Author Archive » Sam Bear
About Sam: Sam Bear is the founder of For A Better America and a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis, double majoring in Political Science and American Culture Studies. He lives in Oakton, Virginia. (View my For A Better America profile)
Political Maneuvers Delay Bill After Bill in Senate
The Senate went home yesterday for the Fourth of July holiday to face voters, having failed repeatedly to address critical economic issues from skyrocketing gas prices to climate change to the nation’s housing crisis. Leaders in both parties have vowed to tackle those problems. Yet the Senate has been unable to move forward even when there is broad agreement about what to do. Take the housing rescue bill that collapsed this week: On a test vote, 83 senators supported provisions intended to halt the steepest slide in home prices in a generation. Still, the measure stalled, undone by a dispute over whether to add tax breaks for renewable energy production, an idea supported by 88 senators. Lawmakers, lobbyists and independent analysts say that bill and other major legislation have been derailed by political maneuvering for an election likely to consolidate Democratic control over Congress and in which the sputtering economy tops the agenda. With each side using the Senate’s byzantine rules to gain advantage, work in the upper chamber, always balky, has ground to a halt. Senate Democrats accuse Republicans of adopting intransigence as a strategy to produce a “do-nothing” Congress. Senate Republicans acknowledge using delay tactics but say they are reacting to a heavy-handed Democratic majority that has denied them a voice on the Senate floor.
Read the story from Washington Post | No Comments | Posted June 28, 2008 at 9:50 AM by Sam Bear
Word arrived today that Barack Obama would not be accepting public financing for his campaign. The news is far from shocking in the context of the campaign — in fact it makes sense in almost every political way — but that doesn’t change the historical fact that Obama now becomes the first candidate of a major party to reject public financing since the system was created in 1976.
As the New York Times explains:
Under the federal presidential financing system, a candidate this year would be given $84.1 million from the Treasury to finance a general election campaign. In exchange, the candidate is barred from accepting private donations, or from spending more than the $84.1 million.
McCain will accept those funds (and thus the limits imposed by them) and Obama will not. It makes sense for his campaign because Obama can easily raise more than the $84.1 million public financing would have provided, and it makes sense practically because Obama’s campaign is not accepting the lobbyist, PAC, and 527 money that will pour into McCain’s war chest. Just as importantly, as the Times notes, contribution limits to political parties — where Republicans still hold an advantage — are so convoluted that it puts the entire public financing system into question. That is exactly what Obama himself argued today saying,
The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.
Bush Calls for End to Ban on Offshore Oil Drilling
President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling and open a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, asserting that those steps and others would lower gasoline prices and “strengthen our national security.” In recent years, the president said, “scientists have developed innovative techniques to reach Anwar’s oil with virtually no impact on the land or local wildlife,” referring to the wildlife refuge by its acronym. He continued, “I urge members of Congress to allow this remote region to bring enormous benefits to the American people.” President Bush also urged Congress to approve the extraction of oil from shale on federal lands, something he said can be done far more economically now than a few years ago, and to speed the approval process for building new refineries. Mr. Bush sought to take full political advantage of soaring fuel prices by portraying Republican lawmakers as imaginative and forward-looking and the Democratic majority in Congress as obstructionists on energy policy.
Read the story from NY Times | No Comments | Posted June 18, 2008 at 7:44 PM by Sam Bear
Its Back Against the Wall, Airline Industry Looks to Come Clean
These are tough times for any industry that burns a lot of fossil fuel or emits a lot of carbon dioxide, and the air travel business does both. The airlines never gave it much thought before, but with sky-high oil prices and mounting concern about global warming threatening not just their bottom line, but their existence, they’re getting serious about reducing the industry’s carbon footprint. “They’re definitely in bad shape,” says John Scholle, an economist with Global Insight. “And going forward, things look bleak.” It is against this backdrop that executives from the U.S. commercial aviation industry gather later this week in Washington D.C. to plot a new course. The Air Transport World Eco-Aviation conference marks the first time the industry has come together on such a large scale to talk about the environment. The conference underscores the severity of the issues facing commercial aviation and the need to begin addressing them collectively and quickly.
Read the story from WIRED | No Comments | Posted at 6:05 PM by Sam Bear
That Buzz in Your Ear May Be Green Noise
Two years after “An Inconvenient Truth” helped unleash a new tide of environmental activism, green noise pulses through the collective consciousness from all directions. The news media issues dire reports about disappearing polar bears; Web sites feature Brad Pitt arriving at a movie premiere in his hydrogen-powered BMW; bookstore shelves are piled high with titles like “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth”; shops carry hemp-enriched shampoo and 100-percent organic cotton tampons. An environmentally conscientious consumer is left to wonder: are low-energy compact fluorescent bulbs better than standard incandescents, even if they contain traces of mercury? Which salad is more earth-friendly, the one made with organic mixed greens trucked from thousands of miles away, or the one with lettuce raised on nearby industrial farms? Should they support nuclear power as a clean alternative to coal? If even well-intentioned activists are feeling overwhelmed, the average S.U.V. driver must be tuning out. And some environmentalists fear that the public might begin to ignore their message before any meaningful change can be accomplished. For them, it’s a time to reassess strategies and streamline their campaigns before it’s too late.
