Biden goes big, fast on clean energy investments: shifting from $1.7 trillion over 10 yrs, to $2 trillion in 4 yrs. He commits to 100% clean electricity by 2035, historic investments in sustainable public housing, public transit & EVs, & more. Check it: https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/ Tweet by Sunrise Movement @sunrisemvmt We are building a movement of young people to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process #GreenNewDeal United States sunrisemovement.org
Ever since I first started reading about Presidential Nominee Joe Biden’s Platform, I’ve been trying to blog about it. I start to write something and it just doesn’t work, so I try a different tack. Now all I have is a group of almost connected paragraphs. Meanwhile, our country seems to be falling apart on an almost Biblical scale and the Platform seems less important. Our National response to Covid-19 is the most inept in the world with 220,000 deaths and still counting. Unemployment is skyrocketing, a true Depression is looming, and Congress seems paralyzed. Meanwhile, against the objections of both the Mayor and Governor, the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, a former lobbyist, has moved Federal para-military thugs into Portland, Oregon, and started “proactive detainments”. Any good news seems illusionary, still, the Democratic Platform is surprisingly proactive.
About April 8th, when Joe Biden got the Democratic Presidential nomination by default, I wrote Today, Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Primary race and I am sad, angry, scared, and feeling sort of hopeless. Maybe Biden will be a better candidate than he was in 1988 or 2008, maybe the time is right. Maybe. Right now, all I feel is loss, all I want to do in mourn. I didn’t expect Bernie to win and he wasn’t even my first choice but Joe Biden was my last choice. He is an old man with, seemingly little interest in Climate Change and a long history of being on the wrong side of what I consider the major problems facing our country and the world today. However, when times change, people change, sometimes; this has been a time of huge change, and Joe Biden seems to be changing with it.
He is running on a platform that is substantially to the left from where he started. At last, he is taking the Climate crisis seriously, saying; To reach net-zero emissions as rapidly as possible, Democrats commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency. We will dramatically expand solar and wind energy deployment through community-based and utility-scale systems. Within five years, we will install 500 million solar panels, including eight million solar roofs and community solar energy systems, and 60,000 made-in-America wind turbines.
The quote above is from the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force to study and make policy regarding climate change and it implies a large investment to rebuild our National Electric Grid. The first time I heard about The Grid was in an interview with Representative Ortega-Cortez just after she was elected. In the interview, I was surprised when she said that the Climate Crisis was her biggest issue. Her district is one of the poorest districts in the US and she has made it very clear that she is representing them so I thought it would have been Health Care or something similar. But, of course, the Climate Crisis is her biggest issue, poor people are hit the hardest by every storm, every heatwave, every fire, they are always downwind. Her answer of “The Grid” was to what she thought was the biggest problem standing in the way of successfully meeting the Climate Crisis. That surprised me but shouldn’t have. Her answer reminded me of the quote When the war starts, amateurs think tactics, professionals think logistics. This was the professional answer, and Ortega-Cortez has obviously thought about the problem.
To backup, shortly after Bernie dropped out of the primary, he endorsed Biden, shortly after that, Biden announced the formation of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force to study and make policy suggestions regarding climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, education, health care, and immigration. Considering that Joe Biden won the nomination, the committees are surprisingly equitable. Biden and Sanders would each choose a Co-chair of each of the resultant Committees, with Bernie naming three additional members and Joe naming four. It didn’t give the left – with Bernie representing the left – real power to set the agenda, but enough power to influence it. At the time, there was still a feeling that the Biden camp needed the left and I suspect – fantasize may be more like it – that Biden, being the consummate politician, is realizing that the electorate is moving left and felt he had to offer real change. To head the Committee on the Climate Crisis, Joe Biden chose Secretary – and former Senator – John Kerry as his Co-chair of the Committee and Bernie chose Alexandria Ortega-Cortez.
The choices couldn’t have been better, or more representative of the Democratic Party today, with Kerry representing the establishment and Ortega-Cortez – hereinafter known as AOC, her Twitter handle – representing what I hope is the future. It must have made an interesting dynamic. Kerry is almost my age and is old school, although he is one of the best my generation has to offer. He was a hero in Vietnam. A real hero, getting wounded twice while commanding a heavily armed but lightly armored riverboat. Vietnam was a bullshit war and, when Kerry left the Navy, having seen the stupidity, worse, the criminality of the war, he started protesting it. Protesting the War was no more popular then than it is now and, as far as I’m concerned, that is what makes him a real hero. Additionally, It was at Kerry’s Democratic Nomination Convention in 2004 that Obama gave the Keynote speech, first putting him on the National Stage. It was a great opportunity and a great speech. That Kerry was the first one to see Obama’s potential is to Kerry’s credit and it is to Biden’s credit that, given that he picked an establishment old-timer, he picked Kerry to Co-chair the Committee.
