A2 Politics & The Nation
Guantanamo detainee pleads guilty ......................................................A3 3 other states weighing tough immigration bills..................................A4 Some customers heated over indoor “tan tax” .....................................A5 Nation Digest 2 missing after barge hits Philly “duck boat” ......................................A3
The World
In Japanese campaigns, it’s all over but the shouting..........................A6 5 Afghan soldiers killed in bombing by NATO helicopter ...................A8 Foreign Digest McCain: Iran attack not on table at moment......................................A6
Economy & Business
Pitfalls for managed Medicaid..............................................................A10 Business Digest Lawmakers vote to cap bankers’ bonuses..........................................A10
WASHINGTON BUSINESS
Market summary....................................................................................A12 The Color of Money SEC rules would take surprises out of target-date mutual funds....A12
The Fed Page
The Cable Palin makes exception for military spending ....................................A13 The Influence Industry Groups say time is now for public financing push............................A13
Opinion
Editorial: Mr. Obama’s promising Mideast pivot................................A14 Editorial: Why gasoline taxes are too low ...........................................A14 David Ignatius: Where is Obama’s stealth diplomat? ........................A15 E.J. Dionne Jr.: Chairman Mike Steele deserves his say.....................A15 David S. Broder: The House shirks its budget duty ............................A15
CORRECTIONS
A July 4 Outlook article about debates over religion between Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi David Wolpe incorrectly de- scribed Temple Emanu-el in New York as the sponsor of a Novem- ber 2008 debate. The event, which was held at the temple, was hosted by the newspaper
·· E-mail
corrections@washpost.com. Jewish Week.
A July 2 Weekend listing of the Capital Fringe Festival’s opening- night shows included two ad- dresses for one D.C. venue, the Clinic. The correct address is 1006 Sixth St. NW.
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quite like Van Jones. A year ago, he was the White
N
House “green jobs czar,” a best- selling author and a community leader brought in by the president to transform the American economy with clean energy. The economy wasn’t
transformed, but the czar’s reputation was. Glenn Beck and other conservative critics dug up unsavory items on Jones — that he once called himself a communist, that he signed a statement in support of the 9/11 “truthers” and that he described President Obama’s Republican critics as a part of the lower gastrointestinal tract. He was forced to resign after six months on the job. “The last time I was here, I was
aWhite House official,” Jones told students Wednesday at the “Campus Progress” annual gathering at the Omni Shoreham. “And now I’m not! That sucks!” Now sadder but wiser, Jones visited the liberal group, an offshoot of John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, to give the kids some perspective on his —and Obama’s — rise and decline. “I’m just like the rest of America,” he said, invoking the millions who have lost their homes or can’t find work. “These are days of hope and heartbreak.” The analogy doesn’t hold up, because Jones has only himself to blame for his downfall. But he has learned something since, and he counseled those frustrated
DANA MILBANK Washington Sketch
with Obama’s lack of progress to look inward. “Honestly, we’re a little spoiled,” he said, likening “Generation Obama” to those who aspire to look like a fitness- magazine model (“That’s called hope”) but haven’t lost those extra 15 pounds (“That’s called change”). The former revolutionary appealed to the students to accept incremental progress, telling them to resist “the despair people want to pull you back to because we didn’t get everything done in 18 months.” And the onetime radical encouraged the students to develop some perspective. “We’re trying to build a pro-democracy movement in a country that at least for eight years was run by straight-up authoritarians, and it’s not going to be easy,” he submitted. Obama, he argued, “has done superhuman levels of achievement, but the hole is so much bigger than any other president has faced.” It was a useful contribution to the debate over Obama’s trouble, from a man who caused some of that trouble. Did Obama and his advisers overpromise? Did they overreach? Did they underestimate the opposition’s strength and Washington’s
inertia? Or was Obama denied credit for real achievements? All of the above, probably — but Obama’s biggest problem is that he set impossibly high expectations. As a reminder of this problem, the man preceding Jones to the stage Wednesday was Jim Messina, Obama’s deputy chief of staff, who clearly hadn’t shed his opinion that the president walks on water. “It’s like a dream every single
day,” Messina said when asked about his White House job. “It’s the single best thing.” The kids laughed at this apparent joke, but Messina was serious. “It is as cool as you think it is.” He spoke of being offered the job (“The president-elect said, ‘Hey, Messina, you want to go change the world?’ ”) and about interacting with the president (“He gave me this big hug and a fist bump”). He suggested that immigration reform, climate legislation and an end to “don’t ask, don’t tell” are all imminent (they aren’t). He called Obama “the leader you all wanted him to be” and asserted that “I couldn’t be any more proud of the guy.” He event tantalized the students with the possibility that, after a couple of grunt jobs, “you
S
KLMNO
THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2010 The radically reflective Van Jones
obody has embodied the promise and the pitfalls of the Obama presidency
could be Jim Messina,” a status that allows you “to have a cool car and work for a cool president.” Jones offered a realistic counterpoint to the smitten Messina. “Successes in life give you your confidence,” he told the students, “but it’s the setbacks that give you the character.” There were morsels of the bombast that got him in trouble last year (he called oil “the ancient blood of our ancestors”) but far more moderation than Jones had shown before. When a young questioner said he was having “a lot of difficulty maintaining my hope level in the face of a lot of despair that’s been coming out in the past 18 months,” Jones said he got perspective by watching a documentary about Nelson Mandela. He counseled the students to turn off the television “chatter.”
