bernie Sanders for putting a hold on Bernanke’s confirmation. (And surprisingly, there appear to be a couple of Republicans ready to join him.)
Go here to sign it. They will be taking the first batch to Sanders’ office later today.
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Jobs Summit
by digby
If you’re at work and want to watch it live, AFL-CIO will have a live stream here.
Meanwhile, this article says the Great Green Hope doesn’t look too good and that’s very disappointing. And it looks like you can blame the global warming deniers as much as anything:
Growth in clean energy industries and in green jobs has been considerably slower and bumpier than anticipated, industry experts say. But rather than giving up on its green jobs mantra, the White House will rededicate itself to promoting green industries at the jobs meeting, which will bring together business and labor leaders, politicians and economists. The initial promise of green jobs was based on governments around the world declaring the fight against global warming to be a priority. The theory was that jobs in environmentally minded companies would grow rapidly as a result. But instead, some green-industry companies have been shedding jobs in the United States, and in some cases moving them to China. Last week, the Gamesa wind turbine plant in western Pennsylvania announced it was laying off nearly half its 280 workers. Last month, General Electric said it would close a solar panel factory in Delaware, while Evergreen Solar, which received $58 million in state aid to build a 900-employee plant northwest of Boston, said it would move some assembly to China, costing 250 jobs. There are myriad reasons why green jobs have grown more slowly than hoped. The clean energy component of the $787 billion stimulus package has only recently started to kick in. Energy experts say that banks, which have been reluctant to lend generally, have been especially loath to lend for alternative energy projects. And renewable-energy companies are hesitating to invest in new plants and equipment before Congress enacts new environmental mandates, like cap and trade, to limit carbon emissions. In addition, the long recession (along with correspondingly slack energy demand) caused the clean-energy industry to delay expansion plans. As a result, the United States is likely to install just one-eighth as much new solar power this year as Germany does, and China is expected to surpass the United States this year as the leader in adding new wind energy capacity. “The renewable energy industry in the U.S. is an underdeveloped developing industry,” said Michael Peck, director of external affairs for Gamesa USA, a Spanish-owned company that has two wind turbine factories in Pennsylvania. “Manufacturers, developers, utilities, financiers — they don’t see the legislative pieces that they’re all hoping for to help the industry move forward.”
That’s bad news on so many levels it makes your head hurt. It would appear that noted global warming denier Senator James Inhofe was right when he said, “we won, you lost, get over it.”
Of course, that depends on what the meaning of the word “win” is:
“The clean energy market is gigantic and growing,” said Phyllis Cuttino, a director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Environmental Group. “The U.S. has a rich manufacturing base, a well educated work force and we are an innovation center. But if we don’t have the policies in place to make investment here a sure thing, then we could potentially lose to other countries. Other countries are jumping in. They have policies to take a lot of projects to scale, and that’s what’s missing in the United States.”
We’re in the bottom in health care and half the country is damned proud of that fact. Why shouldn’t we be at the bottom in clean energy too?
Update: Breakout sessions live streams
Watch LaHood, Orszag, Robert Kuttner, Doug Holtz-Eakin, others on infrastructure
Watch Summers, Hochberg, Wes Clark, Paul Krugman, Larry Lindsey, others on Exports
Watch Geithner, Mills, Eric Schmidt, Joseph Stiglitz, others on small business
Watch Chu, Browner, Wes Clark, Jeff Sachs, others on Green Jobs
Watch Locke, Romer, Genachowski, others on Biz Investment
Solis, Barnes, Dean Baker, Matthew Segal, others on Main Street Workers
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Excited Delusion
by digby
Well gosh. It looks like another appeals court bought the medical voodoo called “excited delirium” and threw out another taser case. (Excited delirium is a strange new disease that only affects people who are in police custody.)
At some point in the future this will be looked back on as yet another in a long line of primitive and cruel (and deadly) ways of dealing with the mentally disturbed. For all of our modern technology, when you come down to it we are a still an unevolved species if this is the best we can do.
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Oh, America
by tristero
This is not a post bashing Nick Kristof. I repeat, and I’m serious: I’m not attacking Kristof on this occasion. In fact, I completely agree with the thrust of this column about Obama’s terrible decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Not to say that Kristof can’t be spectacularly wrong, just that this is not one of those times.
No, what this post is about is something far more subtle, and dire, than an American columnist who happens to be wrong. It’s about how incredibly blind, narcissistic and, frankly, stupid, we can be even when we’re the good guys and are trying to be decent. It’s a little thing, a micro-rhetorical slip, and many of you will scream we have far more pressing things to worry about. I believe, however, that what Nick did here, probably inadvertently, is symptomatic of a major intellectual and moral failure of American international relations, both officially and culturally. It is the perverse universe of American arrogance in an atom.
Please read the entire column. And, if you didn’t notice anything amiss, please bear with me, while I summarize what he said.
