Obama's Schedule July 1 2010

Obama meets with Timothy Geithner at 10 am eastern.

At 10:50 am, Obama speaks on immigration. It's being called a "major" speech. Watch it live here.

12:15 pm, Obama meets with business leaders.

1:30 pm, Thad Allen and Carol Browner join Robert Gibbs to update the press on the oil disaster.

3:05 pm, Obama and Biden meet with Harry Reid.

3:35 pm, Obama and Biden get briefed on the oil disaster.

4:20 pm, Obama welcomes Women's Professional Soccer champs to the White House.

5:35 pm, Obama and Biden meet again.

6:15 pm, Obama signs Iran sanctions bill.

Browner Meets With BP Executives

The administration is still on top of the oil disaster, even though the media has shifted from its Obama-centric coverage. From the White House:

Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner met with BP executives Bob Dudley, Lamar McKay, David Nagel and Karen St. John earlier today to discuss a number of key issues including containment, redundancy, claims and scientific monitoring. The meeting with Dudley was important to do given his new role for BP in the Gulf restoration. Browner reiterated the President’s commitment to the people of the Gulf, that we are not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods. Browner reminded them that we will be judging their work and response based on that bar, no exceptions.

Obama's Schedule June 11

10 am eastern, Obama will get a BP oil disaster update.
10:40 am, Obama meets with small business owners.
11 am, Obama speaks to the press. Live stream here.
11:45 am, Obama meets with Hillary.

12:30 pm, Carol Browner answers questions about the oil disaster.

Obama's Statement on Top Kill Failure

Today, I’ve spoken with National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and senior White House advisors John Brennan and Carol Browner regarding the ongoing efforts to stop the BP oil spill. From the beginning, our concern has been that the surest way to stop the flow of oil – the drilling of relief wells – would take several months to complete. So engineers and experts have explored a variety of alternatives to stop the leak now. They had hoped that the top kill approach attempted this week would halt the flow of oil and gas currently escaping from the seafloor. But while we initially received optimistic reports about the procedure, it is now clear that it has not worked. Rear Admiral Mary Landry today directed BP to launch a new procedure whereby the riser pipe will be cut and a containment structure fitted over the leak.

This approach is not without risk and has never been attempted before at this depth. That is why it was not activated until other methods had been exhausted. It will be difficult and will take several days. It is also important to note that while we were hopeful that the top kill would succeed, we were also mindful that there was a significant chance it would not. And we will continue to pursue any and all responsible means of stopping this leak until the completion of the two relief wells currently being drilled.

As I said yesterday, every day that this leak continues is an assault on the people of the Gulf Coast region, their livelihoods, and the natural bounty that belongs to all of us. It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking, and we will not relent until this leak is contained, until the waters and shores are cleaned up, and until the people unjustly victimized by this manmade disaster are made whole.

Browner Says Oil Spill Worst Ever

In an interview with ABC, Carol Browner, assistant to POTUS for energy and climate change, says the administration is doing everything it can on day 36 to stop the oil leak. The top minds are on the job, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu. The next attempt to stop the leak, called "top kill," comes tomorrow (or later). Browner says that some of the things that Bobby Jindal is asking for would take six to nine months to put into place and the administration is focused on NOW. Could Jindal be using the cover of a crisis to get free government services? Watch the interview here.

Obama Speaks on Clean Autos May 21 Video

Read the memorandum here. The Alliance for Automakers on the plan for more fuel efficient cars.

Browner Says Climate Legislation This Year

Since Lindsey Graham threw a fit the other day, there's been talk that climate legislation is going to be put on the back burner while the democrats take up immigration reform. Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, says the legislation will happen this year:

Browner’s full statement: "We believe the only way to make progress on these priorities is to continue working as we have thus far in a bipartisan manner to build more support for both comprehensive energy independence and immigration reform legislation. "We commend Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman for the tremendous work they have done to date to seize this moment and build a new coalition of business and environmental leaders and their efforts to craft a bill that will garner the votes to pass the Senate. Politico

Obama Announces Green Team

Today at the press conference announcing his energy team, Obama took a Blago question:

Here's his Green Team:

Steven Chu, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics and now directs the government's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, will head the Energy Department.

Chu will work closely with Carol Browner, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Bill Clinton, who Obama said will coordinate White House policy on energy, and climate change among the various federal agencies.

