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AYM Summit: A Meetup for the World's Youth Activists
March 10th, 2010 - 4:04pm
Filed under International Security
I'm at the Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM) summit in London, at the Intercontinental Hotel. The two-day summit, which ends tomorrow, is an impressive gathering of youth activists from more than 18 countries, NGOs and tech giants, here to learn more about using online tools to promote their extraordinary range of social movements and promote non-violent change. You can read more about the AYM here.
At the opening reception last night, hosted at Google's headquarters, I met a smart bunch of people from organizations such as Blue State Digital (which ran Obama's online campaign), Howcast, Middle East peace activists One Voice, and the East London-based Young Foundation.
But the highlight is an A-list bunch of conference speakers at the conference today and tomorrow -- including Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, Scott Heiferman of MeetUp, as well as top people from Google, YouTube and the World Bank. Other keynote speakers include Jeremy Gilley, the former actor who founded Peace One Day, and Joe Rospars, who was the new-media director for Obama for America.
There's strong representation here from Washington DC. This morning, Jared Cohen, of the US State Department, moderated a session titled Seizing the Moment: Responding to Crises and Mobilizing Around Key Events. That had speakers from Mobile Accord, Ushahidi, Mazahery Law, AccessNow and the Censorship Research Center. I'm now sitting in a session called Turning Video into Tangible Action, featuring experts such as Ramya Raghaven of YouTube, Levi Felix of Causecast, and Chris Sarette, Invisible Children.
There's much discussion of how to produce a viral video to spread the word about an urgent crisis -- a panelist who's involved in the Robin Hood Tax campaign (to promote a redistributive 0.05% tax on final transactions) is currently explaining how getting the help of director Richard Curtis helped the campaign soar.
Now a human-rights activist from Israeli NGO B'Tselem is explaining how they gave 250 cameras to Palestinians in the West Bank to document the reality of local life. Not to activists, but to ordinary families, such as a 16-year-old in Hebron whose one-minute video about her frustrations became national news and influenced official policy on law-enforcement in Hebron. It wasn't about using new media -- it was about using traditional tools to provoke established media to notice a story that had been under the radar.
It's an inspiring event, geared towards helping activists share top-level information and making connections that lead to significant change. You can sense the scale of their practical ambition from the title of some of the sessions: one is called Tech Solutions to Repressive Regimes; another is titled Effective Strategies for Mobile Content to Increase Empowerment. - Wired Magazine
Education Finalists Picked
March 9th, 2010 - 4:46pm
Filed under Economy
By NEIL KING JR. and BARBARA MARTINEZ
The Obama administration picked 15 states and the District of Columbia as finalists in a heated competition for extra federal education funds to shake up underperforming schools.
The states that made the cut in the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition were Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Tennessee.
President Barack Obama visits Martin Luther King Charter School in New Orleans in October. The Race to the Top program encourages such schools.
Under the program, states stand to garner hundreds of millions of dollars each, depending on their size, at a time when many local education budgets face deep funding shortfalls.
The sheer number of finalists surprised outside observers, who had predicted the administration would impose more stringent standards. The list included a number of states whose applications were considered weak.
A total of 40 states and the District of Columbia submitted applications in January for the first round of funding, with a second round set for summer.
The administration defended the selection of the 16 finalists, saying that all states whose applications cleared a pre-set score automatically advanced to the next round.
The Education Department promises to be tougher in winnowing the list down to the winners, which will be announced next month, and are expected to include fewer than a half-dozen states.
"Most of them will go home losers," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "We anticipate very few winners in round one."
The size of the finalist list drew fire from some quarters. "I was hoping the administration would send a clear message that you had to be absolutely great to even be in the competition," said Andrew Smarick, a former George W. Bush administration official who has supported the program. "This is a huge disappointment."
President Barack Obama has used the lure of federal grants as a way to get states and school districts to improve local education standards, even if they receive no money in the end. The idea behind the program is to reward states that show a willingness to overhaul failing schools through measures such as tough testing standards, data collection and teacher training. The administration intends to apply this competitive approach to an increasingly large share of its education budget.
The Education Department turned to a panel of outside judges to pick the finalists according to 19 criteria, including a state's track record, openness to charter schools and use of testing systems to judge teacher performance. The finalists' scores weren't made public.
Independent evaluators have given especially high marks to three states on the list-Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana-for their accountability standards and for implementing systems to track student performance. All three have also pushed to expand the growth of charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run.
Observers who have dug through the applications were taken aback by other picks. Few gave New York much chance after state lawmakers failed in January to lift a cap on charter schools and allow for the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations.
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New York caps charter schools in the state at 200, a limit it is expected to hit this year. The failed legislation would have doubled the maximum allowable, while killing a current law that bars tying teacher evaluations to student test scores.
Not allowing student test scores to be tied to teacher evaluations "seemed like a clear no-no under the rules" of the competition, said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, a group that favors charter schools and stronger teacher evaluation systems. He said the state legislature now had a short window to enact legislation that would correct New York's shortcomings.
Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City school system, the largest in the country, failed to win the legislative changes he sought in January, but cheered the announcement nonetheless. "We're within striking distance,'' he said. He wants the legislature to immediately move to lift the charter cap and change state laws regarding teacher evaluations, firings and seniority. "That's the way to win this,'' he said. "We know that these things are hurting us.''
California, which faces a $20 billion state budget crisis, failed to make the finalist list. The state had hoped to qualify for as much as $700 million at a time when many local school districts are slashing their budgets. California had also tried hard to qualify by doing things such as ramming a bill through the legislature over union objections that allowed teachers' pay to be linked to students' test scores.
Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said Thursday he was "disappointed to learn that California is not among the Race to the Top finalists for the first round of funding." He added that "I look forward to working with the state and federal education authorities on future rounds of funding. I also hope that the Obama administration recognizes that [the Los Angeles school district] is paving its own path to success in the midst of our challenges."
Mr. Duncan and his team say they have aimed to keep the selection process as free of politics as possible. Congress, the states and the White House weren't told who made the cut until Thursday morning. Mr. Duncan said the finalists were picked solely based on the judges' scoring of their applications, and that he had no hand in the decision.
Mr. Duncan has won bipartisan support for Race to the Top, but that could change as lawmakers and governors realize only a small minority of states may emerge as winners.
The list of winners so far could stir unease for other reasons. Only five of the 16 finalists were states that went for Republican Sen. John McCain in the last presidential election. And only one of them, Colorado, was west of the Mississippi-a fact that Mr. Duncan said was "purely a coincidence." - WSJ
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Grows Into a Political Force
March 9th, 2010 - 9:28am
Filed under Economy
By Tom Hamburger
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is building a large-scale grass-roots political operation that has begun to rival those of the major political parties, funded by record-setting amounts of money raised from corporations and wealthy individuals.
The chamber has signed up some 6 million individuals who are not chamber members and has begun asking them to help with lobbying and, soon, with get-out-the-vote efforts in upcoming congressional campaigns.
The chamber's expansion into grass-roots organizing -- coupled with a large and growing fundraising apparatus that got a lift from Supreme Court rulings -- is part of a trend in which the traditional parties are losing ground to well-financed and increasingly assertive outside groups. The chamber is certainly better positioned than ever to be a major force on the issues and elections it focuses on each year, analysts think.
The new grass-roots program, the brainchild of chamber political director Bill Miller ( Member of Gen Next), is concentrating on 22 states. Among them are Colorado, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is vulnerable; Arkansas, where Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln faces an uphill reelection battle; and Ohio, where the chamber sees opportunities in numerous House races and an open Senate seat.
The network, called Friends of the U.S. Chamber, has been used to generate more than a million letters and e-mails to members of Congress, 700,000 of them in opposition to the Democratic healthcare plan. That is an increase from 40,000 congressional contacts generated in 2008.
What makes the initiative possible is a swelling tide of money. The chamber spent more than $144 million on lobbying and grass-roots organizing last year, a 60% increase over 2008, and well beyond the spending of individual labor unions or the Democratic or Republican national committees.
The chamber is expected to substantially exceed that spending level in 2010.
The chamber's expanding influence is worrisome to top officials in the White House -- including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who has expressed concern about the chamber in the past, and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, who tried to build direct contacts with company executives last fall when the chamber was fighting the administration's legislation to regulate carbon emissions.
Several companies, including Pacific Gas & Electric and Apple, left the chamber over its stance on climate policies, but since then many more firms have joined and made substantial contributions, chamber President Tom Donohue said.
Amassing cash
Two major factors are driving the chamber's growing success in fundraising.
First, President Obama and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress have alarmed a widening circle of business leaders with their calls for greater government involvement in healthcare, tighter federal regulation of the financial industry and legislation to help unions organize workers, among other issues.
Second, the recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations have a free-speech right to spend money to help elect or defeat candidates not only struck down a century of laws limiting such spending, but it also made many business executives feel more comfortable about using corporate money for political purposes.
Industries that are the most directly affected by Washington policies and regulations -- pharmaceuticals, for example -- have always spent lavishly on lobbying and politics. But many others have held back, deterred by concern over violating the complex laws on campaign spending and by a general sense that putting money into politics might open companies to criticism.
The Supreme Court decision appears to have allayed those concerns, according to corporate lawyers and others involved in the process.
"In the past a lot of companies and wealthy individuals stood on the sidelines," said Robert Kelner, who heads the Election and Political Law Practice Group at Covington & Burling, one of Washington's most influential corporate law firms.
"In just the last election, we had the spectacle of John McCain threatening to prosecute his own supporters if they spent their money on outside groups that ran advertising in the presidential race.
"That cloud has been lifted," he said.
Anonymity
Using trade associations such as the chamber as the vehicle for spending corporate money on politics has an extra appeal: These groups can take large contributions from companies and wealthy individuals in ways that will probably avoid public disclosure requirements.
