Democracy Now! had an interesting debate, sparked by "The Story of Cap and Trade with Annie Leonard " (am I supposed to know who she is?), on the merits of a cap-and-trade plan for carbon dioxide emissions as part of a plan to reduce global warming. However, it gets at a broader point: for every good argument made about cap-and-trade in this whole discussion, there's someone who hears that the market (the greedy dudes!) is supposed to protect the environment and instantly pooh-poohs the whole thing. Take Ms. Leonard herself, who, before making some very provocative and useful points, piques our anger by revealing that

The guys at the heart of this so-called solution…include the guys from Enron who designed energy trading, and the Wall Street financiers like Goldman Sachs who gave us the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Some groups, on the other hand, take the opposite tack, as Mother Jones reports:

Among environmental groups, there is, understandably, less focus on the finer points of financial regulation. "The derivatives side is not something that a person who comes to the table worried about carbon emissions has on their agenda," says Michael Greenberger, a derivatives expert at the University of Maryland who has also served in the CFTC and the Justice Department. "

There are two problems here; let's address them both.

1. The market is not your enemy. The good and bad thing about the market is that, as my Principles of Economics textbook loved to remind me, people respond to incentives. As we've seen in Copenhagen, when there isn't any political incentive to take strong action to stop global warming, it doesn't get done. This sucks, and I'm the first one to acknowledge that the world would be a better place if we all just stepped up and did what was best for posterity and the Earth. But people, by and large, can't be forced to think that way. What comes much more easily to each and every one of us is this: we want to do what's best for us. We want to get votes, we want to earn money, we want to better our own position.

Hence: cap-and-trade. The genius of cap-and-trade, at least in theory, is that it aligns incentives with what's best for the environment. It might not do this perfectly, but it gets at the general idea; it—again to quote my economics text—internalizes the externality. This works. Once people realized that CFLs could save them money in a recession (once, in other words, the externality of energy-caused pollution was internalized by the cost of energy), we had companies like Wal-Mart lining up to get behind energy-efficient technology. News flash: Wal-Mart does not care about saving the earth. Not really, at least. But it cares about making money. Historically, these two things might have been exclusive, but they aren't inherently so.

However:

2. The market is not your enemy, but it might not be your friend either. Just because cap-and-trade sounds foolproof—create permits to pollute, allow people to swap them, then gradually reduce the number of permits—doesn't mean it is. As with everything (and especially everything financial-market-related), it's simply not that simple. One of the most worrisome things about cap-and-trade is how quickly these permits stray from tangible and measurable carbon dioxide emissions. Take, for example, the idea of "carbon offsets," again explained by Leonard:

Offset permits are created when a company supposedly removes or reduces carbon. They then get a permit, which can be sold to a polluter who wants permission to emit more carbon. In theory, one activity offsets the other.

The danger with offsets is it’s very hard to guarantee that real carbon is being removed to create the permit, yet these permits are worth real money. This creates a very dangerous incentive to create false offsets, to cheat. Now, in some cases, cheating isn’t the end of the world. But in this case, it is.

What's worrisome, in other words, is not the permits, but the financial beasts they spawn, which also include derivatives (never a good word). Mother Jones:

In addition to trading the allowances and offsets themselves, participants in carbon markets can also deal in their derivatives—such as futures contracts to deliver a certain number of allowances at an agreed price and time. These instruments will be traded not only by polluters that need to buy credits to comply with environmental regulations, but also by financial services firms.

Just as the opponents of cap-and-trade have too often reacted too abruptly upon hearing the word "market," a lot of the proponents of the system haven't come to grips with the fact that there is way more to it than they think. Not all cap-and-trade schemes are created equal. We need to realize this—and then begin the tough work of creating a carbon dioxide reduction strategy that actually works. Some people, for example, have suggested reigning in offsets or giving the government a role in setting trading prices. A form of cap-and-trade may be part of the eventual solution, and it may not be; what's certain is that we'll never get a sustainable plan to cut greenhouse gases when the only ones talking about the plan's nuances are the investors who stand to profit from them.

