A thank you lunch
Vice President Biden hosted members of the Middle Class Task Force recently for lunch to thank them for their willingness to serve on the middle class task force and to develop the agenda for the first Task Force meeting on Green Jobs.
At the lunch were: Vice President Biden; Education Secretary Arne Duncan; Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood; Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack; Labor Secretary-Designate Hilda Solis; Senior Advisor and Acting Chief of Staff for the Department of Commerce Rick Wade; Director of Domestic Policy Council Melody Barnes; Director of National Economic Council Larry Summers; Director of Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag; Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors Christina Romer; Executive Director of the Middle Class Task Force and Chief Economist for the Vice President Jared Bernstein; and Domestic Policy Advisor to the Vice President Terrell McSweeny.
The Middle Class Task Force is gearing up for its first meeting next Friday, February 27th in Philadelphia on Green Jobs as a Pathway to a Strong Middle Class. Stay tuned for more details on the first meeting.
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Green jobs task force. This is very promising to move the US to a more sustainable, cleaner and greener future.
ReplyDeleteWith vision, even in hard economic times, a shift to create green jobs in the energy sector, wind & solar, would contribute greatly to reducing the overall greenhouse emissions from heavy polluting coal fired power stations.
Bob -
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on the great work you are doing!
The following is one way to get action.
Namaste,
Bill Clift
NEW FREEDOM
GUS SPETH

Change Everything Now
One of the nation's most mainstream environmentalists says it's time to get a lot more radical
Interview with Gus Speth, by Jeff Goodell
Published in the September/October 2008 issue of Orion magazine

JAMES GUSTAVE “Gus” Speth’s office at Yale reeks of Old World charm, with a high ceiling and dark, wood-paneled walls adorned with souvenirs from his travels in Africa and Asia. Speth, sixty-six, the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies,
QUOTES FROM THE ABOVE:
We’re in a vicious circle where the more powerful [certain] interests get, the less able we are to reassert control, and those that have enormous power and wealth in the country [become even more] able to assert even more. And I think that the environmental community needs to see political reform as central to its agenda, and it doesn’t now. That’s not what the environmental groups do. And that’s a huge mistake, because right now they’re playing a loser’s game, and they keep losing. Winning some battles, but losing the planet.
The other thing that needs to happen is that there needs to be some fundamental challenge to our dominant values. It’s been addressed by religious organizations and psychologists and philosophers and countless others for a long time. But until we reconnect in a more profound way with ourselves and our communities and the natural world, it seems unlikely that we will deal successfully with our problems.
GS: I hope it doesn’t take that. But I think if you have a crisis—a Great Depression, whatever—in a time of wise leadership, we can construct a new narrative that builds on the traditions of the country and its highest values, but also explains where we need to go in the future, and why we went astray in the past.
In the end, the thing that I hope for is a huge mass movement in the country before it’s too late. I really don’t know any other way to make the change happen other than a grassroots movement. The nearest thing we’ve seen to this in living memory was the civil rights movement.
GUS SPETH

Change Everything Now
One of the nation's most mainstream environmentalists says it's time to get a lot more radical
Interview with Gus Speth, by Jeff Goodell
Published in the September/October 2008 issue of Orion magazine

JAMES GUSTAVE “Gus” Speth’s office at Yale reeks of Old World charm, with a high ceiling and dark, wood-paneled walls adorned with souvenirs from his travels in Africa and Asia. Speth, sixty-six, the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies,
QUOTES FROM THE ABOVE:
We’re in a vicious circle where the more powerful [certain] interests get, the less able we are to reassert control, and those that have enormous power and wealth in the country [become even more] able to assert even more. And I think that the environmental community needs to see political reform as central to its agenda, and it doesn’t now. That’s not what the environmental groups do. And that’s a huge mistake, because right now they’re playing a loser’s game, and they keep losing. Winning some battles, but losing the planet.
The other thing that needs to happen is that there needs to be some fundamental challenge to our dominant values. It’s been addressed by religious organizations and psychologists and philosophers and countless others for a long time. But until we reconnect in a more profound way with ourselves and our communities and the natural world, it seems unlikely that we will deal successfully with our problems.
GS: I hope it doesn’t take that. But I think if you have a crisis—a Great Depression, whatever—in a time of wise leadership, we can construct a new narrative that builds on the traditions of the country and its highest values, but also explains where we need to go in the future, and why we went astray in the past.
In the end, the thing that I hope for is a huge mass movement in the country before it’s too late. I really don’t know any other way to make the change happen other than a grassroots movement. The nearest thing we’ve seen to this in living memory was the civil rights movement.