Profound Lessons

"Job retraining is also ineffective without job creation, a point made by several economists who have long cautioned against placing too much stock in it."

Michael Luo, "Job Retraining May Fall Short of High Hopes," The New York Times, July 5, 2009.

One of the profound lessons of the past twenty years is that people should be trained for jobs that exist.Too often employment and training has been served up as a palliative to economic dislocation and structural change. Early on the campaign trail, President Barack Obama railed against this kind of training. Yet the administration is now serving up more training than jobs.

There's a lot to be said for skilling up during this economic downturn -- adult education, community college, etc. Reading, math, computer sciences, etc. will certainly be basic skills in demand in the longer run. But consumers of any kind of shorter-term, technical training should demand from trainers an honest assessment of the job market at the outset. Then make a decision about whether it is worth it.

"Back in Washington, senior Democrats were nervously contemplating whether additional government stimulus spending may be needed to pull the nation out of the worst recession since the 1930s."

Lori Montgomery, "Power of Stimulus Slow to Take Hold: Rising Joblessness Blunts President's Plan for Recovery," The Washington Post, July 8, 2009.

I would suggest two things: 1) get the current stimulus money out on the street as fast as you can; and 2) fashion a WPA kind of works program that creates jobs fast and takes on important public work. For WPA to work, we need a national administrative framework that can act fast while knowing how to work locally. And we need a Harry Hopkins type who can get things done. How many jobs did he get off the ground in six months?

Another Fallen

"It is with great sadness that we inform you of our plans to close our Capitol Hill location, but given the current economic climate and the changes in our industry, we are faced with no other viable option."

Flier on Trover Bookshop, reported by: Kate Kilpatrick, "After Half-Century On the Hill, Beloved Trover Shop Comes to the Last Chapter," The Washington Post, July 7, 2009.

I was just there on Sunday -- the day before. The politics rack looked a bit thin and the staff seemed to be in an unusally low mood. I guess it was just a matter of time. Trover was (still is for a few weeks) a sturdy bookstore that rarely yielded a big surprise but delivered on most things. Thank goodness they finally reorganized their new books by author a few years back.

Thankfully there are still two used bookstores on the Hill that can satisfy my premordial need to browse among piles of books -- a need that will never be fully satisfied by Amazon or the big chains.

Now I'm thinking what classics I can pick up at Trover.

Self-Sufficiency Rag

"So no, Growing Power isn’t self-sufficient. But neither is industrial agriculture, which relies on price supports and government subsidies. Moreover, industrial farming incurs costs that are paid by society as a whole: the health costs of eating highly processed foods, for example, or water pollution. Nor can Growing Power be compared to other small farms, because it provides so many intangible social benefits to those it reaches.'

Elizabeth Royte, "Street Farmer," The New York Times Magazine, July 1, 2009.

That's the rub. So, what are the financial benchmarks for urban agriculture? How much subsidy is needed for start-up and ongoing operations? Are we sure of the social benefits from small operations? Aren't these always present, to varying degrees, from nonprofit enterprises -- less crime, more education, better health, etc?

Is a comparison with farm subsidies for corn and soybeans the right frame for urban agriculture? Aren't these subsidies part of the problem --- ensuring that we have the wrong crops and nutrients and too little food as Michael Pollan argues in In Defense of Food.

Will Allen and Growing Power represent the best of urban ag -- a curious farmer inventor committed to social justice and good food. Let's hope the acclaim and the allures of replication don't undermine this wonderful example.

Something Big?

"How could actions so often under the radar screen amount to something big? How can the disparate efforts of a wide range of grassroots groups...shift national politics..?"

Manuel Pastor Jr.,Chris Benner, and Martha Matsuoka, This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements For RegionalEquity Are Reshaping Metropolitan America

The authors talk about the "fog" of regionalism at the beginning of their book. Unfortunately, the "fog" doesn't lift very far by the end of the book -- although there are lots of good ideas and stories. The authors are to be commended for their honesty about their complex roles as researchers, advocates, and grantees and their willingness to surface disagreements and counterexamples.