Throughout last year's campaign, Obama ran as the Sarah Palin antithesis. While the governor from Wasilla was "going rogue" and shouting divisive simplistic dogmas ("drill baby drill!"), the junior senator from Illinois was fastidiously on message; his simplistic dogmas were at least designed to unite rather than divide people ("hope!"). Americans decided—rightfully, I think—that we wanted a president who knew how to transcend entrenched political divisions and reach out to new allies. But at the same time, did we give something up when we decided that compromise was the holy grail?

For one thing is certain: If Sarah Palin were president right now, and she had majorities in the House and Senate, whatever piece of legislation sat atop her agenda—drilling in ANWR, beefing up our Alaska Russian surveillance sites, whatever—one thing is certain: it would not be languishing in the legislature, stripped of its key provisions one by one. And she most certainly wouldn't be leading the charge to help gut the bill.

Obama, meanwhile, decided it was more important to keep everyone happy than to minimize the cost of his health care bill and agreed to keep importation of prescription drugs from Canada off the table in return for a promise of some cost savings. When the Senate dropped the public option, the president said simply that "the final bill won't include everything that everybody wants." Indeed, if everyone gets veto power, by the time the thing gets out of conference, it may include nothing at all.

A willingness to negotiate is certainly not an inherent disadvantage; after all, politics necessitates some compromise. But that is understood as part of the process; you don't announce everything you'll give up right away. As soon as you make your position entirely clear, as soon as you tip your hand and announce that x, y, and z really aren't all that important, you begin playing into a strategy that is all too easy to sabotage. Has Obama never negotiated for anything in his life? If you want to play the game of give-and-take, you have to begin in a position that leaves you something to give. When you start by giving up everything, well...

Russ Feingold gets it right when he traces the recent decay of the Senate bill to the Changeinator himself:

“This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth…I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect.”

What the Senate began to pass tonight (limiting debate on an amendment to an amendment to the bill, in case you're keeping score at home) wasn't health care reform. Insurance reform maybe, but not health care reform. Yes, the current bill does improve upon the current system. But it does not reform it. It fails to offer a long-term prospect of bringing down health care costs for consumers. It fails to expand the system to cover everyone. It fails, in short, to make a meaningful dent in a crisis that has only grown over the last half-century.

If this legislation's passage were framed as the first step toward remaking the health care system in this country, I would be all for it. But so long as our leaders can get away with passing it off as health care reform, they can pat themselves on the back for fixing the system and move on to other issues, leaving any remaining political will for health care reform to wither. Meanwhile, 46 million Americans will have the privilege of spending hours on the phone with their insurer, attempting to get reimbursed for the care their plan supposedly covers. There's change we can believe in!

This is what happens when you bring everyone to a big table—with a spot near the head reserved for the biggest and most entrenched interests—and let everyone work it out: you get a bill that elicits not a peep from any major pharmaceutical or insurance executives. We knew what we were getting ourselves into when we elected Mr. Compromise last November. But Obama has a choice to make: compromise or govern. Unfortunately, he seems to have fallen hard for the former.

I got a phone call last night from a young woman from the group Organizing for America, asking me how I felt about Obama's health care plan. After I answered her yes/no question ("Do you support it?") with a bit of monologue ("Well, I support health care reform, but I'm frustrated by Obama's lack of commitment to a public option, and I feel like he's generally making the bill weaker by his negotiating strategy of saying what he'll give away from the get-go [which I've been meaning to blog about]..."), she asked whether I would be interested in supporting the group, an extension of the Obama for America campaign.

I paused for a moment. Certainly I like organizing, but I wasn't sure what she meant by "outgrowth of the campaign." Did she mean that they'd merely snapped up some of the top administrators and mailing lists? Or was there a deeper connection?

She clearly misinterpreted the direction I wanted her answer to go as she reassured me that "we work very closely with the White House... It's all about supporting Obama's agenda, basically." A bit of further probing revealed that the organization is a "project of the DNC." All this makes me very uncomfortable; what we have is essentially a grassroots organization devoted to no cause but the cause of Obama. It's taking the personality-cult politics I found so distasteful in the campaign and writing them into a president's term. Presumably, if Obama and the Democrats decided that the health care debate needed to include posh giveaways to insurance companies, Organizing for America would shift its course as well. You can't organize for a person. And yet, the "ways to get involved" with OFA, from their website:

Joining grassroots OFA campaigns to support the President's agenda. Online, on the phone, on doorsteps and in town halls in communities across the country, we're building the bottom-up support that makes real change possible.

