Atlanta Journal-Constitution

'Era of Engagement' Includes Cuba

Erin Drankoski — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:11:00 -0400

Last week, President Barack Obama delivered his first address before the United Nations General Assembly. "Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," he insisted. "We have sought in word and deed a new era of engagement with the world."

Yet, there remains one obvious exception to this new era of engagement with the world: our continuing embargo of Cuba.

True Health Care Change Is in Proposal's Details | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Cecille Isidro — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:26:00 -0400

... 9.2 million people with household incomes of $75000 and up lacked health insurance, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ...

Education Data System Key to Additional Federal Stimulus Money | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:33:00 -0400

But it’s likely the state’s plans will be enough, said Jennifer Cohen, a policy analyst with the Education Policy Program at the Washington-based nonprofit think tank New America Foundation. ...

Health Reform is Next Big Goal | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:04:00 -0400

... Congress is focused on expanding health care coverage, which could ultimately bring them more business, said Len Nichols, a health economist and director of the health-policy program at the New America Foundation, a research group in Washington. ...

Spending Worries Rise with Deficit | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 17 May 2009 07:02:00 -0400

Among others seeking to instill a sense of urgency is the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan group whose directors include former Office of Management and Budget directors Alice Rivlin, who served during the Clinton administration ...

“The president … understands the critical importance of fiscal discipline,” the group’s policy director, Marc Goldwein, said last week. “Now we need to see some action.”

Should the U.S. Scrap F-22 Raptor?

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:48:00 -0400

The F-22 Raptor combat aircraft is in the middle of a pitched battle for its existence. Georgians are paying close attention because the main assembly plant is in Marietta at Lockheed-Martin.

Supporters say canceling will cost jobs and national security. However, the reality is that the F-22 is at the top of the list of Cold War weapons that should be eliminated.

Weapons programs should not be about jobs; they should be about security. And on this front the F-22 wins low marks.

Stimulus Plan Could Add $1 Billion to Georgia Schools | The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:12:00 -0500

28, according to an analysis conducted by New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. Georgia has about 1.6 million public schools students. ...

J. Galbraith and Economic Growth Forum in Atlanta Journal Constitution

Communications — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:51:00 -0500

The home foreclosure crisis slamming into the nation's neighborhoods is having the effect of about "one Hurricane Katrina per month," James K. Galbraith, an economist with the University of Texas at Austin, said Friday at a forum examining the credit crisis.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005, nearly 275,000 Gulf Coast residents were forced to move into group shelters, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Economists who recently completed a study for the U.S. Conference of Mayors predicted the number of home foreclosures will hit 1.4 million in 2008.

Foreclosure is the legal process by which property may be sold by a lender to pay off a defaulting borrower's loan. Often, foreclosures drive down prices for entire neighborhoods as homes sit vacant.

When new buyers fail to purchase those empty houses, "the inventory doesn't go away," Galbraith said at the event sponsored by the New America Foundation, a research group. "The houses stay there — and they decay," hurting the value of even occupied homes around them.

This can compound the mortgage slump's economic damage. As home values decrease, Americans may no longer be able to get the home-equity loans that used to help them pay… more

Can't Stand the Heat

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:51:00 -0400

It’s all the suburbs’ fault. You know, everything -- traffic congestion, overweight kids, social alienation. Oh, and lest we forget, global warming and rising energy costs, too.

That latest knock against the burbs has caught on widely. With their multiplying McMansions and exploding Explorers, the burbs are the reason we’re paying so much for gas and heating oil and spewing all those emissions that are heating up the atmosphere --or so a host of urban proponents tells us. It’s time to ditch the burbs and go back to the city. New York, Boston, Chicago -- these densely packed metropolises are "models of environmentalism," declares John Norquist, the former Milwaukee mayor who now heads the Congress for a New Urbanism.

But before you sell your ranch house and plunk down big bucks for that cozy condo in the city, take a closer look at the claims of big cities’ environmental superiority. Here’s one point that’s generally relegated to academic journals and scientific magazines: Highly concentrated urban areas can contribute to overall warming that extends beyond their physical boundaries.

