Featured * :: take back america

The Big Idea In Denver: Green-Collar Jobs

Bill Scher — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:20:51 -0400

In all the buzz of ideas and activism going on outside the convention hall, the rise of green-collar jobs as a signature progressive idea is inescapable. With the potential to help solve our economic, environmental and national security weaknesses, investing in a clean energy economy is quickly becoming a no-brainer which only conservative brains refuse to embrace.

I had the opportunity to talk with Washington state Governor Chris Gregoire about her record on clean energy and green jobs. Watch our interview below.

And I also interviewed David Roberts of Grist.org, who was very impressed with the "sophistication" of the green jobs discussion outside the convention hall, yet felt it was only getting cursory mentions inside the hall.

T. Boone Pickens And The Progressive Moment On Energy

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:08:29 -0400

There they were, billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope and Center for American Progress president John Podesta on the same stage at The Big Tent in Denver on Wednesday, in near-perfect harmony. Something’s wrong here.

And indeed there was, and it was Pope who pointed it out.

“If our politics were even vaguely functional, anything that the three of us would have agreed on would have happened long ago,” he told the crowd of bloggers and Democratic Party activists who were sweating it out on the second floor of the tent.

But they clearly aren’t, and that was what seemed to concern Pope the most. And it should concern all of us.

When Pickens explained his plan, and the crowd was largely receptive. You know the basic details from his massive advertising campaign: Massively expand the amount of wind and solar energy being pumped into the electric grid and massively expand the amount of natural gas being used for automobiles (as well as increasing the number of hybrid electric vehicles). That would allow the country to dramatically decrease its dependence on foreign imports. And the effects would be more significant, and be seen more quickly, than the drill, drill, drill mantra being pushed by conservatives.

“As Boone says, this is not rocket science. This is pretty simple auto mechanics,” Pope said after Pickens spoke. “So let’s understand we have some deep, profound political problems that make us need to have this conversation.”

One of the problems is that the country is too comfortable with a fossil-fuel economy in which “we do not pay the bills” — others do, from lower-income people in oil-exporting countries who suffer from the environmental damage caused by oil drilling to people in coal-producing regions who have seen their environment and their health scarred by mining.

Pole said that what sold him on the basics of the Pickens plan was a visit to Sweetwater, Texas, a town whose economy had peaked in the 1920s and which had been on a long downward economic spiral ever since. But the town embraced wind turbines, and those turbines have spurred a green energy economic revival.

More people need to see examples of what Pope calls a “Dutch treat” energy economy, in which energy consumers in rich countries don’t shuffle the burdens of their energy consumption — the environmental damage, the health consequences, the lowered standard of living — onto others.

But perhaps more importantly for the political fight now being waged is to get the focus off of what Pope calls a massive “head fake” from the right wing. Even Pickens (a man who uses the words “drill, drill, drill” in one of his ads) concedes that the big U.S. oil companies aren’t nearly as interested in opening up offshore oil tracts to drilling as are conservatives in Congress and the White House. Nonetheless conservatives have too much invested in the oil companies that have funded the conservative movement for the past 30 years, and they know that changing the technologies that fuel America can shift the balance of who reaps the benefits.

“What we need to do is change the conversation,” Pope said. He says that we need to repower, refuel and rebuild. Repower by renewing the infrastructure we need to power a 21st century economy. Refuel using a mix of clean energy sources. (Imagine, Pope said, a “gas” station that sold natural gas or electricity for a plug-in hybrid as well as gasoline.) Rebuild so that we conserve energy. (Pope cited as an example Toronto, Canada, which has just launched a program of retrofitting all of its buildings to cut energy consumption and is expecting a 20 percent return on the public investment in the program. The next administration could launch a similar initiative even without significant government funding, since there are banks and other entities that are ready to commit the capital if politicians in Washington are prepared to commit the leadership.)

Conservatives are now touting “all of the above” rhetoric to hide what became naked when, under political pressure, Democratic congressional leaders indicated hat they would be willing to allow a vote this year on an energy plan that would include expanded offshore drilling—if it included such measures as having the oil companies give up tax breaks they received in 2003. When the question of what the oil companies would give up to break the nation’s dependency on foreign oil, the conservative answer was, “None of the above.”

Progressives are rightfully queasy about the man who not only funded the Swift Boat ads that helped derail John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004 but who has funded the campaigns of men like Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., one of the Senate’s chief obstructionists on progressive energy legislation. But Pickens has opened a window of opportunity for a meaningful conversation about how to transform our energy future, and it clears the way for even bolder thinking about how to wean ourselves from our oil addiction. The challenge for progressives is how to best use it.

What Would You Do If You Had Guaranteed Health Care?

Sara Robinson — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:56:05 -0400

This was the Campaign for America's Future's Big Afternoon at the Big Tent. CAF took over the Digg Stage (the entire upstairs floor of The Big Tent) for a series of four panels addressing some of the Big Questions we wrestle with here.

One of the highlights for me was Rep. Jan Schakowsky's presentation, which was part of the second hour's health care panel. She cited an avalanche of statistics describing what condition our condition is in (and I don't need to tell you: it's not good). Two in particular leaped out at me. One (which I knew) is that an American dies due to lack of health care access every 30 seconds. The second (which I did not know) is that Americans are being driven into bankruptcy by health care costs at exactly the same rate. Sixty thousand deaths, sixty thousand bankruptcies, every single year.

(Update: A perspicacious commenter points out that Schakowsky's math was a little off. Sixty thousand deaths (or bankruptcies) works out to about one every ten minutes. My bad for not working the numbers out myself before posting them.)

