The other 9/11 (2014 Hong Kong reminiscent of 1989 Berlin)

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Tuesday November 11, 2014 · 8:08 AM PST

2014/11/11 · 08:08

In the past few days, I suspect we've see a lot of photos and videos of the Berlin Wall coming down -- 25 years ago last Sunday.

But we probably will not see many pictures of Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who made it possible.

It was a spectacular moment that was brought back to me when I visited Berlin recently. I went to the old site of Checkpoint Charlie, the legendary crossing point from the American-occupied sector of Berlin to the Russian-occupied side. It had been the scene of one of the most tense standoffs in the 1960s, when American and Russian tanks faced off a few yards apart with their gun barrels aimed at each other. It was moving to visit the empty spaces with barbed wire and the monuments to those shot trying to escape East Berlin, preserved by the Germans as testimony to the brutality of the wall and its role in one of the cruelest episodes of the 20th century.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down because of the decisions of one man. Gorbachev had spent his career within the treacherous confines of the Russian Communist party, but saw history and human values with enough clarity that in November he ordered border guards and military troops in Berlin not to shoot those tearing down the wall or crossing to the West. And shortly after the wall came down, Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of Germany.

This year marked another important 25th anniversary -- in China. In June 1989, Chinese troops crushed a popular uprising in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Today, there is a comparable faceoff in the largest surviving communist dictatorship between an authoritarian regime struggling to reinforce its hegemony and a popular rebellion seeking democracy and freedom. This is the struggle in Hong Kong, led by students, known as Occupy or Occupy Central, named after a key district in the city.

Many Asian cultures, including China, embody a concept known as the "mandate of heaven," in which a government generally doing a good job is presumed to enjoy a divine mandate to continue its work. But if the government breaks its trust with the people or is seen to act in unjust ways, then the presumption of legitimacy is shattered and it is only a matter of time till that government is superseded or overthrown. This was not a real factor in the Tiananmen Square episode of 25 years ago, when the Chinese economy was roughly 5 percent of its present size; when events were not disseminated instantly around the world over the Internet; when the Berlin Wall had not yet fallen; and when the status of the central government and party in China was not easily questioned.

Today, Hong Kong's situation is made more difficult for the Chinese government in Beijing because it appears to have broken -- or at least seriously modified -- a commitment to allow Hong Kong to choose its own local leadership democratically. And the squeeze for the regime is even more painful because legions of young people around the world have seen pictures of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the violence in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago, and are watching videos of Occupy Central in Hong Kong today.

And, there is another broad, but quieter, challenge to officialdom in China: the widespread discontent with the environmental quality of life in China. Smog, toxic pollutants in the water and air, and unsafe food and other products have become commonplace in the world's most populous country. As part of this growing discontent, ordinary people have led protests and filed legal suits against Chinese governments at different levels as citizens fight back against the tidal wave of poison, pollution and waste that is a byproduct of China's most rapid development boom in history.

For the Chinese government, the most dangerous sparks of discontent are the ones that flamed up this fall in the streets of Hong Kong. Nobody knows for certain how this struggle will end. But there does not appear to be an equivalent of Gorbachev in the Chinese equation.

APPOINT A WORLD CZAR TO CONQUER EBOLA

petercgoldmark

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Wednesday October 08, 2014 · 8:46 PM PDT

2014/10/08 · 20:46

A health worker in protective suit carries equipment on October 1, 2014 at MSF's (Doctors Without Borders) Ebola treatment center in Monrovia. Liberia has been hit the hardest by the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 3,000 people in west Africa. The latest UN data released on September 27, 2014 said 1,830 people have died from the killer virus in Liberia so far, and 3,458 people have been infected. AFP PHOTO / PASCAL GUYOTPASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images (Credit: Getty Images / PASCAL GUYOT)
Thomas Eric Duncan is in a Dallas hospital with Ebola because of an unfolding disaster in international health.

Duncan's story is familiar by now. Personnel at a Dallas hospital failed to raise a red flag when he showed up sick and told them he'd recently traveled from Liberia, an Ebola hot spot. That mistake is changing the "can't happen here" mindset at hospitals across the country.

Now the question of how to mount an effective worldwide response to the Ebola plague is raised -- but the answer is a shock to those who think they live within the familiar confines of their friendly nation state. That's what will make it hard to adopt the solution that works.

