Ahmed Ghailani and Omar Khadr: A Tale of Two Detainees

One will spend at least 20 years in prison. The other will probably be released next year. Guess which one was tried in civilian court.

By Nick Baumann | Thu Nov. 18, 2010 10:45 AM PST

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People who want to put terrorists in prison—or execute them—(and I think most of us want one or the other) should ask themselves one thing: would they rather be Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani or Omar Khadr?
Last month, Khadr, a Canadian-born Guantanamo detainee who was captured in Afghanistan as a teenager, agreed to a plea deal under the military commissions process. A military jury subsequently sentenced him to 40 years in prison for a number of crimes, including throwing the grenade that killed Army Sgt. Christopher Speer in 2002. The 40-year sentence was just for show: Khadr is likely to be released soon after he is returned to Canada next year. Ghailani's fate will be quite different. On Wednesday, a federal jury in New York convicted him [1] of conspiracy for his role in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa. While Khadr will be out of prison by 2012, Ghailani will almost certainly spend at least the next two decades—and possibly the rest of his life—in federal prison.
Most reasonable people would rather serve Khadr's year-or-so in Gitmo than Ghailani's 20 years to life. But because the jury acquitted Ghailani [1] of 280 other counts of conspiracy and murder, conservatives [2] and major media outlets [3] are united today in suggesting that the outcome of the trial—the first of a Gitmo detainee in civilian courts—casts doubt on the prospect of future civilian trials. The current conventional wisdom seems to hold that the outcome of the Ghailani trial proves that military commissions are a superior method of punishing terrorists. The record shows the opposite is true.
Khadr is not the only person to pass through the military commissions only to face a sentence that's light compared to Ghailani's. Australian David Hicks and Salim Hamdam, Osama bin Laden's driver, have both already been released after being convicted in military commissions of providing material support for terrorism. John Walker Lindh—an American who was convicted of similar material support charges in federal court—is currently serving a 20-year sentence. In total, the military commissions have convicted just five people since 9/11. Only one of them is serving a sentence longer than Ghailani's.*
A federal trial provides far more effective closure than a military commissions proceeding. "The federal court trial has provided final resolution for this particular case," says Dixon Osburn, the Law and Security director for Human Rights First. "It gives the verdict a level of legit that no verdict in commission system has." In other words, the idea of human rights protestors standing outside of the SuperMax facility in Florence, Colorado (or wherever Ghailani ends up) to protest Ghailani's imprisonment seems unlikely, to say the least. Ghailani has been convicted in a fair and open court: now he will go away for a long, long time.

Ghailani will have plenty of company in federal prison [4]. Mohamed al-Owhali, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohamed Odeh, and Wadih el Hage—all convicted for their roles in the same embassy bombings that Ghailani was involved in—are already cooling their heels in Florence.
Al-Owhali, Mohamed, Odeh, and el Hage are just a few of the literally hundreds of people [5] convicted of terrorism charges who are current residents of the federal prison system. In fact, there are currently around twice as many convicted terrorists being held in federal prison as there are alleged terrorists being held in Guantanamo Bay.
Why are there so many terrorists in federal prison? Because the law gives the government enormous advantages in prosecuting terrorism cases. Material support charges—which can stem from something as simple as giving someone a cell phone—carry sentences of up to 15 years—or life, if the material support results in someone's death (as terrorism often does). Conspiracy charges, the bread and butter of many federal prosecutions, carry sentences of 20 years to life. And their statute of limitations dates from the last act of the conspiracy—not when it was hatched.
Moreover, federal court convictions are far harder to appeal [6] than military commission verdicts, and many legal scholars and judges [6] believe that some of the crimes Ghailani was charged with (such as conspiracy) aren't even triable in military commissions. This (unfortunately anonymous) quote [7] from a senior Obama administration official on the Ghailani verdict is informative:

[Ghailani] was convicted by a jury of a count which carries a 20-year minimum sentence. He will very likely be sentenced to something closer to life. (The judge can, and very likely will, take into account things that the jury did not, and he can and will consider conduct that the jury found him not guilty of —e.g., murder). He will never be paroled (there is no parole in the federal system). There are very few federal crimes that carry a mandatory MINIMUM of 20 years. What that means is that he was convicted of a crime that is a very big deal.
So, we tried a guy (who the Bush Admin tortured and then held at GTMO for 4-plus years with no end game whatsoever) in a federal court before a NY jury with full transparency and international legitimacy and—despite all of the legacy problems of the case (i.e., evidence getting thrown out because of Bush-Admin torture, etc,) we were STILL able to convict him and INCAPACITATE him for essentially the rest of his natural life, AND there was not one—not one—security problem associated with the trial.
Would it have been better optically if he had been convicted of more counts? Sure. Would it have made any practical difference? No.

Of course, if your main goal is something other than making sure terrorists spend a lot of time in prison, you might see things differently. The truth is that the purpose of the military commissions system is not to punish terrorists. The structure of the military commissions suggests their main goal is to add a veneer of legality to the continued extrajudicial detention of alleged terrorists while giving the military, the administration, and the intelligence community more control over the handling of information about the alleged torture of detainees. There are serious arguments for pursuing that goal. But no one should pretend that goal is the same as—or even compatible with—the goal of punishing actual terrorists for their actual crimes.
More: Karen Greenberg [1] | Adam Serwer [8]
*Some people might argue that it's unfair to compare the crimes that Khadr and Ghailani were accused of committing. But Khadr, like Ghailani, could have faced the death penalty for his crimes if he had been tried in civilian court. The potential punishment was the same.

Ghailani Verdict A Win for America

A jury considers a terror case on the merits—and finds it lacking.

