So You Want a Revolution (Part 1)

Few authors reach the fame of Jane Jacobs, whose masterpiece The Death and Life of Great American Cities celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. In the best tradition of radical reformers, Jacobs wrote and acted to influence the political process and offer constructive options to urban sprawl and decline.

In examining urban settlements through history, Jacobs concluded that “lively diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration.” She saw cities as dynamic eco-systems that required those designing and preserving the built environment to respect natural patterns of human use and interaction.  

For Jacobs, diversity was a natural part of neighborhood evolution. “You don’t get new products and services out of sameness, she said. “This is one of the things that is boring people – this sameness. All kinds of things show us … that the more diverse we are in what we can do the better.”  

Jacobs had little patience for standardization and far less for regulation.  And as a grassroots urban activist, she continued to rail against federal intercession in local affairs that caused the “self-destruction of diversity.” Jacobs offered an alternative she called “unslumming and its accompanying self-diversification.”  She urged the continued but gradual flow of money and public buildings into established communities.

 While Jacobs spoke critically of planning and planners, she encouraged people to enjoy and think about their environments. After decades of fighting the establishment, Jacobs welcomed the emergence of environmental and community groups pressing for green infill development, sustainable smart growth, and the reclamation of degraded land.  

Jacobs died in 2006, the year after the Sierra Club published a guide to “America’s best new development projects.” The Sierra Club report highlighted twelve projects “based on their ability to offer transportation choices, revitalize neighborhoods, and preserve local values” – characteristics that Jacobs had proffered a half century earlier. Given more time, she undoubtedly would have reported on the evolution of these projects and the way these communities have embraced their diversity through affordable, green developments. 

Jacobs urged in The Death and Life of Great American Cities that we imbue our cities and their neighborhoods with the ability to update, enliven, and repair themselves by breaking traditional barriers, taking a balanced, regional approach, and promoting inclusive growth.  If successful, she told us, they would be “sought after, out of choice, by a new generation.”   That generation, and all generations, still have much to learn from Jacobs’ words and wisdom.  

A Christmas Story - Cain Isn't Able

The Bible tells us a story about two brothers.  One a shrewd farmer named Cain decided to offer a pizza with no toppings as a scant sacrifice to his God.  The other an obedient and good shepherd named Abel obeyed God's command and offered his best lamb.  When God accepted Abel's sacrifice, Cain became jealous and set about to kill his brother and win favor with God by offering free delivery.  When God saw what Cain had done, he asked, "Cain, where is your brother?" This led Cain to respond in a manly way, "He's in Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan." Upon God's reproach, Cain fell to the ground saying, "We need a leader, not a reader."  And so began the political demise of a Pokemon poet who realized too late the Power of One.

Hype the Gripe: Pet Pee-ves and Other Annoyances

Last year, a nationally representative survey, reported by no less an authority than Consumer Reports, found that we Americans are annoyed by many of life's little complaints (being surveyed about them apparently did not make the top-ten list).   That list runs from hidden fees to inaccurate weather forecasts and reveals as much about our public wrath as it does our personal foibles.

The cure for many of these complaints is beyond modern science, but some of them seemed easy enough to remedy.  Like putting all of the very slow drivers (complaint #12) in traffic jams (#14).  They won't know the difference. Or putting tailgaters (#3) in the same lane with speeding drivers (#19).  They can chase each other to oblivion.  And speaking of oblivion, how about pairing complaint #4 cell phone use by drivers and discourteous cell phone use (#8) with #13 unreliable cell-phone service -- no service, no obnoxious talking-while-driving.  Bingo.

The synergy seems endless - how about putting noisy neighbors (#15) next to shouting on TV or radio show viewers (#17)?  Or using shrunken products (#11) to solve the problem of dog poop (#6). One estimate puts the average dog's contribution at 276 pounds per year. Less in the bag, fewer trips to the potty.

It appears that complaints about dog waste have been piling up for years, and the matter is getting out of hand, so to speak.  Things are coming unwrapped.  In Massachusetts, an apartment manager is using doggie-DNA to apprehend the canine culprits and fine their irresponsible owners.  And in Virginia, of all freedom-loving places, a woman recently gave new meaning to the people's business.  In her Circuit Court testimony, she accused a doggie defendant of wasting her neighborhood with its unclaimed land mines. 

