Rick Santorum

Following along in my who’s running and who’s not series, I write today to tell you that former Senator Rick Santorum is running for president in 2012.

This was confirmed to me at The Four Season’s bar here in Washington, by a cousin of Santorum’s. ”Oh, yes, he’s running,” she said. This former senator is currently a senior fellow at The Ethics and Policy Center, a radio-show host, a contributor to Fox News and a newspaper columnist. He is also father to no fewer than seven children. (Now, that would make for a full White House…)

Santorum is a devout Catholic and is known for his rather over-enthusiastic (in my view) and borderline belligerent stances against abortion and homosexuality. To say that he is a social conservative’s dream is an understatement. In fact, Santorum’s comments and statements over the years on gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose make me personally uncomfortable, but that’s another blog.

Remember, these are posts about who I believe is running for president in 2012 and who is not, and they’re based on what I’ve read and/or what has been imparted to me by a trusted inside source or two. I reserve the right to change my mind and correct my predictions, but I’m trying to get it right the first time.

Sarah Palin

Now, if I ever questioned whether Sarah Palin was running for president (and I did), I no longer do. First, while the rest of conservative America was fixated on presidential hopefuls at CPAC, Palin was busy hiring Michael Glassner as her new chief of staff for SarahPAC.

Glassner worked with Palin on her vice presidential campaign. His addition to SarahPAC suggests one thing to me – she’s running. As a caveat,a friend who is close to the Palin family had me convinced that Sarah wasn’t running because Todd didn’t want her to. Glassner’s addition cuts against this argument, as it was Todd who actually reached out to the new COS.

Second, let’s also not forget  the whole ambition and addictive nature of running for president. James Carville said it best - running for president is like sex. Once you start, you don’t stop.

Finally, I would note that Sarah Palin loves the center – not the polical center, but being the center of attention. Santorum effectively chips away at her ultra-conservative base and creates real competition by throwing himself into the mix. Sarah, being competitive, wants to keep her fan club. As such, how can she not run?

Sarah Lenti is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s The Savvy. E-mail her at sarah@nmpolitics.net. For full disclosure, Lenti is a Republican strategist who works closely with potential GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s PAC. A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Santorum is currently practicing law with Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC.

Photo by Beverly & Pack/flickr.com

A few days ago I ran into my fellow columnist Dr. Swickard at Toucan Market in Las Cruces. We had a pleasant conversation — baskets of produce and gluten-free cake mix in hand — during which he relayed the story that he tells in his most recent post about not getting his insulin needles.

He also was kind enough to invite me to visit his morning radio show, which I declined because my thoughts are best explored when I get to revise rather than when I’m forced to improvise.

With this conversation fresh in my head, I read his recent claim that government is “destroying the country” because, in the most literal reading of his column, his pharmacist refused to give him insulin needles.

According to his column, Dr. Swickard argues that, for the past half century or so, Americans have been turning to government to solve all of their problems. The latest emanation of this degradation of personal responsibilities has been the most recent health care reforms, which are the reason that the pharmacist refused to give him his needles.

Since I’m concerned that diabetics cannot get the needles they need to apply their insulin treatments, I called the Walgreen’s pharmacy on El Paseo in Las Cruces to ask in what cases I wouldn’t be sold insulin needles. I took notes while we talked. Here’s how it went:

“Can I buy needles for insulin?” I asked.

“It’s up to the pharmacist on duty at the time; otherwise, you need a prescription,” the pharmacist’s assistant said.

“So I need a separate prescription for my needles?” I asked.

“Umm, technically,” she said. “Usually they’ll just sell them to you.”

“Is this a new protocol?” I asked. “Needing a prescription for needles?”

“No,” she said. “Most pharmacists will just sell them to you.”

I don’t know about Dr. Swickard’s particular situation, but it sounds like, in most cases, the government is not interfering with diabetics getting their needles. Rather, a few pharmacists insist on a prescription for the needles, which may not be such a bad idea.

Furthermore, it sounds like the pharmacist was not applying a new rule that had anything to do with the recent health care reforms.

I can understand why Dr. Swickard might make the correlation between his situation and the passage of the health care reform, especially considering all of the talk from Beck and Palin types about death panels and rationed care. We are primed to look for such things. Still, as my composition students and I discuss often, there’s a big difference between correlation and causality.

But this isn’t really about insulin needles

This is about the proper role for government in our society. Dr. Swickard’s column suggests that government has only been destructive to American prosperity. I just don’t think the facts bear that out.

