Bill Clinton is rightly known as a tremendous orator. He speaks to a crowd of hundreds as if he were just chatting over a cup of coffee, and exudes a charisma of a sort that few others have. Last year's speaker, Barack Obama, has a different sort of charisma
He began by saying that in the many political events he's addressed over the last year, he regularly pointed to Kansas as an example of how Democrats could win in Republican areas. The trick in Kansas as it has been elsewhere is "to find a common ground and common solutions."
"You did a great thing here, for the Democrats, but you did a better thing for the people of Kansas and the public interest" in bringing in high profile party-switchers and broadening the debate. His assessment is that Democrats won a chance from the American people, and now is the time to demonstrate that we deserved it.
By his lights, Kansas is a perfect place to find new directions in solving our national problems. By "putting ideology over evidence" on issues from political edits of scientific reports to the war in Iraq, Republicans left room for Democrats to broaden their message, to "become, in effect, both the progressive and the traditional conservative party in America." The questions he posed to the Kansas Democrats were "How do we wish to be conservative,... how do we wish to be progressive?"
The bulk of his speech was focused on how the states - Kansas in particular - could be the laboratory for new ideas, especially in healthcare and the environment, including problems of overfishing, peak oil and climate change. These issues are challenges, but also great opportunities. They are opportunities because we cannot continue to grow the economy without creating new industries, and addressing these problems will require new industries.
Global warming and climate change are a challenge, but also "the biggest economic opportunity we ever had." Building wind farms was one solution he talked about, pointing out that doubling the production of wind power cuts the price per watt by 30%, and that there are already some wind power contracts which are cheaper than contracts from coal plants. Wind power is not just a way to cut our dependency on foreign oil, and not just environmentally sound, it also presents a great economic opportunity for areas without an existing industrial base.
Similarly, while the focus on compact fluorescent lightbulbs tends to emphasize the electrical savings and the longer lifetimes, he pointed out that "Walmart is trying to sell 100 million [CFLs] this year," and that "they ought to be made in America." Solving these problems will require the "kind of practical stuff made for people like you." And while that comment was aimed at Kansas and Kansas Democrats, the message holds for our nation as a whole.
The Clinton Presidency was built around small, practical solutions that opened opportunities - policies ranging from expanded rural broadband to support for new manufacturing. That is the sort of leadership we've missed these last 6 years, a time in which "the elevation of ideology over evidence has kept our head in the sand."
The other area in which our head has been stuck in the sand is healthcare. He pointed out the disparities between the amount we spend on healthcare in America with what we get for the money, and asked "What happened to the money?," the $800 billion per year that we spend beyond any what any other industrialized nation would if it were as large. We have fewer people covered and shorter life expectancies. The money goes to administrative costs for insurers, a situation he described as "letting the financing tail wag the healthcare dog." The insurers have hired more people while covering fewer people, hiring people to figure out how not to pay claims.
On this point, he suggested fewer solutions, perhaps because the issue is so politically fraught. "We cannot make intelligent decisions about how to reform healthcare unless we are both liberal - if you will - in wanting to provide health insurance to everybody that doesn't have it, and conservative in wanting to get our aggregate spending more in line with our competitors. Ironically, we can't do one without the other." The states, especially smaller ones like Kansas, present opportunities to experiment with new ideas. "This is what they hired us to do in the last election." The solution will be found in the details of what we are paying for - shifting to self-insured malpractice pools, controlling obesity and diabetes, and finding ways to make insurance more widely available, especially to children.
He concluded by answering a question that he gets asked a lot: "How long will it take us to recover our lost position in the world?"
"Three or four days. ... This is a country of constant becoming, and you're in a party that's in the solution's business." And Kansas has already shown some of those answers to the nation.
Additional photos at my Fotki site.
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"Three or four days?" Yes, I like the sound of that.
A discussion about Climate Change is not something Americans should pay much concern about during this election cycle. Why?
1. The issues involving climate, whether it is caused by man, much less if man can do anything about it, are based on poor science and slick marketing. The cold hard inconvenient truth is that the AGW issue needs much better verification of models to have any real merit for making policies. The costs associated with any policy changes based on IPCC reports will only serve to accelerate the bankrupting of America and can not be shown to have any tangible return value for the billions of dollars that it would cost.
2. The climate change debate as public policy is a distraction from the real issues that will effect our children and grandchildren. It distracts from the debate on how to restructure social security. It distracts from how to deal with the massive, and ever growing government debts and deficits.
