Dr. Gloria Duffy to Discuss Obama's Transition on "Bay Area Vista," January 4

On KNTV/NBC Bay Area on January 4, 2009, at 10:00 a.m.:

Gloria Duffy, president and CEO of The Commonwealth Club, will be featured on the January 4 edition of "Bay Area Vista," airing at 10:00 a.m., on NBC Bay Area. Dr. Duffy, who served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense and special coordinator for cooperative threat during the Clinton administration, will offer her perspective on the choices made by President-Elect Obama in fulfilling his major cabinet positions. Tune in for an insider’s perspective on what to anticipate with the new administration and why she believes that President-Elect Obama inspires many throughout the nation.

This episode will also feature a panel discussion with James Taylor, Ph.D., USF professor of race and politics; Ron Takaki, Ph.D., UC-Berkeley professor of rthnic studies; and Dawn-Elissa Fischer, Ph.D., SFU professor of Africana studies. This show will also feature Pat Mitchell, Peter Ortiz and Catherine Ortiz, who are all involved with the educational program known as Silicon Valley Faces.

Anchored and produced by NBC Bay Area Community Relations Director Janice Edwards, "Bay Area Vista" began in November 2002 with the goal of covering the compelling personal stories of people who are making a difference in the Bay Area community.

Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat," Passes Away

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Tom Vilsack to Head Agriculture

Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack is reportedly President-Elect Barack Obama's pick to head the Department of Agriculture.

Vilsack (pictured above at his Feb. 13, 2007, speech to The Commonwealth Club of California) was, very briefly, a competitor of Obama's for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he withdrew early in the contest and threw his support behind New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton. For those of you keeping score, that means Vilsack joins former candidates Clinton, Bill Richardson, and Joe Biden as Obama administration officials. Can Mike Gravel still get a position?

Rich Lose Billions While the Poor Get Poorer

THOSE ALREADY ON THE BOTTOM ARE TAKING A GREATER HIT

Staggering amounts such as $700 billion for the financial service industry and the relatively paltry $15 billion proposed for the auto industry pale in comparison to the estimated $1.7 trillion the recession will exact in future losses by the continuing plight of America's poor.

A study released today by a bipartisan child advocacy group takes into account that children born in poverty tend to become lower wage earnings and suffer from poor health without the help of consistent health-care coverage.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said last month that more than 10 million adults and 3 million children could dip into poverty during the current economic downturn and may further hamper those still reeling from the previous recession of 2001.

A story from earlier this year when the state of the economy was bad, but not yet in the free fall that is seemingly occurring today, explained that while the economy expanded after 2001, the number of those in poverty increased by over a million.

This unfortunate phenomenon was touched upon last year by Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman during a speech at The Commonwealth Club where he said, "There have been huge gains at the top of the income distribution. A few people got much more richer, and that took all or almost all of the gains."

Krugman also explained a notion that, a year later, seems quite prescient: "We are fully back to the levels of inequality not seen since the 1920s. It's an extraordinary thing."

As many media types struggle to pin a moniker on this "financial crisis" (this one has nearly runs its course), some are now calling it the "Great Recession." Either way, it is the poor who are shoulder the biggest burden.

The Department of Labor said last week that more than 573,000 Americans applied for unemployment insurance. Indiana's fund is insolvent and California, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island may not be far behind. If government aid is struggling to keep up with demand, it is likely non-profits that fill in the cracks are having trouble keeping their doors open.

Nearly half of the non-profits in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota are resorting to staff cuts because of higher costs and dwindling donations.

A feature story from the Rocky Mountain News illustrates in detail the problems the poor and local non-profits have keeping people warm and nourished. Similar problems are surfacing in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Just last September, an Alameda County non-profit that administered health care to about 1,000 East Bay children closed its doors – and this is in one of the country's wealthier counties.

Gaudy figures on the pages and web sites of the newspapers' business sections may titillate headline makers across the nation, but it seems during a recession, the poor are the canary in the coalmine.

Great Gifts

Over at Jordan Ferney's blog, the writer includes a holiday gift list for a certain "Paul" (we dunno; your guess is as good as ours as to who he is). But we liked the seventh item on her list: "A membership to the Commonwealth Club [so] he can go hear interesting people speak at lunch."

No, we didn't pay her to write that! But, you know, if it gets you thinking ...

Using the Union to Break the Fall of Detroit

REPUBLICANS BLAME U.A.W. FOR NO BAILOUT DEAL

If the Chrysler bailout of 1979 is our guide for the tumultuous times in Detroit today, then Federal assistance for the Big Three is not much more than a short-term solution.