Spreading the word to friends and neighbors about the President's approach on the big issues facing our nation, like health care, energy and education. Nothing is more powerful than your voice in your community.

Serving our community in ways big and small. Rebuilding America starts today.

Connecting with other supporters to form strong local groups, ready to take on whatever challenges we face.

Supporting leaders who share our values and are ready to carry forward the fight for change.

Tell me if you can read the first line there and not be at least a little confused (if not dismayed):

Joining grassroots OFA campaigns to support the President's agenda.

Since when was it possible for the people in power to have legitimate grassroots organizations? It evokes totalitarian "youth movements" and the sort of "spontaneous" pro-presidential gatherings you see in countries of uncertain democratic commitment (China?). This isn't a grassroots movement; it's astroturf. Obama shouldn't need a team of volunteers to support his agenda—that's his job. What he—and we—do need is a team of volunteers to support causes that they believe in, to pressure whoever shows a lack of commitment to those causes to reaffirm that trust.

There's a good post about this from January at the blog techPresident:

The organization is openly and proudly propagandistic. The email today asks people to host a party at which they can watch a video which will "outline the basics of the plan and how it will impact working families. It will also include answers to questions from folks across the country. Invite your friends and family to watch the video, discuss the plan, and help build support for it."

...I support Obama wholeheartedly, and have been thrilled every day of his Presidency. But I support self-government even more, and a successful organization sharing uncritical media with 13 million citizens sounds spooky to me.

Obama may be sympathetic to progressive causes, but he's a compromiser at heart who won't take a strong position unless we pressure him to do so. Having our volunteer energies co-opted into his movement only weakens the forces for real change—and weakens the forces that make our democracy stronger.

I admit that my guilty form of procrastination is watching TV episodes online, and as I was checking out NBC's new show "Community," I found myself laughing out loud (or almost) at a hilarious subplot regarding activism. Realizing that it gave me a chance to (a) finally post again and (b) complain a bit about this sort of "activism," I thought I'd share the pertinent clips here with a bit of commentary below.

The somewhat TV-esque (OK, really TV-esque) setup: a bunch of community college misfits find themselves working together in a late-night Spanish study group. In this episode, one of them makes an offhand comment about political violence in Guatemala, and the following ensues, in which two very well-intentioned yet clueless students attempt to take action, begging her to "at least tell us what to Google" and declaring that "I want to protest the hell out of something!":


What form does their activism take? A protest in which a motley crew of students chants "we hate Guatemala" and snacks on brownies ("if you like these brownies, you're going to hate what Guatemala's doing!)

What I can't stand is that I think NBC almost intends to privilege the faux-ctivists (a portmanteau that was doomed from the instant I typed it) over the woman who actually knows something:

Sassy black woman: "Sounds like someone has the case of likes-to-use-French (?)-politics-to-make-themselves-feel-special-but-doesn't-actually-want-to-do- anything-itis."
Heroine: "No, I do things. I went to— I don't do anything. What can I do?"

upon which she eagerly throws herself into the protest, the message presumably being that either NBC is very dry in their humor, or it's better to do something than nothing.

I would argue that it's not. People who throw themselves into candlelight vigils or rallies (or presidential campaigns) without fully comprehending their cause, without having some ultimate goal they're willing to sit down and debate with the opposing side, do themselves more harm than good, because they believe that they're making a difference, and through that false sense of accomplishment comes complacency. We have to be careful here: individuals can make a difference, but they can't make The Difference. People who listen to Al Gore and then swing by their hardware store to pick up some CFLs can't use that as an excuse to tune out, say, this December's climate negotiations.

I remember when I graduated from high school, there was a move amongst some seniors to put peace signs on the tops of their mortarboards. Their rationale—which I and my co-bloggers vocally disagreed with—was that, well, peace was good. Our response was that peace was just fine, but what was the peace sign on the hat accomplishing? A spontaneous demonstration of peace by a few high schoolers in front of their fawning parents in one of the most liberal towns in America?

