New Geography

Category: Politics

  • Obama’s First Touchdown: Blue States Take Lead in Bowl Games

    What does college football’s schedule of bowl games tell us about American politics?

    Here are some unscientific musings on what it all means — figure any football or political point spreads on your own.

    Let’s start with this fact: The bowl season would have remained an overwhelming “Red State” affair if Barack Obama had not pulled off his successful raids on Republican territory during the recent presidential election.

    Several key college football states flipped from traditional spots in the Red column and went blue November. Indeed, a majority of the bowl games that are set for locales around the U.S. between December 20 and January 8 will be played in Blue states — the first time that’s happened since the color-coded terminology became a popular point of reference for Democrats and Republicans.

    It’s a narrow advantage for the Democrats, with Blue states hosting 17 bowl games to 16 for the Red states, and one in Canada. That’s just under 52% of the contests scheduled in states that went to Obama, about a percentage point less than his share of the popular vote in the general election.

    Obama’s electoral breakthroughs in several previously Red states accounted for a shift in the landscape of bowl games that appears similar to the shakeup he brought to the Electoral College. A big reason for the shift on bowl games can be traced to Obama’s win in Florida — sound familiar? That’s because the Sunshine State hosts the most bowl games, with seven on the schedule from Miami to Jacksonville this year.

    Obama also turned New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina from Red to Blue, picking up much-needed electoral votes in November, along with one bowl game in each of those states. It turns out that Red states would have held a bowl-game advantage of 23-10 if John McCain had just held Florida. GOP wins in New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina would have given the Red States a 26-7 advantage.

    A review of the participants in this year’s bowl schedule shows again that Obama’s 50-state electoral strategy is playing out on the field, too. Blue states hold a 38-30 edge among the 68 college teams that will play in everything from the San Diego County Poinsettia Bowl to the FedEx BCS National Championship Game. It’s clear, too, that those numbers also would have gone to the Red states in dramatic fashion — 47-21 — without Obama’s success in flipping Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Those states represent a shift of 17 teams from Red to Blue. Florida once again leads the way, with five college squads making bowl appearances, followed by four schools in North Carolina; two each from Colorado, Indiana and Ohio; and one apiece in Nevada and Virginia.

    The schedule offers a clear warning for any Republican honchos who are still thinking about Sarah Palin as red meat for hungry Red Staters: The Blue state advantage in this year’s football fiestas should put all the emphasis needed on Obama’s success in poking holes in GOP’s traditional stronghold in the Sun Belt, where warm weather has always been a big draw for bowl-game promoters.

    GOP elders should also keep in mind that the bowl-game landscape is quite astonishing in light of campaign critiques of Obama as “too urban,” “too cosmopolitan,” and “too-exotic” — or any of the rest of the terms many commentators used when they wished to avoid the subject of race. Republicans should recall that Obama — who is set to become the first genuine urbanite to occupy the White House in 100 years or so — brought the Blue states to the bowl-game lead without any heavy advantage from the coastal metropolitan centers deemed central the Democratic Party’s success.

    The fact is that the roster of 68 teams playing in bowl games includes few schools that can be assigned to either the Atlantic or Pacific — only 15 or 20 out of the 68 bowl participants are near the coasts, with the rest from inland areas or southern sections with political kinship to the interior. There are some judgment calls in that count, counting a number of campuses as inland even though they’re in states that do have a coastline. Take North Carolina State, whose Wolfpack made the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Yes, the Atlantic Ocean laps at North Carolina’s land, but North Carolina State is located in Raleigh, more than 100 miles from saltwater’s edge. This analysis also puts schools near the Gulf Coast in the inland category as a matter of spirit rather than geography. The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg is only about 70 miles from the Gulf Coast, but the political climate there is closer to the inland regions that have made big portions of the middle of the country Red on a consistent basis. In other words, Hattiesburg is still more like Hannibal than Haight-Ashbury, regardless of its proximity to the Gulf Coast.

    Large metropolitan areas don’t hold much sway in terms of the bowl-game landscape, either. There are some judgment calls here, too. How do you consider the University of Wisconsin, located in the Dairy State’s capital city of Madison? Not exactly a big city, but it’s a good-sized metropolitan area in a mid-sized state, and plenty vibrant to boot. A number of the bowl-game participants come from similar territory, and with a little give and take for such circumstances you’ll see that roughly half of the schools are located in major metropolitan areas and approximately half reside in secondary markets or exurban locations.

    Take a look, have some fun, use the Red State-Blue State breakdown to guide your picks for the office pool.

    All we can know for certain is that Obama’s campaign proved to be a game-changer in more ways than one — and just 12 days after the last bowl game is finished we’ll see if our new president can play defense.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Stimulate Manufacturing and Production, Not Consumption and Consumerism

    As store earnings plunged last week, the National Retail Federation proposed that the country create the mother of all sales by suspending taxes on all purchases. These tax holidays would occur in March, July and October and be national in scope.

    The bill, they suggested, should be picked up by – who else? – the federal taxpayer, who would make up for the lost local revenues even for the five states without sales taxes. The rationale, suggests the Federation’s chairman, J.C. Penney Chief Executive Myron Ullman III, in a letter to President-elect Barack Obama, would be “to help stimulate consumer spending as one of the first priorities of your new administration.”

    Now I can understand the manager at the local Target, Macy’s or Nordstrom feeling a bit neglected as money pours out to prop up financial institutions and the Big Three. This proposed subsidy for mallrats, however, makes the previous somewhat-dubious bailouts look like good policy.

    In fact, if there is one thing Americans do not need, it is yet another incentive to spend money they do not have. This has become a fixture of stimulus-think under the Bernanke-Bush regime. Remember the tax rebates earlier in the year? That was a big help, wasn’t it?

    Sadly, this “shop ’til you go bankrupt” strategy is being adopted by the new kingpins in Washington as well. Already you can hear Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, talking about a big stimulus to “prop up consumption.”

    This quick-fix approach has become a new genus of bipartisan madness. Like “the best minds of my generation … looking for an angry fix” – to recall Allen Ginsberg’s Howl – politicians and policymakers seem to feel we need some quick high to restore our battered economy.

