energy

President-elect Barack Obama has tremendously more on his plate than reinventing government and restoring some semblance of accountability to Americans.

Ensuring that the world does not enter into a second depression, halting a war or two, saving the environment, formulating an industrial policy on alternative energy, one can go on; all are problems of a massive scale.

Update: Wall Street Journal: "We are running out of the traditional ammunition that's used in a recession, which is to lower interest rates. They're getting to be about as low as they can go. And although the Fed is still going to have more tools available to it, it is critical that the other branches of government step up."
- Barack Obama in a news conference in which he called for a government spending stimulus program.

The incoming Obama administration has just been granted a political license to pursue virtually anything it wants in fiscal policy in light of the seriousness with which the Fed is addressing the economic situation facing the world.

Reducing its key rate to a historic low, near zero, the Fed said it would use “all available tools” to fight the recession; in other words War against the recession by any means necessary.
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Reads the Fed's statement:

For immediate release

The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to establish a target range for the federal funds rate of 0 to 1/4 percent.

Voices for Creative Nonviolence, the Chicago-based group that staged a 500-mile Witness Against War walk to the Republican convention in St. Paul, will sponsor a presence from Jan. 1-19, in President-elect Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. It's called “Camp Hope: Countdown To Change.”

It's called Camp Hope because organizers

earnestly hope his presidency will signal the dawning of long-needed progressive change in the United States.

The 19 days of activities are designed to help build popular momentum behind the progressive goals of President Obama’s campaign -- and, one suspects, to remind him of those commitments.

It's what the left should be doing right now. Instead of assuming the worst about Obama, and giving up on him before he even takes office, progressives should spend their energy giving him and the new Congress the political base and cover they need to pursue a progressive agenda.

We know the forces of darkness will be pushing hard in the other direction. A show of support for progressive policies can help offset that provide a brace for Democratic backbones that are in danger of softening at the slightest pushback from the right.