Following the endorsement of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) Wednesday for her campaign to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina questioned the science of climate change. Boxer, as the chair of the Senate environment committee, is the chamber’s leading advocate for action to create jobs, make America more energy independent, and cut global warming pollution. Ranking environment committee member Inhofe — “Senator Climate Change Denier” — led a failed boycott of Boxer’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733). After news of Inhofe’s endorsement of Fiorina came out, a reporter asked whether she believes in global warming. Fiorina admitted she is skeptical about climate science:

I think we should have the courage to examine the science on an ongoing basis.

Fiorina’s refusal to recognize the science of climate change and her belief that cap and trade legislation “will kill jobs” puts her in opposition to California’s business and political leadership.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), the leader of the California Republican Party, recently noted that California is “already experiencing” the devastating impacts of global warming:

In California, we are already experiencing rising sea levels eroding our coastal infrastructure, reduced snow pack in the Sierra leading to prolonged droughts and more conflict over water, drier forests suffering more frequent and ferocious forest fires, and worsening smog-related public health threats and crop damage. The implications for our state if these trends continue are simply staggering.

Fiorini’s opposition to binding reductions of global warming pollution will make it very difficult to encourage innovation and create jobs, accord to her Silicon Valley neighbor, venture capitalist John Doerr, who testified in July that the United States “must put a price on carbon and a cap on carbon emissions” because “no long-term signal means no serious innovation at scale, which means fewer new American success stories.”

On the same day he endorsed Fiorina, Inhofe “proudly” declared in a speech on the Senate floor that 2009 is “the Year of the Skeptic.”

There’s been a fair bit of hemming and hawing over the news that the federal debt has now surpassed $12 trillion. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), widely known for his fiscal hawkishness during Democratic administrations, couldn’t resist pointing the finger, saying, “this level of fiscal recklessness and irresponsibility should be shocking to the American taxpayer, especially since it is our children and grandchildren who will be forced to grapple with the consequences of our debt.”

While this milestone is actually nothing of the sort – $12 trillion is gross federal debt, not the debt owed to the public, which is the much more important figure – you can be sure that many people will use this as another excuse to condemn what Gregg called “expensive expansions of government” and to blame all of our fiscal problems on President Obama. But here are three facts about this year’s deficit that you probably won’t hear much about:

– Less than one-fifth of all the new spending in FY 09 came from Obama initiatives;

– The big deficit this year was as much a product of a huge decline in tax revenues as it was an increase in spending;

– The overall cost of the decline in tax revenues was four times larger than the cost of Obama’s initiatives.

These facts don’t fit with the narrative of an Obama “spending binge.”

It’s true that there was a big increase in spending in fiscal year 2009. Total spending rose by about $600 billion, not counting payments for interest on the debt (which actually declined in 2009 because of extraordinarily low interest rates).

But fiscal year 2009 began on October 1, 2008, when George Bush was still president, and by the time President Obama took office more than 40 percent of that new spending had already been committed, in the form of TARP and the bailouts for Fannie and Freddie. Another quarter of the new spending came from growth in entitlement programs and unemployment insurance, which was certainly outside the control of a new president.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment act, on the other hand, was responsible for only 18 percent of the new spending in 2009. So, spending did rise, but only one in five of those new dollars came from Obama’s initiatives.

And spending is only half the story. The other half is that tax revenues plummeted this year to their lowest levels since 1950.

Johnny-come-lately fiscal hawks almost never talk about the tax side of the balance sheet when they rail against deficits, because it’s more politically expedient to point fingers at the Recovery Act. But the size of the decline in tax revenues was four times larger than all the Recovery Act spending this year!

This year’s deficit was eye-catching, but it didn’t just appear out of the blue on January 20th, and it isn’t just a product of new spending. If you hear some pundit or politician claiming that a huge expansion of government is responsible for our fiscal woes without mentioning President Bush and with nary a word about tax revenues, you can be pretty sure that he’s more interested in scoring political points than actually solving problems.

Looking at the deliverables from President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao’s first summit is a lot like looking at the box score on the sports pages: it only tells part of the story. Sometimes, the best plays — astute defense, patience in the pitch count, taking the charge — won’t manifest in the final readout, but they could be the game-changing plays.

At first glance, the results of the summit were a mixed bag. The trip, at times, seemed to highlight the differences between the United States and China more than it did to deliver results. There was agreement on the need for free trade but also mutual finger-pointing on currency and protectionism, recognition of the progress in the Strait but the same catechisms on arms sales and One-China.

Perhaps the biggest loser was human rights. To be fair, President Obama did speak directly to President Hu about the issue, asserting “America’s bedrock beliefs that all men and women possess certain fundamental human rights,” and urging Chinese leaders to meet with the Dalai Lama. But at the end of the day, what some deem as President Obama’s more practical approach resulted in some missed opportunities. Unlike in past presidential summits, China didn’t release any political dissidents as a symbol of goodwill. Indeed, China went the opposite direction and detained activists before the President Obama’s arrival. The Obama team did not meet with any political activists or dissident leaders in China, nor did they directly reference China’s human rights record on the trip. The president’s much-publicized call for greater internet freedom was, ironically, censored in China. And ultimately, President Obama’s more conciliatory approach seemed to soft-pedal human rights.

But there was progress, too. Obama and Hu recommitted to improving and increasing military exchanges, programs, and dialogue and have laid out an affirmative agenda focusing on law enforcement and counterterrorism. They reaffirmed a unified approach to the crisis on the Korean peninsula. On non-proliferation, Presidents Obama and Hu agreed to work together to achieve a successful Review Conference of Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 2010 and supported the launching of negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty at an early date in the Conference on Disarmament. Most surprising was the progress made on climate change. So, all in all, a mixed tally.

But what the score, and many accounts of the trip, won’t reflect is the important contributions that President Obama’s trip made to U.S.-China relations. There were three intangibles that we cannot overlook. First, he signaled that the United States is back in Asia, ready to assume its role as an engaged Pacific power once again. Second, his remarks at the joint press conference with President Hu on Tuesday threw support and momentum behind sustaining the U.S.-China dialogue at the highest levels in both governments. Third, he made clear to the Chinese and to the American audiences at home, that, like it or not, on the big issues — security, economy, climate change — we’re in this together.

Earlier this week, as he prepared to leave for Asia, President Obama called the U.S. relationship with China a “strategic partnership.” This is a big move. The term is an upgrade from President Bush’s label “constructive and cooperative and candid” and a far cry from Bush’s campaign term “strategic competitor.” President Obama’s comments are 100% certain to be met with accusations of appeasement and naivete by the not-always-so-loyal opposition. The neocons didn’t like the concept of “strategic reassurance” that Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg unveiled a few weeks ago, and spoke about at a recent event, and they are going to like this even less. But using this term before his first visit is a very smart move.

First, let’s be clear about what President Obama said and the context in which he said it. In response to a reporter’s question about how he views China, President Obama began by saying that he sees China as “a vital partner, as well as a competitor.” Later he stated that “on critical issues, whether climate change, economic recovery, nuclear non-proliferation, it’s very hard to see how we succeed or China succeeds in our respective goals without working together. And that is, I think, the purpose of the strategic partnership.”

