Rampant patriotism breaches on America's right

During the Bush years, the Bush-following Right's Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, frequently accused opponents of the Iraq War of being "unpatriotic," endangering the Troops, and committing treason: "They're not so much 'antiwar' as just on the other side," he often wrote. Today, the same Glenn Reynolds wrote (emphasis added):

If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I'd do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible.

Calling on a foreign country to act in a way that creates "as much trouble as possible" for your own country seems to be the very definition of being "on the other side," does it not? (and his cover sentence -- "Are the Israelis less obnoxious than me? I guess we’ll find out soon enough . . . ." -- changes nothing). That's especially true since the action Reynolds is endorsing -- Israel's bombing of Iran -- likely would, according to America's top military official, directly result in the deaths of American soldiers:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, warned last Thursday that an Israeli attack on Iran might lead to escalation, undermine the region's stability and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf "who are under the threat envelope right now."

By Reynolds' own standards, blithely endorsing such outcomes would seem, definitively, to place one "on the other side." But over the last week, as the U.S./Israel dispute has blossomed, the American Right generally has engaged in much conduct that they have always denounced as disloyal and treasonous. Almost unanimously, they have adopted what Jeanne Kirkpatrick famously condemned as a "Blame America First" attitude, with super-patriots such as National Review and Charles Krauthammer, among many others, heaping all blame on America and siding with the foreign government. According to these Arbiters of Patriotism, this dispute is The Fault of America; indeed, when it comes to American conflicts with Israel generally, as Kirkpatrick put it in her famous refrain: "somehow, they always Blame America First."

Along those lines, the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman yesterday formally condemned Gen. David Petraeus for warning that Israel's conflict with the Palestinians increases anti-American hatred and endangers American troops due to a "perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel." Foxman attacked Petraeus' remarks as "dangerous and counterproductive" -- and, indeed, they are: "dangerous and counterproductive," that is, for those (like Foxman and the neocon Right) who want the U.S. to blindly support Israeli actions even when doing so directly harms American interests. As Andrew Bacevich explained in Salon yesterday, the fact that Petraeus has now linked U.S. support for Israel to harm to U.S. interests will make it impossible for Israel-centric neocons to stigmatize that linkage ever again, and is thus "likely to discomfit those Americans committed to the proposition that the United States and Israel face the same threats and are bound together by identical interests." Isn't it Barack Obama's overriding duty as Commander-in-Chief to listen to his military commanders and take aggressive action against anything which undermines America's war effort and Endangers the Troops -- including Israel's settlement expansions?

Beyond that, wasn't it only recently that attacking Gen. David Petraeus the way the ADL has done was deemed so unpatriotic that it merited formal, bipartisan Congressional condemnation? As Joan Walsh proposed yesterday, shouldn't Congress now be preparing to condemn the ADL and Foxman for their attack on Petraeus, launched at him as he commands brave American men and women in harm's way, fighting for our country? After all, Petraeus is responsible for the safety of those troops and is trying to alert government leaders about policies which endanger those troops and undermine the American war effort. What kind of person would attack Gen. Petreaus for doing that, all in the name of serving the interests of a foreign government? One hasn't seen attacks on Gen. Petraeus this vicious since he condemned torture and called for the closing of Guantanamo, thereby provoking the unhinged wrath of America's Right.

And then we have what I thought was the patriotic standard that one should not attack the President in his conduct of foreign policy during a time of war. What happened to Joe Lieberman's solemn 2005 warning that "in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril"? This is the same Joe Lieberman who, along with his conjoined twin, John McCain, this week went to the Senate floor to rail against President Obama for the crime of Excess Criticism of Israel. Isn't Al Qaeda going to be emboldened if they see the Commander-in-Chief being weakened and attacked by these U.S. Senators as inept and our country riddled with internal divisions of this sort? That was the argument made by these same right-wing super-patriots for years (and, indeed, is now being echoed -- not ironically but earnestly -- by their mirror images on the dissent-hating, Beltway version of the "Left," such as Newsweek's Jonathan Alter). But for the neocon Right, that uber-patriotic standard seems to have been suspended as of January 20, 2009, and (like so many standards) is revoked altogether when it comes to Israel.

Whatever else is true, the American Right is now openly siding with a foreign government against their own, and bitterly Blaming America for these problems. They're protecting this foreign government's actions even though our top Generals say those actions undermine our war effort and directly endanger American troops. They're advocating policies -- such as the Israeli bombing of Iran -- which America's Joint Chiefs Chairman has gravely warned will seriously impede our wars and lead to the deaths of our soldiers. They're demeaning the top American General with command responsibility for two theaters of war. And, in a Time of War, they're attacking the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief -- and relentlessly depicting him as weak and inept -- all because he's prioritizing American interests over those of a foreign country. All of that seems to severely breach the standards of Patriotism they have long advocated and which have long prevailed, to put that rather mildly.

* * * * *

Perhaps most notably, all of this is taking place as a new poll of Israelis finds that "a sweeping majority of Israelis think [Obama's] treatment of [their] country is friendly and fair"; "most Israelis don't believe politicians who call Obama anti-Semitic or hostile to Israel"; and "more [Israelis] said Netanyahu's behavior [in this conflict] was irresponsible than said he acted responsibly." Put another way, the American neocon Right is demanding a level of American loyalty to Israel far higher than Israelis themselves expect, and (as usual) the American neocon Right is far more blindly supportive of the Israeli Government than Israelis themselves are.

Faults, earthquakes, LNG, public safety

Faults, earthquakes, LNG, puTo the editor:

The Massachusetts State Geologist has called for a complete and thorough study ofthe faulting and earthquakes in the area of Mt. Hope Bay for Weaver’s Cove Energy’s proposed LNG site. The cumulative work of more than a century shows over 30 known faults project into the bay, and studies within the bay by URI indicate many more.

Furthermore, those exposed at the west side of Mt. Hope Bay are some of the youngest ones known in New England. It is movement along such young faults that causes the zone of earthquakes from Seekonk down the Sakonnet River. One occurred in the river off the south side of the bay in 2002.

The paucity of seismographs in the region results in poor locations for the events and many are probably not recorded. Although these earthquakes are generally small, southem New England is known to have been more active in the 17th and 18 centuries and it is hard to rule out larger ones.

A Corps of Engineers study gives the bay a potential for a magmtude 5.5 earthquake.

Weaver’s Cove Energy claims to have made exhaustive and thorough studies, but I have not been able to find any recognition and evaluation of these known faults or local earthquakes, let alone evidence of exploration for others in their reports; not even references to the relevant geologic and earthquake studies.

The company did do some drilling in the bay, but, as yet, has neither identified the rock encountered nor released the actual boring data that might identify faults.

All faults around a site for a nuclear power plant must be investigated, and if there is evidence showing a potential for active fault movement the site is not developed. The problem of faulting is much different from designing construction to withstand a certain level of seismic motion.