    Like a bad drug habit, reckless stimulation may make us feel better in the short term, but it could leave us shaky later on. To be effective over time, a stimulus plan must first address some fundamental challenges that have haunted the American economy for a generation.

    Of course, there are countries that should be spending more. Places like China, Germany and Japan have gotten fat off our consumption. Now their beggar-thy-neighbor policies are backfiring as shopaholic nations, most notably the U.S., rein in their spending.

    In contrast, our economy’s failing stems from not producing nearly enough in goods and services to pay our bills. Our long-term weakness stems not from a shortage of consumer credit – the main obsession of Wall Street and both parties – but from the decline in manufacturing, growing dependence on imported fuel and deteriorating basic infrastructure.

    Our consumption patterns – coupled with disdain for production – explain how our deficit in goods-related trade alone has soared over the past two decades from roughly $100 billion annually to over $800 billion. In the process, we have created an enormous shift in currency reserves to countries like China, Russia, India, Korea, Brazil and Taiwan. They produce and save too much; we consume and borrow too much.

    Reversing this dangerous disequilibrium does not necessitate the end for American-style capitalism – as suggested recently by France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy – but instead a paradigm shift within it.

    First, we need to swear off our addiction to hype-driven bubbles, seen first in technology and more recently in real estate. The fact that the government may be about to start yet another – this one colored “green” – suggests bad habits are hard to break.

    Of course, bubbles certainly benefit some individuals and companies, most notably the financial sectors, who can best take advantage of wild speculative swings. The financial sector’s share of profits more than doubled as a percentage of national income since the 1980s.

    However, this pattern has not worked so well for most Americans, who have seen their wages stagnate or even fall. Most of us would benefit far more from robust growth that stems from productive industries like energy, fiber, food, logistics and manufacturing. Parts of the industrial Midwest, Texas and the Southeast have enjoyed expansions in these fields – until the onset of the recession, at least.

    More important, productive economic growth creates demography far more egalitarian than the Namibia-like bifurcation that characterizes bubble centers like Manhattan and San Francisco. In fact, notes University of Washington demographer Richard Morrill, areas with greater concentration of these kinds of industries tend to suffer less inequality and offer better prospects for the average middle class worker.

    Concerns over income equality should persuade Democrats – the supposed party of the people – to focus primarily on the basics of economic growth. This is precisely what we have not been doing for over a generation.

    Just think of the billions sunk into convention centers, yuppie condos, performing arts centers and other ephemera. These produce some high-wage short-term construction and architecture jobs, but after that, they offer largely low-paying service work. Meanwhile the Chinese and other competitors dredge new harbors, build high-speed rail systems, new freeways and fiber-optic lines – the keys for pushing their economies to the next stage.

    Sure, you can say the Chinese are also hurting from this financial crisis. But at least they can pay for their own stimulus. The Germans, Russians and Japanese, for now, can also dip into their dollar reserves to pay for new infrastructure investment. In contrast, we will have to beg the money for our stimulus like some busted-up small-town bookie.

    More serious yet, the real problem may be whether we even want to make the changes necessary to boost our economy. Americans were once masters of both innovation and production, but we have begun to fall behind on both counts.

    Indeed, our policies no longer focus on such things as manufacturing and energy production, deeming them beneath our dignity. As early as the mid-1980s, the New York Stock Exchange issued a report baldly stating that “a strong manufacturing economy is not a requisite for a prosperous economy.”

    At the same time, we have deluded ourselves into believing that a small number of “creative” alchemists – software engineers, hedge fund managers, urban developers – could transform code, cash and condos into limitless pots of gold. The huge winnings of these few would then allow the rest of us to spend like teenagers on a borrowed credit card, consuming everything made by the hard-working fools abroad.

    By now we should know better. Americans possess no monopoly on “creativity.” Our suppliers abroad are using the billions made from selling us everyday stuff to help finance future moves up the value-added scale. You can see it in every critical field from aerospace, steel and pharmaceuticals to software services, fashion design and entertainment.

    Americans can meet this challenge but not by goading the family to spend more at Wal-Mart. Instead, we need to remember what actually drives economic growth. The ultimate fate of the economy will not be determined in the malls, but in the mines, oilfields, farms, factories, design shops and laboratories of a more productive economy.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • America Has No Cause to Fear Political Dynasties

    It’s been a tough winter for those concerned about dynastic politics.

    One-time First Daughter Caroline Kennedy is angling for a Senate appointment from the governor of New York. In Delaware Vice President-elect Joe Biden tapped a longtime aide as a placeholder for the Senate seat he will soon vacate, so his son, state Attorney General Beau Biden, will have a leg up in the 2010 special election. And an oft-mentioned Colorado Senate replacement for Interior Secretary-Designate Ken Salazar is his brother, Rep. John Salazar.

    There’s nothing new about this story. Political dynasties are as old as the Republic itself. Our current president, 43, was elected just eight years after his father, the 41st, chief executive, was booted from office. The aforementioned Kennedys are an icon of American politics. In January 2009 the Senate will include a pair of first cousin freshmen lawmakers, Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.)

    The built-in advantages of political lineages are obvious. Voters, like, product consumers, are apt to go with a name brand. Moreover, parents or spouses in office can help raise campaign cash from contributors and lobbyists, thereby creating financial advantages early that can scare off primary opponents.

    But political anti-royalists still can take heart that despite the best efforts of cunning pols and their operatives, voters have often rejected wannabe heirs to political thrones. The halls of Congress are full of lawmakers who beat kin and spouses of legislators who tried to keep their seats in the family.

    Last month Republican John E. Sununu lost his New Hampshire Senate seat to the woman he defeated six years earlier, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. Sure, it could be argued that the younger Sununu might have never won high office in the first place were it not for a name strikingly similar to his father, former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff John Sununu. Still, in increasingly Democratic-leaning New Hampshire voters nonetheless bounced the political offspring at the first opportunity.

