Hi everyone,
I had a great time today speaking along with other local experts on several of the issues left languishing since President Bush accomplished his mission five years ago. The inimitable Senator Bates served as MC and my co-panelists were all terrific speakers. It was my job to address the current administrations environmental shortcomings and highlight Senator Obama's environmental agenda. I think it went really well, and I'm going to tune into the local news tonight to see if we made it on, as two Medford television stations sent camerapersons.
In my speech - which was supposed to be 5 minutes, but may have been a touch longer! - I talked about when I first saw Senator Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and how I told anyone who would listen that he'd be our president some day. I don't think any of us thought that day would be coming up in about six months!
I think the biggest difference between Senator Obama and President Bush is that President Bush has always been by, for, and all about benefitting big business. Big Business raised his election money and in return he has paid those special interests back in innumerable ways. This isn't to say that President Bush is bought and paid for; rather, President Bush is by nature and by nurture inclined to favor the wealthy over the poor and the needs of business over the needs of individual citizens.
Compare that to Senator Obama, born in a single parent home, raised largely by his grandparents and growing up without the advantages that wealth brings, he nonetheless found his way to Harvard Law and financial success. But his success didn't arise because he took that law degree and went to work for a Wall Street firm. Instead, he took that degree back to Chicago where he used it to further his efforts to organize the socially, economically and electorally disenfranchised. His wealth came instead from the success of his writing. And that success came from his unmistakeable thoughtfulness and insight. Barack Obama is by nature and nurture inclined to favor the underdog over the favorite, the work-a-day citizen over the CEO.
These predilections are reflected in the policies these politicians pursue.
President Bush installed a timber industry lobbyist as the head of the Forest Service. Among his first actions in the White House was to withdraw from Kyoto and to weaken drinking water standards. His Clear Skies Initiative sought to dirty our skies to help the coal industry; his Healthy Forest Initiative sought to cut our public forests for short-term profit. He wanted drilling in ANWAR; he defunded the Superfund; he slow walked endangered species petitions; he sent his Justice Department out to argue that the EPA cannot regulate green house gasses, and when even his own Supreme Court shot that down he had the EPA block the states from doing it.
Senator Obama, on the other hand, has and will continue to do right by the average citizen. When he was in Medford a few weeks ago, he talked knowledgeably about local environmental issues that most national politicians have surely never heard of. He favors protection of old-growth, government funds to purchase sensitive lots of private property, prioritizing salmon recovery and negotiating a long-term solution to the county payments morass. Nationally, Senator Obama favors private/public cooperation to protect land that has gone under-protected and over-developed. He has proposed $150b investment in green research that projects to create 5m jobs. He wants to ensure that 25% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025, and that we reduce our greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050. He gets to these goals in sensible ways - by increasing efficiency and conservation. Senator Obama will return real, objective science to our environmental policy.
What's more, he knows he has no choice. His campaign, as all campaigns are, is beholden to its donors. Only in this case, instead of PACs and industry big-wig bundlers, Senator Obama's campaign is beholden to its nearly 1.5m individual citizen donors. He owes us big time, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
In preparing for my speech, I learned the following amazing fact. Jackson County, our obscure county in Southwest Oregon, is already in for $200m for the war in Iraq. When you stop and think about the teachers that could pay, or the libraries it could staff, or the healthcare it could provide, you really begin to understand why we need new leadership.
Real change has always required the dedicated efforts of the American people. The governemnt of a lazy and disengaged populous will always govern in a lazy and a disengaged way. Never in my lifetime, and I turn 34 this Sunday, have I had a President who demands that I participate in my own political destiny. I am hungry for that engagement; I am starving for it. And it makes my heart swell with pride that so many people this election feel that same hunger. People of all ages, ethnicities and even political parties (we've worked hard to get nearly 32,000 voters to reregister as Democrats in Oregon) are coming together to demand better government. We're learning to take control of our future, demand better from all levels of government, and now that we're awake, there is no way we're going back to bed until the work is done.
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