I guess Armando is desperate for attention. He doesn’t have an opinion on the president’s announcement today on Energy Security, but he’s pretty sure that the “progressive position” on off-shore drilling is to oppose it. I, and certainly Steven, am willing to grant that. I’d also agree that the “progressive position” is to oppose clean-coal technology as a farce and nuclear energy because of the problem with waste. Increasing production of coal, nuclear, and offshore oil is not part of the progressive vision for America. And it’s not part of Obama’s agenda, either.
The president wants to pass a bill that addresses climate change. The House Cap & Trade bill is dead-on-arrival in the Senate. The Kerry/Boxer bill (pdf) forms the template for passing something in the upper chamber. The question before us is not whether or not we should be for offshore drilling. It is whether we are willing to make a compromise on offshore drilling to get most of the positive elements of the House and Senate bills enacted into law.
I can say that I am open to the idea without endorsing such a tradeoff. Without seeing the deal on the table, I can’t say whether I agree with it. What I do know is that no climate change bill worth shit is going to pass thru this Congress without making some major concessions to the energy industries and the states and politicians who protect those industries. Obama’s announcment begins to give a clear picture of what those concessions will be. But his announcement isn’t triangulation. His agenda is passing the climate change elements of the bill, not the carbon producing elements. This isn’t school uniforms, and Armando knows it.
For any who care about the truth, Obama said during the campaign that he might be willing to compromise on this issue:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/01/obama-shifts-on-oil-drilling/?fbid=0jgVlh3Seuq
Shitty, but in no way a surprise or a betrayal.
He certainly did, but it appears that some progressives continue to be plagued by that strange virus that only allows them to hear what they want to hear. Just like they didn’t hear then candidate Obama promise to double down in Afghanistan despite the fact he clearly stated his intentions during EVERY stump speech for almost two years. I have absolutely NO problem with principled opposition to the President’s proposals, but I do have a big problem with charges of flip flops, reversals and all out betrayal when they were duely informed.
He didn’t campaign as a progressive ideologue and he isn’t governing as one. He has and always will be a pragmatist. And those of us who were actually listening are getting what we voted for.
However, if progressives want to move him to the left, they have to get off their asses and get as visual and vocal as teabaggers. Teabaggers are exciting the Republican base. What are progressives doing besides threatening to stay at home?
We’re not upset that he’s compromising on the issue, we’re mad that he’s showing every one of his cards so early.
I accepted a long time ago that in order to get a bill through that some shitty things (clean coal and off-shore drilling) had to be in there. I was fine with that, mostly because off-shore drilling is more rhetoric than actual policy, and there’s no hope of a bill without coal states on-board.
But what does he have left? He’s already given the Republicans everything they want: off-shore drilling and nuclear power. How does he move the bill to what he wants?
It seems to me that people don’t understand the negotiation dynamics here. The Republicans don’t want ANY deal. Their objective is defeat any legislative proposal from Obama/Dems. Period. So it’s not like you can start high and negotiate down. What you have to do is make a proposal that hurts them with their own constituencies so that just blowing you off is not an easy option. The proposal is crafted on the assumption of bad faith negotiation and intent to block.
If their goal is to get nothing, why allow the debate to shift to the right with Obama’s stamp of approval on their policies?
Obama now robs them of the ability to argue drill-not-green-hippy-stuff and to advocate drilling without pissing off their tourism industry sponsors because they know nothing will happen.
And I’m aware that he signed off during the campaign, but he clearly stated that it wouldn’t help dependence on oil or create jobs either:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/31/drilling-no-jobs/
Put it this way: his State of the Union didn’t mention one lefty idea on energy except that global warming is real. He didn’t endorse solar, wind, geothermal, or hydro. It’s like he’s punching the hippies just to punch them at this point.
This is just one piece of the puzzle so far. He does assemble ideas from all sides as shown with HCR. Don’t jump off the handle while the process is ongoing, please.
>>He does assemble ideas from all sides as shown with HCR.
what was shown in the insurance bill is that he assembles ideas from center and right. Progressives are ignored when they aren’t being directly insulted.
Tell that to Bernie Sanders and his Community Health Centers that saw a huge increase in funding.
Of course, I’d like for you to diagram for us your legislative strategy for securing a new federal program that offers health insurance with this Congress. You’ll quickly find there’s no votes in either House.