    In North Carolina this year Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina also lost a Senate seat she had held for only one term. The wife of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, failed to impress Tar Heel voters with her performance. She had spent a minimal amount in North Carolina, preferring the comfy D.C. environs of her Watergate apartment. Her legislative record, meanwhile, was scant. Famous last name or not, voters went with Kay Hagan, a previously little-known state senator.

    The House, too, is littered with the political bodies of defeated congressional relatives. There children of some of the highest-ranking and most influential politicians in the land have come up short.

    Even a politician with relatively enduring popularity, former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, couldn’t help an offspring win high office. In June 2008 her daughter, Kate Whitman, sought an open House seat in the state’s bucolic central regions. But a famous name mattered little to voters, and on Election Day Whitman lost the Republican primary to veteran state legislator Leonard Lance by more than 20 points.

    Or consider Scott Armey, who in 2002 sought the Dallas-area seat being vacated by his father, House Majority Leader Dick Armey. The younger Armey finished first in the Republican primary, but because he did not earn more than 50 percent, a runoff was needed. He ended up losing to Michael Burgess, a doctor and political novice whose literature reminded voters, “My dad is not Dick Armey.”

    The same year, Brad Barton ran for the House in east-central Texas. He is the son of longtime Republican Rep. Joe Barton, who once served as chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Voters were unimpressed just the same, and the junior Barton finished third in his primary.

    Most famously, political royalty did not assert itself in the 2008 presidential race. Former First Lady Hillary Clinton once seemed a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination. But Barack Obama, son of working-class Hawaii and lacking famous relatives, had other ideas. Soon the presidential spouse will be working for Obama, as his secretary of state.

    Should Caroline Kennedy be appointed as Hillary Clinton’s replacement in the Senate, representing New York, she would certainly have advantages in name recognition and fundraising ability over political rivals, Republicans and Democratic primary opponents alike. But the recent history of political offspring and spouses does not mean she can expect voters to keep her around when they next get a say in the matter.

    David Mark is a senior editor at Politico.com and author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning.

  • Good-Bye, Gentry

    The proposed investiture of Caroline Kennedy as the replacement senator for Hillary Clinton has inspired a surprising degree of opposition – at least from other claimants to the throne, such as the Cuomos, and from those obstreperous parvenues, the Clintons.

    Perhaps less obvious may be a wider disdain expressed by even liberal New Yorkers who feel Kennedy’s elevation may be one celebrity rising too many. Although the big New York editorial boards are expected to line up, like so many obedient lap dogs, grassroots dissent seethes. Queens Congressman Gary Ackerman, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, groused: “I don’t know what Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications are except that she has name recognition. But so does J. Lo.”

    Other liberal New Yorkers I have spoken to detest the idea of Kennedy replacing Hillary Clinton – particularly without even having to battle, as she did, through the elective process. One reporter even spoke of a discernible “populist backlash” against this ultimate insiders’ deal among lower-level pols, reporters and grassroots Democratic activists.

    Still, these yelps are not likely to stop the Kennedy juggernaut. The forces behind Caroline – like moneybags Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Wall Street bagman-in-chief Sen. Charles Schumer – are too powerful and well-heeled to be resisted. The word is out that dissenting on Kennedy could result in loss of the kind of largesse that can make or break political careers.

    The disquiet about her appointment does offer a glimmer of hope about our battered democracy. It could point toward a backlash against the gentrification of liberalism, the Democratic Party and much of American politics. Gentry, of course, have been involved in American politics from the earliest time, but generally as a conservative influence tied to the protection of their moneyed interest or privileges.

    Of course, some wealthy hierarchs also supported liberal politics. Perhaps the most important examples were Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yet if the Roosevelts favored the middle class and the poor, they often did so at the expense of being labeled class traitors by their peers.

    In contrast, the current gentry liberals increasingly reflect the biases of their own social class. The upper echelons of Wall Street, academe and the media have been moving toward what passes for the “left” for over a generation. Ironically, this movement became most evident in the early 1960s in the elite support that gathered around Caroline’s father, John, who brought with him into office “the best and brightest.”

    As historian Fred Siegel has noted, the Kennedy phenomena differed greatly – in both style and substance – from the “lunch pail” liberalism epitomized by President Harry Truman and, to an extent, that of both Lyndon Johnson and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Their Democratic party was sustained by appealing to the economic interests of working and middle-class Americans.

    As opposed to gentry politics, whose bastions lay in fashionable urban districts and college towns, Truman-style democracy reached into the vast suburban dreamscape – even into small towns and rural areas.

    Over recent years this version of the party, with its more geographically diverse middle-class base, has lost influence. It’s been a process of both addition and subtraction.

    A series of strong Republican politicians since Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan lured many middle-income voters out of the Democratic Party by appealing to their patriotism, economic self-interest and, in some cases, prejudices.

    At the same time, the core of the elite liberal constituency – academics, high-tech businesspeople and media figures – has been growing steadily in wealth and influence. By marrying this constituency to poor minority voters, gentry liberals have turned our core urban areas into a collection of electoral “ditto heads,” with so-called “progressives” winning as much as 70 or 80% of the vote in presidential elections.

    This year’s thrilling primary battle between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama represented a clash of these two tendencies. Although Clinton herself enjoyed strong ties to some gentry liberals, she campaigned, particularly toward the end of the marathon, as Harry Truman in a bright pantsuit. Obama, for his part, sallied forth from a solid base of academics and well-educated professionals, as well as African Americans.

    In first the primary and then the general election, Obama’s growing fundraising advantage stemmed increasingly not from his early base among students and liberal professionals, but from his strong ties to the highest echelons of the gentry. As we now know, it was big money – hedge funds, Silicon Valley, Hollywood – not small donors who helped propel Obama’s financial juggernaut.

    Then it’s not surprising that, so far, the Obama pre-presidency reflects the values of the gentry class. His appointments in key economic posts have been very much in sync with the Schumer-Robert Rubin Wall Street wing of the party. Contrary to the hyperventilations of some conservatives, Obama seems as unlikely to confiscate the holders of mega-wealth, inherited or otherwise, as that muddle-headed blueblood, George W. Bush.

