"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

--GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin

"OK, OK, maybe this [being a community organizer] is the first problem on the resume."

--Rudy Giuliani

I couldn't agree more. And Obama isn't the worst of the community-organizer crowd. Some other even more problematic community organizers without actual responsibilities:

• Jesus of Nazareth
• The Founding Fathers of the United States
• Paul Revere
• Jane Addams
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Rosa Parks
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Nelson Mandela
• Lech Walesa
• Václav Havel

Republican Convention—According to NYT:

White: 93%
African American: 2%
Latino: 5%

Men: 68%
Women: 32%

Democratic Convention—According to USA Today:

White: 56.7%
African American: 24.5%
Latino: 11.8%

Men: 50%
Women: 50%

United States:

White: 74%
Black/African American: 13.4%
Latino: 14.8%

Via Economist's View, this is interesting research finding that being laid off has a lasting impact on community engagement:

....

"What we find is that even just one disruption in employment makes workers significantly less likely to participate in a whole range of social activities — from joining book clubs to participating in the PTA and supporting charities," said Jennie E. Brand, a UCLA sociologist and the study's lead author. "After being laid off or downsized, workers are less likely to give back to their community."

The first study to look at the long-term impact of job displacement on social participation, the research found that workers who had experienced just one involuntary disruption in their employment status were 35% less likely to be involved in their communities than their counterparts who had never experienced a job loss due to layoff, downsizing or restructuring, or a business closing or relocating. Moreover, the exodus from community involvement continued not just through the spate of involuntary unemployment, but for the rest of the workers' lives.

"Social engagement often involves an element of social trust and a sense that things are reciprocal — that you give some support if you get some support, and you benefit from society if society benefits from you," said Brand, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA. "When workers are displaced, the tendency is to feel as though the social contract has been violated, and we found that they are less likely to reciprocate."

Along with University of Michigan sociologist Sarah A. Burgard, Brand looked at 4,373 participants in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which has tracked a group of 1957 Wisconsin high school graduates for more than 45 years, gathering detailed information on their IQs, education, careers, psychological well-being, family and social lives. Born between 1939 and 1940, the group belongs to what Robert D. Putnam, the author of the 2001 sensation, "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community," has described as "a cohort of joiners" or an American age group particularly inclined to participate in community and social groups.

Of the six forms of involvement studied by Brand and Burgard, youth and community groups experienced the strongest exodus followed by church and church groups, charitable organizations and leisurely activities, including country club attendance.

....

Colorado's Amendment 55, on the ballot this November, would require employees to have "just cause" before firing an employee, with just cause defined to include misconduct, substandard performance, and documented economic circumstances.

Although basing employee termination on just cause reasons is simply sound business practice, corporate interests in the Colorado will undoubtedly fight the initiative and make all sorts of "sky will fall" predictions about what will happen if it is enacted. There is little evidence, however, that a just cause standard would have any negative impact on employment and economic growth. Montana has had a just cause standard since the mid-1980s with no apparent negative economic impacts, as Barry Roseman notes in a recent issue brief.

One odd thing about the initiative: it exempts non-profits with fewer than 1000 employees (private employers are only exempted if they have fewer than 20 employees). There is little good reason to provide non-profit employees with fewer basic employment protections than for-profit employees, and no reason to think that non-profit employers are as a rule more virtuous than for-profit employers.

Harold Meyerson sees WPA-style jobs programs for addressing global warming.

Republican silence on economic matters stands in sharp contrast to the Democratic convention last week in Denver, where there were close to 20 forums on "green" jobs, reviving progressive taxation, balancing the budget, rebuilding infrastructure, the economy of alternative energy and the like. The Democrats have devised a macroeconomic strategy for a beleaguered economy. The party's commitment to alternative energy and green jobs opens the door for, among other things, a public-private jobs program, a WPA for the 21st century.

This policy does more than address America's energy needs. It also begins to grapple with American capital's systematic underinvestment in American jobs. Our banks and corporations, it's clear, have little interest in financing manufacturing here when they can get products built at a fraction of the cost abroad. With our private sector no longer creating the good jobs it did in decades past, it's the public sector, or the private sector with targeted tax dollars, that can create the construction, transportation and manufacturing jobs we need to build not just a more energy-efficient economy but also one that is more prosperous.

One gripe: Meyerson doesn't mention the important role training will have to play if the benefits of investment are going to be broadly shared. A lot of these jobs will require some degree of skill specialization and a basic education, which a striking number of Americans don't have. And investment isn't just about creating businesses- it's about building worker skills. Employers tend to underinvest in frontline workers compared to managers and other professionals, and, unfortunately, government tends to make the same pattern of investment. Human capital investments need to be reprioritized, too.

