NC Media Watch

Being a visionary is hard work -- Two

Russ Steele

As the Grass Valley City Council and the planning staff think about future development, they need to consider where and how jobs will be created.

Richard Florida has column worth their consideration at CATO Unleashed: THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE IN THE GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY

The U.S. is at the forefront of this global creative economy. Over the next decade, it’s projected to add 10 million more creative sector jobs, according to the newest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the present rate of increase, creative jobs alone will soon eclipse the total number of jobs in all of manufacturing. Already, more than 40 million Americans work in the creative sector, which has grown by 20 million jobs since the 1980s. It accounts for more than $2 trillion USD—or nearly half—of all wages and salaries paid in the U.S.

Future development must promote the development of an a local creative economy.  It is not more of the same.  Being a visionary is truely hard work.

More on the AP’s cheap journalism

Russ Steele

George Mason University’s non-partisan Statistical Assessment Service  gives us another reason for questioning AP stories in The Union, especially when the AP does their own amateur polling.  Trevor Butterworth writes at STATS:

How Not To Poll Climate Experts on Global Warming Movie
June 28, 2006

Cheap journalism at the Associated Press reveals little about accuracy

“The nation's top climate scientists are giving "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy,” announces the Associated Press. But what does that really mean?

Well, for starters, it’s the polling equivalent of grade inflation as five stars doesn’t mean 100 percent accuracy.

"The former vice president's movie — replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets — mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from The Associated Press."

But that’s small potatoes when forced, by implication, to accept that there are only 19 “top climate scientists” in the entire United States.

The AP, apparently, “contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory. Most scientists had not seen the movie, which is in limited release, or read the book.”

So why doesn’t the headline say – “nation’s top climate scientists have not seen Gore warming movie” – which is the salient lede in this bit of amateur polling? Or even "some climate scientists ok Gore movie's accuracy." The answer is that neither of these headlines makes for a compelling story.

Who do you supose would go to an Al Gore movie?  Those that agree with him or disagree?  No suprize that those that went thought it was great. But what about the other 81 who did not. There were a number that did not agree. Here is one.

It helps when you know the facts

Russ Steele

Lee Hayes writes in an Other Voices We can have it both ways with smart growth,  June 29, 2006

With regard to the ongoing saga of Grass Valley's SDAs and major "planned" development in the city, there appear to be two important assumptions being made which need to be examined further.

One is "We can't have it both ways " (slow and capped growth as well as affordability and a robust economy) ... the other is "We need development to generate more residential tax revenue to keep our town affordable."

Lee lived on Cape Cod, and he contends that they have smart growth, affordable housing, and a robust economy. They have it both ways according to Lee.

To check this out, I went on Google and asked for Cape Code affordable housing information. In 2005  the Cape Cod Commission  published a housing nexus study. Here is what it said about affordable housing after years of smart growth on Cape Cod:

Further, it is the consultant’s view that home ownership options do not really exist for the Cape’s roughly 13,450 very low and low-income renter households. For even 3,250 moderate-income renters, ownership options are limited to properties significantly below the lowest quartile of housing values. Since 2000, the home buying power of moderate-income households grew by 40 percent but home prices doubled. That results in a 60 percent loss of real buying power in five years. In order to return the home buying capacity of moderateincome residents to the level it had five years ago would require an estimated 1,000 moderately price homes county-wide, reserved for moderate-income, year-round residents. To address the homeownership needs of moderate income residents more fully and to begin to address the ownership needs of non-elderly households earning between 70-80 percent of median income would require an additional 1,500 affordable ownership units countywide.

In all, the consultant estimates current affordable housing need at no less than 4,300 housing units, including 1,800 rentals for very-low and low-income residents and 2,500 ownership units for Low and Moderate-income renters. Given the Cape’s projected trends in household and employment growth, the consultant sees the need for affordable housing growing by an additional 200-225 units per year for the next decade.