The chamber has developed that into something of a specialty: Under a system pioneered by Donohue, corporations have contributed money to the chamber, which then produced issue ads targeting individual candidates without revealing the names of the businesses underwriting the ads.
At the chamber, officials contend that rising donations are less the result of the recent Supreme Court ruling than they are of a 5-4 decision in 2007 in which the court ruled it was unconstitutional to ban issue-related advertising close to an election.
As a result of that ruling, the chamber was able to spend $1 million on so-called issue ads in the final days of the Massachusetts Senate race in January to help elect Scott Brown, the state's first Republican senator in decades.
As ominous music played in the background of one of the ads, a moderator intoned: "Washington politicians continue to fail us. More spending and fewer jobs. Scott Brown . . . supports measures that hold spending and cut taxes. . . . Call Scott Brown. Thank him."
Powerful as the effect of such advertising could be, the chamber and its allies expect the next big expansion of influence will come in street-level organizing and voter turnout operations.
Miller, a former chief of staff to a GOP lawmaker and co-owner of a restaurant in Washington's tony Georgetown section, built up the chamber's grass-roots organization in 2008 and expanded it in 2009 with the help of consulting firms.
Studying magazine subscriptions, voter registration and consumer buying habits, the consultants built a list of potential allies in 122 key congressional districts.
Individuals were invited to join the Friends of the U.S. Chamber initiative and were promised updates and special insights on Washington. They were then "activated," asked to write letters or call Congress on a particular issue or get involved in events in the districts.
Miller said the so-called activation rate was "roughly equivalent" to the rate claimed by Organizing for America, the network known as Obama for America during the presidential campaign, which has twice as many members.
The chamber has also given its staff, especially senior leaders, incentives to push fundraising. They are now working, in effect, on a commission system: the more money they bring in, the more they are compensated.
Leaning right
Officially, the chamber is a bipartisan nonprofit organization, but over the last decade it has tilted decidedly toward the Republicans. During 2008, 86% of the spending by the chamber's political action committee went to Republicans. Far more was spent on issue ads, most supporting GOP candidates.
The chamber says it represents 3 million companies that pay dues to the national chamber or a local affiliate, though internal documents suggest the organization's treasury is filled in substantial part by contributions from a couple dozen major corporations most affected by Washington policymakers.
Tax records from 2008 show that 19 companies or individuals paid between $1 million and $15.3 million, providing a third of the chamber's total revenue that year. Because the chamber is a nonprofit, it must disclose donations, but not necessarily the identity of the donors.
The chamber insists that those donors remain anonymous.
Some labor-backed organizations, such as Working America, which has 3 million nonunion members nationwide, have also declined to release details of its donors, which suggests a rocky road for legislation to require more transparency.
tom.hamburger@ latimes.com
Kim Geiger of the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
Tech Delegation Goes To Russia To Carry Out 21st Century Statecraft
February 23rd, 2010 - 5:14pm
Filed under International Security
Silicon Valley and the State Department are getting along quite well under the Obama Administration. Last year, a tech delegation traveled with the State Department to Iraq and Mexico City to see how technology can help aid the countries. As a result of those trips, the Iraqi government set up a YouTube channel
and digitized the contents of its looted national museum, while Mexico set up an SMS hotline for reporting crimes anonymously. In January, Sec. Hillary Clinton held a dinner in Washington D.C. for tech innovators and luminaries to discuss how to harness the power of technology tools to promote diplomacy around the globe, what Secretary Clinton calls "21st Century Statecraft."
Today, a group of leaders in the tech sector is joining the State Department on a trip to Russia to discuss how communications technologies and social media can be used to strengthen and broaden the ties between the United States and Russia. The State Department has recruited some big names to join the trip, including actor and social media lover Ashton Kutcher, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Twitter co-founder and Square founder Jack Dorsey, and Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior. We hear one of Kutcher's responsibilities will be to Tweet about the trip. Topics which will be explored include how to foster entrepreneurship and how to use the Web to combat child trafficking and corruption, and use it to improve training, distance learning for remote populations, e-government initiatives, and cultural exchanges.
The delegation is led by Jared Cohen, a State Department policy staffer, Howard Solomon of the National Security Council and White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra. The full list of tech leaders on the trip include John Donahoe, Jack Dorsey, Padmasree Warrior, Shervin Pishevar, executive chairman and founder of Social Gaming Network; Jason Liebman, CEO and cofounder of Howcast; Esther Dyson, prolific investor and leader; Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation; and Ellis Rubinstein, president and CEO of New York Academy of Sciences.
Kutcher, along with his actress wife, Demi Moore, are the founders of the Demi and Ashton Foundation, which works on anti-trafficking issues. Kutcher also founded production company Katalyst and has been active in promoting and furthering social media initiatives.
"They are taking off their commercial hat, putting on their expert hats and becoming part-time diplomats," Cohen tells TechCrunch. "The State Department is a connector here. Statecraft is as much about building connections as doing negotiations."