So it is clear, in case you hear otherwise, that President Obama does not think China is our best friend. In addition to calling China a “competitor,” he went on to say that he raises human rights, “universal rights” he called them, in every meeting with the Chinese. We know that he hasn’t hesitated to anger Beijing when policy calls for that, as his controversial decision on trade sanctions on Chinese tires illustrates. In fact, the entire trip itinerary makes clear that China is only one element of US Asia policy. President Obama is strengthening our traditional alliances in Japan and South Korea, and finally getting the US in the game of multilateral diplomacy in APEC and ASEAN on which China has been running the tables over the last eight years.

Obama referred to a strategic partnership with China in the context of major transnational threats. China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon, its most dynamic large economy and a nuclear power that neighbors North Korea and buys more oil from Iran than any other country. If China isn’t our partner, then we are in trouble.

The problem is that China has not been a reliable partner. It has been reluctant to take the kind of proactive steps on global challenges that the US wants and needs it to. As I detail in a new report, China is very engaged in all the international institutions and very prepared at the international summits—and this is a big step in the right direction—but you can count on a couple of fingers the number of times China has taken proactive leadership on a global threat: (1) North Korea (but it took enormous and constant US pressure to get them to lead on the Six Party Talks) and (2) the avian and swine flu pandemics, but on those their active leadership has consisted of convening international conferences, not exactly a mind-blowing example of international problem-solving.

Beijing is not using its leverage with Iran to end its nuclear program, it has so far resisted agreeing to limits on its carbon emissions that would make a necessary global deal to address climate change possible, and the steps China is taking to move to a domestic-led growth model that will address global economic imbalances are welcome but too few and too slow.

What the Chinese will tell you is that they achieve a trusting relationship by, first, developing trust with their counterpart and only then doing things together. This is exactly reverse, they will say, of Americans, who want to get things done together and develop trust in the process. President Obama’s gesture gives China’s leaders some strategic reassurance that he has a positive view of the relationship. He is offering a modicum of pre-trust that the Chinese say they need. This is not weakness — it is clever diplomacy.

If, over time, the Chinese do not cooperate more deeply, then “strategic partnership” will fail to become an accurate description of the relationship. The term could end up just a blip in the historical fluctuations of US-China terminology. But instead I hope that, in a few years, it turns out to be a positive, accurate and unremarkable description of our relationship with China.

On Monday, in an interview with ABC News, President Obama reminded Congress that “this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill.” When asked about the Stupak Amendment, he responded that “there needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we’re not changing the status quo,” implicitly acknowledging that the measure does not preserve the status quo on laws related to abortion funding. “I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test — that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions, but, on the other hand, that we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” he said.

Ironically, it was the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that was among the first to call for an “abortion-neutral” health care bill back in July. It defined abortion-neutral as maintaining current policies on funding, mandates, and conscience protections:

Any legislation should reflect longstanding and widely supported current policies on abortion funding, mandates and conscience protections because they represent sound morality, wise policy and political reality. Making the legislation “abortion-neutral” in this sense will be essential for widely accepted reform.

The Capps Amendment, which was in the original House bill and is still in Senate legislation, meets all of these criteria:

- The Hyde Amendment ban on Medicaid funding for abortion would remain unchanged.

- The Hyde Amendment would be applied to all public and private plans in the Exchange by segregating private premiums and government subsidies and ensuring that only private premiums be used to pay for abortion.

- No abortions could be mandated as part of the minimum benefits package, even those allowed by Hyde.

- Evenhanded conscience provisions protect those willing and unwilling to provide abortion care, counseling, and referrals.

But the Bishops lobbied against this compromise and demanded that the far-reaching Stupak Amendment be adopted. This measure:

- Goes beyond the Hyde Amendment by preventing women from using their own money to buy an insurance plan that includes abortion, even though no public funding would be spent on abortion services.

- Gives insurance companies an incentive to discriminate against low- and moderate-income women.

- Limits insurance companies in deciding what benefits to offer their customers

- Provides for the purchase of flimsy abortion-only riders that are unlikely to be offered or purchased.

- Allows for discrimination against health care providers who are willing to offer abortion services

The Capps Amendment involved a number of concessions from abortion rights advocates and ought to satisfy the demands of abortion rights opponents. If the true goal is health reform and not to undermine that reform or advance an ideologically-rigid agenda, then we need both sides to meet in the middle.

Right now, preventing catastrophic climate change is just about the most important thing any one of us should be working on right now. 350.org organized a worldwide day of action which took place on October 24. The goal of their effort was to educate and generate attention around the setting of a 350 parts per million CO2 target goal for the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December. I know something about getting attention and decided to contribute to their effort.

Watch it:

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

The whole “Supermodels take it off for climate change” project happened from start to finish in a little under two weeks and 300 phone calls–who knew production was so complicated! All the girls — Rachel Alexander, Shannon Click, Hanne Gaby, Olya Ivanisevic, Alla Kostromicheva, Heidi Mount, Crystal Renn, Rianne Ten Haken, and Nicole Trunfio — are my friends and loved shooting the video for a good cause, so that part was relatively easy to pull together. But let me tell you who was really responsible.

Indirectly there are three people responsible for this video: Tibor Kalman, Bill McKibben, and Robin Chase:

My all-time hero Tibor Kalman showed the world the ability of mass media to convey serious images and create real discussion (think 90’s Benetton advertisements of people with AIDS). Climate change, which is often seen as very political or scientific, needs to be made a people’s issue. My hope is that this ad helps re-brand environmentalism.

Bill McKibben, advocating scientist James Hansen’s target of 350 ppm CO2 to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change, leads the 350 movement — a widely successful environmental action campaign that remains in close touch with science and politics.

Finally Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar and Goloco, is my mom and raised me in a household that didn’t drive when it could be avoided, bought used clothes and almost nothing else, and led our family and friends by example showing us that it doesn’t matter how much you have. She also taught us to appreciate our personal and unique strengths, skills and experience, and figure out how to put them to good use.

There were at least 26 other people directly involved in making it. Eleven other models donated their free time, a precious day off for these top girls who work nearly every day from their late teens to as late as their early 30’s. Some of them have professional lives outside of modeling too. Cystal Renn just put out a book called Hungry about her transformation into a plus size model — it’s been incredibly successful and earned her a spot on Oprah. Nicole is the host of Bravo’s “Make Me a Supermodel” show. Heidi is the proud mother of two year-old Liam.