    If the president-elect looks to raise taxes, a more likely target will be the less-well-heeled small businesspeople, farmers and others who have tended to remain closer to the Republican Party. These are the people who earn about $250,000 a year and may now be demonized as “rich.” Another source of pain for the middling classes may come from carbon trading, which could boost energy prices.

    Indeed, Obama’s most liberal positioning may come on environmental issues, a favorite concern of many gentry liberals. “Green” politics appeal to these factions in part because it poses little threat to “information” industries like finance, software and entertainment. Instead the losers will be blue-collar polluting industries – such as traditional energy production, trucking or manufacturing – which have largely remained close to the GOP.

    Another arena may be found in new federal initiatives on urban and planning issues. Many gentry liberals, starting with Al Gore, have long disdained suburban lifestyles that allow most Americans an enviable level of privacy, safety and comfort. After all, members of the gentry don’t need supports since they can afford both spacious city digs and country retreats.

    But it’s not only ideology or cultural preferences that drive the gentry agenda. Many venture capitalists and investment bankers see a carbon-trading regime and massive subsidies for renewable energy as a potential source of windfall profits.

    Yet for all of these synergies, Obama’s embrace of the gentry agenda also poses some longer-term political risks. For one thing, there’s a growing cadre of congressional Democrats from non-gentry constituencies – the Great Plains, various suburbs and exurbs – who may find the Obama approach both not sufficiently populist and too dismissive of their basic economic concerns.

    The patterns of this dissent can be seen in the early opposition among these Democrats to the initial plan for the financial bailout proposed by President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It might be further stimulated if the administration seeks to smother fossil fuel, agricultural and industrial development as well as steer the stimulus away from financing the roads and bridges critical to the suburban and rural economies.

    For right now, the drive for the Kennedy nomination suggests how powerful, pervasive and even cocky the gentry class has become. But if the economy worsens and grassroots anger grows, the new president may want to avoid emulating JFK and instead follow another playbook, one oriented toward the middle class and epitomized by Harry Truman – the very same approach that almost helped elect his primary rival and new secretary of State.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • Go North Young Man

    With his foreign policy team now in place, President-elect Barack Obama certainly will be urged to make his first forays into high profile places like Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, as well as to greet his devoted fan base in Europe.

    But before heading off on the diplomatic grand tour, he might do well to turn his attention first to the country with which we have the closest political, economic and environmental ties: Canada. Although not as momentous or sexy a locale as Paris or Jerusalem, Ottawa could well hold the key to developing a bold new strategy for America in an increasingly incoherent and multi-polar world.

    A focus on Canada and to some extent Mexico as well, would require a reversal of the kind of wide-ranging foreign policy focus that has dominated the country since the 1940s. In that period, the United States has extended – one might increasingly say overextended — its economic and political reach ever further from its continental base.

    In the process, the country has become ever more intertwined with unreliable and often malicious regimes on the Asian continent and subservient to the interests of an often jealous and uncomprehending Europe. As a result, the country has sacrificed its own economic health, becoming ever more dependent on fuel, manufactured goods and even its self-esteem from countries with which we often share distressingly little.

    Instead, the new President should place greater emphasis on the fundamental basis of our uniqueness and economic strength: the enormous continent we share with our Canadian as well as Mexican neighbors. This would represent a return to a version of the politics – so important in our 19th Century emergence – that understood resources, natural and human, constitute the true foundation of national greatness.

    This shift also would help us establish significant psychological distance between the United States and Europe. Although there are segments of the country, notably in the Northeast, who would prefer America become a clone of the Old Continent, our demographic and physical realities are diverging every day from those of a rapidly aging and resource-poor Europe.

    In contrast, Canada shares with America a somewhat more vibrant demography. This is driven largely by immigrants who are rapidly integrating and invigorating both countries. With Australia, the two countries have emerged as the preferred location for immigrants in part because they are where they are – in sharp contrast with that of Europe – most likely to succeed.

    Being a country of immigrant aspiration represents just one aspect of our close cultural ties with Canada. Our northern neighbor ranks among the largest senders of immigrants as well; roughly 840,000 Canadian citizens now have established themselves south of the border. On a familial level millions of Canadians have relations with Americans; in fact, places like Los Angeles, if current and former Canadians were counted, would constitute among the largest cities in that country.

    Canada is also our country’s largest source of visitors – there are parts of Florida where French is the second language – and a major player in our national real estate and financial market. Whole sections of the northern Great Plains depend on consumers coming from over the border. (Full disclosure: Joel Kotkin’s wife is a native of Montreal, Quebec and the Schills live in Grand Forks, an icy spit from the Manitoba border).

    Most critically our economic ties to Canada represent the largest bilateral relationship in the world while Mexico has emerged as our third largest trading partner. And unlike our chronically poor terms of engagement with countries like China and Japan, our trade with Canada and Mexico also includes healthy transactions in basic manufactured goods, technology and farm products.

    At the same time, Canada and United States together share a critical interest in agricultural commodities, a market where they are the undisputed world leaders. In a world that is likely to get too crowded and short of basic resources, a strong North America should be well-positioned in comparison with relatively resource-poor competitors such as Western Europe and East Asia.

    But perhaps the most critical relationship lies in the energy arena. The globally Saudi-centered energy policy of recent years, particularly during the Bush-Cheney era, has fueled our deadliest enemies and also threatens both our environment and long-term economic viability.

    A U.S.-Canada energy consortium — with the eventual involvement of Mexico — provides an out from our fundamental geopolitical dilemma: how to grow our economy while reducing our dependence on imported energy and, over time, carbon-emitting fuels. This could take the form of something like a North American Energy Community, which would help coordinate research, development and environmental resources across the continent.

    This approach would offer a way to shift our economic interests away from unreliable and unfriendly regimes towards countries with whom we have far better personal, political and economic ties. Current estimates indicate we will increase oil imports from 12.6 million barrels a day today to 16.4 million in 2030. More than half of that is expected to come from OPEC suppliers, with much of the rest from Russia and the Central Asia autocracies.

