HORNER'S DIRTY TACTICS: -posed as journalist from Wash Times!

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TALKING POINTS
Standing Alone on Climate Change


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STATE WATCH
GEORGIA: Heated evolution debate in suburbia.

FLORIDA: FEMA aid goes to higher-income groups.

KENTUCKY: Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) blames the media for his troubles.

MEDICAID: House and Senate bills on Medicaid benefits have important consequences for states.


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BLOG WATCH
THINK PROGRESS: Rumsfeld lies about pre-war predictions: "You can take that to the bank."

TALK LEFT: What to make of Viveca Novak's TIME column. More from FireDogLake and Greg Mitchell.

ESCHATON: Single mother of 13-year-old daughter called up to Iraq.



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DAILY GRILL
"It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."
-- Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), 12/7/05

VERSUS

"In our democracy, a president does not rule, he governs. He remains always answerable to us, the people. And right now, the president's conduct of our foreign policy is giving the country too many reasons to question his leadership."
-- Sen. Joe Lieberman, 7/28/03


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by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney
Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin


December 12, 2005
KATRINA
The Forgotten Tragedy
CLIMATE CHANGE
World Leaves the U.S. Behind
UNDER THE RADAR
Go Beyond The Headlines
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KATRINA
The Forgotten Tragedy

On September 15, President Bush stood in downtown New Orleans -- bathed in floodlights powered by generators -- and made a pledge. Bush said, "Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives. ... There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." It hasn't worked out that way. A presidential adviser told TIME Magazine reporter Mike Allen that Katrina "has fallen so far off the radar screen, you can't even find it." Bush hasn't visited the Gulf Coast since Oct. 11. Most significantly, critical funding to build stronger and higher levees has not been appropriated. The New York Time notes, "Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city." As it stands, we "are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die."

ADMINISTRATION WAVERING ON LEVEE FUNDING: It will cost an estimated $32 billion "to strengthen Louisiana's flood defenses so they could withstand a Category 5 hurricane." The price tag has "drawn a tepid response from the Bush administration." The administration's top reconstruction official, Donald Powell, said the decision about whether to provide funding for the levees will "opefully...be made sooner rather than later." While the cost of the levees is significant, the New York Times notes "it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives," that would largely benefit the wealthy and are supported whole heartedly by the White House. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) says "she'll use parliamentary procedures to keep Congress in session over Christmas unless it approves spending for levees, Louisiana school districts and hospitals."

SHORTEST WAR ON POVERTY ON RECORD: In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, there was widespread concern over those left stranded in New Orleans because they weren't able to afford to evacuate. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne notes that "one month and the war on poverty was over. I mean, it's the shortest war on poverty on record." The poor in New Orleans are now "victims of a devastating combination of forced evictions, a failure to reopen the city's public house projects, rent gouging and...a decision to write off whole neighborhoods." With little leadership at the federal or local level, reconstruction has "been left to the care of the private sector with little interest in the city's poor." The result has been "one of the most shocking pieces of urban planning that black and poor America has seen: reconstruction as survival of the wealthiest."

NEW ORLEANS AS THE RIGHT WING'S IDEOLOGICAL PLAYGROUND: The right is more interested in using New Orleans as an ideological petri dish than rebuilding the city. Conservative columnist David Brooks said yesterday that "the core problem is in New Orleans right now, where a lot of us from outside, frankly, thought, let's experiment. But people in New Orleans want their city back. They want the city they had. And so it's made it very difficult to talk about innovation." Brooks stressed, "The Urban Land Institute came up with a plan to develop some neighborhoods, but not others because they said we just can't do it all at once. But that's politically impossible down there, because people say, 'No, we want it all.'" That plan "focused on rebuilding New Orleans' less damaged neighborhoods first - which also happen to be the wealthier ones - while studying whether it makes sense to repopulate areas that saw the worst flooding."

