Posts Tagged “energy”Just a quick observation prompted by events in recent weeks. These events are unrelated, yet they form a pattern. Together, they put Washington on the hot seat and shine a spotlight on its (questionable) ability to act in the public interest. Specifically, if… Tags: Congress, Constitution, energy, government, immigration, media, Senate, Wall Street
May
24
2009
 
The politics of paranoia and paralogiaPosted by Chris J. Miller in Personal, Policy, PoliticsWhere did we leave off? I was writing about the difficulty of finding something meaningful to say in the wake of all the full-time, professional political bloggers out there. Too often I feel like I’m just offering a synthesis of what others have said, rather than any new insight. Perhaps I’m holding myself to an arbitrarily high standard. Posting seems easier on political discussion forums, where I can just spout off some quick impressions of the issue of the day without necessarily worrying about providing proper background and context for everything, and where the ebb and flow of responses from other posters guides the structure and flow of the discussion, rather than having to organize it entirely on my own. Nonetheless, I ramble on… Thus: I was also writing about the political environment in which the Obama administration operates, and the political pressures that have led the president to make some decisions that are very disappointing in the eyes of civil libertarians, and indeed of concerned citizens in general. Which, in the wake of events this past week relating to the disposition of prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere, leads us to the perplexing questions: Why has Barack Obama backtracked so quickly from so many of the progressive policy expectations of his supporters? and, moreover, WHY does the mass media keep treating Dick Cheney as a credible public figure? One of these questions may seem deeply relevant, the other facile… but the answers are connected at a deep level. Tags: blogging, climate, Congress, conservatism, Constitution, Dick Cheney, energy, Guantanamo, health care, international, journalism, libertarianism, media, Obama, Reid, Republicans, tortureWednesday was Barack Obama’s 100th day in office. Everyone else has been talking about it. Why not me? A hundred days is a pretty arbitrary number, of course. But ever since FDR used it as a marker in 1933 for taking quick action against the Depression, it’s been a convenient hook on which to hang stories about new presidents. Few of them compare to FDR, of course. Then again, few are up against the kind of problems he was. These days, though, the times make the comparison seem a bit more apropos. Tags: Afghanistan, climate, diplomacy, DOJ, energy, EPA, FDR, George W. Bush, Obama, Timothy Geithner
Mar
02
2009
Some things about President Obama’s proposed budgetPosted by Chris J. Miller in Policy, PoliticsJust going from the press coverage, of course. I haven’t read the actual FY 2010 federal budget the administration presented to Congress. (Have you ever tried to read a federal budget? Even in outline form, they’re large. And arcane. The legislators themselves don’t usually bother. They have staff lobbyists for that sort of thing…) Anyway, I’m going to tackle this one in bullet-point format, starting with the largest category: Good Things About Obama’s BudgetTable of contents for Obama's Challenge
 In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Obama’s address tonight may well have been the first presidential speech I’ve ever seen that genuinely lived up to the full meaning of the word “presidential.” The first time in my life we’ve had real, effective leadership in Washington. So this is what it looks and sounds like!
It’s sincerely heartening these days, of course, just to hear a presidential speech delivered in complete, grammatical sentences, shorn of angry fearmongering and brazen paralogia. But Obama had to achieve far more than that. He had a tightrope to walk, having to avoid being too doom-n-gloomy (and thereby get accused of talking down the economy) but also avoid making unrealistically rosy promises (and thereby get accused of empty politicking). The times we are in are indeed, as he phrased it, “difficult and perilous,” yet he had to make clear that they are not insurmountably so. He pulled it off. Table of contents for Obama's ChallengeIn crisis lies creative potential. If there’s any silver lining in the cascade of crises facing the country (and the world) right now, it’s in how they lay the groundwork (pardon the mixed metaphor) for the incoming Obama administration to pursue policy solutions that would otherwise have been impossible. There are good, serious ideas out there in the larger political discourse, some of which have been around for quite a while, yet which as of four years ago, or two years ago, or even six months ago, would have been dismissed by the commissars of conventional wisdom as “too radical,” or “not viable,” or outside the political “mainstream.” I’ve stepped back a bit from my usual preoccupation with political details in recent days, perhaps out of exhaustion as much as anything else. In a sense, though, that makes it easier to avoid getting caught up in speculation about the News Of The Day and take a look at the big picture. And one thing that’s clear from that perspective is that “change” is more than just a campaign slogan at this point—it’s an inevitability. The only question is how we choose to direct it. Table of contents for Obama's Challenge
Nov
21
2008
Some good news for the atmospherePosted by Chris J. Miller in Policy, Politics, ScienceThis news broke last week, but got negligible media coverage that I’m aware of, so I think it’s still fair to call it to people’s attention. If you’re at all concerned about climate change or pollution, or for that matter just wondering how much influence the Obama administration will really be able to exert over environmental policy, this is a very positive sign: Read the rest of this entry » Tags: climate, energy, environment, EPA, Obama |
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