Sites for power plants and dams have been abandoned in New England because of potentially active faults, and similar situations would have precluded sites for underground storage of high-level radioactive waste.

LNG facilities have the potential to cause a great disaster and need to be held to the same standards as other critical facilities for public safety. I concur with the Massachusetts State Geologist that a thorough and complete investigation be made. I would consider anything less imprudent and irresponsible.

Patrick Barosh

Bristol

The writer is a consulting geologist who has studied faults and earthquakes in the region for the U.S. Geological Survey, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Corps of Engineers, and Department of Energy. He believe many earthquakes in the East Bay have not been properly recorded and he would appreciate it if those remembering past earthquakes, which may sound like explosions, to send the approximate date and location and what it felt or sounded like to 103 Aaron Ave., Bristol, RI 02809

blic safety

Battle against LNG readied

Note from Greetings: If approved, this would, every other day, take very dangerous LNG tankers past potential terrorist targets, such as the Naval War College and the Naval Undersea War Center, as well as through very populous areas. In this day and age, and with reports of new terrorist strikes being planned... why would this President and Congress provide another potential terrorist target when it is not needed for energy supply?

It would also dredge up a previously polluted bay and shut down jobs to an entire region that has high unemployment at a time when they are trying to "promote" adding jobs.

Where are you on this, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid? Not to mention our Senators Reed and Whitehouse? (To his credit, Senator Whitehouse has said he opposes this.)

By Phil Zahodiakin , Jamestown Press

Grassroots efforts to block a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal proposed for Mt. Hope Bay have redoubled in the wake of a federal appellate court decision slamming the door on the R.I. agency that reviews applications to dredge in the state’s coastal waters.

Under the proposal from Weaver’s Cove Energy, a subsidiary of Amerada Hess, the LNG terminal would be constructed about a mile from the Fall River shoreline, where a storage facility would be built to receive the gas from an expected 140 supertanker shipments per year.

The East Passage, which the tankers would use to transit into Mt. Hope Bay, is deep enough for the ships, but Weaver’s Cove would have to dredge the channel leading up to the site of the terminal – a project requiring permits from Rhode Island, Massachusetts and the Army Corps of Engineers.

On Oct. 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the Coastal Resources Management Council had run out of time to process the permit application from Weaver’s Cove, leaving the application review in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers.

John Torgan, Narragansett baykeeper and advocacy director for Save the Bay, said the volume of sediment that Weaver’s Cove would have to dredge “is upwards of 3.5 million cubic yards.” However, all but 230,000 cubic yards of the total would be dredged out of Massachusetts waters, and “the Massachusetts review of the permit application for that dredging is alive and ongoing,” he said.

Torgan also said that “there are still some 21 state and federal permits that Weaver’s Cove has to obtain before starting construction.” Moreover, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates natural gas transmission facilities – and which will have the final say on the project – has yet to issue an environmental impact statement for the proposal.

An earlier proposal, which failed to pass U.S. Coast Guard muster, proposed to build the terminal on a shoreline site north of the Braga and Brightman Street Bridges. Weaver’s Cove responded to the Coast Guard’s concerns with its 2008 proposal to site the terminal in the bay.

Save the Bay this week launched a campaign “to make sure that people are aware of the Weaver’s Cove proposal and the EIS, which may be released before the end of the year,” Torgan said. “The EIS will be several ‘phone books’ thick, and we want to equip people with the information they’ll need to provide FERC with informed and appropriate public comments. It’s all part of the overriding goal of our campaign: Preventing this project from going forward.”

To that end, said Save the Bay Communications Director John Martin, the group this Monday started running its campaign messages in newspapers and radio spots. The group also has a commitment for billboard space on Rt. 24 or I-195 – whichever billboard becomes available first.

Additionally, “a number of environmental groups have asked for links to our website,” Martin said, “and we’ll be e-mailing our message to all our members – a constituency of 12,000 people. Our social networks account for many more supporters, and we’ll be reaching out to them as well.”

The website also includes etools that enable people to send letters – or Save the Bay’s recommended letter – to their senators and representatives, Martin said.

“We have a downloadable petition which we’re asking people to circulate in their neighborhoods or their places of worship or anywhere else where people are picking up on our concerns,” he said. “We’re also in the final stages of setting up an online petition. We’re hoping to sustain our amplified campaign all the way up to the EIS hearings, which FERC could open this winter. But, that’s not to say that people haven’t been hearing our message: We were quite encouraged by the strong response of our constituency when they heard about the court decision.”

The decision affirmed a U.S. district court ruling against the CRMC – which, Weaver’s Cove asserted, had waived its right of review by failing to issue a decision on the permit application within the timeframe specified by the federal Coastal Zone Management Act. The CRMC argued that the regulatory clock could not start ticking until the application was complete. But the district court ruled that the timeframe, which is intended to ensure that no individual state can arbitrarily delay a project, had been violated.

CRMC Public Educator and Information Coordinator Laura Ricketson-Dwyer said that the council had not engaged in any “arbitrary” delay.

“We had to know where the dredge material would be going,” she said. “We have a prerequisite regulation requiring applicants to provide a letter of acceptance from the disposal facility.

“We were concerned,” Ricketson Dwyer continued, “because Weaver’s Cove had indicated that the material would be sent out of state, but we didn’t have their plan and, as the responsible state agency, we had to make sure that the material wouldn’t return in Rhode Island. We didn’t want a situation like the infamous New York City ‘garbage barge to nowhere.’ We didn’t want a ‘dredge scow to nowhere.’ So, based on that lack of information, we could not accept the application as complete.”

Michael Rubin, an assistant state attorney general and chief of the environmental unit in the state AG’s office, represented the CRMC in the Weaver’s Cove case. He said that the state would not appeal the decision of the three-judge panel to the full panel of First Circuit Court judges, adding, “We have suffered a setback, but that’s all it is. There are many more fronts on which we intend to fight this proposal. The decision does not preclude FERC from forcing Weaver’s Cove to return to the CRMC for a review of issues that weren’t included in the court decision, including the hazards from scow transits.”

Rubin explained that there is a threat of environmental damage from dredge sediments spilling off the barges.

“There is also a concern about the hazards from the 800-foot tow lines,” he said. “You’d be looking at approximately 1,000 scow transits through Newport harbor, including transits at the height of the boating season, and there are documented cases of masts being ripped off sailboats by those cables. The court decision doesn’t preclude a review of those hazards, so this decision is not, by any means, the end of our fight against this abomination.”

Rubin added that there will be exclusionary zones around the tankers, and that their arrival in the bay will be practically unannounced.

“Assuming you’re listening to the marine band on your radio, you’ll have 15 or 20 minutes in which to get out of those zones – two miles ahead of the tankers and one mile behind – or you’ll find your boat being boarded by Coast Guardsmen or private security agents,” he said. “I am not exaggerating. It’s going to be a very grim scene out there if this proposal goes through.”

