The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Can't Stand the Heat

Articles — 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… more

Restoring the Value of Saving

Articles — 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… more

Why Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Hollywood Now Rule

Articles — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:07:00 -0400

Power in America is shifting from George W. Bush’s Sun Belt mafia -- with its roots in post-1950s aerospace, energy and development -- to a new political triad: a handover of control from one oligarchy to another.

This new triad draws its power from three key postindustrial power centers: technology, entertainment and finance. Its geographic orientation is different as well. Rather than having its primary bases in boomtowns like Houston, Dallas, Charlotte or Phoenix, the new elite clusters mostly in the more established, refined reaches of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Manhattan.

Nowhere is this shift more notable than in the extraordinary attention… more

Atlanta Journal Constitution Favorably Reviews "Oil on the Brain"

Communications — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 20:47:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Oil on the Brain: Adventures From the Pump to the Pipeline.
By Lisa Margonelli. Doubleday. $26. 325 pages.

Verdict: A fascinating drive.

Like many journalists, Lisa Margonelli knows a little bit about a lot of topics. Like many freelance writers, she moves from one unrelated topic to another, depending on what strikes her fancy and on what an editor will buy.

On Oct. 28, 2002, Margonelli took a fancy to writing about oil. The result is a book in which she shows she knows a lot about one topic. Those who read to the end of the simultaneously breezy and serious book will know a lot, too...

Margonelli, who lives in Oakland, Calif., decided she would travel the globe "to hear stories from the people who oversee oil's long journey to our cars." She wanted to understand oil in a deeper manner than the fluctuating price of its derivative, gasoline, at the service station pump...

The structure of Margonelli's narrative is unexpected, even daring, as she works backward along the demand-supply chain. She starts the book at the service station pump, because it's the most familiar manifestation to the largest number of readers. Then she tackles the distribution, refining and drilling, in that order...

"Nothing was as I expected," she writes of a gas station, a seemingly familiar and uncomplicated site. "The one thing I thought I had a handle on --- the price of gasoline, which is updated frequently and displayed prominently on large signs --- turned out to be a chimera, albeit a fascinating one that reveals much about the behavior of American gasoline consumers and our role in the world."

While oil never leaves center stage, Margonelli does a masterful job of humanizing its passage from underground to pump handle...

For the complete review, please visit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.

Peter Bergen on the Taliban, Pakistan in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Communications — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:29:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush sits down to a White House dinner Wednesday with Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, two crucial U.S. allies who have been launching increasingly bitter accusations at each other for sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

"It will be interesting for me to watch the body language of these two leaders to determine how tense things are," Bush said Tuesday after an Oval Office meeting with Karzai...

Joking aside, the tension between Karzai and Musharraf has been palpable in recent days as each made the rounds in Washington -- including meetings with Bush -- leading to tonight's dinner.

In addition to issuing challenging, if measured, words about each other, Musharraf now is on the record as opposing Bush's Iraq strategy...

Musharraf also said Karzai incorrectly thinks much of the region's violence emanates from Pakistan. Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation, an expert on the region, said, however, there is little doubt that Pakistan has become headquarters for the resurgent Taliban, based in Quetta and Peshawar. Bergen noted that several Taliban leaders have been captured or killed in those cities in recent months.

"The short answer is yes," Bergen said when asked if Pakistan has become the base for violent insurgents...

For the complete article, please visit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.

Joel Kotkin on the Evolution of Atlanta in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Communications — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 03:00:00 -0400

New America in the News:
Before he decided to open a high-end Japanese restaurant in a generic strip mall in southern Cobb County last year, chef Tomohiro Naito considered Midtown ("too expensive to rent") and then an industrial area of Decatur (too much competition from established Chinese eateries).

"I heard this location [on Cobb Parkway] was very favorable," Naito says amid a recent noon-hour rush at Tomo, now touted as one of the best restaurants in metro Atlanta. The proximity to several mega-malls and affluent shoppers was an attraction, he said, and I-285 and I-75 are just around the corner. And there was also the new Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, under construction nearby in this booming part of the county.

"[I] thought about all the good clientele coming before and after shows," he says. "People who are educated and enjoy nice things know they have to pay for it."

The Atlanta Opera is betting its future that Naito is right. After a turbulent 27-year history, the opera company is moving to Cobb. Beginning in fall 2007, it will make the new arts center's 2,750-seat Williams Theatre its home.

The move is historic: It marks the first time a major-city opera company will leave its established location within a city and move all its performances to a suburb, according to Opera America, a service organization based in New York. And though metro Atlanta's reputation may be that of one large, sprawling landmass, for the opera, being in Cobb County could present an uncertain bundle of financial, sociological and political ramifications.

For the entire article, please visit The Atlanta Journal-Constitution web site.