A few examples of how our lives have been improved by pooling our resources through government action:

• Thanks to basic government research, Americans are living better and longer than ever before. Because we the people — through the pooled resources that we call the government — invest in research colleges, nonprofit organizations like the March of Dimes and research hospitals, we’ve been able to support the discovery of vaccines for diseases like polio and improve the quality of life for people who are suffering from other diseases like AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and — yes — even diabetes.
• Government investment in basic science has led to many innovations that both improve our quality of life and also are the building blocks for entrepreneurs and businesses. An obvious example is government investment in the computer chip, which led to the personal computer. Also, government development of the Internet has been an undeniable boon to not only entrepreneurship and consumer choice but to the spread of democracy itself, as we’ve seen the impact of social media in Egypt and elsewhere.
• Government investment in basic infrastructure like the interstate highway system has not only allowed for businesses to transport and receive goods from all over the country and our neighbors to the north and south, but has also allowed for people who can afford it to move from town to town and back again safely, freely and easily.
• Government investment in emerging industries has spurred innovation in the United States. Starting with the transition from lighting the streets with whale blubber to investing in the pipelines to move petroleum, the government has provided a useful helping hand for industries that benefit everyone.
• Government acts as a stabilizing force for our financial markets and a safeguard for individual investors through protections like those provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
• Governmental regulatory boards like the Environmental Protection Agency secure our rights to breathe clean air and drink safe water. The Food and Drug Administration screens everything from prescription drugs to toys to make sure that the things we buy don’t kill us.
• Our military has been the driving force behind some of the most meaningful efforts in history to secure freedom, such as World War II.
• Our firefighters and police allow for a degree of public safety enjoyed by few other countries. There can be little doubt that this is a boon to commerce and entrepreneurship, not to mention liberty.
• Government has fulfilled its constitutional mandate to continue to “secure the blessings of Liberty” to all Americans by securing rights — from voting to freedom of speech, religion, and peaceable assembly — for all people, regardless of gender or ethnicity. On this point, as in all of the above, our record has been imperfect, and much work remains to be done.

The above list is merely representative (not exhaustive) of what we have accomplished through the government. To me, it is hard to defend the position that government has been largely destructive to the success of our American experiment.

A more perfect union

According to the preamble of the Constitution, the people of the United States have empowered the government to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” To me this indicates that the founders intended that the government would play a large role in building a more perfect union.

I agree with Dr. Swickard that “cradle-to-grave” government is not a viable solution for our problems. But, it’s equally inaccurate to say that government is at the root of all our problems.

I propose that we move our discussions beyond assuming that government contributes nothing — it’s just not factual. Let’s not forget that some of our earliest national debts accumulated because the federal government took over the debts that our states incurred during the Revolutionary War. The price of a free society has long been borne by government.

Instead, we need to discuss how to optimize and administer a government that is charged by the founders — and empowered by the people — with securing justice, domestic tranquility, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty.

Nick Voges is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net.

John Thune

Here is the second in my series of predictions about who’s seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 and who isn’t. The first post maintained that former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is not running.

Next in line - South Dakota Senator John Thune.

Washington is all abuzz of late wondering if this relatively understated senator (but soon to be noticed heart throb,  a la Scott Brown) will make a run at the GOP presidential primary. Roll Call is not willing to risk making a call on Senator Thune, but is willing to tell us that his team will announce their intentions by the end of the month.

I, on the other hand, am going to predict that Senator Thune is not running in 2012.

To begin, who is Senator John Thune? Senator John Thune is the man who so gloriously won Tom Daschle’s U.S. Senate seat in 2005. He’s a social conservative’s conservative – he professes to be an evangelical christian and received bachelor’s from Biola University.

And, he’s a fiscal conservative’s conservative – he has a M.B.A. and served under the Reagan Administration’s Small Business Administration. Among other things, he also served as the executive director of South Dakota’s Republican Party for two years in the early 90s. You can read more about Senator Thune here.

For many, but not all of course, he’s the dream candidate. He’s a stellar mix of social and fiscal conservatism and he’d be the unassuming underdog in this race. Senator Thune would be one of a few candidates in the 2012 Republican field who did not run in 2008. For many voters, this is a net positive, and I’m sure it’s making his political team salivate.

Why I think he’s not running

Now, back to my prediction. Senator Thune is not running.

First, on what am I basing my information? Answer: an inside source who has known Senator Thune since high school. But let’s be real here – this decision is larger than just the senator. This decision also rides on the senator’s political team.

Now here is the interesting thing. I understand that Senator Thune’s political team is pushing him to run, not so much for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination per say, but for either the 2012 vice presidential nomination or for name visability in the lead up to an actual run at the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

In my mind the latter makes sense, but there are other ways to get the first.  The bottom line is that Thune’s political team is pushing him to run in 2012 with more than one end goal in site.

Bet on Thune running in 2016

At the the moment Senator Thune is flattered and Senator Thune is tempted. But, at the end of the day, Senator Thune will ultimately call the shots and not run. My hunch is that after looking at the fast and burgeoning army of potential 2012 Republican primary contenders at CPAC next week, Thune (with a little prodding from friends not on his political team) will realize that he won’t be able to muster the money or the time to compete in the field this go around.

And, as such, Thune does not run in 2012.

It’s a humble prediction.  (That said, I’d put my money on him for 2016.)

Sarah Lenti is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s The Savvy. E-mail her at sarah@nmpolitics.net.