Then there was a whole team of people that made the girls look amazing: a stylist, Shandi Alexander, and her two assistants, a hairdresser, Kevin Ryan, and his two assistants, and two make up artists, Jesse Lawson and Fara Homidi, who all donated their free time as well. Then there was our amazing director Damani Baker, the three guys who assisted him, and Andrew Zuckerman who took still photos. There was my co-prodcuer Alex Vlack who also let us use his studio and turn his office into a wardrobe room. Finally there was Christana Tran and Heather Hughes who work at Women and Supreme model management that helped provide designer clothing and coordinate models.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)

The claim that it only bars federal funding for abortions is simply false. Here’s what the Stupak Amendment does:

1. It effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans in the Exchange: In addition to prohibiting direct government funding for abortion, it also prohibits public money from being spent on any plan that covers abortion even if paid for entirely with private premiums. Therefore, no plan that covers abortion services can operate in the Exchange unless its subscribers can afford to pay 100% of their premiums with no assistance from government “affordability credits.” As the vast majority of Americans in the Exchange will need to use some of these credits, it is highly unlikely any plan will want to offer abortion coverage (unless they decide to use it as a convenient proxy to discriminate against low- and moderate-income Americans who tend to have more health care needs and incur higher costs).

2. It includes only extremely narrow exceptions: Plans in the Exchange can only cover abortions in the case of rape or incest or “where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death.” Given insurance companies’ dexterity in denying claims, we can predict what they’ll do with that language. Cases that are excluded: where the health but not the life of the woman is threatened by the pregnancy, severe fetal abnormalities, mental illness or anguish that will lead to suicide or self-harm, and the numerous other reasons women need to have an abortion.

3. It allows for a useless abortion “rider”: Stupak and his allies claim his Amendment doesn’t ban abortion from the Exchange because it allows plans to offer and women to purchase extra, stand-alone insurance known as a rider to cover abortion services. Hopefully the irony of this is immediately apparent: Stupak wants women to plan for a completely unexpected event.

4. It allows for discrimination against abortion providers: Previously, the health care bill included an evenhanded provision that prohibited discrimination against any health care provider or facility “because of its willingness or unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.” Now, it only protects those who are unwilling to provide such services.

One in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime. Eighty-seven percent of employer plans offer abortion coverage. None of that will matter if the Senate takes its cues from the House. In every other way, this bill will expand access to health care. But for millions of women, they are about to lose coverage they currently have and often need.

Senate Republicans are demanding lengthy economic analyses of progressive clean energy policy, despite having spent careers voting for and against major energy legislation without such delay. This week the Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted its debate on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the economic impacts was not sufficiently thorough. Before they launched their boycott, committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) demanded a “full analysis” that satisfied their particular requirements:

As we’ve noted in previous letters and requests, getting a thorough, comprehensive economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill is an essential component of a meaningful legislative process. To accomplish that, EPA needs to do a series of model runs examining key provisions in the bill, with a number of sensitivity analyses on critical issues, including, among others, the availability of offsets, potential growth in nuclear power, and the extent of emissions reductions by developing countries. Anything less than a full analysis of this kind will be unacceptable.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chair of the Senate Republican Conference, piled on: “We want to participate in any clean energy bill, but we’re not willing to do that until we know what it costs.”

“It undermines the credibility of the process,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). “It’s not constructive to the process to proceed without knowing what it costs.”

On Monday, senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) joined Inhofe to demand a “complete and substantive analysis of any bill that attempts to address this issue” and “complete data and a thorough vetting” before the EPW Committee took action.

Yesterday, senators Gregg, Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter to the EPA saying, “We cannot support legislation” without “a clear picture of the bill’s impacts on our economy,” saying the EPA analysis needs to be completed “prior to any action in EPW.”

Their arguments fall flat, however, because these and other senators routinely voted on energy and global warming bills without any analysis. Since 2001, the Senate has debated at least eight energy or global warming bills where there was no analysis by EPA, Congressional Budget Office or the Energy Information Administration completed in advance of Committee deliberations. In several cases, there was no full analysis before the bill was voted on by the entire Senate:

– Energy Policy Act of 2002 (H.R. 4): EIA and CBO analysis conducted after both committee passage and full Senate consideration.

– Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S. 139): EIA analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.

– Energy Policy Act of 2003 (H.R. 4/S. 1005): EIA and CBO analysis conducted after committee passage. Limited CBO analysis completed before full Senate consideration, EIA analysis after.

– Climate Stewardship Act of 2005 (S. 342): No analysis conducted before full Senate consideration. No committee consideration.

– Energy Policy Act of 2005 (S. 10): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

– Energy Savings Act of 2007 (S. 1321): CBO analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

– America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191): EIA and EPA analysis completed after committee passage, before full Senate consideration.

– American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 (S. 1462): CBO analysis completed after committee passage.

Sen. Murkowski notably had no problem voting for the American Clean Energy Leadership Act this June, even though CBO analysis was only completed in September.

The fact that these and other bills moved through committees without any analysis sharply contrasts with the mountain of assessments of this year’s clean energy legislation. Full EPA, EIA, and CBO analyses were conducted of the House bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), and the EPA has conducted additional analysis of the Senate legislation. The Republicans’ interest in analysis is little more than an excuse for delay and defeat of clean energy legislation. In one of the boycotted hearings this week, Sen. Boxer noted that the “EPA has also indicated that this economic analysis reflects hundreds of thousands of pages of backup documentation” about the related House bill. Environmental Protection Agency Director of Congressional Affairs David McIntosh appeared before the Committee to reiterate that S. 1733 and H.R. 2454 were very similar:

[EPA economic] models are not designed to detect fine-grain details in this kind of legislation. So changes in the legislation at that level of detail will not even show up in the economic computer model. Second, it costs the EPA at least $135,000 and 1600 man-hours of time to run a bill through the agency’s full suite of economic computer models.

Nonetheless, Republican boycotters wanted EPA to spend five weeks and $135,000 of taxpayer money to conduct a redundant analysis before they would agree to a vote.

Today, the committee approved the Clean Energy Jobs Act on an 11-1 vote. Every Republican was absent without leave.

An interesting effort at the Pentagon caught my attention in recent weeks: the “Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Program.” Introduced earlier this year, the program raises broader questions about the emerging Obama doctrine on U.S. national security and the right balance of resources between military and non-military efforts.

Yochi Dreazen at the Wall Street Journal mentioned the program in this article earlier last month (calling it the “Afghan Hands”), and this recent article on the Pentagon’s website provides more details.

The program seeks to bring officers from all of the military services to serve for 3-5 years on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The overall aim is to promote greater focus and continuity on these countries as well as reduce the steep learning curve facing personnel on language and cultural issues when they land in Afghanistan. The program has 300 billets, including 121 new positions. Military personnel who enter the program would have their assignments focused on the Af-Pak region of the world –so after serving on the ground, they would rotate to positions in the Defense Department that are focused on this part of the world. The training would include several weeks of language training in Pashto, Dari, and Urdu, as well as combat training. And the Pentagon has stated that those who enter the program won’t be penalized in terms of advancement and seniority – easier said than done with the sometimes rigid bureaucratic procedures governing such a large group of personnel.

The idea for the program emanated from the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s review of Afghanistan strategy that General Stanley McChrystal chaired before he became the current top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Obama administration officials are careful to note the obvious – that this program could be scaled back if the commander-in-chief decides to move to a strategy that includes a more modest military footprint in Afghanistan. I doubt that the creation of this program signals all that much about what President Obama will decide in the coming weeks, beyond restating the obvious that we’re seeing a recalibration of more resources to Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the center of gravity for U.S. policy in the broader Middle East and South Asia is shifting eastward.