By Karen Greenberg | Thu Nov. 18, 2010 3:00 AM PST

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Read Karen Greenberg's previous coverage [1] of the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantanamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court.
The sun was beginning to set and the lawyers were packing their bags to go home Wednesday, the fifth day of jury deliberations in the trial of Ahmed Ghailani, the only Guantanamo detainee ever to have come to trial in a US court. But then the tall security guard who served as Judge Lewis Kaplan's liaison to the jury entered the courtroom with a tell-tale sealed manila envelope. Fifteen minutes later, Ghailani and his attorneys took their seats at the defense table. The Manhattan courtroom was full for what felt like a curtain call as one by one the other players arrived: a gaggle of reporters, three rows of US attorneys, seven US Marshals lining the wall, the prosecution team, the defense team, the law clerks, and finally the defendant, wearing a white shirt and reddish tie.
Few doubted that this would be guilty verdict, likely on all counts. The faces of the defense team seemed to say, "Well, we knew this would have to happen sooner or later." Ashen and reserved, defense counsel Peter Quijano kept his gaze on his client while his partner Anna Sideris patted Ghailani on the back. Prosecutors Michael Farbiarz, Harry Chernoff , Sean Buckley, and Nicholas Lewin waited just as quietly at the prosecution's table.

Judge Lewis Kaplan opened the envelope with the charge sheet in it, read the verdict to himself, and then read it again. "There will be no outbursts," he said, a statement that seemed odd given that there were no Ghailani family members present. The young foreman spoke from the raised jury box as Ghailani watched intently. Count one: not guilty. Count two, not guilty. By the time the foreman got to count four, the courtroom felt as if it had been transported to another galaxy. Count five: guilty. Counts six to 286: Not guilty. The words rang out over and over again, to no apparent reaction; far from outburst, it seemed as if no one had anything to say. By the end, the defendant stood convicted of one charge—conspiring to damage US property.
It fell to Judge Kaplan to restore some degree of normalcy. In a steady voice he thanked the jury, commended their patriotism and their hard work. Then he departed. The defense team rose as if in a daze while the prosecutors quietly slipped away to the foyer.
In the silence, it seemed as if the spell that has lain over the country for the past eight years had finally been broken. For the first time, the words "not guilty" had been uttered in a terrorism case where the evidence did not prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. For the first time, a jury had not been cowed by the notion that to be accused of terrorism is tantamount to being guilty.
In the hours since those astonishing 15 minutes, the verdict has set off a political maelstrom—a "tragedy" and a "disaster," it's been called. Never mind that Ghailani's one-count conviction still carries a 20 years-to-life sentence. The truth is, the reluctance to try detainees in federal court was never about justice. It was about the fear of justice.
Many will want to contest this decision. The defense may insist that their client shouldn't have been convicted at all. The prosecution may argue that had they been allowed to introduce evidence obtained through torture, they would have done better. But for now, we should see this as a victory—not just for civilian courts, but for the bravery and integrity of a group of Americans who did exactly what they were instructed to do. They weighed the evidence, they seriously considered the law as presented to them, and they decided on the merits. Their success at delivering this verdict is a first glimpse of light in what has been a long, dark tunnel for the rule of law.

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This is America in a Nutshell

California, Bellwether for the Nation

— By Kevin Drum

| Thu Nov. 18, 2010 8:47 AM PST

This comes from the LA Times, but I think it could be the lead story in pretty much any newspaper in the country:

Californians object to increasing taxes in order to pare the state's massive budget deficit, and instead favor closing the breach through spending cuts. But they oppose cuts — and even prefer more spending — on programs that make up 85% of the state's general fund obligations, a new Los Angeles Times/USC Poll has found.
That paradox rests on Californians' firm belief that the state's deficit — estimated last week at nearly $25 billion over the next 18 months — can be squared through trimming waste and inefficiencies rather than cutting the programs they hold dear. Despite tens of billions that have been cut from the state budget in recent years, just a quarter of California voters believed that state services would have to be curtailed to close the deficit.

Well, there you have it. This is America in a nutshell.
Of course, one might well wonder just why voters are so convinced that nearly a quarter of the state budget is waste and inefficiency. Certainly some of the budget falls into that category, but a quarter? Where could voters have gotten that idea? Any guesses?

Are Good Journalists "All Bad People"?

A war reporter defines "objectivity": videotaping a man who's bleeding to death without stopping to save his life.

By Adam Weinstein | Wed Nov. 17, 2010 5:21 PM PST

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So, apparently Bill Nye the Science Guy was giving this speech [1] to a bunch of Southern California students Tuesday when he tripped over an extension cord, knocked his head, spoke some gibberish, and fainted onstage. And the crowd just sat there, with nary a good Samaritan among them, live tweeting the series of unfortunate events till Bill came around of his own accord. Twitty Twitterers? You bet. A sad commentary on the youngs and their gawker culture? Perhaps.
But journalist David Axe has a different takeaway [2] from the audience's unresponsiveness. A young war correspondent for the likes of Wired and the Washington Times, Axe writes on his group blog War Is Boring [2] that "this 'passivity' could also be something else: journalistic 'objectivity.'" Then he gets weirdly personal:

Two years ago, I took the time to videotape a gunshot man dying on a street during a battle in Abeche, Chad. I did not try to help the man as he lay at my feet. I fled only when someone opened fire in my direction. It’s all there in the video, above.
Asked about the incident a year later, I said it never occurred to me to help the man. It was my job to document the battle and its victims. If forced to choose between trying to save the life of someone I did not know, or recording his slow death so that I might highlight its tragedy, I suppose I will usually choose the latter. I am not a medic. I am not a decent person. I am a journalist.
And so are the USC students, in a sense. The more we equip ourselves with the technology to document our own lives and events around us, the more we might see merely observing as a role—and an important one. In that sense, it’s hypocritical for any journalist to criticize the students for watching rather than acting. For if they are a good journalist, they would have done the very same thing.

