NDN

Gallup just released these findings based on polling data obtained in Mexico during the Summer of 2008 that provides some insight into public perception of the drug trade problem.  I am a bit concerned about the size of the poll, which interviewed 1,000 individuals (out of a population of over 109 million), and the Gallup site does not clarify whether they interviewed people in every state, by region, or whether it concentrated all interviews in one specific region (border, Gulf, Pacific, etc), which can play a pivotal role in the results obtained.  It comes as no surprise that as violence has escalated,  the confidence of the general populace has diminished.  Among other findings: 

• Nearly 6 in 10 Mexican residents (59%) said gangs are present, up from 51% in 2007.
• More than 4 in 10 (43%) said drug trafficking or sales take place in their neighborhoods, up from 38% in 2007.
• Forty-four percent of Mexicans expressed confidence in their local police, which is down from 50% in 2007 and roughly similar to the 42% measured in 2006 before Calderon's crackdown.

Yesterday at NDN we heard from several experts, advocates, and strategists on the issue of immigration reform.  NDN President Simon Rosenberg was joined on a panel by Rick Johnson of Lake Research, Pete Brodnitz of Benenson Strategy Group, Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and Frank Sharry of America's Voice.  Andres Ramirez, Vice President, NDN Hispanic Programs, moderated the discussion. 

Building on the great work by these organizations over the last few years, and the creation of the Immigration08 campaign, the meeting consisted of a vibrant - and very timely - discussion during which the panelists reiterated the reasons why our economy and American values require passage of comprehensive legislation to fix the broken immigration system this year.

NDN would like to thank America's Voice, NCLR, Lake Research Partners, and Benenson Strategy Group for their hard work and partnership on this issue.

Video of the event will be posted next week.  For additional information, please refer to the final slide in this presentation, which will take you important work completed by each of the participating organizations.

As NDN mentioned during the event, we are making the speakers' presentations available below.  Presentations in order of appearance: 

Simon Rosenberg, NDN

Rick Johnson, Lake Research Partners

Pete Brodnitz, Benenson Strategy Group

Additional Resources:

NDN - www.ndn.org
The Immigration Proxy Wars Continue, by Simon Rosenberg, 2/13/09
An Updated Analysis of the Hispanic Vote 2008, by Andres Ramirez, 11/13/08
NDN Polls on Comprehensive Immigration Reform in Battleground States, 9/10/08
Hispanics Rising II, 5/30/08
Can Democrats Seize the Opportunity the Immigration Debate Offers Them? by Simon Rosenberg, 12/11/08

America's Voice - http://www.americasvoiceonline.org
www.immigration2008.org What the 2008 Elections Mean For the Future of Immigration Reform, by Frank Sharry, 1/28/09
A Prescription for Comprehensive Reform
The Facts About Immigration

NCLR - www.nclr.com
http://www.wecanstopthehate.org/
NCLR Position on Immigration Reform
NCLR Immigration Information
NCLR Immigration Basic Fact Sheet

I am excited to be announce that on Tuesday March 10 we will be holding a special event here at NDN - a luncheon conversation with Joe Rospars, the new media director of the Obama Presidential Campaign and founder of Blue State Digital, one of the nation's leading new media consulting firms.  

There is little argument now that the way the 2008 Obama campaign used new media and the internet has changed politics here, and around the world, forever.  Joe was the director of this historic effort, and I am very pleased he will be taking the time to reflect on their remarkable campaign, and offer some thoughts on what we might expect in this space in the years to come.

We will be making a more formal announcement on this in a few days, but in the meantime mark your calendar for this midday discussion with Joe Rospars.  For those not able to attend the event here in our offices be sure to watch it live on our new high-end webcasting system. 

Lots going on in the New Tools world this week. Here's a quick recap of some some of the most important things happening in the tech sphere:

• NDN and the New Politics Institute held an event on Tuesday entitled New Tools for a New Era. Hopefully some of you were able to join us in person, or via our new NDN Live Web cast. In case you couldn't make it, I'll be posting videos and a recap from the event tomorrow, so be sure to check back then - it was really good (and I say that as an objective, unbiased observer).

• Several prominent articles this week explored how the blurring of the line between phones and computers is both creating new opportunities and posing new challenges. First, an article in Wired discusses the spread of "iClones," phones from other manufactures that closely mimic the iPhone's features and interface. Another piece in Wired looks at how others are copying Apple's innovative (and highly lucrative) App Store model.