Popular culture fawned over Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca after "saving" the company. He had a best-selling book, graced magazine covers and hawked cars on television commercials. Iacocca was the man, except, in hindsight, he barely stopped the bleeding of the company and the slow slide of the American automobile industry.

A Hertitage Foundation essay from 1983 did well to take some of the shine off Chrysler's resurgence, calling the bailout "quasi-bankruptcy" in which the company failed to recapitalize or make significant changes to its leadership. The report points out that Chrysler missed out on becoming a leaner and more innovative company and its laggard ways also spread to General Motors and Ford.

Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture blog details this point in a posting last month:

The Chrysler bailout of 1980 was not quite a pre-packaged bankruptcy reorganization. It left the company with the same management team, the same union contracts, the same pension obligations, and the same health-care coverage; all the bailout did was buy the company a few more years. Indeed, the pre-bailout industry looked almost identical to the post-bailout industry. None of the Detroit automakers, Chrysler included, received any long-term benefits from the bailout.

The major difference between 1979 and today is the hovering dark shadow of economic collapse, and many people believe that whether The Big Three fail is almost irrelevent just as long as it does not happen now, when just a smidge of panic on Wall Street will trigger further bloodletting.

What is interesting about our current financial atmosphere is a willingness by Republicans in Congress to stick to their ideological guns during this period by laying blame on the United Auto Workers. Embattled Louisiana Senator David Vitter simply says, “It sounds like the U.A.W. blew it up,”

Possibly the leading opponent to the bailout Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who has four foreign automakers in his state, told the Wall Street Journal that he has always been against government assistance of private industry, noting that he voted against the 1979 Chrysler bailout and the recent $700 billion financial bailout. The story also describes the South's hospitality toward non-union workers and low wages.

Blaming the union for scuttling the proposed $15 billion bailout is not fair, according to The Nation's John Nichols, who notes that the UAW has already made huge concessions to The Big Three, while attempting to further weaken them will hamper the labor movement in the U.S.

Anyone who thinks that breaking the UAW will only weaken the circumstances of autoworkers is missing the point of the royalist enterprise, which is to weaken the ability of all American workers to demand fair pay and benefits.

Failure to aid Detroit could lead to unimaginable economic decline (just in time for Barack Obama's inauguration!). If politics is the ulterior motive of House Republicans – where one of labor's strongest unions is obliterated and the president-elect is saddled with an agenda solely of economic matters – then some people will wonder who's interests are being served.

Look for more thoughts on the auto bailout at The Commonwealth Club's Bank of America-Walter E. Hoadley Annual Economic Forecast, coming January 14. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich will share his reactions.

Report: U.S. Global Power Will Diminish By 2025

A MULTI-POLAR WORLD SHARED WITH CHINA, RUSSIA AND INDIA PREDICTED

The National Intelligence Council (NIC) has a thought-provoking outlook for the the global geopolitical future in a report released last month. (A .pdf of the report can be downloaded here.)

In the report titled, "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World", it predicts the United States will continue to sit atop world leadership, but with diminishing returns and "where power will be dispersed with newer player with new rules to the game."

Along with Russia and China, one of these new players will be India, which was the subject of a four-person panel last night at The Commonwealth Club.

The assessment sees both China and India regaining economic power not seen in those countries in two centuries and predicting both will rival the U.S. and Japan in Gross Domestic Product by 2025. Here are some of the other points the report makes regarding India:

-States such as India and other nascent countries may not espouse the Western-developed modes of governing, but are more likely to drift toward methods of "state capitalism" used in China.

-Rapidly modernizing nations like India will likely usher in a new sense of stability as their economic livelihoods will depend on it. It cautions, though, that Russian aggression may be an outlier to that situation.

-The report also imagines the Middle East and Asia without Western intervention as potentially a stumbling block to globalization. If the West and the United States, specifically, find the region a burden to their interests, a scenario could arise where China and Russia, despite differences, come to a tacit union, leaving Iran and India with no choice but to support them in the absence of Western support.

As Michael T. Klare wrote in The Nation, "Not only will the United States be weaker in 2025 because of the hubris of Bush and Cheney; it will face a world of multiplied dangers, emboldened challengers and a paucity of reliable allies."

If you don't want to read the 130-page report, that's the conclusion in a nutshell.

Energy Pick Gets Rave Reviews, Yet Much Work Lies Ahead

CHU: 'COAL IS MY WORST NIGHTMARE'

After years of perceived scientific neglect at the upper rings of government, President-elect Barack Obama's choice of Nobel-winning physicist Steven Chu to lead the Department of Energy is drawing high marks, or as one blogger wrote, "I'm on board the Chu Chu train."