Information about the Save the Bay campaign is available at www.savebay.org.

Colbert destroys Harold Ford

Alex Koppelman, Salon.com

For the most part, despite a string of segments in which he's embarrassed elected officials, politicians tend to see an interview with Stephen Colbert as easy. As long as you can come off looking like you're in on the joke, it's not like he'll ask truly tough questions, so hey, no big deal, right?

Tell it to former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr.

Ford was on "The Colbert Report" Monday night to promote his burgeoning candidacy for Senate in New York. But the appearance probably won't do much for his poll numbers, as Colbert spent more than six minutes embarrassing the former Tennessee congressman.

It started with the host's introduction of his guest, when he joked, "Evidently, six minutes at my interview table counts as New York State residency." And things got worse from there, as Colbert made Ford look silly regarding his having changed his position on abortion and same-sex marriage, then derided him for having said he'd seen Staten Island because he'd landed there in a helicopter. "Are there other places in New York you designate as helicopter-only?" Colbert asked.

Ouch.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Harold Ford Jr.
www.colbertnation.com
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Michael O'Hanlon's "testosterone-laden tough guys"

But one thing is clear: in American culture, there has long been a group of men (typified by Williiam Kristol and Michael O'Hanlon) who equate toughness and masculinity with fighting wars, yet who also know that they lack the courage of their own convictions, and thus confine themselves to cheerleading for wars from a...far and sending others off to fight but never fighting those wars themselves (Digby wrote the seminal post on that sorry faction back in 2005). It seems that individuals plagued by that affliction are eager to avoid having it rubbed in their faces that there are large numbers of homosexual warriors who possess the courage (the "testosterone-laden tough-guyness") which the O'Hanlons and Kristols, deep down, know they lack.

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com, 02 04 10

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates today will unveil the administration's plan for repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, beginning with a ban on discharging gay service members who are "outed" by third parties. More than 13,500 gay service members have been discharged since the Clinton-era enactment of that policy, which continued unabated even as America's military has been stretched horribly thin by multiple wars and endless tours of duty. Ironically, the highest number of discharges came in 2001, when more than 1,000 people were discharged for being gay. For some strange reason, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was on CNN to opine about all of this today, and this is what he said (h/t Michelangelo Signorile):

Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute said the real test will be in the barracks, with the rank-and-file members of the military.

"We can talk about this delicately or we can just be fairly direct," O'Hanlon said. "There are a lot of 18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys. They're often politically old-fashioned or conservative; they are not necessarily at the vanguard, in many cases, of accepting alternative forms of lifestyle."

First of all, O'Hanlon sounds like he just stepped out of a 1981 Moral Majority documentary. Who still talks about sexual orientation being an "alternative form of lifestyle"? That was always a dishonest and propagandistic phrase -- as though gay people intrinsically lead a different "lifestyle" -- and it's rare these days to hear anyone outside of Jim Dobson and Maggie Gallagher use it. And the apparent belief of O'Hanlon that there's an inverse relationship between masculinity and acceptance of gay people ("testosterone-laden men who are tough guys") is ludicrous, though, almost certainly, his saying this unintentionally reveals some disturbing psychosexual undercurrents that are driving O'Hanlon himself.

Second, O'Hanlon's views on the repeal of DADT were the same ones cited to oppose racial integration and an expanding role for women in the military (it's not me, but those primitive enlisted men, who will cause problems). It's also unbelievably disrespectful of the military itself and its rank-and-file, since it assumes that those who join the military are consumed with such uncontrollable bigotry and are incapable of adhering to its policies and dictates. That, too, seems to say much more about O'Hanlon than the "rank-and-file" members of the military whom he's disparaging.

Finally, what does Michael O'Hanlon know about the military, and why is he -- of all people -- being held out as some sort of expert on these matters? He's never been anywhere near the military. He specializes in establishing himself as a "testosterone-laden tough guy" by cheerleading for wars and urging that we send other people off to fight them -- all from the safety and comfort of his Brookings office. Several months ago, over 100 retired Generals and Admirals -- people who, unlike O'Hanlon, actually understand the military first-hand -- called for a repeal of DADT so that gay people can serve openly. Why would anyone believe that someone like Mike O'Hanlon, who relentlessly waves his pom-poms for war while ensuring he never fights them, has anything worthwhile to say on the topic of the military's ability to successfully integrate openly gay service members?

UPDATE: I'd also like to know whether those who (a) cheerlead for our various wars, (b) oppose the repeal of DADT and (c) are of prime fighting age -- such as GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah -- intend to enlist in order to replace the highly qualified, well-performing gay service members who are discharged under the policy they favor?

UPDATE II: Andrew Sullivan notes that Michael O'Hanlon's brother-in-arms for the testosterone-laden team of war-cheerleaders -- Bill Kristol -- echoed the same arguments today, even going further than O'Hanlon by insisting that homosexuality is inherently incompatible with the superior performance of military duties.

It should go without saying that debates over homosexuality, the military, warriors, masculinity and the like are suffuse with all sorts of complex psychological influences. But one thing is clear: in American culture, there has long been a group of men (typified by Kristol and O'Hanlon) who equate toughness and masculinity with fighting wars, yet who also know that they lack the courage of their own convictions, and thus confine themselves to cheerleading for wars from afar and sending others off to fight but never fighting those wars themselves (Digby wrote the seminal post on that sorry faction back in 2005). It seems that individuals plagued by that affliction are eager to avoid having it rubbed in their faces that there are large numbers of homosexual warriors who possess the courage (the "testosterone-laden tough-guyness") which the O'Hanlons and Kristols, deep down, know they lack. Banning gay people from serving openly in the military as warriors is an excellent way of being able to deny that reality to themselves.

UPDATE III: Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified today that "it is his 'personal and professional belief that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do'." On Twitter, he added (yes, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is on Twitter):

Stand by what I said: Allowing homosexuals to serve openly is the right thing to do. Comes down to integrity.

I believe he knows more about the military than Mike O'Hanlon and Bill Kristol. As for O'Hanlon's projection (in both senses of the word) that young, conservative enlisted men will backlash against openly gay service members, the most recent poll shows that 69% of all Americans -- along with 58% of both self-identified "Republicans" and "conservatives" and 60% of people who attend Church at least once a week -- favor "allowing openly gay men and lesbian women to serve in the military."

China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy

By KEITH BRADSHER, NY Times, January 30, 2010

TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

The United States and other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race.

Multinational corporations are responding to the rapid growth of China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.

“You have to move fast with the market,” said Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such fast development in a wind market.”

Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.

Yet renewable energy may be doing more for China’s economy than for the environment. Total power generation in China is on track to pass the United States in 2012 — and most of the added capacity will still be from coal.

China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest.

As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.

China’s top leaders are intensely focused on energy policy: on Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a “superministry” led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.

Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.

China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year. To meet demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will.