I have a bunch of questions/concerns/isues about the book -- and thus with the notion of "something big." On the whole, I must admit, I'm on their side of the argument.

1)Several times the book pivots off of David Rusk's critique of community development corporations(CDCs) -- that they haven't done much about poverty alleviation. Regional equity strategies have been around long enough that they should face the same question. Little is said about impacts people. At some point, it's not enough to invoke policy, etc.

2. Regional equity strategies and the "regionalist" component seem to cover too much ground. For example, there is a conflation of social justice and regional equity stategies -- most living-wage ordinances are not regional; nor are community benefits agreements.

3. Little is said about other regional (or city) equity strategies that don't have a social movement base. Think of regional mobility or open housing strategies like Gatreaux. Or think of mayors like Norm Rice or William Johnson or Harold Washington.

4. The LA story is a great story -- one we should all seek to learn from. Some of the other examples are not so well put together. For Milwaukee, for example, the Milwaukee Jobs Initiative as an institution was put together because two young conservative operatives infiltrated the Campaign for Sustainable Milwaukee and wrote it up for the Wall Stree Journal. This was during the "school choice wars" in Milwaukee. The Chicago story about the "green line" also does not inspire a lot of confidence -- sometimes the Chicago "El" is called a commuter line or light rail. Why is this a case of regional equity? Some data would have helped.

5. The story about community organizing over seventy years involves ever-expanding geographic domains -- from industrial white-ethnic neighborhoods, neighborhoods of color and changing neighborhoods, citywide campaigns, and regional organizing. And don't forget the national organizing around CRA that started in the late 1960s/ early 1970s and various versions of state-based citizen action. The authors don't offer a very nuanced version of this evolving story. It would be a mistake to think that the regionalist frame provides the only "structural" dimension of organizing.

6. Sometimes I got the feeling that this book was another in a long line trying to advocate the LA paradigm and experience as super-relevant for the rest of the U.S. Maybe, maybe not. LA certainly provides the most full-blown example, but there isn't much discussion about the traveling power of the whole model and experience, although I think a lot of lessons could have been drawn out. Of course, what do LA, Chicago, or NYC really have to say to all those cities and regions down the metro hierarchy?

7. My final question is about the future. With a new focus on energy efficiency, renewables, etc., lot's of people are talking about the irrelevance of the suburbs down the line and the density assets of cities. What's the balance of regional equity and holding onto a long-term economic assets? This gets played out in a lot of strong-market cities in which regional equity provides one rationale for emptying cities of low-income people and communities. These are not necessarily questions for this decade (although things are happening), but they certainly are relevant looking out a few decades.

So, in conclusion, any book that stirs up seven questions or more is worth reading and chewing on.

New Plastics

"UMUC Environmental Management. 7.22 Billion Stimulus Dollars. Thousands of Green Jobs. Be Prepared. Now."

UMUC Advertising Poster, MARC Penn LineThis poster graces the most strategic spot on the train -- right at the exit door. We are usually lined up ready to tumble out as the train slows, stops, brakes, shudders, etc. Having something to look at and read is a lifeline in those last moments before more scurrying.

I was a bit surprised by the line of argument. UMUC is University of Maryland University College -- and I believe primarily undergraduate although environmental management is likely to be a graduate degree as well. There has been some analysis that many stimulus/recovery green jobs will require post-secondary credentials -- so going back to school makes some sense. But there is a bit of a timing problem -- short term for stimulus dollars and jobs -- the next couple of years. And I wonder whether there are thousands of jobs standing waiting by for these kind of skills -- as opposed to weatherization technician or auditor. I guess we'll need administrators and planners.

I found it odd that the poster focused solely on government supports -- not a new business sector, vibrant green economy, or climate change policies. There was almost something too concrete about it -- like get a degree and get a job. But that is what people want. I hope green is the next plastics.

