IPS Blog

1) Say no to the Keystone XL pipeline.
Without waiting for Congress the State Department can deny TransCanada’s request for permission to build a pipeline across the United States carrying toxic tar sand oil to polluting refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

2) Regulate power plants.
Since the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants in 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to put controls on carbon emissions. This means the EPA has tools to regulate new and existing power plants and industrial sources that are spewing methane, nitrous oxide and soot into the air.

3) Curb natural gas exports.
The Department of Energy can reject licenses for oil and gas industry to expand their export of liquid natural gas to countries with which we don’t already have free trade agreements. And Obama could direct the U.S. Trade Representative to withdraw from negotiations on the TransPacific Partnership, which would fling the doors wide open to LNG export to countries in Asia.

4) Negotiate a global climate deal in good faith.
Obama should instruct the climate team at the State Department to return to the negotiating table ready to compromise in order to reach international consensus for a strong and equitable 2015 climate treaty.

President Obama said during his State of the Union address that he would focus on things he could do alone — without having to depend on a badly divided, partisan Congress. And the powerful imagery he summoned in support of voting rights — real, implementable voting rights, based on the example of a 102-year-old voting rights hero, could and should indeed be a critical focus of executive energy. His story of Desiline Victor waiting six hours to vote in North Miami even brought members of Congress — at least some of them — to their feet in a powerful ovation.

But Obama didn’t seem to include in the list of “things he could do alone” the solo, individual decisions that are fundamental to the role of commander in chief. And that role could include, without Congress having to have any role in it, bringing home all the troops from the failed war in Afghanistan. Ending it. Totally. Quickly.

Bringing home half the troops this year reflects the pressure of massive public opposition to the war — but it’s far from enough. All 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be pulled out by the middle of this year. And that role of the president, without Congress, could include announcing that the “winding down” of the U.S. war in Afghanistan won't be transformed into an expanding drone war waged in shadows across the world.

When Obama claims that budget cuts “would jeopardize our military readiness,” he is signaling a rejection of what his own nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, acknowledged is the need to cut the “bloated” military budget.

And crucially, when we look at areas in which the President can make executive decisions, independent of the whims of a paralyzed, partisan congress, is there any clearer example than the Obama administration’s strategy of targeting and killing “terror suspects,” along with unknown numbers of civilian “collateral damage” in Obama’s Global War on Terror 2.0? 

We heard a claim about those drone assassinations during his address, that “we have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts.”

There's no way that would fly, given recent revelations of the administration’s efforts to claim a legal right to murder anyone, U.S. citizen or not, who they “believe” may be guilty of something they identify as a terrorist attack. So Obama went on. “I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take my word that we’re doing things the right way. So, in the months ahead, I will continue to engage with Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”

What about the KILLING of the people he calls terrorists, beyond detention and prosecution? The reference to checks and balances referred back to the Justice Department’s claim that “due process” didn’t necessarily mean anything having to do with courts and judges, the claim that a decision by a “decision-maker” — not even necessarily the president — was enough to qualify as due process sufficient to take someone’s life, way beyond taking their liberty and their pursuit of happiness.

Focusing on the executive actions you can take without Congress is a great idea, Mr. President. But not unless that focus includes reversing the individually taken military actions that brought such disgrace on your administration’s first term.

Phyllis Bennis is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. Her books include Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN. www.ips-dc.org

In the last year, climate change has come home to the United States in a visceral way. During his State of the Union address, Obama should lay out bold plans for the transition to an ecologically sane economy that reduces inequality.

Images of waves crashing into the Statue of Liberty, wildfires engulfing homes in Colorado, and flood water shutting down the Louisiana interstate have rocked the American psyche over the past twelve months.

For me, 2012 meant living through record-breaking heat waves that buckled metro tracks and derailed commuter trains in my adopted home of Washington, DC. Sadly it also meant saying good-bye to the beach on the Jersey shore where my brother and I played as kids.

