New Geography

Category: Politics

  • The Future of Affirmative Action Under President Obama

    There is going to be a lot of debate on the impact of Barack Obama’s election on the future of affirmative action.

    There has been speculation for months among all sides of the debate about whether Obama’s ascension to the Presidency would provide proof positive that affirmative action is no longer necessary, or at least, has run its course.

    Ward Connerly, a black Republican who has led the fight to ban affirmative action in California and other states, told the San Francisco Chronicle today that Obama’s election decimates “victimhood“.

    Obama has said that his own daughters do not deserve affirmative action because of their economic privilege. As president, asks Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe, will he lead the way from race-based to class-based policies? Some black leaders, she writes, citing such figures as Eugene Rivers and Kevin Peterson, say Obama’s political success necessitates a new approach to the issue.

    As Ben Smith writes on Politico.com, partisans of both sides of the bitter, long-running wars over affirmative action say Obama’s position on the subject is ambiguous and scarcely articulated. As a state senator in Illinois, he called traditional affirmative action “absolutely necessary,” but he’s more recently called for government to “craft” policy “in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren’t getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more.”

    Some of the staunchest opponents of race-based affirmative action are skeptical of replacing it with a system that takes class into account rather than simply considering merit, but if Obama or the courts were to shift away from existing programs, writes Smith, a focus on class seems the most likely direction.

    Indeed, affirmative action cannot endure if nothing else because the black/white paradigm no longer fits. Ironically the rise of Hispanic Americans (who, by the way, voted for Obama by a nearly 2-to-1 margin) may prove the critical factor here.

    As I have maintained for years, the future of multiculturalism is not fragmentation and segmentation into endless subgroups, but a blurring, mixing and blending of races, ethnicities and cultures. This process is already well under way.

    In Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America (2008), author Gregory Rodriguez writes that America has become so mixed that racial distinctions are losing their power to categorize and separate Americans from each other:

    Mexican Americans are forcing the United States to reinterpret the concept of the melting pot to include racial as well as ethnic mixing. Rather than abetting the segregationist ethos of a country divided into mutually exclusive groups, Mexican Americans continue to blur the lines between “us” and “them.” Just as the emergence of the mestizos undermined the Spanish racial system in colonial Mexico, Mexican Americans, who have always confounded the Anglo-American racial system, will ultimately destroy it, too.

    How will they destroy it? By making categorization impossible, and hence, meaningless. When racial classification is no longer sensible or even possible, neither are discrimination or affirmative action. And we have long since passed that point. I often use Tiger Woods as an illustration of this: he is a mixture of black, Asian, Caucasian, and Indian (oops, I mean Native American) ancestors, but when asked to identify himself he says, ”I’m Tiger.”

    Another key factor will be interracial dating and marriage. In 1987 slightly less than half of Americans approved of dating between black and whites. By 2007, according to the Pew Center, this had risen to 83%. These changes are most evident among the millennial generation, the very people who will make up the majority of adults in 2050, 94% of whom approve of such matches.

    Already, over 2.5 percent of Americans are of mixed race, and this percentage grows significantly among people under 18, and, geographically, in California, on the entire west coast, and in the New York area. One third of all mixed marriages involve Hispanics. In California, between 1980 and 1997 one of every seven babies born had parents of different races. This notion of race will become ever more fluid as it becomes obvious from DNA testing that people’s racial or ethnic origins are often far more diverse than usually imagined.

    During the 1990s, even interracial marriages between black and whites, once very rare, increased seven times as rapidly as marriages overall. Intermarriages between native-born Hispanics and Asians with other groups covered upwards of thirty percent in the first native-born generation, and over 57 percent in the next.

    These developments are anathema to the diversity/affirmative action industries. Believe me; I have been encountering them on the corporate speaking circuit for years. When I speak (optimistically!) of the American future, of the blending and blurring of races, ethnicities and cultures, and of the individual as the basic sovereign unit of a truly free and diverse society, they start going through the first four phases of grief: denial, anger, bargaining and depression. Regrettably, the final phase – acceptance – is beyond them. They will probably endure, administering preferential treatment for quite a while, as they have been empowered and financed by large, slow-changing bureaucracies: governments, foundations and corporations.

    But the writing is on the wall. A mixed-race candidate has just been elected President of the United States. In the same election, via voter initiative, Nebraska adopted (and Colorado narrowly rejected) state constitution amendments outlawing discrimination by race, sex, ethnicity or national origin. Nebraska has thereby joined California, Washington and Michigan as states where voters have outlawed discrimination by race. According to the American Civil Rights Institute, similar amendments, put on state ballots by voters, will appear in coming election cycles across the country, including in Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Colorado (again).

    What? you thought such discrimination was already illegal and unconstitutional? It is. These state ballot initiatives have become necessary to overturn the system of ethnic favoritism known as affirmative action – the use of racial and ethnic quotas in the bestowal of public and private largesse – which has been codified in both public policy and private practice.

    Obviously, the American people are tiring of a diversity regime that (perversely) demands conformity of thought (also known as ”political correctness,” the phrase Soviet commissars used to enforce Central Party rule). Eventually, the American people themselves, having become a mongrel nation, will also reject racial and ethnic categorization. Hint: watch the dramatic rise in the number of people who decline to state in surveys, questionnaires and the Census itself.

    Dr. Roger Selbert is a business futurist and trend guy. He publishes Growth Strategies, a newsletter on economic, social and demographic trends, and is a professional public speaker www.rogerselbert.com. Roger is US economic analyst for the Institute for Business Cycle Analysis in Copenhagen, and North American representative for its US Consumer Demand Index.

  • The Two Obamas

    President-Elect Obama has promised us a new day but early signals show that if change is on the way, it might follow the course most expect. Just look at his choice of Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. It appears Mr. Obama has picked a very partisan Democrat from Chicago’s Democratic Machine. Rahm Emanuel’s closeness to Mayor Daley and William Daley should raise eyebrows.