    A continental strategy would halt this dangerous slide. Taken together, the resources of our three countries are both immense and extraordinarily diverse. Overall, North America ranks second only to the Middle East in proven oil reserves. Canada, for example, has the world’s second largest proven crude oil reserves, outpaced only by Saudi Arabia; the United States ranks 11th and Mexico 14th. The three North American states rank in the top fifteen in natural gas production, as well.

    This alliance can work both in the short run on fossil fuels and will, over time, blossom with the shift to renewables. Canada, well known for its surplus of fossil fuels, also possesses promising potential in hydroelectric and wind energy. Wind alone, Canadian researchers believe, could provide 20 percent of that nation’s power. Prince Edward Island, on the country’s east coast, is already conducting a major experiment to shift its primary energy dependence towards wind and biomass.

    Mexico, long an oil exporter, needs new technology both to upgrade its current energy industry and to exploit its potential in renewable fuels. Over time, experts say, Mexican production of fossil fuels will drop, but the nation has an almost totally unexploited potential in solar and sugar-based ethanol fuel, following the Brazilian model. For its part, the United States also has considerable solar, wind, and biofuels, of which we are already the world’s second largest producer.

    This energy alliance would also help spark employment and growth across the continent. Money spent on development and importation of energy from Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Iran offers few benefits for our economy. We conduct pathetically little export trade with these nations; we constitute less than 5 percent of Russia’s imports, less than 14 percent of Saudi Arabia’s, and virtually none of Iran’s. Europe, Japan, and, increasingly, China – not the United States – are the growing and primary beneficiaries of the energy-producers’ wealth.

    The same dollars spent within North America have a very different effect. Canada and Mexico together constitute by far the largest export market for the United States. Over one third of our exports now go to our North American allies, compared to less than 5 percent to OPEC and less than one percent to the Russian Federation.

    Investment in Mexico’s Peninsula de Atasta, an ethanol plant in Iowa, or a hydroelectric plant in Quebec enriches customers for whom the United States is a primary source of both manufactured goods and of services, including tourism. A wealthier Mexico also means more visitors to the parks of Orlando, Anaheim or to Houston’s Galleria. Canadians, for their part, flock first to New York, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles or Florida when they have extra change to spend.

    So as he considers his options, President-elect Obama may want to consider this continental strategy as a means to create new wealth here and to strengthen our hand abroad. We know these proposals are radical, and will be subject to all sorts of opposition by well-organized pressure groups.

    But by focusing on our continental economy, the United States can begin facing the world not as another slowly declining European descended power but once again as a youthful, defiantly multi-racial and ascendant one.

    This piece originally appeared at Politico.com

    Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and is finishing a book on the American future. He is executive editor of www.newgeography.com. Mark Schill is the site’s managing editor and an associate at the Praxis Strategy Group.

    December 19, 2008

  • Bailing out California, Again

    If many of the nation’s governors have their way, the next agenda item for the spendthrift federal government could be a bailout of state budgets. According to a report issued on December 10 by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 37 states face mid-year 2009 budget deficits, totaling $31.7 billion. As would be expected from its size, California leads the pack at $8.4 billion. However, California’s shortage is well above its share, at more than one-quarter of the total which is double its share of the population.

    Yet it gets worse. Later, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that the budget deficit had risen to $14.8 billion, which would take its share of the deficits to more than three times its share of the population. All of this is after a long and drawn out legislative process that was to have closed a previous $22 billion deficit earlier in the year.

    For years, California boasted a strong economy, with the world’s leading technology, entertainment and agricultural industries. The state’s Legislative Analyst claims that California would be the 7th largest economy in the world if it were a nation. California is rich not only in the aggregate, but at the ground level. Only eight of the 50 states have a higher gross state product per capita. This means that California is per capita the richest large economy in the world. Thus, any bailout would be disproportionately financed by parts of the country that are often far less affluent.

    How can it be that California stands in such tatters seeking a handout? Why are people from other states, at least 30 of which wouldn’t even rank in the top 50 economies of the world, being asked to prop up this dynamo?

    The problem starts in Sacramento. California has been pitifully served by its state government. After missing the June 30 statutory deadline for balancing the 2009 budget, the legislature and governor spent the better part of the next three months doing everything they could to finish the job. In the final analysis they pretended to balance the budget with math that virtually no-one believed. That’s probably why there has been so little outrage at the new $15 billion deficit that has developed so quickly.

    But the buck doesn’t stop with lawmakers. After all, California’s electorate has repeatedly sent the elected representatives to Sacramento that have produced this mess. In California the voters themselves seem oblivious to the financial status of the state.

    This is likely to get worse before getting better. In the past voters could be counted on to vote down expensive new projects in hard times. But not anymore. In November they approved more than $30 billion in additional bonded indebtedness when they should have been asking for either a draconian spending cut or the tax increases. Californians will not be stopped from living beyond their means.

    So how can this continue? One way is for the world’s richest largest economy to be bailed out by people in states that are generally poorer and have been more frugal than California. The state’s powerful congressional delegation, with such heavyweights as Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman, the new boss of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, are likely to see to it that the national interest is sacrificed on behalf of California.

    The final irony here is the nation and indeed the world is already paying a heavy price for another exercise in Californian excess. The state is ground zero for the mortgage meltdown. It was here that house prices exploded. State and local land use policies provided the fuel for much of the increase, so that when demand increased in response to the profligate lending, the housing supply market could not adequately respond (unlike other higher demand parts of the country).

    With the most bloated housing bubble in the nation, mortgage losses understandably were concentrated in California. California, which accounts for 12 percent of the national population has accounted for more than one-half of the aggregate loss in housing value. California house prices dropped at least 10 times as much as the national average since the peak of the bubble. When the people could not pay their mortgages, unprecedented losses occurred and house values plummeted from 25 percent to 50 percent in some areas. Enough people who had virtually no financial stake in their houses walked away.