Since Obama committed the United States to responding to climate change in his inaugural address, saying that a “the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” American families in the Southeast were hit by severe tornados and in the Northeast by crippling snowstorms.

Of course, dealing with climate change in our country is about more than bad weather. We’ve heard about how battered infrastructure and closed businesses strain on national and local coffers. We hear less about how climate change exacerbates inequality — disproportionately impacting the lives and livelihoods of people living in poverty and low-income communities.

A shot at a better life for everyone has to entail a shift away from an “all of the above” energy plan that includes sources that poison people, pollute the environment, and lock us into decades of pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The expansion of fossil fuels and the increasingly extreme ways of getting at it — through fracking, deepwater drilling and blasting the tops off mountains — has got to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Obama said that “the path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult” — no less because the fossil fuel industry and the members of Congress to whom they contribute continue to undermine legislative action on climate. But the transition to shared prosperity and a vibrant clean economy can be made easier with sustained leadership from the president and his administration.

Here are a few actions Obama can take without Congress that he can highlight in tonight’s State of the Union address to show he’s serious about the fight against global warming:

• Say no to the Keystone XL pipeline. Without waiting for Congress the State Department can deny TransCanada’s request for permission to build a pipeline across the United States carrying toxic tar sand oil to polluting refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Regulate power plants. Since the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants in 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to put controls on carbon emissions. This means the EPA has tools to regulate new and existing power plants and industrial sources that are spewing methane, nitrous oxide and soot into the air.
• Curb natural gas exports. The Department of Energy can reject licenses for oil and gas industry to expand their export of liquid natural gas to countries with which we don’t already have free trade agreements. And Obama could direct the U.S. Trade Representative to withdraw from negotiations on the TransPacific Partnership, which would fling the doors wide open to LNG export to countries in Asia.
• Negotiate a global climate deal in good faith. Obama should instruct the climate team at the State Department to return to the negotiating table ready to compromise in order to reach international consensus for a strong and equitable 2015 climate treaty.

Obama doesn’t have to wait for Congress to act — and we don’t have to wait for Obama, either.

People have already started. They’re putting their bodies in the path of Keystone’s southern leg to halt construction. They’re closing down dirty power plants in the cities where they live and work, and meeting with neighbors to create plans to make their communities climate resilient. And thousands of people from around the country will gather in Washington, DC this weekend to call on Obama to push forward on climate in his second term.

Tonight, as Obama addresses the nation he’ll be laying the groundwork for his climate legacy.  His comments will also shape how the growing majority of Americans who care about global warming perceive him — as a climate champion or an agent of politics as usual.

What a difference a week makes. GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney finally disclosed on Tuesday that he paid a measly 13.9 percent of his vast income in taxes in 2010 and will probably pay just 15.4 percent on his 2011 earnings. Those rates are far lower than what the IRS demands of you, or the two of us, or Warren Buffett's secretary.

Thanks to the persistence of the Occupy movement and Romney's tin ear, the anger over inequality, recent college grads who can't pay their student debts, and elderly people being thrown out of their homes is boiling over into outrage.

Thanks to this pressure, President Obama devoted much of his State of the Union address to the damage extreme inequality wreaks on our democracy. IPS experts John Feffer, Phyllis Bennis, Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh all offer their takes on this important speech.

At IPS, we're spreading the stories, facts, and figures about our nation's 30 year march toward extreme inequality in as many ways as we can. IPSers Chuck Collins and Sam Pizzigati have built the leading inequality website. (Please visit www.inequality.org to see what we mean). Chuck's latest book 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It will be released shortly before Tax Day, and he's a featured expert in "We're Not Broke," a new documentary that premiered on Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival, which highlights the growing public outrage toward those in the 1 percent who are key drivers of inequality. Too Much, Sam's weekly newsletter, highlights news and views that show how our world would be considerably more caring, prosperous, and democratic if we narrowed the vast gap that divides the wealthy from everyone else.

