Commentary: Obama's Flip-Flop on Public Financing

Senator Obama has announced he will opt out of public financing for the general election. He says he will "forgo" more than $80 million in public funds and go it alone.

How was that decision made?

This reporter obtained a transcript of the meeting during which the Obama team made the decision.

Someone said, "We want to do this but we've got a problem — last September you wrote that you would aggressively pursue an agreement with your Republican opponent for public financing. And then last February, when Tim Russert asked you why you wouldn't keep your word on that, you said you would sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that is fair for both sides."

"Yes," says someone else, "but you didn't really promise to do it, just to 'pursue an agreement,' and let's face it, if we're free to raise a ton of money above the public financing limit we can bury McCain with more television ads than any candidate has ever been able to run in the history of presidential politics."

"Okay," says someone else. "But we've got to word the announcement in a way that makes it sound like we are actually taking the high ground in this matter. That we are the ones fighting against the big money in politics."

Well of course, I have no such transcript, I don't know what they said to each other, but I do know what Sen. Obama said on his Web site about this.

He said it was not an easy decision because he supports a robust system of public financing of elections … but the system as it exists today is broken and his opponents are masters of gaming the broken system.

Therefore, said Sen. Obama, he wants to declare his independence from such a broken system and run the type of campaign that reflects the grassroots values that have already changed our politics and brought us this far.

All I can say is, here's to the high ground and here's to change — ain't it great?

Now I obtained a transcript of Donaldson and his editor discussing this piece. "There's nothing that grabs the reader here," says the editor, "If you only you had some damaging quotes ..." "I could probably work something up," replies Donaldson, "I've been around long enough to know how these pols think." "That's the way, Sam. You've still got it!"

A Meeting at Jiddah

Tom Whipple speculates about how King Abdullah's Sunday meeting with 30 Oil CEOs and 26 Energy Ministers might affect our immediate oil future:

Bush, Cheney and their corporate backers think that western oil majors should again be running OPEC oil fields, as they will be in Iraq. Will OPEC allow that?

The Saudis fear that oil prices are so high that customers might begin conserving or finding alternative fuels. They want European countries to cut back on their high gas & diesel taxes. The excuse will be to ease the European consumer's pain - the real reason is to make Europeans as reliant on fossil fuel as Americans.

from WSJ's THE MORNING BRIEF (sub)
By JOSEPH SCHUMAN

Following a discussion of the GAO weighing in on the Boeing v EADS contract dispute, it's all about energy:

Republican efforts to reopen American waters to offshore oil drilling have been one of the dominant stories of the week, and yesterday President Bush formally joined those efforts by laying what The Wall Street Journal calls "groundwork for the broadest election-year energy-policy debate in a generation." While Democrats focus on trying to curb alleged oil-market speculation and get oil companies to help pay for research into other energy sources, Republicans want to "open new areas of the country to drilling and exploration," the Journal notes.

Once again, Republicans are addressing the supply side while Democrats address the supply side - in a different way. Advocating a reduction in demand through conservation hearkens back to Jimmy Carter, which is still political suicide.

But the paper points out that the White House is emphasizing "past proposals on oil-shale production," and that "many Democrats in the western states say oil-shale technology requires more water than the region has available," even as "some independent energy experts say the technology used to develop the resource would require large amounts of energy from new coal-fired power plants."

In the American Southwest, Republicans and Democrats will soon be fighting over the supply side of water. Meanwhile the Bushes and Cheneys of the world have bought tracts of land near the large aquifer in Paraguay.

Meanwhile, the New York Times notes that "a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply."

It isn't just ships. Matt Simmons noted that there are no rigs available, either. We're entering the period where developing new energy sources, whether nuclear, deepwater, unconventional oil, wind or solar, is going to require massive amounts of construction and energy input. Building rail will require energy input. Maintaining our current highway infrastructure will require energy input. Something's going to give.

And on yet another oil front fraught with political implications, Iraqi officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat tell the Times that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP "are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power." Those talks, the Times reports, are over potential no-bid contracts from the Iraqi Oil Ministry to service the country's largest fields.

As many articles have recently noted, it *was* about the oil.

Homeless to build own Nickelsville

In the 1930s, Seattle twice burned out 500-shack shantytowns. Both were rebuilt. Now four men are searching for the most likely site to plan and build a new shantytown this summer. They're calling it Nickelsville instead of Hooverville (or Bushville). There are too many homeless. Some established shelters are turning away folk; others have been sold and closed down. People are scrambling for something better than the cardboard encampments that have sprung up along Interstate 5. "We know they're going to fight us tooth and nail," says James Lucas, who now lives in a work-for-rent transitional house. "What else is new?"

Redundancy is often presented as a negative, but redundant systems allow graceful degradation rather than sudden collapse. Besides the threat to life, homes and crops, the midwest flooding illustrates how we have given up transportation resiliency in the name of profit:

How A Midwest Flood Can Drag Down A Nation

Most of that web of rails is gone too. What's left is overloaded "main lines" that are often just single track, the second track having been pulled up and sold for scrap. "Branch Lines" that used to parallel the main lines and serve as detours now run a few miles and dead end, if they haven't been torn out entirely. Dozens of rail yards have been torn out and the land sold at huge profits for development- As a result backed up trains plug the main lines  because there aren't enough yards to park them in. Despite most railroads now being quite profitable, profits that should have been reinvested in upgrading century old routes through river valleys have instead gone into dividends to satisfy short sighted investors.

We ain't gettin' anywhere on the highways either- money that could have been spent to raise highways above the 500 year flood plain has instead been wasted on extremely expensive added lanes so exurban commuters can escape the city a minute or two faster. Fortunately Iowa invested in making US 61 and US 20 into 4 lane expressways that are now doing yeoman duty as detour routes- In neighboring Minnesota republicans still haven't finished 4 laning US 14 after decades of planning. And on the river our WPA era system of locks cries for an upgrade.

Brings to mind the recent thread on bus express lanes.

The papers and morning shows are full of the "big Saudi oil increase," but the Huffington Post reminds us:

What the New York Times goes on not to tell us is that even with this increase, under Saudi Arabia's suzerainty OPEC's quota still has not made up the full 1.7 million barrels a day cut made in early 2007, and that, by some 400,000 barrels/day. Only 1.3 million bbls/day of that cut will have been reinstated: 500,000 bbls/day last November; 300,000 last month, 500,000 next month (a report has just come across the wires that according to Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi the increase for next month has been set at 200,000 barrels, not 500,000 barrels as reported by the NYTimes. Are you surprised?)

HOUSTON, June 12 /PRNewswire per AutoblogGreen

Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens says energy is in a crisis in the U.S. and should be the No. 1 campaign issue for the presidential candidates. Pickens spoke at Oil and Gas Investor's Energy Capital Forum in Houston Tuesday.

"Energy is not a debate; it's a crisis for this country," Pickens said. "We cannot continue down the path were on. It's that desperate."

...

 Pickens chided Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama for "throwing around the windfall profits tax like a piece of balsa wood.

"I don't think the senator knows anything about energy. He sounds good for about two minutes."

Republican candidate Sen. John McCain received little more support. "I don't know how much he knows either. He wants to lower the gas tax during the summer. What the hell is he talking about? Will that fix anything?"

Pickens said he is not impressed by either candidate on energy issues and plans to elevate the issue into this year's presidential election campaign through a series of television ads talking about energy.

"I'm going to force this into this campaign. We'll see if I have the credibility to force it into the debate."