A photo of Obama that's obviously not from tonight's address. (White House photo)

According to the news commentary running up to this evening’s State of the Union, tonight’s oratory address is President Obama’s “moment.”

And tonight, in his address to the country, President Obama told America that now, right now, is this generation’s “Sputnik” moment.

Well, it’s all very good and interesting. Apparently, there are a lot of moments to be had.

And what’s more, there are a plethora of policy proposals and promises to be kept. A la the ”Sputnik” theme – the president promised the moon and the stars in his address.

True or false

I’d like to know what you think about the laundry list of policy proposals and  promises below. For each one, ask yourself:  True or false – will the administration get this done?

• We need to make America the best place on earth to do business.
• This administration will take on clean energy – and in such a way that America will have more electric vehicles on the road than any other country by 2015.
• Further on the clean energy theme, this administration will embrace clean energy and this will mean that 80 percent of America’s energy will come from clean energy sources by 2035.
• Race to the Top will continue to raise standards for teaching and learning. In fact, Race to the Top will prove to be more focused on what is best for children than No Child Left Behind.
• Great teachers will start to be rewarded.
• This administration will “prepare” 100,000 new teachers in the fields of math, science and engineering.
• Within 25 years, 80 percent of Americans will have access to high speed rail.
• Within the next five years, Americans will experience faster Internet.
• This administration will put policies into place that will double our exports by 2014.
• This administration will engage in Asia-Pacific and global trade talks.
• Annual domestic spending will be frozen for the next five years.
• Excessive spending should be cut wherever we find it – domestic, defense, loopholes, etc.
• This administration will take on medical practice reform to reign in frivolous lawsuits.
• This administration will create a bipartisan commission on Social Security reform.
• This administration will not extend tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.
• Within the year, this administration will issue a proposal that merges, consolidates and reorganizes the federal government in such a way that provides for a more competitive America? (Lenti note: Whoa – what does this mean? Answer: This would effectively mean moving heaven and earth.)
• If any bill comes across the president’s desk with earmarks inside, President Obama will veto it.
• The president will start bringing our troops home from Afghanistan effective July 2011.
• We will stand by South Korea and insist that North Korea abides by its commitment to abandon its nuclear weapon program.
• America will support the democratic aspirations of all people all over the globe.
• Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving her or his country for loving who they love.

True or false? Tell me what you think, please.

Some notes

In purely petty commentary, I would just like to add that:

1. I am a huge fan of Secretary Clinton’s new coif!
2. Representative Pelosi should be ashamed of herself for refusing Representative Cantor’s invite to sit together. Kerry and McCain managed to do it…
3. House Speaker Boehner is looking, well, crispy – almost mirroring the purple hue of his tie.
4. That said, Speaker Boehner clearly has a heart – the president’s mention of family brought a tear to the House speaker’s eye.

In more substantive commentary, I would note that:

1. I agree with President Obama in that there is a huge difference in “sitting together tonight and working together tomorrow.”
2. No matter what your political affiliation, I think we can all agree that President Obama is quite an amazingly exceptional orator.
3. I agree with President Obama’s comment that, “We need to make America the best place on earth to do business.”
4. Finally, I agree with the notion of American exceptionalism and the case for American greatness. As the president said, America is capable of doing “big” things.  The president now must lead in a manner that allows for this.

Sarah Lenti is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s The Savvy. E-mail her at sarah@nmpolitics.net.

Mike Huckabee

Here is my first in a series of posts on who I believe is running for president in 2012 and who’s not. These posts will be based on what I’ve read and/or what has been imparted to me by a trusted inside source or two.

Nothing you will read will be scientific; however, nothing you will read will be dreamed-up or an outright lie for the sake of shock value. Note that I reserve the right to change my mind and correct my predictions. That said, my goal is to get it right the first time.

(For full disclosure, I’m a republican strategist who works closely with potential GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s PAC.)

Let’s begin.

Mike Huckabee – not running in 2012

The surest sign that former Arkansas Governor Mike Hukabee is “out” for 2012 is the mortgage on his $3.2 million Florida panhandle beach House. Sources tell me that the Huckabees put a very minimal payment down on this retirement mansion. Rather than preparing to be first lady, Mrs. Huckabee is busy drape shopping.

Call my crazy, but the Hucketer simply CAN’T give up his FOX contract and still afford this house. (Note that Huckabee has already secretly negotiated a Monday-Friday gig – if, that is, FOX can figure out which weeknight re-run they replace with Huckabee’s show.)

As a practical matter, Huckabee’s presidential ambitions died back in 2009 in a hail of bullets in a Seattle Starbucks. You can read the story here. Four dead cops because you, as governor, misjudged a felon’s faith conversion is a tough country ballad to sing to law-and-order primary voters.

Finally, and quite frankly, Huckabee’s only real shot for the GOP nomination would be if 2012 became an election centered around social conservative issues, period. Not going to happen – I don’t care how quickly the economy begins to heal, it’s going to be impossible for a full (or close to full) economic recovery to occur in the next 22 months. And until that recovery happens, you can be sure that Americans will be voting with their wallets and not simply their hearts.

