In March, the Sierra Club will begin a new phase as 38-year-old Michael Brune takes over as executive director of the San Francisco-based environmental group. Brune comes to the Sierra Club after seven years as head of the Rainforest Action Network, a smaller organization that was instrumental in persuading Home Depot to stop selling wood from endangered forests. Under Brune's leadership, Rainforest Action Network also won environmental commitments from such corporate heavyweights as Bank of America, Boise, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Kinko's, and Lowe's.
Brune will succeed Carl Pope, who has led the Sierra Club since 1992. In his new post, Brune will be responsible for the organization's 500-person staff and $87 million operating budget. Pope, 64, will stay on as executive chairman and will focus primarily on climate change.
Brune, who has bachelor's degrees in economics and finance from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, recently talked to National Journal about his new job.
Subscribers can continue reading the full interview.
With nearly $100 billion to distribute from the economic stimulus, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has had an unusual first year in office. Devising ways to dole out the money -- more than one and a half times the amount appropriated to the department the previous year -- has shaped Duncan's role as America's education chief. Race to the Top, the Obama administration's $4.35 billion grant competition for stimulus funds, sent states into a legislative scramble to boost their chances of getting a share -- 40 states applied last week for the first round of the competition. Signaling a longer-term commitment to the program, President Obama recently announced that he would ask Congress for an additional $1.35 billion.
In 2009, Duncan also conducted a "listening and learning tour" to gather feedback on the reauthorization of President Bush's 2002 No Child Left Behind law, which is three years overdue for renewal. The Education secretary sat down with National Journal recently to reflect on the past year and the next one.
Read extended excerpts from the interview here.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech on Internet freedom last week sounded like an American manifesto for the digital age. Clinton sided with Google in its fight against China's Internet censorship and cyber attacks, rallied other American companies to stand up against state-sponsored censorship and surveillance, and warned ominously of a "new information curtain" descending across much of the world. To flesh out these expansive ideas, National Journal spoke with Alec Ross, Clinton's senior adviser for innovation. Edited excerpts of their discussion follow.
Continue reading State Department: One Internet, Indivisible.
Was last week's Massachusetts Senate result a referendum on President Obama? Not according to Anita Dunn, who served as interim White House communications director for six months last year. Dunn told National Journal in an interview on Wednesday that Washington is drawing the wrong message from Republican Scott Brown's victory against Democrat Martha Coakley to fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's Senate seat. The election result was not a reflection on the president, Dunn said, but the product of a strong campaign by Brown and voter anger with Washington.
Dunn also discussed the way Democratic candidates should approach the midterms, the challenge of appealing to both base and independent voters, and the relationship between health care and the economy. Edited excerpts follow.
Continue reading Dunn: Don't 'Over-Interpret' Massachusetts.
Putting a price on carbon emissions should be an "integral" part of a comprehensive energy bill, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters on Thursday after testifying to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He said it was not too late for the chamber to move such a bill this year but demurred from drawing a line in the sand on a cap-and-trade system. Excerpts from his Q&A with reporters follow.
Continue reading Chu: Cap On Carbon 'Integral' To Energy Bill .
Ever since 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up his Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, the country has been engaged in a fierce debate over whether to significantly increase the use of whole-body screeners in U.S. airports.
There are already 40 body scanners deployed in 19 airports throughout the country, including Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport. But they are used for initial screening in only six airports and their use for either primary or secondary screening is optional for all passengers. TSA has another 150 scanners set to be deployed and is planning to buy 300 more.
Proponents insist that full-body scanners could have detected the plastic explosives Abdulmutallab had sewn into his underwear and argue that widespread use of body scanners would deter potential terrorists from trying to smuggle non-metal explosives onto planes. Critics counter that the graphic images they produce violate personal privacy and that at roughly $150,000 each the machines are too expensive for widespread deployment while their effectiveness is unclear.
NationalJournal.com asked several experts in aviation and security whether widespread use of whole-body imaging to screen travelers would make planes safer from the threat of terrorism. These and other experts spoke with us for an article on international aviation security.
Continue reading Would Body Scanners Make Us Safer?.
The recent hack of Google's China Web site adds new impetus to President Obama's efforts to coordinate cybersecurity policy between the government and the private sector. NationalJournal.com spoke with James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of its Technology and Public Policy Program, about what kind of domestic oversight might work and how the situation with China might reform the global computing market.
Continue reading Google's Clash With China Could Spur Cybersecurity.
Anyone who believes bad publicity is better than no publicity should take a look at Nigeria.
Africa's most populous nation has seen its international stature tumble in recent weeks after a run of dismal headlines. A Nigerian student attempted to bomb a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, landing the country on a terror screening list. An autumn cease-fire with Niger Delta rebels looked to boost oil production and foreign investment, but rebel activity has resumed. And ailing Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua hasn't been seen in public for months, leading to rumors of his death and a constitutional crisis.
