New America in California: Publications, Events and More

Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who wrote a book about Schwarzenegger's 2003 campaign, envisions the governor becoming “climate ...

Which is my answer to those, like Yale Professor Jacob Hacker, who advocate public policies to reduce risk for individuals. In his book "The Great Risk ...

With its quirky vintage cars and grease-stained floor, pat's garage looks like a typically hip San Francisco auto repair shop. Until you notice that the street outside is overweighted in Toyota Priuses and inside, against the wall, stands a stack of $10,000 batteries made by A123 Systems. Drop one of these 185-pounders into the spare tire well of the Prius, get garage owner Patrick Cadam and partner Nicholas Rothman to tinker with it overnight, and you've got a hybrid that can be plugged into any outlet for… more

Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri, made a lame attempt to invalidate the idea that Barack Obama's victory is a symbol of American racial progress. It's not a surprise really. The United States' enemies long have used racial inequality as the stick with which to beat us. And unfortunately, it's a stick that we've handed them over and over again. Domestic discrimination has been at odds with our national mission of democratizing the world. But Zawahiri's message suggests the ascendance of a black… more

In California, lower paid illegals have harvested, cooked in restaurants, bussed tables, worked construction and helped remodel homes or landscape. Tomas Jimenez, Ph.D., is an Irvine fellow and a sociology associate professor at Stanford University. He studies immigration trends. "We have less of an ability to afford these services. Because of that they go back and so at some point the number we will need will find its own level," says Jimenez. LINK to video

In the mid-1970s, Peter Drucker stood before a group of executives at New York University and listened to one of them gripe about his struggles in a difficult economy. Drucker offered a bit of advice, but the executive evidently was not persuaded.

"I don't think that will work for me," the man said in an exchange recounted in John Tarrant's book, Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society.

"Then you had better go out of business," Drucker replied. "There is no law that says… more

With state revenues in free fall, governors are banging on the door of Congress, calling on lawmakers to put assistance to the states at the top of the list in the next economic stimulus package. In the ubiquitous media shorthand, the states want a “bailout.”

This shorthand, however, muddies the issue and the stakes here.

Giving help to the states is not the same thing as opening up the Treasury to shore up a failing private bank or manufacturer. States and the federal government are partners. In… more

Joe Mathews, a New America Foundation senior fellow who blogs about the initiative process in California and elsewhere, said today's process is rooted in the early 20th century progressive tradition, written by "tough guys, outsiders to government" who thought government was fundamentally corrupt and had to be circumvented by the people.

"It's that kind of fighting tradition this thing comes out of. It's not a flexible system "... there's not a lot of room to negotiate, there's room to fight," Mathews said. LINK

California is a state of many distinct regions. To give citizens a voice on regional issues and to reinvigorate California's Legislature, the state's central institution of self-government, we propose Personalized Full Representation for the 21st Century (PFR21), a system of representation by means of regionally based legislative elections that will allow the state'scitizens to set the agenda for their regions and for the state as a whole. By reshaping the stage on which legislative politics is played out, California can… more

This half-day symposium will address the distinct economic and cultural differences among our state's regions, will highlight the pioneering work that has been done to improve economic development and land-use decisions at the regional level, and will offer a series of new policy proposals to improve regional political accountability and coordination. The event will include a catered lunch and many opportunities for public feedback and interaction.

Volatile energy costs are a concern for every California family-particularly the millions of households for whom every extra dollar spent on energy comes at the expense of other necessities and the ability to save. For these families, securing affordable energy would result in savings that could be used for short- or long-term investments. In a cruel twist, the people most in need of relief from high energy costs are those least able to afford the longer-term investments that… more

Terry Tamminen stressed that states and local governments have already gotten a substantial head start on climate policy, offering incoming president Obama a foundation on which to craft a federal program. LINK

Summit organizer Terry Tamminen says even with a more climate-friendly White House, states like California will play a vital role in shaping the next international

TERRY TAMMINEN: Any problem benefits from breaking it down into smaller parts and solving those parts and then building it back up to the whole. And the same thing is true with climate policy. LINK to audio

"First thing is that we want (the conference) to be a showcase of what the states, provinces and countries are doing to limit emissions, and I think that'll surprise the world," said Terry Tamminen, former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency under Schwarzenegger. LINK

New America's Climate Policy Program was a major organizer and sponsor of the Governors' Global Climate Summit, held Nov. 18-19 in Los Angeles, which broght together leaders from the United States, Canada, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, the EU and other key regions of the world. Via taped message, President-Elect Obama used the summit to make his first statement on climate change -- declaring that he would establish annual targets to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020… more

The chattering classes on the post-racial right say Barack Obama's win is one more nail in the coffin of affirmative action. It proves blacks are equal, they say, and therefore they don't need "special considerations" anymore. Abigail Thernstrom wrote it in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Maybe they're right, and gays' attack on blacks for voting to ban gay marriage is the proof. Since when have blacks been the target of left-wing opprobrium about the way they vote? At least since Obama was elected… more

``I think it helps people understand the various elements of where you can get reductions,'' said Terry Tamminen, a climate change adviser to Schwarzenegger. ``When you look at a watermelon, you can't imagine how you're going to eat it but if you slice it and take one bite at a time, it's not that hard.''  LINK

Now that a winner has emerged in Oregon's down-to-the-wire U.S. Senate race, one nagging question persists: What effect did the third-party candidacy of Dave Brownlow have on the election?

The question is important for a number of reasons. With the vote for Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Jeff Merkley so close -- each received 47 percent of the total -- the more than 80,000 votes earned by Brownlow of the Constitution Party is far greater than the margin of difference between the two leading candidates. So when… more

There's little doubt that Barack Obama's redemptive message of change grabbed Americans by the throat. After all, it's in times full of fear and despair that people are hungry for hope. Obama's triumph and victory speech were moving not only because they reminded us that this country is based on the idea of possibilities but because, for at least a moment, much of the nation believed that hope was reborn. And that raises a question: Why are Americans so obsessed with hope? The American dream… more

Panel on the history and politics of oil with Lisa Margonelli, Alexandra Fuller, and Robert Bryce. Following their remarks, the panelists took questions from audience members. LINK to video