The Ebola crisis is producing refugees from the first deeply affected countries -- Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Many refugees are dirt poor. But some are well-to-do, and some of those will figure out real quick that the place to get treated, if they can get there, is the United States or Europe. And that is exactly where they will set out to go, by hook or by crook. It won't be long, I predict, until an Ebola victim crops up at a New York-area hospital. The same goes for other world capitals.

How should we respond to this fast-spreading and very dangerous epidemic?

Major countries should appoint one of the world's experienced experts in the management of epidemics to head an emergency worldwide effort to contain and roll back the Ebola scourge.

Nations participating in the effort should give this individual extraordinary powers, like a general leading allied forces, and a generous budget with full discretion on spending. A ceiling might be 0.01 percent of a nation's gross domestic product. For Europe and the United States combined, this would generate an initial pot of roughly $4 billion. And the Ebola czar should be given power to draft medical units from the armed forces and public health units of those nations in the emergency alliance.

The fact that you, like me, are saying that this will not happen is a sign of two things: how out of date and lazy we have been in our thinking about global health issues, and how difficult it will be to mount an effective effort to contain Ebola. The world is changing a lot faster than our institutions.

There are reports that a major pharmaceutical company is making progress on an Ebola vaccine, and that early animal trials are showing success. We must hope so.

But two questions stand out: Why did no one make it a priority when the current outbreak was first reported in March? And how do we establish an effective global effort as rapidly as possible?

Stay tuned. The Ebola drama may be coming to a neighborhood near you.

Europe's disturbing re-emergence of anti-Semitism

petercgoldmark

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Monday August 04, 2014 · 8:37 AM PDT

2014/08/04 · 08:37

Rioters destroyed stores owned by Jews and chanted anti-Semitic slogans in demonstrations in France that stretched over three weekends last month.

A synagogue in western Germany was attacked, and swastika graffiti defaced shops in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Rome.

All have fueled fears of rising Gaza-related anti-Semitism in Europe -- and the attacks evoke haunting memories like frames from an old horror movie.

We thought we had learned. All of us. Forever.

"Never again." Remember?

But that has turned out to be wrong.

For instance, the recent rallies in Paris and its surrounding suburbs contained three distinct -- and not necessarily consistent -- currents.

The first current is France's "old" left, which has long been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and criticizes Israel for its settlements policy and occupation of Palestinian territory.

The second current is clearly anti-Semitic. These are the demonstrators who chanted slogans such as "Hitler was right" and "Death to Jews."

The third current represents the "new" Europe and is the most difficult to gauge. It includes young Muslim professionals -- stockbrokers and accountants -- who have committed themselves to France and its republican values. Many said they took part in their first demonstrations because they are angry at Israel's military action in Gaza.

"I'm wearing the kaffiyeh [traditional Mideast headscarf] that my parents brought back from Mecca in 1996," said recent high school graduate Wassila. "I am anything but a supporter of demonstrations," said Arafa, a 33-year-old construction supervisor. These were two of many who gave only their first names to French reporters.

This is the sophisticated younger Muslim generation, most of them children of immigrants from North Africa. Now some of them, and non-Muslim young professionals as well, are in the streets with slogans such as "Israel out of France" -- a political formulation, not an anti-Semitic one.

An anti-Semitic leader in French social networks is Dieudonné, a French actor and comedian who has been repeatedly convicted in French courts of anti-Semitic offenses. He talks of a community of "non-Jews of France" who must stop being "slaves" of Zionism. In one of his songs, he says it's not up to him to "choose between the Jews and the Nazis. I am neutral in that business."

It is a fluid, volatile moment for Europe -- and the world. European political leaders, who have occasionally been wobbly on Vladimir Putin's deadly antics in Ukraine, have been united and clear in denouncing anti-Semitism.

But there is a new generation of Europeans who will make up their own minds about Israel and its conflicts in Gaza. The group includes the young professionals who demonstrated against Israel and a broader group of young voters who are impatient with traditional European Union politics and bureaucracy. How will they react to posters such as those slapped up on stores owned by Jews in Rome saying "Jews -- your days are numbered" and "Anne Frank is a liar"?