As the outrage grows, change that seemed impossible not long ago becomes possible. IPS is working with the National Nurses United union and a wide range of groups in this country and around the world to build support for a tax on speculative Wall Street trades, which could raise hundreds of billions of dollars for urgent needs, such as jobs and climate programs. The Institute is working with other allies to lay out the shift from a Wall Street casino to a green Main Street economy.

Remember, Wall Street banks and global corporations have driven down wages, working conditions, and environmental standards both in the United States and everywhere else. We need solutions that cross borders. That's why IPS is working with allies around the world — from Occupy Nigeria to groups fighting the U.S. drug war.

A movement for the 99 percent is growing like wildfire, and each and every one of you is part of it.

This post was originally sent out to IPS supportes in our biweekly Unconventional Wisdom Newsletter. Sign up for UW and other IPS newsletters here.

While we’re still waiting for actions to match his rhetoric, President Barack Obama made three critical points in his big speech about the problem of inequality—a problem that the Occupy movement has pushed into the public consciousness.

1. The Rules are Rigged in Favor of the Rich

Early in his address, the president said that “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Despite the popular myth that the rich are rich solely because of their hard work and talent, in reality, much of the explosion of wealth at the top is a result of the rich rigging the rules.

Case in point: rich people, who make most of their income on the stock market, pay a far lower tax rate than ordinary Americans. Warren Buffett pointed this out several years ago when he offered a million dollars to any CEO who could prove he paid a higher tax rate than his secretary. Not one came forward.

In a brilliant stroke of political theater, Obama invited Buffett’s secretary to sit with the First Lady during the speech. This came just hours after Mitt Romney revealed he had paid only a 13.9 percent rate on his 2011 income taxes—thanks to the deep discount rate of 15 percent for financial earnings, compared to the top rate of 35 percent for income from actual work. Obama proposed a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for people who make more than one million dollars a year.

2. We Have Tackled Extreme Inequality Before

A century ago, the rich were enjoying the so-called “Gilded Age” with extreme levels of inequality. Starting in the mid-1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression, our government, pressed hard by a militant labor movement, raised taxes on the rich, protected worker rights, and began a four decade march toward much greater equality. By speaking of “restoring an economy where everyone gets a fair shot,” Obama reminded Americans that our current levels of inequality, which rival those of the Gilded Age, are hurting tens of millions and degrading our democracy, and that we know how to reduce extreme inequality in this country.

3. The Occupy Movement is Not About Envy

The president also effectively rebutted the common conservative argument that all this Occupy ruckus is about nothing more than petty jealousies. “When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet.”

Obama’s sharp rhetoric is an important contribution to the public discourse about inequality. Yet deeds are stronger than words. And right now, Obama is not expected to include the millionaires tax increase in the budget he delivers to Congress next month. For the millions of young people who joined the Occupy sites last fall because they can’t find jobs nor pay off their student loans, Obama weakly admonished colleges not to raise tuitions. No word of what many of those students demand, namely that they not be required to repay those loans until they have incomes.

No real relief from Obama for the millions of Americans who can’t pay their mortgages. He said he was proposing a small fee on the big banks to help pay for a program to allow homeowners to save on their mortgages by refinancing. This is small compared to what is needed: a reduction in the principle on those mortgages down to what the market says they are worth.

So, the challenge to the American people remains huge. Yes, we now have a President who is talking about the obscene inequality that is ripping this country apart. Yet, it will only be through massive pressure from below that bold measures to tax Wall Street, tax corporations, tax the wealthy, and tax pollution get enacted.

And, while Obama talks of wind farms and other green jobs, he still is not articulating a bold vision to transform this nation’s economy from a war economy still addicted to fossil fuels to a green Main Street economy that creates jobs while advancing ecological balance. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has released an Act for the 99% that included some of this vision, particularly for millions of new jobs paid by a fairer tax system.

We all know that thirty years of deregulating Wall Street and lowering tax rates on the rich won’t be undone quickly. For years, Wall Street has crashed the economy and corrupted our politics. Only bold, transformative vision and action can restore our democracy and improve the lives of our people.

Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.