The delegation is tentatively scheduled to meet with the Russian Ministers of Communications, Health and Education; with advisors to President Medvedev; with leaders of Russian technology and telecommunications companies; with cultural and educational leaders; and with civil society organizations concerned with health, child welfare anti-trafficking, and anti-corruption efforts. - Tech Crunch
Silicon Valley Luminaries Become Technology Ambassadors to Russia
February 23rd, 2010 - 5:10pm
Filed under Economy
Silicon Valley is playing a much larger role in international diplomacy in the Obama administration than in the Bush administration. That's in large part thanks to Jared Cohen, who has played a role in both.
Cohen joined Condoleezza Rice's State Department policy planning staff as its youngest member in 2006. A Stanford University graduate who won a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a master's degree in international relations at Oxford, Cohen advised the State Department on youth and education, particularly in the Muslim world. He gained notice for his book: "Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East," which was based on his travels there. He advised Rice on how to reach young people in the Middle East who were increasingly using social media tools.
Now Cohen is on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's team and helped with her speech on Internet freedom. I spoke with him while he was waiting at the airport to board a flight for Moscow. He's part of an effort that Secretary Clinton calls "21st Century Statecraft." In January, Clinton held a dinner in Washington to explore how to use technology to promote diplomacy.
"Statecraft as much about building connections as it is about negotiating," Cohen said.
That's what Cohen will be doing for the next five days. He has teamed with Howard Solomon of the National Security Council and White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra to lead an all-star U.S. delegation to Russia to see how technology can mutually benefit both countries.
The State Department has always sent business delegations to other countries. But sending technology delegations is something new. Last year, a tech delegation traveled to Iraq and Mexico. After the Iraq trip, the government there set up a YouTube channel and tech companies helped set up a website to catalog arts and artifacts in the national museum that was looted after the U.S. invasion. After the Mexico trip, the country set up an SMS hotline to report crimes anonymously.
Cohen's contention: The U.S. can open doors to other countries and cultures through its technology sector that produces many of the tools that young people around the world use to connect with one another.
Among the luminaries headed to Russia with Cohen are actor Ashton Kutcher; EBay CEO John Donahoe; Shervin Pishevar, executive chairman and founder of Social Gaming Network; Twitter co-founder and Square founder Jack Dorsey; Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker; and Cisco System CTO Padmasree Warrior. They will meet with Russian ministers of health and education, advisors to President Dimitry Medvedev, leaders of technology companies and more. They will tackle issues such as encouraging entrepreneurship and e-government initiatives and combating child trafficking and corruption.
The participants were chosen because they represent a microcosm of the technology industry and they make efforts to do social good. Kutcher, and his actress wife Demi Moore, for example, have a foundation that works on trafficking issues. Kutcher is also active in social media.
"They are taking off their CEO and commercial hats and putting on their expert hats," Cohen said. - L.A. Times, Jessica Guynn
Why Aren't we Learning From Japan's "Lost Decade"?
February 18th, 2010 - 11:57am
Filed under Economy
President Obama has requested another round of stimulus spending with expanded unemployment benefits and additional money for infrastructure projects to jump-start economic growth and reduce unemployment. Although this stimulus package is meeting with more opposition than the first, our elected officials do not seem to have learned anything from other countries who have unsuccessfully tried similar stimulus policies in the past. Take Japan for example.
Following strong economic growth and low interest rates in the 1980's, an asset bubble developed in the Japanese economy consisting of inflated real estate and securities prices. Recognizing that this bubble was unsustainable, the Japanese central bank raised interest rates in 1989, leading to a massive sell-off in securities and a dramatic decline in real estate values. In short, the bubble burst.
The government responded with several rounds of stimulus which consisted of massive infrastructure spending. All over Japan, roads were paved, dams were built and bridges were erected to connect numerous land masses all in an effort to stimulate the economy. In the process, Japan accumulated trillions in national debt which now totals 180% of it's nearly $6 trillion dollar economy. So large is Japan's debt that it now ranks number one of the developed countries in terms of leverage.
So how well did this entire stimulus program work? Well, economists generally refer to this period in Japan's history as the "lost decade" because the policies failed. Miserably.
Between 1989 and 2003, the Nikkei Index fell by 80% and real estate declined by 50%. Homeless camps sprung up on the banks of many rivers as people abandoned their homes due to foreclosure activity of the banks. The suicide rate skyrocketed when unemployment doubled. Even today, exports still continue their downward spiral, prompting fears of a second wave of recession for the Japanese economy.
The Heritage Foundation says that no nation is sorrier than Japan for endorsing John Maynard Keynes brand of economics and for squandering vast sums of national wealth in a vain attempt to stimulate their economy.
It now appears that these policy mistakes cost Japan the chance to lead the world in economic growth. Indeed, The Japan That Can Say "No" learned the hard way that fiscal stimulus programs financed by debt won't stop bankruptcies, declining real estate values, foreclosures, job losses or a falling stock market.