Praise for Chu's selection has been effusive. Joe Romm at Climate Progress called him "a great choice," as did Andrew Revkin on The New York Times blog Dot Earth. Brad Johnson at Think Progress' Wonk Room blog called him "a singular addition to Obama's Cabinet" and a posting from Science magazine also lays out how Chu might change the department.

The appointment brings both the prestige of the scientific world's highest honor along with adding an Asian-American to Obama's diverse cabinet.

Since last Friday, when word of possible candidates for the job began to leak, the name of Chu was little-known among big names who campaigned vigorously for Obama such as Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. The choice shows a willingness by the incoming administration to address climate and energy issues confronting the country.

During a 2005 speech at The Commonwealth Club, Chu said national security has become synonymous with energy security and the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. is threatened by global warming. (Click here to listen the speech.)

“I believe this energy issue is the center of all of these concerns," said Chu, "thus, I think it is the single most important societal problem that science has to solve. There is no magic bullet to this problem.”

Traditionally, the role of the energy secretary has primarily focused on nuclear energy and weapons issues rather than the conservation and alternative energy programs Chu favors.

The lack of administrative experience on the scale of the Department of Energy's $25 billion budget and 14,000 employees has been one major argument for some detractors. Former New Jersey governor and head of the Environmental Protection Agency Christine Todd Whitman has cautious words for the appointee saying, "It's a big leap from the academic world to the administrative world."

A Wall Street Journal piece from today also reveals Chu's aversion to coal and the need to develop methods for clean-coal.

Comments Chu made during a lecture at Cornell University last April on the need for regulations to curb carbon emission will not endear him to conservatives.

"Free market forces aren't going to do this. You really need a combination of fiscal policies and downright regulations, and it has to be international. And above all, we need to put a price on carbon without any loopholes. People in the U.S. especially are working very hard to keep it below $20 per ton -- and then have additional loopholes -- because at that price you actually don't have to change anything."

Blogger Matthew Yglesias put a damper on the appointment of Chu; while lauding it, he also believes the position offers the chance at little but a "bully pulpit." Also, at the same posting an interesting video of Chu is offered.

Chu, 60, was both congenial and lighthearted during the question and answer segment of his Commonwealth Club speech on solving the world energy crisis.

He reflected on his denial to both Princeton and Yale after graduation as a being "the best thing to happen to him" and displayed sharp, self-deprecating humor when describing his mother's feelings about winning the Nobel Prize in 1997.

“It gained me some respect in my family, but not in my mother’s eyes. She still can’t figure out why my oldest brother—he’s the one with the most degrees—and so my mother, who is getting along in the years, is still trying to figure out why didn’t Gilbert get the Nobel Prize. Why did Steven get the Nobel Prize? So, she’s finally come to the solution that Steven must be better at the politics of getting something like that. So, you can’t win.”

Wonder what Mother Chu is thinking today?

Kinsley On Journalism, Not The Economy

COLUMNIST HAS HARSH WORDS FOR OWNER OF CHICAGO TRIBUNE

You really could not expect two journalism lions like Michael Kinsley and Phil Bronstein to not talk about the state of newspapers, could you?

Kinsley, the purveyor of nearly every medium of journalism, spoke to The Commonwealth Club Tuesday about the demise of newspapers while finding optimism in journalism's future online, in a conversation moderated by the editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle.

With fresh news that Kinsley's old boss during his stint on the editorial pages at the Los Angeles Times filed for bankruptcy, the topic was on the minds of both.

Kinsley's contentious stay at the L.A. Times occurred among infighting with the new owner, the Tribune Company, and a radical and unsuccessful idea to allow readers to make additions to editorials using technology made famous by Wikipedia. In his conversation with Bronstein, Kinsley did not mask his anger towards Zell, who purchased the Tribune media empire two years after Kinsley left the Los Angeles Times.

“I was prepared until today to think that Sam Zell wasn't totally evil,” said Kinsley before adding, “I think Zell should be taken out and shot.”

Kinsley criticized the Tribune's decision to put ownership of the company under employee stock holders, while noting many of the former employees offered buyouts are now unsecured creditors since the bankruptcy.

Some of the more thought-provoking moments of the hour-long program were Kinsley's view of the future of his craft. He does not believe that newspaper companies will die, but newspapers will, and he thinks the key to the future may be discovered by a no-name.