Schakowsky also said that health care hasn't been a hot-button political issue to date because the political conventional wisdom says that nobody's ever lost an election due to their health care position. That, she said, needs to change -- starting with John McCain, whose plan will make things far worse than they are now (as if such a thing were possible).

As an American living in Canada, my permanent resident card (the Canadian version of a green card) entitles me to the services of that country's health care system. I also still see doctors in the US, even though I'm no longer insured there. As a participant in both systems, I've written at some length here and here about the myths Americans tell each other about the Canadian system. Right now, I think there's one important question we could ask Americans that would focus this debate, and take the conversation to the next level. It's this:

What would you do with your life if you never had to worry about health care again?

It's a hard thing for most Americans to imagine -- but it's odd how your vision of the future changes once you stretch your mind and see what it might be like.

Would you start a business of your own?

Go back to school to upgrade your skills, or retrain for an entirely new career?

Tell your toxic boss where to stick it, and find a job with reasonable hours and nice people?

Spend a few years at home with your kids?

Join the Peace Corps?

Move to a town that you really love?

Save some money up, and retire early?

I should probably warn you: You may get good and angry once you start to take stock of the huge trade-offs you've made over the years just to hold onto your health insurance. You may be even more angry when you realize that nobody else in the industrialized world has had to make those choices.

I live in a country where nobody is tied to a job they hate, or forced to give up important life opportunities just to hang onto a health care plan that may or may not even come through for them when they need it. Nobody ever declares bankruptcy because they can't pay a medical bill, either: most Canadians find this as mind-blowing as Americans seem to find the "What would you do...?" question. Almost nobody dies because they can't get care (and when it does happen, it's a cause for national outrage).

Countries with universal coverage free up their citizens to take advantage of personal development opportunities that, in the long run, stimulate the economy and create a more skilled, traveled, educated, and fulfilled workforce. Americans, on the other hand, routinely stay chained to jobs they hate -- and are forced to pass up on chances to expand their horizons and their fortunes -- because they can't afford to jeopardize their health care coverage.

Our health care mess has reached a point where it jeopardizes not only our lives, but also our liberty, our property, and our ability to pursue happiness -- as well as the long-term strength of the economy as a whole.

We cannot abide more of the same. Let's make sure John McCain pays the ultimate political price for his indifference to this issue -- and that every other elected official hears, loud and clear, that health care is a right they ignore at their own peril.

In the meantime, indulge yourself in a little fantasy. What would you do with your life if you never had to worry about health care again? Tell us in the comments.

Krugman: Why The Health Care Battle Is Key

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:37:16 -0400

Paul Krugman, the columnist for The New York Times, told me in an interview here in Denver that getting a universal health care plan enacted will be one of he most important keys to creating a progressive moment on a whole host of issues.

His reasoning is this: “If you can get universal health care or something close to it in, however imperfect, then the country will never be the same again. It will be something that is an untouchable, and it will make people just understand once again that government can do things to make the society fairer, safer.”

Krugman calls himself a single-payer advocate, but he says he supports a proposal along the lines of the Health Care for America Now plan because “I want something that you can get into legislation fast.”

One of the barriers health care reform will have to overcome is the fear among the public that they would lose access to quality care under a radically changed system. If you can tell people that they can keep the insurance they have now, but they have the option of enrolling in a Medicare-type system that would provide universal coverage without regard to pre-existing conditions, more of the public would be prepared to get behind it.

Krugman’s prediction is that a united progressive movement could get a Health Care for America Now-style plan could get enacted by the fall of 2009 “by not being a purist.”

“One of the things that the Republicans have been good at is thinking a step ahead, playing the log game, setting things up,” Krugman continued. For those who believe that government “is the problem,” as Ronald Reagan famously stated, the strategy was to “starve the beast; deprive the government of revenue so it can’t do staff later on.

The other strategy was to take power away from the union movement, which Reagan began doing during his term. “Unions raise wages, but they also shift the political balance The destruction of the union movement in the 1980s, which was largely a Ronald Reagan thing, did not just undercut the workers’ bargaining power, but it also undercut their political power.”

That is why Krugman agrees that passing the Employee Free Choice Act is critical to the future of progressive politics.

“That is a big enough agenda to keep a Democratic Congress and President busy for a couple of years,”

Krugman says that the kind of presidential candidate that is needed over the next two months in order for progressives to be in a position to have an ally in the White House is one who is espousing “a clear progressive agenda.”

“Bill Cinton in 1992 had this very simple thing: The hard-working people, the people who played by the rules, who try to do it right, get cheated. He had a phrase about people who cut corners and cut deals. And we need to hear that. I think the theory that a broad, post-partisan appeal could lead to a transformative victory appears to have been refuted.”

The Explosive Growth Of The Progressive Movement

Bill Scher — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:00:27 -0400

Reporters always complain that there is no news at political conventions any more. Perhaps. But there is news outside the convention hall: the loud buzz of progressive activity, organizing and mobilizing around big issues, hundreds of decibels louder than at the Democratic convention of 2004.

All my bloggingheads.tv partner, and Heritage Foundation blogger, Conn Carroll could do was scoff at the notion that "The Big Tent is sponsoring no less than ten panels about global warming this week." But all that shows is progressives are coming to Denver to work, and work hard.

With that in mind, allow me to share with you me a few more interviews from my Monday of live streaming (Tuesday's stream should get going around 9 AM MT).

Arianna Huffington shares what she expects from convention week.

Claire Silberman discussed how Crafting Liberally -- part of the Living Liberally empire -- is helping expand the progressive community.

While Michael and Al Shaw, father-and-son team at BAGnewsNotes, talked about how progressives still lag conservatives in using visuals to communicate ideas.