Obama also named Lisa Jackson, the chief of staff for New Jersey's governor, to lead the EPA and Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Lisa Jackson actually says she's an environmentalist. Joe Biden says as Vice President, he will not stand in the way of environmental protections. Obama says "My administration will value science." Music to my ears. He also says that a strong economy and protecting the environment aren't contradictory. Hallelujah!

Ocean Conservancy Praises Obama's Environmental Team

Obama's announcing his environmental and energy team today.

Politico: Statement from OceanConservancy.org: 'Start of a Sea Change in Washington as Environmental Issues Poised to be Given the Priority Our Country Needs -- Ocean Conservancy Applauds Appointments, New White House Post Focused Solely on Environmental Issues; Makes Push for Ocean Health to Top the Agenda: Ocean Conservancy is praising today's announcement that a new post has been created within the White House to serve as a clearinghouse for all environmental matters. Climate, energy, water, and air quality issues will now have a more prominent seat at the table when matters of national import are discussed and decided. ... 'Today's announcement of the 'green team' represents the start of a real sea change in Washington. Carol Browner is a model choice to assume the responsibilities of this new and important position within the Administration. This selection and post, paired with the announcement of Lisa Jackson as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, and Nancy Sutley as Chairwoman of the Council on Environmental Quality, show that the Obama Administration does not intent to put the environment in the backseat. The ocean is the first victim of climate change, and we expect progress on building back its resiliency from our new environmental team,' explained Laura Burton Capps, Senior Vice President at Ocean Conservancy. 'The next four years will be pivotal ones for the oceans and the climate in general. The ocean is the engine that drives our climate, supplying much of the air we breathe and the food we eat. We need a tested champion for the oceans to lead the environmental team within the White House. Now is the time for this green team to step up and prove that they are the ocean champions that we need.'

Obama To Announce Chu and Browner Dec. 15

Tomorrow, at a 5 pm Eastern press conference, Obama is expected to name Steven Chu as his energy secretary, and former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner as the head of a new council that will coordinate White House policy on energy.
Scientists are elated about Chu. I'm sure they're happy that someone other than No Science Bush is moving into the White House.

Science: Steve Chu could be a groundbreaking energy secretary for the energy research efforts of President-elect Barack Obama's Administration in several ways. It's not just that Chu will be the first life-long scientist— and a Nobel prize-winning physicist at that—to run a department which spends more than $15 billion a year on physical science research, including weapons work. (Previous energy secretaries have usually been political allies of the president, which Chu isn't; a Naval Admiral and a power industry official have previously held the post.) But his selection, and new clues from Obama's transition team, could signal some big changes in the way that the United States conducts science to tackle the energy challenge.

First there's the big picture for the Department of Energy, a sprawling, $23 billion per year agency that manages twenty national laboratories and roughly a dozen nuclear waste cleanup projects. DOE spends roughly $9 billion to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal, roughly $10 billion on the waste sites, about only $4 billion on applied energy research, and close to $5 billion on basic physical science. Congress has historically preferred that lopsided balance. But recent fights between appropriators on Capitol Hill and a veto-threat-wielding White House over the budget (such as this skirmish) have prevented the agency from steadily doubling that basic research component—something both sides want to do. Money is tight, but Obama won't be threatening a veto over spending bills and moreover, he has promised to double the budget. So that, along with the appointment of a Nobel prize-winning physicist to run DOE, means the agency will probably do more and more science, including applied research as well as fundamental physics. Chu was one of the authors of a highly influential report from the U.S. National Academies on the link between basic science and the "Gathering Storm" that faced the U.S. if it didn't improve its technical know-how.

Also on Monday, Obama is expected to have a national security meeting with the following folks around the table: Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary nominee Gov. Janet Napolitano and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

Obama to Appoint Steven Chu and Carol Browner

Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize winner and by all accounts, a genius. He's set to be Obama's energy secretary.
He headed Bell Lab's Quantum Electronics Research Department in the 1980s and designed an electron spectrometer--whatever the heck that is. He's currently director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he's engaged in energy research.
Carol Browner will be an energy czar of sorts.

Carol M. Browner is a principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm. Ms. Browner provides strategic counsel to clients in the areas of environmental protection, energy conservation, and climate change. She positions clients in many sectors to succeed in enhancing corporate responsibility, gaining market access, identifying political and regulatory risks, and developing strategic partnerships and business relationships.