    Emanuel presents the other grittier face of our new President. As Obama reminds reporters on occasion, he is no political weakling. He comes from the world of Chicago politics, where the ends always justify the means. Power, patronage and influence are the primary currency of the regime; consistent good performance is nice, just not as important. In some senses, we need to see this as the Chicago Machine going national. The aldermen are already salivating at the prospect of unprecedented new pork coming direct from the heart of national power.

    They can certainly expect sympathy from Rahm Emanuel since, at heart, he is one of them. Emanuel rose to power with the help of an illegal patronage operation still the continuing subject of a major federal criminal investigation. Rahm Emanuel became a Congressman by defeating a grass roots local Democrat with the help of Mayor Daley’s illegal patronage army. John Kass of The Chicago Tribune reports:

    It’s likely that if City Hall had not sent Don Tomczak, the corrupt city water department boss, to Emanuel’s congressional campaign in 2002, he may not have ever been elected. Tomczak’s political army of hundreds of city workers stumped the precincts with the promise of overtime.

    Don Tomczak is now a convicted felon for his efforts.The New York Times explained some of the methods of the patronage army working for Rahm Emanuel: “concocted ‘blessed lists’ of preselected winners for certain jobs and promotions based on political work or union sponsorship. The scheme involved sham interviews, falsified ratings forms and the destruction of files to cover it up.”

    Ok, so that’s inside Chicago politics. But how about this? Before coming to Congress, Bill Clinton appointed Rahm Emanuel to the board of directors of Freddie Mac.Few can say they’ve ever been on the board of directors of an S&P 500 company – particularly before the age of 40. What did Rahm Emanuel know about the bogus accounting numbers of Freddie Mac? Obviously, Barack Obama should be concerned about having someone so associated with the housing debacle being a major part of his administration.

    Ultimately, the rest of America is going to have to get used to two Obamas – one a rough edged Chicago poll and the other the spinner of rhetoric brilliance and the beloved of the planet. The Chicago side could prove troublesome even with allies. Emanuel once proposed taking away the driver’s licenses of high school drop outs – an idea which made members of the Congressional Black Caucus irate.

    On the other hand, Emanuel’s practical, “yes to power” political views might play a positive role on issues such as trade. His relatively pro-free trade stance already has created the first panic among left-wingers about what many thought would be the administration of their dreams.

    And what about the slide of America Emanuel has been representing all these years? Between 2000 and 2005, his district lost 5.1 percent of its population. It was one of the country’s ten fastest-shrinking districts. Bad public schools, high taxes, and high crime have caused the middle class to leave Emanuel’s district for the suburbs.

    An Obama Administration with Rahm Emanuel in the key position of Chief of Staff has great symbolic value. It suggests less attention to be paid to the post-partisan reform and more to hardboiled politics. It grows from an economic climate that has over the past few decades lost jobs, the middle class and families.

    In this sense, Rahm Emanuel does not symbolize a change in the way politics is conducted. If our new President wants to do this, he will have to do so over the likely objections of his chief of staff – and also in contrast to his own record of conciliation with one of the most corrupt city machines in American history.

    Can someone who works with the Chicago Democratic Machine be for political change? History would suggest it would be a first.

    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.

  • Big City Prediction: Expect All Things in Moderation From Obama

    Barack Obama is now set to become the first genuine urbanite to occupy the White House in more than 100 years.

    It will be tempting for many politicians and activists to envision a new era for big cities, with federal money flowing freely toward plans for high-density housing, transit projects, and any number of other dreams and schemes held dear by urban folk.

    And why not? The so-called “liberals” or “progressives” who dominate politics in many big cities form a key part of the base of the Democratic Party. They have long claimed Obama as one of them—and he has let them do so when politically convenient.

    But here’s why not: The way that Obama managed his campaign offers indications that he’s smart enough to find that precious intersection where good politics and good policy become one. That will mean saying no more than yes, disappointing fervent supporters more often than not.

    Obama is impressive, but he’s a politician and not a saint.

    He plays tough, and knows how far his supporters will bend. He’s willing to push them right up to the breaking point in service of his larger goals. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the urban agenda will get less than it has in recent years. Just don’t expect a gusher for big cities.

    The guess here is that Obama will zero in on some large national efforts such as healthcare, the ongoing stresses on our financial system, a winding down of the war in Iraq, and some new strategy in Afghanistan. Look for him to occasionally square off against the Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress, using the Republican minority for leverage when his own party gives him a hard time.

    Such moves will amount to a high-stakes strategy to redefine the middle in U.S. politics. Success will likely pave Obama’s way to re-election in four years, while failure will tempt a stiff challenge on re-nomination.

    Obama has shown that he’s willing to take his chances when he likes his cards, though. He’s now holding enough cards to pull off a big political feat. Watch him say no to big cities if that is what it takes to address national priorities and give him enough room to occasionally co-opt Republicans to tame Democrats who grow obstreperous in Congress.

    Anyone who doubts this scenario should review the recent campaign, where Obama beat New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination—and took her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, down a few pegs in the process. Obama didn’t seriously consider Hillary Clinton as a vice presidential pick…and Bill Clinton steamed. Obama heard the whispers about the Hillary factor costing him big chunks of votes. He toughed it out while Bill Clinton damned his candidacy with faint praise and spoke ever-so-kindly of John McCain.

    Obama, meanwhile, focused on building his campaign into a model of efficiency that overwhelmed any bitterness about the battle with the Clintons. Both Clintons were eventually happy enough to jump aboard the winning campaign. Where else were they going to go?

    Compare that to McCain, who won the Republican nomination over the heated objections of the so-called “conservative” movement and the big names in the vaunted world of talk radio—those yakkers who claim to represent their party’s base. These ideologues had no use for McCain, but he whipped them outright.