Richard Koo, the chief economist at Nomura Research Institute calls our current recession "a balance sheet recession." In the United States, the housing and credit bubble created several trillion in assets. It also created several trillion in debt. When the bubble burst, the value of the assets declined as housing prices plummeted and mortgage backed securities became worthless. Unfortunately, the debt remains.
The only solution now is for banks to remove these assets from their balance sheet by taking the write-offs. Likewise, individuals and business have no choice but to pay down their debt. This reduction in debt takes huge sums of money out of the economy. Koo maintains that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and popular left-of-center economist Paul Krugman, who often writes for The New York Times, do not understand this yet as demonstrated by their vain attempts to prop this bubble up even more through massive government stimulus plans financed by equally massive increases to the national debt.
When one compares one financial indicator: The Nikkei 225 Index to the Standard and Poor's 500 Index, there is a frightening similarity. If the United States stays on its current course, we are likely to suffer the same fate as Japan, and perhaps even more so, because while the savings rate cushion in Japan was 17%, the United States savings rate is considerably lower.
Furthermore, Japan had very little population growth during this period while the United States continues to grow from substantial immigration, both legal and illegal. Where most of the bad debts in Japan have been written off and removed from balance sheets, most banks in the U.S. have not written off their bad debts and we continue to prop up vast sums now owned or backed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
American businesses are truly beginning to see the same level of declines that the Japanese experience. Brian Dunn, the President of Best Buy, recently commented: "In 42 years, we have never seen such difficult times for the American consumer." If the United States does not curtail its current government spending frenzy and stabilize our sovereign debt level, we are destined to suffer a period of low economic growth, historically high unemployment, stagnating living standards, all while the world around us resumes prosperous growth.
In short, we, too, will experience our own "lost decade." - John Ridings Lee
U.S. Girds for a Fight for Internet Freedom
February 11th, 2010 - 1:44pm
Filed under International Security
By Ken Stier
During the Cold War, Soviet bloc dissidents had to rely on primitive printing technologies to reproduce samizdat literature in tiny quantities. Today's dissidents living under authoritarian regimes around the world can disseminate their message world wide with the click of a mouse, through blog postings and viral videos. And, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in a recent speech, the United States plans to champion their cause by enabling unprecedented freedom of speech on the Internet, in defiance of all political censorship.
"While it is clear that the spread of [new communication] technologies is transforming our world, it is still unclear how that transformation will affect the human rights and human welfare of the world's population," noted Clinton. That's because "on their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does; we stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas." (Read about internet searches in China.)
In the U.S., the notion of unfettered access to communications is so uncontroversial as to seem almost trite, but it is a revolutionary demand in countries such as Iran and China where it threatens the regimes' hold on power. That's the reason that one third of the world that has any access to internet sees a version censored by their governments. Declaring a kind of soft war on this new information curtain being drawn across the "new iconic infrastructure of our age", the U.S. is now committing itself to actively undermining censorship. In China, that means going up against some 50,000 government employees and the '50 Cent Party' - the many thousands of youths alleged to be paid 50 cents for each pro-government comment they post on-line.
The State Department is already working to enhance digital communications capabilities in some 40 countries, but not all of those efforts are aimed at subverting dictatorships. Some further development ends, such as mobile banking systems the U.S. has helped deploy in Afghanistan, and for demobilized militia members in the Congo. Others address urgent social problems. In Mexico, local mobile phone carriers are working with a U.S.-sponsored technical team to enable citizens to text information about crimes to police - the anonymity of the source would help protect informants from retribution. And in Pakistan, the U.S. helped establish the nation's first ever text-messaging system, allowing real-time information exchanges all across the country, according to Mobile Accord's James Eberhard, who has also been instrumental raising donations for Haiti through text messages. (See the top 10 banned books.)
The State Department's more sensitive efforts are those that seek to empower grassroots organizations, such as the $5 million Civil Society Initiative 2.0, officially launched in Morocco last November to work with local NGOs in North Africa and the Middle East. An even broader effort, the Alliance of Youth Movements, mentors activists from around the globe using annual summits and a bulging library of how-to videos such as How to Create a Grassroots Movement for Change. "Mostly these are one or two people doing amazing things on their own, who often did not appreciate the full significance of what they were doing, so we brought them all together," says Jason Liebman, co-founder of the AYM and Howcast, which produces the videos. "For most of them this was a first time on an airplane." (Read "A Coming Chill Over Internet Freedom?")
Having seen the potential of new communications platforms and social media to spread information and organize action, the State Department has assembled a team of tech-savvy twenty- and thirty-somethings to train activists, nurture networks and even innovate new technologies. To do this, it plans to sponsor competitions and partner with universities and companies, which Clinton called upon to "be part of our national brand" campaigning against Internet censorship.
Clinton recently hosted a dinner where her senior staff met with CEOs of leading technology companies, as part of an effort to shake up her own organization. That means ditching its 20th century habits for a culture of innovation, explains Andrew Rasiej, of the Personal Democracy Forum, who has periodically offered Clinton advice on IT issues. "Whereas the Internet may have been looked at as ancillary to her campaign when she was running for president, it is no longer, it is now integral to her vision for a successful tenure as Secretary of State," he added.