In the consultant’s view, there are three interconnected reasons why Cape Cod has and will continue to experience problems of housing affordability for the foreseeable future. First, is the appeal of the Cape as a destination for vacation and retirement homes. A significant share of all homes countywide sell to buyers who do not rely on local employment to support their home purchase and earn significantly more money than local residents. Secondly, these two groups of buyers (along with transient visitors) generate demand for a relatively large number of low-wage jobs. Wealthier buyers not only drive up the cost of housing, they create demand for more workers with little capacity to afford that cost of housing. Finally, the limited supply and high cost of developing land on the Cape limits the ability of housing production to keep up with both local and external demand. As the huge cohort of “baby boomers” reaches its maximum earning potential and begins retiring over the next decade, the external market pressures on Cape Cod real estate will likely increase; so too will their demands for additional low-wage jobs.

This is clearly another example of supply and demand. As in Nevada County, the housing supply on Cape Cod is not keeping up with the demand. Slow growth, and limited land for development, has limited supply, and the price of housing is going up.  Affordable housing is now out of reach of local citizens.  Until the supply goes up, the prices will continue to climb, just as prices have in Nevada County.  You cannot have it both ways!

Being a visionary is hard work! (edited)

Russ  Steele

UPDATE: Trina Kleist writes Mixed vote on housing rules, June 29, 2006
               Grass Valley to exceed guidelines but reduce density

The Union retitled and edited the orginal web based story below, which my comments are based on, specifically the "be visionary" subheading.

Trina Kleist writes (on the web) the Council agrees on more development, public input, June 28, 2006

Residents ask them to "be visionary" and avoid sprawl

I was encouraged by this report, but troubled as well. We will examine both cases in my comments below the criteria development proposals must meet before the city will take up their applications.

• Increase the amount of land dedicated to business use. Together, the four projects are proposing 80 acres for business parks, while city guidelines call for 443. Council members agreed their target would be between 211 and 300 acres, which matches the need for business acreage projected by a recent economic study. That figure would help balance new houses with new jobs.

The question is, what kind of facilities and associated business will Grass Valley need over the next 20 years to generate local revenue sources, and how much land will these facilities need? They need to look forward and ask,  how will wealth be created in the next 20 years?  What kind of facilities, skills and education, will be needed to support the development of this wealth in Grass Valley. They will find some clues in Toller’s book, which is reviewed below.  If the 443 acres is based on the past needs of local manufacturing business, or for that matter 211 or 300, the council is making a bad decision. The decision must be based on future needs, not an extension of the past.  As I said, being a visionary is hard work!   

• Install infrastructure on business and commercial land for the timely creation of job opportunities.

As we move from manufacturing toward a service economy, and participate in the global information economy, broadband telecommunication infrastructure will be as important as water, sewer and power. It may be more important than new roads. Future products will be based on our creativity, design and innovation. The resource materials will be data, education, and genius. The products will, information, innovation and design.   All of these resources and products move over broadband networks. The infrastructure needed to support wealth development over the next 20 years is broadband fiber optics. DSL and cable with choke points will not do.  All new development must have fiber to the home and business!  Period!

• Sell at least 20 percent of the housing at prices that working families and low-income wage earners can afford.

These inclusionary requirements will drive up the cost of all houses, unless the 20 percent are much smaller, built on smaller lots, using lower cost materials, with fewer amenities, then all owners in the development must shoulder the cost of the 20 percent which are deemed affordable.  Here is where the hard work of being a visionary is going to be important, how to create affordable homes with out creating a modern getto. How does the City Council propose the developers pay for these affordable houses, given the cost of land. material and labor? Could they waive all fees on the affordable houses, plus all commercial buildings that promote high paying jobs? Permit higher densities?  Being a visionary is not easy, it requires innovative out of bounds thinking. More on this later.

• Build traffic projects to soften the impact of additional cars.

