NDN ON THE RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT PLAN
The Super Bowl is over, but this year's biggest political matchup is just getting underway. President Barack Obama’s economic recovery and reinvestment plan is working its way through Congress. Last week, the House passed the bill, and the Senate will take up its version this week. Jake Berliner, Deputy Policy Director of our Globalization Initiative, compiled a must-read primer of NDN’s major work on the recovery and reinvestment plan in this backgrounder. Featured in the backgrounder is a new essay from Michael Moynihan, Director of NDN’s Green Project. In Clearing the Decks for the Next Expansion, Moynihan looked forward to 2012, and laid out a four-step plan to put the economy back on track in the next three years:
We need to act decisively, but intelligently, to put this recession behind us. The stimulus package is not a cure-all, but it will help restore liquidity to the economy. The key here is to pass it quickly rather than haggling over details. The greatest task is probably to revamp and refashion the clumsy TARP program into a multi-pronged policy to restore the health of the financial sector. The government needs to help banks clear their books of non-performing loans.
In another essay, Rob Shapiro, Chair of NDN's Globalization Initiative, suggested a way to stabilize the foundation of our economy. By imposing a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures, and converting distressed mortgages to a 30-year fixed rate of 5.25%, we will keep people in their homes and address one of the underlying flaws causing this crisis.
Despite aggressive courting by the White House, not a single House Republican voted in favor of the bill. In response to this seeming failure of bipartisanship, Simon authored a new essay, The Utter Bankruptcy of Today’s Republican Party. In a new essay posted today on Huffington Post, Simon writes that Michael Steele's acession to the chairmanship of the party is a hopeful sign, but not a sea change for the GOP. For more reading on the subject, see Simon's backgrounder, in which he highlighted some of our earlier writings on the state of the modern conservative movement and the end of the conservative ascendancy.
TASK FORCE ON MIDDLE CLASS WORKING FAMILIES
As all economic indicators point to a continually worsening economic future, Vice President Joe Biden announced a new Task Force on Middle Class Working Families. We released a statement in response to Biden’s announcement:
"For many Americans, the current economic crisis began long before our financial markets weakened and the economy went into recession," said NDN President Simon Rosenberg. "In the years before the recession began, America was in recovery, but the income of a typical family dropped and wages stagnated. Never before had the incomes of Americans not risen during a sustained period of national economic growth. Coming to understand why this unprecedented economic event took place, and crafting a plan to not just create a new era of growth and prosperity, but one that is broad-based, where every day people can once again share in the growth, is one of the most important governing challenges facing America today.
"Making the struggle of every day people the central focus on our national debate has been of NDN's top priorities these last few years," added Rosenberg. "We welcome the Obama Administration's desire to take this issue head on and applaud them for the establishing this new Task Force on the Middle Class and for sending a clear signal of its importance by putting Vice President Biden in charge. We look forward to working with this new task force in these critical months and years ahead."
Click here to read the statement on our blog and peruse links to our economic work on keeping the focus on everyday people.
NDN ON CLIMATE CHANGE
President Obama has already taken great strides toward creating a low-carbon economy for the future. Shapiro has been encouraged by the steps that have been taken, but, in a new essay, he argues that the provision that matters most is putting a price on carbon to steer our economy naturally toward a low-carbon future:
Making people pay more for carbon-intensive energy and the products and services produced with it means that, well, people have to pay more – and people don’t like that, especially in very hard economic times. And the inconvenient truth is, those are only the beginning of the costs to contain climate change, since retrofitting our factories, offices, homes and our power systems for less carbon-intensive and energy-intensive technologies and materials will cost everyone, well, a lot more than the stimulus package. To his credit, President Obama corrected one of his rivals for the nomination who tried to claim that we could beat climate change at little cost. And there is some other good news here: The costs to redo our lives around more climate-friendly fuels and technologies can be spread over two generations – and paying those costs will save much of planet for our grandchildren.
MILLENNIAL ERA UPDATE
NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais are featured in today’s Roll Call, with an op-ed discussing the civic engagement that typifies the Millennial Generation and is embodied by President Obama.
Realignments like these occur about every four decades with the coming of age of a new, large, dynamic generation of young Americans whose political participation is enabled by a new communication technology. The most recent makeover stemmed from the emergence of the "civic" Millennial Generation (born between 1982 to 2003) and their use of social networks. Civic generations, like the Millennials and the GI Generation before it, are group-oriented, cooperative, and pragmatic. Their behavior stands in stark contrast to the individualistic and ideological Baby Boomers, who dominated American politics for the previous 40 years.
Click here to read the full essay. If you do not have a subscription to Roll Call, click here to read an earlier version on the NDN Blog.
IMMIGRATION UPDATE
In her weekly immigration update, Zuraya Tapia-Alfaro comments on a New York Times editorial about the streak of racialist extremism exposed by a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party. Her roundup also includes NDN’s note highlighting “The Star Spanglish Banner,” which the New York Times called a “puerile bit of Latino-baiting." She comments on Michael Steele’s position on immigration reform; new senior appointments at the Department of Homeland Security; and how Obama must embrace immigrants.
Zuraya also put together a backgrounder recapping NDN's key work on comprehensive immigration reform, the changing demographic realities of 21st century America and Hispanic electoral trends.
NEW TOOLS UPDATE
In his weekly New Tools feature, Dan Boscov-Ellen pulls together NDN’s influential collection of papers that have helped many progressives manage the transition to a 21st century media and technology environment. He also posts a series of videos of top experts explaining the New Tools to audiences at past NDN events.
NDN CONGRATULATES SENATOR GILLIBRAND
U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand is now U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, representing the people of New York State in the U.S. Senate. Kirsten is an old friend of NDN's, having served on the board of our New York Network before becoming a Member of Congress. We could not be more pleased at this exciting news, and we congratulate her on her new job.
NDN IN THE NEWS
It was a good week for NDN in the media. After NDN broke the story of Chip Saltsman's Other Song on Thursday, our post was featured in Politico and as the feature story on the front page of the The Huffington Post. The story was also picked up by Kos over at DailyKos, and even made it into The New York Times's Sunday editorial.
Along the same lines, Simon was quoted in the Spanish-language paper Terra on immigration reform, and was the lone voice of reason in a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Ira Mehlman on the same topic. His recent essay about the Republican party and race, "Steele, the GOP and Confronting the Southern Strategy," was also featured on the front page of the Huffington Post. Finally, Simon was also quoted in AFP and Red Orbit about how President Obama will use his Web-based campaign organization moving forward. From the AFP piece, entitled "Obama Retools Campaign Machine":
Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a progressive think tank here, likened Organizing for America to former president Bill Clinton's attempt to build a grass roots pressure group on health care reform but agreed that "there really hasn't ever been anything like it before."
"Barack is not like any other candidate," he said. "He comes to Washington with more supporters and more modern tools than anyone in history. Barack is going to reinvent the presidency the way he reinvented the campaign."
Rob was quoted in the Los Angeles Times about cap-and-trade versus a carbon tax, and in the International Herald-Tribune on the stimulus package.
NDN JOBS
CFO - NDN is seeking a CFO with four to five years of experience in financial management to direct and oversee all financial activities of the organization, including preparation of current financial reports and forecasts for economic trends and future growth. For more details, visit our jobs page or contact jobs@ndn.org for more information.
Winter and Spring Interns - NDN is looking for interns to join our staff this winter and spring. If you or someone you know is interested in working at NDN during this exciting time, visit our internships page or contact jobs@ndn.org.
Clean Infrastructure: Transportation Policy for the 21st Century
In this week's 
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