Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
Yesterday, the Obama Administration released top-line numbers of its FY10 budget request. Of the whopping $3.6 trillion budget, $51.7 billion was allotted to the International Affairs Budget, an estimated 9.5% above the comparable amount for FY09.
Well, the World Bank’s senior management has really done it this time: As my colleague Joel Meister reported today, Congress has reacted to its intransigence on carbon accounting and coal-fired power by deleting budgetary support for the Bank’s Clean Technology Fund. After c
The U.S. Congress today passed its omnibus appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2009, H.R. 1105. Missing in action: the U.S. contribution to the World Bank's so-called Clean Technology Fund (CTF), which has repeatedly come under fire from CGD's David Wheeler and others for including coal-fired power plants among those potentially eligible for CTF support.
My colleague David Roodman has decided to write his next book in public, not only by posting draft chapters as he completes them and inviting comments but also by sharing his discoveries and tribulations as he conducts the research that underpins the book. David writes:
On March 2, thousands of people are expected to engage in mass civil disobedience at the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant in Washington, DC.
The Spanish press reports that Spain's prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has been officially invited to the G-20 summit in London in April as well as the preparatory meeting in Berlin. Spain was invited by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (El Mundo (Spain)/Factiva). The Spanish government has campaigned vigorously to be included in the G-20, despite the fact the European Union is already represented.
Last week, Bill Easterly and colleagues formally launched the new Aid Watch initiative at the Development Research Institute at NYU. Aid Watch is meant to serve as an independent monitor of the aid practices of official development agencies, through research, events, and a blog.
Last week the German Marshall Fund released the report of a Transatlantic Task Force on Development. Formed in spring of 2008, the Task Force was led by former U.S. Congressman Jim Kolbe and Swedish Minister for International Development Gunilla Carlsson. Its purpose was to formulate a common U.S.-Europe development agenda, as a basis for renewed transatlantic cooperation in tackling global challenges. I was one of 22 European and American task force members.
The global economic crisis is already creating pressure for the United States to further restrict skilled migration. The economic stimulus act that President Obama signs today limits the ability of many companies receiving stimulus money to freely employ highly skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas.
President Barack Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24 isn’t officially a State of the Union Address, since he has just recently taken office. But it will look and sound exactly like a State of the Union, and that can mean only one thing: time for CGD’s ever popular State of the Union (SOTU) BINGO!
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