These are just a few reasons why I believe Mike Hukabee is not running in 2012.

Sarah Lenti is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s The Savvy. E-mail her at sarah@nmpolitics.net.

A sign from a tea party rally in Albuquerque in 2009. (Photo by nmfbihop/flickr.com)

Whether Jared Lee Loughner targeted Congresswoman Giffords after listening to extreme right wing or extreme left wing rhetoric seems beside the point — the truth is that, like all of us, he’s likely been exposed to a full helping of both.

And although we may find that one fanatic group or the other bears a lion’s share of the blame for this particular tragedy, there’s enough incendiary talk burning up our public dialogue that any one (or combination) of them could be responsible.

A more useful thing might be to consider how the ways that we talk about our disagreements not only hinder meaningful problem solving but also, in the worst cases, facilitate violence.

Discursive entrenchment

Rhetorician Elizabeth Ervin uses the term discursive entrenchment to describe when:

“participants in a debate intellectually and rhetorically dig in their heels, refusing to consider alternative positions and thus aggravating existing tensions.”

We can find many examples of discursive entrenchment in our society.

For example, consider many of the comments following articles on this site where commentators talk past each other, insisting on seemingly willful misunderstandings of opposing points of view, and resorting to name calling rather than civil discussion. Interactions like these promote discursive entrenchment and, as Ervin argues, are capable of “aggravating existing tensions.”

We’ve seen this sort of rhetorical brinksmanship playing itself out in the public sphere, with conservatives calling President Obama a socialist, or, even stranger, someone who displays “Kenyan, anti-colonial” behavior. In turn, President Obama recently accused Republicans of being “hostage-takers” when they didn’t act as he wanted them too. It’s easy to see how this sort of talk, from both sides, exemplifies discursive entrenchment and moves the country further from solutions rather than closer.

Both parties have dug in their heels, both refuse to consider alternate viewpoints, and both are aggravating existing tensions.

Sacred Rhetoric

Political scholar Morgan Marietta uses the term sacred rhetoric to describe rhetoric that is:

“unconflicted, extreme, and strident, taking positions that ignore compromise or negotiation, upholding the inviolability of a favored set of values while dismissing others.”

President George W. Bush used sacred rhetoric when he argued after the 9/11 attacks that “you’re either with us or against us.” In this case, President Bush brooked no room for discussion or deliberation among “us.” Talk like this limited the scope of how we might have addressed the 9/11 attacks, effectively moving the public dialogue past deliberation to passionate engagement (or alienation, in some cases).

Sacred rhetoric is contrasted with what Marietta calls consequentialism, a rhetorical mode where discussion centers around how the activity or policy in question would impact the public welfare. A consequentialist discussion of 9/11, for example, would debate the practical effects and real world consequences of various military and diplomatic options rather than proselytize about the morality of them, as both sides (and I too) have done.

Marietta’s research indicates that our brains process sacred rhetoric differently than consequentialist rhetoric.

Here are her findings:

• Exposure to sacred rhetoric (as opposed to consequentialist rhetoric) decreases deliberation and increases what she calls “absolutist reasoning.” In other words, people who hear sacred rhetoric think less carefully about that facts about the issue at hand and rely more on the norms and values of their friends and families to guide their actions.
• Sacred rhetoric “encourages political intensity and engagement.” It’s little surprise to learn that invoking deeply-held values and convictions gets people fired up and engaged in the issue (although not, it’s important to note, intellectually engaged).

Marrieta’s findings highlight an awkward conundrum for public discourse: The use of sacred rhetoric decreases our tendency to deliberate carefully about policies, while at the same time it increases not only our involvement but also the intensity with which we engage the issue.

The question she raises — but leaves us to answer — is whether we’d prefer consequentualist rhetoric, which encourages deliberation at the expense of passionate participation, or whether we’d prefer sacred rhetoric, which encourages passionate participation at the expense of careful deliberation.

I prefer consequentialist rhetoric that — although a bit wonky and dry — encourages careful deliberation and serious discussion of the real-world consequences of our decisions. The other option looks too much like mob rule to me.

What can we do?

If you agree with me that using consequentialist rhetoric that increases our public deliberation is a better way to discuss public policy options, then the question becomes how we could encourage it. The fact that many of our most successful media outlets have become rich and powerful through their intentional use of sacred rhetoric complicates the matter. Sacred rhetoric engages people passionately. That’s good for ratings. But this is another dangerous example of our most powerful corporations privatizing profits while socializing their risks.

This weekend — even as people like Glen Beck, Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh have become rich by calling their political opponents names — we all saw the real human cost of allowing the irresponsible use of sacred rhetoric. Ironically, the images and accounts of what has happened are delivered to us by many of the same media personalities who have profited (and continue to do so) from the sacred rhetoric that can lead to violence.