Two questions I had about the Af-Pak Hands Program:

1. Why did it take eight years to come up with this idea? I don’t find it a particularly innovative idea that America might want to know something about the countries where it sends tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines and spends billions of taxpayer dollars. There are more tactical questions such as whether a few weeks of language training are really enough – as an Arabic speaker, I know how hard it is to develop and then maintain the language skills. The creation and existence of this program demonstrates the gap that exists between what counterinsurgency (COIN) theorists often propose our troops should do and the actual capacity among our troops to implement those tasks.

2. What do Pentagon programs like these mean for the “smart power” ideas that are the threads of an emerging Obama doctrine on national security? The Obama administration’s top national security officials have all talked about the need to focus on investing in diplomacy and development as tools of national power – putting it under the label of smart power. And Afghanistan and Pakistan are probably the toughest test cases of this emerging Obama doctrine of smart power.

A program with 300 billets is not very large if one considers the overall military presence in the country – 68,000 at present, with thousands of supporting actors back here in the United States and in other parts of the Central Command. But the 300 positions are part of an effort framed as vital to a possible counterinsurgency strategy, and that number is almost a third of what the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development hopes to have on the ground in Afghanistan after the “civilian surge” is implemented (with no plans for additional personnel in the foreseeable future according to a recent statement by Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew.)

Perhaps this Af-Pak Hands program is a minor issue in the grander scheme of things – the long standing funding and power disparities between the Pentagon and civilian agencies are well known. The FY2010 budget requests for DOD vs. State are at a 12 to 1 ratio – about $660 billion for the Pentagon (including supplemental funding for the wars) versus $50 billion plus for foreign operations. And as Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy.com noted yesterday, the real Defense-State turf war is just getting underway on other fronts.

The Af-Pak Hands raises several important questions –what’s the right balance of military versus civilian agencies in developing a “smart power” strategy? If diplomacy is the “vanguard” of this new approach to security, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued in her confirmation hearing, then what happens when there aren’t simply enough diplomats or development assistance professionals to answer the call? How much should the military continue to play a role in implementing development assistance and economic reconstruction? Can other agencies offer an alternative? Does the State Department have a similar program to assign personnel to 3-5 year slots focused on these countries? If not, why not?

Speaking at the New America Foundation earlier this fall, Retired General Anthony Zinni sparked a minor but interesting debate by proposing the creation of a new military command in the Pentagon to advance the political and economic reconstruction efforts in places like Afghanistan. He offered this idea out of frustration – saying essentially that the civilian agencies like the State Department and USAID aren’t moving quickly enough to implement the “smart power” ideas he supported on a previous think tank commission.

The Af-Pak Hands program is a minor initiative in these broader debates. But depending on one’s perspective, the Af-Pak Hands program either represents yet another sign of the continued militarization of U.S. foreign policy or a pragmatic effort to fill policy implementation gaps left behind by civilian agencies that lack the resources and capacity to deliver.

From the satellite mapping of atrocities and data-driven prosecution of war criminals to the use of social networking to mobilize against repressive regimes, advances in science and technology hold unprecedented potential to make human rights a reality across the world.

A new report from the Center for American Progress, “New Tools for Old Traumas,” calls on President Obama — recently dubbed “Scientist in Chief” for his unprecedented commitment to research and development — to lead efforts to use these new tools to bring human rights perpetrators to justice; halt ongoing atrocities; and empower victims to fight against injustice. Cell phone companies have crucial roles to play as well because part of the complexity of this issue is ensuring that these tools do not foster human rights atrocities as well as stop them.

Today, the mobile phone that an activist uses to mobilize protesters in Tehran is made with tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold, whose mining in eastern Congo has fueled the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

All electronic devises — from satellites to smart phones — require these specialized metals. Tin is used to affix components to circuit boards. Tantalum is a vital element of capacitors that store electrical charge. And tungsten is a key ingredient in vibrate alert functions and LCD displays.

Unfortunately, the mines in eastern Congo that produce these mineral ores fuel and support armed groups on all sides of the conflict. These groups — including the Rwandan Hutu rebels who helped commit the 1994 genocide and Congo’s ill-disciplined and predatory armed forces — exploit impoverished miners and extort exorbitant ‘taxes’ from this trade. They use the profits to finance some of the worst human rights abuses in the world, including an epidemic of sexual violence that makes eastern Congo the most dangerous on the globe to be a woman or a girl.

Eastern Congo is the sight of the worst abuses in the supply chain for electronics products, but it is by no means the only one. From extraction in mining to unsafe and exploitative conditions in manufacturing facilities in Asia, the intricate supply chains that produce these products are opaque and electronics companies have yet to fully assume responsibility for the behavior of their suppliers or their suppliers’ suppliers.

These tools, which have such potential for fostering free expression and abating atrocities, must no longer be used to fuel this violence.

Last week, Washington took a small but important step forward on this issue. The Defense Authorization legislation that President Obama signed into law contains a requirement for the U.S. government to support efforts to map the militarized mining sites of eastern Congo. This will help to increase transparency of the trade and aid efforts to distinguish between mines controlled by armed groups and those that are free of conflict. But government cannot solve this problem on its own — the makers of mobile phones and other electronics products have a central role to play.

Electronics companies should commit resources to trace supply chains back to the point of extraction, conduct independent audits and spot check assurances for fraud, and ultimately certify electronics products as conflict-free.

As daily consumers and users of laptops and cell phones, average citizens too must demonstrate that we are willing to pay to make this happen. Give your mobile phone company a call, and tell them, “I want to buy a conflict-free phone.”

Ensuring that these products do no harm will require an ethical revolution in how we manage the intricate and globalized supply chains for electronics. We should care as much for how our technology is made as we do for the pleasure and convenience we derive from using it.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for this week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Late Friday, Inhofe spokesman Matt Dempsey announced “Republicans will be forced not to show up” at the markup hearing scheduled for Tuesday. Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

– As Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) through the House Energy and Commerce Committee this June, committee ranking member Joe Barton (R-TX) employed multiple parliamentary tricks to “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Democrats responded to these “nefarious stall tactics” by calling Barton’s bluff, even hiring a speed reader.

– House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) filibustered the final vote on the ACES Act for hours by reading the text of the bill on the House floor.

– Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me:

– Despite the fact that Senator Inhofe has been working to orchestrate this obstruction for a week now, Republicans are pretending the effort is being led by the two moderate Republicans on the committee. Politico handled the stenography, writing that the “boycott effort is being led by the two most moderate Republican members on the committee: Sens. George Voinovich of Ohio and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.” This is absolutely not true. Voinovich and Alexander have both indicated a willingness to lend bipartisan support to the legislation. Their statements in support of Inhofe’s obstruction are an indication that they are showing deference to the ranking member on the committee, nothing more. Again, this thing has Inhofe written all over it.