So I'm watching the Republican Convention on MSNBC, and Orrin Hatch, in an interview on the floor says that one of the issues this election is about is the "move toward socialism." Guess I missed the part about nationalizing the means of production in the Dem platform.

Sunday's NYT has a great op-ed from the incomparable Sarah Vowell on how college aid provided by the federal government helped her succeed:

....

I paid my way through Montana State University with student loans, a minimum-wage job making sandwiches at a joint called the Pickle Barrel, and — here come the waterworks — Pell Grants. Thanks to Pell Grants, I had to work only 30 hours a week up to my elbows in ham instead of 40.

Ten extra hours a week might sound negligible, but do you know what a determined, junior-Hillary type of hick with a full course load and onion-scented hands can do with the gift of 10 whole hours per week? Not flunk geology, that’s what. Take German every day at 8 a.m. — for fun! Wander into the office of the school paper on a whim and find a calling. I’m convinced that those 10 extra hours a week are the reason I graduated magna cum laude, which I think is Latin for “worst girlfriend in town.”

Twenty years after my first financial aid package came through, I have paid off my college and graduate school loans and I have paid back the federal government in income taxes what it doled out to me in Pell Grants so many, many, many, many times over it’s a wonder I’m not a Republican.

But I would like to point out that my perfectly ordinary education, received in public schools and a land grant university, is not merely the foundation on which I make a living. My education made my life. In a sometimes ugly world, my schooling opened a trap door to a bottomless pit of beauty — to Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong and Frank Lloyd Wright, to the old movies and old masters that have been my constant companions in my unalienable pursuit of happiness.

....

Among the things the mainstream media needs: less Broders and Brooks, more Vowells.

Just in time for Labor Day, American Rights at Work has a new ad out on the Employee Free Choice Act.

In his acceptance speech, Barack Obama declared "now is the time for to help families with paid sick days and better family leave." If anything, it's been that time in the United States for a while. A new report from CEPR on family leave policies in 21 high-income countries shows just how behind the times we've been as a nation:

The United States finishes 20th out of 21st when it comes to the total length of leave guaranteed to a two-parent couple -- 24 weeks. Only Switzerland provides less --14 weeks -- but 11 of those weeks are paid. The United States finishes last among the 21 countries when it comes to the generosity of paid leave. Neither Australia nor the United States have minimum standards for paid leave, but Australia does give new parents a $3,000 "baby bonus".

“The United States has the least generous parental leave policies of all 21 economies compared in this study,” said report co-author and CUNY Graduate Center professor Janet Gornick. “We pay a high price for our poor policy, though, because parental leaves improve the health and well-being of children and their parents and paid leaves provide families with crucial economic support at such an important time."

While the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) does set a minimum standard for parental leave, that leave is unpaid. Moreover, about 40 percent of U.S. workers are not protected by the FMLA. The FMLA does not cover workers in smaller establishments and also excludes employees with less than one year on the job.

"The FMLA falls well short of international best practices," said Rebecca Ray, a co-author of the report. "One of the biggest shortcomings is that current law makes no provisions for paid leave. Some employers do pay, but putting the full cost of parental leave on individual employers is neither fair, nor efficient."

As I mentioned before, I'm in Vancouver with no cable and a slow internet connection, so I haven't had a chance to watch Obama's acceptance speech yet. I'll withhold comment until then, but the speech certainly reads well. I dug the overall theme of "keeping the American promise alive":

... we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage; whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma. We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President - when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush.

We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that honors the dignity of work.

The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great - a promise that is the only reason I am standing here tonight.

And, I especially like this line—"America, now is not the time for small plans". It just may be that the era of the "the-era-of-big-government-is-over" thinking is over.

Public jobs have been putting marginalized people in the middle and working class for centuries- think of Irish-Americans in the police, African-Americans in social work, the military for rural whites, and so on. The topic doesn't come up much among anti-poverty advocates, but thanks to the long memory of the internet, it's pretty easy to read about these ideas. In 1996, William Julius Wilson gave an interview to Mother Jones defending a public jobs approach to ending inner city poverty.

Q: But why does the government need to provide work? Why not rely on the private sector for jobs?
A: A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery. Our study clearly shows that employers would rather not hire a lot of workers from the inner city. They feel people from the inner city are not job-ready, that the kids have been poorly educated, that they can't read, they can't write, they can't speak.