    McCain failed to claim victory in his own party, however, moving instead to appease his critics with a dubious choice for vice president. The decision cost him any chance of getting the support he needed from other segments of the electorate—he vacated the middle ground of the political field, where presidential elections are always decided.

    McCain should have taken the chance on disappointing a segment of his party’s base in hopes that they would bend but not break.

    Obama did exactly that, and he has reaped the political benefit.

    Big city politicians and activists should expect the same playbook from Obama in the White House.

    The rest of us should hope that’s the plan, because it’s time for all of our politicians to make a virtue of saying no to their most fervent backers in the service of larger goals.

    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)

  • Bringing Hope to Red America

    In the end Appalachia remained out of sync with much of America this year. West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and much of the hill country went for John McCain. Senator’s Obama’s message of “hope” did not play as well here as elsewhere.

    This may seem a bit odd. The major targets of the election were Joe six-pack, Joe the plumber; Joe the ordinary man. Joe represented the disaffected males, the lost ones yearning for a simpler time and a better time. Enough Joes in other states voted for Obama to get him a spectacular victory in places like Ohio, Florida and Michigan.

    But no one thought much of Joe the coal miner and not much thought has been given to what this election means to the many “Joes” who live in Appalachia. For too many generations, our Joes have either hunkered down and worked the coalfields, or eked out a meager living on rocky hillside terrain. Many survive on the cash economy, tinkering as best they could to put together a living. My father tells me his grandfather made mandolins to supplement his farm earnings and played them at family gatherings. He describes his upbringing as poor, but happy.

    There were town centers where, as my dad put it, families would come to “trade” on the weekends. Baseball teams formed and played in the circuit of small towns. I once saw a 1914 picture of my grandfather as a member of one of those teams – called the Mize Nine. Today you could not get nine people together in Mize, now barely a wide place in the road.

    It is a world where the much discussed disappearance of the middle class didn’t apply because it never existed. Like my father, many of them left for the factories of the north in the 40s and 50s. The culture was and is a story of unparalleled literary and artistic musical strength, but little in the way of jobs outside of coal.

    Appalachian people were sometimes portrayed during the primary as racist, ignorant and pathetic. Appalachian towns like Inez, Kentucky – the site of LBJ’s proclamation of the war on poverty in 1964 – were visited and heralded as the towns to be rescued – only to once again be left behind.

    In an era of demand for change, what can be expected of or for Appalachia? It is a land where minerals are king and largely owned by outside interests. It has resisted change and remains ridden with poverty and an image that defies change even in the face of success – and there are some success stories in Appalachia.

    Barack Obama is the candidate known for his message of hope. He is known for his soaring speeches that lift us up. But, he is a Chicago kind of guy and seems to grasp the need to pay attention to the big cities and surrounding regions where 75 percent of Americans will likely live in the year 2050.

    But, “hope” also applies to places like Appalachia. We don’t need to be caricatured in the national media as pathetic, poor and somehow outside the brave new world.

    Yet we should not expect that help will come from Washington and solve the problem. It is dawning on all of us that what is big and glittery may not be what we seek. The environmental, energy and fiscal crises have converged to drive home what Katrina only began – the need for a realignment of our priorities.

    Those priorities are not fundamentally about big new investments in infrastructure or Washington support for improved education. Those would be welcome, but the change that will work long-term comes from the local level, from the ability of smaller places to reinvent themselves.

    I see some signs of this. Places that were left behind or written off are coming alive once recalling the early days of the Mize Nine as we seek to build locally what is beyond our scale in those more glamorous venues.

    Being “left behind” is something that implies that others must reach out and provide the rescue. In Inez, the people are speaking and they are saying we will take control of our own destiny. We want to write a new story that transcends poverty and the painting of images by the 24 hour news outlets. Perhaps, instead of trying to catch-up, these places can leap forward to lead the way toward local prosperity and a better quality of life. Will we in Appalachia now finally make the intentional choices to secure a better future or will we continue to let others tell our story of woe and misery?

    The truth is that the story won’t change if we don’t begin to write and tell our own stories. As the new administration grapples with the many issues it faces – health care, energy and fiscal distress to name just a few – it should remember the words of Colin Powell: “All villages matter.” Small places – and big ones – do not need Washington to save them, just to acknowledge that they are important and deserving in their own way.

    So, as President-elect Obama looks to the future, he should grasp the opportunity that is upon us to build great communities in all corners of the nation under the new rules of the game of the 21st century. Appalachia may not have voted with him, but we are still part of his constituency; “red” America, as he suggested last night, is still part of his America.

    Our new President needs to realize – as do we – that the tired old policies of Washington will not work any longer – “handouts” have never been the answer. And, as one voter here said: “We intend to hold Obama accountable in his presidency.” She paused before adding: “And, we expect him to hold us accountable as well.”

    Sylvia L. Lovely is the Executive Director/CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities and the founder and president of the NewCities Institute. Please send your comments to slovely@klc.org and visit her blog at sylvia.newcities.org.

  • Pennsylvania – Political Positioning or Realistic Chance?

    The keystone of the McCain campaign’s victory scenario during the final weeks was a surprise victory in Pennsylvania despite that fact that polls (Real Clear Politics had the gap at 7 points on Election Day) clearly showed Obama comfortably ahead. Why?

    Pennsylvania has a Democratic Governor from Philadelphia who was elected twice with sizable margins. Democrats have gotten a big boost over the past two years in voter registration. The political shift from Republican to Democratic in the Philadelphia suburbs is nearly complete – at least when it comes to statewide and federal offices.

    This said, no Democratic candidate has ever held the statewide office of Attorney General. The State Senate had a 29 – 21 Republican advantage going into the election and until 2006 Republicans in the State House held 110 seats to the Democrats 93 (currently 102 – 101 Democratic).