Will this new generation -- for most of whom World War II and the Holocaust are chapters in history books -- reject the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe and condemn it to wither and die. Or will its members equivocate, and let prejudice pass as part of public expression -- unwittingly creating the soil in which this poisonous weed may grow, again?

Don't Wait for 2016 for New Ideas

petercgoldmark

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Monday July 21, 2014 · 9:11 AM PDT

2014/07/21 · 09:11

We've started a serious but thus far not very lively debate about inequality because of an unusual confluence of circumstances in American history.

First, we are in a period of stunted economic growth following the crash of 2008. There is no rising tide to lift all boats. But Americans have become aware that within the general sluggishness there is one group whose fortunes are improving rapidly -- the rich.

Second, our manufacturing sector has undergone four decades of decline. That is the sector where the power of organized labor and the ability to find and hold a job through steady hard work meant that many middle-class Americans could prosper even though parts of our education system were mediocre.

During the years after World War II, the United States was the largest unified market in the world and its productivity among the highest. Much of that has changed now, including a switch from solid-paying blue-collar jobs to unpredictably paying high-tech jobs and brutal global competition, neither of whichexisted half a century ago.

The third and the biggest change is also the newest and the least mapped: the increasing influence of money has pushed American politics to favor the rich. In the clearest example, we bailed out the banks (never even scolded their executives) after the crash, but we blithely left millions of victims of shady mortgage deals underwater or, in some cases, losing their homes altogether.

In a republic that allows private interests a wide margin for wheeling and dealing, it should not surprise us that individuals and corporations with the money to make big campaign contributions and hire well-connected lobbyists to wrangle helpful amendments to the tax code or subsidies for their businesses. Powerful lobbies like the oil and gas sector and big agribusiness have enjoyed special subsidies for years. But now a lot more money is controlled by big business and the rich with fewer restrictions on how it can be used, so their ability to get Congress to enact special deals has increased.

So how do we get back on a course to an economy that allows the poor and the middle class to improve their lot and the whole game is not stacked in favor of the rich? President Barack Obama does not have the political strength or the vision to lead us there, and a divided Congress oscillates between brinkmanship and irrelevance. So far, the 2014 midterm campaigns are rehashing existing issues, not raising new ones. So, we'll have to wait for the 2016 presidential election. Will a candidate willing to dramatize powerfully the argument for a "level playing field" or a "fair break" for all emerge?

It is hard to see such a candidate in the Republican Party, dominated by leaders with zero interest in harnessing government to be a force for growth and fairness. The leading Democrat, Hillary Clinton, is not putting forth Roosevelt-like new ideas that will benefit the middle-class families. (In fairness, FDR didn't talk very much about that during his campaign during the Depression; he surfaced the ideas for the New Deal only after he was elected in 1932.)

The right time to begin airing new ideas is now, before the campaign gets fully underway. This is the time in the American political cycle for academics, innovators and commentators to circulate new ideas and see what plays with the American people. We need to see which ideas strike a few sparks before we expect a candidate to pick up the torch and run with it. But if fairness in the economy is going to be "normal" in the United States again, we need someone to run on that issue.

Conquer food waste to feed the world

petercgoldmark

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Monday June 23, 2014 · 9:14 AM PDT