I understand that there will always be people like Jared Lee Loughner who are susceptible to extreme ideas and who are capable of violence. And I understand that sacred rhetoric is just another term to describe the practice of manipulating people with language, which has been with us since antiquity. In the western tradition, this long conversation started with Plato and the sophists and now includes pundits and politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Many smart, well-meaning people throughout history have wrestled with this same problem and come away with only a limp to show for their troubles.

Furthermore, we the people can’t ignore our own culpability in all this. We not only allow but celebrate the people who use the most extreme rhetoric. One of the challenges of writing these blogs is resisting the temptation to be provocative. This would surely attract a broader readership, but not really advance how we think about these important issues. I trust you all to tell me when I’ve failed to promote deliberation.

To be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be passionate. However, all of us — both in our public and private roles — might endeavor to talk more rationally, and more carefully, about the issues we care about. Always attempting to discuss them in ways that encourage rather than quiet careful deliberation.

All of my specific ideas to fix the larger problems in our public discourse — like, for example, forming a regulatory board that assesses the toxicity of the rhetoric that travels across our public airwaves and the internet — seem naïve and politically impossible (and perhaps, in the case of the Internet, literally impossible). Besides, the line between free speech and toxic speech can seem pretty darn thin, depending on how we each feel about the person doing the talking.

At the local level, my students and I work together in our composition classroom to become more critical consumers and more ethical creators of the various forms of rhetoric. This is satisfying and important work but it’s a slow way to foster a healthy public debate. We learn to use Donald Davidson’s principle of charity, which requires that we not only assume that the people we disagree with are rational but also we consider the opposing argument in its strongest form, even building it up if need be.

This is not only a good exercise for developing critical thinking, it also helps us understand where those we disagree with are coming from. Rather than being merely an enemy whose ideas we must defeat, those we disagree with become fellow humans with real and legitimate motives,even if we do not, in the end, agree. Our understanding of the world becomes richer and more complex, rather than simplified and monochromatic.

While we look for bigger antidotes for what ails our toxic public dialogue, each of us can hold ourselves and those we can influence to a higher standard of public discourse than we have before. Accepting dangerous rhetoric has become too costly.

Nick Voges is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net.

Photo by dpatricklewis/flickr.com

Over the last few decades the city of Littleton, Colo., has enjoyed the sort of economic success that many other communities can only dream of. According to the city’s economic intelligence specialist, Christine Hamilton-Pennell, Littleton’s economic development practices have resulted in the following growth:

• The number of jobs created in Littleton has doubled from 15,000 to around 30,000.
• Sales tax revenues tripled from $6.8 million to $19.6 million (Hamilton-Pennell notes that this increase occurred despite two major recessions and a population increase of only 30 percent).

Furthermore, the city offered no tax incentives or breaks to recruit these new businesses. Recently Christian Gibbons, Littleton’s director of business/industry affairs, conducted a conference call with Las Cruces community leaders, city staff, and representatives from local business groups like the Las Cruces Green Chamber of Commerce, the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance, and the Hispano Chamber of Commerce, among others, to discuss how they did it.

How did they do it?

Littleton’s economic prosperity is thanks to an economic development model that  Gibbons calls economic gardening. A cornerstone principle underlying economic gardening is that economic development efforts should focus on:

“…investing in local businesses rather than the traditional approach of luring businesses… from elsewhere by offering incentives and tax breaks.”

Economic gardening’s focus on investing in local entrepreneurs is derived from David Birch’s research while he was at MIT. Here’s what CBS Moneywatch says about the impact of Birch’s research:

“Small business is now widely regarded as the principal generator of net new employment in the United States. When first introduced fifteen years ago, the idea was revolutionary. Few economists or policy analysts gave smaller firms a passing thought. Large entities were presumed to be the primary, if not the sole, source of economic vitality and the only units worth examining. Yet, the newfound utility of small business took hold quickly not only because it fit America’s self-image, but because the empirical data supported it.”

Following are some of Birch’s key findings:

• An estimated two-thirds of net private sector jobs created in the last 25 years were created by small firms (a small business is defined as one that employs fewer than 500 employees).
• Small firms employ about half of the total private sector work force.
• Small businesses that employ from one to 18 employees create the most net new jobs relative to their share of total employment.

Furthermore, a more recent research study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City determined that “between 1990 and 2003, companies employing fewer than 20 employees accounted for 79.5 percent of the net new jobs in the US.”

It’s clear from the data that investing in small businesses and entrepreneurship can lead to significant job growth.

How economic development usually happens

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, economic development policymakers have traditionally focused on the following four activities:

• business recruitment
• retention
• expansion
• entrepreneurial development

Many communities are now turning their focus away from only recruiting big companies – it’s called smokestack chasing – to encouraging entrepreneurial development. There are a few reasons for this shift, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

• Investment in business recruitment has not consistently produced strong job growth or economic development.
• Policymakers are concerned that incentives are an ineffective way to attract businesses that might not be committed to the community for the long-term, and are likely to leave once the incentives expire.

With communities shifting to entrepreneurial development, policymakers and planners are looking for successful models like economic gardening.