– Senator Inhofe, of course, will never support the bill regardless of any economic modeling the EPA does. He does not even believe that humans are responsible for climate change. In his opposition to health care legislation he was at least honest enough to say so up front, telling a town hall in August, “I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways.” The same is true of the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill: Inhofe has no intention of learning anything about it or voting for it. His only intention is to gum up the works and delay delay delay.

– As Senator Boxer has pointed out, Inhofe’s stated reason for concern here is absurd. The two-week EPA analysis of Kerry-Boxer came on top of the five-week review of the House-passed bill — and the two bills are “90 percent similar,” says Boxer. “We’re not going to waste taxpayer money because someone drew a line in the sand.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has called Inhofe’s gambit exactly what it is: “theatrics.”

This is nothing more than a shameless attempt to obstruct and delay clean energy legislation. Both on the EPW Committee, and in the full Senate, the numbers are on the side of passage. Senator Inhofe knows this, so he is throwing one last hail-mary in an attempt to stall the process. I don’t expect better from him, but it is still pretty pathetic.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Glenn Beck deny global warming.

In his book “Crossing the Next Meridian,” University of Colorado law professor Charles F. Wilkinson called the timber, mining, grazing and water development interests who for too long dictated how our western public lands should be managed the “lords of yesterday.”

Western lawmakers with their politics still stuck in a 19th-century time warp continue to do the bidding of the lords of yesterday, who now include big energy interests. Witness the letter 16 House and Senate Republicans sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar protesting his secretarial order creating a Climate Change Response Council that is designed to coordinate efforts among Interior agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cope with the impacts of climate change. The new council, the lawmakers said, represents an end-run around Congress and could be used to stifle oil and gas development and other activities on western lands on behalf of “special interest groups with narrow agendas”:

Businesses in the West are worried about potential court challenges and administrative action. These new rules will allow special interest groups with narrow agendas to block all existing and future activities on federal lands in the name of climate change.

Of course, the “special interest groups” these politicians attack are the Western people, with the “narrow agendas” of preserving their land and way of life against the ravages of uncontrolled development and runaway global warming.

Leading the charge in this effort to ignore the new realities of a changing climate is Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), one of the Senate’s leading opponents of legislation to regulate carbon pollution. Barrasso represents Wyoming, the nation’s top coal producer, and is the chair of the recently formed Senate Western Caucus, a latter-day reincarnation of the 1970s “Sage Brush Rebellion” that fought federal oversight of Western lands, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Barrasso has previously temporarily blocked the Obama administration’s choice to head the air office at the EPA, fought the establishment of a CIA climate change center, and accused the EPA of “silencing” a dissenting voice to its finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health.

Salazar, whose department oversees public lands comprising about one-fifth of the U.S., most of it in the West, issued his order on climate change planning in mid-September. It sets up a council made up of senior officials to coordinate the department’s response to climate change, and establishes eight regional climate change response centers and a network of conservation cooperatives to work with states, localities and the public in developing strategies to cope with global warming impacts.

Barrasso and his co-signers see this as a conspiracy to get through administrative fiat what the Obama administration may not be able to get through climate legislation. “These regulations will hit the Western United States the hardest,” they charge in their letter. “Westerners will suffer from higher energy and fuel costs or simply be put out of work.”

If Barrasso et al. are genuinely worried about the western U.S. being hard hit, they should take a closer look at what climate change is already doing to the region. In the state of Wyoming alone, a mountain pine beetle epidemic spurred by climate change had claimed 1.2 million acres of forest by the end of 2008, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Elsewhere in the West, declining snowpack and earlier spring runoff will mean the Colorado River, the lifeblood for some 25 million Westerners, will be unable to meet demand as much as 90 percent of the time by mid-century, according to a recent study.

The Senate is hard at work crafting legislation to create clean energy jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fight climate change. I am very proud of what we’ve accomplished on the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act so far and I wanted to let you all know about the progress we’ve made. I want to point out how critical it is that we reach out to folks beyond the blogosphere to let them know why this legislation will benefit all Americans.

We have to face the fact that curbing global warming isn’t the top priority for every American. When I talk to folks back in Oregon who may be skeptical about the scientific consensus on the threat of global warming, I take the opportunity to point out that there is a consensus among Americans when it comes to the many benefits of this legislation:

– This bill will create jobs.
– It will make our air cleaner.
– And it will reduce our dangerous dependence on oil imported from countries like Saudia Arabia and Venezuela.

These are goals we can all get behind. When Americans are presented with the choice of jobs, clean air and self-sufficiency versus a stagnant economy, dirty air and billions sent overseas to purchase foreign fuel, it’s an easy choice.

Senators Kerry and Boxer have put together an excellent framework that adds up to a comprehensive plan that would create a number of new renewable energy and energy efficiency programs. In addition, the bill includes a pollution reduction and investment program that would go beyond what the House proposed, to cut pollution 20 percent by 2020 and more than 80 percent by 2050. It will reduce dependence on foreign oil by helping cities and states plan for cleaner and more efficient transportation infrastructure that reduces the pollution coming from cars and trucks and by investing in clean vehicle technology and electric vehicle deployment.

That’s the overview of why we must pass this bill. But the details are important too:

– For the first time, states and the biggest metro areas would factor greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption into their transportation infrastructure plans, and they would plan to reduce emissions and oil dependence. You’re familiar with an environmental impact statement – this would be like a carbon-use impact statement. This is particularly significant, because we know that in addition to electrifying vehicles and using advanced biofuels, we need to be building infrastructure that gives families and workers more options for getting to work than driving alone.

– We increase the allocation for energy efficiency and renewable energy deployment from 9.5 percent of allowances in the House bill to almost 11 percent. That represents a significant increase in investment and it’s appropriate because meeting our energy challenges needs to start with aggressively deploying the energy efficiency and renewable energy measures that are available right now. Within this program, we have funding for deploying large-scale renewable energy and smaller-scale technologies people can use in their homes and businesses. We include specific support for thermal energy – the often overlooked area of efficient and renewable heating and cooling technologies, like biomass, cogeneration, geothermal, and district energy. We are continuing to work on a proposal to require local electric utilities to use a portion of their allowances for energy efficiency investments.

– We also add programs to make sure working foresters and farmers can participate in solving our energy and climate challenges. We devote 2 percent of allowances to incentive programs for agriculture and forestry operations that can reduce emissions or increase sequestration – and those emissions reductions are in addition to what the pollution reduction program requires. We are also working hard to get the right definition of biomass; one that follows the best science so that expanding the use of biomass sources truly produces net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, while ensuring that our working farms and forests can be a productive part of the clean energy economy.

We at the Environment and Public Works committee are in the middle of hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs Act right now. When our committee meets to consider, amend, and vote on the bill, as early as next week, I will be working with my colleagues to continue pursuing all these goals. And momentum is on our side. The House already acted. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee has already recommended policies on renewable energy and energy efficiency measures.