2014/06/23 · 09:14

We don't hear much about it today, but growing enough food to feed the planet will be a significant problem before long unless we make some changes soon.
A leading cause of the projected food squeeze is that agricultural productivity has not increased as fast this decade as it did during the second half of the 20th century. In other words, we are starting to consume more than we're producing..
The global population has grown at roughly 2 percent a year, but that trend understates the increase in demand for food. Standards of living in emerging markets such as China have risen, leading to increased consumption of items further up the food chain, such as meat. And those richer foodstuffs require more calories and energy (fertilizer) to produce than the basic grain diets on which the world's poor have traditionally relied.
Starting with the Green Revolution in the 1960s, there has been a fairly steady increase in food yield per acre of 2 percent or more per year. But there has been no new big round of technology that increases crop yield since then, and new factors are coming into play, such as more severe weather disruption (due in part to global warming); increased land degradation and loss of irrigation water, and shrinking available arable land to expand agriculture.
And as global warming accelerates, the consequences will severely reduce our agricultural production because of droughts, storms, flooding, and temperature increases in key growing zones, such as the American Midwest.
But there's a huge opportunity that would help reverse the trends. "From farm to fork," as the experts say, how much food do you think is wasted, lost, thrown away, spoiled or otherwise not used? The answer: a staggering 30 percent globally.
In the United States, nearly 40 million tons of food a year ends up in landfills, according to the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, an industry group that has started to wrestle with this problem.
Most demographers predict that the world's population will stabilize somewhere between 9 billion and 10 billion in roughly two decades. One of the very few courses that will allow us to feed this many people is to reduce food waste.
Of course this is a problem for the food industry. If you make money by producing, distributing or selling food, then the more you produce, process or sell, the more you earn. This is true whether you're a farmer or Campbell Soup Co. So if demand goes up, to the degree you can get waste out of your production chain, the more you will sell and the more you will make.
But if one of the places we eliminate waste is that part of the food chain that stretches from the point of sale, such as the supermarket, to your dining room table, that means families will be buying less food -- and that is not a happy prospect if you're in the food business.
If gains in agricultural productivity continue to decelerate, and if the pressure on crops placed by global warming increases -- and both trends seem firmly established -- we will have no other choice than to go after food waste.
The Europeans are ahead of us on this issue. There are organizations and websites in Europe that alert people to the problem of food waste. And some supermarkets in Germany and the United Kingdom sell what's called "ugly food" -- food that has passed its best sell-by date but is still safe to eat.
If you don't want to pay top price for food and you'd like to reduce food waste, then "ugly food" is for you.

Europe endures the stresses of democracy

petercgoldmark

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Monday June 23, 2014 · 9:14 AM PDT

2014/06/23 · 09:14

Europe is America's principal partner in the world -- politically, economically, and in terms of democratic values.
And the results of the European parliamentary elections last month suggest that our biggest partner may be going through a rough patch.
Europe is mired in a prolonged economic slowdown, with unemployment remaining above 10 percent. Anemic growth is exacerbated by the absence of a region-wide stimulus program.
Simultaneously, there has been a visible increase in both legal migration from new European Union member states such as Romania and illegal migration from a dozen countries in northern and central Africa. For struggling European working-class families, the immigrants have become targets of resentment.
There is also widespread disillusionment with the performance of the European Union government itself. A senior German editor warned me last year that there was a growing anti-EU groundswell from younger Germans.
The backlash against the EU is driven by two partially contradictory themes: criticism that the EU is not doing enough on big issues, such as the economy, and resistance to suffocating micromanagement emanating from Brussels (the seat of the EU government). The French had a field day last year ridiculing the EU after it issued a regulation telling restaurants how to serve olive oil. And the right-wing National Front party that came in first in the recent French elections for the European Parliament -- the party's first national win -- proposes withdrawing from the euro and returning to a national currency.
Sharply increased protest votes in favor of extremist parties in the European elections are not surprising. The votes are followed economic stagnation, increased immigration of people of color, faiths or languages different from those of the majority population, and exasperation with their regional government.
In many cases what these once-fringe parties say gives amplified expression to some of the worst prejudices and most dangerous resentments that smolder in any electorate. For instance:
The National Democratic Party of Germany said it would stop immigration because Europe is "a continent of white people."
The leader of the Netherlands Party for Freedom (which did not do well in the recent election) said: "I don't hate Muslims. I hate Islam."
The spokesman for the right-wing Golden Dawn party in Greece wears a swastika tattoo, and the party pledges to "rid this land of filth."
In Hungary the deputy parliamentary leader of the right-wing Jobbik party said, "People of Jewish ancestry who live here . . . pose a national security risk."
Some will dismiss the statements as nothing more than bizarre local European politics to be caricatured in a Woody Allen movie. But it's infinitely more serious than that: If not countered with coherent programs for growth nationally and regionally, these currents may threaten to unravel the fragile European unity and democracy.
There are two other arenas worth noting where many of the same currents are at play.
In Ukraine, which also held a national election last month, economic frustration, political corruption, and language and ethnic differences inflamed partly by Russia have produced violence and chaos.
The other case is a democracy with more than twice as many voters as Europe and whose population embraces, sometimes uneasily, a variety of religions and more than 800 different languages. Despite some gloomy predictions, the elections in India last month went smoothly and the victory by the Bharatiya Janata Party and new Prime Minister Narendra Modi was interpreted as a popular call for reform and economic progress.
Life in the world's democracies is never simple.