How economic gardening works

Economic gardening nurtures entrepreneurship. By investing in smaller, high-growth  businesses – which Birch calls “gazelles” – economic gardening, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, “allows local communities to capitalize on their unique assets and to leverage their existing strengths for future growth.”

Following are the three “building blocks” that economic gardening programs use to nurture entrepreneurship:

• Information. According to their website:

“Over the years we have developed very sophisticated search capabilities using tools often only available to large corporations. We subscribe to a number of database services and CD-ROMS which provide us access to over 100,000 publications worldwide. We use these tools to develop marketing lists, competitive intelligence, industry trends, new product tracking, legislative research and to answer a number of other custom business questions.”

• Infrastructure. This includes not only physical infrastructure necessary for businesses to be successful but also quality of life infrastructure like parks, green spaces and community development. Economic gardening programs also focus on developing “intellectual infrastructure” through training and seminars. Here’s what they say about infrastructure:

“All of our infrastructure work is based on the idea that economic development and community development are two sides of the same coin. In the New Economy, where new wealth and jobs are being created by knowledge firms, creating a community that is attractive to entrepreneurs and the talent they hire is as important as natural resources and heavy rail were to Old Economy companies.”

• Connections. This involves not only connecting businesses to one another but also to trade associations, academic institutions and research and innovation.

The future of economic gardening in our community

I hope that, with the new leadership at the city, and empowered local business advocates like the Green Chamber, our economic development policymakers will look at ways to adapt the principles of economic gardening to fit Las Cruces. BALLE, a nationwide network of local businesses, contends that a strong local economy not only makes good economic sense but also helps a community celebrate and leverage its inherent strengths.

In Las Cruces, those strengths are things like our mild climate and the particular beauty of the Organ mountains; our unrivaled positioning on the globe to be a leader in renewable energy production; access to NMSU, a Carnegie foundation top research institution; and our unique mix of culture and tradition.

Furthermore, investing in our local entrepreneurs will create what sociologists call social capital, the formation of which, according to public policy expert Lewis Feldstein and Robert Putnam in their book Better Together, can improve schools, make people live longer, create broad prosperity, and – if that’s not enough – build prosperous local economies.

Congratulations to Littleton and the economic gardening folks for creating a model of economic success that invests in homegrown talent. Let’s hope that we in Las Cruces can figure out how to adapt their ideas to work for us.

Happy New Year!

Nick Voges is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net.

The 111th (lame duck) Congress did a few good things this past week. My favorite – from a center-right frame of mind – was that the 111th repealed the rather prehistoric “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”  policy.

Call me crazy, but I do not understand the logic behind turning down an able-bodied man or woman who is offering to surrender his or her life for you and me and this progressive country purely on this basis of  sexual inclination. In my mind, it is criminal to deny any person the right to serve their country on the basis of a personal preference that is totally remote from the mental decision to give up  life and livelihood.

Argue with me, please, but do not give me the extremely bogus attraction/distraction argument. (You know, the argument that says that a homosexual soldier might fall down on the job because they are attracted by the soldier next to them.) If you want to cling to this argument, then women should have never entered the workforce after WWII…  Walk around any corporate headquarters, or any congressional office, for that matter, there is sexual tension everywhere. This is where acting like an adult is supposed to kick in – and in most cases it does.

A few basic thoughts.

News flash: Sex is everywhere, and barely in the bedrooms of monogamous couples.

News flash: Signing up for the military is not like signing up for match.com. With the military, you are signing up to potentially die (from actual fire), as opposed to signing up for potentially getting laid.

News flash: I am not alone in my views regarding the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. A recent Gallup poll (read it here) suggests that the majority of Americans share the same point of view on DADT. The polls shows that while many are still struggling with the line to draw on gay marriage, the majority understand the inherent stupidity guised behind DADT.

Ok, please hear me out here. I think the military has a larger issue to deal with at the moment than that of the sexual preference of its troops. And that, the larger issue, is the current and growing suicide rate amongst service members. The Army alone is losing one per day. Yes, one per day, and you can read about it in USA Today here. Why is it that these men and woman are taking their own lives at such eye-raising rates? Clearly it’s not because the military is just that awesome. I’d be curious to know if Wall Street is taking lives at a similar rate.

This brings us down to a pretty simple bottom line. And that is this: At the end of the day, the question we should be asking is whether our brothers and sisters are going to come out of the war zone alive, well, unsuicidal and OK – as opposed to whether they come out gay or not gay.

Sarah Lenti is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s The Savvy. E-mail her at sarah@nmpolitics.net.

A food line from a sculpture at the FDR memorial in Washington, D.C. (Photo by woodleywonderworks/flickr.com)

With the Obama-Republican tax deal having passed the Senate and the House as well, I guess I’ve gotten the compromise I’ve been asking for.

To be honest, I’d thought I’d feel better about it.

