Former President Bill Clinton says he likes blogs and bloggers.That's why he had his staff invite 15 of us to his Harlem, New York office for an hour-long chat Monday about the work of the Clinton Foundation, his recent appointment as special UN envoy to Haiti and a range of other current political issues.  

Energy policy 

Global warming is one of Clinton's major concerns. He lamented the media's scanty coverage of a recent study from MIT that projects that global warming stands to be worse than anyone has previously projected. He lauded his Foundation's recent announcement that the Empire State building is going to be remodeled with energy-saving technologies. Clinton wants to see laws changed to allow utility companies to create favorable financial terms for these kinds of major renovations.  Specifically, he wants them to ba able to get use the costs savings from green renovations to repay the bondholders and debtors who financed the construction.

According to Clinton, investing in solar power and renewable fuels creates ten times the number of jobs than, say, investments in a coal or nuclear plant. That's why he wants to see a greater investment in those technologies in any energy legislation that emerges from the President and Congress this year.

Health care 

He also wanted to talk about health care. The Clinton foundation, he noted, is providing anti-retroviral medications to about 2 million people around the world. (Details are available on his foundation website.)  People no longer die for lack of medicine, he said. However, people are dying for lack of access to health care. Still, he said, Pres. Obama has a better shot at getting a health care reform bill passed. Chris Bowers, who was also at the meeting, got the most accurate notes explaining Clinton's position. "I'd be surprised if we don't get health care this year," Clinton said. If we don't however, he said allowing uninsured Americans to enroll in the federal employees' health program would be a good compromise. He also echoed the Obama administration's focus on reducing administrative costs. 

Think Progress has a transcript of this part of the exchange. Here is an excerpt:

"The other thing that people keep talking about is how complicated my bill was. You know, there's a reason President Obama hasn't presented a bill here. The fact is, my bill replaced hundreds of more pages of federal law than it added. It was a net simplification of the current system. The current system looks like Rube Goldberg on steroids. And so - But he's not going to have to worry about - I think we're going to get past the filibuster, and I think they'll be tough enough to go to 51 votes. But they would prefer, for his long-term relationships with Congress, it would be better if we could get the 60 votes. So what I think they'll do is go for the 60, but if it seems that people are just dug in taking positions that don't make any sense, then I think they'll go back to plan B. That would be my preference, because he's got to think about what it's going to be like next year, and the year after, and the year after, and all of that."

Bill Clinton

powered by PicApp

Haiti 

Clinton also reflected about his recent appointment as UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Noting that the small island nation has been "ignored or oppressed" for most of its history, Clinton expressed optimism that the country was about to turn itself around, partially because of his confidence in  Haitian president Rene Preval. At a press conference with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Clinton elaborated on his plans:

This job, as I see it, will involve the following elements. First, have to support the Government in the implementation of its program, "Haiti: A New Paradigm", to generate new jobs and enhance the delivery of basic services. Second, we have to assist the recovery effort with the same fervor that was brought to the tsunami-affected nations to build back better. That is to say, better schools; better hospitals; better housing; better public facilities; better infrastructure. And, we have to do a better job of disaster prevention and mitigation.

I'm encouraged that I've had a number of people who know a lot about this call and offer their services just to try to help. We know from experience in other places that we can do a lot to mitigate disasters, and we can do a lot in Haiti. We're about to face another storm season without that sort of mitigation and I don't want go another year without it.

Third: we want to encourage more international private sector investment in Haiti and to make Haiti more competitive to attract such investment. When the Secretary-General and I visited the industrial park, for example, the people we talked to said this is a really good place to do business, the people work like crazy and they're very productive, but because there's not a broad-based revenue collection system, and because the power system is unreliable, it costs too much to get into the industrial park and the power is too expensive. We can fix that. And I intend to do everything I can to do that.

Fourth: we want to encourage the donors to honor the commitments they have already made at the donors' conference. We'll do just what we did before: I'll have a grid, and we'll match the donors to the Haitian plan and the work that needs to be done. It'll be a totally transparent process so all of you can keep up with what is going on as we go forward. We also want to do everything we can to make sure these donor commitments are aligned as closely as possible with the Haitian program we have been given.

Women's rights 

Asked what he would do to expand women's rights, Clinton talked about the empowering role that education can play in women's lives. Emily Douglas at RH Reality Check has more. 

Education 

 My question had to do with the upcoming debate over the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind Act, which uses standardized tests to determine whether school districts are meeting student achievement goals. The Obama administration has signaled that they will push for changes in the law, and although the precise nature of those changes is not clear, Pres. Obama's criticism of assessments "simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test" has led a number of states to reconsider their standards and assessment measures.  Clinton said that he had always been an advocate of national standards, because allowing states to pick their own standards and assessment tools creates incentives for states to set the bar low in order to preserve their funding.

I reminded Pres. Clinton that at his September, 2008 meeting with bloggers, he told me that his administration's efforts to close the digital divide had not achieved the anticipated results. At that time, he told me, "perhaps we were not sufficiently flexible in our approach." (This exchange occured as we were taking a picture, not as part of the group meeting. At Monday's meeting I asked him to elaborate, referring especially to Jane Margolis' findings that many urban schools, particularly, are "technology rich" but "curriculum poor." Clinton agreed, but expressed concern that new curriculum standards could lead to the same kind of dumbed down of curriculum and stunted teaching that has resulted from similar efforts in other disciplines. In addition, he said, he didn't know how to integrate computer science education into an already overburdened curriculum. 

I confess that at that moment, I stepped outside of my blogger role and took the opportunity to tell him about the positive preliminary results that we are getting at TCNJ with our efforts to infuse basic computer science education into the middle school language arts curriculum. We are in the process of analyzing all of our data; results will be posted to our project website over the next few weeks.

Other blogs attending this meeting were: Daily Kos, TalkLeft, Feministing, Treehugger, Susie Madrak

   (cross posted at Professor Kim's News Notes)