"Well, it can't hurt," the organizer of the event replied. "I mean, if you want to participate, it's just a way of showing what you're for."

The problem is not putting the peace sign on the hat. It's being conditioned to think that those sorts of actions are the key, that if only enough people put enough peace signs on enough hats the problem could be solved. It may be less hopeful, but I think it's more true: the fight—against Guatemalan persecution, against global warming, against war—is not easy. It cannot be solved by just one person doing one thing. It cannot be done without sacrifice—real sacrifice. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can take action that matters.

A quick update on Feingold's insistent revisiting of warrantless wiretapping. At his confirmation hearing, AG Holder had agreed that the wiretapping executed outside of FISA was illegal. Now that he's actually the attorney general... not so much. Earlier this month, Holder less-than-deftly dodged a similar question before the judiciary committee much to the chargrin of Feingold, who had long been enthusiastic about the new adminsitration's willingness to take responsiblity for past violations.

Holder: As it was put together at the t time it was certainly unwise … It now exists with congressional approval, so the concerns I addressed in that speech [referring to a speech at the American Constitution Society before he became Attorney General] no longer exist.

Feingold: I asked if it was illegal, not unwise.

Holder: I thought actions the administration had taken were inconsistent with the dictates of FISA. And as a result I thought the policy was an unwise one. The concerns I addressed then have been remedied by Congress.

Feingold: Was it illegal?

Holder: I said it was inconsistent with the dictates of FISA.

Feingold has since responded with just the sort of statement that we wish every democrat was willing to put out re: Obama administration responsibility shirking:

I was disappointed by Attorney General Holder’s unwillingness to repeat what both he and President Obama had stated in the past – that President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program was illegal. For an administration that has repeatedly stated its intention to restore the rule of law, this episode was a step backward. While the Attorney General restated his belief that the program was inconsistent with the FISA statute, his testimony today, and the administration’s delay in withdrawing the Bush Administration’s legal justifications for the program, are troubling.

Here's a video.

I just have to say congrats to the Obama admin for maintaining an open border with Mexico. Time and time again, it has been shown that closing borders simply does not work to contain the spread of infectious disease. My question to critics: would we rather be like Russia (which is banning pork imports from affected countries, despite the fact the the flu isn't spread by eating pork) and take grandiose actions to showcase our stupidity? All I have to say is thank God we finally have an intellectual in the White House.

Unfortunately, this intellectual comes in a package with the gaffe-prone Biden who fueled public panic this morning when he told the Today show that he would warn his family not to ride airplanes or subways. The poor public health agencies that are trying so desperately to maintain public calm while raising awareness must want to strangle him.

And, to close out this list of flu-related observations: much has been said about the fact that many of the top health-related positions in the Obama administration have not yet been filled. On the one hand, this is worrisome in the sense that a lack of a clear chain of command can be disasterous for public health. On the other, as the Times pointed out, the result of the vacancies is that many of these positions are currently being filled by career civil servants. In a time when public health needs to take complete and utter priority over politics and we can't have officials worried about a repeat of the first swine flu debacle, this could be a very good thing.

I went to hear David Sirota speak last week, and he said something that I thought was quite interesting. Yes, the media has a bias, this progressive columnist said. But it's not a liberal bias or a conservative bias – it's a bias in favor of elected office. The media tells us that the only people that matter in the political sphere are elected officials, that the only elected officials that matter are national ones, and that the only national official that matters is the president. The president: if he can't do it, no one can. Obama or bust.

I had meant to blog this, and then I caught most of a Donna Brazile speech (it's so nice living on a college campus where all of these cool people come to you), and she said, only half-jokingly, that (and I'm paraphrasing here) "I'll take a few questions before I head back tonight to tape the Saturday show on Obama's first hundred days, and then we'll do the Sunday show on Obama's first hundred days, and then we have to tape the week's worth of shows about the first hundred days." Talk about president-bias.

I think this is true, and I think it's a dangerously narrow-minded view of agency, and I think it's something we all fall into – even Agora, at times. Most of our recent entries (recent as a relative term, I suppose – we're trying, really we are) tie back to Obama. Perhaps this is inevitable given what Obama currently represents in the American zeitgeist – due to the two-year election cycle he's a product of, he's got a lot of expectations to meet, or not – but there are five hundred thirty five congress people, fifty states, and millions of grassroots organizers for causes left and right.