So while Americans are used to thinking of themselves as having the world’s largest market in many industries, China’s market for power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, even though the American market is more mature. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.

In the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.

Interest rates as low as 2 percent for bank loans — the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy — have also made a big difference.

As in many other industries, China’s low labor costs are an advantage in energy. Although Chinese wages have risen sharply in the last five years, Vestas still pays assembly line workers here only $4,100 a year.

China’s commitment to renewable energy is expensive. Although costs are falling steeply through mass production, wind energy is still 20 to 40 percent more expensive than coal-fired power. Solar power is still at least twice as expensive as coal.

The Chinese government charges a renewable energy fee to all electricity users. The fee increases residential electricity bills by 0.25 percent to 0.4 percent. For industrial users of electricity, the fee doubled in November to roughly 0.8 percent of the electricity bill.

The fee revenue goes to companies that operate the electricity grid, to make up the cost difference between renewable energy and coal-fired power.

Renewable energy fees are not yet high enough to affect China’s competitiveness even in energy-intensive industries, said the chairman of a Chinese industrial company, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of electricity rates in China.

Grid operators are unhappy. They are reimbursed for the extra cost of buying renewable energy instead of coal-fired power, but not for the formidable cost of building power lines to wind turbines and other renewable energy producers, many of them in remote, windswept areas. Transmission losses are high for sending power over long distances to cities, and nearly a third of China’s wind turbines are not yet connected to the national grid.

Most of these turbines were built only in the last year, however, and grid construction has not caught up. Under legislation passed by the Chinese legislature on Dec. 26, a grid operator that does not connect a renewable energy operation to the grid must pay that operation twice the value of the electricity that cannot be distributed.

With prices tumbling, China’s wind and solar industries are increasingly looking to sell equipment abroad — and facing complaints by Western companies that they have unfair advantages. When a Chinese company reached a deal in November to supply turbines for a big wind farm in Texas, there were calls in Congress to halt federal spending on imported equipment.

“Every country, including the United States and in Europe, wants a low cost of renewable energy,” said Ma Lingjuan, deputy managing director of China’s renewable energy association. “Now China has reached that level, but it gets criticized by the rest of the world.”

Obama vs. House GOP: Best TV ever

By the time Obama was done, and had stayed about 30 minutes past when he was scheduled to leave, Republican leadership was ready to get him out of the room. One GOP lawmaker asked for one more question, and as Obama started to say he was out of time, Pence jumped in, too: "He's gone way over." And with that, Obama took... his booklet of GOP policy proposals and left the

Before President Obama started speaking to the House Republican conference's retreat in Baltimore Friday, the GOP presented him with a little book, one that wrapped up all of the policy ideas they've had since he took office that have languished. It had a catchy title: "Better Solutions." The pamphlet may not be an ideal blueprint for governing -- it only takes 30 pages to wrap up everything from economic stimulus to national security to financial reform -- but, as it turned out, it did make for a pretty good prop.

Which Obama demonstrated about an hour into what was easily the most entertaining program C-SPAN (or any cable news network, really) has aired in a long time. "You say, for example, that we've offered a health care plan, and I look up -- this is just [in] the book that you've just provided me, 'Summary of GOP Health Care Reform Bill,'" Obama said, casually flipping through the book as Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., stood by. Price had demanded the president tell Republicans how they should answer constituents who don't like the way the White House says the GOP hasn't offered any ideas. So Obama played it deadpan. '"The GOP plan will lower health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing America's number one priority for health reform.' I mean, that's an idea that we all embrace. But specifically it's got to work."

Two days after his feisty State of the Union speech, Obama's trip to the retreat started off slowly, with a speech that could have worked almost anywhere with only a few edits ahead of time. And then the question-and-answer session got started, and the event turned into a spectacle, the kind of thing that hasn't been seen in American politics in years -- and probably won't again, once the people responsible for putting it together go back to look at the video. (Which is too bad, because NBC does have an opening for a 10 p.m. show, and this was a lot more watchable than Leno.) Rarely has his administration done such a good job of bluntly underscoring the differences between what Obama wants to do and what Republicans would prefer if they had power. The president was funny and disarming, but he defended his policies fiercely, and he tiptoed up to the line of calling Republicans liars to their faces.

"We've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality," he said. "I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything ... but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me. I mean, the fact of the matter is is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you've been telling your constituents is, 'This guy's doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America.'"

The ironic, detached style and professorial wonkiness that has sometimes made it hard for Obama to connect on a visceral level since he took office worked perfectly in Baltimore. And what could have been a dangerous event politically, with Republicans riding high in polls and Obama's agenda on its heels, turned into a presidential seminar, instead. He ridiculed a year's worth of Republican talking points on the stimulus: "The notion that I would somehow resist doing something that cost half as much but would produce twice as many jobs -- why would I resist that? I wouldn't ... It doesn't make sense if somebody could tell me, 'You could do this cheaper and get increased results,' that I wouldn't say, 'Great.' The problem is, I couldn't find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made." When Rep. Mike Pence tried to push him to commit to "across the board tax cuts," Obama pointed out that the stimulus plan did cut taxes for millions of Americans -- but he couldn't resist twisting the knife a bit. "What you may consider across-the-board tax cuts could be, for example, greater tax cuts for people who are making a billion dollars," he said, tying his answer into the Democratic effort to paint Republicans as friends of the rich without blinking. "I may not agree to a tax cut for Warren Buffett. You may be calling for an across-the-board tax cut for the banking industry right now. I may not agree to that." He mocked the GOP for voting in lockstep against the stimulus bill, then trying to take credit for projects it funded: "A lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against." Sixty-eight of them, to be exact, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

GOP aides only agreed at the last minute to air the questions, and the lack of political polish made it seem like a freewheeling U.S. version of Britain's prime minister's questions. But on TV, the event played even more one-sided than it probably was in real life. Except Pence, who was on the stage with Obama, the other questions all came from disembodied voices in a dark hotel ballroom. Which worked all right for Republicans like Rep. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who basically just lobbed a softball about the economy. But when others tried to push Obama, the setup only helped him bat away their questions as they flew out of the darkness.

"What were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas (who Obama kept calling "Jim," for some reason). "You are soon to submit a new budget, Mr. President. Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy?"

The president laughed. "Jim, with all due respect, I've just got to take this last question as an example of how it's very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we're going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign," he said. "When we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. $1.3 trillion. So when you say that suddenly I've got ... a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true."

The whole thing basically went like that: Republican asks obnoxious question rooted in Glenn Beck-ian talking points; Obama swats it away, makes the questioner look silly, and then smiles at the end. It got so bad, in fact, that Fox News cut away from the event before it was over. Democratic operatives around Washington watching it had pretty much the same reaction: "Where the hell has this guy been?" One source said GOP aides probably wished they'd spoken to John McCain "about what happened to him in the presidential debates" before they broadcast the event. "It's quite a show," a White House official said, apparently going for the same deadpan tone the president was.