Kristof begins by asking us to imagine that we are a “barely educated” Afghan villager and to see Obama’s escalation through his/her eyes. Nick’s point: while occasionally American troops have done good, they’ve done a helluva lot of harm, and they’re non-believers in a region where religious homogeneity is a given. With Obama’s escalation, it surely looks, to rural Afghanis, like a foreign, occupying power is running amok in their country. In short, the escalation is a perfect mechanism for increasing sympathy among the Afghan people for the Taliban.
This sounds highly plausible to me. Kristof goes on:
That’s why so many people working in Afghanistan at the grass roots are watching the Obama escalation with a sinking feeling. President Lyndon Johnson doubled down on the Vietnam bet soon after he inherited the presidency, and Mikhail Gorbachev escalated the Soviet deployment that he inherited in Afghanistan soon after he took over the leadership of his country. They both inherited a mess — and made it worse and costlier.
As with the Americans in Vietnam, and Soviets in Afghanistan, we understate the risk of a nationalist backlash; somehow Mr. Obama has emerged as more enthusiastic about additional troops than even the corrupt Afghan government we are buttressing.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned in his report on the situation in Afghanistan that “new resources are not the crux” of the problem. Rather, he said, the key is a new approach that emphasizes winning hearts and minds: “Our strategy cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent troops; our objective must be the population.”
So why wasn’t the Afghan population more directly consulted?
What a fantastic question! Why didn’t anyone ask lots of Afghans what they wanted? Kristof continues:
“To me, what was most concerning is that there was never any consultation with the Afghan shura, the tribal elders,” said Greg Mortenson, whose extraordinary work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan was chronicled in…
Hold it right there. What the hell is going on here? Did I read that right?
Immediately after pointing out the very disturbing problem that Americans and other Westerners seem only to be consulting with themselves, Kristof immediately turned around and consulted an American for his opinion on what Afghans think. Later in the article, he quotes another American. No Afghans.
Despite an occasional expert with hands-on experience – and I’m certainly not disputing Mr. Mortenson’s or Mr. Rupp’s expertise – we, as a country, have only the vaguest idea of who these people are, what their concerns are, their hopes, and their fears – not to mention their complex politics and social structure, which seems radically different from America’s.
In short, Americans know exactly enough about Afghanistan to be dangerous.
“Okay, tristero,” I can hear you saying, “Aren’t you doing the same thing? Talked to any Afghans recently, you hypocrite?” No, I haven’t. I haven’t been to Afghanistan nor ever met anyone from that country (it looks like an incredible place and I would love to go there someday, if it ever gets stable),
God Told Him To
by digby
Everyone who reads tristero’s posts knows about Mike Huckabee’s record of bad judgment in pardoning criminally insane prisoners. And we all know that he did at least one of them based upon loony wingnut radio conspiracy theories and others because he personally knew the fellas.
But I think it’s important to emphasize why he did most of them. Here’s Gene Lyons:
During the former Baptist minister’s decade as Arkansas governor, it appeared that no matter how heinous an inmate’s crimes, all he had to do for a pardon was drop to his knees, praise Jesus and persuade some preacher known to Huckabee of his newfound holiness. “Everybody knows that Mike Huckabee makes up his mind what to do by what God tells him to do,” said one minister who gained clemency for a prisoner serving 100 years for the strong-arm robbery of elderly neighbors.
I believe in clemency and I think our legal system is often very unjust. But to pardon violent criminals because “God told him to” is mind boggling. It’s a very good thing this man’s political career appears to be over. He’s nuts.
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Fergawdsake
by digby
I can excuse some college kid for this but it is completely absurd coming from a man of Tom Hayden’s age and experience:
Tom Hayden, the liberal activist best known for his work in the 60’s, when he helped found Students for a Democratic Society, was once pretty enthusiastic about Barack Obama. Back in March of 2008 he had the first byline on an article in the Nation — also attributed to Bill Fletcher Jr., Danny Glover and Barbara Ehrenreich — that began, “All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama.” Now, though, after the president announced his decision to send an additional 30,00 troops to fight in Afghanistan, Hayden’s had enough. His latest piece for the Nation begins with a very different sentiment than the one he expressed not two years ago. Now, Hayden says, “It’s time to strip the Obama sticker off my car.”
Hayden’s fanboy endorsement was an embarrassment of giddy projection even at the time. But there were a lot of people who were caught up in campaign fever on all sides so he wasn’t unique. To have a fit and claim “betrayal” because Obama is fulfilling his campaign promise to send more troops to Afghanistan, however, is just puerile.
We had a choice in the Democratic Party between two moderates with almost identical agendas and worldviews. It’s not in the least bit surprising that they are working well together. They have never really disagreed. And in the General we had a choice between a moderate and a doddering right wing fool with his ignoramus running mate. These were the choices before us. If Tom Hayden thought we were electing the second coming of Ghandi, Houdini and Jesus Christ, it was all in his head.
Joan Walsh says it all about Hayden’s silliness both then and now, but I will just note that it’s this kind of behavior that has given liberals a bad name since Hayden was in his heyday.
Update:
I wish Obama had changed his mind on Afghanistan, and argued for him to do it. I will continue to do so. But I never had any illusions about where he and most of the other Democrats were headed with the “Good War” narrative. It always ends up the same way.