• A great article in the New York Times this week raises many of the same questions I asked in a previous post about location-aware mobile technology, one of the many advances enabled by the proliferation of smart phones and apps. It's well worth the read.

• Two more articles in the Times look at how mobile phone processors are beginning to rival PCs in their functionality. The first looks at how phones are beginning to break into the education sector. From the article:
  

  On Tuesday, Digital Millennial will release findings from its study of four North Carolina schools in low-income neighborhoods, where ninth- and 10th-grade math students were given high-end cellphones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software and special programs meant to help them with their algebra studies.

  The students used the phones for a variety of tasks, including recording themselves solving problems and posting the videos to a private social networking site, where classmates could watch. The study found that students with the phones performed 25 percent better on the end-of-the-year algebra exam than did students without the devices in similar classes.

  The other looks at how the ARM processors used in many smart phones are being adapted to create very inexpensive (~$200) "netbooks," stripped-down laptops with limited functionality. These ARM-based netbooks might even run on Google's Android platform, which currently powers Google's G1 smart phone. 

• These are certainly exciting prospects for those of us interested in the possibilities for using mobile technology and cheap laptops as instruments of social and political progress (see A Laptop in Every Backpack and Harnessing the Mobile Revolution to see just how much potential there is). But it's not all good news this week; because they will use broadcast TV's old frequency blocks, the delay of the DTV conversion will likely also delay the development of 4G networks and devices. However, the stimulus money should get the DTV conversion moving, and hopefully avoid any further delays (it's currently been pushed back until June).

• Obama's new site for the stimulus bill, recovery.gov, was built using Drupal (just like this site!), which is a big deal for nerds like myself. Drupal, for those of you that don't know, is a free, open-source content management system. The Administration's embrace of Drupal is another signal to us that they "get it." 

• Finally, a word about search ads. As I wrote last week, search ads are a highly effective and cost-efficient way of reaching targeted audiences (the Obama campaign saw an ROI of around 15:1 on their search ads). This market has recently been dominated by Google, which now owns two thirds of the search ad market share. However, in an attempt to shake things up and gain back market share, Yahoo has just introduced new search ads with images and video (they are normally text-only). This is something search ad buyers should certainly consider, as it mixes some of the benefits of search and banner/display ads. 

President Barack Obama today announced a plan to cut foreclosures and reboot new mortgage financings, at least when the economy shows signs of new life. The fact of offering a plan is an advance, given that Bush and his people did nothing and proposed nothing, even as the crisis reached critical mass. As we have written here since the crisis first broke, keeping people in their homes is fundamental to solving the larger economic problem. Again, it’s the fast-rising foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies that are eroding and destroying the value of hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities and the credit default swaps that “back them up” (sic). And it’s the falling value of those securities and swaps, in turn, which has led to the effective bankruptcy of financial institutions that had leveraged themselves to their eyeballs to buy them or issued them and then kept them (and how dumb was that?).

While the act of proposing anything serious puts the Obama Administration ahead of its predecessor, passing such a low threshold is hardly very meaningful -- especially since the problems continue to worsen. More than nine percent of mortgages today are either in foreclosure or delinquent, two to three times the numbers from just two years earlier; and if everything continues to unravel, those numbers could double in another year. If that happens, there won’t be many large, U.S. banks left standing. Many of the homeowners now in trouble could manage, if they just could refinance at current rates. But banks quite naturally see someone in financial trouble as a poor credit risk for a new loan, which is what refinancing is. And the fall in housing prices means tens of millions of those people can’t qualify to refinance. That’s because refinancing is available today only if you owe no more than 80 percent of the original mortgage’s value. The catch for millions of families is that as the value of their home goes down, their existing mortgage (the one being refinanced) accounts for a greater percentage of the value being refinanced. In the worst cases, people just walk away from a $200,000 home with a $300,000 mortgage -- and who would refinance one of those? In millions of other, less extreme cases, the falling prices simply disqualify people for refinancing.