The amazing rise of the supercomputers

petercgoldmark

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Saturday May 24, 2014 · 1:15 PM PDT

2014/05/24 · 13:15

In the second half of the 20th century, we saw computers as powerful machines for doing calculations. They were faster and more accurate than humans, and could handle more variables and solve more complex problems.
A short half-century later, we are on the threshold of co-evolution of humans with digital machines. We are not quite codependent -- for a while longer we'll still be able to live without machines, and the machines will still largely depend on us. But we are heading for a world where each relies on the other to stay alive.
Watching my grandchildren play with handheld digital devices before they learned to talk helped me understand that learning itself was changing. When I was growing up, we had to learn "material" and master "fields." Now, the critical skill is "finding" the information you need and "navigating" fields of activity. Today's key skill set -- and what will set people apart -- is knowing how to "search' and "find" information, which is more important than mastering content that seems to grow in volume every second.
I read the MIT Technology Review regularly because it helps me understand modern technology and where it's going. One development described in the latest issue is customized, 3D-printed heart implants -- such as pacemakers or defibrillators -- that are computer-designed to work with your specific heart. Another development is genome editing: the ability to target specific genes with the aim of introducing or withholding a specific genetic capacity. (This was successfully done last year with monkeys.)
A host of startups are working on wearable sensors that can monitor your health and alert you when action is required to protect it. And scientists at Boston Dynamics, a Google-owned company, have created robots that can recover their balance rapidly and thus have the agility to walk or run across uneven terrain, bringing us closer to having a "robot army." But before we get there, we will probably get the "robot home health aide," which will dispense medicine, prevent an elderly person from falling, and accompany people outside the home.
My last example is a robot named Pioneer, built by Qualcomm in San Diego, that operates on neuromorphic chips. This allows the robot to learn immediately from someone else's gestures or instructions, rather than requiring comprehensive programming. Pioneer can recognize and deal with people or objects it hasn't seen before because of their resemblance to what they've seen previously. That's getting pretty similar to the human nervous system -- which is why, I suppose, the chips are called neuromorphic.
The trends are clear. We live in a time when we are heavily dependent on computers for the security of our energy systems; for tracking our finances; and for managing much of our medical care, from preparing treatment plans to custom-designed drugs. More and more we will rely on computers to design and monitor complex societal tasks, including disease detection and identification, military weapons design and anti-terrorism efforts, including protecting us from other computers.
Today, robots and computers need us to design, update and maintain them -- but gradually supercomputers and superrobots that can share in designing and caring for their successors will emerge. And then we will need them to help design more advanced generations of themselves.

Being firm against Putin is not that easy

petercgoldmark

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Monday May 12, 2014 · 8:41 AM PDT

2014/05/12 · 08:41

In Ukraine, there's chaos. In Russia, Vladimir Putin, a shrewd master of strategy, appears to be riding a wave of popularity as he aims to expand Russian territory and influence. And in Western Europe, there is disarray.

The United States has imposed economic sanctions on Russia. European countries have not joined that course of action wholeheartedly, declining to act with the United States in imposing sanctions on Russian companies.

"Europe has a completely different relationship with Russia than the U.S.," said Stefan Meister, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "It is much more economically interdependent with Russia . . . We still have [an economic] crisis in Europe, and every country will look for its own interests, and every country has a veto."
In one European poll less than half of those interviewed supported sanctions against Russia.

Chaos and confusion in foreign affairs often present the opportunity for big mistakes. And the blunders can have dangerous consequences when militias, self-appointed gangs and nationalistic passions are involved. It is ironic that the chaos in Ukraine is erupting on the 100th anniversary of the lead-in to World War I.

The lessons of history are simple to recite but difficult to apply:
Lesson one: Make sure you have the facts on the ground right. It is axiomatic in such situations that initial "information" will be incomplete, and sometimes just plain wrong.

