Saturday, October 09, 2010

How things work (and why they don't work) in Washington

A very important article from the New Yorker Magazine--enough to make you cry at the politically driven dastardly deeds in the halls of Congress and the White House.  Unfortunately, most of the populace won't read it, hear of it, or care about it--and thus will never understand why our world is crashing down around us.  And they will go to the polls and vote for change that will never come, because those who really run things in our world are driven by greed and power for themselves and they know exactly how to keep it--wheeling and dealing their way through our halls of government, which they now own lock, stock, and barrel.  Their true motto is "Damn the people and damn the planet -- we will NEVER give up our goodies! Full steam ahead!"  Through unchecked and unregulated selfishness and greed, the American Empire/dream has been brought down to its inevitable end, with the progressively minded voters, the true lovers of democratic principles, dragged kicking and screaming all the way.  Our way of life is doomed as our planet experiences the results of callous greed, neglect and ignorance on the part of the majority of its inhabitants. Read about it in this article at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/11/101011fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=1

SAD EXCERPTS from AS THE WORLD BURNS:

In Barack Obama’s primary-campaign victory speech, in St. Paul, Minnesota, he said that his election would be a historical turning point on two pressing issues: health care and climate change. “We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick,” he said. “When the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” During the campaign, he often argued that climate change was an essential part of a national energy strategy. “Energy we have to deal with today,” Obama said in a debate with McCain. “Health care is priority No. 2.”  After the election, Obama decided to work on both issues simultaneously. Representative Henry Waxman moved climate change through the House, while Max Baucus, of Montana, moved health care in the Senate. “The plan was to throw two things against the wall, and see which one looks more promising,” a senior Administration official said.

(IN THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, READ WHY OBAMA'S PROMISES COULD NOT BE KEPT)

A FEW MORE EXCERPTS:
Graham warned Lieberman and Kerry that they needed to get as far as they could in negotiating the bill “before Fox News got wind of the fact that this was a serious process,” one of the people involved in the negotiations said. “He would say, ‘The second they focus on us, it’s gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time, and it’s gonna become just a disaster for me on the airwaves. We have to move this along as quickly as possible.’ ”

For Obama, health care had become the legislation that stuck to the wall. As a consequence of the long debate over that issue, climate change became, according to a senior White House official, Obama’s “stepchild.” Carol Browner had just three aides working directly for her. “Hey, change the entire economy, and here are three staffers to do it!”

“Let me teach you something about this town,” Graham told [LeMieux, a new senator who wanted to help with the environmental legislation]. “You can’t come that easy.” Graham was trying to give the new senator some advice, according to aides involved with the negotiations: LeMieux would be foolish to join the effort without extracting something for himself.

Kerry and some aides were in his office discussing the progress of their bill. Someone mentioned T. Boone Pickens, the author of the so-called Pickens Plan, an energy-independence proposal centered on enormous government subsidies for natural gas, which is abundant, cleaner-burning than other fossil fuels, and sold by a Pickens-controlled corporation at some two hundred natural-gas fuelling stations across North America. Back in 2004, Pickens had helped to fund the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran a sleazy—and inaccurate—ad campaign proclaiming, among other things, that Kerry had lied about the circumstances that led to his Bronze Star and Purple Hearts.

Kerry had an inspiration. “I’m going to call T. Boone,” he said. Frangione was surprised. “You really want to call that guy?” she asked. Kerry told an aide to get Pickens on the phone. Minutes later, Kerry was inviting Pickens to Washington to talk. Rosengarten, who watched Kerry make the call, thought it was “a show of extraordinary leadership.” The following week, Pickens and Kerry sat in two upholstered chairs in the Senator’s office. Between them loomed a giant model of Kerry’s Vietnam swift boat. Kerry walked Pickens through the components of the bill that he and his colleagues were writing, but Pickens seemed uninterested. He had just one request: include in the climate legislation parts of a bill that Pickens had written, called the Natural Gas Act, a series of tax incentives to encourage the use of natural-gas vehicles and the installation of natural-gas fuelling stations. In exchange, Pickens would publicly endorse the bill. At the end of the meeting, the Senator shook hands with the man who had probably cost him the Presidency. Afterward, staffers in one of the K.G.L. offices started telling a joke: “What do you call a climate bill that gives Pickens everything he ever dreamed of?” “A Boonedoggle!”

The influence of special interests is now at an extremely unhealthy level.... And it’s to the point where it’s virtually impossible for participants in the current political system to enact any significant change without first seeking and gaining permission from the largest commercial interests who are most affected by the proposed change.

Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman were not alone in their belief that transforming the economy required coöperation, rather than confrontation, with industry. American Presidents who have attempted large-scale economic transformation have always had their efforts tempered—and sometimes neutered—by powerful economic interests. Obama knew that, too, and his Administration had led the effort to find workable compromises in the case of the bank bailouts, health-care legislation, and Wall Street reform. But on climate change Obama grew timid and gave up, leaving the dysfunctional Senate to figure out the issue on its own.

As the Senate debate expired this summer, a longtime environmental lobbyist told me that he believed the “real tragedy” surrounding the issue was that Obama understood it profoundly. “I believe Barack Obama understands that fifty years from now no one’s going to know about health care,” the lobbyist said. “Economic historians will know that we had a recession at this time. Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James Buchanan of climate change.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/11/101011fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=1







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