So today let's shift the attention to one of our favorite senators: Sen. Russ Feingold, D-WI. Feingold's been bully pulpit-ing it up this past week, urging Obama to proceed with torture investigations. To wit:

I don't see how we as a country say oh fine we knew this was against international law, we knew it was against our own laws, and these people can come up with any phony legal opinion they want. I've read these opinions because I'm on the intelligence committee and had access to them much earlier than the public. These arguments are bogus. (The Atlantic)

Or from HuffPo:

A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a long-time critic of torture, Feingold viewed investigations and, perhaps, prosecutions as a key tool to restoring America's moral standing.

"It is truly horrifying and unforgivable that anybody operating under the auspices of the United States of America had involvement in any of this," he said. "So I'm not even completely ready to [cede the argument] that people who devised these techniques should be off the hook. I understand the argument. I also remember when people said that they were just following orders. So that troubles me and I am thinking about it."

Go, Russ! You can even become a citizen endorser for his 2010 Senate run if you're so inclined.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but (a) let's be honest, bad things spur one to blogging much faster than good things do and (b), more importantly, I keep dreaming for this clean break from the Bush past that is simply not happening. 

Slate's Jack Shafer has a column up in which he argues that the whole ballyhoo over the demise of newspapers is just that: a bunch of misguided hand-flapping. Newspapers essential for democracy? he scoffs:

I can imagine citizens acquiring sufficient information to vote or poke their legislators with pitchforks even if all the newspapers in the country fell into a bottomless recycling bin tomorrow. ... Even an excellent newspaper carries only a few articles each day that could honestly be said to nurture the democratic way. Car bomb in Pakistan? Drug war in Mexico? Flood in North Dakota? Murder in the suburbs? Great places to get Thai food after midnight? A review of the Britney Spears concert? New ideas on how to serve leftover turkey? The sports scores? The stock report? Few of these stories are likely to supercharge the democratic impulse.

Shafer's tragically realist view of human nature is akin to someone looking at a burning building and lamenting, "Oh, it's burning, we may as well call off the fire trucks." Does he honestly believe that Americans' declining knowledge of international events has no detriment to the health of our democracy? (Ironically, it is these articles that will get the most play in an internet-driven news cycle: big exciting car bombs get tweeted/blogged/"iReported" a lot more than the city council meeting.)

Like it or not, we live in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, and maintaining that a self-centered worldview is in our best interest is slightly ridiculous. Good newspapers strike the balance well: enough national and international information to give one historical context and current affairs literacy; enough local information so that you can participate in more direct democracy.

I once heard John Nichols, editor of the now-deceased Capital Times of Madison, Wis. and The Nation writer, compare good newspapers to a plate of carrots: something that most people may not want, and may even need forced down their throats a bit, but ultimately need. He commented that too many media outlets were delivering "pizza." Eat too much pizza and you become fat, bloated, unable to move. Read too much "pizza" news, and the body politic will end up much the same way.

There are times when I have to repeat to myself a simple mantra: McCain would be worse.

I never doubt for a minute that Barack Obama is better than the alternative, but sometimes it's hard to remember this. In between the Guantanamo-closing and climate-change-acknowledging, there are things like this, courtesy of the Times:

the Justice Department had abandoned transparency just last month in a case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case involves five men who were seized and transported to American facilities abroad or countries known for torturing prisoners.

The Obama administration advanced the same expansive state-secrets argument pressed by Mr. Bush’s lawyers to get a trial court to dismiss the case without any evidence being presented. Even the judges seemed surprised, asking whether the government wanted a delay to reconsider its position.

And remember that this guy taught Con Law! What happened? What happened to the "clean break" of "change"? What happened to a repudiation of the Bush era?

Perhaps more importantly, where is the frustration over this? Thankfully, the New York Times editorial page expressed some appropriate outrage, but other bloggers and news outlets have been painfully silent over some of these strange Obama regressions, as if the fact that he was elected in an outpouring of change-based rhetoric immunizes him from mistakes and "politics as usual." Let's hold the guy accountable!