I'm pretty big into the social media, so for now I'll accept Axe's glib assertions that every roomful of students with smartphones is a roomful of journalists, and journalism is "merely observing." (I'll let Jay Rosen tackle that second idea [3].) The bigger problem is Axe's cynical description of the news reporter as an amoralist. You can be a good person who cares about other human beings, or you can be a good journalist. You can try to save a life, or you can be "objective." But you can't be both.
It's a false dichotomy, of course. Journalistic objectivity is what we make of it. And if we make it completely devoid of a moral core, then we fail epically both as journalists and human beings. Believe it or not, you can actually do a good deed in the middle of a reporting job [4] and still tell the story.
But in the Chad shooting, Axe did neither. Here's his Washington Times writeup [5]:

...a reporter witnessed men dressed in military fatigues shooting at each other throughout downtown Abeche. One young man dressed in a mix of civilian and military clothes bled and died while soldiers and fleeing civilians stepped over him.

This excerpt is hardly "objective": Axe gets an emotional reaction out of the reader by depicting "soldiers and fleeing civilians" stepping over the dying man...while neglecting to mention that he, too, paced around the poor Chadian. Strangely, though, in the video he filmed of the incident, Axe comes off as the star: He titled it "Getting Shot At." (The video also shows that Axe made a tragically poor judgment, shining a light on the dying man in the middle of a pitch-black night—which brought a predictable hail of gunfire down on both him and the bleeding victim.)
The takeaway: There's nothing potentially more dangerous in journalism than using "objectivity" as a pretense to practice amorality. News reporting doesn't exist in a vacuum; it isn't good in itself. It's supposed to be good for something: Selling papers, educating citizens, exposing injustices or inhumanities, whatever. There's always some higher value at play when a journalist is at work.
I get what Axe is trying to say. One of the biggest problems with paid journalists—commenters point it out a lot—is our tendency to overinflate our moral worth. We want to do work that Matters, that Makes a Difference in the World. It's a good aspiration. Mother Jones exists because of it. But like all virtues, this one becomes a vice in megadoses. We all know that guy, the self-important reporter who thinks every hackneyed clause he spills into a Word file has the salvational properties of John 3:16. The one who claims no pretense to objectivity, which is good, since he's totally subjective. (You're reading one now.)
Yeah, that's dangerous. But not as dangerous as grabbing a camera or notepad to report the news while leaving your moral scruples at home.
Now, Axe and his War Is Boring colleagues are very talented, and they all evidently believe in the power of journalism to transform society: They identify themselves on the site [6] as "citizen journalists" with an interest in "peacekeeping over war-making." Before his cynicism gets much worse, Axe should consider that mission statement anew. After all, it's the "citizen" that comes first, not the "journalist."

We're Still at War:

 Photo of the Day for November 18, 2010

Thu Nov. 18, 2010 2:30 AM PST

“It’s kind of nice seeing those same old mountains,” said U.S. Army Sgt. James T. Schmidt, an infantry squad leader from Decatur, Ill., assigned to Company C, 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, Task Force No Slack, while looking through his night vision goggles as the sun sets from a hilltop in the Shal Valley in eastern Afghanistan's Nuristan Province, Nov. 8. This is Schmidt’s second combat tour to the same region in Afghanistan. Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Mark Burrell, 210th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.

Let's Get This Party Started

The Climate Next panelists debate new strategies for curbing global warming.

By Alexis Madrigal | Thu Nov. 18, 2010 3:00 AM PST

The initial set of Climate Next essays [1], published Tuesday and Wednesday, inspired a snappy discussion around the e-campfire about the future of climate policy. Our panelists exchanged nearly 7,500 words over e-mail this week, and reading through their debate—which can be accessed in its entirety here [10]—you realize that what starts as a discussion about climate ends up a discussion about things that are much more viscerally important to us: electricity, the United States' role in the world, how technology improves, and the health of people and their families. After more than a century of carbon-intensive development, any effort to turn away from fossil fuels will require a realignment of the very backbone of modernity. The question we're really asking, then, is this: What will it take for something so radical to occur?
Because, as the Breakthrough Institute's Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus note [3], something new needs to happen. They call it a "step change transformation of the global energy economy." And about the only real examples of such a thing we have to work from occurred around the dawn of industrialization in Britain, when a small group of businessmen and tinkerers figured out that they could burn rocks (coal) and transform that heat into mechanical work. With that in mind, most of the discussion among this group of experts revolved around the social mechanisms that might allow for a major shift in our energy usage.
On all sides, the panelists are trying to connect the science of global warming with the emerging literature of how technological innovations happen, in an effort to find a climate solution that fits with today's precarious politics. Those three different areas—science, innovation, and politics—do not connect up easily. But among this group, at least, the effort is there.
So, let's go big-picture first. How could we ever achieve something like mass decarbonization? David Roberts of Grist suggests that a decentralized, grassroots power-building effort would be necessary, but the Council on Foreign Relations' Michael Levi doesn't think the masses matter:

Others here understand grassroots politics better than I do, but I must admit that I'm skeptical, at least for as long as the public has other pressing priorities. I also wouldn't ignore the elite-driven model, which explains a lot of progress on global trade. (It isn't like trade deals are made in response to massive public demand.) But the prospects here are also tricky, in substantial part for the same reasons as the US political system has turned against trade liberalization: elites no longer command the trust that they once did.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger answered that the problem in recent climate politics wasn't that elites were involved but, rather, that they were misguided.

Levi is closer to the mark when he observes that elite opinion may matter most. It confuses things to compare things like starting and funding clean tech businesses, developing smart growth programs, and establishing new building efficiency standards to a guerilla insurgency or civil rights movement, as David Roberts does. The problem is not that the effort to address climate was driven by elites but rather that the elite consensus was wrong. It assumed that carbon pricing and pollution targets could do everything from reduce emissions to accelerate innovation to create green jobs. The good news is that the old consensus appears to be, finally, starting to change.

Roberts answered the critique of his position by arguing that any climate hawk program shouldn't focus on a couple of narrow policy prescriptions.

The bias at this point should be toward trying more things. Will grassroots activism make a difference? EPA regulations? State [Renewable Energy Standards] programs? Utility reform? A national transmission grid? Nuclear loan guarantees? Feed-in tariffs? Smart growth? Who knows. The size, complexity, and urgency of the problem argue for a strategy built around diversity and resilience: spread out, rack up some small wins, build up networks, and accumulate political power along the way.