Read the story from NY Times | No Comments | Posted June 16, 2008 at 9:51 AM by Sam Bear
In just twelve days, United Ways all across the country will host a “Day of Action.” It’s a simple idea but a powerful one, and they explain it best themselves,
June 21 is the longest day of the year. More daylight hours than any other. More time for volunteers to bring sun into someone’s life. More time to help elected officials see the light. More light to shine on United Way’s solutions to community issues. June 21 is a perfect day for United Ways across the country to let their actions speak louder than words. To show, by example, what it means to LIVE UNITED.
Each local United Way is hosting its own day of volunteering, each with a unique agenda. The Aloha United Way is refurbishing affordable homes, the United Way Capital Area in Austin, TX is hosting block parties and a LIVE UNITED film festival, the United Way of Nashville is having a book drive, and the United Way of the Midlands is providing free blood pressure screenings.
As the political season grows more and more partisan, it’s refreshing to see such a visible organization as the United Way attempt to put the emphasis back on volunteering and engagement. It’s a goal and an event that I, personally, will be proud to support.
And, as a postscript, if you haven’t gotten a chance to see United Way of America’s new ad campaign, take a look:
Underneath everything we are, underneath everything we do, we are all people: connected, interdependent, united. And when we reach out a hand to one, we can influence the condition of all. That’s what it means to Live United. [Music: We Belong]
After Immigrant Raid, Iowans Ask Why
In this small northeastern Iowan town surrounded by newly planted cornfields, a middle-aged white woman walks into the local Guatemalan restaurant with her arm around a Hispanic child who is sobbing because she can’t find her mother. After conferring with a restaurant worker, the woman takes the child nearby to St. Bridget’s, a small 1970s-era brick Catholic church on a quiet tree-lined street that has become command central for what people in this community of 2,273 describe as a “disaster relief response.” In the aftermath of the nation’s largest single-site immigration raid — a May 12 raid of a Postville-based meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors Inc. that took 389 workers into custody — Hispanic children and adults here remain fearful. And many white residents remain hard at work helping the people left behind — mostly women from Guatemala and Mexico and their children.
Read the story from TIME | No Comments | Posted June 8, 2008 at 12:38 AM by Sam Bear
Using community to fight drugs
The background to the story is a classic inner city crime-ridden neighborhood where police can’t effectively prosecute drug markets since it looks like community norms sanction them and the community thinks that police are in cahoots with drug dealers because calls to police are relatively ineffectual. Police Chief Fealy called open meetings with the community in 2003 to admit bravely that the police had been ineffective and often caused more harm than good. That led to lots of useful dialogue. The Police Department got community residents to understand both that their walking away from drug dealers let the drug trade continue and that they had a lot of moral outrage about what was happening. The Chief emphasized that by partnering with police they could both dry up the drug markets and all the associated crime.
Read the story from Social Capital Blog | No Comments | Posted April 9, 2008 at 12:17 AM by Sam Bear
Administration Unveils Sweeping Plan to Overhaul Financial Regulation
he Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury’s ornate Cash Room. He declared that a strong financial system was important not just for Wall Street but also for working Americans. The administration’s plan was already drawing criticism from Democrats that it does not go far enough to deal with abuses in mortgage lending and securities trading that were exposed by the current credit crisis. The plan, which would require congressional approval for its biggest changes, seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions that date back to the Civil War.
Read the story from AP | No Comments | Posted March 31, 2008 at 10:08 AM by Sam Bear
One-year earmark moratorium fails in Senate
A closely watched proposal for a congressional “time out” on earmark spending failed by a wide margin late Thursday night, creating some unusual Senate alliances along the way. Senators voted 71-29 against a measure by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) that would have imposed a one-year moratorium on earmarks. The measure needed 60 votes to pass because it was ruled non-germane to the budget, prompting DeMint to ask that the Budget Act be waived. Presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) all voted for the amendment, as expected. In a surprise, so did Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a longtime top appropriator for Kentucky who has traditionally taken a skeptical approach to the idea of limiting earmark spending. “The DeMint-McCain amendment would have provided an important pause to allow us all—those who oppose earmarks and those who favor them—to take a step back, build a better oversight system, and allow these reforms to be implemented,” McConnell said in a subsequent statement.
Read the story from The Hill | No Comments | Posted March 14, 2008 at 10:19 AM by Sam Bear