The problems we see today are going to be a hell of a lot worse in 10 years if we're not willing to face up to them. These kids are just not going to be absorbed into the economy, so what are they going to be doing? Well, we know. They're going to be making life pretty miserable for a lot of people.

In the short term, we have to have public-sector employment to get people back to work. In the long term, we're going to have to have programs to ensure that our kids are ready to enter the private labor market.

The Clinton era economic boom may have convinced some folks that a wisely-managed market can solve the problems of poverty and inequality, but the persistence of these problems and the history of public jobs tell a different story.

This has been a busy week for progressive economic policy wonks. It started with a cover story in The New York Times Magazine about Sen. Barack Obama’s economic positions; moved to “Poverty Day,” the day on which the U.S. Census Bureau releases income, poverty and insurance data; and will end with the release of EPI’s newest State of Working America report. To boot, numerous speakers at the Democratic Party National Convention have spoken about the problems facing working Americans.

Despite this week’s torrent of data and commentaries – despite this week’s torrent of words – about economic conditions, a coherent story about the problems, causes and solutions is missing. Rather, it seems as if progressive-minded leaders are pulling their punches. In his speech last night, for instance, vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke elegantly about the problems of working families but timidly about solutions. He briefly mentioned such fundamentally conservative solutions as tax cuts and welfare reform before moving on.

But at least Biden exuded passion. The night before, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner gave a keynote address that was essentially a laundry list of safe, small-bore (a.k.a. “bi-partisan”) economic policies divorced from any larger economic story. What point should working people in struggling communities like those in Virginia’s Appalachian or Southside regions take from Warner’s remarks? That education and rural broadband access are good?

The absence of an economic story illustrates a criticism voiced by economist James Galbraith in his recent book, The Predator State. Writes Galbraith:

Liberals continue to behave as though they face a philosophically coherent adversary and as though the politics of the day require formulating a program that responds to that adversary …. This leads to a paralysis of thought and action and to programs doomed to futility and failure from the beginning.

This failure of imagination when it comes to solutions leads to cautious, incremental steps ill-suited to today’s challenges. (A dynamic that Robert Kuttner describes in an article about balanced budgets in The American Prospect.) Until progressive economic critiques are coupled with a willingness to offer solutions flowing from the critiques, the prospects for meaningful reforms are limited, regardless of what the data say or which party controls the levels of government.

I'm not so sure Barkley would make a good chair of Half in Ten. From what I can tell, Barkley's highest priority is expanding opportunity so that poor folks can make it to the working and middle class. Mostly, Half in Ten is promoting policy that would increase income security and lessen material hardship. Their primary goal is to reduce poverty, not open doors for folks to move up and be integrated into mainstream society, and that isn't just a linguistic distinction.

That said, Barkley could chart a better direction for Half in Ten. And while we're dreaming, it would be extra cool to have him hanging around DC. Hopefully they could reconcile.

I'd been wondering for a while who might be a good replacement for John Edwards as chair of the Half in Ten anti-poverty campaign. I was initially thinking it should either be a Bono-like rock star, but American, or maybe a NASCAR driver, but Matt's post got me thinking that Charles Barkley might be a good replacement.

As Matt's post suggests, Barkley understands that poverty is mostly about opportunity structures and geography. He's also interested in a political career, at least according to Wikipedia, and, despite once being a Republican, now recognizes the damage that conservatism has done to America:

In February 2008, Barkley announced that he would be running for Governor of Alabama in 2014 as an Independent. He explained, "I don't like the way the Republicans are taking this country. Every time I hear the word "conservative," it makes me sick to my stomach, because they're really just fake Christians, as I call them.

On the con side, his gambling may raise some eyebrows—he claims to have once lost $2.5 million in six hours playing blackjack—but he's said recently he's quitting. Probably be a good idea to confirm that before any offer is extended.

Former NBA star and, in my view, the best basketball commentator on television, offers some good rhetoric for anti-poverty advocates in an interview with CNN. He focuses attention on systems better than most advocates do:

CNN.com: What do you think the Democrats need to do here to win the White House?

Barkley: I think they've got to just make sure to get those troops home from Iraq, that's a big deal. But No. 1, we've got to give poor people a chance. America is divided by economics, and we as Americans, we've got to do a better job of supporting poor people.

CNN.com: How?

Barkley: We've got to improve the public school system. If you're born in this country poor, whether you're white or black, you're going to be born in a bad neighborhood; you're going to go to a bad school. It's going to be very difficult for poor people to be successful.

Saying that he's "giving poor people a chance" is a good way of getting at unequal opportunity. If poverty is about anything, it's about being denied a chance to show what you're capable of.