Studies in cities around the world -- Beijing, Rome, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles and more -- have found that packed concentrations of concrete, asphalt, steel and glass can contribute to a phenomenon known as "heat islands" far more than typically low-density, tree-shaded suburban landscapes. As an October 2006 article in the New Scientist highlighted, "cities can be a couple of degrees warmer during the day and up to 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer at night." This is critical as we deal with what may well be a period of prolonged warming. Urban heat islands may not explain global warming, but they do bear profound environmental, social, economic and health consequences that reach beyond city boundaries. A study of Athens that appeared this year in the journal Climatic Change suggested that the ecological footprint of the urban heat island is one-and-a-half to two times larger than the city’s political borders.

Further, urban heat islands increase the need for air conditioning, which has alarming consequences for energy consumption in our cities. Since air conditioning systems themselves generate heat, this produces a vicious cycle. Some estimate that the annual cost of the energy consumption caused by the urban heat island could exceed $1 billion.

This is not to say that big buildings can’t be made more energy efficient by using new techniques, such as high-tech skin designs, special construction materials to reduce energy consumption, green roofs and passive cooling. But one big problem is that making large buildings green also makes them much more expensive, so that they’re less and less affordable for middle-class and working-class families.

The Environment’s Friend

Low-density areas, on the other hand, lend themselves to much less expensive and more environmentally friendly ways of reducing heat. It often takes nothing more than double-paned windows to reduce the energy consumption of a two- or three-story house. Shade can bring it down even further: A nice maple can cool a two-story house, but it can’t quite do the same for a 10-story apartment building.

Focusing on the suburbs has the added virtue of bringing change to where the action is. Over the past 40 years, the percentage of people opting to live in cities has held steady at 10 percent to 15 percent. And since 2000, more than 90 percent of all metropolitan growth has taken place in the suburbs.

Here’s an Earth-to-greens message: Instead of demonizing the suburbs, why not build better, greener ones and green the ones we already have?

One approach might be to embrace what one writer, Wally Siembab, has dubbed "smart sprawl." Encouraging this sort of development will require a series of steps: reducing commuters’ gas consumption with more fuel-efficient cars, dispersing work to centers close to where workers live and promoting continued growth in home-based work. We’ll also have to protect open spaces by monitoring development and establishing land conservation based on public and private funding, the latter coming from developers who wish to work in suburbs. Building what we call "an archipelago of villages" seems far more reasonable than returning to industrial-age cities and mass transit systems.

Transportation Issues

This is not to say that transit of some kind -- perhaps more cost-efficient and flexible dedicated busways, or local shuttles -- can’t play a role in serving those who can’t or would rather not drive. But short of a crippling fuel shortage or some other catastrophic event, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever see the widespread success of heavily promoted strategies such as dense, transit-oriented developments, or the wholesale abandonment of the suburbs.

We can accommodate our need for space and still leave ample room for a flourishing natural environment, as well as for agriculture. By preserving open space and growing in an environmentally friendly manner, we can provide a break from the monotony of concrete and glass and create ideal landscapes for wildlife preservation.

Such notions -- developed before the term "green" existed -- go back to a host of visionaries such as Ebenezer Howard, James Rouse, Frederick Law Olmstead, Frank Lloyd Wright and Victor Gruen. And they have already been put into practice. Starting in the 1960s in his development of Valencia, north of Los Angeles, Gruen envisioned a "suburbia redeemed" that mixed elements of the urban and the rural.

Valencia’s elaborate network of 28 miles of car-free paseos -- paths designed for pedestrians and bicyclists -- helped make the natural environment accessible to residents. Similarly, The Woodlands, a sprawling development 27 miles from downtown Houston, is a model for a greener suburbia in a region not much celebrated for its environmental values.