Mega-Project Redux

"...The Chicago 2016 Olympics committee leaders balked at the idea of publicly briefing the City Council about a wrinkle that could put taxpayers on the hook for cost overruns, but today tried to reassure alderman in a series of private meetings.."

Hal Dardick and David Heinzman, "Olympics bid team holding secret meeting with alderman," Chicagotribune.com, June 24, 2009.

Mega-project planning and implementation are distinguished by at least two features -- cost overruns and secrecy. Chicago 2016 Olympics planning is right on schedule. Other typical features include wildly optimistic attendance figures, the inflated economic value of residuals, and the ROI.

Chicago saw all these come together in the failure and collapse of the planned 1992 Worlds Fair. So the biz boys are at it again. They do have a problem. It is legitimately difficult to get all the numbers right at an early stage. If there is total public transparency, citizens see the mega project for what it is -- a physical manifestation of urban ego. And hence secrecy. But secrecy encourages curiosity. And so on.

Jobiness

"The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is projected to create over 500,000 clean
energy jobs – including 300,000 jobs to build mass transit systems and high speed rails,140,000 jobs to build new transmission lines and a smart grid, and 73,500 jobs weatherizing homes."

Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Green Economic Recovery Fact Sheet.2009.

Let's get started. I suspect the weatherization dollars will flow the quickest and the expansion of work should pick-up this summer. Will this be net new jobs? Continuation of existing jobs? Expansion of existing jobs. A lot of these estimates derive from macro models about job creation and financial expenditures. That makes sense -- but it also may include indirect jobs. On the ground, it looks a bit different. How many crews or contractors do I put to work on how many jobs? Do existing contractors take more work because other construction work has dried up?

And then there are other questions that only close documentation will capture. How are workers hired? What are their skill and experience levels? What training is really needed? Is weatherization the first step on a career ladder? A steady job with benefits? Or a dead-end, bad job?

Weatherization is one of the key topics of the ARRA talkathon. Let's hope we can put together a broad and deep evaluation/documentation effort to learn as much as we can about weatherization numbers, processes, and impacts.

Building on Emptiness

"In the hardest-hit cities, where big clusters of foreclosed homes sit empty, entire blocks are being returned to nature -- land banks, they call them. There is opportunity in this crisis...City dwellers: this land is your land."

Timoth Egan, "The Self-Service City," excerpted in The New York Times, June 28,2009.

You might add closed factories, shopping centers, and public housing development to the list. So, what do we do with the land: urban farms, urban villages, green industry parks and incubators, urban homesteads,nature preserves, or regional amenities,

Of course this isn't a new problem. The blow out of cities from disinvestment in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s led to dramatic population and housing losses -- even in many cities now thought of as strong-market cities. North Lawndale in Chicago dropped from 120,000-plus people in the 1950s to 40-50,000.

So we experiment -- but mostly wait. I'm hoping that people will take the song seriously and invent so new solutions.

Green Anxiety

"When the president speaks of 'new green energy economies' creating 'countless well-paying jobs,' perhaps they really are countless, meaning incapable of being counted."

George F. Will, "Tilting at Green Windmills," The Washington Post, June 25, 2009.

The greening discussion deserves a good bit of here-and-now skepticism but not dismissal. Green jobs at the scale President Obama speechifies will be possible only if a robust set of federal, state, and local policies about climate change and energy independence are put in place. A more modest estimate of policy change and green jobs by the U.S.Conference of Mayors is the creation of 4.2 million jobs over thirty years. Until then, we have the opportunity to develop solid pilot projects in sub-sectors of the green economy where jobs exist or will soon be created by federal stimulus/recovery dollars. And, these jobs are countable, not countless.

Some may not agree with energy independence and reducing our carbon footprint as worthy public goals. And these goals are certainly not costless to achieve in dollars and sense. But investing in new industries has always involved chasing windmills and defying cost/benefit analyses -- the Hamiltonian way. Unfortunately, we are trying to straddle short-run economic woes with long-run economic potential and environmental necessity. The words get away from us.

Failure Policies

"But from a longer point of view, the country's [Germany's] ambitious green project is failing."

