from www.fivethirtyeight.com
Obama: Highest Initial Approval For Elected President?
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Barack Obama's favorability ratings have continued to improve as we approach Tuesday's inauguration. But how do they compare to those of his predecessors?The two highest initial, post-inauguration approval ratings as measured by Gallup belong to presidents who took over for others whose terms ended prematurely. About 86 percent of Americans approved of Harry Truman when he took over for FDR. And 77 percent approved Lyndon Johnson when he took over for JFK. The highest initial approval rating for a newly elected president, on the other hand, appears to belong to Kennedy, whom Gallup pegged at 72 percent approval shortly after his inauguration in 1961.Barack Obama has an excellent chance to exceed Kennedy's numbers. The Pollster.com averages show that 70 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Obama versus 16 percent unfavorable. Although favorability ratings aren't the same thing as approval ratings, they tend to closely track one another. Also, it appears that there may typically be something of a bounce in an incoming president's approval scores immediately after his inauguration, so Obama's numbers may (temporarily) get even better.My guess is that when Gallup comes out with its first post-inauguration approval ratings for Obama later this week, it will show him with about 76 percent approval, 11 percent disapproval and 13 percent uncertain, which would indeed be the best numbers on record for a newly-elected president. At the very least, Obama is virtually assured of starting out on better footing than his two immediate predecessors in the White House, as Bill Clinton had emerged victorious in a three-way race in which he got just 43 percent of the popular vote, and George W. Bush's disputed victory in 2000 had come only after weeks of uncertainty and litigation.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
History of slavery and the Presidency
On Tuesday, we will swear into office the 44th President of the United States.
12 of these 44 Presidents have owned slaves, 8 of them while in office.
Another fact that makes Tuesday even more interesting.
12 of these 44 Presidents have owned slaves, 8 of them while in office.
Another fact that makes Tuesday even more interesting.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Martin Luther King and Barack Obama in 2009
Tommorrow, January 19th is our federal holiday, Martin Luther King Day and Tuesday, January 20th our nation's 44th President and first African American President will be inaugurated as President.
"Pelosi: Let's Pay Tribute (Associated Press/1.16.09)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) circulated a statement today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday. In it, she linked the historic significance of Obama on his way to become the first black president: "Just as Barack Obama's historic inauguration makes this Martin Luther King Day more poignant, our commitment to fulfilling Dr. King's dream must become more powerful."
As Obama stands on the inaugural platform by the Capitol on Tuesday, Pelosi continued, he "will look across the expanse of the National Mall to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where one of America's most courageous and compassionate prophets of peace -- Reverend Martin Luther King -- called upon our nation to fulfill the promise of its founding dream for all of our people." (end of press release)
It is obviously an amazing two days for all Americans, but especially for African Americans. I read a story yesterday about Martin Luther King's sister taking a group of young students on a tour of the house where he grew up. One can only imagine what those Americans who led and struggled thru the Civil Rights movement with Rev. King will be thinking this week. Also how must the leaders of those more radical leaders of civil right groups, like the Black Panthers, be feeling about our country and about their history and experiences.
NPR did an interview with a retired White House Butler. The White House Butlers over history have been and are mainly African Americans. This gentleman was asked how he believes the current Butlers will feel the when they come face to face with the first African American President of the United States. It was a beautiful and interesting interview.
One wonders about the segregationalists from the Civil Rights era (and today) that are still alive today and how this coming week processes thru their minds and souls. Will it change in their last days how they view America and the issue of race and hatred. Maybe not but it must have an impact. It must be a stunning occurrence.
The other person in our historywho had an huge impact on civil rights, almost equal to that of Martin Luther King, is President Lydon Johnson. The President who hailed from the segragationalist south, Texas, and was the most unlikely political leader in American to bring about intergration and move the civil rights movement forward. He got civil right legislatin thru the Congress that former President John Kennedy could not get passed. He took huge risks for his presidency and did what he thought was right for America. He led housing and school integrration. he changed American society and American law. He used federal troops to make sure people could get into school and universities, ride on buses and move thru our country freely--regardless of their color. He made into law what Martin Luther King and thousands and thousands of other Americans fought for years and years to become law.