What the deal does

In short, the tax deal gives both the Republicans and the Democrats the one thing they wanted most. For the Republicans, that one thing was extending the Bush Tax Cuts to everyone, especially protecting those making over $1 million a year in income. I emphasize the protection of those people making over $1 million a year in income because we saw Senate Republicans (and a few Democrats) vote against the opportunity to both reduce the deficit and maintain the Bush Tax Cuts for everyone but the very very rich.

Clearly, the most important thing for the Republicans – which they got with the current tax deal – is maintaining lowered tax rates for the richest 2 percent of Americans, rather than lowering the deficit or, for that matter, investing in infrastructure and education that will be the pathway to future prosperity.

On the other hand, the Democrats got the thing that they most wanted: extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Here’s how the New York Times summarized the expansion:

“The bill would also keep jobless aid flowing to the long-term unemployed for 13 more months, maintaining extended limits, which now range from 60 weeks in states with less than 6 percent joblessness to 99 weeks in states where the unemployment rate is more than 8.5 percent. Benefits normally last for 26 weeks.”

While the Republicans insisted on legislation that didn’t jive with their deficit-reducing campaign promises, the Democrats stuck to their long-stated commitment to extending unemployment benefits.

At a time when there are six candidates for every open job, and we know that people receiving unemployment benefits immediately pump most if not all of that money back into an economy that is wallowing due to lack of consumer spending and confidence, extending unemployment benefits is not only the right thing to do for people struggling to get back to work, but also is a necessary boost for our economy - unlike extending the tax cuts for Americans making over $1 million, who have proven themselves unwilling to invest their money back into the economy either through spending or hiring.

Some stimulus

The upside for both parties is that this tax deal offered much-needed political coverage (thanks to right-wing misrepresentation of the success of the stimulus) to provide much-needed additional stimulus to an economy in which the private sector, despite having been bailed out by taxpayers, refuses to begin hiring again. Liberals who are optimistic about this tax deal point to the stimulatory effects of the deal. Here’s how Ezra Klein, economics blogger for the Washington post, describes it:

“So is this a good deal? It’s a lot better than I would’ve told you the White House was going to get if you’d asked me a week ago. There’s some new stimulus in the form of the payroll-tax cut and the expensing proposals. The older stimulus programs that are getting extended – notably the unemployment insurance and the tax credits – probably would’ve expired outside of this deal. The tax cuts for income over $250,000 are a bad way to spend $100 billion or so, and the estate tax deal is really noxious.”

The problem with stimulus in the form of tax incentives, especially to the wealthy, rather than direct government spending in jobs and infrastructure is that it provides, according to many economists, a less-effective boost to the economy. But, perhaps Klein is right that this is the best we could have hoped for.

What Americans think about the deal

According to a recent Pew Research Report, Americans from both parties show strong support for the tax deal:

“The agreement between President Obama and congressional Republicans to extend tax cuts and unemployment benefits is getting strong bipartisan support. Overall, 60% approve of the agreement while just 22% disapprove.”

These poll results confirm what Republicans like Dick Cheney have long-suspected: As long as you talk tough about the deficit and the size of government, Americans won’t be upset when you insist on measures that hardly anyone, not even Glenn Hubbard, the architect of the Bush Tax cuts, believe are good for our country’s long-term deficit problems.

So now what?

Let’s hold our noses and grant that this is the best deal that President Obama and the Republicans could come up with. Now what?

Corporations and the wealthy need to quit complaining about uncertainty about higher tax rates and start spending and hiring. The American people have endured more than their fair share of uncertainty when we used ours and our childrens’ tax dollars to bail out the failing financial system, which benefited the wealthy much more than average Americans. The lower and middle classes are likely to continue the long process of getting rid of their debts (deleveraging), so the rich now need to do their part to carry the economy – especially on the heels of this latest deal.

The people of the United States have done everything we can - perhaps too much – to reassure corporations and the wealthy that they can continue paying this near-historically low rate of the cost of living and doing business in America. Corporations and the rich had better start spending all that cash they are sitting on immediately through hiring and capital investment. Otherwise, having,  as we’ve done so often, privatized the profits and socialized the risks of the wealthiest Americans, the rich should abandon their pretenses of being either entrepreneurial or socially responsible, and admit that they will happily take advantage of their wealth and position to increase their wealth and position.

Furthermore, if the rich don’t re-invest their money in American jobs, they should be publicly shamed by Americans from all points of the political spectrum as unpatriotic, modern-day robber barons.

Class warfare?

Many conservatives claim that asking corporations and the wealthy to do their part is a form of class warfare. My simple response: They started it.

As I’ve argued before, many economists, like Edward Glaeser, contend that the rich have used their ability to lobby the powerful to bend the system to unfairly benefit them. In the words of NMSU professor Chris Erickson, they have:

“…manged to corrupt the system so that the benefits are flowing more to them than would be justified in a completely free market. One of the ways to balance so that we get an outcome that is more consistent with a free market is to tax the rich… I think a higher tax rate on the wealthy is justified in the current circumstances.”