As we move forward in the fight to pass effective clean energy jobs legislation, supporters of the status quo are arguing loudly against acting to build a clean energy economy. They tell us this action is too complicated and uncertain. But I don’t see it as complicated: We have a choice to either take on this critical challenge or continue with a status quo energy policy. Fortunately, more and more Americans, and leaders from all walks of life are seeing the clear choice and are joining us in working to embrace a clean energy future. Companies from Apple to Nike are standing up to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for opposing progress. Labor unions are joining with environmentalists, faith leaders are joining with military leaders, all in support of action to curb global warming, rebuild our economy, and take control of our energy future.

To me, the choice is simple and I will continue to do everything in my power to help deliver strong legislation that will get our country on the right path to a clean energy future.

The topic on everyone’s lips over the last three months has been health care: how the system will work, who will benefit from it, and how we will pay for it.

Congress is now considering important tax reforms that would not only help pay for health insurance reform, but also close offshore tax haven loopholes, which force American taxpayers to make up for over $100 billion per year in lost revenue.

One of the most vocal opposition groups to this reform has been the coalition called Promote America’s Competitive Edge, or PACE.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) conducted an investigation into corporations who work with PACE and support their positions to better understand why it is so important to them to fight these tax reforms and maintain the status quo.

U.S. PIRG found that a group of 12 prominent corporations that have signed onto PACE letters to Congress rank among the top 100 largest publicly traded contractors that also maintain a significant presence in tax haven countries. In 2008, these 12 corporations received over $10 billion in government contracts, and they collectively have 443 subsidiaries in tax haven countries, where they pay minimal, if any, taxes.

So, why is the status quo important to these “dirty dozen”?

Because currently, these dozen corporations generate profits on taxpayer dollars through lucrative government contracts without contributing back in taxes. They leave that unwelcome burden to other businesses and ordinary taxpayers to pick up.

Maintaining the status quo is hard work. Thankfully for these companies, they have various means to influence our politicians. The same 12 corporations spent nearly $6 million in Political Action Committee (PAC) expenditures for 2008, over $37 million lobbying in 2008, and over $33 million so far in 2009. (See U.S. PIRG Report)

“We’re going to spend whatever it takes,” Brigitte Schmidt Gwyn of the Business Roundtable –- a member of the PACE coalition –- told Politico earlier this year when asked about defeating tax reforms.

In our electoral system, politicians are forced to endlessly reach out to major donors, like the 12 we cite here, to keep their coffers full. These corporate entities know that contributing to campaigns and lobbying officials can help reap valuable dividends in policy decisions. It’s a damaging cycle for average taxpayers, who pick up the tab for corporations that use tax havens.

Tax reform that addresses bank secrecy and tax schemes is a common sense solution to the loss of billions of dollars each year due to tax haven abuse. When individuals and corporations abuse the system, the rest of us — ordinary taxpayers and Main Street businesses — must pick up the tab. The necessary reforms can be found in the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act S. 506, H.R. 1265. This is a comprehensive bill that addresses offshore shell companies, includes strong enforcement mechanisms and calls for common sense reporting. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009, introduced this week, contains a weaker subset of these reforms, and focuses more narrowly on holding foreign banks and corporations accountable for their clients.

We should make it law that transactions must have some real economic purpose other than the reduction of tax liability, and permanently eliminate the appeal of moving “headquarters” to a post office box in the Cayman Islands.

As important as the above reforms would be in revenue saved for Americans, we also need long-term campaign finance reform, including a voluntary system of small donor-focused fair elections. (The types of reform that are required can be found in the Fair Elections Now Act S. 152, H.R. 1826). When candidates for Congress can run for office without relying on large contributions and big money bundlers, they will be forever freed from a corrosive system in which big business is seen to dictate public policy.

Reforms to give taxpayers a greater voice in electing officials, to give lawmakers greater incentives to put taxpayers first, and to level the playing field for Main Street businesses and Main Street families are long overdue.

We need to slow the PACE of these types of corporate activities and push for real reforms to our system.

Today’s news that Iran has changed its mind and rejected a deal to send three-quarters of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia no doubt will be heralded by opponents of engagement as proof that Iran is just stalling for time while it builds a nuclear weapon, so let the sanctions and bombs fly.

A much more plausible explanation, however, is that Tehran may have regarded the deal as a little too good (for the West) to be true. Think about it for just a moment from Tehran’s perspective, a feat of imagination that eludes most neocons. Under this deal, Iran would give away three-quarters of its biggest bargaining chip in the nuclear talks (its LEU stockpile) at the outset of talks. What Iran would get in return would be a status-quo negative: a tacit agreement that the West would not try to bomb or cripple Iran with sanctions for at least a few more months, during which time the West of course would demand further concessions.

I’ve never bargained with Tehran. But I did work as a trade negotiator at the Office of the US Trade Representative and remember well the mantra we practically lived and breathed by in trade talks: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” The deal that Tehran just walked away from would have been a major departure from that rule, in the West’s favor. From public reports, what has not yet been agreed — or even seriously discussed — is the ultimate question of whether Iran, at the end of the day, will be allowed to enrich uranium to low levels under comprehensive IAEA safeguards, as Iran has maintained for six years that it has the right to do, and is determined to do.

With that huge issue still out there, unresolved, why should Iran make major concessions now? Is it really so totally incomprehensible that Iran might regard (a) a tacit western promise not to club Iran for a few more months as a less-than-adequate quid pro quo for (b) a very tangible concession on the disposition of Iran’s uranium stockpile? The promise will be much easier to reverse than the stockpile will be to replace.

Does this mean we can be confident that Iran is bargaining in good faith and has no weapons program? Of course not. But if we don’t trust Iran, the thing to do is not to fuss and fume over Iran’s open-safeguarded enrichment to low levels and Natanz. What we need to do is get into place, as rapidly as possible, a comprehensive safeguards agreement that applies nationwide and gives us the maximum chance of making sure there aren’t more clandestine facilities out there. Yet right now, while all eyes focus on Natanz, we have little or no reliable means of knowing or verifying what is going on across the rest of Iran.

The stockpile at Natanz may well be a red herring in any case. Recent reports suggest that it may be so contaminated with molybdenum as to be useless for high enrichment. If so, this means there is plenty of time to negotiate a deal with Iran that puts everything on the table and deals with it as a package under that usual maxim of all negotiation: Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

Meanwhile, it clearly is disconcerting that Iran’s designated negotiator, Soltanieh, signed a deal on which he could not deliver his bosses in Tehran. Soltanieh is a relatively low-level official in Iran and this experience will raise serious questions about whether he is a credible and acceptable interlocutor for the West in future talks. At his point, he probably is not.

But that doesn’t mean you call off talks. What is needed from the Obama Administration now is cool heads, steady hands, and the patience and fortitude to ignore the hysterical screaming from the John Boltons and Liz Cheneys of the world — while patiently negotiating a long-term deal with Iran that benefits both sides.

*The views expressed herein were written in Mr. Parker’s personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the views of other contributors to the American Foreign Policy Project.