Gosh, I hope these are not code words for more transit. We have discussed the advantage of broadband. But, it is more than “build traffic projects.”  The fastest growing process for reducing traffic impact is promoting work from home. Look at this graphic?  The impediments to working from home are managerial and operational, once the communications networks are in place. The City Council can start the visionary process by allowing city employees to work from home where possible, and encourage all new businesses to have similar policies.  The City Council can demonstrate their visionary skills  by creating an incentive package in the permitting process that promotes work from home opportunities in all local businesses. Yes, I know we cannot all work from home, but more than you think, once we are all shopping on the Internet.

• Use innovative design approaches, including architecture that matches Grass Valley’s historical character, mixing business and residential properties, providing public squares, and building bicycle and walking trail networks.

Planners need to make sure that all public places have access to wireless networks that allow people to work and shop from any public place. Mom’s and Dad’s can work from the playground and public parks if they must.  Planners can be visionary, by building bike lanes into the road network, not building bicycle trails, which cost more and are used less.  Ask the bike to work community, they want bike lanes not bike trails!

• Provide advanced wireless or fiber communications infrastructure to encourage telecommuting.

Yes!  But, developers need to provide both fiber optics to businesses and homes, and wireless in all public places.

Now to the real hard part. Why is the City Council, the City Staff, and the developers required to be the visionaries. What about the public?  I would like to see those making demands for affordable housing to come up with solutions that take in account the cost of land, materials and labor, without requiring all the other home buyers in the development from paying for those affordable dwellings. Nor, requiring all the tax payers in the City to foot the bill, or the developer for that matter. How would those demanding non-visionary thinkers solve this problem.  Why should the City Council do all the hard work of being a visionary?   

And for god gosh sake, if we must have more public meetings the Council should not allow people to waste our time with rants on what they do not want. If they cannot contribute to the solution, they should just sit down and shut up be quiet.

One of Al Gores Canaries has escaped

Russ Steele

Al Gore is telling us melting glaciers are global warming’s canary in the coal mine, alerting us to the danger of CO2 generated by human activities. A study by Chylek, etal, published in peer reviewed Geophysical Research Letters  “Greenland warming of 1920-1930 and 1995-2005.”  indicates that at least one of Al Gores canaries has escaped, if in fact it was ever in the cage. The paper finds the average rate of warming was considerably higher within the 1920-1930 decade than within the 1995-2005 decade.  In fact, the earlier warming rate was 50% greater than the most recent one. The warming was higher when the CO2 concentrations were lower, so how are the two connected?

Al, help me understand your junkscience when the real science does not support your claims.

Chylek, "we find no direct evidence to support the claims that the Greenland ice sheet is melting due to increased temperature caused by increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide."

CO2 Science has the full analysis of Chylek’s paper.

Does the AP tell it like it is?

Russ Steele

I have often been critical of AP stories in The Union, and was challenged by the Editor to show were the AP was not truthful.  I provided some examples, here is another example.

This Press Release issued by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

AP INCORRECTLY CLAIMS SCIENTISTS PRAISE GORE’S MOVIE

June 27, 2006

The June 27, 2006 Associated Press (AP) article titled “Scientists OK Gore’s Movie for Accuracy” by Seth Borenstein raises some serious questions about AP’s bias and methodology.

AP chose to ignore the scores of scientists who have harshly criticized the science presented in former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Full details here.

Summer reading?

Russ Steele

The leadership of the National Chamber Foundation, the educational arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,  recommends its board of directors read 10 books “that drive the debate.”

National Chamber Foundation’s Top 10 Reading Selections

    1.    Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy by Moises Naim
    2.    Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz
    3.    The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy by Peter Huber and Mark Mills
    4.    In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State by Charles Murray
    5.    Our Brave New World by Charles Gave, Anatole Kaletsky, and Louis-Vincent Gave
    6.    The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle: What We’ve Learned; How to Fix It by Henry N. Butler
    7.    An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths by Glenn Reynolds
    8.    The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor
    9.    Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care by Arnold Kling
    10.    Education Myths What Special-Interest Groups Want You To Believe About Our Schools – And Why It Isn’t So by Jay P. Greene

It is going to be busy summer, so far I have only read number 7, An Army of Davids.  My review here.  Given the number letters to the editor and other voices concerning our local heath crisis, we all should be reading number 9,  Chrisis of Abundance.  I can highly recommend An Army of Davids. If you would like your own copy click on the image in the left column.