Hovering around the margins of the discussion is Roger Pielke Jr.'s "Iron Law of Climate Change," which states that when environmental and economic objectives are placed into opposition, the latter always win out. Levi and Roberts argued that this idea may not be as ironclad as it seems. And according to Levi, major investments in green energy could create the same sort of conflicts.

Ted and Michael's introductory essay says that the [Iron Law] is about "the unwillingness of governments to sacrifice economic growth for global warming", which is what I took issue with. Saying that it actually describes the unwillingness of individuals to "sign up for substantial, open-ended increases in energy prices… in the name of avoiding uncertain climate impacts decades hence" is quite the shift. I never said that carbon pricing was in the cards; I just said that the "Iron Law" wasn't a strong reason why. And, while I support increased government investment in energy innovation, it's worth noting that it's also far from obvious that that policy will be growth-enhancing. Government spending on energy innovation, particularly without a strong market, may itself violate the Iron Law.

Roberts, meanwhile, attacks the law's rhetorical use.

Stated as an absolute, it's obviously wrong. The public has an illustrious history of supporting, in some cases demanding, policies that are a drag on economic growth. Motivated minorities have secured farm subsidies, trade barriers, regulatory loopholes, and many more policies which impose higher costs on the public in exchange for benefits that are uncertain or, more often, concentrated in a very few hands. Consider, to take an example, that energy efficiency is currently going for around 4 cents a kwh, while coal electricity is around 10 cents a kwh. By opting for so much coal and so little efficiency, the public appears to be breaking the Law, only in reverse—paying extra, sacrificing economic growth, for environmental disbenefits.

Michael and Ted stick to their guns, though, refocusing the discussion on the technological challenges they see in renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Argue all you want about the Iron Law, what should be clear now is that whatever tolerance political economies around the world may have for raising energy prices and slowing economic growth does not begin to approach the levels that would be necessary to price carbon high enough to actually drive substantial emissions reductions or deploy low carbon technologies at any meaningful scale. Fossil fuels are remarkable sources of energy—energy-dense, easily-deployed, well-suited to provide baseload power, and still reasonably abundant in one form or another in most parts of the world. Present day alternatives, by contrast, cost too much and can't effectively serve the demands of modern energy economies.

The near-term prospects for green technology really matter, too. Here in the United States, the key upcoming climate policy decision will be what to do with old coal plants. Over the next decade or so, many plants may be shut down because of environmental concerns and aging, as the Sierra Club's Michael Brune explains:

What's happening here is that many of the pollution costs of burning dirty coal are now being internalized. That is, when utilities are forced to make a decision to either invest in upgrades to minimize a coal plant's pollution or to shut down that plant and invest in cleaner energy resources, it is expected that many utilities and regulators will choose the latter. For example, in a July 2010 report that examined just two federal rules— those governing air toxics such as mercury and another to limit soot and smog—Bernstein Research estimated reductions in coal-fired generation from these two rules of over 10 percent in just the next 4 to 5 years. Industry analysts ICF International estimates more than a 25 percent reduction under "modest regulation" between now and 2015-2016.

What's going to replace the energy services those plants provided? There are a host of alternatives, ranging from building new coal power plants to deploying natural gas or solar. (Or maybe we should just use less energy.) A lot of our e-mail discussion focused on that short-term problem—and opportunity. Levi provides a good starting point.

I'll reinforce a point from my initial essay: the first priority should be to replace retired coal-fired power plants with anything but other traditional coal-fired power plants. Those replacements would either be zero-carbon, which would be great, or natural gas, which would allow them to be easily replaced with zero-carbon sources later. Ideally, the replacements would be renewable, nuclear, or [carbon-capture-and-storage] based, which would provide a platform for zero-carbon technology development and learning.

Armond Cohen of the Clean Air Task Force wasn't so sure that more gas-fired plants would be a good idea.

If a meaningful amount of US coal capacity is to be retired, it is important that we think about policies that will avoid the obvious default replacement—natural gas without CO2 scrubbing. Since half the molecules of CO2 we emit today will be with us several centuries from now, it's highly likely that we need to move the system, over a multi-decade period, to zero emissions if we want a shot at stabilizing CO2 concentrations at manageable levels. Natural gas replacements would chop CO2 in half or more relative to coal, but then that's the end of the drop and the beginning of a plateau. Do we want to create another generation of better-but-still-not-great-for-CO2 incumbent generators defending their turf? It looks like that's where we're headed.

Brune was even more forceful in his take on new power deployments. He derided nuclear power and coal with carbon capture.

Say what you want about nuclear power, but you can't call it cheap. There's a reason why Wall St. is reluctant to finance nukes in the US without loan guarantees. Even if we ignore the persistent problems nuclear power poses regarding mining, radioactive waste, safety and proliferation dangers, the cost to build nuclear plants is high, and rising, compared to other forms of energy. The same is true for coal gasification and carbon sequestration. One example: the Duke Edwardsport plant that the Sierra Club opposed but others supported will not capture a single molecule of carbon. But the cost to build the plant has doubled, and there is a criminal investigation underway about misdeeds between Duke and the PUC. Is this a good deal for ratepayers? Every billion dollars we invest in nuclear power or so-called "clean coal" is a billion dollars much better invested in energy savings and clean energy. Clean energy will create more jobs, cut air, water, and greenhouse gas pollution, and make our country more competitive. As for costs, just look at the trends: efficiency is cheap and always has been. The cost of new coal plants and nuclear plants is rising, and the cost of solar and wind is dropping. Which side of the equation do we want to get on?

But those cost curves are one of the trickiest bits of climate policy. We know that human behavior can accelerate the development of individual technologies, but it's very hard to know which of those technologies would end up becoming radically cheaper over time. For example, we can assume that the cost of producing solar power will go down in the coming decades. Figuring out how much it will go down (and whether it will become a viable alternative to fossil fuels) is another thing entirely—even small changes in the expected rate of decrease yield vastly different projections for its success.
Roberts does a nice job laying out the four cornerstones of a national innovation system: R & D to push technological development faster, various incentives and Federal procurement policies to create market pull, an institutional ecosystem of supportive research institutions and government agencies, and robust government-supported resources and capabilities for the industry.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger, though, believe that the current generation of renewable energy technology is so far from competitive that it precludes building a real base of support for climate action.