    In other words, statewide the sum of Republican parts remains greater than Republican voter registration. It was this anomaly that very likely gave McCain hope for winning Pennsylvania by running more a regional than statewide campaign.

    This strategy was likely bolstered by what was perceived to be still disaffected Hillary voters. Senator Clinton carried the state by more than 200,000 votes and captured nearly 55 percent of the vote. In Pennsylvania, the divisions between the electoral bases of the two Democratic primary candidates were most clear. Clinton carried the older, rural and lower income Democrats while Obama won the better educated, urban and minority bases. The Clinton Democrats are the same “swing voters” Republicans need to win in the more hotly contested districts.

    Obama won 7 of 67 counties in the Primary Election. Obama’s only significant victory was in Philadelphia County which he carried by 130,000 votes. Obama won only two of the four Philadelphia collar counties. Meanwhile, Clinton won many of the state’s rural counties by margins of 2 – 1 or greater.

    Yet potential weakness for Obama did not overcome the huge challenges facing the McCain campaign. Democrats now outnumber Republicans by 1.1 million registered voters statewide. According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, Democratic registration grew by 855,000 or 14 percent over the past year while GOP registration shrank by 4 percent or 145,000 voters. In 2000, the difference between the parties was less than 500,000. George W. Bush lost Pennsylvania in 2004 having a much more favorable electoral environment than did McCain in 2008.

    The framework for statewide Democratic victories was established by Governor Ed Rendell in 2002. In that race, Rendell won the five counties that comprise the Greater Philadelphia region by 515,000 votes. The vote in the rest of the state, which he lost, didn’t really matter. This is in large measure the model Obama would follow to victory.

    McCain has a far more difficult road to victory. He needed to emulate Republican U. S. Senator Arlen Specter’s 2004 victory, which was based on limiting his losses in Philadelphia County to 270,000 votes and winning Delaware, Bucks, Chester and Montgomery Counties (collar counties) by 145,000 votes. This enabled him to achieve a nearly 600,000 vote victory statewide – the highest margin for any statewide Republican candidate in recent history.

    The other victory scenario was that used by Republican Attorney General, Tom Corbett in 2004. Corbett won statewide by around 100,000 votes. Corbett lost Philadelphia by almost 400,000 votes, but he won all four collar counties albeit with 90,000 less votes than Specter.

    On Tuesday, McCain ended up looking more like a far more strident conservative candidate, former U. S. Senator Rick Santorum who lost to now Senator Bob Casey by more than 700,000 votes in 2006. In that election, Santorum got only 15 percent of the vote in Philadelphia County and lost the collar counties by 175,000 total votes. This was a swing of nearly 320,000 votes compared to those won by Specter two years earlier.

    So why did McCain play the Pennsylvania card? Maybe it was the belief that the state’s “Hillary Voters” still felt disaffected from Obama. It may also have been that he had to believe in Pennsylvania in order to have even the most remote chance at victory. Hoping for an October surprise, he thought Pennsylvania would keep him in the game. Without Pennsylvania the election was almost surely lost with states like Virginia, Ohio, and Florida trending toward Obama.

    In the end, McCain lost Pennsylvania by more than 600,000 votes and one Republican incumbent in Congress lost in the Erie region. Obama won Philadelphia and it collar counties big, basically replaying Rendell model.

    But does this mean that Pennsylvania is now a solid “Blue State?” The answer here is mixed. Republican incumbent Attorney General won statewide by nearly 400,000 votes. The Republican State Senate has seemingly increased its caucus by one Member to 30 – 20. The State House, at this writing, remains in Democratic control by a margin of 104 – 99. Certainly this was not a big change election.

    What we saw here was an anti-Bush vote in Pennsylvania that followed the national trend of wanting a change of direction. Locally, voters seem just fine with a status quo that may tilt a bit blue, but still has room for dashes of red.

    One thing for sure, at least for now the politically powerful southeast collar counties hold the key to winning statewide in Pennsylvania. A candidate must win at least one of these counties to have any hope of a statewide victory.

    Dennis M. Powell is president and CEO of Massey Powell an issues management consulting company located in Plymouth Meeting, PA.

  • The Triumph Of The Creative Class

    Barack Obama rode to his resounding victory on the enthusiasm of two constituencies, the young and African Americans, whose support has driven his candidacy since the spring. Yet arguably the biggest winners of the Nov. 4 vote are located at the highest levels of the nation’s ascendant post-industrial business community.

    Obama’s triumph reflects a decisive shift in the economic center of gravity away from military contractors, manufacturers, agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, suburban real estate developers, energy companies, old-line remnants on Wall Street and other traditional backers of the GOP. In their place, we can see the rise of a different set of players, predominately drawn from the so-called “creative class” of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the younger, go-go set in the financial world.

    These latter business interests provided much of the consistent and massive financial advantage that the Illinois senator has accrued since early spring. The term “creative class” was popularized by former George Mason professor Richard Florida, who used it to describe those with both brainy business acumen and a very liberal cultural agenda borrowed from the bohemians of the ’60s.

    Florida, whose views have affected urban policymakers over the last several years, has attributed these characteristics to upward of 30% of the workforce, basing his figures largely on education. On close examination, suggests Brookings Institution demographer Bill Frey, the “cultural creatives” at the core of Florida’s formulation represent likely no more than 5% of the population. After all, most college-educated workers live in suburbs, have children and even attend conservative churches.

    In contrast, the narrower “creative” group clusters heavily in the very areas–college towns, urban centers, some elite suburbs–where Obama has done exceedingly well from early on in the campaign. Nearly one quarter of the core “creative group,” those working in the arts and culture industries, live in just two cities, New York and Los Angeles.

    Many of these workers are employed by a far smaller, and more influential, base of largely pro-Obama corporate and financial titans who embrace the Florida view that “creativity” can save the U.S. economy. These include the likes of Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google–whose employees contributed over $400,000 to Obama’s campaign–as well as a who’s who of other Silicon Valley oligarchs.

