21st Century Agenda for America

NDN needs your help to update our agenda.  After you read the section below, sign-up for an account, if you haven't already, and share your ideas with us in the comments section.

From NDN's Agenda for Hope and Progress...

Modernize Our Health Care System: Increase access to quality and affordable healthcare; address the rapid rise of healthcare costs; ensure the solvency and effectiveness of Medicare and Medicaid; and invest in and encourage the extraordinary promise of the knowledge revolution in science and medical care.

Read and comment on the entire agenda

Now that the President has vetoed Congress's alternative strategy for Iraq, we have come to a defining moment in his Presidency, for the nation, and the two parties.  At the core of this moment is the uncomfortable recognition that despite his lofty rhetoric about the intent of his foreign policy, Bush's foreign policy has failed at just about everything it has set out to do. 

The list of our failures are long.  Our dramatic intervention in Iraq has been costly and has been bungled beyond imagination, leaving the Middle East hurtling much more towards chaos and sustained regional conflict than democratization.  Al Qaeda has regrouped, has gained a regional legitimacy that it lacked prior to 9/11, and their allies, the Taliban, are resurgent in Afghanistan.  Terrorist attacks around the world have increased.  More states have acquired nuclear weapons, and despite recent encouraging signs in North Korea, the Administration's efforts to halt nuclear proliferation have been very disapointing, and thus dangerous.  The 9/11 Commission gave the Administration across the board failing grades, and as we saw with Katrina, our homeland is no safer today despite billions spent and unending photo ops and press conferences.  We've failed to reform our immigration system, worsening our already frayed relations with our Latin neighbors.  We've ignored the challenge of global climate change.  The tragedy of Darfur has been ignored.  International institutions, critical to keeping the nations of the world working together on our common challenges, have been weakened.  Our military has been ground down, anti-Americanism is on the rise just about everywhere, historic alliances strained, and our standing in the world dramatically diminished.  We are simply less able today to act in our national interest.

And of course, as we all know now, that the Administration ignored significant and repeated warnings about potential terrorist attacks prior to 9/11, including the famous August 2001 memo that warned that Bin Laden was poised to strike targets in the US.  

Less obvious but I think equally troubling has been the Administration's lack of interest in global economics, and lack of advocacy for trade liberalization, one of the key pillars of our foreign policy success in the 20th century.  The Doha trade round has faltered, and here at home the Administration has over seen a dramatic decline in public support for liberalization, without offering any plan on how to help Americans better succeed in this era of dramatic economic change.   For a Republican President, the lack of leadership in this whole area has been staggering, and has done much to harm our long-term national interests.

Which brings us to today.  My hope is that as a proud and patriotic American the President will begin to acknowledge his mistakes, and seek to work with other responsible leaders to put America back on track.   We've come to a place now in Iraq where the President is no longer acting in our national interest, but in his own political interest.  Given the overwhelming evidence of system failure in all areas of his foreign policy, and the weakened state he has left the country he loves, he needs to find a new and better path.  Our Congressional leaders have acted responsibly by offering a thoughtful and constructive alternative to the President's plan.  They are acting in the nation's interest.  They are, in essence, asking a failed President to sit down and work out a better path, one much more in our national interest. 

I hope the President sees the next few weeks as an opportunity to finish his term by constructively cleaning up the mess he and his team have left us.  It would be the highest act of patriotism, leadership and courage expressed by this President in his entire term in office, and the kind of leadership our nation so desperately needs today.

I also hope that the Democrats use this time to not just work to "end the war," as admirable and important as that is, but to lay out a vision for the world in the post-Bush era.   Bush's failure has not been just Iraq, but a flawed foreign policy that has left America weaker.  The ultimate goal here should be to fashion a new foreign policy for America, starting with a new and better path for our policy in the Middle East.

Today, the NDN Globalization Initiative is releasing the first paper in A Series of Modest Proposals to Build 21st Century Skills offering innovative ideas on the steps that can be taken to help our children and workers right now, today.  This first paper A Laptop in Every Backpack suggests that:

Achieving the American Dream in this century increasingly requires fluency in the ways of this network and its tools – how to acquire information and do research, how to construct reports and present ideas using these new tools, how to type and even edit video.  We believe we need a profound and urgent national commitment to give this powerful new 21st knowledge, essential for success in this century, to all American school children.

Feel free to comment on the paper or pitch us on some additional ideas here on our blog.

Buy George Tenet's book.  You can find it here on amazon.

NDN needs your help to update our agenda.  After you read the section below, sign-up for an account, if you haven't already, and share your ideas with us in the comments section.

From NDN's Agenda for Hope and Progress...Strengthen Families and Communities: Put families, children and communities at the very center of our agenda by improving the nation's schools through higher standards, greater accountability, more choices for parents, quality teachers, and promised additional resources; fostering family friendly policies that help parents succeed at work and at home; expanding college opportunities; promoting safe neighborhoods, home ownership, and personal responsibility; keeping abortion safe, legal, and rare; embracing legal immigrants seeking a better life in America; developing an improved path to citizenship; and striving towards equal opportunity for all.

Read and comment on the entire agenda

Matt Stoller over at MyDD is talking about a carbon tax versus the cap and trade approach and he had only good things to say about NDN Globalization Initiative Director Robert J. Shapiro's paper on the carbon tax.  Read the entire post here.