Lesson two: Don't assume you understand the intentions or reasoning of other parties. Under rapidly changing circumstances, intentions often change. In the run-up to World War I, for instance, the major powers miscalculated what the other parties would do. The price of that misjudgment was slaughter and economic ruin. (Also, don't assume that local "allies" will act as you think allies "should" act.)

Lesson three: Communicate clearly and send critical messages through multiple channels (in this case to Putin). Send the identical message through several channels so that there's little chance that it would be misinterpreted; the recipient will be confident he understands the message, whether he likes its content or not.
And it is always wise to be extremely cautious when two powers with nuclear weapons are on opposite ends of a military tussle, no matter how unlikely it may seem that nuclear weapons would be used.
Ukraine is a dangerously volatile situation. Putin is popular at home for his actions on behalf of Russians in the "near abroad" -- as many Russians call Eastern Europe -- while militias and street gangs are becoming more unpredictable. Complicating matters is that the only Western organization that can oppose Russia is NATO, and the western European members of NATO are not united on how to respond to Ukraine's crisis.

President John F. Kennedy taught us the wisdom of combining firmness with restraint during the Cuban missile crisis. President Barack Obama has been right to be restrained in his response to Putin's aggression. It will be hard for the United States to be firm about a struggle between unruly forces on a continent whose most powerful members have not decided how firm they want to be against Russian power.

How the world can respond to Putin

petercgoldmark

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Friday April 11, 2014 · 12:39 PM PDT

2014/04/11 · 12:39

The Russian military buildup along the Ukrainian border and Vladimir Putin's seizure of Crimea have become pivotal moments for Western powers and NATO.
During the Cold War, the Kremlin had little doubt that if the Soviet Union attacked or invaded Europe -- anywhere in Europe -- it would have a full-scale conflict with NATO and the United States. Today, frankly, it's unclear what would happen if Russia seized Moldavia or, say, two cities in eastern Ukraine.
Those who say they long for the clarity and symmetry of the Cold War forget the danger of living under an international regime in which "stabilizing deterrence" was the threat to incinerate half the planet. But a new, volatile period brings dangers and instabilities of its own.
There are enclaves all over this world populated by minorities that, like Crimea, would on balance rather be part of a nation other than the one they find themselves in.
There are parts of the world with natural resources like oil or gas -- such as the South China Sea -- that become natural strategic objectives for surrounding countries. Energy and food will be subjects of strategic contest for many decades to come because not all countries have both, and the haves are tempted to use energy and food as instruments of coercion vs. the have-nots.
There is no international body with the strength, the legitimacy and the freedom to act that can guarantee national integrity for all countries.
The United States and Europe are both in economic difficulty, and both have sought to reduce military spending and commitments. For most of the period since World War II, the western alliances have been both dominant and stabilizing; today they are shrinking and uncertain.
And there are areas of potential international conflict that are not primarily defined by traditional geographic boundaries, such as cyberspace and China's drive to dethrone the dollar as the sole global reserve currency. On the latter, there can be little doubt that the wily Putin is probing not only China on this subject, but also fossil fuel-producing enemies of the West, since the production and sale of oil and gas are significant parts of hard-currency transactions.
Stopping expansionists like Putin and providing a stable international framework will require difficult choices, including:
Committing NATO unambiguously to defend central Europe along a clearly defined line, and establishing tripwire troop presence to underline that commitment.
Establishing a body outside the UN Security Council, perhaps acting on its own as an adviser to the General Assembly, composed of countries respected for their support of international stability and the rule of law, that can issue non-vetoable opinions on short notice on whether a given military action by a nation violates international law or the UN Charter.
Establishing an international court of arbitration to which some disputes over natural resources might be referred.
Creating an international energy fund modeled on the International Monetary Fund that would have the capacity to extend emergency short-term energy assistance as well as the resources and know-how to help countries develop long-term policies for energy independence. (A similar function for food could be housed in existing international agencies, such as the World Food Program, with relatively minor modifications to their charter and function.)
The expansionist autocrats, including Putin, are asking themselves whether any countries are willing to back with force a post-Cold War system of rules and institutions that will limit "neighborhood" aggression and provide structures to contain disputes over food and natural resources.
This challenge requires more than the silence and incoherence the West has shown thus far.