    Obama has also enjoyed almost lock-step support in Hollywood and among the go-go wing on Wall Street. Hedge-fund managers, for example, gave 77% of their contributions in congressional races to Democrats last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan analyst of campaign finances. George Soros, the peculiarly left-leaning financial speculator, has been a long-time financial supporter and a critical ally in terms of funding pro-Obama media.

    Of course, many of these people had influence during the Clinton administration, but not remotely to the extent we are about to witness. Back in the 1990s, traditional business leaders, some of whom had backed the “big dog” back in Arkansas, still had some White House clout. After 1994, they were thick with the Republican-dominated Congress.

    Today the traditional business leadership, like their Republican allies, present a spectacle of utter disarray. The commercial banks have been effectively nationalized. Many traditional manufacturers, notably automakers, also yearn to suck on the federal teat. Reduced to supplicants, these companies have surrendered their standing as independent players. At the same time, the traditional energy companies, long the whipping boys of Congressional Democrats, will be fully occupied trying to survive the onslaught of anti-carbon regulations now all but inevitable.

    In contrast, the creative class comes to power with the wind at its back. Its ascendancy was first predicted by Daniel Bell in his 1973 classic The Coming of Post-Industrial Society as a natural product of the rise of science-based industry. Shortly afterward California’s Jerry Brown became the first politician to recognize this shift, embracing Silicon Valley and Hollywood as a counterweight to the industrial, aerospace and agribusiness establishment that had supported both his father, former governor Pat Brown, and Ronald Reagan.

    In the ensuing decades, the creative class establishment rallied to different political causes and candidates, including Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign and the causes of other so-called “Atari Democrats.” Yet it is only this year that its members have, like the Skynet computer system in the Terminator series, reached a level of consciousness about their potential true power.

    What will this ascendancy mean in economic terms? Since the creative class deals largely with images, ideas and transactions, it’s not likely to focus much on reviving the tangible parts of the economy: manufacturing, logistics, traditional energy and agribusiness.

    On the other hand, the creatives are unlikely to be protectionist since they represent companies whose growth markets, and often suppliers, are located overseas. Heavily counted among the world’s richest people, they are also likely to support some Bushite policies–like low interest rates and financial bailouts–that prop up their stock prices and drive money to Wall Street.

    The biggest difference between the creative class and the old business types isn’t on cultural issues–few traditional CEOs embraced the religious right’s agenda–but on environmental policy. Executives at places like Apple, as well as opportunistic investment firms, have become enthusiastic jihadis in the war against climate change. Conveniently, their companies don’t tend to be huge energy consumers and, if they make products, do so in largely unregulated facilities in China or elsewhere in the developing world. And youthful financial firms looking for the next “bubble” could benefit hugely from mandates for more solar, wind and other alternative fuels.

    All this could prove very bad news for groups that produce tangible products in the U.S. or that, like large agribusiness firms, are big consumers of carbon. Also threatened will be anyone who builds the suburban communities–notably single-family houses and malls–that most Americans still prefer but that Gore and his acolytes dismiss as too energy-intensive, not to mention in bad taste.

    Theoretically, there is opportunity for the Republicans–if they can somehow jettison the more primitive parts of their social agenda and come up with their own bold, environmentally sound energy agenda. The new hegemons could easily be painted as moralistic hypocrites who live the carbon-heavy luxury lifestyle of the super-rich while demanding ordinary Americans give up their cars, homes and even their jobs.

    Yet given the creative class’ increasing domination of the media, and the inability of the GOP to comprehend the changing world around it, such a counterstroke may be years in coming. For the time being we will just have to watch to see if the new economic order can perform better than the now largely discredited old business establishment whose time in the sun, at least for now, has set.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    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 in the Millennial Era

    By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais

    Senator Barack Obama’s success in the 2008 presidential campaign marks more than an historical turning point in American politics. It also signals the beginning of a new era for American society, one dominated by the attitudes and behaviors of the largest generation in American history.

    Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, now comprise almost one-third of the U.S. population and without their overwhelming support for his candidacy, Barack Obama would not have been able to win his party’s nomination, let alone been elected President of the United States. This new, “civic” generation is dramatically different than the boomers who have dominated our society since the 1960s and understanding this shift is critical to comprehending the changes that America will experience over the next forty years.

    The arrival of social network technologies enabled Millennials to create the most intense, group-oriented decision-making process of any generation in American history. This generation’s preference for consensus for everything from minor decisions, like where to hang out, and major decisions, such as whether go to war, stems from a belief that every one impacted by a decision needs, at very least, to be consulted about it. This approach will dominate how leaders of America’s primary institutions – from corporations and churches to government at all levels – will be measured in the years ahead.

    Contrast that approach to those of the candidates who struggled in 2008. In her losing run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton presented case for a highly assertive, controversial – if sometimes a bit too strenuous – Boomer style of leadership. She emphasized the value of her years of experience and wisdom. Senator John McCain tried that approach as well during the summer lull, but found it didn’t have sufficient power to overtake Obama in the national polls. He then rolled the dice and asked a Generation-X Governor, Sarah Palin, to help him win voters by emphasizing their mutual belief in the superiority of traditional social values and small government. The Republican ticket has had about as much success with this strategy as Governors Huckabee and Romney did Millennial voters during the primaries.

    To successfully manage the transition to a Millennial era, institutions will need to find leaders of any age far-sighted enough to fully embrace Millennial attitudes and behaviors. They have to give them full reign to makeover the outdated structures they will inherit.

