Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Energy and Environment: From the Transition Team

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An e-mail from John Podesta:

62 days. That's how much time we have left to prepare for the Obama-Biden Administration that will bring the change Americans demanded so strongly in this past election.

President-elect Obama has set a high bar for the Transition team: to execute the most efficient, organized, and transparent transfer of power in American history. As a co-Chair for the Transition, I want to tell you about a few steps we've already taken to achieve this goal.

First, we adopted the strictest ethics guidelines ever applied to any transition team. President-elect Obama pledged to change the way Washington works, and that begins with shifting influence away from special interests and restoring it to the everyday Americans who are passionate about fixing the problems facing our country.

Opening up the Transition means listening to your ideas and stories and providing a window into how the process works.

To give you a look at how we're approaching some of the nation's most pressing issues, we filmed this meeting of our Energy and Environment Policy Transition Team and interviewed team member Heather Zichal.
President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden have set an ambitious agenda, and we are going to make Change.gov a source of information, as well as a place to participate in the decisions being made about your government.

Since the decisions we're making affect all Americans, we're counting on citizens from every walk of life to get involved. You can help us right now by making sure your friends and neighbors know about Change.gov and give their input, too.

We're continuing to develop new ways to open up the process, and we'll keep you posted along the way.

Thanks,
John

John Podesta
Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team


Comments (4)

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This is a little bizarre. Why are they trying to justify this in terms of jobs, when the truth is that if we don't do drastic things the planet is on its way to devastation?

Latest disaster, massive die off of millions of acres of trees in the West, and the article doesn't even mention the loss of them in terms of carbon sinks -
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18trees...

I hope people are thinking about the plant a tree for Inauguration suggestion.
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Mattias Wikstrom's avatar

Mattias Wikstrom · 854 weeks ago

I received an email with exactly the above text except that it started with "Dear Mattias", and I asked myself what connections it had to what I had written. Why write emails in a personal style when there is nothing personal about them? It can easily hurt people's feelings.
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1 reply · active 854 weeks ago
I don't think they were intending to reply to individual emails, or give the impression they were. They would have to have a huge staff or number of volunteers to do that. My guess is that the incoming emails become grist for figuring out what matters most to people. If we're lucky, the people scanning them might pick up occasional good ideas and forward them on.

Once they have your email address, you'll likely continue to get announcements like the above.

(Of course, I'm trusting that the email doesn't just go into a bit bucket. I know some Congressional offices do that, but I have a certain degree of faith that Obama is better than that.)
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