Internationally, the new emphasis on enabling the skirting of Internet censorship amounts to a shift from traditional public diplomacy to a kind of Internet democracy activism. Where the former relied on tools such as Voice of America radio broadcasts to all corners of the globe, the latter emphasizes the U.S. promoting indigenous voice in countries that curb free speech, says NYU telecommunications professor Clay Shirky, adding that enabling citizens to express themselves "is way more threatening than Voice of America-style broadcasts, and autocratic governments will react to that."
Thus far, authoritarian governments have largely managed to control the Internet in their countries, argues Hal Roberts, a researcher with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "Actually I think the story of the first 15 years of the widespread use of the Internet is that it is deeply embedded with local mechanisms of control and that governments can control the Internet pretty well," he says. That's only likely to change if the U.S. is willing to match the new inspirational rhetoric about Internet freedom with actions that could be deemed hostile by the regimes concerned. Time Magazine.
Aging Baby Boomers Need A Bucket Brigade
January 29th, 2010 - 10:38am
Filed under Economy
For decades, financial planners helped baby boomers build their nest eggs. Now, as those same folks age, advisers are increasingly preoccupied with plotting how to distribute that wealth in retirement.
That's a whole new ball game. "Managing distribution is much harder than managing accumulation," says Todd Rustman, GN Member and founder of Newport Beach Calif.-based GR Capital Management. For one thing, he says, there are more variables, primarily the addition of mortality to infamous unknowables such as market conditions.
"Longevity risk is the new buzzword," says Rustman, referring to the problem of clients outliving their money.
As more Americans head into their sunset years, Rustman believes the job skills for managing wealth need to adjust significantly. "What I've seen in 16 years in this business is that a lot of advisers take all the [retiree's] money, assume a 3% or 4% return rate, and invest it all that way."
But 2008 showed how badly that calculation can fail. To mitigate that potential, Rustman divides a retiree's money into five-year buckets, and invests each bucket as a separate nest egg based on analytics that factor in longevity, gains and average inflation. "We end up with very little risk for the next five or 10 years, and more exposure to equities over the long term," he says.
To demonstrate, he cites the example of a 63-year-old client with a wife and two grown children. "He was an executive who is now worth about $7 million," says Rustman. "He's not living high on the hog, but he also has a pension of about $6,000 a month. He's super-healthy and a non-smoker." Actuarial tables say that, on average, he'll live another 17.5 years, and his wife two years longer. Of course, no one is average. They could both live to be 100.
So first, Rustman set aside about $1.5 million of the estate plus a paid-for home, which are earmarked as an inheritance for the children. Then he took the remaining money and divided it into five five-year buckets. Bucket One would contain 27% of the remaining nest egg and assumes just a 2% rate of return because 95% of the money is in fixed-income investments like laddered CDs. "We're planning to deplete that bucket entirely," says Rustman.
The next bucket holds another 26% of the total nest egg and is marked for a 4% return, with a bit more risk exposure. It now becomes the new Bucket One after five years, converting to the safer fixed-income funds. But over the first five years when it was Bucket Two it has presumably increased in value, so distributions will be notched up to counter inflation.
The third, fourth and fifth buckets have consecutively less in total funds and larger allocations of equities; each is expected to grow at faster rates as the time horizon expands. The total equity exposure comes to about half the portfolio, but it's mostly loaded onto the back end, years away from now.
"The $1.5 million inheritance for his kids gives him a huge cushion," says Rustman. "So even if I'm wrong on a lot of things, he has a lot of cash to chew through." - WSJ
Haiti Earthquake: GN Members Respond
January 25th, 2010 - 2:02pm
Filed under Miscellaneous
We Have We Need is a place where relief organizations can quickly post their most urgent needs and have them matched by generous donors during a time of crisis. This site was built by a group of geeky do-gooders, also Members of Gen Next, who saw this as an opportunity to use technology to help bring people and donations together in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Haiti. More.
Alliance of Youth Movements To Participate In Secretary Clinton’s Internet Freedom Address
January 20th, 2010 - 11:34am
Filed under International Security
Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver a major policy address on Internet freedom on Thursday, January 21 at 9:30 a.m. at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Secretary Clinton's policy address will lay out the Administration's strategy for protecting freedom in the networked age of the 21st century. The speech will underscore the importance of technology as a tool to connect populations around the world to information, to each other and entities, and to actual resources be they financial, judicial, health, or educational. Four fellows representing Alliance of Youth Movements will be featured prominently in Thursday's program. The Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) is a nonprofit organization that empowers leaders to affect nonviolent change in the world by creating and promoting the use of 21st century tools to safeguard human rights, promote good governance and foster unprecedented civic empowerment.
AYM Fellows on Thursday's panel include::
- Oscar Morales, A Million Voices Against the Farc (Colombia)
- Shubham Kanodie, In Memory of Those Who Died in the November 26th-27th Mumbai Massacre (India)
- Natalia Morari, ThinkMoldova
- Ceren Kenar, Young Civilians (Turkey)
David Nassar, Executive Director of AYM will also be participating in a panel discussion following the Secretary's remarks moderated by Anne Marie Slaughter, the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department.