Indeed, economies around the world have been slowly decarbonizing for two centuries. Energy intensity has declined at about one percent a year over that period and carbon intensity about half that. Those trends have been driven by technological, economic, and political changes alike. We've developed ways to generate power—still mostly fossil based power—that are better, cleaner and cheaper. The structure of our economy has changed dramatically, with the rise of the information and service economies and the decline and outsourcing of our industrial economy driving declining energy intensity. And rising post-material values have led to political demands for cleaner energy and less pollution which have in fact resulted in higher regulatory costs for dirty energy and substantial subsidies for clean energy. It is unlikely that efforts to increase the regulatory costs of coal as envisioned by Brune, accelerate the development of gas as envisioned by Levi, and promote low-cost energy efficiency as envisioned by Roberts will do much to significantly accelerate those trends over the next several decades. Nor will the variety of other policies that Roberts proposes to throw against the wall—renewable energy standards, feed in tariffs, a national grid, smart growth, the list is endless—lacking vastly better technological alternatives.

For them, the technology has to precede many policies. That's one reason that they, like Cohen, think the Pentagon would be a natural engine for the tough and market-unfriendly work of pushing energy breakthroughs. The best part of the Department of Defense? It's so big that it would be its own best customer for any innovations.
Perhaps it's best to end this discussion with a look at the scale of the problem. Given the economic growth of China, India, and other major developing countries, we can anticipate that global energy demand will grow, and so will the need for clean sources. Here's Armond Cohen's compelling look at what we'd need to do to meet that demand.

Since achieving merely one[carbon-free] terawatt … would require quadrupling today's installation of wind power, or three hundred times current global solar capacity, or, for that matter, three times our current global capacity of nuclear plants, it's pretty clear that fossil fuels are likely to be part of the picture for quite a while—[which suggests that] developing the [carbon capture and storage] option at scale is likely to be pretty important. … It's also clear that at least current-generation renewables, with their substantial land use demands, intermittency challenges (which, even at current penetration levels in California and parts of Europe have required substantial numbers of new gas power plants to fill in when the wind isn't blowing—a cost which is typically not counted against the renewables), and very high cost (at present, solar [photovoltaics] is at something like four times the cost of new nuclear power in the United States), are going to have a hard time filling out most of those 30 terawatts. We are going to need lots of innovation, and every scalable option we can imagine.

This post was produced by Slate [11] for the Climate Desk [12] collaboration.

2012's Senate Battle Begins...Today

The handicapping begins for Congressional races in 2012.

By Andy Kroll | Thu Nov. 18, 2010 8:30 AM PST

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The 2010 midterms are barely in the rear-view, the 111th Congress' lame-duck session just begun, but already the handicapping for the 2012 congressional races is underway. As Politico reports today [1], senators up for re-election in 2012 are drumming up cash, laying the groundwork for their campaigns, mulling their party affiliations, or weighing whether to even bother running again.
For instance, a pair of longtime Senate Democrats, North Dakota's Kent Conrad [2] and New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman [3], are considering hanging up their spurs and retiring, Politico reports. Then there are Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri [4] and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut [5], both of whom face questions about which party they'll run with in 2012. McCaskill's re-election challenge is a steep one, simply because she's a Democrat in a state that didn't back Obama in 2008 and voted in a Republican senator in the midterms. Now, McCaskill has made no statements suggesting she'd run as an independent in 2012, but she's definitely been playing up her independent streak. "I think that’s the message that I got to make sure that Missourians understand: that I haven’t been afraid to differ from Harry Reid; I have not been afraid to take on Nancy Pelosi; I have not been afraid to tell the president he is wrong," McCaskill said. "And that I have been the independent that I think most Missourians want."
Meanwhile, Lieberman's affiliation is always up in the air. Currently an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, Lieberman said three different scenarios—a GOP candidacy, Democratic candidacy, or even retirement—"are still alive."
The stakes for 2012 are, of course, especially high with the GOP angling to win back the Senate, and thus control the entire Congress. Here's more from Politico:

Leaders from both parties are urging a more aggressive strategy for senators to be more visible back home and calling on senators to tout the benefits of bills they’ve pushed. They’ve also been warned not to take any challenger—whether in a primary or general election—for granted.
Democrats clearly have the more challenging playing field, defending 21 incumbents, along with two independents who caucus with them. The GOP only has nine seats to worry about...
Republicans, who watched incumbents Lisa Murkowski and Bob Bennett lose primaries, seem more concerned about intraparty challenges going into 2012. Texas Sen. John Cornyn is already warning his nine incumbents to begin preparing for an influx of candidates who may challenge them in primaries.
Already, tea party activists are making noise about taking down moderate Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe in her 2012 primary.

The Tea Party Targets... Sustainable Development?

If you believe conservative activists, smart growth is really a global conspiracy to herd Americans into "human habitation zones."

By Stephanie Mencimer | Thu Nov. 18, 2010 3:00 AM PST

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First, they took on the political establishment in Congress. Now, tea partiers have trained their sights on a new and insidious target: local planning and zoning commissions, which activists believe are carrying out a global conspiracy to trample American liberties and force citizens into Orwellian "human habitation zones."
At the root of this plot is the admittedly sinister-sounding Agenda 21, [1] an 18-year-old UN plan to encourage countries to consider the environmental impacts of human development. Tea partiers see Agenda 21 behind everything from a septic tank inspection law in Florida [2]to a plan in Maine to reduce traffic on Route 1. The issue even flared up briefly during the midterms, when Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes accused his Democratic opponent of using a bike-sharing program [3] to convert Denver into a "United Nations Community."