The Cap and Trade Scam
by Matt Stoller, Tue Apr 24, 2007 at 11:46:18 AM EST

Alright, it's time to understand the global warming debate, and who's selling what.  And basically, the state of the policy world is pretty bad.  The urgency on the problem is high, and paradoxically, Bushnik's refusal to admit the problem exists has obscured the choices we'll have to make post-2009.  But the choices exist, and all the major Presidential candidates are pushing policies that are not only ineffective, but subject to massive corporate corruption.  Like with Iraq, it's time for us to engage. Thankfully all of them are bad on this, so I don't want to hear any secret agenda whining, though I do have an emerging secret agenda in favor of Chris Dodd, as you'll soon see.

Economist Robert Shapiro has a very important and readable paper on different ways to deal with the carbon problem.

And doesn't want to hear from Sheryl Crow and Laurie David about global warming.  Read their simultaneously depressing and funny entry on Huffington Post for more.

Last night Thelma and Louise drove the bus off the cliff or at least into the White House Correspondents Dinner. The "highlight" of the evening had to be when we were introduced to Karl Rove. How excited were we to have our first opportunity ever to talk directly to the Bush Administration about global warming.

We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.

We reminded the senior White House advisor that the US leads the world in global warming pollution and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country.

We felt compelled to remind him that the research is done and the results are in (www.IPCC.ch). Mr. Rove exploded with even more venom. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, Mr. Rove launched into a series of illogical arguments regarding China not doing enough thus neither should we. (Since when do we follow China's lead?)...

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, "You can't speak to us like that, you work for us." Karl then quipped, "I don't work for you, I work for the American people." To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, "We are the American people."

The Times documents another startling Bush legacy:

HOLLANDALE, Miss. — For decades, Mississippi and neighboring states with large black populations and expanses of enduring poverty made steady progress in reducing infant death. But, in what health experts call an ominous portent, progress has stalled and in recent years the death rate has risen in Mississippi and several other states.

The setbacks have raised questions about the impact of cuts in welfare and Medicaid and of poor access to doctors, and, many doctors say, the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and hypertension among potential mothers, some of whom tip the scales here at 300 to 400 pounds.

“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.

Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.

Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)

The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for a total of 481..

You gotta hand it to Tom Friedman. He’s not the first guy to spot a trend or big idea, but he has a great way of popularizing them. He’s great at squeezing down big ideas into slogans. Or forcing simple parallels that make you think. “If this, then that.”

Anyhow, he did it again this week with a terrific cover story in the New York Times Magazine. He lays out a big idea about how the United States can completely rework geopolitics and regain global leadership by truly taking on climate change, or, in his words, going “geo-green.” By taking the lead in alternative energy and a comprehensive environmentalism, the United States could help solve three of the biggest challenges of the early 21st century.

1/ Solve global warming, which does have the potential to remake the world – and not for the better.

2/ Solve the quandary of globalization and the new global economy. The United States could spawn the next generation high end technologies that could serve the needs of the world – and would not be easily replicated by low end labor. We could have a thriving next generation economy that could include all Americans.

3/ Solve our era’s security challenge of global terrorism, sustained by a militant radical Islam that is fueled by the oil regimes of the middle east. We cut our dependence, and ultimately the world’s dependence, on that resource and that region, and we undercut our biggest threat.

I could not agree more with his framework. This is a massive opportunity for the progressive movement and Democratic politics in general. The conservatives have completely failed on all these fronts – starting with their obstinate denial of climate change long after all evidence showed denial to be a sham.

Progressives have always taken the lead on environmental matters, and now they can extend that core competency into the reworking of the global economy, and a convincing strategy to truly make the world more safe.

Bravo to Friedman, who has done much to move this meme into the mainstream. Inevitably this piece will be his next book, and judging by the success of his other books, it will be a bestseller for a long while.

Peter Leyden

NDN needs your help to update our agenda. Two weeks ago, we began the important process of updating the NDN Agenda for Hope and Progress, the document that defines our governing philosophy and is at the center of all our advocacy work. This week we are asking for your feedback on the foreign policy and homeland security sections of the NDN agenda "Assert Responsible Global Leadership" and "Protect the Homeland."  After you read the sections below, sign-up for an NDN Blog account, if you haven't already, and share your ideas with us in the comments section. 

From NDN's Agenda for Hope and Progress...

Assert Responsible Global Leadership: Win the war on terrorism and end international conflicts that threaten our interests and values; foster security and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan; ensure that America's military is the strongest, most agile, and best equipped in the world and our nation honors the service of our veterans; combat AIDS and other pandemics that threaten global stability; and work together with our allies and international organizations to advance democracy, human rights, liberty, free markets, opportunities for women, and rising standards of living across the world.

Protect the Homeland: Implement a comprehensive homeland security strategy; improve our nation's counter terrorism intelligence capabilities and performance; ensure that those on the frontlines have the very best tools, training and support to protect our communities; secure our nation's borders and ports without impeding the free flow of goods and people; and fight to protect the civil liberties for all Americans that have long been the envy of the world.

Read and comment on the entire agenda here.

Read Simon Rosenberg's oped "Time Warp" from The New Republic for an example of NDN's foreign policy work.