The burning of coal and oil is killing 20,000 Americans each year, a new Congressional report has found. After the Senate completes its work on health insurance reform, it will have the chance to pass major legislation to further improve our nation’s health, with the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs Act. The National Research Council (NRC), an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, recently found that the United States is paying a heavy price in health and lives lost for its dependence on fossil fuels. In the newly released report, “The Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use,” the NRC explores the “externalities” of energy use, costs that are not factored into its market price. Requested by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the report monetizes these unseen energy costs at $120 billion annually by tracing the full cycle of our energy use—extraction, development, deployment, and waste:

Based on the results of external-cost studies published in the 1990s, we focused especially on air pollution. In particular, we evaluated effects related to emissions of particulate matter (PM), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and oxides of nitrogen (NOx), which form criteria air pollutants. We monetized effects of those pollutants on human health, grain crop and timber yields, building materials, recreation, and visibility of outdoor vistas. Health damages, which include premature mortality and morbidity (such as chronic bronchitis and asthma), constituted the vast majority of monetized damages, with premature mortality being the single largest health-damage category.

Shockingly, the NRC’s estimates for the death toll of a school bus worth of Americans every day are very conservative — a 2004 report by the Clean Air Task Force estimated 24,000 people died prematurely due to coal pollution alone.

Most of the hidden costs of energy use come from coal-fired electricity generation ($62 billion a year) and motor vehicle transportation ($56 billion a year). The NRC did not take into account the cost of global warming pollution, including only the estimates for some of the non-climatic costs imposed by our energy use, specifically those costs related to health, agriculture, and built infrastructure. Although other pernicious side-effects of our dependence on dirty fuels — such as ecosystem disruption, mercury contamination, and national security risks — were examined in the report, they were excluded from the final cost figures.

Comparatively, the report shows that renewable energy such as wind, solar, geothermal power costs us very little in external damages. If we cannot direct our use of energy towards those forms that do not carry hidden burdens, we better hope that Americans have good health insurance.

Roger Beachy

Lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House,” President Obama assured us upon inauguration. And yet he just nominated to two key posts “Big Ag” industry power brokers, who come straight from the chemical pesticide and biotechnology sectors. While they may not be registered as lobbyists, both men come from organizations representing powerful agribusiness interests, which every year spend millions of dollars in lobbying to advance their companies’ chemical and transgenic products.

Obama has tapped Roger Beachy, long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto’s nonprofit arm) as chief of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Created by the 2008 Farm Bill, NIFA is the new means of awarding the USDA’s external research dollars. As the director of NIFA (a nomination that doesn’t require congressional approval), Beachy will oversee the distribution of nearly $500 million in grants and other research funding. Sustainable agriculture initiatives are likely to suffer, as research dollars are awarded to projects that promote Beachy’s vested interests in biotechnology.

Islam Siddiqui

Islam Siddiqui, currently the VP of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife USA, was nominated to the post of Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. Why the president would nominate someone from the group that infamously chided the First Lady for refusing to use pesticides on the White House garden is a bit of a mystery. This critical position is designed to use free trade agreements to open up foreign markets for U.S. agriculture goods — in the past, mostly to promote chemical-intensive, genetically modified products that undermine local food cultures in developing countries.

It’s crucial that the Senate Finance Committee hears from public witnesses while investigating his past roles. At CropLife International, Siddiqui led an initiative to weaken restrictions against fertilizers and pesticides, as part of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations. He also served as the senior agricultural trade adviser during the Clinton administration, and pressed for getting genetically modified crops and seeds approved for commercial use in the United States.

Now the United States will continue its efforts to export the worst aspects of U.S. agriculture to other countries, many of which are deeply wary of genetically modified seeds and the impacts of toxic pesticides on their communities. Mirroring those concerns, a comprehensive United Nations and World Bank- sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has said that one of the best ways to feed the world is to increase investments in agro-ecological science and farming.

We don’t need more genetically modified seeds. What we need is enforcement of antitrust laws to break up monopoly control of the global food system, and fairer — not “freer” — trade arrangements to overcome poverty and hunger around the world.

The Obama administration has made tremendous strides towards encouraging the growth of the local food movement, and its connections to human health and ecological impacts. The White House organic garden and the farmers market spearheaded by Michelle Obama are important symbolic gestures, as is the USDA’s new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative.

However, these latest appointments of industry insiders to two of the most influential offices that will shape U.S. food and agricultural policy at home and abroad call into question just how committed the Obama administration is to promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing hunger in the developing world.

In a press conference this morning, choreographed to show a unified front after months of internal bickering, Secretary of State Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and Sudan special envoy Scott Gration released the official U.S. policy on Sudan.

For the past seven months, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, Maj. General Scott Gration, has led the U.S. response to Sudan’s multiple challenges –- ongoing humanitarian crisis and political deadlock in Darfur, growing tension between North and South over a 2005 peace deal that is largely unimplemented, and increasing violence in the South in which Khartoum seemingly has a hand. Absent an official policy line, General Gration has had the leeway to implement an approach that many longtime Sudan watchers feel is inappropriately soft on Khartoum. (He even described his strategy as one in which he would hand out “cookies and gold stars” to encourage Khartoum to abide by its commitments.)

Fortunately, the policy paper released today demands accountability and verifiable progress on a wide range of issues before incentives would be deployed — although these benchmarks are not spelled out in detail.

Now is when things get tricky.

The evidence from Gration’s tenure so far — and even more importantly, the heinous 20-year track-record of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, or NCP — is unambiguous: Khartoum is not a partner that can be cajoled into behaving in the interests of its people. U.S. diplomacy toward Sudan has tilted dangerously in the direction of appeasement of the NCP headed by a man wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

The policy on paper looks solid and seems to take into consideration recent lessons learned. Significantly, it states that “assessments of progress and decisions regarding incentives and disincentives must not be based on process-related accomplishments (i.e. the signing of a MOU or the issuance of a set of visas), but rather based on verifiable changes in conditions on the ground.” The policy on paper also blatantly shifts away from earlier indications that the U.S. approach would quietly ignore past state-sponsored atrocities in the interest of moving forward. For the millions of victims in Darfur and for the leaders who believed their culpability for past crimes could negotiated away in exchange for cooperation on counter-terrorism efforts, the acknowledgment that “accountability for genocide and atrocities is necessary for reconciliation and lasting peace” is critically important.

The new policy also calls for more formalized involvement of senior level administration officials, a welcome shift that will ensure that the day-to-day diplomacy on Sudan matches what senior administration officials have agreed to on paper.

Indeed, today’s policy roll out is a first step in changing the tenor of U.S. diplomacy toward Sudan. The de-facto strategy up until now has been deeply problematic, giving President Bashir and his close-knit circle of advisers (many of whom rose to power alongside Bashir after the 1989 coup) the chance to stall and make excuses, while fomenting violence and undermining peace efforts behind-the-scenes.

Allowing the status quo in Sudan to continue is a recipe for a return to war between the North and the South. If the Obama administration doesn’t build an international coalition around this policy, doesn’t recognize the dangers of the increasing attacks in the South and the ruling party’s efforts to stir up violence ahead of the South’s self-determination vote in 2011, and is not willing to use multilateral and unilateral pressures (which have a history of working) early enough to make a difference, Sudan will descend into war, with disastrous consequences for broader stability in the Horn of Africa. U.S. policy objectives, so sensible on paper, will go up in smoke as Sudan burns again.