    California’s ability to spend every dollar the nation can print on its behalf should not be underestimated. Boatloads of federal money for California are likely to postpone any genuine efforts to improve California’s long run financial picture. The often used line about fighting a fire with gasoline has few better applications. A state that has thrown financial caution to the wind is not likely to adopt the necessary frugality with a new, national source of revenue. The special interests that have driven California’s spending into the stratosphere will not be more inclined to moderate their demands or to spend less lobbying money in Sacramento’s corridors. California’s taxpayers, perhaps the most anti-tax in the nation, are not likely to accept higher taxes if Washington can be counted on to pay instead.

    There could be no worse signal to California’s dysfunctional governor and legislature than to bail them out. With the situation deteriorating daily, bailing out California could become a continuing national obligation – sort of like Iraq, but without the prospect of an exit date.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • Financial Crisis: Who will Bailout the State and Local Governments?

    The continual Illinois corruption scandals have created not only ignominy to the Land of Lincoln, but have now placed a negative ranking from Standard and Poor on its credit. If Illinois vies with other states for the title of most corrupt, it has plenty of company when it comes to financial disaster.

    Although building for years, the impending collapse of state and municipal finance has been hastened by the growing financial crisis. The year 2008 will go down as one of the most turbulent years in the history of financial markets. Long established companies such as Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Citigroup have imploded. Large retailers like Circuit City have already filed for bankruptcy and, without federal help, huge companies like General Motors will join the parade.

    Yet with all the turbulence in the private economy, there has been much less media attention on the coming bankruptcy of some municipalities and perhaps even some states. Many of us are taught in college finance classes that the yield on municipal bonds always has to be lower than U.S. Treasury securities, largely due to their exemption from federal income taxation. This normal pricing of municipal bonds no longer exists. Municipal bond yields, the last couple of months, are consistently higher than U.S. Treasuries. This tells us that the credit markets perceive great risk in lending to America’s cities. The perceived ability to pay back principal is now the operating rule in the credit markets.

    As of this writing, Triple-A rated, Tax-Exempt General Obligation Bonds are yielding over 5% while the 30 Year Treasury Bond yields around 3%.This suggests that many communities and some states as well may be in distinct danger of default.

    There’s a general pattern as to where the biggest problems lie: in those states and communities where public employee unions wield all but unlimited power. This is not so much the fault of unions – the purpose of every union is to gain higher wages for its workers – but in many states and cities there is no counterforce to their influence. This becomes a vicious circle. Local politicians overpay unionized government workers who make campaign contributions and organize “get out the vote” drives to make sure the politicians keep overpaying them.

    The most recent famous example is the California city of Vallejo filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. George Will writes:

    Joseph Tanner, who became city manager after this municipality of 120,000 souls was mismanaged to the brink of bankruptcy, stands at a white board to explain the simple arithmetic that has pushed Vallejo over the brink. Its crisis — a cash flow insufficient to cover contractual obligations — came about because (to use figures from the 2007 fiscal year) each of the 100 firemen paid $230 a month in union dues and each of the 140 police officers paid $254 a month, giving their respective unions enormous sums to purchase a compliant City Council.

    So a police captain receives $306,000 a year in pay and benefits, a police lieutenant receives $247,644, and the average for firefighters — 21 of them earn more than $200,000, including overtime — is $171,000. Furthermore, police and firefighters can store up unused vacation and leave time over their careers and walk away, as one of the more than 20 who recently retired did, with a $370,000 check. Last year, 292 city employees made more than $100,000. And after just five years, all police and firefighters are guaranteed lifetime health benefits.

    The recent news out of the state of California is no better. The L.A. Times reports that California’s budget deficit could reach $41 Billion by 2010. Can California continue to pay 3600 prison guards over $100,000 a year? It would be wrong to single out California. Many other places are on pace for financial ruin.

    Massachusetts is another state where unions have hijacked the political process for the benefit of their members. Last year, The Boston Globe reported how lucrative rent-seeking can be:

    Nearly one in 10 Massachusetts State Police officers made more than the governor last year, with 225 officers topping the $140,535 annual salary of the state’s chief executive.Four of the 2,338 state troopers were paid more than $200,000, and 123 others were paid more than $150,000, the salary of the governor’s Cabinet secretaries, according to payroll information obtained by the Globe under the state public records law.

    And that brings me back to my home state of Illinois. We not only face an immediate cash flow crisis but also must confront an underfunded public pension fund deficit of more than $50 Billion, and the Blagojevich scandal has held up a needed $1.4 billion short-term bond offering. Chicago Public Radio reports the Illinois pension deficit is “larger than the state’s annual budget.” There is a clause in the Illinois State Constitution that prevents any state or local government worker’s pension from being cut. Will a federal bankruptcy judge have to come in and void a section of the Illinois State Constitution?

    When the major credit rating agencies failed to accurately price in the risk of subprime mortgages, questions about their rating standards are now becoming quite important. If you can’t trust Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch, what should you be looking for if you want to own municipal bonds?

    In the coming years, many municipalities and state governments will need to deal with the conflict between those who pay taxes and those who consume them. Government workers’ salaries come from the taxpayers: which means government workers aren’t net taxpayers. Cheap and easy credit might no longer be available to help pay for overpaid government workers.

    This situation can be resolved in two ways. As in a bankruptcy proceeding, states and cities can work with unions to control costs and reduce obligations. Or they can – as Wall Street and Big Three have done – come to Washington, DC to beg. Once that happens, the long-term credibility of Washington’s debt will need to rise to record levels, with implications that are almost too horrific to contemplate.

    Steve Bartin is a resident of Cook County and native who blogs regularly about urban affairs at http://nalert.blogspot.com. He works in Internet sales.

  • Rust Belt Realities: Pittsburgh Needs New Leaders, New Ideas and New Citizens

    The current recession provides a new opportunity for Pittsburgh’s elite to feel good about itself. With other boom economies from Phoenix to Miami on the skids – and other old Rust Belt cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo even more down on their luck – the slow-growth achievements of the Pittsburgh region may seem rather impressive.

    Yet at the same time, the downturn also poses longer-term challenges for which the local leadership is likely to have no answers.