In the tea partiers’ dystopian vision, the increased density favored by planners to allow for better mass transit becomes compulsory "human habitation zones."

Agenda 21 paranoia has swept the tea party scene, driving activists around the country to delve into the minutiae of local governance. And now that the midterm elections are over, they're descending on planning meetings and transit debates, wielding PowerPoints about Agenda 21, and generally freaking out low-level bureaucrats with accusations about their roles in a supposed international conspiracy.
Virginia activist Donna Holt [4] is among those who believe that Agenda 21—unveiled during the UN's "Earth Summit" in 1992—is really a plot to curtail private property rights and deprive Americans of precious constitutional freedoms. In reality, the document will do nothing of the sort, but it has nevertheless been the target of conspiracy-minded UN haters for years. Holt and other tea partiers are taking their cues from people like Henry Lamb [5], a WorldNetDaily columnist and founder of Sovereignty International and Freedom21, groups designed to fight Agenda 21 and its ilk. He has been arguing for decades that the UN is secretly plotting to herd humans into crowded cities so that the rest of the world can be devoted to wildlife preservation. (Lamb declined to comment for this story because back Mother Jones once included him in a story [6] called Wingnuts in Sheep's Clothing, and another article [7] that described his role in Astroturf lobbying against the Kyoto treaty.)
Holt has also has relied on the research of Tom DeWeese, the founder of the American Policy Center [8] and a climate change denier whose group has been funded by Exxon [9]. DeWeese's organization hosted a conference in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania [10], this summer attended by many tea partiers, which featured sessions on Agenda 21. Schooled by such activists, Holt, the Virginia coordinator of Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty [11], has set to work spreading the word about Agenda 21 and the evils of sustainable development. She's finding a very receptive audience among tea party groups, who she believes are going to make sustainable development the next target of their activism.

"I'm overwhelmed with tea party leaders who have asked me to come and speak to their groups," she says. "They're calling on me to form a coalition, to put up a dedicated website." She says tea partiers understand that "there is a global agenda to actually abolish private property and abolish the Constitution for that matter." If sustainable development is fully implemented, she says, "This basically will turn us into a Soviet state."
In the tea partiers’ dystopian vision, the increased density favored by planners to allow for better mass transit become compulsory "human habitation zones." They warn of Americans being forcibly moved from their suburban dream homes into urban "hobbit homes" [12] and required to give up their cars and instead—gasp!—take the bus to work. The enemies in this fight are hidden behind bland trade-association names like the American Planning Association or ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability).
Shortly after the midterm elections, a Maine tea party group blasted out a call to arms to its members [13]: "Red Alert! Agenda 21 is coming on full force to the Mid coast area!" The notice implored members to show up at a November 10 meeting in Rockland sponsored by the Maine Department of Transportation. The group warned that the agency was:

implementing the sustainable development/Agenda 21. This is the hard core agenda 21 derived from…the United Nations, and we need to make a BIG presence to show our outrage and anger at this. This is the centralized planning for the de-industrialization of large segments of Maine, and the relocation and isolation of the population into human habitation zones. Plan on attending the meeting and express your outrage at this. We need to stop this NOW before it gets out of hand.

What UN-inspired outrage was on the table for the meeting? A proposal to improve development and reduce traffic around Route 1, [14] which runs up the eastern coast of the state. Stacy Benjamin, the DOT project manager, says that four or five people she and her colleagues have never seen before showed up at the meeting. During the public comment session, the activists questioned the DOT representatives about Agenda 21. "None of us had ever heard of it," Benjamin says, laughing, "but we learned a lot about Agenda 21. They had handouts." The tea partiers also posed questions about "human habitation zones," she says, noting that they were polite and interested in what the committee members had to say.

The scene in Maine is repeating itself across the country. Only sometimes the activists are less polite. One planning consultant I spoke with, who requested anonymity, recalled a recent meeting where he was on the receiving end of tea party rage. "I got called a communist," he says. Someone in another tea party-heavy area recently told him, "We don't need none of that smart growth communism." The people he's been encountering are new to the process, short on solid facts, and many are "spitting mad." Combined with what they see as an "elitist" bent in planning consultants, he says, it makes for a toxic and intimidating mix for local officials who aren't used to being accosted by conspiracy theory wielding activists.
The local planning fights reveal a little-understood characteristic of the tea party movement: its inherently suburban nature. Not only does the movement's agenda derive from a hostility to what it sees as elites, but it's also hostile to the places those elites live—namely, cities and more densely populated areas—which makes sustainable development a natural issue for activists. Call them the newest pro-sprawl lobby.
In Virginia, Holt is trying to whip up tea party opposition to a comprehensive development plan [15] being drafted in Chesterfield County, where she lives near Richmond. She believes such plans will, among other things, ban cul de sacs, and she happens to live on one. So far, though, she hasn't made much progress with the county. "They don't want to hear from us," she says. "They think we are wackos with tinfoil hats."
Indeed, while the UN conspiracy talk makes it easy to dismiss the tea partiers as nutters, that doesn't mean they won't derail local development projects. Take what transpired recently in Tampa, Florida, where tea party activists helped defeat a widely supported measure that would have funded light rail and road improvements in Hillsborough Count [16]y. In the lead-up to a ballot initiative on the penny-per-dollar sales tax increase to fund the project, the local conservative paper, the Tampa Bay Examiner, ran a series on Agenda 21 [17]plus commentary suggesting that the "smart growth" principles underlying the light rail proposal were simply "cover for an agenda to transfer American sovereignty to various tentacles of the United Nations."
And the Florida tea partiers are just getting started. The Tampa 912 project, which often works in tandem with tea party groups, organized members over the summer to attend project briefings on another transportation plan for high-speed rail in the state. After a July meeting, the group's chairman reported back on the powwow with great skepticism. She said supporters claimed that [18]:

the high speed rail project will conserve 1 million acres of environmental lands and cause 44% less land to be consumed. How does a train running down the middle of I-4 do all that? The answer is by "compact development" aka "smart growth", aka "New Urbanism", aka "Traditional Neighborhood Design", aka "Transit Oriented Development", aka "Livable Communities", aka "Sustainable Development." These are all names meaning the same thing: they are anti-suburban, high-density dwelling design concepts that are part of the UN's Agenda 21 and will make single family home ownership for our posterity unattainable.