Republican aides tried to argue that Obama was struggling to get past his initial talking points, but that was a pretty desultory attempt at spin. By the time Obama was done, and had stayed about 30 minutes past when he was scheduled to leave, Republican leadership was ready to get him out of the room. One GOP lawmaker asked for one more question, and as Obama started to say he was out of time, Pence jumped in, too: "He's gone way over." And with that, Obama took his booklet of GOP policy proposals and left the room -- in much better political shape, possibly, than he was when he walked in.

Watch the question-and-answer session here, if you missed it -- or if you just want to see it again:

Double Standard For Bernanke: Only 50 Votes Needed In Senate

Outrageous...

Ryan Grimm, Huffinton Post, January 26, 2010

When it comes to progressive priorities in the Senate, there's one standard: 60 votes are needed. But for Ben Bernanke, there's a second standard: 50 will be just fine, thank you.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are asking colleagues who are reluctant to support Bernanke's nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman to nevertheless vote with them to end a filibuster and allow a vote on the actual nomination. The reluctant members would then be free to vote no to express their displeasure. Several Democrats have committed to just that and others are considering it.

The public health insurance option was stripped from health care reform because it didn't have 60 votes. An expansion of Medicare took its place but it, too, was dropped for having fewer than 60. Both proposals had at least 50 votes. Dawn Johnsen, a nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, has the backing of progressive organizations, but a 60-vote threshold has held her up for a year.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters on Monday afternoon after a meeting with Bernanke that some opponents of the chairman had pledged to support him on the first vote, but not on the second.

"I know that there are some Democrats who have stated publicly that they are not going to vote ultimately for his nomination as chairman of the Fed. Many, not all, but many of these Senate Democrats have said that they won't stop us on procedural votes. So we may have their support on cloture but not on final passage," he said.

HuffPost asked Durbin why they'd make that commitment for Bernanke but not for health care.

"I don't know. That's a good question. They come up with different standards in terms of how they do things," Durbin replied. "By and large, I will say, and I think Harry Reid and the leadership would agree, that with very few exceptions, the Democratic senators have stood behind us on procedural votes. And we expect them to. We ask them to."

Except on health care, the president's signature domestic legislation and a major plank in the Democratic platform for more than half a century.

Story continues below

"On health care, there were some exceptions," Durbin said, in something of an understatement. "There's no question about it. That's what made the job so difficult."

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who announced her opposition to Bernanke on Friday, has committed to vote for cloture -- in other words, to vote to end a filibuster, her spokeswoman told HuffPost. She will then vote against him on final passage.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) has been consistently opposed to Bernanke and told HuffPost that he'll vote against cloture, as well, meaning that he'll be opposing Bernanke in both of his votes rather than having it both ways. Asked why some of his colleagues considered the cloture vote critical on health care but not on Bernanke, he paused and smiled. "I don't know," he said.

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said that he spent a lot of time recently talking with his home state colleague, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Bernanke opponent, but hadn't decided whether to oppose the chairman's reconfirmation.

But, he added, "I don't believe in filibusters on nominees."

Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman, has a consistent record opposing filibusters on nominees, but some of his other colleagues have more situational ethics when it comes to so-called "procedural" votes.

Casting a vote for cloture -- which ends a filibuster -- but against final passage lets a senator have it both ways. Voters back home can be told the senator stood in opposition, even when they didn't actually stand in the way.

In case of a 50-50 vote, Vice President Joe Biden can break the tie.

It gets complicated enough that even Leahy, who's been in the Senate since 1975, can get confused.

"I'd be disinclined to vote against cloture," he said, then paused, wondering if he had all the negatives straight. "I'd be inclined to vote for cloture," he clarified. Sort of.

Thomas Jefferson on Democracy versus corporations

“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.” -- Thomas Jefferson

The Court’s Blow to Democracy

The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure... that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections

NY Times Editorial, January 22, 2002

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.

As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)

The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.

This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.

These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.

Bankers Without a Clue

Well, if you were hoping for a Perry Mason moment — a scene in which the witness blurts out: “Yes! I admit it! I did it! And I’m glad!” — the hearing was disappointing. What you got, instead, was witnesses blurting out: “Yes! I admit it! I’m clueless!”

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 14, 2010

The official Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — the group that aims to hold a modern version of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, whose investigations set the stage for New Deal bank regulation — began taking testimony on Wednesday. In its first panel, the commission grilled four major financial-industry honchos. What did we learn?

Well, if you were hoping for a Perry Mason moment — a scene in which the witness blurts out: “Yes! I admit it! I did it! And I’m glad!” — the hearing was disappointing. What you got, instead, was witnesses blurting out: “Yes! I admit it! I’m clueless!”

O.K., not in so many words. But the bankers’ testimony showed a stunning failure, even now, to grasp the nature and extent of the current crisis. And that’s important: It tells us that as Congress and the administration try to reform the financial system, they should ignore advice coming from the supposed wise men of Wall Street, who have no wisdom to offer.

Consider what has happened so far: The U.S. economy is still grappling with the consequences of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; trillions of dollars of potential income have been lost; the lives of millions have been damaged, in some cases irreparably, by mass unemployment; millions more have seen their savings wiped out; hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, will lose essential health care because of the combination of job losses and draconian cutbacks by cash-strapped state governments.

And this disaster was entirely self-inflicted. This isn’t like the stagflation of the 1970s, which had a lot to do with soaring oil prices, which were, in turn, the result of political instability in the Middle East. This time we’re in trouble entirely thanks to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system. Everyone understands this — everyone, it seems, except the financiers themselves.

There were two moments in Wednesday’s hearing that stood out. One was when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase declared that a financial crisis is something that “happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.” In short, stuff happens, and that’s just part of life.

But the truth is that the United States managed to avoid major financial crises for half a century after the Pecora hearings were held and Congress enacted major banking reforms. It was only after we forgot those lessons, and dismantled effective regulation, that our financial system went back to being dangerously unstable.

As an aside, it was also startling to hear Mr. Dimon admit that his bank never even considered the possibility of a large decline in home prices, despite widespread warnings that we were in the midst of a monstrous housing bubble.

Still, Mr. Dimon’s cluelessness paled beside that of Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein, who compared the financial crisis to a hurricane nobody could have predicted. Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman, was not amused: The financial crisis, he declared, wasn’t an act of God; it resulted from “acts of men and women.”

Was Mr. Blankfein just inarticulate? No. He used the same metaphor in his prepared testimony in which he urged Congress not to push too hard for financial reform: “We should resist a response ... that is solely designed around protecting us from the 100-year storm.” So this giant financial crisis was just a rare accident, a freak of nature, and we shouldn’t overreact.