In a huge win for privy privacy, the judge believed the owner's claim that she always obeyed the local popper-scooper law. Without asking for cheek swabs or saliva tests, he at least cleared the court's docket if not the neighbor's lawn.  

Ever since B.F. Skinner invented the pigeon, we Americans have been searching for the right mix of negative reinforcement and punishment to avert irresponsible human behavior.  Short of death, deterrence is not an easy thing to achieve.  

Leave it to little Loganville-Grayson, Georgia to provide us with a worthy alternative.  The town paper recognizes random acts of kindness and is creating a kindness community that everyone is invited to join.  In fact, towns all over Georgia are asking their denizens to practice and report such acts of kindness.  

Now, that's positive reinforcement worth scooping up. 

Cracks in the System - Wise and Otherwise

House Speaker John Boehner said last week that "there's no daylight between the Tea Party and me," while some Democratic stalwarts suggested that he should put that sentiment "where the sun don't shine" permanently. 

Such volleys marked the beginning of what turned out to be a nail-biting battle to break the budget impasse that threatened to shut down the federal government.  Rather than a victory, however, the 11th hour compromise felt more like our collective kidneys declaring war on our body politic.

In a show of what is fast becoming a signature expression of his personality type, President Obama coached the Congressional leadership from the sidelines until the bitter end.  He then showed up at the Lincoln Memorial to announce that to save money and appease the Republicans, he had handed all of our national monuments over to NATO. 

President Obama assured the American people that he had not acted unduly.  A lot of Lincoln-like soul-searching had prompted his unprecedented action to bind the nation's gaping deficit wounds.  And to clinch the deal, the GOP threw in a White House membership to Sam's Club.

If NATO can work in Libya, why not the national mall?  NATO after all is our trusted ally, able to hit any physical, and hopefully fiscal, target it chooses - but it remains to be seen in these crazy times if even NATO can restore balance to Washington's self-imposed no-fly budget.

Schooling Scott

Well, those radical cheese heads have gone too far.  They brought in known gadfly Michael Moore to do a mind meld with those protesting educators worried about losing their namby pamby rights to collective bargaining.  Just like the Whigs and the Tories 300 years ago in England.

All ye Poets of the Age!

All ye Witlings of the Stage!

Learn your Jingles to reform!

Crop your Numbers and Conform....

And guess what the Wisconsin Senate did in spite?  They took away labor's collective bargaining rights. In strong sympathy (not), the NFL players gave up their own negotiations, and the team owners locked them out.  So now we have no football, no teachers, and no Wisconsin Democrats.  What else is there for the TV pundits to talk about?

Well, as luck would have it, Japan saved the day by conjuring up an epic 8.9 earthquake and tsunami to take our mind off of our own miseries.  A nuclear reactor appears ready to spew forth not far from Hiroshima.  Maybe we'll have to rethink the old saying that "when God closes a door, he opens a window" - a least until the threat of radiation has passed.

Meanwhile back in Wisconsin, would it surprise you that Governor Walker did not finish college?  And at least one source says he lost a student government election to a write-in candidate because of a voting irregularity.    You don't have to be a Freudian to speculate that some of this unpleasantness is latent contrition.  "Let the Verse the Subject fit; Little Subject, Little Wit."

Falling Off an Ideologue

The National People's Congress is set to approve a five-year plan next week that will serve as China's new economic roadmap, while our House of Representatives can't even agree on which utensils to use in its own cafeterias.  It seems that the environmentally friendly cutlery that the Democrats willed in the last Congress isn't cutting it with the new House Republican leadership - and you know how they like to cut.

The Supreme Court ruled this week that Constitutional protections to free speech extends to hurtful public debate, so I guess we'll have to wait until someone brings a second amendment lawsuit to settle this.  Does the right to bear arms extend to environmentally unfriendly silverware? 

There must be better ways to create dialog and deliberation.  Take, for instance, Larry Susskind's consensus-building tools that he built for more democratic decision-making, or Fisher and Ury's "Getting to Yes" published nearly 30 years ago.  The idea they share is that negotiation isn't "giving in" if all the parties win an acceptable alternative to their initial desired position.  In the context of democracy, public problems are solved by generating collective policies and programs that stem from such deliberation and acceptance.