Ms. Browner served as the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for eight years, longer than any other administrator in EPA's history. As a Cabinet official during the Clinton administration, she built unique partnerships with business leaders, community advocates, and all levels of government. She also developed common sense, cost-effective solutions to the nation's most pressing environmental and public health challenges.

Marc Ambinder: President-elect Barack Obama will appoint former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner to a new position coordinating White House policy on energy, climate and environmental issues, a Democratic aide said on Wednesday.

Obama will also nominate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as his energy secretary, a Democratic Party official said.

Obama, who has said energy and environment matters would be important to his administration, is closing in on choosing the team that will oversee them.

He wants to spend billions of dollars to promote alternative energy sources and create millions of green energy jobs.

Chu's autobiography at the Nobel Prize site:

My father, Ju Chin Chu, came to the United States in 1943 to continue his education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in chemical engineering, and two years later, my mother, Ching Chen Li, joined him to study economics. A generation earlier, my mother's grandfather earned his advanced degrees in civil engineering at Cornell while his brother studied physics under Perrin at the Sorbonne before they returned to China. However, when my parents married in 1945, China was in turmoil and the possibility of returning grew increasingly remote, and they decided to begin their family in the United States. My brothers and I were born as part of a typical nomadic academic career: my older brother was born in 1946 while my father was finishing at MIT, I was born in St. Louis in 1948 while my father taught at Washington University, and my younger brother completed the family in Queens shortly after my father took a position as a professor at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

In 1950, we settled in Garden City, New York, a bedroom community within commuting distance of Brooklyn Polytechnic. There were only two other Chinese families in this town of 25,000, but to our parents, the determining factor was the quality of the public school system. Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'être. Virtually all of our aunts and uncles had Ph.D.'s in science or engineering, and it was taken for granted that the next generation of Chu's were to follow the family tradition. When the dust had settled, my two brothers and four cousins collected three MDs, four Ph.D.s and a law degree. I could manage only a single advanced degree.

In this family of accomplished scholars, I was to become the academic black sheep. I performed adequately at school, but in comparison to my older brother, who set the record for the highest cumulative average for our high school, my performance was decidedly mediocre. I studied, but not in a particularly efficient manner. Occasionally, I would focus on a particular school project and become obsessed with, what seemed to my mother, to be trivial details instead of apportioning the time I spent on school work in a more efficient way.

Obama's Chief Technology Officer: Vint Cerf?

Obama has created a chief technology position. Brilliant. Vint Cerf, father of the Internet (he created internet protocol) and vice president of Google, endorsed Obama in October via youtube. Cerf says Obama supports net neutrality.

CNN: Carol Browner, President Bill Clinton's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm also are possible contenders for the energy secretary post.

Another big opening -- chief technology officer -- is a newly created position. The transition team says this post will be charged with ensuring that the government has the right "infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century."

Obama's presidential campaign developed a reputation for harnessing technology and the Internet to mobilize its grass-roots movement. Democratic strategist Lisa Caputo says this position will help Obama use the Internet to keep that movement going strong.

One name generating buzz for this position is Vinton Cerf, the vice president of Google.

Read more about what the CTO would do:

The full plan can be seen below. It contains several new proposals, including the appointment of technology czar called a Chief Technology Officer.

The CTO’s mandate would be quite different from the Cybersecurity czar appointed under the Bush Administration. Bush’s czar helped defend against cyberattacks. Obama’s CTO, by contrast, would ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.

Obama's serious about broadband for all. For geeky types:

II. BROADBAND ACCESS

Second, Obama makes new stances on several other areas of technology of interest to Silicon Valley’s tech community. He calls more aggressive government support of broadband access. Specifically, he calls for subsidies for phone carriers to be given to only those carriers offering both regular phone service and Internet broadband to rural areas. To date, carriers offering merely phone service have been able to claim subsidies from the so-called Universal Service Fund, giving them little incentive to roll out out broadband. This is also new, in that he hasn’t proposed this before.