OK, this is where I lose any objectivity I may have because I think choosing AOC for anything is the right choice. She is the most extraordinary politician I have ever seen. I first became aware of her when she won her primary against Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent Democratic who was considered unassailable. After she was elected to Congress, AOC’s first political move, so to speak, was to join the Justice Democrat’s/Sunrise Movement’s protest for The Green New Deal in front of Speaker Pelosi’s office. This was the first time I had heard of either the Green New Deal or the Sunrise Movement or the Justice Democrats and I was and am thrilled that somebody is actually working towards saving the planet. It was also the first time I had heard of the Overton Window which is the fairly narrow range, between what is considered the extremes of the Right and Left, in which politically acceptable dialog can take place. According to Bloomberg Business, where I first saw it, AOC was already moving the Overton Window considerably to the left on Climate, Taxes, and Health Coverage. I was smitten and I still am. When Bernie chose AOC to Co-chair the Committee, he chose the most persuasive Progressive in the known universe. At the risk of sounding old-fashionedly chauvinistic, I also want to point out that a man Kerry’s age is especially vulnerable to the charms of a woman as young, attractive, and smart as AOC.
For good measure, Bernie also named one of the Co-founders of the Sunrise Movement, Varshini Prakash, another young, at only 26, attractive, and smart woman to be a member of the committee. The Sunrise Movement is probably the most influential pro-climate, pro-earth advocacy group in the country and they are becoming increasingly politically active. Joe’s nominations included Chiraag Bains who investigated local police departments while at the Department of Justice during the Obama administration and Karen Bass who has also been active in trying to control the out of control police so they were outgunned on the Climate Crisis Committee who report starts with Climate change is a global emergency. We have no time to waste in taking action to protect Americans’ lives and futures. Reading it has left me very hopeful even if the rest of the news is distressing.
Thank you! This is the first, the best, good news to trickle down to me in many weeks…
Thanks Steve for posting something positive. I’ve been so depressed wondering if my city will have to experience Trump’s wrath. It’s good to be hopeful.
Steve, as you know, I am not quite as progressive as you are, but in general, we are pretty much aligned.so I am particularly sensitive to that side of the story. When you refer to the agents in Portland as “para-military thugs,’ you are adding to the division and discord. I’m not saying “they” are a good thing. But you are painting all these men with a single brush, and it’s not true. Some individuals are indeed doing very bad things, and the whole idea of sending Federal forces into our major cities is abhorrent to me. I pray that my son is not deployed, but if his boss tells him that’s what he’s doing, then that’s what he’s going to be doing. There are archetypal forces on both sides here. Just don’t forget these are individual people too.
Yep, “good people on both sides”…as my son pointed out, soldiers conducting themselves that way, even in a war zone [which we might hasten to point out “Democrat” cities emphatically are not], would be pulled out and disciplined. We’re not seeing that here, though. These are not soldiers and, albeit enthusiastic, not disciplined. Which is not to say that people in the military aren’t seriously worried at this point that they may be asked to do things that might strain their loyalties…even in a shining beacon of Demockery such as Trumpmerica.
Gail, I just read a quote from Jeh Johnson, who was the Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017 that claims these are mercenaries working for Erik Prince (brother of DeVos) .
I’ve seen that report today too. I don’t know whether to feel relieved or enraged. More the latter.
Michael, well said.
First of all, Gail, thank you for saying this directly to me. I did not use “para-military thugs” lightly, I called them that because all of them are wearing uniforms without identifying badges or nametags. I’ve read that they are Federal prison guards from Texas, or a special ICE team but nobody seems to know. But you are right, only some of them are doing thuggish things like aiming at protestors heads while shooting teargas grenades. And you are right, I have painted all these men with a single brush, and that isn’t accurate. It is a lazy description and not true. I’m sure not all of them want to be there.
When I last heard, your son was in the Marines flying helicopters so it is unlikely he will be put into that situation but you are right again, if called up, he will go (I know I would have when I was in the Army).
Adding to the division and discord is not something I want to do. Thanks for pointing that out.
Steve, since Mark left the USMC in 2010, he has spent a year in Afghanistan as a State Department contractor, 3 years flying for the Maryland State Police, and now working for DHS flying on the Arizona border as a Customs & Border Protection Federal Agent. I know he would be very conflicted. I very much appreciate Michael’s comments above.
And your comments too!
Gail, some of us are more worried about the now obvious “F” word that describes how these federal agents were used by Trump. Fascist Paramilitary units deployed to areas where local leaders objected to their pretense. Sure some of these federal agents didnt sign up to shred the constitution. So what? The deployment of these units pose a grave threat to our democracy. It must be called out in the alarming words that it deserves. Thuggery. Fascism.
Absolutely agree, Steve. Not only untrained agents from multiple triple-letter sources, but mercenaries from Blackwater and other private companies. It’s terrifying. More and more, anxieties are showing up in the news from people gaming multiple election scenarios. Trump is likely to use every weapon, legal or un- in the event he loses. All of the possible progressions of each scenario seem to lead to violence in the streets.
Blackshirts, brownshirts, DHS; they’re just doing what they’ve been programmed to do. Domestic terrorism. When they began calling this place “the homeland” back in the Bushwhack era it began to feel less and less like my country. These next months, leading up to an election that may or may not happen, promise to be terrifying indeed.