But there was nothing accidental about the crisis. From the late 1970s on, the American financial system, freed by deregulation and a political climate in which greed was presumed to be good, spun ever further out of control. There were ever-greater rewards — bonuses beyond the dreams of avarice — for bankers who could generate big short-term profits. And the way to raise those profits was to pile up ever more debt, both by pushing loans on the public and by taking on ever-higher leverage within the financial industry.

Sooner or later, this runaway system was bound to crash. And if we don’t make fundamental changes, it will happen all over again.

Do the bankers really not understand what happened, or are they just talking their self-interest? No matter. As I said, the important thing looking forward is to stop listening to financiers about financial reform.

Wall Street executives will tell you that the financial-reform bill the House passed last month would cripple the economy with overregulation (it’s actually quite mild). They’ll insist that the tax on bank debt just proposed by the Obama administration is a crude concession to foolish populism. They’ll warn that action to tax or otherwise rein in financial-industry compensation is destructive and unjustified.

But what do they know? The answer, as far as I can tell, is: not much.

Banks Set for Record Pay

Greetings note: I am wondering how quickly the banksters are rushing all of their bonus money to Haiti. That $145 billion could help that country immensely. And I doubt the banksters need it that much.

Top 38 Firms on Pace to Award $145 Billion for '09, Up 18%, WSJ Study Finds

BY STEPHEN GROCER

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people about $145 billion for 2009, a record sum that indicates how compensation is climbing despite fury over Wall Street's pay culture.

An analysis by The Wall Street Journal shows that executives, traders, investment bankers, money managers and others at 38 top financial companies can expect to earn nearly 18% more than they did in 2008—and slightly more than in the record year of 2007. The conclusions are based on an examination of securities filings for the first nine months of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end.

The Show Must Not Go On

Asking those responsible why it happened won't get answers. Only the retrieval of documents and other true investigative procedures will. I hope these folks have those skills.

New York Times Editorial, Jan. 17, 2010

Political theater and public scolding are good ways to draw attention to important issues and bad behavior, and Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, made use of both last week. As he swore in four of the nation’s top bankers, it was impossible not to think of that famous scene with executives from the tobacco industry. During the questioning, he rebuked Lloyd Blankfein, head of Goldman Sachs, for his firm’s practice of selling mortgage-related securities and at the same time betting they would fall in value.

Now that he has everyone’s attention, Mr. Angelides and his fellow commissioners can get to the hard part.

Inconclusive sparring at hearings will not fulfill the mandate Congress gave the panel to investigate the causes of the crisis. Indeed, the bankers who testified last week did not say much they had not said before.

The commission must uncover what bankers, investors, government officials and other people in positions of power, past and present, would prefer not to say — or perhaps do not know or understand — about the crash and the bailouts. The primary aim is not to air issues and foster debate, but to test views, resolve contradictions and arrive at evidence-based conclusions.

Yet the commission — which is supposed to file a final report by Dec. 15 — has not issued a single subpoena for documents. Instead, investigators have apparently been relying on voluntary cooperation, public records and information-sharing agreements that have been negotiated with federal agencies. A thorough investigation requires source documents that reveal what people were thinking and doing at the time of the events and that illuminate, buttress or contradict testimony.

Take, for example, Mr. Blankfein’s explanation that the clients Goldman bet against were sophisticated investors who demanded the doomed securities that Goldman sold them. Apart from the fact that the notion of “sophisticated investors” has been discredited by the crisis, does that explanation go far enough?

Without peering into the internal workings of Goldman and other financial firms that engaged in similar practices, it is hard to know how far bankers went in creating demand rather than responding to it, or if the securities were purposely designed to perform poorly.

The answers could cast light on when Wall Street practices cross the line from prudent hedging to excessive speculation.

A crucial related issue is whether Wall Street’s role as the underwriter of securities, which implies a level of approval of the investments being offered for sale, misled investors into buying questionable securities, and thus contributed to the credit bubble. If so, that would make the argument for barring too-big-to-fail banks from operating hedge funds all the more compelling.

Given the stakes, the chances seem remote that Wall Street will voluntarily hand over the papers that could get to the bottom of it all.

The inquiry is getting under way at a critical moment. The House has passed a financial regulatory reform bill that was enfeebled in important respects by bank lobbyists. The Senate banking committee recently rejected a generally robust proposal by Senator Christopher Dodd. It has yet to produce an alternative, but it is likely that lobbying and partisan politics will generate a weak bill. President Obama’s call for a new tax on big banks is a good idea, but must not pre-empt other needed changes, including a tax on bankers’ bonuses and more direct regulation to limit the size of financial firms.

Serious investigative work is the only way to counter the banks’ political power and alter the course of a reform effort that is headed in the wrong direction.

A Wake Up Call

by Robert Kuuttner, Salon.com

How could the health care issue have turned from a reform that was going to make Barack Obama ten feet tall into a poison pill for Democratic senators? Whether or not Martha Coakley squeaks through in Massachusetts on Tuesday, the health bill has already done incalculable political damage and will likely do more. Polls show that the public now opposes it by margins averaging ten to fifteen points, and widening. It is hard to know which will be the worse political defeat -- losing the bill and looking weak, or passing it and leaving it as a piñata for Republicans to attack between now and November.

The measure is so unpopular that Republican State Senator Scott Brown has built his entire surge against Coakley around his promise to be the 41st senator to block the bill -- this in Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts. He must be pretty confident that the bill has become politically radioactive, and he's right.

It has already brought down Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, a fighter for health care and other reforms far more progressive than President Obama's. Dorgan championed Americans' right to re-import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, a popular provision that the White House blocked. Dorgan, who is one of the Senate's great populists, began the year more than twenty points ahead in the polls of his most likely challenger, North Dakota Governor John Hoeven. By the time he decided to call it a day, Dorgan was running more than twenty points behind. The difference was the health bill, which North Dakotans oppose by nearly two to one. The fact that Dorgan's own views were much better than the Administration's cut little ice. He was fatally associated with an unpopular bill.

So, how did Democrats get saddled with this bill? Begin with Rahm Emanuel. The White House chief of staff, who was once Bill Clinton's political director, drew three lessons from the defeat of Clinton-care. All three were wrong. First, get it done early (Clinton's task force had dithered.) Second, leave the details to Congress (Clinton had presented Congress with a fully-baked cake.) Third, don't get on the wrong side of the insurance and drug industries (The insurers' fictitious couple, Harry and Louise, had cleaned Clinton's clock.)

But as I wrote in Obama's Challenge, in August 2008, it would be a huge mistake to try to get health care done right out of the box. Obama first needed to get his sea-legs, and focus like a laser on economic recovery. If he got the economy back on track, he would then have earned the chops to undertake more difficult structural reforms like health care.

Deferring to the House and Senate was fine up to a point, but this was an issue where the president needed to lead as only presidents can -- in order to frame the debate and define the stakes.