The fight for civil rights, for civil liberties and for equal opportunity is not over. It does not end with the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday. However it is interesting to think about what Americans past and present will be thinking about in the next two days as we celebrate two wonderful American events. It is interesting to think about how our country will change after tommorrow.
"Pelosi: Let's Pay Tribute (Associated Press/1.16.09)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) circulated a statement today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday. In it, she linked the historic significance of Obama on his way to become the first black president: "Just as Barack Obama's historic inauguration makes this Martin Luther King Day more poignant, our commitment to fulfilling Dr. King's dream must become more powerful."
As Obama stands on the inaugural platform by the Capitol on Tuesday, Pelosi continued, he "will look across the expanse of the National Mall to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where one of America's most courageous and compassionate prophets of peace -- Reverend Martin Luther King -- called upon our nation to fulfill the promise of its founding dream for all of our people." (end of press release)
It is obviously an amazing two days for all Americans, but especially for African Americans. I read a story yesterday about Martin Luther King's sister taking a group of young students on a tour of the house where he grew up. One can only imagine what those Americans who led and struggled thru the Civil Rights movement with Rev. King will be thinking this week. Also how must the leaders of those more radical leaders of civil right groups, like the Black Panthers, be feeling about our country and about their history and experiences.
NPR did an interview with a retired White House Butler. The White House Butlers over history have been and are mainly African Americans. This gentleman was asked how he believes the current Butlers will feel the when they come face to face with the first African American President of the United States. It was a beautiful and interesting interview.
One wonders about the segregationalists from the Civil Rights era (and today) that are still alive today and how this coming week processes thru their minds and souls. Will it change in their last days how they view America and the issue of race and hatred. Maybe not but it must have an impact. It must be a stunning occurrence.
The other person in our historywho had an huge impact on civil rights, almost equal to that of Martin Luther King, is President Lydon Johnson. The President who hailed from the segragationalist south, Texas, and was the most unlikely political leader in American to bring about intergration and move the civil rights movement forward. He got civil right legislatin thru the Congress that former President John Kennedy could not get passed. He took huge risks for his presidency and did what he thought was right for America. He led housing and school integrration. he changed American society and American law. He used federal troops to make sure people could get into school and universities, ride on buses and move thru our country freely--regardless of their color. He made into law what Martin Luther King and thousands and thousands of other Americans fought for years and years to become law.
The fight for civil rights, for civil liberties and for equal opportunity is not over. It does not end with the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States on Tuesday. However it is interesting to think about what Americans past and present will be thinking about in the next two days as we celebrate two wonderful American events. It is interesting to think about how our country will change after tommorrow.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Presidential Team of Rivals at the Pentagon and State Department
Presidential power has been analyzed and debated by scholars and practitioners. A new book is out on the topic and is a great read. A review from the Wall Street Journal today is below.
Recently a conservative commentator cited a poll that said that 59% of Americans supported the new Obama cabinet and thought it reflected "America". By now we all have read that President Elect Obama is a fan of the book called "A Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. So will Obama cabinet be like Lincoln's? How should Obama manage his rivals: the Sect of State; National Security Advisor; Sect of Defense; National Security Council Director; the Homeland Security Secretary; the CIA Director and the FBI Director?
Can this be managed? Obama does not have a lot of room to "play" here--his team of rivals must figure out how to work together and the President must find a way to manage, direct and secure these rivals on his defense, national security and foreign affairs teams.
The below article is an interesting discussion and anlaysis.
Team of One
How a president must manage his 'rivals' at the Pentagon and State Department.
By JONATHAN KARL Wall Street Journal
In a recent interview, Vice President Dick Cheney outlined his view of presidential power by noting that the American president is followed at all times by a military aide carrying the so-called nuclear football, which can be used to launch an immediate nuclear attack. "He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Mr. Cheney said. "He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in."
The president may have the power to annihilate the world, but the experience of the past half-century shows that he may find it harder to get his own cabinet agencies to do what he wants. Peter Rodman's "Presidential Command" is a brilliant tutorial on the way presidents, regardless of party or ideology, have struggled to control the vast national-security bureaucracy that they inherit after taking the oath of office.