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The Great Debate
by digby
Well, not exactly:
WASHINGTON – A deeply skeptical Congress on Wednesday resigned itself to President Barack Obama‘s escalation of the Afghanistan war, even as the president’s chief military and diplomatic advisers sought to cool any expectations that the war would end in two years. Leading Democrats said they had serious misgivings about the deployment of 30,000 more troops but would not try to block it — or the $30 billion it will cost. Republicans said they support the force increase even as they doubted Obama’s July 2011 deadline to start bringing troops home. The response was the best Obama could have hoped for from a Congress sharply divided on the war. “It’s not likely that there would be any circumstances where the president would lose this battle this year” with lawmakers, said Rep. John Murtha, a vocal war critic who oversees military spending.
I guess all those youthful Obama voters who believed that his speech in 2004 against the Iraq war meant that he wouldn’t behave like all the other old Democratic hacks have just ben schooled. No biggie. They’ll be too busy trying to scrape up the 35% tuition hikes to vote anyway. As for the rest of us who heard all the talk (from all the serious candidates) about fighting The Good War and were just sort of hoping he’d think again once in office and recall the political fates of those who make the error of escalating a futile war to keep the military from rebelling or to head off their right flank, well here we are.
I am honestly not sure whether the Democrats can actually keep the congress at this point. And then the games will really begin.
Meanwhile, Gordon over at C&L reminds us of an anniversary:
Thirty years ago this December, the Soviet Union decided it was a good idea to take advantage of an unstable region by launching an invasion of Afghanistan. Convinced this would be easy and “what the Afghan people wanted”, Moscow quickly moved to set up a Soviet backed regime and to fold Afghanistan into the Communist bloc. Or tried to anyway.
Dallas Townsend (CBS News): In recent days U.S. Intelligence has detected the influx of a battalion of Soviet troops, about five hundred men, into Afghanistan.”
We are, of course, exceptional and will succeed where every other empire has failed, so it’s nothing to worry about. Carry on. Just thought it was an interesting little tid-bit.
Update: Dear God
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Heads Must Roll
by digby
The other day I mentioned that the Villagers were ginning up a scandal over this party crasher story that would eventually require the resignation of someone in the White House. It’s not about security. They really can’t be bothered with such trivia. But God help anyone who presumes to ignore the approved social pecking order. One simply does not presume to attend events which are confined to Very Important Villagers and someone must be sacrificed on the alter of Sally Quinn lest the entire social order be threatened.
Eric Boehlert has found the perfect example of tabloid Village media gleefully pushing this sort of gossipy narrative with the usual cheap insinuations. And naturally, it’s from Politico.
If you haven’t been following the recent back and forth between Politico and the White House, read this. They are the very essence of the Village and the Obama White House is finding out just how sharp their claws can be.
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Bargaining Power
by digby
I may not be competent to weigh the importance of the various wonkish details of the health care reform package being debated in the Senate, but I’m pretty comfortable talking about this.
Ezra believes that if the votes aren’t there for a decent public option then the horse trading should be around getting something good in return for giving up the public option rather than negotiating the terms of the public option. That would make sense if the public option were just another feature of the health care bill. But it is not. It is the central demand of the liberal base of the Democratic Party in this rube goldberg health care plan and has long since gone way beyond a policy to become a symbol.
Perhaps that is wrong on policy grounds. People will argue about that forever. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is no longer a matter of policy but rather a matter of political power. And to that extent it cannot be “bargained away” for something like better subsidies, even if it made sense. “Bargaining away” the Public Option is also the bargaining away of liberal influence and strength.
Indeed, since the political establishment and the media have been declaring it dead for the past six months, the fact that it is still in the bill is a testament to liberal strength. And that is why Republicans and corporate centrists are so desperate to destroy anything that’s called a “Public Option” no matter how many compromises are made to accomodate them. And it’s why the liberals are so adamant about keeping it alive.
Again, as a matter of policy I don’t know that the public option actually means much anymore. But as a matter of politics, it’s very important. Powerful people, from outside and inside the Party are desperate that the liberals are not seen to win this battle. It changes the balance of power in ways that extend far beyond the health care debate and they know it.
Update: Bowers talks about the necessity of passing a final bill here, and a commenter uses this post to refute it. I don’t actually think it does.
The “Public Option” is a symbol of liberal power, and losing it will be a serious loss. However, expecting that Democrats would vote against a final health care bill because it didn’t have one was always dicey in my view. If, in the end this bill doesn’t have a public option, I have little doubt that most pols are going to make a very serious gut check, as Bowers does, and ask themselves whether or not the public loss of this liberal power is worth tanking health care reform over. I don’t know how that will come out.
What’s really kept this symbol of liberal power alive is public opinion, in my view, rather than an institutional belief in the serious intention among progressives to tank the bill. It’s the people who have the liberals’ back on this one and that actually scares politicians. They aren’t scared that liberal pols are going to vote against health care reform. They’re scared of voters.
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IOKIYA a senile R
by digby
Somebody should report that to the FCC. I hear they have a zero tolerance policy these days.