In Florida, the tea partiers have had some help in such fights from Ed Braddy, the executive director of the American Dream Coalition [19], which opposes smart growth and other standard components of modern land-use planning. Braddy, who has dubbed cars "personal mobility machines," has become a popular speaker on the tea party circuit. A former Gainesville city commissioner, he believes the rail fight in Florida, along with the involvement of the tea partiers on sustainable development issues, is the wave of the future.
"The tea party is receptive to our argument," he says. Regardless of whether people believe that Agenda 21 is a UN plot (he doesn't), tea partiers recognize the evils of sustainable development. "It's almost an instinctive thing," he says. "People know that living in a suburban development and driving to work is not an inherently bad thing. Living in tiny cramped apartment surrounded by noises, so you can hop a bus is not intrinsically superior. "
When the tea partiers bring that perspective to local government, they have the potential to make a significant impact—far more than they might have on, say, a congressional health care bill where high-paid lobbyists dominate. It’s clear that they are starting to realize that, too.

Coburn Tapped to Help Lead Steering Committee

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  By John Stanton
• Roll Call Staff
• 12:46 p.m

Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) announced Thursday that Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) would help lead the Republican Steering Committee in the next Congress as the group’s vice chairman.
The vice chairmanship is a new post. Coburn’s installment was approved by the panel’s eight-member executive committee. Those Senators’ names have been kept private.
“I’m hopeful the Steering Committee will help provide the kind of leadership the Senate, and our country, needs at this critical time. I’m pleased to work with Sen. DeMint who has brought innovative and specific solutions to the table. We need every member to do the same,” Coburn said in a statement released by DeMint’s office.
Some have suggested that Coburn, in assuming the new role, would help bridge the gap between DeMint and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). DeMint and McConnell have clashed at times, while Coburn enjoys an increasingly close working relationship with the Minority Leader.
Over the past few years, DeMint has used the Steering Committee as a platform for his conservative agenda.
DeMint was also selected by the executive committee to serve in his third term as the panel’s chairman.
In the statement released by his office, DeMint said he was “honored to continue to lead the historic Steering Committee and it’s a privilege to serve with Dr. Coburn.”

Release: U.S. Housing Secretary Visits Vermont Discusses Affordable Housing for Rural States

November 18, 2010

BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 18 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today introduced Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan at the Vermont Housing Conference where both addressed the need for greater access to affordable housing in rural states.
"In the midst of a serious shortage of affordable housing, we are delighted that Secretary Donovan came to Vermont to meet face-to-face with housing leaders,” Sanders said. “Not only is this an opportunity for Vermonters to learn about recent HUD initiatives, but it is an opportunity for the secretary to hear from Vermonters about the very real challenges of providing affordable housing in a rural state.”
After meeting on Wednesday with housing advocates in Sanders’ Burlington office, Donovan was the keynote speaker this morning at the biennial statewide housing conference.  With the Senate in session, Sanders participated in both events by video teleconference from Washington, D.C.
“Vermont has been a leader in designing affordable housing for some of our nation’s most vulnerable individuals and families,” Donovan said. “But we also know that one size does not fit all when it comes to building vibrant, sustainable communities of opportunity in Vermont and other rural states. That’s why HUD is committed to working across the administration – and with champions like Sen. Sanders – to marshal support that truly addresses the diverse challenges and opportunities our rural communities face.”
Sanders, who invited Donovan to Vermont, urged the secretary to ensure that federal housing policy emphasizes the needs of rural states and small cites.  “HUD has been a partner in many of the efforts to create affordable housing in Vermont and it is imperative that HUD remains at vital partner to helping solve the affordable housing crisis in rural states like Vermont,” Sanders said.
“Federal dollars intended to benefit low- and moderate-income households should be available to families whether they live in New York City, or Rutland, Vt.,” the senator added.
Sanders, a former Burlington mayor, said one of his proudest achievements as mayor was starting the first municipally-funded community land trust in the nation. The Champlain Housing Trust is now the nation's largest community land trust, with more than 4,000 members and 2,000 affordable homes in northwestern Vermont.  The concept has spread: there are now community-based housing trusts covering in every area of Vermont, and they have become the foundation of a unique-in-the-nation affordable housing network.
The conference, organized by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, is Vermont's biennial gathering housing advocates, builders, legislators, local planners, non-profits, realtors, lenders and service organizations.
Twenty workshops were planned for today’s housing conference. The workshops include sessions that will address federal housing policy, mortgage lending changes and a “roadmap” for energy efficiency.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, small business reps oppose tax breaks for wealthiest

Published: Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 1:47 PM     Updated: Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 2:42 PM

Charles Pope, The Oregonian

View full sizeOlivia Bucks/The OregonianPortland businessman Jim Houser says a tax break for the middle class would help his auto shop more than tax cuts for the wealthy.

WASHINGTON -- Swimming against the political tide, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley -- backed by a group of small business leaders -- argued Wednesday for allowing tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans to expire while extending them for people of more modest incomes.

Allowing tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to vanish Dec. 31,  while preserving them for the middle class, would be good for business and the nation's sputtering economy, they said in a conference call. "Extending tax cuts for middle class families is extremely important," said Merkley, who embraced the primary argument voiced by President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and even some economists.

"If we don't tend to our working families this economy will never recover," he said.

Keeping money in the pocket of the sprawling middle class, they said, would boost consumer spending that economists say is essential for a recovery.

Doug Beghtel/The OregonianSen. Jeff Merkley argues that ending tax cuts for the wealthy would boost business and help the economic recovery.

The fate of the expiring tax cuts promises to be the biggest battle in Congress before lawmakers finish work for the year. Merkley and his mostly Democratic allies argue that including tax breaks for families that make more than $250,000 would add $700 billion to the deficit over 10 years without contributing much - if anything - to the economy's recovery.