Another questioner said he
“danced in the streets” when Jones got his job and “cried” when he lost it. “Do you feel any sense of frustration still?” Jones took the long view. “If you were given the same opportunity I was given to go and serve for six months and it was 100 percent guaranteed that you would have the same rough exit that I had, do it,” he said. “Do it. It’s worth it.” Jones departed, and the MC
asked whether the students “feel a little better about everything.” In a sense, they should have: If Jones could survive his disgrace, surely Obama can survive his slump.
danamilbank@washpost.com
BP looks to foreign partners for investment
CEO Hayward visits Middle East, Africa as asset sales are planned
by Steven Mufson
BP’s chief executive Tony Hay- ward met with Abu Dhabi’s crown prince Wednesday while BP’s investment bankers worked to raise money without shedding any of the company’s crown jew- els.
Hayward is looking to shore up
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BP’s standing with foreign part- ners, investors and host coun- tries. In recent visits to Russia and Azerbaijan, he reaffirmed the company’s commitment to explo- ration projects there, and he told reporters in the United Arab Emirates Wednesday that he had a “very good” meeting with the crown prince, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Hayward heads next to Angola, where BP has deep-water offshore explora- tion and production projects. Meanwhile, the company is also looking to shore up its fi- nances, pressing ahead with plans to raise $7 billion to $10 bil- lion by selling “non-core” assets over the next year. Industry sources familiar with the negotiations said this week that investors — including U.S. and European oil firms, BP’s Rus- sian partners, and one of China’s state oil companies — have been approached about buying BP oil and gas production assets in countries including Argentina, Venezuela, Vietnam, Indonesia and Algeria. BP also may look to sell some of
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its 35 percent interest in Alaska’s aging Prudhoe Bay field, some sources said, though others said the company would not want to do anything to raise fears that it is reducing its U.S. exposure. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private. Brian Youngberg, an oil analyst with Edward Jones, said that BP has sold an average of $2.5 billion a year of assets over the past three years as part of the normal repo- sitioning strategy. “Companies routinely buy and sell assets,” he said. “This would be just a bit more than normal.” “BP will have no trouble selling these assets,” said Fadel Gheit, an
LEE CELANO/REUTERS
While cleanup workers in protective gear pick up tar balls washed up from the gulf oil spill, a girl plays in the sand on the beach at Waveland, Miss., on Wednesday.
oil analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. China, which is expanding oil holdings worldwide, might want reserves in Venezuela or Asia. Gheit also said that Exxon Mobil might use the opportunity to try to buy minority positions in some of BP’s extensive holdings off the coast of West Africa. BP’s assets in Argentina may be the most likely to go. When it bought Amoco, BP acquired 60 percent of a venture that has boosted output from an aging field, which now produces 100,000 barrels a day of oil and 450 million cubic feet a year of natural gas. Gheit said other oil companies with fields in Argenti- na might be able to operate BP’s fields profitably because of econ- omies of scale. BP denied reports that it was looking for a sovereign wealth fund to take a big equity stake in the company, much as Middle East investors propped up the shares of beleaguered U.S. finan- cial firms by taking substantial minority stakes. But BP spokes- man Andrew Gowers said that “we are talking to investors about the attractions of coming into BP at current attractive prices.” He said Hayward’s message was “we welcome new shareholders on our register or existing share- holders who see an opportunity to top up.”
Abu Dhabi’s crown prince is also head of the emirate’s sover- eign wealth fund.
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Sovereign funds are already big BP shareholders. They include the government of Norway, which reported on May 1 that it bought a 1.7 percent stake; the People’s Bank of China with 1.1 percent; the Government of Singapore In- vestment Corporation with 1.07 percent; and the Kuwait Invest- ment Authority with 1.75 percent. In a strong day for stock mar-
kets, BP jumped $1.28 a share, or 4 percent, to $33.19 a share on the New York Stock Exchange.
mufsons@washpost.com
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
At Grand Isle, La., cleanup workers salvage equipment that was swamped by high seas whipped up by Hurricane Alex.
The oil spill: The latest developments
BP hopes to connect a third vessel to the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico this week, doubling the company’s capacity to collect oil from the blowout, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said Wednesday. The Helix Producer would be able to capture 25,000 barrels of oil a day. Finalizing the link requires calm seas, so progress depends to some extent on how soon waves of four to six feet churned up by Hurricane Alex die down around the well site, Allen said. Connecting the well to a third vessel would allow BP and the Obama administration to make a final decision about replacing a leaky, funnel-shaped collection cap with a bolt-on seal that would route oil and gas from the well to the surface.
Michelle Obama
First lady Michelle Obama plans to visit the Gulf Coast in mid-July to tour areas affected by the spill, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. The visit would follow President Obama’s four trips to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida since the spill began. Vice President Biden also got a firsthand look at the cleanup efforts late last month.
— From news services on
washingtonpost.com
To join discussions, ask questions, read news updates, watch video, find interactive graphics, and view a vast collection of Post reports and photos from cleanup efforts, visit
washingtonpost.com/oilspill.
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