Mr. Rodman, who died in August at the age of 64, knew this world as well as anyone. Beginning as a 26-year-old assistant to Henry Kissinger in President Nixon's National Security Council, he worked under five presidents in the State Department, the Pentagon and the NSC. "Presidential Command" should be required reading for President-elect Barack Obama's national-security team and, if he has the time, for Mr. Obama himself.
"Every President in our history," President Truman wrote in his memoirs, "has been faced with this problem: how to prevent career men from circumventing presidential policy." Truman faced the problem most dramatically in 1948, when he recognized the state of Israel over the objections of virtually everybody at the State Department, from the secretary on down. "I wanted to make it plain," he explained, "that the President of the United States, and not the second or third echelon in the State Department, is responsible for making foreign policy, and, furthermore, that no one in any department can sabotage the President's policy."
Presidential Command By Peter W. Rodman (Knopf, 351 pages,) President Nixon's approach was to pretend that the State Department didn't exist. He conducted policy through what Mr. Rodman calls "a committee of two." When Nixon met with foreign leaders, Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, was frequently the only other person in the room (aside from an interpreter). Transcripts would be forwarded to State, but they were often edited. The transcripts of Nixon's early exchanges with the Soviets, for example, left out references to a summit meeting he was secretly trying to arrange.
The secrecy was driven by Nixon's paranoia about press leaks but also by his well-founded belief that the senior ranks of the State Department were hostile to his policies. When the possibility that Nixon would pursue a diplomatic opening to China became public, Mr. Rodman writes, "delegations of senior State Department diplomats even came to the White House to counsel him against it, since it risked provoking the Soviet Union."
The "committee of two" approach brought coherence to Nixon's policy, but at a cost. The Pentagon set up a spying operation to figure out what President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were up to. They even placed a "mole" on Mr. Kissinger's NSC staff. Pentagon officials learned about Mr. Kissinger's plans to visit China only because their spy had rummaged through papers in Mr. Kissinger's hotel room while on a trip to Pakistan.
Nixon's abuses of power led to an effort to rein in the "imperial presidency." President Gerald Ford also had to deal with fallout from the investigations of the Senate's Church Committee, which revealed publicly, for the first time, the assorted misdeeds of the CIA. As Congress attempted to assert control over intelligence operations, Mr. Ford's CIA director, William Colby, decided that the CIA was more beholden to Congress than the White House because, he later explained, "the center of political power had moved to Congress." Colby defied a presidential order not to give highly classified documents to the Church Committee by "lending" them instead.
Like Nixon, Jimmy Carter installed a strong national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. But for balance he also picked a strong secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, who held often opposing views. This meant loud disagreements over policy and theoretically gave the president a wider range of options to choose from. Mr. Carter's approach made sense on an organizational chart, but in fact, Mr. Rodman contends, it "only enshrined the philosophical schizophrenia of its chief."
Mr. Rodman's central argument is that presidents perform best when they are consistently engaged in matters of national security and when they empower subordinates to impose policy on the bureaucracies at State and the Pentagon. President Clinton's successes, for example, came when he gave clear direction and appointed a powerful envoy -- George Mitchell for Northern Ireland and, eventually, Richard Holbrooke for Bosnia. President George W. Bush called himself the "decider," but Mr. Rodman argues that many of his foreign-policy failures -- including the incoherence of his approach to North Korea or the absence of a workable plan for postwar Iraq -- came in part from "a systematic failure to manage conflicts among his advisors."
We don't know what Mr. Rodman would think of Mr. Obama's incoming national-security team. He didn't know that Hillary Clinton would be heading the State Department when he wrote that the "pivotal" figure is a "strong and loyal Secretary of State." And he wasn't writing about Mr. Obama when he warned: "The risk involved in the future is that a president who is not a master in foreign affairs may have a difficult time keeping an energetic secretary under control."