In his speech last month, President Obama explained that his ideal health care reform plan would include a cap on out of pocket costs because “in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.” A recent study has found that health care costs contributed to 62 percent of bankruptcies in 2007 – despite the fact that three quarters of bankruptcy filers owned health insurance. The President’s call to action could not be more timely.

To its credit, Congress has taken strong steps to address this issue. In addition to providing subsidies to low-income Americans and mandating that insurance companies cover a certain percentage of a consumer’s total health care costs, both the House and Senate’s reform bills include provisions that would cap family out-of-pocket costs. Once this cap is exceeded, the health insurer would be required to pick up the tab for any remaining health care expenses.

The three versions of the House’s bill, H.R. 3200, would cap yearly in-network out-of -pocket costs at $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a family. Similarly, both bills currently being considered in the Senate would cap these costs at $5,950 for an individual and $11,900 for a family. While these caps are considerably better than the status quo –many employer-provided plans lack any sort of cap on out-of-pocket costs – they will likely leave many Americans vulnerable. In particular, working class families with incomes just high enough to disqualify them for subsidies would be at heightened risk to accumulate huge medical expenses.

For example, a high school teacher making approximately 500 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), or $54,150, would not qualify for subsidies and could pay up to 10 percent of his or her income on out-of-pocket costs if the House’s cap is adopted. The situation is similarly problematic for a family of three making 400 percent of FPL, or $73,240. Such a family could pay up to 14 percent of its income on out-of-pocket costs.

So what would an effective out-of-pocket cap look like? Earlier this summer, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Elizabeth Edwards noted in testimony before my own House Judiciary Committee that “even moderate levels of out-of-pocket spending relative to family income…created medical bill problems.” A study from the Center for Studying Health Systems Change found that financial pressures on families from medical bills increased sharply when out-of-pocket spending for health care services exceeded just 2.5 percent of family income. These statements and studies seem to reaffirm what most of us have known all along: that in these difficult economic times, asking cash-strapped Americans to pay thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs is simply not an option.

During a recent hearing exploring some of the problems associated with our nation’s profit-oriented approach to health care, I asked a panel of executives from some of the largest health care companies in the nation – United Health Care Group, Wellpoint, Aetna, Humana, and CIGNA – if they were concerned about the effect medical debt is having on American families. To their credit, several of them nodded yes. Yet, not one of them offered a defense or tried to explain the business practices promoted by their companies that have wrecked havoc on the lives of their fellow citizens.

The deafening silence emanating from those executives demonstrates why it falls on the shoulders of Democrats in Congress to help the approximately 25 million Americans categorized as “underinsured.” It is abundantly clear that the insurance companies and their allies will not do so voluntarily. Caps of any kind are a direct affront to their business model: charge as much as you can, while approving as little care as possible.

Representative Dianne Watson and I are currently circulating a letter to House Leadership that may offer a way forward. In it, we argue that out-of-pocket costs should be capped at the 2.5 percent of a family’s adjusted gross income recommended by the Center for Studying Health System Change. It is clear to us that, unless they are strengthened, the caps currently being considered will likely be insufficient to eliminate medical bankruptcies and the care rationing that occurs when a family has to balance financial health against physical health.

The buzzword on Capitol Hill these days is “affordability.” However we go about achieving it – be it with subsidies, a robust public health insurance option, or, ideally, through a publicly funded, privately financed single-payer system – the end goal of reform is to make sure that access to health insurance and access to health care are synonymous. Enacting a progressive, yearly out-of-pocket cap will be an important part of reaching this critical goal. Leaders in the House and Senate have made a good start; now they must complete the job by making the idea of affordability a reality.

As President Obama meets with advisers to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, questions abound regarding the legitimacy of the government the U.S. is trying to support. How the debacle of the August 20 presidential election is resolved could very well provide the answers the administration is looking for.

Looking at Afghanistan’s recent election, it appears that sometimes the remedy can be worse than the ailment. While the ailment — a fraudulent election — threatens to undermine the credibility of the country’s democratic experiment, the remedy — a run-off election — may in fact inflict greater harm. While prevailing wisdom demands a second vote, is it really in Afghanistan’s best interest?

The case for a second round is strong. The Election Complaints Commission (ECC), the joint Afghan-international body charged with investigating electoral irregularities, has ordered recounts at more than 2,500 polling stations after it found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud.” The European Union alleged that up to 1.5 million ballots out of 6 million could be fraudulent.

Senior officials from the international community have also expressed serious reservations about the legitimacy of the election. Most importantly, Afghan voters themselves are questioning the credibility of the election, sapping what little faith they have left in the current government.

Popular attitudes are marked by a widespread belief that the Independent Election Commission (IEC), which oversees the ECC and whose senior officials are all appointees of current President Hamid Karzai, is anything but independent. It appeared that the ECC was taking its independent mandate seriously until it decided to examine only a statistical sample of contested ballots: just 10% of the total. This may lead many Afghans to perceive the work of the ECC as biased.

Should the ECC find that fraud did not significantly alter the results of the election, President Karzai would avoid a run-off. But given the public’s discontent with the electoral process, he would enter his second term in office with a serious legitimacy deficit. Considering the circumstances, it is difficult to imagine how an administration elected in this fashion would be able to govern effectively.

It would seem clear, then, that a run-off election is necessary to restore confidence in the election and in the administration that emerges from it. Upon a closer look, however, a second round of voting may actually lead to a more acute political crisis.

A run-off would either have to be held by mid-November, after which severe weather conditions prohibit polling in remote areas, or wait until the snow melts in April. In the first instance, by the time the IEC makes the official decision, there would only be a few weeks to prepare for the election. While ballots are already being printed for a second round of voting, more than 100,000 polling officials need to be hired and trained, materials mobilized, and voters educated.

Above all, a pre-winter run-off would mean another election in an environment plagued by the very insecurity that enabled fraud to occur in the first place. Observation of the polls would be impossible in the areas that need it most, while intimidation of voters, particularly women, would be widespread. It is unlikely that the deficiencies that marred the first round could be adequately addressed. In other words, there is little reason to believe a second round would be any less flawed than the first.

The remaining option is to hold the run-off election in April, once weather conditions again allow for nationwide polling. Presumably, that would provide electoral authorities time to tackle the problems and ensure a more credible vote. But this raises a separate set of issues.

President Karzai has already remained in office five months past the expiration of his five-year mandate. Extending his term past the winter — basically giving him an additional year as president — may precipitate a constitutional crisis. An April run-off would also compromise planning and resources for the parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall of 2010. Finally, delaying the second round until after the winter would also give Taliban insurgents the time to regroup, resulting in a greater risk of violence.

While prevailing wisdom suggests a second round of voting, it remains unclear which prescription will do no harm. Since an ideal option is not available, it is imperative that authorities choose the path that will be perceived as the most legitimate by the people of Afghanistan. Making that the measure of success would do wonders to establish the credibility Afghanistan so desperately needs for continued support from the U.S. and its allies.