There's an old saying that the person who asks the question controls the answer.  Governor Walker, no doubt falling on his environmentally inappropriate sword, proposes placing the brunt of deficit reductions on his state.  Some ideologue conservatives are joining the argument by saying that it is unfair that teachers are making more than the average American worker.  In what I call the immoral hazard, they are also using the same argument to call for decreased funding for all social safety net programs.

Rather than addressing the inequality of wealth, corporate tax dodgers, or the exploitation of tax giveaways and government subsidies, these ideologues would rather ignore the cost-effective benefits of taking on tax cheats, making productive federal investments in education and the public infrastructure, and supporting essential programs - all in the name of reducing the deficit.

Not for one minute do they consider that a better solution would be to raise the minimum wage and benefits for the American worker rather than lowering them for teachers.  The thought of too much money resting in the hands of too few people does not alarm them.   The fact that Americans were forced to borrow more and save less, with many losing their homes in the process, is deemed neither a threat nor a failure.

It's one thing to suggest that America cannot afford these programs.  It is another to argue that they are not in the best interests of the people they serve.  Unfortunately, the anger of working people and the threatened middle class has led them to ignore this distinction and vote against their own self-interests in recent elections.  This administration must focus on reclaiming the right to ask these hard questions and frame compelling answers to these concerns of the electorate.

It is no longer, if it ever was, about high speed rail or jobs, or even the deficit.  It is about showing the average American that the aftershock of our economic turmoil is not an endless age of austerity.  It is about fairness, and dialogue, and reaching consensus.  It is about Americans working together to build our economy rather than reducing it to a zero-sum game. 

I bet that China would accept a higher U.S. debt ceiling, unequal balance of trade, or stronger dollar if we could reach such an agreement.  They may even be willing to write us into their five year plan.

A Crack in the Liberty Bell Curve

It's shaping up to be a pretty good week for America, although I am still not too sure about Wisconsin.  The space shuttle is scheduled to return successfully, and the federal government will remain open longer than a 7-11.  But Governor Walker is still trying to impose his will on the public unions, and there's a pretty good chance that the NFL will  be showing reruns of the Vancouver Olympics next fall.

Calmer and, dare I say, saner voices are calling for a return to civil discourse on all fronts - reminiscent of Roosevelt's second fireside chat, which ended, "We are encouraged to believe that a wise and sensible beginning has been made.  In the present spirit of mutual confidence and mutual encouragement we go forward." 

That remains to be seen.  Mutuality is a lost art in contemporary American politics.  Headlines blare that the "new dynamic pits unions vs. taxpayers" as if union members don't pay taxes or aren't loyal to the republic.  Private or public, when the pie shrinks everyone must share the loss.  It shouldn't matter who pays the compensation, but it does matter who is baking - and eating - the pie. 

The American public seems to understand that this budget battle, in the end, is about fairness, that it has always been about fairness.  A majority of those polled say that they oppose efforts to weaken collective bargaining rights because it strikes at the heart of this fairness, our right as Americans to redress our grievances.

It is this belief that gives us the courage as a free nation to face an uncertain future, a future that hinges upon discovering our mutual interests with compassion, wisdom, and a sense of public duty to find a better way.  Res Public.

Public opinion expert Daniel Yankelovich calls how America makes up its mind The Learning Curve.   I call it the liberty curve, because its shape determines our collective freedom and our economic destiny.  Too far to the right and the public is left out of democratic decision-making; too far to the left and public participation may remain uninformed and ill-advised. 

Yankelovich titles his new book, "Toward Wiser Public Judgment."  We have a lot of work to do to improve our country's civic literacy.  In fact, illiteracy as a whole is rampant - and spreading to the Internet.

Speaking of epidemics, the U.S. Department of Education recently reported in a 2006 study (maybe they should have asked Yankelovich to do the survey quicker) that only 36 percent of adults have even the minimal skills to deal with the information provided them for follow-up medical care and medications.  For example, one elderly patient undergoing his first colonoscopy did not know to take the foil wrapper off his prescribed suppository.  Ouch!

A 2007 study estimated the problem costs the U.S. economy as much as $238 billion annually.  That savings alone could pay NFL players for the next 27 years.  As the comic strip character Pogo said sixty years ago about pollution, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."