WH Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth:

The Innovation Agenda and Green Jobs of the Future Discussion

December 3, 2009 

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Assistant to the President Carol Browner moderate a discussion on The Innovation Agenda and Green Jobs of the Future at the Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth.

Please thank Mary for finding this excellent interview of General Clark, by The Economist, at The Clinton Global Initiative. It's just over 8 minutes. Wish they all took at least this much time when interviewing him - he packs a tremendous amount of information into a small amount of time that never fails to make one think further!

Wes has an important op-ed in the New York Times today. Here's part of what he says:

In a little more than a year, the Army has procured and fielded in Iraq more than a thousand so-called mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. The lives of hundreds of soldiers and marines have been saved, and their tasks made more achievable, by the efforts of the American automotive industry. And unlike in World War II, America didn’t have to divert much civilian capacity to meet these military needs. Without a vigorous automotive sector, those needs could not have been quickly met.

More challenges lie ahead for our military, and to meet them we need a strong industrial base. For years the military has sought better sources of electric power in its vehicles — necessary to allow troops to monitor their radios with diesel engines off, to support increasingly high-powered communications technology, and eventually to support electric propulsion and innovative armaments like directed-energy weapons. In sum, this greater use of electricity will increase combat power while reducing our footprint. Much research and development spending has gone into these programs over the years, but nothing on the manufacturing scale we really need.

Those are excellent points. We need to help Wes get this important message out as widely as possible.

Karl Rove had to be cursing the day that John Edwards ever decided to have that blasted affair. Had he but resisted the temptation (or had he not gotten caught)... Karl would never have found himself stuck in the pickle of a predicament he was in on Friday night at the University of Buffalo – Facing down General Wes Clark in a clash of the Titans. Two men who have undoubtedly carved their footprints on American history.