That is because Obama administration is about doing stuff
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/releases/01-26-10_AWEA_Q4_and_Year-End_Report_Release.html
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/12/this-year-in-geothermal-energy
I think one of the problems Obama has with “progressives” is that they are trained to look for subtle hints in policy declarations and his group is focused on fundamental changes in substance.
Doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff gets you what?
It got a healthcare bill passed into law, dude.
It got the green energy business to grow at an unprecedented rate in the middle of a business collapse.
Boo:
I have a question for you. How much do you know about Rahm Emanuel? And what I mean is this. You understand that there is no principal that Emanuel won’t sell for a “victory”, right? You read Froomkin’s latest? At what point do you fight for policies because it’s the right thing to do(even though Republicans will filibuster)? And why doesn’t the DNC and Co. put an effort to actually increase seats this fall? Especially in the Senate? Meaning, do stuff in the interim that will drive turn out up. Kissing Republicans ass isn’t going to do that. Or is the WH to in love with Versailles thinking?
Please stop speaking Teabonics.
How is that Teabonics? Christ.
it’s someone playing diary police, ignore him
People who don’t know the difference between “principal” and “principle” are illiterate fools speaking Teabonics.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pargon/4469684254/in/set-72157623594187379/
People don’t get a pass on illiteracy just because they’re on our team, instead of the other team. Because we have principles, right?
People who make a federal case over a trivial spelling error are nattering nabobs. Get a life.
The vast majority of Americans thank you for your staunch defense of stupidity.
The vast majority of Americans don’t give a flying fuck about principle/principal. Including me. Go away.
I think the best thing that ever happens on the internet is when somebody conflates spelling and intelligence. Sure, some will tell you that it doesn’t provide the same sort of intellectual satisfaction as those websites where drunken frat boys post pictures of their own bowel movements, but for my money, you can’t beat the masturbatory postings of a self styled spelling and grammar nanny.
We all make typos on the web.
Sorry, but I don’t think there is room on the subject field here for the required number of exclamation points.
Having written a bill in the House around the coal industry, how many GOP votes did we get? Eight, one of whom is now Obama’s Secretary of the Army. Follow the Reagan Plan: make the GOP and Blue Dogs go on record against a bill that will actually get done what you want, and THEN and only then, say, “If we drill in the Baltimore Canyon will you vote for it?” “If we put in money for nuclear power plants, will you vote for it?” Not start with predigested compromises so that you have to give more and more. This is Negotiations 101, which the entire Obama Administration slept through apparently.
Then don’t. It’s not worth it. Unless we are limiting carbon every single human being on this planet is dead. I’m not up on corporate give-aways of my money before I die.
My opposition to nuclear is premised on the idea that the industry is based around cutting corners and skirting regulation, the GOP enables it and the Dems are too spineless or powerless to change it. So no nukes.
Call me a Firebagger on this issue, but I am not willing to sacrifice this planet for political expediency. The fact is we either act, or we don’t. There is no “compromising” when it comes to the science. Science doesn’t have time for politics. We don’t take what we can get and move on declaring victory. We need small victories in the right direction, not half-assed approaches that aren’t worth a shit.
So the only way you will EVER get me to sign off to this bill is if it actually impacts our work towards a better climate and place to live. Sure, I’ll agree to wasting money on clean coal, you’ve already got my support for nuclear as an intermediary (and possibly a permanent solution in the future if the technology keeps getting better the way it has), I’ll agree to give oil companies leases to drill because I know for a fact that they won’t until the land-oil is gone. To get me to agree to this, you’ve got to give me some hefty investments into everything I want, AND some way to price carbon (cap and trade, cap and dividend, tax and dividend, cap and tax, flat carbon tax….SOMETHING). Without those investments and pricing carbon, I want NOTHING to pass. BOTH are needed, and if you say they’re dead on arrival, then so is this climate bill.
But nobody is asking you to sign off. I’m not impressed with this as policy, but Obama campaigned on possibly opening up more oil lease territory and he won the election. The public spoke.
As much as people hate to admit it, the reality here is we have progressives, moderates and conservatives in the same party. Obama has to make compromises like these to secure Democratic votes, not Republican ones.