Cutting a deal with the insurers and drug companies, who are not exactly candidates to win popularity contests, associated Obama with profoundly resented interest groups. This was exactly the wrong framing. This battle should have been the president and the people versus the interests. Instead more and more voters concluded that it was the president and the interests versus the people.

As policy, the interest-group strategy made it impossible to put on the table more fundamental and popular reforms, such as using Federal bargaining power to negotiate cheaper drug prices, or having a true public option like Medicare-for-all. Instead, a bill that served the drug and insurance industries was almost guaranteed to have unpopular core elements.

The politics got horribly muddled. By embracing a deal that required the government to come up with a trillion dollars of subsidy for the insurance industry, Obama was forced to pursue policies that were justifiably unpopular -- such as taxing premiums of people with decent insurance; or compelling people to buy policies that they often couldn't afford, or diverting money from Medicare. He managed to scare silly the single most satisfied clientele of our one island of efficient single-payer health insurance -- senior citizens -- and to alienate one of his most loyal constituencies, trade unionists.

The bill helped about two-thirds of America's uninsured, but did almost nothing for the 85 percent of Americans with insurance that is becoming more costly and unreliable by the day -- except frighten them into believing that what little they have is at increased risk of being taken away.

All of this made things easier for the right, and left people to take seriously even preposterous allegations such as the nonsense about death panels. It got so ass-backwards that the other day Ben Nelson, who successfully held out for anti-abortion language and a sweetheart deal for Nebraska's Medicaid as the price of his vote, found himself facing a wholesale voter backlash.

Nelson began running TV spots assuring Nebraska voters that the Obama health plan is "not run by the government." That's one hell of a slogan for a party that relies on democratically elected government to offset the insecurity, inequality and insanity generated by private commercial forces. If not-run-by-government is the Democrats' credo, why bother?

So we went from a politics in which government is necessary to provide secure health insurance -- because the private insurance industry skims off outrageous middlemen fees and discriminates against sick people -- to a politics in which Democrats, as a matter of survival, feel they have to apologize for government. Thank you, Rahm Emanuel.

The budget-obsessives around Obama also insisted that most of the bill not take effect until 2013, so that all of the scary stuff gets three years to fester before most people see any benefit. Call it political malpractice.

Finally, the health insurance battle sucked out all the oxygen. When Obama made time to work the phones personally, it wasn't to enact serious financial reform (this was left to the tender mercies of Tim Geithner) or to fight for a real jobs program (deficit hawks Peter Orszag and Larry Summers got to blunt that one). No -- Obama got on the phone and met with legislators to round up the last vote or two for a sketchy health reform that crowded out far more urgent issues.

As a resident of Massachusetts, in the last two days I've gotten robo calls from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Martha Coakley, and Angela Menino, the wife of Boston's mayor -- everyone but the sainted Ted Kennedy. In Obama's call, he advised me that he needed Martha Coakley in the Senate, "because I'm fighting to curb the abuses of a health insurance industry that routinely denies care." Let's see, would that be the same insurance industry that Rahm was cutting inside deals with all spring and summer? The same insurance industry that spent tens of millions on TV spots backing Obama's bill as sensible reform?

If voters are wondering which side this guy is on, he has given them good reason.

Looking forward, one can imagine several possibilities. Suppose Coakley loses. Obama and the House leadership may then decide that their one shot to salvage health reform after all this effort is for the House to just pass the Senate-approved bill and send it to the president's desk. They can fix its deficiencies later. This is an easy parliamentary move. But the bill passed the House by only five votes; many House members are dead set against some of the more objectionable provisions of the Senate bill; a Coakley loss would make the bill that much more politically toxic; there will be Republican catcalls that Congress is using dubious means to pass a bill that has just been politically repudiated; and the House votes just may not be there this time.

Alternatively, let's say Coakley narrowly wins, the Democrats have a near death experience, and the House and Senate stop squabbling and pass the damned bill.

Either way, the Massachusetts surprise should be a wake-up call of the most fundamental kind. Obama needs to stop playing inside games with bankers and insurance lobbyists, and start being a fighter for regular Americans. Otherwise, he can kiss it all goodbye.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect, a senior fellow at Demos, and author of Obama's Challenge.

Former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford Jr.'s northern exposure

Ford's investor-friendly positions as chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council make him an ideal vehicle to protest Obama's "fat cat" insults and Schumer's post-crisis interest in financial regulation. Is that what you're looking for, New York?

By Jason Horowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 15, 2010; C01

Harold Ford Jr. has gone viral.

"You can judge from the editorials in the city, and just the response in the city and in the state that people don't want party bosses telling anyone that you can't run," Ford said in a phone interview between meetings in New York on Thursday afternoon. "People want an independent strong voice representing New York in the Senate."

The former Tennessee congressman has reintroduced himself as public muller of a primary challenge against New York's low-polling junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand (D). Ford has resided in New York for less time than many of the grad students taking his "political reality" class at New York University and he has no discernible support from the Democratic establishment. His conservative record on gay rights, abortion and gun control is so out of step with the party's primary voters that it makes Gillibrand's right-leaning record look progressive. Ford, the son of Tennessee's first black congressman, took a job as a Bank of America Merrill Lynch executive, and has cultivated a core constituency of Wall Street donors, many of whom are frustrated with President Obama's regulatory crackdown and what they see as a sudden cold shoulder from Sen. Chuck Schumer. Yet for all those moneyed ties, Ford has raised nothing -- literally, zilch -- to rival the millions of dollars in Gillibrand's coffers.

But as a shoestring publicity campaign for the Harold Ford brand, his 2010 media blitz has all been something to behold.

The New York political media, famished for a competitive political contest, has been more than willing to entertain this outsider as a potential contender for Gillibrand's seat. Ford, a talented 39-year-old with a book, titled "More Davids Than Goliaths," coming out a few weeks before the U.S. Senate primary this September, has cast his nascent primary challenge as that of a principled Democratic insurgent, staring down Schumer and Obama administration officials who have protected Gillibrand from opponents in the party.

In the interview, Ford said that the notion that he was doing this for publicity was "insulting to voters."

New Yorkers, he said, deserve a candidate who would fight for their interests, tax breaks and a health-care overhaul beneficial to the state, which he believes is not being done now. "Independence and jobs" were his echoing watchwords. "That's not about publicity," Ford said "That's real."

So, too, is the tacit approval of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who privately boosted Caroline Kennedy's Senate bid after Hillary Clinton was appointed secretary of state. A year later, Bloomberg appears less invested though decidedly comfortable with letting his loyal operatives make a few bucks; his pollster Doug Schoen and campaign manager Bradley Tusk are advising Ford.

Like Bloomberg, Ford defends Wall Street bonuses as critical to the city's tax base. When asked in the interview whether he himself had received a bonus from his employer, his spokesman, Davidson Goldin, interrupted, as he did on other topics not related to Ford's rationale for running, which the media handler understood to be the sole focus of the interview. At that point in the interview, Ford stayed silent, but Goldin later offered that Ford's "salary is set by contract."