The Administration wants to address this precise part of the problem, by providing $75 billion in subsidies to banks to defray half of the cost of refinancing for several million homeowners at risk of losing their homes. Mortgages owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are also eligible here, and they’re the ones most likely to actually see their interest rates reset, since the government owns Fannie and Freddie and can direct them to do it. It will be harder to convince bankers already staring at enormous losses already on their books or soon to be there, especially if they’re worried that their bondholders could sue them for resetting loans. The plan also has some $100 billion for the Treasury to keep buying more of Fannie and Freddie’s failing mortgage-backed securities since, as we also have said repeatedly, until foreclosure rates return to normal, the biggest bank bailout in the world won’t prevent more banking losses.

There are more direct ways to address foreclosures. We could provide direct loans to tide over those in trouble, or Fannie and Freddie could reset the loans of everyone in trouble. The problem is that anyone advancing such a common sense approach would become a very large political target -- and not just for reflexively-critical House Republicans.

How could the president or his advisors explain to those who work hard and spend less, so they can keep their mortgage payments up to date, why they don’t qualify for a lower interest rate from the government, when their neighbor who spent more or just had harder luck does qualify? More plainly, how does the government choose who would qualify for such direct help without enraging most of those who wouldn’t? In effect, the Administration plan finesses this problem by letting banks choose, without compelling them to do so. But what if the economy continues to worsen and the plan doesn’t work, which is a very real possibility? Indeed, don’t be surprised to see the Administration revisit it six months from now with a much less “voluntary” approach.

After President Obama's discourse today on how to help working Americans through this crisis, I thought it appropriate to reiterate points we have made on the economic arguments for immigration reform.  And I highly recommend this piece in the American Prospect on "The Real Economics of Immigration," by Cristina Jimenez:

...Immigration reform is a tougher sell in a recession. That's the blunt observation Wall Street Journal
columnist Gerald Seib recently offered: "Pushing any kind of
immigration reform, particularly one that includes a path toward
legalization, is a lot harder in an environment in which Americans are
losing jobs."

Yet the political difficulty predates the Wall Street collapse and
job-loss figures. For years, there has been little analysis of how a
path toward legalization would increase the positive economic
contributions of undocumented immigrants. Instead, conservative critics
have found willing partners in the media and government to turn
immigration reform into a zero-sum game, a war of us-versus-them in
which every job performed by an "illegal" must have been stolen from a
more deserving American.

The politics won't change until the real economics of immigration reframe the debate.

Here's a reality check: Consigning undocumented workers to a
precarious existence undermines all who aspire to a middle-class
standard of living........
By complying with tax law, many immigrants have made it clear that they
are willing to help build a new middle class through cooperation.
Contra the myth of immigrants as economic parasites, tax dollars from
undocumented immigrants are an integral part of our national economy,
funding programs like unemployment benefits that support a large number
of Americans in a time of economic crisis. This money is more
indispensable than ever. The Internal Revenue Service estimates that
undocumented immigrants contributed nearly $50 billion in federal taxes
between 1996 and 2003. Ironically, it's easy for undocumented
immigrants to document their earnings; a passport and proof of address
are all they need for a tax-identification number.....

The Small Business Administration finds that immigrants are nearly 30
percent more likely to start a business than non-immigrants and that
they represent 16.7 percent of all new business owners. In New York
City, the borough of Queens -- the most diverse county in the nation --
remains the leading source of job creation in the city. According to
the Center for an Urban Future, three zip codes in Queens had
employment growth of more than 80 percent in the past decade, adding
66,000 immigrants from 2000 to 2005....

Nancy and Carlos live with the constant threat of deportation,
surviving between hope and trepidation as best they can. "We need to
hide like criminals, and we go to work in fear, hoping that God brings
us back home. You know, we will do any work to survive," Nancy
insisted. Some jobs that paid $10 an hour just a few months ago now pay
only $4 an hour.

Yet Carlos sounded unfazed by the recession. "We have our savings;
the difficult times have taught us that we need to save for
emergencies," he told me. "We pay our taxes; our son makes online
monthly payments to the IRS because we get paid cash."

A path to legalization for millions of people like Carlos and Nancy
is a cost-effective path to short-term stimulus and long-term recovery.
We cannot afford to ignore it any longer.

NDN applauds President Obama's demonstrated commitment to reaching out to Latinos.  President Obama began reaching out to Hispanics during the 2008 campaign through his record amount of Spanish language paid advertisements, by issuing all communications in English and Spanish, and by working to get into the living rooms of Hispanics by appearing on several of the most popular Spanish language programs.  NDN congratulates the President on the continuation of his bilingual press strategy throughout the transition, and now as part of the White House Media Affairs Office.  He gets, it - candidates and public officials need to address Spanish language media and speak in Spanish.   

