Anyone waiting for Washington to fix their problems is likely to be waiting for a long time. The news lately feels like some sort of conspiratorial plot to turn us all into anarchists, delivering a steady rebuke to the concept of effective government action.
Elevated joblessness rips at the American soul while Washington devotes itself to raising obscene amounts of campaign cash. The odds that a meaningful job creation initiative will emerge from the capital before November are roughly equivalent to those of Dominique Strauss-Kahn becoming pope.
But while the center of national power may be a void, creative people in myriad localities are increasingly taking matters into their own hands, forging innovative solutions to vexing problems tearing at their communities. In the Cincinnati area, an entity known as the Strive Partnership -- a fusion of about 300 local, non-profit, social service agencies, foundations, school districts, universities and private businesses -- has organized to prepare area young people with the skills needed to embark on successful careers.
Since coming into existence six years ago, the partnership already has produced dividends -- higher retention rates at participating universities and improved reading levels at local schools.
Young people need jobs, and area businesses need capable workers. Schools need effective strategies to increase their graduation rates. Social service agencies traditionally pursue distinct areas of focus, from boosting preventative health care to stemming gang violence. But before the Strive Partnership, all of these actors operated independently, with little coordination and no central database to highlight the problems that needed tackling most urgently.
"It was spray and pray, investing in a lot of stuff and hoping it works," says Jeff Edmonson, the partnership's former executive director, and now managing director of the Strive Network, a new entity exporting the Cincinnati model to other communities, including Boston, Houston and Seattle. "Investments were falling into a black hole in terms of educational outcomes. You would address third-grade reading and then your high school graduation rates would go down."
The principle behind the partnership is both elegantly simple and adaptable to local circumstances: Put concerned people in one room, agree upon statistically definable goals, and then coordinate action and spend the dollars to hit the targets.
"The ultimate goal is to see these outcomes consistently trend in the right direction," Edmondson says. "You are essentially creating infrastructure to make sure that investments are focused in the right areas."
But the significance of this success goes beyond the Cincinnati area, highlighting the sort of pragmatism and creativity that we need to draw on nationally if we are to have any shot at digging ourselves out of this formidable hole. Organizations like the Strive Partnership are an effective response, presenting a useful strain of resourcefulness, and an antidote to the paralysis of our times. Its existence flows from the same human impulse that created the federal institutions that now seem so feckless: When people with shared interests join together to pursue solutions to societal problems, those problems become more manageable, and the available resources more potent.
Regular readers of this column have divined that I am suspicious of anything that smells like a feel-good initiative for its own sake. I am dubious of supposed fixes to our underemployment epidemic -- from the Obama administration's faith in the innate bounce-back properties of the market, to the Republican notion that prosperity stems from handing out tax cuts to the ultra-rich.
I don't buy the oft-repeated canard that we can ride job training back to full employment, as if high unemployment were merely a mismatch between available skills and open positions. And I confess to being distrustful of philanthropy, which generally seems more like an exercise in public relations than a coherent strategy to address problems.
For all of these reasons, I am viscerally prone to questioning any organization that aims -- as the Strive Partnership does -- to elevating "every child, every step of the way, cradle to career." (Right, and after that, on to putting every retiree in a beachfront mansion, while delivering world peace for good measure.)
But cynicism never fixed a problem (not unless you work for Jon Stewart). Simply bemoaning the pitiful state of our politics and complaining about the hopelessness of these times is no solution. In the next few months, I'd like to use this space to explore promising efforts at confronting deep-seated problems -- first, efforts aimed at job creation -- in the hopes of identifying what might work on a bigger scale. I'd like to hear from you, if you have suggestions about what to spotlight.
The problem with the state of American life is not that we've become a nation of lazy dolts who have squandered our frontier legacy. It is not that we have become selfish, small-hearted and inured to the troubles afflicting our age (though you can get that feeling, if you look to national events to define us.) The problem is that we have been unable to mobilize our best ideas in the service of what can only be called the greater good. Our intelligence and decency have somehow been walled off from our political sphere.
But the more local you go, the less this feels true. The sort of public-private partnership they have forged in Cincinnati is no panacea, but it is more than something. And it is a crucial reminder that we do have people in our midst who have effective ideas about how to get the country back to work.
Energetic and passionate, Edmondson is inclined toward technocratic language. He distills most problems down to issues of metrics, as befitting someone sprung from the educational reform movement, with its emphasis on numerically based assessment of teachers -- sometimes ignoring the fact that teachers in low-income areas often function as social workers, with mere test scores failing to capture their impact.