Op-Ed: Governors can re-energize the Port Authority, with Richard C. Leone

petercgoldmark

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Friday April 04, 2014 · 8:39 AM PDT

2014/04/04 · 08:39

Months of raw partisan politics, comical mismanagement, conflicts of interest and resignations at the Port Authority have left the public outraged and confused.

But despite a naive attempt by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to wriggle out of the frying pan with a homegrown internal review, the drama of the George Washington Bridge lane closures and the conflicts and shenanigans it exposed won’t be over until federal and state investigations are concluded.

We all spent months learning about nonperformance and political interference at the Port Authority, without a word from Governors Christie or Andrew M. Cuomo about fixing it. But last week the governors raised the possibility of breaking up the Port Authority into two state-based operations.

If Christie and Cuomo think there is a solid case for that course, they should lay it out in terms of jobs, investment, improved transportation and economic growth for the region. A key question is how they would propose to untangle a $2.6-billion-a-year bi-state agency whose operations, cash flow and assets stand behind a series of long-term bonds.

Given the constraints on the capital capacity of the agency and its past success, the burden of proof is on them. In the meantime, what’s important now is to start a serious discussion about how to fix the Port Authority.

For nine decades, the authority has been critical in meeting the metropolitan region’s infrastructure needs, becoming a key regional asset that often led the way on transportation projects nationally. While sometimes sluggish about transparency and unresponsive to the public, it was generally insulated from short-term political whims in New York and New Jersey and could take on long-term capital projects that benefitted the metro region.

The reality is that nothing serious happens at the Port Authority unless the governors permit it. But in addition to the governors’ commitment to rebuild the agency, we need a team of nonpartisan civic leaders to serve as commissioners, a strong, experienced executive director, and vigilance from the public and the media.

Clubhouse politics has to be rooted out if the agency is to competently manage capital investments. Some have noted that you can’t get “all politics” out of the authority. In a sense, that is right; the authority was created by two state legislatures and Congress, and is overseen by two governors. But we shouldn’t settle for the kind of Tammany Hall politics in which the governors divide the authority into New York and New Jersey branches through patronage appointments of the kind that led to the bridge lane closures last summer.

The board of commissioners and agency staff need to serve impartially the broad priorities of the region, not the governors’ partisan agendas. That could be accomplished by legislation requiring that the Port Authority’s board be balanced politically to neutralize one-party high-jinks, and by tough conflict-of-interest rules under which the authority could not do any business, at any time, with any firm with whom a commissioner has a business or personal connection.

The commissioners and the two governors should publicly state that the authority will not be used to fill potholes in the budgets of the two states. Christie had the agency pay for maintaining New Jersey highways and New York diverted funds to plug budget shortfalls. The authority’s capital capacity and expertise should be used for designing, financing and implementing large projects — something both states desperately need.

Reform is essential; but it starts and ends with the two governors.

Peter Goldmark is a former executive director of the Port Authority (1977-1985) and Richard C. Leone is a former chairman (1989-1994).

We need new cooperation to move America again

petercgoldmark

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Monday March 03, 2014 · 8:43 AM PST