“They just don”t know” - Al Gore

Russ Steele

Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, writing in the Wall Street Journal shares this with WSJ readers. (No link, subscription required)

The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim -- in his defense -- that scientists "don't know… They just don't know."

If science does not know, why then are we spending billions on fixing a problems that science cannot define.  Yet your liberal Democratic state legislature knows better, they have decided to fix global warming and in the process, increase taxes and drive jobs from the state. Details here. Business Coalition Says Dozens Of Pending Bills Hurt CA Economy

Revolutionary Wealth

Russ Steele

I was a big fan of Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s early books, Future Shock, Third Wave and Powershift. But when they published War and Anti-War they lost me, and I wonder off looking for the future elsewhere. When I bought Revolutionary Wealth, I was hoping for some insight and enthusiasm for the future that has been evident in their early books. I was disappointed.   While I found the book interesting, easy to read, it seemed so yesterday. This could have been a shorter book, more tightly written.

The Toffler’s spend to much time promoting some of their favorite ideas, especially prosumerism, in which people consume the products which they produce. I agree, that volunteers contribute to our economy in ways that are not considered in the calculation of our national wealth, but I find it hard to believe volunteerism “is about to explode and compel radical changes in the way we measure, make and manipulate wealth.”

There are some good insights in the book. This one rang so true in the discussion on time and its relation to space, knowledge, and effectiveness as translated into wealth.

Innovative businesses are going 100 mph; civil collective groups at 90 mph; the US family at 60 mph, labor unions at 30 mph, government bureaucracies at 25 mph, education at 10 mph, non-governmental organizations including the United Nations at 5 mph, US politics and the participation process at 3 mph, and law enforcement and the law it enforces at 1 mph.

We see news reports everyday where our legal system and educational institutions are not keeping up with technology. This has to change, but the Toffler’s offer few practical solutions for reforming our industrial education model, which has not kept up with the needs of the global information economy.

Some of strengths of the book are in the discussion of information technology on knowledge creation and capitalization, to include cell phones or other micro-devices that serve simultaneously as identity devices, bank accounts, and knowledge devices. Another one of those head slapping insights in the book –– wealth creation from knowledge does not consume the resource material, like manufacturing consumes exhaustible commodities. In fact the more knowledge created the more valuable knowledge becomes, especially as we expand our knowledge based economy. In the back of my head I knew this, but now it is on the forefront of my mind.

The book closes with a review of China, India, Japan, and Europe as either threats or potential disasters. Japan and Europe are not the threats, but demographic driven disasters.  The authors, while extolling the possibilities of Chinese capitalism, are careful to point out the many things that could go catastrophically wrong for China. They do a similarly balanced evaluation of India. This was a valuable section of the book, and should be read by everyone, as they are our future mega-competitors.

If you are interest in this book, please click on the image in the left hand column, I am hoping to offset the cost of this site through participation in the Amazon Associate program. If you click enough –– I get paid.

Who is having more fun, local bloggers or Union journalist?

Russ Steele

I spotted this looking through Romenesko’s daily report on the state of journalism.

Is anyone in journalism having fun any more?

National Journal

Bloggers are, says William Powers. "While mainstreamers cry in their beer -- or their herbal tea -- about the sorry state of journalism, those troublemaking bloggers are, in the finest tradition of hackdom, simply having a blast."

For the recored, I am having a blast.  I am not sure about The Union Reporters, but the Editor Pat Butler, and the Publisher Jeff Ackerman seem to be a bit stressed.  I wonder –– are they having any fun?  What do you think?