In other words, if they want to think of this as class warfare, they should remember that the Pearl Harbor of this conflict happened when they used their money and influence to distort the system. For more details, check out this breakdown from The Fiscal Times:

“According to the IRS, the top 400 earners in the U.S. grossed a whopping $137 billion in 2007 (the latest data available). A household making $50,000 a year is taxed at 17.4 percent, assuming no write-offs. Yet the billionaires were only taxed an average rate of 16.7 percent, amounting to $22.9 billion.”

It’s shameful that the top 400 billionaires pay a lower rate of taxes than a household making $50,000 a year. I’d argue that if there is a class war underway, the rich started it by using there power and money to avoid paying their fair share. But that’s my simple response.

My somewhat more complicated response to whether this is class warfare: It’s not. Typifying public discussion about the costs of democracy and freedom, and how those costs should be allocated, as class warfare is merely a ploy to short-circuit meaningful discussion. We need to be able to discuss our problems reasonably.

But really. What now?

This tax deal proves that congressional Republicans have little credibility when they claim to be concerned about either the debt or long-term deficits. On the other side, President Obama has invested a lot of political capital in this deal, with the  hopes that it will encourage corporations to start hiring again. If they do not, Obama will be stuck with a deal that angers his base and doesn’t improve the economy. To that end, according to the Wall Street Journal, he’s gone on a “charm offensive” to do just that:

“The White House has been pursuing a charm offensive with the biggest U.S. employers in recent weeks, hoping to convince them to plow some of the $2 trillion in cash they are sitting on into expansion and hiring in the U.S.”

The debate about the Bush Tax cuts, and, in effect, our long-term deficit problem, will be continued when the cuts are scheduled to sunset again in 2012, just in time for the next presidential election. Perhaps President Obama is right that these concessions will provide the short-term stimulus that our economy needs, and we can address the Bush Tax cuts (and the long-term deficit problem) after more people are employed again. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, perhaps this imperfect deal will pave the path for future compromises that actually benefit the long-term well-being of America, rather than the narrow constituencies of our two-party system. I’d start with finding ways to address the troubling decline of inter-generational mobility that has bedeviled the working and middle classes in the last few decades.  This will provide access to prosperity for all Americans, not just the already wealthy. Again, only time will tell.

Nick Voges is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net.

Barack Obama

President Obama compromised, and guess what?

Democrats are pissed.

It’s all over the blogs, all over the papers, and I think I can even hear Pelosi, Reid and Feinstein whining through my exposed-brick wall at home on Capitol Hill.

Even Howard Fineman is having a bit of a pity party on Huffington Post. The tragedy, apparently, is  that the Bush tax-cuts are a win-win no matter what happens economically. Fineman writes,

“Consider this: if the economy improves over the next two years, it will in part be ‘because’ of the Bush tax cuts! And if it doesn’t, it will be because of the Bush tax cuts that became the Obama tax cuts!”

Shame on President Bush for getting the tax-cuts right.

The White House reaction

On Tuesday, the president said to Democrats that this was “a long game, not a short game.” And to Republicans, he said that he was looking forward to working on an agreement.

It’s funny how the White House is framing this extremely Democrat-opposed and Republican-beloved deal.

Here, below, please read how today’s Washington Post frames the White House reaction. (Note that I could not help but bold a few of the juciest points – at least from the perspecitive of a fiscally-conservative but socially-open mind.)

“The mood was cheery at the White House as administration officials celebrated a package that, if approved by Congress, would provide a far bigger jolt to the economy than anyone had expected. While lamenting the need to compromise on the Bush tax cuts and particularly on a revived estate tax, administration officials said the package would inject an extra $300 billion into the economy next year alone.

“Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, predicted that the package would accelerate economic growth, adding more than 1.6 million jobs next year and driving unemployment down to 8.5 percent by the end of 2011.

“Buyers of U.S. government debt were less pleased with the prospect of additional borrowing: The interest rate the government must pay to borrow money for 10 years rose 0.2 percentage points to 3.1 percent, a rate that, if it persists, could reduce the stimulative effects of the tax cuts.

“But White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said that ‘the first priority for addressing the budget deficit has to be getting the economy growing again at a rapid rate.’ The tax deal, he said, ‘offers the best prospect that was available for achieving the kind of escape velocity that we’ve been seeking for the past two years.’”

An honest reaction

To everyone who is concerned about the U.S. economy and somewhat adept politically, I ask you this: If you sincerely want to get the economy rolling, then why not accept compromise and allow the economy to do just that – get rolling?

My fear is that a resistance to compromise by Democrats or Republicans alike in Congress will ultimately force President Obama into a Sisyphus-like political greek tragedy.

The president just pushed a boulder up a mountain. Why, now, let it fall back on him to the further detriment of the U.S. economy?

We’ve now hit a 9.8 percent unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Let the president push the boulder over the peak. Let him embrace what his advisors Zandi and Summers are, in fact, advising – keep taxes low and stimulate the economy.

Let’s get the ball rolling.

Sarah Lenti is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s The Savvy. E-mail her at sarah@nmpolitics.net.