While Ford refused to compare himself to politicians who ultimately dropped their primary bids against Gillibrand, he acknowledged that his has been received differently.

"Maybe it's the benefit of time. People have had the opportunity to experience some of the policies passed in Washington," said Ford, adding, "and there is dissatisfaction with Senator Gillibrand."

Gillibrand, who has sat back and waited for intervention on her behalf from Schumer or the White House, is getting more involved.

"The notion that 'Tennessee' Harold Ford is an independent outsider is completely contrived," said Jefrey Pollock, Gillibrand's political adviser. "But his extreme views against reproductive rights, against marriage equality and against immigration are all too real. Kirsten Gillibrand is not backing down from this fight."

* * *

For Ford's rebel rationale to have any credibility, he needed a villain. He found one in Schumer, his former benefactor who raised money and campaigned for Ford during his narrow defeat to Bob Corker in the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Tennessee. Schumer has successfully swatted away Gillibrand's would-be primary challengers, and Ford argued that party pressure on him not to run "exacerbated" the situation and sped up his timetable.

"The only person Chuck Schumer has to blame is himself and his fellow Washington insiders for having the gall to interfere with a free election," said Goldin, Ford's spokesman. "And for blocking an independent Democrat from running."

But according to a source in Schumer's office familiar with conversations between Schumer and Ford, the senator called Ford after a November Politico story reported that the Memphis native was exploring his chances against Gillibrand. They agreed to a face-to-face meeting to discuss Ford's New York political future. But on the morning of the meeting, the New York Times reported that Ford was "weighing" a challenge to Gillibrand. In the days that followed, the Times reported the substance of the meeting under the headline "Schumer Urges Ford Not to Run."

"The only person the senator has talked to about Ford not running was Ford himself," said a person close to Schumer, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private conversations. The Schumer intimate suggested that Ford exploited his meeting with Schumer to build up his insurgent story line.

"He has not talked to anyone else because he has no interest in feeding this David-versus-Goliath fairy tale that seems to be the only thing the Ford campaign has going for it right now," the person close to Schumer said.

The Ford camp denies any such setup.

The White House and leaders in Washington have been less careful about fueling the Ford phenomenon. During a White House briefing on Jan. 11, press secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated the administration's support for Gillibrand. But then by telling reporters to "stay tuned" for administration efforts to knock Ford out, Gibbs may have unwittingly boosted Ford's status as an anti-establishment comer.

On Jan. 12, Ford sat down again for dinner with Schoen, the Bloomberg pollster, at the apartment of Richard Plepler, an HBO executive who is taking a leading role in promoting Ford's potential candidacy, according to a source with knowledge of the dinner who was granted anonymity to speak of the private meeting. Ford has also kept in daily touch with Tusk, Bloomberg's reelection manager.

"I'm involved a lot and Mayor Bloomberg is not," said Tusk, who said he is providing free advice for now but would sign on with Ford if he runs. As might be expected in New York politics, Tusk is himself a former aide to Schumer. "I deeply admire and respect Chuck and always have," he said. "But Gillibrand is her own entity."

Tusk argued that while Ford is not a household name among regular New York voters yet, he "has the ability to be known. The ability to raise money and the ability, clearly, to do press."

* * *

The one constituency with whom Ford does have high name-recognition is the city's top Democratic bundlers. "At least among my friends, Harold has an extremely strong base," said Orin Kramer, an investor at Boston Provident whose early support for Obama imbued him with gravity in the New York donor firmament. While Ford has yet to raise a cent for the race, Kramer said he would have financial support if he in fact ran.

"People regard him quite properly as an extraordinary political talent," Kramer said.

"We bonded with him years ago and he is one of our friends," said Robert Zimmerman, another influential fundraiser and Democratic National Committeeman. But according to several of these bundlers, it's not all about friendship. A show of support for Ford's potential candidacy also sends a message to Washington.

Ford's investor-friendly positions as chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council make him an ideal vehicle to protest Obama's "fat cat" insults and Schumer's post-crisis interest in financial regulation.

"Mr. President, you did what you need to do, we now have to do what we have to do," said one prominent member of New York's Democratic donor universe, who was granted anonymity to freely reflect the sentiments of his peers. The donor said Wall Street needed to elect Ford as a "champion for New York's economy and financial services sector," because Schumer "is preoccupied with being majority leader and a national leader, and our junior senator is a second vote for Chuck."

("Nobody stands up for New York's economy more than Senator Schumer," said Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon. "But that doesn't mean doing whatever the banks want even when they're wrong.")

Many of these donors are simply underwhelmed by Gillibrand, whose garrulousness is much noted, and have not embraced her as they did Clinton before her. Gillibrand has expressed irritation at her inability to crack into the uppermost echelons of the fundraising circuit, namely into the sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment of the first couple in Democratic Party fundraising, Steven Rattner and Maureen White.

Rattner, the Bloomberg confidant and money manager, former Obama car czar and Times reporter who remains close with the paper's owner, Arthur Sulzberger, has gushed about Ford in print. According to one Gillibrand supporter, the senator has ascribed the reason for her discord with the couple to a broken-off relationship with White's younger brother more than a decade ago.

"If I got mad at every girlfriend one of my five brothers ever dated, I'd be mad at a lot of people," White said. "The only relevant part of that story is I've known her longer than most people.

"I'm not enthusiastic about Kirsten for a very simple reason," White continued, "New York State needs someone great. It's not clear to me that she has the talent to follow in the footsteps of Robert Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan or Hillary Clinton."

If Ford gets elected, White said, "he'll be a national presence for New York State from day one."

* * *

In 2006, Schumer, then chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and architect of the Democratic takeover of the chamber, recruited Ford as the nominee to fill the seat vacated by Tennessee's Bill Frist. Schumer called him "a great candidate" and helped Ford raise millions of dollars for a bruising and tight contest against Corker, a Republican. The contest is perhaps most remembered for a racially charged ad aired by the Republican Party at the end of the election, in which a winking blonde said she met the unmarried Ford at a Playboy party. Schumer released funds to keep Ford ads airing on television until Election Day. But he fell just short.

Soon after his defeat, Ford started spending substantial time in New York City and became an official resident in 2008. Like Bloomberg, he got to know the benefit circuit, squiring around his now-wife, Emily Threlkeld, an executive with the fashion designer Carolina Herrera and the stepdaughter of Wall Street grandee Anson Beard -- as well as the table-hopping nightspots, like Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn.

An interview in the New York Times on Jan. 13 revealed the chasm between Ford and his recession-weary constituents more starkly. He preferred the Giants over the Jets because he was closer to their owner. He had been to Staten Island only by helicopter. He got pedicures.

For now, at least, Ford is counting on media interest in a competitive race and the strength of his anti-establishment message to keep his campaign going, whatever the ultimate goal.

"I'm considering it more and more seriously every day," he said.