2014/03/03 · 08:43

I keep asking myself why America is stuck. We can't seem to get anything serious done.
We have a big budget deficit, crippling national debt and a jobless rate that is still too high. And even though we're the wealthiest country in the world -- read options -- we can't agree on how to solve any of those problems.
We are wobbling our way out of the biggest economic slump since the Great Depression -- two steps forward, one step back. And at a time we should be pulling together, we are pulling apart. We don't even have a comprehensive and serious program for economic growth.
Americans' disenchantment with the federal government is deep -- President Barack Obama's approval rating is at 41 percent and dissatisfaction with Congress is a whopping 79 percent, according to a CBS News-New York Times poll last week -- at a time corporations and billionaires are spending hundreds of millions to lobby for tax loopholes and air attack ads in this year's elections.
I care passionately about our country, its future and how it's regarded across the world. I remember visiting Europe for the first time as a teenager. An elderly woman crossed the street, and believing I was American, proceeded to thank our country for what it did for Europeans.
"You tell them at home, young man," I remember her saying, "that we are truly grateful." She was talking about World War II and the Marshall Plan, America's initiative to aid Europe after the war.
I travel extensively, and no one has come up to me lately to thank our country for anything.
When I read that it's a positive development that the House of Representatives has voted not to put us on the road to default, I gag. Should we be expected to applaud because Washington politicians didn't allow default on our legally incurred debts?
I often ask myself whether there is something I should be doing. I vote. I write. I've explained public affairs to my children. (When one of them asked me what she should be when she grew up, I told her she should be a climatologist. That was not a big hit.)
It struck me that while I read that some elected representatives think we should not pay our debts and should default, or want to cut food stamps but keep farm subsidies for the richest farmers, I don't have any contact with people who think that way. I don't actually know anyone who elected the representatives who think that way.
And then I wonder whether the people who think that way know someone who's not a politician who thinks the way I think. Suppose none of us ever talk things over with the people with whom we disagree?
Professor James Fishkin runs Stanford University's Center for Deliberative Democracy, which researches public opinion and democracy issues. The center assembles a representative sample of the public around controversial issues, gives them briefing materials and then lets them discuss and listen to each other. One effort was called "What Next for California," which brought together people from all over the state to talk about gridlock and what they needed to do to get out of it. At that session, as in others, attendees worked through deeply held differences and came up with pretty good ideas.
You and I live in a country that is paralyzed by angry division. Perhaps one way to dislodge us from paralysis is to reinvent town meetings, where you meet neighbors and those who think differently from you. It wouldn't be easy; it would take real effort from all of us.
But we're in deep trouble. It's time to roll up our sleeves and pull together to get ourselves out of this rut.

Make Port Authority an economic engine again

petercgoldmark

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday February 03, 2014 · 9:53 AM PST

2014/02/03 · 09:53

There are two distinct changes New York and New Jersey state officials must implement to improve the efficiency -- and fulfill the promise -- of the Port Authority.

- Stop political abuse by either state and sweep out unqualified patronage appointees.

- Restructure the Port Authority to become once again a powerful, professionally run engine of capital investment and economic growth for the country's largest metropolitan region, from modern transportation facilities to a smart electric grid.

To prevent abuse of power, the agency must embrace regular outside reviews so the board and the staff designated by the governors of New York and New Jersey act in the best interests of the region, not in the best interests of statehouse politics. The agency is bursting with patronage appointments. It began to split its senior management into separate New Jersey and New York chains of command two decades ago, which made possible the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal now under investigation.

The agency should consider three potential avenues of outside review to shore up confidence that it's managing assets and investing responsibly. The reviews would be conducted by:

- The New York State comptroller's office: It's an elective office -- independent of the governor -- that has shown it can perform professional audits of Port Authority activities. (New Jersey's comptroller is appointed by the governor.)

- The federal Government Accountability Office: This agency undertakes quality, independent analyses. With minor changes to its mission, it could be authorized to review the operations of the Port Authority, which was created by federal legislation.

- Nonpartisan groups: The authority could commission a review of its practices by independent groups such as the Citizens Budget Commission or Citizens Union. The scrutiny would help the agency transition from its stagnation and impotence.

The second and more difficult change will not happen as a result of external oversight. It's vital for the authority to resume its role as a regional engine of economic growth. That would require leadership by both New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, if he survives allegations made Friday that he knew about the lane closures.

The leadership of the authority itself, the board of commissioners and the executive director, should play a major role in revamping the agency.

The board and the executive director should announce that they will not honor requests by either state to fund routine maintenance or repair projects normally financed by the two states, and that they will not engage in financial high jinks designed to transfer agency money to the state budgets.

The greatest contribution Christie and Cuomo can make to our economic recovery is to allow the agency to invest in large-scale public projects that contribute to regional growth, create jobs, and increase competitiveness and transportation efficiency. The authority should present a long-term plan to Christie and Cuomo to do that.

The board and the executive director also must return the agency to a single, professional chain of command and decide that it will accept no patronage appointees from the two states.

If the board finds such a position too taxing, the executive director, as chief executive, could announce he will institute the changes on his own, and restore the agency as an independent organization serving the region, as foreseen by the original Port Compact of 1921.

It would be instructive to see if he gets fired for that.

Peter Goldmark, a former budget director of New York State, served as executive director of the Port Authority (1977 to 1985). He is a former publisher of the International Herald Tribune and headed the climate program at the Environmental Defense Fund.

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