3. Any money spent on global warming solutions is akin to taking the slim revenues that are running into government and betting them on the lottery instead of investing them in the stock market. Is that way you want to provide a sound future for your children and grandchildren?
I think it is irresponsible to do the Chicken Little dance for global warming when the real wolf at the door for America is the challenge to get fiscally right and fix the issue with social entitlements. Even if you could stop the melting of a glacier, who is going to care in 30 years when the country is bankrupt from the massive cost of entitlements for health care.
Daprez, I think you are making a number of truly disingenuous points here.
First, the science behind climate change is quite solid. Regardless of what policies you support or don't support, it is inaccurate to claim that the models are not adequate. They are.
Second, talking about the costs of policies without specifying what those policies are is just bogus. Some policies would be expensive, others wouldn't, and political campaigns are precisely when the public should make their preferences heard. Some costs would buy us benefits beyond controlling climate change, for instance shifting away from declining foreign oil sources and towards renewable domestic sources. Other solutions would create new jobs, a benefit that counts against whatever costs are attached.
I also think it's inaccurate to claim that whatever policy we choose will distract us from other problems. Growing the economy means increasing FICA tax revenue, which means reducing the Social Security and Medicare deficits. As Clinton pointed out, many of these problems can only be solved by addressing them all at once. Al Gore has proposed using a carbon tax to balance the Medicare and Social Security budgets.
In either event, there's no inherent conflict between addressing climate change and Social Security. FICA taxes definitely wouldn't go into climate change.
Building and promoting new industries benefits everyone; promoting green industries would improve the environment and strengthen the economy. That's why Clinton said global warming is "the biggest economic opportunity we ever had," as I quoted above.
The point of a carbon tax is that it integrates the costs of carbon into the price of producing it. What happens to the money after you've gathered it is a SEPARATE POLICY DECISION.
Global warming is already happening. Social Security is not projected to be bankrupt until 2047, by which time any number of small demographic or economic changes might have protected its solvency. In contrast, the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and glaciers are already warming because of human activities. That is not a "lame scientific claim." It is a well-documented trend based on reliable, extensively verified science.
It is inaccurate to claim that there is some trade-off between dealing with entitlements or with global warming. There isn't, any more than there is a trade-off between fixing Social Security and fixing our public schools. We can, and should, do both. Dealing with global warming will grow the economy, creating new jobs, which means new FICA taxes, which means less of a threat to Social Security. It really is that simple.
Josh the only thing disingenuous is promoting policy of AGW based on the current scientific understanding. The models that are tauted as being "bona fide" use parameters that are more a matter of making the model match data sets of current conditions than actual physical parameters that are well-established and verified. The models suck when you try to use them to replay past climates.
Yet, these are what we hang the "science proves it" seal of approval. Its really a sad statement about climate science.
Al Gore's idea of using a carbon tax to balance the Medicare and Social Security budgets it just plain loony and it precisely what reveals his disingenuous nature. Instead of dealing with the Social Security problem head on he blows hot on AGW to motivate a carbon tax. If the truly was a need for a carbon tax it would piss me off no end for that money to be used for something unrelated.
You think its inaccurate to point out a problem with social entitlement programs which is clearly known and needs to be dealt with for the future welfare of the country as being far more important and crucial than to save a few melting glaciers? PLEASE... what is most important to America right now. Politician need to be spending 300% more talking time about fixing social security than anything to do with AGW. Why? Because it is tangible and relevant. AGW needs a lot better science behind it to make it relevant.
Green companies should promote themselves and grow themselves. I don't have a problem supporting them. I have a problem subsidizing based on lame scientific claims.
What is the cost of producing carbon? How do you calculate it?
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/glotax/carbon/carbongr.htm
So according to Al Gore's logic, which you unfailingly support, we should put a carbon tax in place and take the money to balance the Medicare and Social Security budgets. If such a tax went into effect why would the government want to curb CO2 emissions? They will be needing more and more money for the social entitlements. The government would want more CO2 so they could get more revenue from it. Its dippy ideas like this which helped to keep Al Gore from being President.
I didn't say I supported Gore's plan. My point was just that it's absurd to say that there is an inherent conflict between solving those two problems.
One problem is highly tractable with several viable approaches that can eliminate it from affecting Americans, the other problem, and it is debatable if it is even a problem, is highly intractable, with no known viable approaches for resolving the problem, if it even exists.