In a recent TEDx Cincy talk, Edmondson notes how the Strive Partnership's database can tell from the minute that a child is born that both parents are working, flagging that some child care will be needed. Good enough, but in Ohio -- as in most states -- subsidized child-care programs have been slashed dramatically, relegating many low-income families to endless wait lists. Simply identifying a need is a very different thing from satisfying it.
Yet when I put this criticism to Edmonson, suggesting that this might be a case of his faith in the process masking the reality of scarcity, he offers up real life examples that challenge this characterization: When Ohio cut funds for low-income child care programs, the Partnership immediately recognized the need, and one key member -- the United Way -- stepped in with alternative funding.
But could the rise of public-private partnerships further weaken social faith in government just as we may need it most? Will the citizenry further embrace mindless tax-cutting and the dismantling of public education, taking heart that Bill Gates and the United Way can attend to life's problems?
Edmondson doesn't buy it, and let us hope that he is correct.
"When we're in this new normal when we know a dollar has to go further than it did before, we have to start thinking in a new way," he says. "We're not going to see people shirk their responsibility. We're going to see them wanting to get involved. In history, good ideas have stuck around, and typically they have stuck around because they have worked."
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Until the money is taken out of the process, the majority of us are screwed.
The established parties are very much against this, as it would dimish thier power (whice IS the problem with DC) and increase the power of the American citizen.
If we do not go with public financed elections then "We The People" will no longer have a say in our own governance.
Simple choice I'd say...
I'll be the one to say it. Conservatives have had a lock step on US economic policy decisions since President Richard Nixon days - 43 years with dems only for 15 of those years. Even during the 15 yrs of Dem presidents they governed in the conservative bend. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA with most dems in congress voting against it. He raised taxes with most GOP voting against it. Obama cut taxes many times on small businesses plus he kept Bush43 tax cuts, his health care reform was a GOP template, his financial reform was weakened by Wall St lobbyists.
So when and where have there been anything other than conservative financial and economic governance since Richard Nixon. This economic decline lay right at the foot of conservative ideology of 'free markets' and unabashed tax cutting, de-regulations, mergers/acquisitions of companies in the 1980s, outsourcing jobs, and privatizing of govt functions.
This is the world brought on by conservatives. Folks, start telling the truth, then DC will not be in gridlock. People will know who created the problems, and who keeps the problems from being solved.
People think Romney will bring jobs. How does electing a new president suddenly make millions of unskilled Americans skilled? It doesn't, yet people believe it because our society looks for the quick fix which never works. The only thing that can improve our economy is finding the millions of unemployed Americans, finding which skills they have, and sending them to community colleges to develop these skills, then matching them with the correct job. I don't see any politician suggesting this.
A last thing I'd say, is have a look at the Mondragon Cooperative in the Basque area of Spain. They are going gang busters.
Larry Ely pvrelocal@gmail.com
Putting all of our investment into political campaigns is not part of the solution.
We need public-private alternatives to school that do more with less, including more hands on training, gender separation during the crazy hormonal years between 13-18, physical fitness, using youthful energy to complete work-intensive projects in the community, cooperation, values, foreign language training. etc. training with the hopes we live peacefully here in the civilian world but the preparedness that we may not always globally.
We need more money in all public schools for a better education for all. I don't know where you are coming from with your "crazy hormonal years" thing, but that's absurd as young adults need to learn how to work with and interact in a mature manor. If you are hung up on human sexuality, then take that up with the the parents of the children, and their responsibilities of teaching their kids well about such matters. That does not belong in the school system to correct. As for work study, why not push Peace Corps for our youth? It facilitates the interaction of our youth to learn about other cultures, and also for other cultures to learn about Americans as well.
A sound Public School system for everyone with budgets that allow for teaching the technical studies as well as with the arts coupled with a good physical fitness program for all is the best solution: I know, as that is how I grew up and experienced in my school years, and have no regrets as it worked for me, and also for many others as well as my wife as well. Couple that with sound vocational guidance as to our children continuing on to college, or to technical trades is needed as well: Study the successful countries that have such programs in place, Germany for one. And just where are they in the world economy and quality of life for their citizens?
Extremely well, compared to us.
I disagree. The problem is that that these ideas have been walled off, but we are at am impasse is philosophical views. We always have been and always will be. What is different about this now, than in the past is that conservatives could compromise because we could fund big government. That is no longer the case.
Keep in mind we have been moving towards the progressive ideal for the last 120 years. It has always been conservatives who compromise. The compromise has always been between far left liberalism and moderate liberalism.
Why? Because dolts is all this is left of the once-proud Republican party of Ike, Javits and Dirksen.
It would be foolish for the Teapublicans to want to educate the citizenry; an intelligent voter is one who examines the issues and comes to an opinion based on empirical evidence--not his or her ideology, circumstantial and hearsay evidence . . . or lies.