Toluu

Modeshift

Chronicling the American Transition

Radical Republican Economics: The EndSeptember 30

Thank God, it’s over. The radical right is retreating back to the dank, dark, fetid corner from which it sprang 30 years ago. The wreckage they’ve wrought has left a nation unable to govern, an economy that will be wobbly for years, a president drained of credibility, and a capable nation doubting its own creativity and strength.

But if there’s one enduring value to the meltdown in leadership in Washington and the financial markets in New York it’s this: The cynical, hypocritical, dangerous ideology of the right has been exposed for the fraud it is. Though it involves money and credit and financial transactions I know nothing about, the credit crunch seems like the natural disasters I periodically reported on over the years.

Like a flood, a torrent of history and economics has drowned institutions that seemed untouchable only a year ago. Like fire, the financial crisis has raced through the White House and both houses of Congress, through the Fed and the Treasury, burning through the old forest of lies and making way for new leadership, new values, new goals. Like a category 5 hurricane, the foolishness of stripping away oversight, and removing sound management has blown through the bank accounts of the

McCain Blinks on Debating, The Bailout, WMD, And Our ResponsibilitySeptember 25

Listen up kids. This stuff just doesn’t happen but once in a lifetime. 

Century-old billion dollar financial institutions crumbling in a matter of days. Nearly $100 billion bailouts decided in closed session by a tiny group of government bankers. An American political party tossing out the central tenets of the free-market, deregulatory, anti-tax, anti-government ideology that fostered its political ascendancy for nearly 30 years and is now backing a $700 billion taxpayer-financed government takeover of much of the rest of the financial industry. A weak and foolish president again appearing on a national broadcast to make the case for passage of the measure, equivalent to a declaration of war to prevent economic collapse, and basing it on unproven assertions of calamity if the bailout measure is not quickly approved. A hardened Vietnam-era war hero running for president who, days before it is scheduled to occur, calls for canceling the first presidential debate of a close and heated campaign. Why? To rush back to Washington, he says, to work with a Senate he has barely visited over the last year, to colleagues of both parties who are well aware of his disinterest and meager knowledge of economic theory and

Energy From Apollo AllianceSeptember 23

Congress this week took up legislation to decide America’s energy future.  The question in Washington is the same as it is in the presidential campaign - “drill baby drill” or a policy that promotes real solutions, a plan for a reasoned future that invests in clean energy and good jobs.

The Apollo Alliance is pushing back against drilling proposals that won’t solve our energy crisis and promoting a much better one that will, The New Apollo Program. The New Apollo Program is a comprehensive national economic development strategy to scale up and accelerate development of the clean energy sector and create millions of green-collar jobs.

In pursuit of those goals, this week we published a careful analysis that compares the proposals in The New Apollo Program with those put forward in Barack Obama’s New Energy For America Plan, and John McCain’s The Lexington Project.

We also sent an email alert to you and thousands of our other supporters urging you to help alert Congress that more domestic drilling is no solution to the energy, economic, security, and climate crises buffeting the nation. Please make your views known, and pass the alert onto friends and family.

And today we are in Newark, New Jersey for the first of the two-day Newark’s Green Future Summit, which the Apollo Alliance and Mayor Cory A. Booker (pix right with Phil Angelides) organized with the help of a number of other national and local organizations.

The idea of

The Unfolding Clean Energy EconomyMay 1

Last November Senator Hillary Clinton delivered a major policy speech in Iowa, during which she described her clean energy and jobs proposal. Three months later, in a speech in Seattle, Senator Barack Obama outlined his clean energy plan. Every week now, in many of their public appearances, both Democratic presidential candidates mention the millions of “green-collar jobs” they anticipate from an energy strategy that stresses clean renewable sources and moves the nation away from a carbon (read that oil and gas and coal) energy economy.

Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, who’s assured action on global climate change if he’s elected president, also gingerly notes the need for what he calls “alternative” sources of energy. His policy platform is decent. But he’s under enormous pressure from the Republican governors of carbon energy producing states to refrain from addre

Flip: In Time for Earth Day, A Sustainability PrimerApril 18

The University of Michigan Center for Sustainability Systems just posted this very good online interactive primer on how we use resources. This is a clear and concise check on our excessive use of resources, and a strong way to get kids engaged. It’s also a keen deployment of design and online interactivity. Nice work Michigan.