Much has been made of Mr. Obama's Lincolnesque "team of rivals" approach to assembling his cabinet. Mr. Rodman's history lesson suggests that installing strong people to challenge the president can be a good thing -- if leadership ultimately comes from the top. Mr. Rodman offers the apocryphal story of Abraham Lincoln asking his cabinet to vote on whether to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. After all his cabinet secretaries voted "no," the story goes, Lincoln declared: "The ayes have it!""
Mr. Karl is the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News.
Recently a conservative commentator cited a poll that said that 59% of Americans supported the new Obama cabinet and thought it reflected "America". By now we all have read that President Elect Obama is a fan of the book called "A Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. So will Obama cabinet be like Lincoln's? How should Obama manage his rivals: the Sect of State; National Security Advisor; Sect of Defense; National Security Council Director; the Homeland Security Secretary; the CIA Director and the FBI Director?
Can this be managed? Obama does not have a lot of room to "play" here--his team of rivals must figure out how to work together and the President must find a way to manage, direct and secure these rivals on his defense, national security and foreign affairs teams.
The below article is an interesting discussion and anlaysis.
Team of One
How a president must manage his 'rivals' at the Pentagon and State Department.
By JONATHAN KARL Wall Street Journal
In a recent interview, Vice President Dick Cheney outlined his view of presidential power by noting that the American president is followed at all times by a military aide carrying the so-called nuclear football, which can be used to launch an immediate nuclear attack. "He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen," Mr. Cheney said. "He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in."
The president may have the power to annihilate the world, but the experience of the past half-century shows that he may find it harder to get his own cabinet agencies to do what he wants. Peter Rodman's "Presidential Command" is a brilliant tutorial on the way presidents, regardless of party or ideology, have struggled to control the vast national-security bureaucracy that they inherit after taking the oath of office.
Mr. Rodman, who died in August at the age of 64, knew this world as well as anyone. Beginning as a 26-year-old assistant to Henry Kissinger in President Nixon's National Security Council, he worked under five presidents in the State Department, the Pentagon and the NSC. "Presidential Command" should be required reading for President-elect Barack Obama's national-security team and, if he has the time, for Mr. Obama himself.
"Every President in our history," President Truman wrote in his memoirs, "has been faced with this problem: how to prevent career men from circumventing presidential policy." Truman faced the problem most dramatically in 1948, when he recognized the state of Israel over the objections of virtually everybody at the State Department, from the secretary on down. "I wanted to make it plain," he explained, "that the President of the United States, and not the second or third echelon in the State Department, is responsible for making foreign policy, and, furthermore, that no one in any department can sabotage the President's policy."
Presidential Command By Peter W. Rodman (Knopf, 351 pages,) President Nixon's approach was to pretend that the State Department didn't exist. He conducted policy through what Mr. Rodman calls "a committee of two." When Nixon met with foreign leaders, Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, was frequently the only other person in the room (aside from an interpreter). Transcripts would be forwarded to State, but they were often edited. The transcripts of Nixon's early exchanges with the Soviets, for example, left out references to a summit meeting he was secretly trying to arrange.
The secrecy was driven by Nixon's paranoia about press leaks but also by his well-founded belief that the senior ranks of the State Department were hostile to his policies. When the possibility that Nixon would pursue a diplomatic opening to China became public, Mr. Rodman writes, "delegations of senior State Department diplomats even came to the White House to counsel him against it, since it risked provoking the Soviet Union."
The "committee of two" approach brought coherence to Nixon's policy, but at a cost. The Pentagon set up a spying operation to figure out what President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were up to. They even placed a "mole" on Mr. Kissinger's NSC staff. Pentagon officials learned about Mr. Kissinger's plans to visit China only because their spy had rummaged through papers in Mr. Kissinger's hotel room while on a trip to Pakistan.
Nixon's abuses of power led to an effort to rein in the "imperial presidency." President Gerald Ford also had to deal with fallout from the investigations of the Senate's Church Committee, which revealed publicly, for the first time, the assorted misdeeds of the CIA. As Congress attempted to assert control over intelligence operations, Mr. Ford's CIA director, William Colby, decided that the CIA was more beholden to Congress than the White House because, he later explained, "the center of political power had moved to Congress." Colby defied a presidential order not to give highly classified documents to the Church Committee by "lending" them instead.