TRAILER FABULOUS: According to the federal government's second-ranking disaster official in Louisiana, Scott Wells, the administration's program to provide housing to evacuees is "wasteful and counter to the long-term interest of more than 100,000 displaced families." Currently, the administration is housing many evacuees in trailers, "spending as much as $140,000 for each trailer and site for a family to use for 18 months." Wells noted that if the administration gave displaced families the $26,200 that Congress has approved for storm victims, "his would allow to quickly get on with rebuilding their lives and afford them an immediate permanent housing solution. It also saves the U.S. taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars." Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) agreed with Wells assessment. Collins said, "I have long believed that it would have been far more effective at this stage for FEMA to have given vouchers for housing and to assist people in finding private-sector housing." 125,000 trailers remain on order.



CLIMATE CHANGE
World Leaves the U.S. Behind

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=914257&ct=1722421

The United States emerged isolated from the rest of the world at the two-week United Nations Climate Change conference, which ended on Dec. 9. During the conference, the seas rose by 0.077mm; 1,176 million barrels of oil were pumped; 280,000 hectares of forest were destroyed; and 907 million tons of greenhouse gases were discharged. In the face of strong scientific evidence that the climate is changing and the world is increasing its greenhouse gas emissions, the Bush administration continued to reject and stall international agreements to reduce world pollution. From not signing the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, to rejecting binding talks on emission reductions at this past weekend's conference, the Bush administration has proved itself to be out of step, choosing excuses over action, as the rest of the world moves forward. (For an alternative approach to climate change, check out this report, co-sponsored by American Progress.)

A 'DIFFERENT VIEW' FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD: More than 150 countries, including nearly every industrialized nation, agreed "to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012." The United States, which produces 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, not only sat out of this agreement, it also walked out of informal discussions aimed at finding new ways to curb gases. But U.S. objections were based more on politics than substance. The United States rejected language lifted directly from the G8 communique signed by President Bush in July 2005, and reengaged only after the British government made a direct call to the White House. Similarly, administration officials "privately threatened organizers" of the conference, "telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering." (Organizers allowed him to speak anyway; Clinton called the Bush administration's approach to climate change "flat wrong.") The White House contends that it has a "a different view" from most other nations. "It is our belief that progress cannot be made through these formalized discussions," said U.S. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky. But the rest of the world isn't waiting for the United States. "Just because the Bush administration doesn't want this doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't see this as the right thing to do," said Danish negotiator Eva Jensen.

HORNER'S DIRTY TACTICS: Chris Horner is counsel at the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has received more than $1.3 million in funding from oil giant ExxonMobil. Horner "also acts for the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group set up 'to dispel the myth of global warming.'" But at the U.N. conference, Horner posed as a journalist. With press credentials from the right-wing Washington Times, Horner appeared at the State Department's press briefing for U.S. journalists on Dec. 7, without even a notebook, according to Andrew Buncombe of the Independent, who was also at the briefing. Instead of questioning the White House's position on climate change, Horner attempted to portray the U.S. position as leading the "new consensus." Horner is not a journalist; in the last two years, his only published work was a single op-ed in the Washington Times. But Horner is quite experienced at underhanded tactics. He drew up a plan, funded by ExxonMobil, for a secret "European Sound Climate Policy Coalition" intended to "to destroy Europe's support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change." The plan hoped to emulate the White Houses's success in stalling progress on climate change: "In the US an informal coalition has helped successfully to avert adoption of a Kyoto-style program. This model should be emulated, as appropriate, to guide similar efforts in Europe."

STATE AND LOCAL ACTION ON GLOBAL WARMING: Not only is the White House being left behind by other nations, but states are also moving ahead without the federal government. In September, New Mexico became the first state to join the Chicago Climate Exchange, promising to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions by four percent by 2006. California has unveiled a set of new initiatives "to cap greenhouse gases and force industries to report emissions of carbon dioxide," which contradicts the Bush administration's no-mandatory limits policy. Seattle mayor Greg Nickels has also organized a grassroots campaign to tackle global warming, enlisting the cooperation of more than 180 of the nation's mayors, and eight Northeastern states proposed a plan "to set a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants." Take action with Greenpeace and call on more lawmakers to make progress on global warming.