Yesterday, the President fulfilled his promise to grant an interview to El Piolin, during which he discussed recent achievements, the economic stimulus package and immigration reform.  El Piolin, or Eddie Sotelo, is one of the most televised radio personalities in the nation. His show, Piolin por La Mañana, is the top ranking for morning shows in Los Angeles (regardless of language) and its 50 syndicated markets.  Its growing scope makes it the #1 Radio Show in the country.  Studies indicate that Hispanics are suffering disproportionately in this economic crisis, and Obama's appearance on this show indicates his desire to to reach them directly and let them know he is working on solving this economic crisis.

President Barack Obama’s signature on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the clearest signal yet that America has entered a new civic era, very different from the idealist era of the past four decades. As has been the case with all previous realignments or makeovers in our history, this new era will be marked by a far different conception of the role of government and of the way in which public policy is made and judged.

The latest survey results from the Millennial Strategy Program of communication research and consultation firm, Frank N. Magid Associates, demonstrate that the American public fully embraces this new era even as many in the country’s political establishment continue to behave as though the 2008 election never happened.

Conservatives in the media, and virtually everyone on the Republican side of the congressional aisle, amazingly still seem to believe that the country remains "center-right" and is willing to accept an answer to its economic distress that is based on a continuation of the financial and fiscal policies of the past four decades. Many of their counterparts in the liberal media and blogosphere, and some congressional Democrats, are upset that President Obama even deigns to talk to Republicans and are unrealistically disappointed that that the entire Democratic legislative wish list of recent decades has not been fully enacted within the first month of the new Administration. But what both sides fail to fully comprehend is the degree to which public attitudes have shifted. From the perspective of public opinion, America is now a very different country than it was in the 1980s, 1990s, and even what it was before the financial meltdown of last September.

Here are some highlights from the latest results from Magid’s February 2009 survey that clearly document this change and describe the new contours of the public opinion bedrock on which governmental policy will be debated, enacted, and gauged in the coming decades.

• Governmental activism has replaced a laissez faire approach to societal and economic concerns. By a greater than 2:1 majority, Americans now say they prefer a government that actively tries to solve the problems facing society and the economy rather than one that stays out of society and the economy to the greatest extent possible. (58% vs. 26%). Overwhelming support for an activist approach crosses all demographic and political lines; only Republicans, conservatives, and 2008 McCain voters have any lingering doubts about the matter. In the 1980s and 1990s many, if not most, Americans believed, along with Ronald Reagan, that government was the problem, and not the solution to problems. In 2009, the American people have turned Mr. Reagan's aphorism on its head even as Republicans in Congress and the media continue to preach that very old time religion.

• Economic equality is a major goal and standard by which to gauge government policy. A majority of the American public now believes that the best policy is to ensure that everyone has at least a basic standard of living and level of income, even if that increases government spending, instead of an approach that lets each person get along economically on their own, even if that means some have more than others (53% vs. 30%). Support for policies that promote economic equality is widespread demographically and politically. Only Republicans and conservatives are opposed. By contrast, in Pew surveys taken in the mid-1990s, only about four in ten Americans endorsed a governmental guarantee of a basic standard of living.

• Americans favor a foreign policy based on multilateralism. By almost 2:1, Americans agree that the best way to protect our national security is through building strong alliances with other nations rather than by relying primarily on our own military strength (56% vs. 29%). Once again, Republicans and conservatives stand in opposition to all other major demographic and political groups on this matter. And, once again, the American public has clearly moved in a new direction in recent years. Since early 2002, support for relying on military strength for the country's security has fallen by about 15 percentage points while the preference for depending on alliances with other countries has also increased by about the same amount.

• Pragmatism has replaced ideological purity as the preferred standard for gauging public policy. Half of Americans (49%) say that the best way to judge the correctness of government policies is how well they work. Only a third (31%) believe that the standard should be whether the policies seem to be morally right or wrong. As in other areas, it is only Republicans and conservatives who are out of step with the rest of the public. Clearly, most of the American people, if not many of those inside the Beltway, are ready to say farewell to the ideological gridlock that has characterized U.S. politics for the past 40 years.