Like Nixon, Jimmy Carter installed a strong national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. But for balance he also picked a strong secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, who held often opposing views. This meant loud disagreements over policy and theoretically gave the president a wider range of options to choose from. Mr. Carter's approach made sense on an organizational chart, but in fact, Mr. Rodman contends, it "only enshrined the philosophical schizophrenia of its chief."
Mr. Rodman's central argument is that presidents perform best when they are consistently engaged in matters of national security and when they empower subordinates to impose policy on the bureaucracies at State and the Pentagon. President Clinton's successes, for example, came when he gave clear direction and appointed a powerful envoy -- George Mitchell for Northern Ireland and, eventually, Richard Holbrooke for Bosnia. President George W. Bush called himself the "decider," but Mr. Rodman argues that many of his foreign-policy failures -- including the incoherence of his approach to North Korea or the absence of a workable plan for postwar Iraq -- came in part from "a systematic failure to manage conflicts among his advisors."
We don't know what Mr. Rodman would think of Mr. Obama's incoming national-security team. He didn't know that Hillary Clinton would be heading the State Department when he wrote that the "pivotal" figure is a "strong and loyal Secretary of State." And he wasn't writing about Mr. Obama when he warned: "The risk involved in the future is that a president who is not a master in foreign affairs may have a difficult time keeping an energetic secretary under control."
Much has been made of Mr. Obama's Lincolnesque "team of rivals" approach to assembling his cabinet. Mr. Rodman's history lesson suggests that installing strong people to challenge the president can be a good thing -- if leadership ultimately comes from the top. Mr. Rodman offers the apocryphal story of Abraham Lincoln asking his cabinet to vote on whether to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. After all his cabinet secretaries voted "no," the story goes, Lincoln declared: "The ayes have it!""
Mr. Karl is the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News.
"Say No to New Coal Power Plants: Detroit Free Press Editorial--are they correct?
The Editorial is wrong about Northern Michigan University's proposed "power plant". Dead wrong. It says that Northern is going to "expand its existing coal unit..." NMU does not have a coal burning plant--it buys its electricity from the Board of Light and Power--BLP.
What Northern is doing is proposing to build a wood burning power plant that will burn timber and forest waste product. Its permit allows NMU to burn coal up to 30% of the time when it cannot get wood/timber due to weather, road conditions etc..
NMU currently gets its power from the BLP which burns coal 100% of the time.
The NMU plant would be a 70% improvement--at a minimum.
So is the Free Press correct about blocking all new coal power plants? Business leaders say Michigan will need 3 to 5 new power plants in next 10 years. Environmental groups say they should be forced to build power plants that use renewable energy--solar, wind, wood, etc..
Can a state like Michigan survive and compete if it cannot build a new power plant in next five years because of this ban? Would any industrial state be able to compete with off shore manufacturing that do not have these limitations? Would it be able to compete with the southern states who are building coal burning plants now? Will more Michigan jobs move to the south while we look for alternative energy sources. Are there adequate alternative energy sources that can provide enough power for campuses and manufacturing plants--not to mention residences?
Are the legisaltures and Governors up to the task? Term limits and partisanship seem to make them move even slower than before. What can government do to help in the developmetn of alternative energy sources? Do they have the financial resources to assist with research and development? These are all questions that need to be addressed immediately.
Maybe an interesting thing to do would to encourage a citizen internet debate on this problem. Maybe we would come up with some interesting public policy alternatives.
We know coal is not good for our health and environment in the long term. Can we afford a coal ban in the short term.
Here is the editorial.
Detroit Free Press
IN OUR OPINION
Say no to new coal power plants
January 9, 2009
"The environmental groups have it right.
Michigan ought to declare a moratorium on new coal-fired utility plants. This may even prove a blessing to the outfits that want the plants, given the difficulties of financing big projects these days.