    In large part, Pittsburgh’s “success,” such as it is, has been based on what may be called a “legacy economy,” essentially funded by the residues of its rich entrepreneurial past. This includes the hospitals, universities and nonprofits whose endowments have underwritten the expansion of medical services and education, which have emerged as among the region’s few growth sectors.

    The other great advantage Pittsburgh has – as do potentially other shrinking Rust Belt burgs – is lower housing prices. That’s the good news. But the lack of a great surge in housing prices during the real estate “bubble” also testifies to the region’s general lack of overall attractiveness and its languid job market.

    The current national economic meltdown now changes these realities, and in ways that may not allow Pittsburgh and other slow-growth burgs as much comfort as they might wish.

    For one thing, the “legacy” economy is almost certain to start shrinking as the portfolio investments of universities, hospitals and nonprofits begin to erode. After all, these institutions rode the boom elsewhere for a long time; they now will reap the consequences of that dependence.

    Perhaps even more important, the great housing advantage seems certain to weaken as a net positive. As prices in Florida, Arizona and even California begin to decline, Rust Belt residents who’ve been thinking of moving to warm weather, more dynamic economies and lively entrepreneurial environments will now have their chance.

    To thrive, Pittsburgh simply cannot rely on being somewhere that is a good place to go to school, get sick or die. It needs to offer restless, entrepreneurial people an opportunity to succeed and do something new.

    As local blogger Jim Russell notes, the real problem with his hometown is not that people leave, but that others do not come to replace them. People always leave places, but exciting locales – Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Houston or San Francisco – also attract large numbers of new people. The immigrants, many of them seeking the “main chance,” are generally the people who shake things up and bring new energy to places.

    Who seeks their “main chance” in Pittsburgh? Certainly not foreign immigrants, who are staying away in droves. Metropolitan Pittsburgh has one of the lowest percentages of foreign-born residents in the nation. Even Detroit, with its sizable Arab population, has some sort of ethnic vibe.

    In the short run, some might argue, not having immigrants relieves the stress on schools and eases potential social tensions. Yet in the America that is emerging, these newcomers represent arguably the most dynamic new element and harbingers of the future. By 2000, one in five American children already were the progeny of immigrants, mostly Asian or Latino; by 2015 they will make up as much as one-third of American kids.

    Rather than compliment itself on not exhausting itself by running too fast, the Pittsburgh region should think about producing enough of a pulse to attract immigrants and aggressive young people. A place that reassures itself on the basis of its stable, homogeneous and rapidly aging population seems doomed to achieve little better than self-satisfied stagnation.

    City leaders may be proud to see Pittsburgh hailed in the media – most recently by USA Today and the Cleveland Plain Dealer – as a poster child for urban “renaissance,” yet these glowing accounts are clearly not inspiring many people to settle there.

    Indeed, in a nation with the most vigorous demographics in the advanced industrial world, the City of Pittsburgh continues to suffer one of the most precipitous declines in population. Like the former East Germany, the town needs more coffins than cribs. Even the suburbs of Pittsburgh have been losing population.

    More worrisome, there seems no strategy – or even an inclination of needing one – to change this reality. Rather than stimulate the grassroots economy, the region for decades has sought to revive itself by spending billions on new stadia, arenas, convention centers and cultural facilities, sometimes in the process demolishing vibrant working-class neighborhoods or local business districts. Meanwhile, the roads and bridges of the city – which continues to battle bankruptcy – are in a constant state of disrepair.

    Every time I read about or visit Pittsburgh, the powers that be have a new project to prove to themselves that the city actually has a life. Most recently, it’s a lame-brained scheme to create a 1.2-mile, $435 million (at least) transit tunnel under the Allegheny River to connect Downtown’s heavily subsidized office towers to the North Shore’s even more heavily taxpayer-funded pro sports stadiums and a future casino.

    Yet, in reality, Pittsburgh’s “Tunnel to Nowhere” is simply part of the same old brain-dead development strategy that may impress visiting journalists or conventioneers but creates little in the way of good new jobs or long-term opportunities.

    You have to think about what the energetic people who come to a community really want – things like economic opportunities, single-family houses and good schools for their kids. Who but speculators and city officials cares about luring the latest ESPN Zone or Planet Hollywood? These kinds of venues are simply commodities now, with no sense of place and available in any city of decent size willing to subsidize them.

    So what should the Pittsburgh region do differently?

    The first thing would be to consider using its scarce public funds to revive the old urban neighborhoods and leafy suburbs that constitute Pittsburgh’s greatest competitive advantage. These are places that may attract students now, but to matter in the long term, some of these young people must stay after they graduate. This will be particularly critical as the current “echo boom” begins to fade and the now record-high number of students begins to drop.

    Second, the region should target growing small businesses. The era when Pittsburgh was a big-business town is all but over. In 1960, 22 Fortune 500 companies were headquartered there. Now it’s roughly a third that number. High taxes, tiresome regulatory regimes and the enormous burden created by outsized city employee pensions have hit the small entrepreneur hardest. Addressing these issues is more important to them than new arts venues or jazz clubs.

    Finally, the city needs a shtick to call its own. It might look at its historic strengths as an innovative engineering city. Pittsburgh could look also to its hinterland, a region rich in beauty and resources, as part of its competitive advantage.

    All of these things could provide linchpins for a true renaissance – one driven not by public relations and shiny new subsidized edifices, but by the energy of its people.

    That’s what has always made for great cities – and what will do so well after this current recession has passed into memory. Pittsburgh has the potential to catch the inevitable next wave that will emerge after the crisis, but only if it can get past its long-standing celebration of mediocrity.

    This article originally appeared at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • Auto Bailout: Follow the Money to House Votes

    This probably won’t shock you, but MapLight is reporting today that those House of Representatives members voting for the auto bailout received 65% more in campaign contributions from the auto industry than did those who voted against:

    House Democrats voted overwhelmingly in favor of this bill, 205 voting Yes and 20 voting No (11 not voting). Democrats voting Yes received an average of $74,846 each, about 19% more than those voting No, who received an average of $63,140.