Michael Scott Moore, "Germany's Fine Failure," Miller-McCune, July-August, 2009.

Policies spur green markets -- but policies can be turned around -- that's the potential (likely) failure in Germany. A combination of mandatory nuclear phase out and "feed in tariffs" for renewable energy creation has driven green innovation, jobs, etc. Now there's a failure of nerve (and maybe analysis) that renewables can do the job alone.

"[U.S.] policies look anemic -- as if the idea of harnessing market forces to drive innovation has yet to dawn on Washington lawmakers."

At another level, individual households won't adopt solar because of prohibitively long payback periods and high short-run costs of installation.

"At its root, there is a financing market failure for renewables and energy efficiency in people's homes. Everybody's talking about all the technology, but we have to solve the financing problem."

Francisco DeVries, quoted in Matt Jenkins, "Solar System," Miller-McCune, July-August, 2009.

It's so simple. Treat solar, energy efficiency improvements like the sidewalk out front, putting utilities underground, or special assessments for extra services. Set up a special district if needed, figure out the pay back mechanism through utilities or taxes, subtract incentives, sell bonds, provide upfront cash to homeowners. Pilot and scale. Yes, I know it's not that simple. But it's virtue is that it uses tried and true municipal financing techniques and puts energy efficiency in the realm of the normal.

Again, policies and incentives spur markets -- and then comes job and business creation.

Too Late?

"Obama has defended his economic approach -- which includes the $787 billion economic stimulus plan and record investments in health care, alternative energy, education and job training -- as necessary to stabilize the shaky economy and point the way to job growth."

Michael A. Fletcher, "Recovery's Missing Ingredient: New Jobs," The Washington Post, June 22, 2009.

So, left and right kind of agree that we're not out of the recession, things may grow worse in terms of unemployment, and we may need think about other investments and policies. Of course, everyone has grown tired of spending more money. Obama folks caution that we wait and see the hopefully positive effects of the stimulus funds as they hit the streets more forcefully this fall and winter. More job training and community college announcements are coming in the next few weeks -- as if training creates jobs. Are there other plausible ideas?

It's too bad we didn't put a public jobs program like WPA into the ARRA instead of a lot of the razzle dazzle stuff. I know that the politics would have been tough, etc., but it would have put people to work -- while ARRA extended and deepened benefits and provided resources for skill upgrading. We could have used the military and national guard to get this going quickly. Is it too late?

Poverty Progress?

"..GM's bankruptcy marks the passage of this model...GM promised high wages, lifetime employment, generous pensions,and comprehensive life insurance."

Robert Samuelson, "Welfare in a Bad Way," The Washington Post, June 22, 2009.

Are those really such bad things? Maybe we should be doing more mourning than scorning about the loss of good manufacturing jobs. A few weeks ago I heard an LA Times auto writer talk about the "vast welfare state of GM." He wasn't referring to worker benefits; he was referring to GM's corporate bureaucracy and its unwillingness to innovate over decades -- in the face of market information, competition, and dwindling market share. Why do so many discussions about the welfare state focus only on benefits for workers and the unemployed?

"Today the poor are no longer invisible...But [Michael] Harrington's prediction is otherwise correct. For all the changes ushered in by the 2008 election, a renewed war on poverty does not seem to be in the offing."

Maurice Isserman, "Warrior on Poverty," New York Times Book Review," June 21, 2009.

Don't be so sure. Fighting poverty requires tight labor markets, smart policies,and individual and community mobilization. Policy innovation is taking a real leap -- even as the economy sputters. Let's hope these elements can come together in a year or two.

Food-Industrial Complex

"The trick will be getting 'Food Inc.'s' message beyond its natural constituency of the already-converted to the millions of shoppers whose choices in the marketplace represent a tsunami of untapped power."

Ann Hornaday, "'Food': Good...And Good For You," The Washington Pose,June 19, 2009.