“It will probably be a company that nobody has heard of. Somebody is going to crack this nut,” said Kinsley. He believes whichever successful model that arises will ultimately be replicated or bought by a larger company like the New York Times.

It might be wise to heed Kinsley's advice when it comes to imagining the future of journalism and the internet; Kinsley is about the closest person to a sage of cyberspace. In 1996, he founded Slate, the web's first online news magazine. He did note that some of his ideas were a bit conventional in hindsight.

Initially, he conceived the site's content to be printed weekly similar to a magazine, even including page numbers.

“The conventions of print have been in place for centuries and to the point that you don't even think about,” said Kinsley, “The internet is starting to develop some conventions like that, so that you don't have to be Gutenberg to start a publication.”

At one point, in reference to a recent Time column where he wondered whether there were too many blogs, one audience member jokingly asked whether he was also against the printing press. He said he was not and said the piece was a bad attempt at humor and reiterated his belief in the future of blogging.

“Something like that is where this whole thing is going to end up,” said Kinsley, “It's probably going to evolve in some ways to the whole blogging world where amateurs sitting in their boxer shorts opining. It might not be so terrible.”

When the discussion turned to economic matters, of which Kinsley was expected to speak, he said “I don't think anything that has happened certainly so far really threatens capitalism. Capitalism is here to stay.”

With Congress immersed in talk of bailing out the automotive industry, Kinsley wondered why until the bankruptcy of the Tribune Company no one has called for assistance of the newspaper industry, and he ridiculed cable news talking heads (of which he was one once, as the liberal side of CNN's Crossfire) who are clueless on the financial crisis.

I think it is very funny to watch all these shows during our current financial crisis and you'll find some funny stuff there,” said Kinsley, “They don't have any idea and I don't either, and to hear them, you would think, they were masters of derivatives and how the auto industry works.”

Travelers Beware!

Amy Kniss, a member of The Commonwealth Club's media and PR staff, contributes the following:

As the holiday season draws near, many of us are in the midst of making our travel plans, but before you make those reservations or hit the road you should consult Peter Greenberg's new book Don't Go There!: The Travel Detective's Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World (Rodale Books).

Greenberg spoke yesterday at The Commonwealth Club of California about how to travel better, faster and cheaper, even during these harsh economic times. The former Newsweek writer and onetime travel editor for NBC's "Today Show" has spent much of his life and career on the go, and now he is sharing the secrets of traveling well. His talk revealed much of "what locals will tell you if you asked, but travel guides won't."

Covering all 50 states and at least 50 foreign countries, Greenberg brought a humorous style to some of the more serious issues of traveling, like piracy, terrorists and airport security. But his comedic style only enhanced what might otherwise be a depressing look at what's wrong with a globe's worth of destinations.

What's the key to effective traveling? According to Greenberg, "It's all about not listening to the rules. The rules are arbitrary and going to you get you in trouble every time." He advised travelers to be contrarians, particularly when it involves going against the flow of airport traffic. "Why look at the departure board when checking to see if your flight is on time?" Greenberg asks. Those boards haven't been right since 1963. Travelers should instead check the arrival board for their gate to see if a plane is there. If not, he says, why make the trek down the terminal only to be disappointed by an inevitable delay?

Although it may seem counterintuitive, Greenberg also suggested that when travelers arrive for a departure flight, they enter at the arrival level, and vice versa when their flight arrives at an airport. His logic? Full flights lead to long lines, congestion and slow security. Entering and exiting the airport against the flow of traffic will help travelers arrive speedily at their destinations, with far less stress.

Also, when preparing to leave for the airport, Greenberg reminded travelers to print their boarding pass and check-in online to streamline the airport experience. He also recommended that travelers program the airline's 800 number into their mobile phone. That way, should they run into unexpected delays at the airport, or worse find their flight canceled, they can avoid the lines at the ticketing counter and rearrange their travel plans over the phone while fellow passengers scramble to talk to an agent in person.

Instead of landing us in jail with his "don't follow the rules" mantra, Greenberg's spin helps us tweak our expectations for particular destinations and insists that being informed about where we are going is the best offense to both domestic and international travel.

He emphasized the human element of traveling and recommended calling hotels directly and contacting airlines before purchasing online. He not only encouraged travelers to FedEx their luggage to their destination beforehand, rather than check their bags, but to befriend ticket and gate agents at airports they depart from frequently.

Most important, Greenberg said, “Get to know their names. Don't ask them for anything. Be nice. Say thank you." Greenberg says agents tend to remember you positively and are more willing to pass along essential information concerning your travel itinerary and the like. "Not because you asked them for the low down, but simply because you were nice.”