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Thomas Paine Would Have Loved Van Jones
Kelpie Wilson, truthout
It’s been a nail-biting time for liberals, wondering if President Obama would have the strength to take on the right-wing bullies who ran amok in our public life throughout August’s Congressional recess. It was a relief to hear the president in his health care address confront the lies directly and to hear him stand behind his preference for a public health care option. But Obama’s failure to defend Van Jones, his green jobs adviser, is still a big disappointment and we need to understand why it happened.
Why was Glenn Beck able to drive Van Jones out of office? Jones did nothing that was illegal or immoral. Some of his views and opinions, now or in the past, are not popular with some people, but that doesn’t make them “fringe” or “crazy” or “reprehensible,” all epithets used to describe them. “Crazy” is more applicable to Beck, who seems to believe he is channeling the American revolutionary Thomas Paine: Beck titled his own book “Common Sense”; Beck produced a series of nutty videos where an actor portraying Tom Paine spouts angrily about taxes and illegal immigrants; Beck has Tea Party protest signs that say, “Tom Paine Rocks.”
Let’s take a look at the charges against Jones and try to understand why the president couldn’t just ignore Glenn Beck. Then let’s look at how we can reclaim the spirit of this country and make progress toward a more just, free and secure life, in accordance with the ideals of Thomas Paine…
(14 Sept 2009)
If Obama can’t defeat the Republican headbangers, our planet is doomed
Jonathan Freedland, the guardian
Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare. That probably sounds hyperbolic, if not mildly deranged: even those who are adamant that 45 million uninsured Americans deserve basic medical cover would not claim that the future of the earth depends on it. But think again.
Next week, world leaders will attend the first UN summit dedicated entirely to climate change. Their aim will be to plunge a shot of adrenaline into stuttering efforts to draw up a new global agreement on carbon emissions. The plan is to replace the Kyoto treaty with a new one, to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. Trouble is, the prospects of getting a deal worthy of the name get bleaker every day.
Few deny that the world needs a new agreement. In the 12 years since Kyoto, we’ve emitted a whole lot more carbon – and gained a whole lot more knowledge of its dangers. The science is now clear that if we do not manage to keep the increase in the earth’s temperature below 2C, we risk facing the effects of catastrophic climate change – with all the flooding, drought, mass migration and human suffering that it would entail. The experts tell us that the only way to stay below that 2C limit is for global emissions to peak in 2015 – and then start falling. In other words, we have set ourselves up at a nice corner table in the last chance saloon…
(15 Sept 2009)
Good Billions After Bad
Donald L. Barlatt and James B. Steele, Vanity Fair
Just inside the entrance to the U.S. Treasury, on the other side of a forbidding array of guard stations and scanners that control access to the Greek Revival building, lies one of the most beautiful interior spaces in all of Washington. Ornate bronze doors open inward to a two-story-high chamber. Chandeliers line the coffered ceiling, casting a soft glow on the marble walls and richly inlaid marble floor.
In this room, starting in 1869 and for many decades thereafter, the U.S. government conducted many of its financial transactions. Bags of gold, silver, and paper currency arrived here by horse-drawn vans and were carted upstairs to the vaults. On the busy trading floor, Treasury clerks supplied commercial banks with coins and currency, exchanged old bills for new, cashed checks, redeemed savings bonds, and took in government receipts. In those days, anyone could observe all this activity firsthand—could actually witness the government and the nation’s bankers doing business. The public space where this occurred became known as the Cash Room.
Today the Cash Room is used for press conferences, ceremonial functions, and departmental parties. And that’s too bad. If Treasury still used the room as it once did, then perhaps we’d have more of a clue about what happened to the billions of dollars that flew out of Treasury to selected American banks in the waning days of the Bush administration…
(October 2009 issue)
Big Step Forward Lost in Shuffle
Sam Kornell, Miller-McCune
As political moments go, the present one doesn’t suffer for lack of drama or import. So it isn’t particularly surprising that yesterday a momentous bit of news slipped by more or less unnoticed, lost in the general hullabaloo over health care and the apparent deterioration of civil discourse sweeping the country.
The recent history of American automobile culture has been increasing profligacy in the face of growing austerity: As the danger of climate change grew clearer every day, and the vanishing nature of the world’s oil reserves more apparent, American car manufacturers still built bigger and bigger cars — and we bought them.
So the unveiling on Tuesday of the Obama administration’s plan to force the country’s automakers to de-guzzle the gargantuan mainstays of their fleets — the Suburbans, the Excursions, the Navigators — was not at all insignificant. Under the plan, which would be enforced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, each automaker’s fleet will have to average more than 35 miles per gallon by 2016.
According to the administration, the new standards will increase fuel efficiency by 5 percent annually, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons, save the average car buyer more than $3,000 in fuel costs and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil. “This action will give our auto companies some long-overdue clarity, stability and predictability,” President Obama said in a visit to a GM plant in Ohio…
(16 Sept 2009)