    House Republicans were somewhat more divided on this bill, 32 voting Yes and 150 voting No (16 not voting). Republicans voting Yes received an average of $69,323 each, 63% more than those voting No, who received an average of $42,598.

    MapLight charted a similar situation with the financial industry bailout.

  • City Planning and The Politics of Pollution

    Part Two. Yesterday, in Part One, Critser discussed scientific advances in understanding air pollution. Today, he addresses the social implications.

    The new science of air pollution, with its emphasis on dose-response mechanisms, may remake the traditional advocacy realm of social and environmental justice. In the past, that world has been focused on class, race and ethnicity, classic markers of inequality and vulnerability. Today, the focus is more “exposure driven.” “Dosage… may be something people who have ignored environmental justice can get their heads around,” one researcher at last month’s Environmental Epidemiology conference in Pasadena noted. “It may get people’s attention on something that affects us all.”

    Other new observations are recasting ancient (and highly suspect) urban-suburban dichotomies as well. If one parses the science of small, regional temperature increases—the kind we may see more of in the future—and how those spikes “activate” ultrafine particles, one discovers a disturbing phenomenon: The combination of heat and UFPs makes airborne plant pollens more inflammatory. Such was the finding of Italian researchers studying how traffic emissions and high temperatures in Naples fortify the toxicity of urtica, the common allergen known as the nettle plant. One wonders how the same combination remakes the lovely sage and chaparral environment surrounding Southern California suburbs, even when the region isn’t burning. It is a disturbing prospect for those who believe they have escaped inflammation by exchanging big cities for exurban greenlands.

    What, besides moving to Iceland, can be done? Few have thought more about that, at the practical level, than Andrea Hricko, an associate professor of clinical preventive medicine at USC, where she is trying to translate epidemiological data about pollution into practical public health policy. For years, Hricko’s focus was the Port of Los Angeles and the neighborhoods and schools surrounding that diesel-saturated realm. What she found were huge spikes in childhood chronic diseases, especially asthma, as well as other heart and lung problems. She and others succeeded in getting one school relocated—pushed back from the most truck-intensive route near the Alameda Corridor—but even that victory was a lesson in the unintended consequences of regulation.

    “Come over here, you have to see this,” she said to a visitor one day in her crammed office on the medical school campus. On her computer appeared a picture of a group of kids playing soccer. In the immediate background loomed trucks belching the substances that eventually make the port air so heinously foggy. “See, this is where the school was. This was supposed to be the buffer zone, but… being that it is also rare, unoccupied space, and LA schools have so little recreational area, it is now a defacto playground. So you have kids better protected inside, but doing their deepest breathing part of their day right on top of the trucks.” It’s a perfect public health storm, she notes, because “getting kids outside and exercising more is a huge priority in the obesity-diabetes crisis.”

    Hricko’s focus on the ports, arguably the octopus of contemporary industrial Los Angeles, has taught her some hard lessons. You can always get a regulation that says, for example, don’t build a school within X distance of a freeway, but you can rarely switch the scenario around, say, with a ruling that says don’t widen a freeway when it is within X distance of a school. The same is true of building a new rail yard, as is the case just north of the port today. For years, area residents waged war with the railroad and the port to simply locate the new yard closer to the water, which would have drastically reduced the number of short, emission-intensive trips by trucks, and thus hopefully cut down the high rate of respiratory disease in the area. The solution, instead, was to go ahead and build the yard right by the homes, with a promise by state regulatory agencies to install new, high efficiency filters in all area homes. While that protects the children while they’re inside—and, it would seem, suggests a possible boom enterprise for the filter industry—it’s far from an ideal solution. “They’re still spending most of their time outside, and we still need to get them to exercise more while they’re out there. It’s a frustrating exercise.”

    Hricko has also wondered if the same impasse won’t obtain in the arena of the low-income housing juggernaut led by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. One recent hearing concerned an affordable housing complex proposed alongside the 5 freeway near East Los Angeles. As Hricko tells it, that project would be sandwiched between one of the most emissions-choked portions of the freeway and the mass transit Gold Line, which would run just behind it. “There was all kinds of talk about filtering, etcetera, but the real question was never brought to the fore: Perhaps this shouldn’t be considered for housing in the first place.” She notes that a member of the LA County Public Health staff made precisely this point… privately.

    One can understand why. Affordable housing is an important, unmet need in Los Angeles, one with a substantial political establishment behind it and a charismatic mayor in front of it. There is, as a result, an understandable reluctance to get in the way of the parade, especially after years of political impasse. The mayor recently upped the ante and proclaimed a new $5 billion housing initiative, much of which would center on building new housing near mass transit stations. The essence of this transit pod strategy has a fairly sustainable logic: If you can get people to live near mass transit, you’ll dramatically reduce one of the biggest single factors in urban pollution: the numerous short, one-to-five mile trips that people make every day, whether to work or to the store or to pick up the kids at school. You’ll also reduce traffic jams.

    The problem, of course, is human nature, and the naughty desire by poor people, especially in Los Angeles, to be like the rich people, driving whenever and to wherever they want. Compounding this, for the scheme to work, we still must get from the station to work and people will use a car to do that. “For Antonio’s plan to work, you’d basically have to make it a condition of ownership that you don’t have a car. Or, that if you are going to buy this housing, you have to work somewhere on the trainline,” Hricko said with a knowing smile. “Because if you don’t, you still have people driving. You’re defeating your purpose before you ever get started.”

    That’s one realm where a leader like Villaraigosa, with his celebrity status and megawatt smile, could lead by example. But that hasn’t happened so far. Mike Woo, who describes himself as a supporter of the mayor, says “I want to say that I think the mayor’s people are on top of this. I wish I could say that. I really wish I could say that.” Woo notes that there is a slightly bigger time window for solving the housing crunch than is popularly acknowledged. The Planning Commission’s most recent staff report holds that meeting the need for housing in most transit corridors for the next 8-10 years does not require raising the density of housing.

    That’s a rare breather, Woo says. Let’s make the most of it.

    Greg Critser is the author of Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Houghton Mifflin 2003), Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Houghton 2005), and Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging (Random/Harmony 2009).