Booman, if Obama, Kerry, Boxer, et al are serious about moving a bill this year, then you may need to dust off your 2009 posts about the politics of passing health care legislation through the Senate, and update them to deal with climate change/energy reform.
Here’s the ugly truth. With Republicans abusing the filibuster, Obama needs to compromise enough to get the 60th most liberal Senator to vote for cloture. That’s significantly harder now that Scott Brown has replaced Ted Kennedy.
I think, based on the past 14 months, we can be fairly confident that no GOP senator wants to be the only Republican to vote for cloture. Therefore, Obama needs to compromise enough to get the 61st most liberal Senator to vote for cloture.
This again raises the question for progressives: how do we get major rules reform passed in the Senate?
Armando seems to have a lot in common with my dog. Reverse psychology works wonders for getting him to do my bidding. Don’t want to drop the ball? Then I just say “OK, keep it. I don’t want to play” and he drops it at my feet. With Armando you just take the opposite stance from the one you really have and he’ll agree with you.
So predictable and so easy to herd in the desired direction. And like my dog on the day he lost his family jewels…Armando won’t even know what happened.
talk about a waste of bandwidth. Armando says he doesn’t have an opinion on the issue, but he spends a LOT of time disagreeing with your opinion.
over at orange, Devilstower disagrees with you much more intelligently.
well, I’m not sure how much he disagrees with me.
He’s basically arguing that Obama should take a strong line on a bill that has no chance of getting taken seriously for a moment and then dole out goodies for votes until he reaches the minimum number needed. In other words, he’s opposed to the strategy.
On the substance, I think we agree.
However, this isn’t a reprise of the health care bill and it shouldn’t been seen as one.
In order to move forward at all, Obama needs a significant chunk of Republican support in the Senate. Without it, there is no point in even bringing the bill up for debate. So, either these upfront concessions get upfront support, or we’re moving on…
All these compromises were outlined in the Lindsey Graham and John Kerry op-ed about Climate Change legislation they wrote in 10/10/09 for the NYT. Graham thinks he can get about 6 Repugs because there are coal state dems,etc. who won’t vote for cap n trade. I don’t know how to link it or I would.
They probably won’t work on it until after the election but it has been in the works since last yr.
Here’s the link.
Here’s the nut.
Name me the Republican Senators who will be (1) the 60th vote for cloture; (2) substitutes for the Democratic Senators likely to vote no.
Name me the Republican members of the House who will substitute for the Democratic House members who will vote against the bill when it comes back from the Senate in conference.
OK, given that reality, the bill is not going to pass this year. So what you have on the southeastern coast is Democrats, Blue Dogs, and Republicans trying to outdo each other on “protecting our tourism and fishing industries from Barack Obama”. And who has the best opportunity of changing Barack Obama’s mind on this issue? Just might be a Democrat.
Look in the other diary on this for my list of the members of Congress whose districts or states are affected by this. Hint: Joe “You lie” Wilson is one of them, with an interest in protecting Hilton Head Island’s beaches. Or Democrat Glenn Nye (VA-01) who represents Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
If the bill doesn’t pass this year, doesn’t that mean the House will have to pass a new bill all over again? Past Congresses can’t bind future Congresses, etc… everything gets reset, right?
My question on this has been: Given how many acres the oil and gas industries already have access to, and haven’t bothered to drill on or even seriously survey for potential drilling… and given how long it takes to get a drilling project cleared, built and working….
What are the chances that these sites on the Atlantic shelf would ever actually be drilled? Or ten years from now, is it likely they will decide it’s not worth the return on investment to do so?
I’d rather see wind farms off the coast than drilling platforms — but either one is a tremendous investment and not a sure thing. (Jerome a Paris has discussed at length what kind of complex financing goes into a major wind far, I can imagine the same thing goes for drilling platforms, especially in deep water…?)
I’m more concerned about the landbased drilling projects that use water to force the oil and gas up — the risk to water tables when water itself may become more important than oil in the future, especially in the south-west US (as well as other places around the world).
How hard is that? But when you have a crappy narrative, I guess “factesque” is good enough.
is absolutely both progressive and responsible. The “problem with waste” of which you speak is not nearly as great with nuclear as it is with burning either coal or oil.
Agreed. I’m glad that I’m not alone here. It absolutely MUST be part of our solution if we are to get off of oil and coal.