    Millennials, in particular, are ready to take on the challenge. Millennials were taught that if you follow the rules and work hard, you will succeed. As the first generation to experience “always on,” high-speed access to the Internet at a young age, Millennials have confounded the vision of many Gen X futurists who envisioned the Net as a tool to enhance individual freedom and liberty, not as a new resource for community building. Sharing their ideas and thoughts constantly from short Twitter texts, or “Tweets,” to extended, if often amateurish, videos on YouTube, Millennials generate and absorb an overwhelming amount of information. Individual Millennials use this ability to influence their own decisions, and then those of the wider group. If institutions and their leaders want their decisions to have any credibility with this new generation, every institution will need to open its own governance procedures to ensure a level of transparency and fairness that meets the test of Millennial values.

    There have been other times in American history when a “civic” generation like the Millennials has emerged to transform the nation. In the eighteenth century a “civic” generation, called the “Republican Generation” by the seminal generational theorists William Strauss and Neil Howe, created the constitutional republic whose democratic values we celebrate to this day. About eighty years later, an equally “civic” impulse propelled to the war to abolish slavery and extend liberty and freedom to all citizens. And when the last “civic” generation was called upon by its elders to conquer fascism and remake America’s economy in the twentieth century, the GI Generation responded with such fervor and ability that they were labeled the “Greatest Generation” by a grateful nation.

    Now, another eighty years later, it is the Millennial Generation’s turn. Its “civic” revolution draws its unique character from the particular way Millennials were brought up, and their use of interactive communication technologies. We believe the Millennial Generation’s revolution will be just as profound as that of previous “civic” generations. Barack Obama’s victory does indeed mark the end of the late 20th century “idealist” era of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But its significance is much deeper, and likely to shape the nature of the new era the country is about to enter.

    Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics Winograd and Hais are fellows at NDN and the New Policy Institute.

  • Spanish, Obama, and Cambio in St. Louis

    There are two definitive differences between St. Louis and Los Angeles: Autumn is better in St. Louis, and more people speak Spanish in Los Angeles. And, yeah, there’s the Mississippi River and the humidity and the beach and the film industry and the palm trees, but in terms of my own private geography and topophilia, autumn and Spanish are the differences that matter. I long for LA in every season but fall, and a part of my longing is, inevitably, a longing for Spanish.

    Let me be clear: my Spanish is not as good as it once was, as it should be, or as I would like it to be. At my best, I could read a newspaper, and now I struggle with verb conjugation as I try to teach my son a limited number of phrases. I had to correct my pronunciation of Sepulveda when I arrived in LA, and I had to constantly remind myself that Californians do not place the accent in Cordova on the first syllable as they do in my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico. But during my time in California, the straining to understand when I rudely eavesdropped, the sorting of accents (Guatemalan, Mexican, Honduran), the delight in piecing together the history behind the names of the streets and the neighborhoods and the mountains – from Pico to Los Feliz to the San Gabriels – wrapped me in Spanish, and somehow made me feel comfortable with the constant struggle to comprehend a landscape written in a different language.

    I knew I moved through the city with a cloak of privilege. White Angelinos stereotypically treat Latinos, especially recent immigrants, as invisible workers. I tried to buck the stereotype, but my stumbling Spanish was usually no more than comic relief to native speakers. No one ever questioned (as they have some of my Latino friends) whether English was my first language. And when I was tired or distracted or just disinclined, I never had to speak Spanish to navigate the metro or read the paper or, even, to order at a restaurant. I’m willing to entertain the thought that my relationship to Spanish was no more than a condescending quest for local color, but I like to think it was more than that. I like to think that the city loved me in Spanish.

    It was in a spirit of perversity that, just as the leaves began to turn, the mosquitoes began to die, and the outdoors became bearable, I decided to accompany my husband to Cherokee Street in St. Louis for Mexican food. Cherokee Street has a burgeoning Latino community, boosting St. Louis’s Hispanic population to a whopping 2%. Nonetheless, undocumented residents perhaps double that number, and co-workers tell me they’ve watched St. Louis’s Latino population grow, especially within the Catholic community. For what it’s worth, I can’t stand on more than one street corner at a time, and from the corner of Cherokee and California it could almost have been LA. It was a hot, dry day. Dust actually blew past the furniture rental stores. Squint, and I could almost smell the Santa Anas. Our restaurant had a Spanish soap opera on the television, the waitress served the coke in a tall glass bottle. For a few minutes, it felt like the city loved me.

    Head west on Cherokee, and you will see a huge Obama poster with the word, Cambio – Change – written across the bottom, and an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the corner. In these final days of the campaign, images of Obama seem more and more to reflect what their creators want to see. The poster is, arguably, a picture of St. Louis’s potential future: a majority black city with a growing Latino, especially Mexican, population. I look at the poster, up against St. Louis’s characteristic red brick, and hope that Latinos here will be visible in a new way. I remember a bumper sticker, “Rednecks for Obama,” that I saw recently in my neighborhood. I remember that St. Louis is no blank slate when it comes to race relations. I chastise myself for being naive. I note that the poster says cambio, not esperanza; change, not hope. I think about how to tell my son, in Spanish, where I’ve been that day.

    Flannery Burke is an assistant professor in the Department of History at St. Louis University. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, she writes about the American West, the environment, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.

  • Obama and Chicago: Saying Yes to Power?

    With Barack Obama possibly becoming the next President, it’s time to look at the Senator’s hometown. The Senator may have talked a great deal about change as a candidate, but to a large extent he has worked closely with what may be one of the most corrupt political cultures in America.

    Of course every politician has his or her skeletons – McCain for example with Charles Keating and his assorted scandals. But with Chicago, Obama has links to an entire cemetery of corruption. It’s not surprising, for example, that the FBI has its largest public corruption squad located in its city limits. This is the ultimate one-party city: Chicago has had a Democratic mayor since 1931, something of a record for a major city. Today, 49 of the city’s 50 Aldermen are Democrats. Things like the skyline and demographics change in Chicago, but not the politics.