Republicans, however, are refusing to accept any proposal that does not extend all the tax cuts, insisting that any increased tax burden would strangle any recovery.

"Let me share with you what I believe our priorities need to be during the lame duck session," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday.
"Preventing massive tax increase on families and small businesses, and stopping the Washington spending spree."
McConnell and other Republicans argue that lowering taxes on the wealthy is the shortest route to creating jobs and boosting the economy since that is the group that owns businesses and is most likely to use the extra money to expand and generate jobs.


The business leaders joining Merkley, however, disagreed.
"A tax break without more customers does absolutely nothing for my business,'' said Jim Houser, owner of Hawthorne Auto Clinic in Portland, Ore., and a leader with the Oregon Small Business Council. Merkley was joined by Margot Dorfman, CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Frank Knapp, president of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce.
"We need policies that actually help small businesses by restoring consumer purchasing power and spurring demand. Extending federal unemployment benefits would produce six to eight times the economic impact in terms of job growth compared to the tax cuts. And that's just one example," Houser said.
Wednesday's event was just the latest in what promises to be an intensifying battle over the fate of large scale tax cuts put into place in 2001 and 2003 at the request of former President George Bush.
Merkley has allies in the House as well. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who sits on the Ways and Means Committee that writes tax law, said Republicans are misreading public sentiment. "People do not believe in borrowing money to cut taxes,'' he said, referring to the $4 trillion that will added to the deficit if all the taxes are permanently eliminated.
So far there is more jockeying than agreement as the serious work is not expected for several weeks.
While they insist the economic arguments are valid, Democrats are also aware of the political risk of voting for any bill that could be cast as a tax increase. Democrats are even more alert to the danger only weeks after they were routed in the mid-term elections.

Unless Congress acts, marginal income tax rates will rise across the board, tax credits that benefit families will be slashed, and rates on capital gains and dividends will increase. A federal tax on estates worth more than $1 million also will be resurrected after expiring for 2010.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that they expect a deal to be reached. The most likely scenario is that all the tax cuts will be extended for two years. Doing that would reduce the cost of the tax breaks for the wealthiest from $700 billion to $65 billion.
-- Charles Pope

The Incredible Shrinking Chamber of Commerce

   Last year, MoJo caught DC's biggest business lobby inflating its size by 900 percent. Now its new numbers look too good to be true.

By Josh Harkinson | Thu Nov. 18, 2010 3:00 AM PST

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For years, the US Chamber of Commerce [1] overstated its membership numbers by a staggering 900 percent. After Mother Jones debunked its fuzzy math [2] last fall, Washington's richest lobbying outfit downplayed its claim that it represented 3 million businesses, instead saying that it had a "direct membership" of 300,000 companies. But now it appears that even that number could be overblown by as much as 500 percent. If that's so, then the Chamber may have to revise its claim to be "the largest business trade association in the country [3]."
The new numbers come from the union-backed group US Chamber Watch [4], which examined the Chamber's 2009 financial disclosures and concluded that it has fewer than 100,000 dues-paying members. Of those, just a handful contribute the vast majority of its annual budget.
Here are the numbers behind US Chamber Watch's calculations: In 2009, according to forms the non-profit Chamber filed with the IRS, it brought in $205 million. Nearly 94 percent of this, or $193 million, came from slightly fewer than 1,500 members. Assuming that the Chamber has 300,000 members, that means the remaining $12 million of its budget came from 298,500 members giving an average of $40 each. But that doesn't hold up, since the Chamber's minimum annual dues are $125 (for an individual membership). If each member paid at that level, the Chamber would have a total of around 100,000 dues-paying members. If each member paid the minimum corporate dues of $250, then the Chamber would have 50,000 dues-paying members. Either way, it's a far cry from the 300,000 members that the Chamber currently claims.
By citing its impressive membership stats, the Chamber can say that it's in a league of its own. Yet if it indeed does have around 50,000 paid members, it's closer in size to groups such as the National Small Business Association, which last year pegged its dues-paying membership at 60,000 [5].

So where did the Chamber get its current membership number from? Most likely from its Federation Partnership Program, in which small businesses that join local chambers of commerce are automatically enrolled in the US Chamber of Commerce free of charge. Local businesses often aren't aware that they're members of the US Chamber of Commerce, as I found when I asked green businesses that belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce why they belonged a national group that opposes caps on carbon emissions. After being contacted by several surprised members, the San Francisco Chamber dropped out of the partnership program [6]. As of late 2009, 354 local chambers were participating in the partnership program, though only 17 chambers from the 100 largest cities were involved. Yet the Federation Partnership Program could still be large enough [7] to give the Chamber a 200,000-member boost.
This suggests that the Chamber has been lumping together its dues-paying members with its non-paying affiliates in its membership count. Asked for clarification, Chamber spokesman J.P. Fielder refused to say how many of its businesses pay membership fees.
US Chamber Watch's analysis of the Chamber's tax forms also confirms that the group is dominated by a relatively small core of donors. Many Americans still think of the Chamber as a small business group [8] that sponsors little league teams. In reality, it's a Capitol Hill behemoth; it spent a record-breaking $81.3 million [9] on lobbying this year, plus millions more on political ads. In 2009, only 6 of the 118 members [10] of the Chamber's board of directors represented small businesses; the rest worked for highly capitalized regional, national, or international corporations. And as Bloomberg reported yesterday, the health insurance industry's trade organization ponied up 40 percent of the Chamber's budget last year, a whopping $86.2 million [11] that fueled a massive PR campaign against the Democrats' health care bill.
Whatever its actual size, the Chamber is continuing to oversell its image as the representative of a broad swath of commercial interests. "For an organization that claims to represent all of American business, the US Chamber's agenda is increasingly being decided by a group small enough to fit around a smoke-filled board room table," says US Chamber Watch spokeswoman Christy Setzer. "That's bad for democracy, bad for Chamber members, and certainly bad for business."