Energy Efficiency

All these places evoke a more environment-friendly suburbanism, which also can be promoted in areas that did not benefit from the foresight of a Gruen or a Rouse. Town centers, revived older shopping districts, even re-engineered malls can all be part of a greener, more energy-efficient future in a large number of communities. Dragooning Americans into a dense urban lifestyle that’s attractive to only a relatively small minority isn’t the best way to address concerns about energy and resource depletion or global warming. Instead, we need to take gradual, sensible, realistic steps to improve the increasingly dispersed places where most of us choose to live and work.

Restoring the Value of Saving

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 08:09:00 -0400

The value of saving is finally making a comeback. After years of over consumption and accelerating debt -- and more than two years with a negative personal savings rate -- Americans are finally beginning to fret over their empty coffers and negative balance sheets. As headlines profile subprime borrowers going into default around the country, the average American’s sense of economic security has jumped from unease to panic. As policymakers scramble to develop new policies to bolster working families, echoes calling for the return of the American value of thrift are beginning to grow louder.

Any middle class American will tell you that it is increasingly difficult to afford a middle-class lifestyle on a middle-class income. Tuition at four-year institutions -- in 2005, averaging $11,441 a year -- amounts to 25% of median income; in 1990, a year of higher education cost just 16% of annual household income. Increase in the median home price has also outpaced income growth. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the cost of a new home was 3.8 to 4.2 times greater than the median household income; today a new home is 5.1 times greater than median household earnings. The accelerating costs of higher education and homeownership -- both hallmarks of the middle-class lifestyle and trophies of the American Dream -- have made these goods largely unattainable to those who rely solely on income to advance.

Americans are quickly beginning to realize they’ll need more than just stable wages to get ahead in the new economy. And with foreclosure rates skyrocketing, and student loan and credit card debt continuing to mount, families are rightfully hesitant to take on more debt. This leaves only one option: for hard working families to afford a middle-class lifestyle -- while avoiding the paralysis of debt -- they must restore the virtue of thrift and begin to develop personal assets through saving.

Saving has already emerged on the campaigned trail as one not-so-novel way to bring low- and middle-income American’s back onto solid economic footing. Just last week, John Edwards proposed the creation of “Get Ahead Accounts” that will provide matching dollars for working families who save. It is with savings, Edwards argues, that families will achieve economic security -- by investing in assets such as higher education or homeownership.

Just off the campaign trail back on Capitol Hill, savings proposals are gaining traction in a divided Congress looking for a bipartisan way to support working families who feel increasingly marginalized. Just before the August recess, Senators Clinton (D-NY) and Smith (R-OR) introduced the New Savers Act, a comprehensive bill designed to promote new savings, especially among low- and middle-income families, and enhance existing savings vehicles. In addition, members from both chambers and both sides of the aisle have proposed reforming asset limits -- rules in public assistance programs that prevent low-income families from saving while receiving benefits. The savings agenda appears to safely occupy the ever-receding common ground in both parties’ approach to social and economic policy, making it fertile ground for innovative policies that can actually become law.

One bold initiative rooted in this shared agenda has the potential to instantly reinvigorate America’s saving culture and provide every citizen with a vehicle to invest in his or her own economic future. To date there are a number of legislative proposals, from both Democrats and Republicans, to create a Children’s Savings Account for every child in America. These accounts, which could be started with government seed money and grown through personal deposits, would provide every individual with the start up capital needed to transition into adulthood. By limiting the use of these funds to investments in higher education, homeownership, or retirement, we can ensure that every young person has the opportunity to pursue the American Dream and the capital needed to secure a middle-class lifestyle through hard work and prudent investment.

Making homeownership, higher education, and retirement security a reality for families earning the median income in the new economy will require a fundamental shift away from debt and consumption back to the inherently American value of thrift on which our middle class emerged and thrived. Policies both big and small can help increase the incentive to save and expand access to savings products, but it will take a cultural reawakening for America to remember that the trophies of a middle-class lifestyle are bought with hard work and prudent investment, not with easy credit.