    A a result of this one party system, the city has one of the most expansive and expensive governments in the country. Recently, Chicago’s sales tax made national news because, at 10.25 %, it is the highest in the nation. A major reason taxes are so high: corruption is costly.

    This is not a hard case to make.

    Chicago’s Aldermen have a felony conviction rate that would shock outsiders. Since 1973, 27 Chicago Aldermen have been convicted by U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois. This includes former Alderman Fred Roti whose amazing criminal career helped turn Chicago’s City government into a racketeering enterprise.

    Roti was a Chicago Alderman from 1968-1991. At the time of his indictment in 1990, Roti was Chicago’s longest serving Alderman. Here’s a description of Roti by the Justice Department, “ Fred Roti was convicted of RICO conspiracy, bribery and extortion regarding the fixing of criminal cases in the Circuit Court of Cook County, including murder cases involving organized crime members or associates and was sentenced to 48 months’ imprisonment.” At Roti’s sentencing, federal judge Marvin Aspen reminded everyone of the danger of Alderman Roti. “But there is a bigger victim, and that’s the whole democratic process. When you have the courts of law that are fixed, when you have a city government that is fixed, what are doing, really, is attacking the core of democracy. You’re saying that this democracy…is the same as any other banana republic or corrupt regime.”

    During his time as an elected Alderman, Roti effectively controlled Chicago’s legislative branch. The Chicago Tribune wrote, describing his tenure at Chicago’s City Council, “It’s often said that roll calls could stop after Roti votes-the outcome is already known. Roti, an affable fellow, controls the Chicago City Council with an iron fist.”

    In August of 1999, the Justice Department named Alderman Fred Roti as a “high ranking made member” of the Chicago Mob. Roti’s mission was to hijack the political system and load up Chicago’s government and labor unions with friends, relatives, and Chicago Mob associates. Roti succeeded in his mission. Today, in 2008, Roti’s friends and relatives still make the news for their ability to get caught up in scandal.

    Chicago political corruption is not merely a colorful historical artifact. Alderman Roti’s friends and relatives remain at the forefront of recent political scandals. Chicago’s Hired Truck program, under which private trucks were hired to do city work, lead to several felony convictions. Many of the trucks hired did no work but were paid taxpayer dollars. The Chicago Sun-Times reported 17 trucking companies in the Hired Truck program had ties to the Roti family. Roti relative Nick “the Stick” LoCoco was the boss of the program. Nick LoCoco was a Mob bookie in charge of the $40 Million a year program.

    Alderman Roti’s prolific criminal legacy includes getting Chicago Police Officer William Hanhardt appointed Chief of Detectives. Hanhardt was the Chicago Mob’s long term plant on the force. With Hanhardt as Chief of Detectives, the Chicago Mob had a person who could promote corrupt cops and control criminal investigations. Before and after leaving the Chicago Police force in 1986, Hanhardt ran the most successful jewelry theft ring in United States history which he ran until he was indicted in 2000.

    U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar described Hanhardt’s operation,“Hanhardt’s organization surpasses, in duration and sophistication, just about any other jewelry theft ring we’ve seen.” John Kass of The Chicago Tribune recently described the Hanhardt legacy as an illustration of what he called “the Chicago way.” U.S Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald reminded everyone when Hanhardt pled guilty in 2001 of the danger of William Hanhardt, “It’s remarkable that a person who was chief of detectives of the Chicago Police Department admits to being part of a racketeering conspiracy.”

    In July of 2006, the Justice Department convicted top Daley administration officials for running a massive illegal political patronage operation. Robert Sorich , one of Mayor Daley’s top aids, was convicted of running a massive political scheme in which favored political patronage workers were placed on Chicago’s payroll. As The New York Times reported, “the scheme involved sham interviews, falsified ratings forms and the destruction of files to cover it up.”. One of Alderman Roti’s nephews, Bruno Caruso, was the second most successful individual in terms of getting people jobs. In 1999, according to The Chicago Sun-Times, the FBI named Bruno Caruso as a “made member” of The Chicago Mob.

    The people who run Chicago today still have a soft spot for mobsters

    Six weeks after being named a high ranking “made member” of the Chicago Mob, Roti died. One of the first orders of business when the City Council met on September 29,1999 was to honor his life with a resolution supported by the two most important political figures in Chicago, Mayor Daley and Alderman Ed Burke. The resolution called “Fred B.Roti, a committed public servant, a cherished friend of many and good neighbor to all, will be greatly missed and fondly remembered by his many family members, friends and associates” and Roti “is remembered as a kind, considerate person, who had great love for his family and community.”

    In the summer of 2007, the Justice Department brought one of their largest Mob trials in years. It was dubbed the Family Secrets trial for charging the mob with 18 unsolved murders. This historic trial indicted the entire Chicago Mob as a racketeering enterprise. Not only did Alderman Roti‘s name come up at the trial, but the name of his nephew Fred Barbara also surfaced. Fred Barbara was accused of taking part in bombing a business. Barbara was described by The Chicago Sun-Times as “a close friend of Mayor Daley’s”.

    Senator Obama’s relationship with Tony Rezko is much more significant than his association with a bunch of radicals. Obama decided joining the status quo in Chicago was an excellent career move. Tony Rezko’s ties to the Chicago’s establishment are the basis of a major Justice Department investigation titled Operation Board Games. As Rezko’s career shows, Chicago remains a town very much cast in the spirit of Alderman Roti.

    This machine has had far more to do with the rise of Barack Obama’s political career than Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright and the equally unseemly radicals who so unnerve some right-wingers. In contrast, the implications of his close ties to the Chicago machine may tell us more about the man, and the kind of people he might bring into the highest offices.

    Except for an occasional article on Tony Rezko, Obama’s ability to work with, and to nurture his own place within one of the most corrupt regimes in nation has not been a major political issue. Some of this may reflect the press’s infatuation with the man and his well-crafted image; it also suggests the incompetence of the McCain campaign.