Political instability in Africa isn't new, of course, except that this particular African country is America's fifth-largest supplier of foreign oil. Nigerian politicians, upset at being lumped in with the likes of Iraq and Libya on Washington's terror radar, have batted around withholding oil exports to the United States. Such an embargo, however unlikely, would be disastrous.
But David Goldwyn, the State Department's coordinator for international energy affairs, isn't panicking. Goldwyn traveled to Nigeria in November, and he spoke with NationalJournal.com about the state of relations between Washington and Abuja, how to stop rebel attacks in the Niger Delta and his hopes for embattled country. Read a previous interview here.
Continue reading An Oil Partner Fighting To Right Itself.
Before the faltering economy hijacked the 2008 presidential race, President Obama's campaign was largely defined by his bold defense promises. He differentiated himself from then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries by his opposition to the Iraq War. Later, during the general election, he pledged to engage America's enemies, shutter the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, end enhanced interrogation techniques and establish a timeline to leave Iraq -- all of which earned him scorn on the right.
But following through on his promises to break with Bush administration policy hasn't proved easy either, and Obama has been criticized on his left as well. He pledged to ban torture and signed executive orders on detention and interrogation policies, yet he has also blocked the release of torture photographs. He promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and has ordered an Illinois prison to accept detainees, yet he hasn't secured funding and his pledge to close Gitmo within a year will go unfulfilled.
NationalJournal.com spoke with Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration who advised Obama during the campaign, to get his take on what the president is doing right -- and wrong -- on national security.
Continue reading A- For Defense Policy, Says Former Obama Adviser.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told National Journal reporters Dec. 17 that voters will turn to GOP candidates this year because the Democratic legislative agenda has been both sparse and unpopular. What follows are edited excerpts.
Continue reading Cornyn: Voters Willing To Give GOP A Chance.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., says House Democrats have a lot of accomplishments to run on, even with health care, energy and financial regulatory legislation stalled by the Senate. That means House members can spend more time in their districts this year selling what the majority did since President Obama took office. In a Dec. 17 interview with National Journal, Van Hollen -- who is also a liaison to the White House as assistant to the speaker and is a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee -- said Democrats will run on their efforts to shore up the economy, and on Republicans' opposition to those efforts.
Continue reading Waiting On The Senate.
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, D-N.J., talked with National Journal reporters Dec. 22 about the party's challenges going into the midterm elections and how to contrast Republican policies with those offered by Democrats. What follows are edited excerpts.
Continue reading Menendez: Election Won't Be Referendum On Us.
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions of Texas says the GOP intends to recapture the House majority this November. To do it, Republicans look to paint the Democratic majority as anti-jobs, anti-employer -- and even anti-women. In a Jan. 12 phone interview with National Journal, Sessions paints the scene for the 2010 campaign, defends the previous Republican majority's record and notes that the GOP has experience working with a Democratic president.
Continue reading Running Against 'Pelosi's Agenda'.
During a Jan. 7 interview with National Journal, White House senior adviser David Axelrod described the legislation President Obama would like Congress to complete this midterm election year and said that even with persistent high unemployment, Democrats can make the case to voters that they are improving their lives. Axelrod also discussed how Democrats can frame their message going into the election.
Subscribers can continue reading the full interview.
During his campaign, Barack Obama said we "need to stop seeing our cities as the problem and start seeing them as the solution." In February, he created the White House Office of Urban Affairs. The move gave hope to cities, which have suffered federal disinterest for decades. But observers have wondered if the office will actually be effective in changing the urban and economic development landscape.
NationalJournal.com sat down with Adolfo Carrion Jr., director of the office, to discuss the accomplishments and challenges of its first year and his hopes for 2010. Edited excerpts follow.
Continue reading Carrion: 'We're Not The Lead Actor'.
Democrat Christopher Dodd is the longest-serving senator in the history of Connecticut, the author of the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee -- and now, it seems, with his expected retirement announcement today, the latest casualty of a toxic political climate. In his bid for re-election this fall, Dodd was consistently trailing in polls against leading Republican opponents. In one survey, a scant 39 percent of the state's voters said they viewed him as "honest and trustworthy."
Dodd was well aware that voters were upset with him over such matters as his place on the notorious "Friends of Angelo" V.I.P. list at Countrywide Financial Corp., maintained by chief executive Angelo Mozilo to give favorable mortgage terms to influential Washington insiders. In a telephone interview with National Journal on Dec. 17, he said, "People are angry, and angry at me. I acknowledge that."
Dodd, though, denied that he was giving any thought to exiting the race. "I love what I do. And I am good at what I do," he said of his work in the Senate.
Continue reading Dodd In December: 'People Are Angry... At Me'.