Somehow, Michigan has become a magnet for proposals to generate electricity from coal. Five groups have requested permits from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality; three more have announced plans. It's unlikely anyone could prove Michiganders need that much electricity, let alone that they should have to put up with the tradeoffs in poorer air quality and mercury dropping out of the smoke into the state's lakes and streams.
Back when Michigan's economy was merely slipping, as opposed to cliff-diving, the most detailed forecast of future electricity demand called for just one new coal plant.
Thus, it seems reasonable to hold off on permits for coal plants for at least a year. That should provide a better picture on the financial markets, the demand for electricity and, perhaps most important, what kind of greenhouse gas regulations may emerge in Washington.
Coal has the unwanted distinction of being the dirtiest fuel in common use today and the one that throws off more carbon dioxide for the amount of energy derived from burning it. (Mining it is also phenomenally destructive, especially in Appalachia, where the preferred technique is blowing up mountaintops and letting the rubble drop into streams -- a travesty no one in Michigan would ever put up with.) Although America has coal in relative abundance, the shift away from it cannot come soon enough.
Either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system will lead to higher costs for coal-generated electricity. Other forms of electricity generation, from wind generation to home-based solar units, may suddenly look like bargains -- and it makes no sense to make a huge collective investment in coal plants when the cost of the electricity that emerges remains so uncertain. Some analysts believe wind power already is competitive, price-wise, with power from a newly built coal plant.
Northern Michigan University is the only proposed plant to have received a DEQ permit to expand its existing coal unit, and the decision was appealed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is disappointing that a university, of all institutions, didn't pursue alternative energy sources, but Northern's plan is among the smallest of the proposed plants. Michigan will have a sounder energy future if the rest get put on hold."
What Northern is doing is proposing to build a wood burning power plant that will burn timber and forest waste product. Its permit allows NMU to burn coal up to 30% of the time when it cannot get wood/timber due to weather, road conditions etc..
NMU currently gets its power from the BLP which burns coal 100% of the time.
The NMU plant would be a 70% improvement--at a minimum.
So is the Free Press correct about blocking all new coal power plants? Business leaders say Michigan will need 3 to 5 new power plants in next 10 years. Environmental groups say they should be forced to build power plants that use renewable energy--solar, wind, wood, etc..
Can a state like Michigan survive and compete if it cannot build a new power plant in next five years because of this ban? Would any industrial state be able to compete with off shore manufacturing that do not have these limitations? Would it be able to compete with the southern states who are building coal burning plants now? Will more Michigan jobs move to the south while we look for alternative energy sources. Are there adequate alternative energy sources that can provide enough power for campuses and manufacturing plants--not to mention residences?
Are the legisaltures and Governors up to the task? Term limits and partisanship seem to make them move even slower than before. What can government do to help in the developmetn of alternative energy sources? Do they have the financial resources to assist with research and development? These are all questions that need to be addressed immediately.
Maybe an interesting thing to do would to encourage a citizen internet debate on this problem. Maybe we would come up with some interesting public policy alternatives.
We know coal is not good for our health and environment in the long term. Can we afford a coal ban in the short term.
Here is the editorial.
Detroit Free Press
IN OUR OPINION
Say no to new coal power plants
January 9, 2009
"The environmental groups have it right.
Michigan ought to declare a moratorium on new coal-fired utility plants. This may even prove a blessing to the outfits that want the plants, given the difficulties of financing big projects these days.
Somehow, Michigan has become a magnet for proposals to generate electricity from coal. Five groups have requested permits from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality; three more have announced plans. It's unlikely anyone could prove Michiganders need that much electricity, let alone that they should have to put up with the tradeoffs in poorer air quality and mercury dropping out of the smoke into the state's lakes and streams.
Back when Michigan's economy was merely slipping, as opposed to cliff-diving, the most detailed forecast of future electricity demand called for just one new coal plant.
Thus, it seems reasonable to hold off on permits for coal plants for at least a year. That should provide a better picture on the financial markets, the demand for electricity and, perhaps most important, what kind of greenhouse gas regulations may emerge in Washington.