AYM is the world's leading network of online and mobile social movements for change. The organization has hosted two successful which brought together some of the worlds most innovate social entrepreneurs with some of the world's most exciting technology companies. AYM supporters include Causecast.org, Facebook, Gen Next, Google, Hi5, Howcast Media, MTV, MySpace, Pepsi, Univision Interactive Media, Inc., WordPress.com and YouTube.
"Online technology has unprecedented potential to help us work together to address some of the world's most urgent problems," said Megan J. Smith, vice president of new business development and general manager of Google.org. "We are proud to support the Alliance of Youth Movements and share its vision to empower citizens and communities to influence positive change through the use of today's technology."
"Today we have the power to communicate and connect in real-time through online tools like Twitter," said Jack Dorsey, chairman and co-founder of Twitter. "Traditional social movements can now take advantage of these revolutionary technologies to spread their messages more rapidly and effectively," continued Dorsey.
U.S. Sees An Opportunity To Press Iran On Nuclear Fuel
January 11th, 2010 - 4:13pm
Filed under International Security
Domestic unrest and unexpected problems in Tehran's nuclear programs have made Iranian leadership susceptible to new U.S. imposed sanctions. These sanctions would suspend financial transactions with front companies for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the military force believed to run the nuclear weapons effort. "For now, the Iranians don't have a credible breakdown option, and we don't think they will have one for at least 18 months, maybe two or three years." Although sanctions have failed to detour Iranian nuclear efforts in the past, the Obama administration hopes that this extended time frame will allow the sanctions to have an effect and convince Iranians that their nuclear programs are not worth the price tag. - NY Times
The War Against the Wanna Be Rich
January 11th, 2010 - 4:12pm
Filed under Economy
A war was declared on the wannabe rich when the Obama administration announced that people earning over $200,000 a year will pay higher income taxes. Professionals and small-business owners are among the hardest hit. The new law has only furthered the recession causing small business owners to retrench rather than expand by hiring new employees. Business owners fear that the proposed new income, payroll and health-care tax rates along with increased state and local taxes will put up to 70 percent of their income in the government's hands. "[If we] continue to punish and demonize [the productive class], the country will grind to a halt - as we are seeing now." - Real Clear Politics
Public Sector Unions Are Killing California
January 11th, 2010 - 4:11pm
Filed under Economy
More Americans are fleeing California as the public sector unions diminish willingness to fulfill promises to taxpayers. As unions take control of the Democratic majorities in the state legislature, the "net internal migration" fluctuates.The union's ability to produce effective campaigns that have a track record of making or breaking political careers has caused politicians to submit to the will of the public sectors in order to receive a higher compensation. "For the first time in history most union members work for the government... [and] depend on the government for their livelihood." This change has devastated American taxpayers as the increase in union member voters results in more dollars for campaigns to elect politicians who will support higher taxes to compensate for the upward arc of government spending on workers. According to a City Journal writer, the reciprocity existing between compliant politicians and influential public sector unions has left California with higher taxes, poor services and a disappearing middle class. - The Foundry
Who's Got Michelle Rhee's Back?
December 21st, 2009 - 10:25am
Filed under Education
D.C. Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, has proposed changes to the teacher tenure system that would offer higher salaries to teachers willing to link their paychecks to student performance. Those opting to be paid solely on seniority would receive smaller pay increases. Rhee has been in negotiations with the Teachers Union for more than two years. While Arne Duncan Secretary of Education has hinted that he'll look favorably on states that enact such reforms when distributing "Race to the Top" grant, he has refused to interfere with Rhee's negotiations with the unions. In the last couple years D.C.'s fourth-graders have made the largest gains in math among big city school systems, while eighth-graders have increased their math proficiency at a faster rate than all other big cities (U.S. Department of Education). - WSJ
Helping Iranians Stay Free Online
December 21st, 2009 - 10:19am
Filed under International Security
Traditional media in Iran has long been censored the government, leaving nontraditional new-media such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter as the only platform for dissenting opinions. President Ahmadinejad is working to censor all Internet access for the Iranian people, which can be attributed to movements like the one following the controversial presidential election last summer. Haystacknetwork.com is a new program designed to provide unfiltered Internet access to the people of Iran. The site conceals the identity of users, making them undetectable by Iranian authorities and "enabling them to learn, communicate and fight for their rights to personal liberty, freedom of expression and information." - OC Register, Written by GN Member Brian Calle.
An Empire at Risk
December 8th, 2009 - 1:27pm
Filed under Economy
The decline of an empire begins with debt explosion and ends with a reduction of national defense resources (Newsweek)."If the U.S. can't restore the federal budget in 5 to 10 years, a debt crisis may result in a major weakening of American power and a shift in the global economy. "Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next".