These results reflect an almost total shift in the bedrock beliefs of the American people about the purpose of government and the standards for evaluating public policy. Under the heavy influence of the Millennial Generation’s (those born between 1982 and 2003) preference for liberal interventionism in economic matters, activist multilateralism in foreign affairs, and tolerant non-meddling on social issues, the United States has moved squarely into a new civic era.

President Barack Obama intuitively and clearly understands the magnitude of this major change in public opinion. The American people have adopted new attitudes for a new era. It's now time for the Washington political elites to do the same.

UPDATE: Today, Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post points out that more and more politicians are finally waking up to the fact that using 21st-century coummunication technology is vital in today's political environment. From his excellent piece:

...the GOP will be rebuilding itself at a time when the Democratic Party continues to make inroads in using technology to reach a diverse set of constituents with their message. Today, the New Politics Institute, an arm of the liberal think-tank New Democrat Network, will hold one of its many lunches for Democratic Hill staffers and advocacy folks. The title of the event: "New Tools for a New Era." Simon Rosenberg, founder of NDN, said the lunch is a part of his group's ongoing New Tools series, which tout the use of cell phones, social networks and micro-targeting, among others, in campaigning.

We hope you will join NDN and its affiliate, the New Politics Institute (NPI), today at noon for our first post-election tech event of 2009, New Tools for a New Age -- a discussion of three exciting media and tech tools with tremendous potential for use in politics, advocacy and governing today. This event will showcase some impressive new advances in the fields of social networking, Web video and microtargeting of television advertising.

For those not able to attend, we are excited to announce that we will be providing a live Web cast of the event from our newly redesigned, high-tech NDN event space just a block from the White House. Visit ndnblog.org/livecast today to catch a high-quality stream of the forum. Feel free to tell others you think might be interested in attending or watching. For those watching on the Web, the live program will begin at 12:15 p.m. ET.

Joining NDN President Simon Rosenberg for this forum will be Jason Rosenthal, Senior Vice President of Business Operations at Ning, Inc.; Tim Chambers, Co-Founder of the Media 50 Group and Principal, Dewey Digital; and Amy Gershkoff, co-founder of Changing Targets Media. Jason will talk about how Ning -- a scalable social networking platform -- can be adapted to a huge variety of applications; Tim will show us the new Dewey Digital Radar, which provides accurate and detailed Web video metrics for more than 150 Web video platforms; and Amy will tell us how Precision Buy can make media buys more efficient, from targeting the right cable systems to buying the right television programs.

The forum will take place at NDN's offices from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Lunch will be served, and seating will be first-come, first-serve. Space is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible. For maps, speaker bios, and other information, please click here.

For background, feel free to review the following memos and papers from NDN and NPI: Leverage Social Networks, Buy Cable Smart, and shaping and delivering messages with Microtargeting.

On Friday, I posted some of our recent breakthroughs in the media, including Morley Winograd and Mike Hais's piece in the National Journal and Simon's commentary on Judd Gregg's withdrawal in the Huffington Post, the Economist, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the Hill. That commentary picked up more steam over the weekend, appearing in Gather and even the Spanish-language Sendero de Peje. From the original Huffington Post feature piece:

During the Clinton administration, Judd Gregg fought hard to deny the Commerce Secretary the ability to use the latest techniques to ensure the most accurate Census count. The goal of this effort was to make it harder for the Census to count minorities, young people and the poor, groups the Republicans do not view as part of their coalition.

Rob's last blog post was also picked up by Reuters and internationally syndicated, appearing in papers worldwide. From the Reuters article:

Some economists argue globalisation, in the sense of the increasing integration of different countries in the world economy, is the cause, acting as a transmission belt from one suffering economy to the next.

"With globalisation, the world can suffer the central cost of protectionism -- a deep fall in trade -- without passing any new laws or regulations," Robert Shapiro, head of progressive think tank NDN's globalisation initiative, said in a blog.

...

"The crux of it is that as the share of what the world produces that's traded across borders rises -- 18 percent of worldwide GDP was traded in 1990, compared to 30 percent in 2006 -- a serious recession in a few large places moves quickly around the world, driving down global trade," said Shapiro of NDN, a former undersecretary in the U.S. Commerce Department.

In other words weak demand in one country increasingly affects others because they are more dependent on exports.