    But those of us who will be living with a President Obama for the next four years should consider the implications of his Chicago connection. At very least, his ability to cohabit with the machine says something of his deft ability to talk one way – as a change agent – and to walk another.

    It does not mean that Senator Obama himself is corrupt or even intellectually dishonest. And perhaps his ability to work with the machine suggests a skill that may be useful in dealing with the many thugs who run powerful regimes around the world. Yet it also suggests that, when push comes to shove, he could be more likely to say ‘yes’ to power rather than speak truth to it.

    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.

  • Why can’t Wall Street be more like Ghana?

    For the past week an irritating little tune has bounced into my head unexpectedly every time I turned to news about the financial collapse. The melody would then remain at the edge of my consciousness for hours at a time like a buzz or a hum in my ear. Though I couldn’t make out the lyrics, I could distinguish the distinct nasal whine that Rex Harrison affected in the musical My Fair Lady. Still, I couldn’t pin down which song was playing on an endless loop in my head. Instead, as I made my way through the Kotokuraba Market in Cape Coast, Ghana, this past week, I found myself absentmindedly substituting my own lyrics to the Frederick Loewe score. At first I sang the line “If only Lehman Brothers was more like the Man! Know Thyself Pharmacy,” and then “If only AIG could be more like Is Not By Might Alone Construction.” Though my feeble attempt did not come close to scanning, I knew immediately that I was onto something. There was a nugget of truth there that I could never have reached through ordinary means of logical analysis. I began to rattle off all the financial behemoths who have crashed or have nearly crashed or will potentially go belly up in the coming months, giants like Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Wachovia, Washington Mutual—the list seems to grow with every passing day.

    I continued to substitute the strange names for businesses that Ghanaians seem to prefer for those of the failing financial industry. After my initial amusement of replacing Lehman Brothers with Man! Know Thyself, I realized that the way businesses are named in Ghana speaks to core values that perhaps would have kept the Wall Street CEOs in check. Ghana is a country steeped in the oral tradition of proverbs. The ancient Akan religion is full of proverbs and sayings about how to live a moral and upright life. Surprisingly, most of these Akan tribal proverbs correlate directly to Christian proverbs despite the fact that they existed long before Europeans introduced Christianity to the region. As a result, these sayings have remained a vital part of the culture and often crop up in conversation in a kind of abbreviated shorthand. On the street conversation is peppered with such statements: “But, I have forgiven you, let us not bite one another,” “So you strike fire among us ever,” “Oh great ancestors, our blood relation chain will never break apart,” “Till death ladder, together we climb to rest,” among scores of others. Since Ghana is a public and communal society unlike Western cultures which are more private and personal, these sayings and expressions of philosophies and beliefs tend to affirm a responsibility toward others.

    I’ve been particularly moved by the name of a small hardware store, “But Like A Chain Ventures,” which is an abbreviation of the Akan proverb “But like a chain, we are linked both in life and death with our people, because we share common blood relations.” As I reflected on the implications of Lehman Brothers being named “But Like A Chain Investment Bank,” I tried to tease out the implications of such a dramatic change in the strategy of naming businesses in most of the Western world. American businesses appear to emphasize ownership, especially in advertisements and product names employing the notion “this is mine”, rather than their moral and ethical relationship to customers and the community. In recent years this has played out intricately in such marketing strategies as “branding.” For Ghanaians, business names are more a form of moral or ethical expression. Names are an opportunity to publicly articulate a belief or philosophy. Because Ghana is such a public and communal society, the way you present yourself is much more important than the product you are offering. Customers are drawn to businesses that express the mores of the community first, and then they determine whether the business offers what they are looking for. In a community where politeness is primary, knowing the kind of person you are doing business with first is a determining factor greater than price, location, or variety.

    With this in mind, I now wonder if such a name would not have stopped this fallen bank’s former CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr. and his brethren from pursuing personal gain to such a degree that the entire globe was at risk. Would the message printed on the stationary and on the front of the building have been sufficient to caution their recklessness? Probably not, but it is nice to consider such a possibility.

    On October 9th, 2008, the Washington Post reported that even the International Monetary Fund, the world’s cheerleader for world markets, has now qualified its support. “Obviously the crisis comes from an important regulatory and supervisory failure in advanced countries […] and a failure in market discipline mechanisms,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s managing director, told the Post. She emphasized that African countries with the least free market openness are more prepared than most to survive a major global recession.

    Like most African economies, Ghana is primarily a cash society. The average person on the street, even if he or she has a job, cannot get credit and would never consider attempting to get a loan. No one has a Visa card here because no businesses accept them. When my friend, the playwright Victor Yankah, had to pay his middle son’s college tuition at the beginning of September, he took out a six inch thick stack of ten and twenty cedis from his bank account to pay the university’s 5,000 Ghana cedi fee. As the economic crisis intensifies, Yankah feels prepared because he has diversified the African way. His wife Betty Yankah owns a small dry goods stall in the local market. In addition to being head of the Department of Theater Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Yankah also owns a small orange grove that supplies fruit to local markets as well as a fish hatchery along the Volta River. He has positioned himself to “think globally and act locally.” He hopes that by staying close to the ground he and his family will weather whatever dire economic times lie ahead.

    As I play with renaming the failing titans of finance, the reference I have been trying to remember finally comes to me. The song I am thinking about is “A Hymn to Him,” a solipsistic and misogynist diddy asking, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” I can imagine Lehman’s fallen CEO Fuld Jr. singing a similarly written ode to free market capitalism and self-aggrandizement. To which, I would counter: Why can’t Wall Street Be More Like Ghana? And this verse scans.

    Laban Carrick Hill is a visiting professor at University of Cape Coast in Ghana and the author of more than 25 books, including the 2004 National Book Award Finalist Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. His most recent book America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60’s recently won the 2007 Parenting Publications Gold Award.