Rep. Jeff Flake Spent A Week On A Deserted Island
November 5th, 2009 - 11:35am
Filed under Miscellaneous
Rep. Jeff Flake, who spoke with Gen Next Members in September, spent a week surviving alone and with minimal supplies on an island in the Pacific Ocean. His reasons for doing it? He said, "As a kid, I used to snicker when I shook an uncallused hand. Now I've got two of my own... But, perhaps the greatest appeal was not knowing what was behind the next wave." Flake, 46, is a fifth term Congressman from Arizona and serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Committee on Resources, and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Rift Emerges in Fed Over Timing of Rate Rise
October 17th, 2009 - 11:40am
Filed under Economy
With unemployment rates expected at 9.8% in 2010, federal fund rates are expected to stay low for an extended period. Recent debate is centered around strategy, which includes raising rates and putting $2 trillion into programs that will hold up banks and credit markets, and how to execute them (New York Times). Any quick calls will cause friction between the fed and the White House because Obama has said that he doesn't want a quick end to stimulus policies.
Deployments and Diplomacy
October 17th, 2009 - 11:38am
Filed under International Security
More troops is just the start. Henry Kissinger says Obama should be focusing on a diplomatic solution with Afghanistan's influential neighbors (Newsweek). With Pakistan, India, China, Russia, and Iran directly impacted by Al Qaeda, Jihadists and Muslim fundamentalists, negotiations would be in their best interest. The diplomatic effort would also bring to the forefront the importance of a global alliance against terrorism.
Mark Twain
October 17th, 2009 - 11:37am
Filed under Think About It....
"[Education] consists mainly in what we have unlearned." -- Mark Twain
Capitalism: This Time, Moore is Less
October 17th, 2009 - 11:36am
Filed under Miscellaneous
Our very own Brian Calle recently wrote his debut opinion article in the OC Register entitled "Capitalism: This Time, Moore Is Less." According to Calle, "Moore completely misdiagnoses the villain (capitalism/capitalists) and heroine (socialism/government). He mistakes corporate fraud and government corruption - which are statist, not capitalist, tendencies - for capitalism. And he essentially begs for more government intervention as the solution, even though his own examples point to how government enabled every injustice the film describes."
Decline Is A Choice
October 17th, 2009 - 11:34am
Filed under International Security
"The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. Both answers are wrong... nothing is inevitable. Decline is a choice (The Weekly Standard)." To resist decline, we should accept our role as a hegemonic power and decrease dependency on foreign oil by lifting the 30 year nuclear power plant building restriction. Our focus should be on elevating ourselves, not worrying about other countries. Ultimately, we should learn from Demosthenes who said when asked about the decline of Athens, "I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don't do what you are doing now."
Reviving America's Schools
October 17th, 2009 - 11:33am
Filed under Education
Almost three-quarters of Americans think that the problems facing education are at least as grave as those facing health care (Economist). Traditionally, the education secretary can do little to push reform. Armed with $10 billion in stimulus, Arne Duncan wants to "fundamentally change the business the department of education is in." Some even call him a "venture philanthropist." His plan includes "Investing in Innovation" a fund that awards grants to school districts and private groups running schools and a "Race to the Top" fund which rewards states who reform in the following areas: support of internationally benchmarked standards and tests; reversing the tendency of states to weaken NCLB standards; streamlining the collection of pupil data to improve teaching; use performance to determine training and, controversially, pay and promotion.
Dollar Loses Reserve Status to Yen and Euro
October 17th, 2009 - 11:32am
Filed under Economy
The Euro and Yen now are favored by central banks as the reserve currency. The U.S. Fed Chief, Bernanke could go down in history as "the man who killed the greenback on the operating table (New York Post)". He's credited with printing trillions of new dollars and bonds to stimulate the economy, but is now facing inflation and recession instead. Economists suggest that Bernanke start raising interest rates and "pull back the flood of currency spewed from U.S. printing press."
Save The Greenback, Mr. President
October 17th, 2009 - 11:31am
Filed under Economy
To stabilize the U.S.'s economy, we should stabilize the dollar, lower tax rates to reduce unemployment, and use the Mundell - Laffer model. The model "exercises monetary restraint to save the dollar-and low marginal tax rates for economic growth incentives that benefit investors, risk takers, small businesses and workers". The treasury should also buy up unwanted dollars in the marketplace and stop printing excess money to cover congress' debt. These solutions have worked for JFK, Clinton, and Reagan in the past. Obama should follow suit (CNBC).
There Is No Such Thing As Too Big In Free Market
October 17th, 2009 - 11:27am
Filed under Economy
"We must not allow giant, state-supported banks to believe that they are indestructible (Telegraph)". The economic repression was not a result of market failure, rather it was because of "excessive concentration, excessive leverage, spurious theories of risk management and moral hazard in the form of implicit state guarantees, combined to create huge ticking time-bombs on both sides of the Atlantic". Government interference has made the issue even worse. The government should instead offer incentives for the banks to shrink and divide by taking its protection out of the equation -- leaving the losses on the backs of the creditors and other stakeholders.