Within hours of Barack Obama’s election, naysayers chastened caution. Don’t go too far, they inveighed. Build trust slowly with restrained, moderate, and gradual actions, they admonished.

In other words: Start with piddling plans.

Basically, they want to abort hope — kill it before it has a chance.

That is all wrong after an election in which it’s believed that a higher percentage of Americans voted than at any time in the past 40 years; a win that brought tears to the eyes of even hardened reporters; a result that drew joyful citizens into streets across the country to celebrate, a balloting that swept even larger majorities of Democrats into the U.S. House and Senate. Read the rest of this entry »

During his campaign, Barack Obama spoke of investing in clean energy to create jobs, secure energy independence, and fight global warming - and Americans clearly approved that message.

What does this mean for the agenda of the environmental movement? Now that Americans have elected a strong leader to the White House and strong environmental majorities in the House and Senate, we will be able to work with those majorities to create clean energy solutions in America.

The first big change we expect to see will be in the philosophy and style of government.
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Given the current state of our economy, Washington needs to focus its initiatives on helping business owners stay healthy and grow their firms. After all, entrepreneurs continue to produce the bulk of new jobs (more than 90 percent over the last decade or so) and add significantly to U.S. innovative capacity and global competitiveness.

You will not see small businesses getting in line for any type of direct federal bailout, but they are looking for help with respect to tax certainty, affordable health coverage and keeping external or government-imposed costs low. Therefore President-elect Obama and the next Congress will need to carefully balance their agenda of expanded health care, more workplace regulation and tax increases on higher-earning small business owners against the goal of getting the economy back to robust levels of growth. Read the rest of this entry »

The Project On Government Oversight was a little ahead of the times when in December, 2003 we called for Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) to resign from the Senate. POGO acted after an expose by the Los Angeles Times revealed a long list of financial benefits that Senator Ted Stevens and his family members had received because of his power as Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.  He is the only Member of Congress to earn this distinction from POGO.  We take no cheer from this but fervently hope his conviction this week on multiple corruption charges will hasten his departure from the Senate.  Senator Steven’s stunning arrogance and malfeasance have finally brought him to justice.

In the future, we hope both the Executive and Congressional branches of government will be filled with people who are inspired to public service rather than seeing their federal jobs as personal enrichment opportunities.

Read POGO’s recommendations to Presidential Transition Teams.

- Marthena Cowart, POGO Director of Communications

The United States of America is a uniquely strong country because we ensure no one branch of government has too much power. That’s why we are disappointed that last week the administration issued two signing statements that ignore this fundamental principle.

Soon, a new president will be signing legislation into law. We urge both presidential candidates to respect our Constitution and resist using signing statements as a substitute for either negotiation with Congress or exercise of veto power.
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Yesterday the White House Domestic Policy Council issued a 164-page report with some rather stunning recommendations. It calls, among other things, for a sweeping program of public subsidies for religious education through vouchers, tax credits and other forms of tax aid at both the federal and state levels.

Wall Street continues to melt down, so the report made no splash at all in the media. That’s a shame, because what it proposes is truly radical, and Americans ought to know about it. Consider this: 90 percent of American schoolchildren attend public schools. There’s no denying that some of those schools are troubled, especially in poverty-stricken inner-city and rural areas. Yet this report suggests we collectively throw up our hands and bail on them by diverting resources to private religious academies that are in no way accountable to the public and that have the right to refuse admission to a child for almost any reason. Read the rest of this entry »

On the 6th floor of the Department of Justice, there used to be what employees called the “hall of shame,” where hung the official portraits of the likes of John Mitchell, Richard Kleindienst and Ramsey Clark.  I don’t know if a portrait of Alberto Gonzales was commissioned before his departure, but if so, this is where it belongs.

This week’s release of the report by Justice’s two internal watchdogs, the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, concluded that Gonzales “bears primary responsibility for the flawed U.S. Attorney removal process and the resulting turmoil that it created.”  Both Gonzales and his deputy, Paul McNulty, “abdicated their responsibility to safeguard the integrity and independence of the Department.”  Even worse, they and other senior officials gave reasons for the removals that were “inconsistent, misleading, or inaccurate.”

In concluding that several of the US Attorneys were forced out for political considerations, the report’s authors admitted their investigation remains incomplete because a number of crucial witnesses declined to cooperate.  Further, the White House refused to turn over critically important records, including a chronology drafted during March 2007 when the uproar over the firings was cresting.  The two watchdogs recommended that “a counsel specially appointed by the Attorney General” continue their probe and assess whether any criminal offense was committed. Read the rest of this entry »

I think it’s a sad day for our country, where members of the administration are afraid to appear before a Congressional Committee for Oversight. This is an Oversight hearing, this is to have an assessment of where we are in regards to environmental legislation and they’re afraid to appear– that’s just offensive, it’s wrong, and it’s just a sad day for our country.

The record has been clear the Environmental Protection Agency has withheld scientific information from the public that should have been made public. They have not followed their professional scientific information and so it’s part of a track record which is very, very disturbing.
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As the president of the union which represents more than 600,000 workers in the federal and DC governments – 40% of whom are veterans – we are well aware of the role the Bush Administration has had in minimizing and politicizing the role of public service in government. From Hurricane Katrina to Walter Reed to the United States Justice Department the results have been catastrophic. Our members, who are on the front lines of 75 agencies including Social Security, the VA, and the Department of Homeland Security, realize and know first-hand, the devastating impact of the Bush Administration’s efforts to quell our ability to provide quality service for all Americans.

The Administration’s mantra of privatization and outright animosity toward federal workers has resulted in wreaking havoc throughout the federal government.  And sadly, the most insidious of these government abuses has come at the expense of America’s heroes, our veterans. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to imagine that we have reached a point where the word of a known drug-smuggler is given more weight by the Bush Administration than that of two Border Patrol agents – but that’s exactly what has happened. As Osvaldo Aldrete Davila received his 9 ½ years prison sentence yesterday, two Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, remained in jail. The fact that this drug smuggler received a lighter sentence than the two border agents is in itself mystifying. But when you consider the circumstances that led to this debacle, it defies conventional wisdom for the President to stand idly by while these two agents remain in jail. Read the rest of this entry »