III. OPEN WIRELESS SPECTRUM

Obama’s plan also calls for reviewing the decision by the Federal Communications Commission to open the wireless spectrum for competition. Specifically, Obama feels the FCC may not have gone far enough with its recent ruling. He is strongly considering advocating that spectrum on the 700 MHz band be opened so that third parties can lease it on a wholesale basis. This will ensure winners of a pending auction for the spectrum — expected to be large phone carriers like Verizon — don’t just sit on the spectrum and not use it. They may do that to avoid other entrants from competing with them. Obama’s campaign also appears ready to support the right of service providers to interconnect with a licensee’s wireless network. Google is expected to bid on the wireless spectrum.

IV. NETWORK NEUTRALITY

Obama also is supporting network neutrality, a policy that would ensure Google wouldn’t be forced to pay an Internet service provider extra to ensure the speedy transfer of its data over the Internet. Stanford legal expert, Larry Lessig, called me up this afternoon (apparently under recommendation from the campaign) saying Obama has the most nicely balanced policy among the democrats. Obama’s plan, he says, imposes minimal regulatory burden. So: Unlike John Edwards who, proposes to “enforce net neutrality ensuring no degradation or blocking of access to websites,” Obama would not ban differential service. He would simply require that the terms offered one website or company are no better or worse than those offered anyone else. This is a kind of “most favored nations” network neutrality, much simpler to enforce than one that looks to technical factors to determine whether the regulation is obeyed. Venture people should be very interested in this, Lessig says, because “if network neutrality regulation is going to be passed (as it will if a Dem is president) this imposes a very minimal (and relatively easy to monitor) burden on network owner.” read more.

The shortlist of potential CTOs, according to Business Week:

BW: Among the candidates who would be considered for the job, say Washington insiders, are Vint Cerf, Google's (GOOG) "chief internet evangelist," who is often cited as one of the fathers of the Internet; Microsoft (MSFT) chief executive officer Steve Ballmer; Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeffrey Bezos; and Ed Felten, a prominent professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University. An Obama campaign spokesman did not return phone calls seeking comment about potential CTO candidates.

Obama's Transition Team

Obama announced the key members of his transition team Wednesday. The team will be co-chaired by John Podesta, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, a longtime Obama confidante; and Peter Rouse, Obama's chief of staff in the Senate.

Obama also may have a press conference before week's end to announce top White House appointments. Reports say Obama would like to announce key nominations such as secretary of state and Treasury chief before the end of the month. Among the top contenders for Treasury secretary: Larry Summers, former Harvard president and deputy Treasury secretary. The thinking is that because he has already been through the confirmation process, his appointment would likely sail through. And some reports say Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) has been offered the White House chief of staff job.

Advisers:

The Obama campaign released the names of the people who will help guide the changeover: John Podesta, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, a longtime Obama confidant; and Peter Rouse, Obama's chief of staff in the Senate, will serve as co-chairs of the transition team. They will be assisted by an advisory board that includes Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and several former Clinton Cabinet members: William Daley, who served as commerce secretary; Carol Browner, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and former Transportation and Energy Secretary Federico Pena.

Full team:

The Transition Economic Advisory Board will help guide the work of the Obama-Biden transition team in developing a strong set of policies to respond to the economic crisis. The Board includes:

• David Bonior (Member House of Representatives 1977-2003)
• Warren Buffett (Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway)-will participate via speakerphone
• Roel Campos (former SEC Commissioner)
• William Daley (Chairman of the Midwest, JP Morgan Chase; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Commerce, 1997-2000)
• William Donaldson (Former Chairman of the SEC 2003-2005)
• Roger Ferguson (President and CEO, TIAA-CREF and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve)
• Jennifer Granholm (Governor, State of Michigan)
• Anne Mulcahy (Chairman and CEO, Xerox)
• Richard Parsons (Chairman of the Board, Time Warner)
• Penny Pritzker (CEO, Classic Residence by Hyatt)
• Robert Reich (University of California, Berkeley; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Labor, 1993-1997)
• Robert Rubin (Chairman and Director of the Executive Committee, Citigroup; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1995-1999)
• Eric Schmidt (Chairman and CEO, Google)
• Lawrence Summers (Harvard University; Managing Director, D.E. Shaw; Former Secretary, U.S. Dept of Treasury, 1999-2001)
• Laura Tyson (Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chairman, National Economic Council, 1995-1996; Former Chairman, President's Council of Economic Advisors, 1993-1995)
• Antonio Villaraigosa (Mayor, City of Los Angeles)
• Paul Volcker (Former Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve 1979-1987)