Coal has the unwanted distinction of being the dirtiest fuel in common use today and the one that throws off more carbon dioxide for the amount of energy derived from burning it. (Mining it is also phenomenally destructive, especially in Appalachia, where the preferred technique is blowing up mountaintops and letting the rubble drop into streams -- a travesty no one in Michigan would ever put up with.) Although America has coal in relative abundance, the shift away from it cannot come soon enough.
Either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system will lead to higher costs for coal-generated electricity. Other forms of electricity generation, from wind generation to home-based solar units, may suddenly look like bargains -- and it makes no sense to make a huge collective investment in coal plants when the cost of the electricity that emerges remains so uncertain. Some analysts believe wind power already is competitive, price-wise, with power from a newly built coal plant.
Northern Michigan University is the only proposed plant to have received a DEQ permit to expand its existing coal unit, and the decision was appealed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is disappointing that a university, of all institutions, didn't pursue alternative energy sources, but Northern's plan is among the smallest of the proposed plants. Michigan will have a sounder energy future if the rest get put on hold."
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Alternative to Kennedy to Replace Hillary
How about the New York City Council President Christine Quinn, who is openly gay. Governor Patterson if he likes firsts would certainly get that with this appointment.
Washington Post today also suggests that Patterson could a first with the appointment of the first Hispanic to the US Senate from New York: Bronx Boro President Adolfo Carrionn.
Most observers think the deal to appoint Caroline Kennedy is already sealed and delivered, but maybe Patterson might want to pull off a "first". Question is could either of these two firsts keep the seat if Republicans mount a major campaign to re capature the seat in 2010. Same question should be asked about Kennedy--lots of rich folks have spent alot of their money and still lost. On the other hand so have a lot of them won--including the current Governor of New Jersey.
Washington Post today also suggests that Patterson could a first with the appointment of the first Hispanic to the US Senate from New York: Bronx Boro President Adolfo Carrionn.
Most observers think the deal to appoint Caroline Kennedy is already sealed and delivered, but maybe Patterson might want to pull off a "first". Question is could either of these two firsts keep the seat if Republicans mount a major campaign to re capature the seat in 2010. Same question should be asked about Kennedy--lots of rich folks have spent alot of their money and still lost. On the other hand so have a lot of them won--including the current Governor of New Jersey.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
LANSING -- Michigan has paid a developer $16 million after seizing land for a highway project in metro Detroit. (Detroit Free Press, 1.2.09).
Amazing that Michigan is facing an immediate shortfall of $106 million and looking at a $1.5 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year would now have to pay out $16 million on a court ordered settlement. Developer greed and a lawyer's greed. Case goes all the way up to State Supreme Court. State was going to pay in 1995 $2.8 million and court gets it up to $16 million. What happened the courts staying out of policy making. The state ought to give the name and email address of the developer and his lawyer to every child in every school district and university. They should email them the next time their tuition goes up or their school cuts a K-12 program. What a disaster. Just what Michigan does not need--another $16 million to have to cut from its budget. Ugh. Maybe we should start a Michigan Hall of Shame and post this type of judicial and developer activity.
Amazing that Michigan is facing an immediate shortfall of $106 million and looking at a $1.5 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year would now have to pay out $16 million on a court ordered settlement. Developer greed and a lawyer's greed. Case goes all the way up to State Supreme Court. State was going to pay in 1995 $2.8 million and court gets it up to $16 million. What happened the courts staying out of policy making. The state ought to give the name and email address of the developer and his lawyer to every child in every school district and university. They should email them the next time their tuition goes up or their school cuts a K-12 program. What a disaster. Just what Michigan does not need--another $16 million to have to cut from its budget. Ugh. Maybe we should start a Michigan Hall of Shame and post this type of judicial and developer activity.
Mexicans and Obama
While in Mexico during the month of December it was interesting to note how the Mexican press covers the upcoming Obama Inaugural. A great deal of interest and hope by average Mexicans in everyday work life. They have many questions and are very hopeful about the future relationship between their country and the United States of America. They seem very optimistic that the new administration will again attempt to address the immigration problems between our two countries. Although with the economic crisis in both countries there is less interest in immigrating to the U.S. Although many want the future opportunity.
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