A wonky film about farm subsidies, animal cruelty, and patents that argues consumers will have to pay more to be healthy may not be the right vehicle to unleash a consumer tsunami. By relying upon poignant stories, mostly about farmers, Food Inc. never delivers a hammer blow of condemning evidence about the health effects of the way we produce and package our food -- except in the case of feeding corn to cattle. In this sense, In Defense of Food does a better job -- and Michael Pollan helped on the film (and is in the film). We need a stronger, more pointed case to ignite a "anti-tabacco-like campaign.

This is not to say I wasn't horrified by Food Inc. or learn something new about the dastardly food-industrial complex.

Like: "Anyone saving seeds can be investigated for patent infringement."

Read the Dots

"Beneath the constant drumbeat of numbers emanating from Washington on the precarious state of the U.S. economy lies a complex, diverse set of 366 metropolitan economies—combinations of cities and suburbs that form distinct labor markets, housing markets, and centers of commerce"

MetroMonitor, "Tracking the Recession and Recovery in America's Top 100 Metropolitan Areas," Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution, June 19,2009.

What world do you live in? Not surprisingly, not all metro areas are doing the same by a long shot. The orange dots, the most metro losses, cluster in California, the metro areas surrounding Detroit, and in Florida. The blue dots cluster in the plains states, the northeast and mid atlantic.

Manufacturing, auto, trade, and foreclosures are no doubt part of the not-doing-so-well story. The better-off metro areas probably have more diverse economies, fewer foreclosures. Reliance upon tourism probably fits in somewhere.

One oddity for me is that New Orleans is at the bottom of the list and Baton Rouge is at the top of this list. What's the connection?

Roofing

"City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings.But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants."

Marian Burros, "Urban Farming, A Bit Closer to the Sun," The New York Times, June 17, 2009.

So much for thinking ahead. We replaced our rowhouse roof several years ago without a thought of greening. A tight, insulated roof was our mantra. Our postage-stamp backyard with more shade than sun could barely fire-up our composter. What were we not thinking?

Of course, we suffered from battle fatigue from years of roof leaks manifesting themselves in every nook and cranny of the house, fueled by the mysterious leakage trails throughout our walls. We had wildy different inspections,diagnoses,and interventions before going all the way. Now, the thought of messing with our roof seems like blasphemy.

The other,small problem is how to get up there. We have a hallway-ceiling entry, much like a submarine escape hatch, that requires a ladder and a gymnastic contortion to pull oneself up and out -- after hammering off the sealed hatch lid.

I also have a sneaky suspicion that making the rooftop garden work will not exactly pencilout in the short run. We'll need a long payback period, a pledge to personally ward of global warming, and some robust assumptions about changed eating habits, especially for our children. But, still, a rooftop garden would be fun -- and do some good for the world.

Spring Fling

"Like the authors ofThe Coming Insurrection, most of those observing... its publication...refused to identify themselves..."

Colin Moynihan, "Liberating Lipsticks and Lattes," The New York Times, June 16, 2009.

A pseudo reading of a mysterious French text at a nearby Barnes and Noble, a worthy target, no doubt at the center of false consciousness. And Barnes and Noble acted the part by calling security. Over what?

"'The book is important because it speaks to the total bankrupcy of pretty much everything,' one man said...'We're living in a high-end aesthetic with zero content'"

That sounds bad -- and no seeming way out. A perfect distraction for graduate students on a Sunday afternoon-- disturbing the material world. I bet it will catch on. But what is it?

"A few minutes later the cry was taken up again as the group moved into Starbucks..."

Seed Momentum

"[A] spokeswoman for Wal-Mart...said seed salesin March were up 30 percent over last year,sales of vegetable and herb plants had increased by 28% and sales of seed-starting supplies rose 40%."

Adrian Higgins,"Demand for Vegetable Seeds Rooted in Recession," The Washington Post, June 15, 2009.

I wonder if someone has invented a Victory Garden starter kit to help fledgling backyard gardeners succeed. I'm sure they have. Of course there are courses -- but you still help and easy access to the basics. A nudge, right?

* Dollars and cents of backyard gardening
* Where to put the garden
* Raised beds or the old-fashioned way
* What to grow and when
* TLC -- feeding the plants
* What to do with all the produce
* Common mistakes to laugh about

Community gardens make self help a bit easier and build upon communal knowledge

"At four community gardens in Reston...the wait list for 250 plots has climbed to 140 names, a back log of three years."

Time for more plots. My occasional view of backyards from an Amtrak perch tells me there are more community gardens in the making.

Will this gardening thing end with the recession, as if that will be soon? Like with many things,people need some success and it needs to be made easy.

Whose Soulcraft?

"The truth is that some would not have the physical and cognitive ability to do skilled blue-collar work, and that others, could do it only if they invested 20 years of their life learning a trade."

Francis Fukumaya, "Making Things Work," book review of Shop Class as Soulcraft, New York Times Book Review, June 7, 2009.

I guess I'm one of the "some"-- "highly educated people"...who dabble with shop class but frequently create more problems than soulcraft. My specialty seems to be demolition of all kinds -- walls, grass, trees. But even here I sometimes overreach.

I like this book a lot, especially its understanding and reflection upon the arts of "knowing and doing." I also think everyone should have a good dose of shop,cooking, and gardening at an early age. The closest I come to Crawford's kind of soulcraft is baking and growing organic vegetables.

My central problem with Crawford's book is the "straw" he sets up of the universal knowledge worker. I've worked in the nonprofit sector for 30-plus years (see: Nonprofit Leadership) and have found the work cognitively engaging and challenging for most of the time. It's not rule driven, nor a Dilbert stage set. A kind of republican virtue permeates the nonprofit sector. I suspect this is true for many small businesses as well.

Think of someone trying to start a charter school? What about a weatherization program scaling up to meet the future? What about a early childhood center working with kids and parents? I suspect that many of these social entrepreneurs and their teams couldn't change the oil in their own car much less a motorcyle. Yet, aren't they engaged in soulcraft?

Waving Hands

"Consider the angry feeling that bubbles up in this person when, in a public bathroom, he finds himself waving his hands under the faucet, trying to elicit a few seconds of water from it in a futile rain dance...Why should there not be a handle?"

Matthew B. Crawford,Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into The Value of Work

Yeah, modernity sucks! The spirited man or woman has to put up with all sort of stuff. But it hasn't broken me yet; I still wave my hands in hope of getting a few drops of water.

"Spiritedness...is the prideful basis of self-reliance."

Crawford doesn't seem to like much about the world except working on bikes and maybe doing some occasional electrical work. I get the bike stuff in a way, who wouldn't, but let's admit that it's metaphysically living off of a high-end, discretionary consumer product. I guess there's nobility in that. And I bet a lot of the bike production workers these days work in quality teams, use computers, and have some college. And at least for Harley, I think they make more money off of all their leather accessories than the actual bikes.

I'll have a bit more to say -- 50 pages to go.

Magic Money

"Bill Somerville thinks there's something drastically wrong with philanthropy today... [A]t Philanthropic Ventures Foundation..,Somerville guarantees an answer -- and a check -- within 48 hours...Somerville blasts foundations for behaving like lumbering elephants. They're passive, risk-adverse, and uncreative, he says."

April Dembosky, "The 48-Hour Yes or No," San Francisco, June 2009.

Yes, remarkable, unbelievable, tests the limits of undersanding, a cosmic breakthrough. No longer will philanthropists be able to say that "It's hard to give away money." And Bill seems to be having fun.

"Philanthropic Ventures gives away $5 million a year....A more typical example is the San Francisco Foundation, which gives away more than $21 million annually. Its average turnaround time has dropped from nine to four months."

I was at a gathering of philanthropists about a year ago at which Bill spoke. The theme of the convening was lessons learned. Bill wowed everyone with his approach. Then someone from the audience asked him whether, in his long career in and around philanthropy, he had ever made a mistake. He scratched his head and said, "Can't think of one."