Neat idea: publish a data-driven list of retailers' green practices

What if you want to support retailers that are more progressive and environmental than the average company? How do you know which ones to pick?

And if you help run a retailer, how do you know how to incrementally get more green relative to your peers?

Here's a neat idea: some non-profit run an annual ranking of retailers based on an objective assessment of their green practices. As an example: out of 100 points, they get 1 point for every ten percentage points of their electricity that is generates from renewable sources. With points awarded for clear, objective (and somehow verifiable) behavior, publishing the list will encourage companies to earn each additional point by improving their environmental behavior.

I was inspired by this from looking at a J. Crew catalog today. On the cover was a notice of their commitment to sustainability in the use of their paper sourcing through the Forest Sustainability Council certification process (with a particular certification number from the FSC) where they use 30% of post-consumer content and they only get wood from sustainable forests.

Looks like a campaign from Forest Ethics out of San Francisco has helped to put just this kind of public pressure on companies. They put out an annual Santa-themed naughty-or-nice ranking of big mailers (check out the 2008 version and the 2009 version).

The neat idea would be to expand this ranking into other objective assessments (perhaps with the purchase of renewable electricity, or LEED certification for their buildings or similar commitments to green sourcing) to not only put pressure on our companies but also offer companies a clear roadmap to earning better environmental credentials among the many citizens who care.

Part of the trick will be to determine exactly what those objective assessments should be. And part of the trick will be to get the publicity and credibility that the environmental measurements are legitimate and worth considering. But no one can manage what they can't measure, so the sooner we come up with some fair measurements of behavior (X% of resources devoted to renewable energy or X pounds of paper generated per employee or revenue or X% of products sold with renewable/organic/sustainable content), the sooner companies can work to achieve those objectives. That would be incremental progress -- the only kind there is!

Entrepreneurs who actually create jobs need a voice to shape policy and politics

The standard Republican narrative for economic development goes something like this: in order to attract businesses to come here, we need to create a business-friendly environment, and that means low taxes and fewer regulations.

Thus, according to the standard Republican playbook, the way to increase employment is to lower taxes, particularly on the wealthy.

The Chamber of Commerce follows that Republican line, fiercely opposing most of the Democratic Party's agenda (buying more and better health care and education through higher taxes on the wealthy, imposing more regulations on businesses to better improve the lives of regular people).

The great disconnect is between the entrepreneurs who are actually creating jobs (and the first job they create is their own) and the Republican-leaning Chamber of Commerce that purports to speak for them.

Chambers of Commerce (particularly federal and state) primarily represent established businesses. Big companies have budgets to join groups like the Chamber, while smaller, growing companies typically do not. So the "voice of business" tends to sound a lot like the voice of Republican low-tax ideology and push for the interests of big businesses (that tend to downsize and fire employees more than hire new ones).

This disconnect came home for me this legislative session in Springfield. I was working against a bill pushed by the banks that would essentially allow lenders to make more money from their business loans. Thus, the business borrowers would pay more money. The Illinois Chamber of Commerce supported the bill, siding with the banks over any business borrower. During committee testimony, a senior Republican legislator asked why in the world the Chamber of Commerce was supporting the bill. And the unspoken answer is that most business organizations promote the interests of their largest members -- big banks, big utilities and big insurance companies.

But entrepreneurs have diametrically opposed interests to the banks, utilities and insurance companies. We want cheaper credit and the banks want more expensive credit. We want cheaper energy and the utilites want more expensive energy. We want cheaper and better insurance and the insurance companies want to charge higher premiums and pay out fewer claims. So when there is a bill that could tilt the balance of power between entrepreneurs and the banks, insurance companies or utilities, guess which side the Chamber of Commerce always takes? Not the side of the job creators.

The frustrating thing is that I believe most legislators want to do the right thing -- and if we can show that entrepreneur-supportive policies which are generally Democratic-leaning policies (regulate the banks, insurance companies and utilities to create cheaper and better products) will create more jobs than the alternative, we'll get some traction. The trouble is there isn't enough of a voice for the entrepreneurs to explain the more effective way of creating jobs than just lowering taxes and regulation -- by explaining exactly how they have been successful so far at actually creating jobs. The Chamber is supposed to play that role, but they largely don't.

We need an organization of entrepreneurs to engage in politics and policy development. And by the way, I count leaders of non-profit organizations in the definition of entrepreneur. Someone who starts and runs a dance company or an after-school program can create the same amount of jobs as someone who starts a software company or construction company. Cutting corporate taxes doesn't affect the growth of a non-profit organization (that doesn't pay any). Developing public policies to encourage more employment has to include the needs of non-profits as well, or we'll skew the results and end up with suboptimal policies.

Of course, some Chambers are better than others, but the US Chamber of Commerce is now one of the main political organizations against President Obama and the Democratic-led Congress, planning to spend $50 million in 2010 to unseat Democrats, according to this Washington Post article.

For entrepreneurs who understand that Democrats have been delivering real job-growth policies (like the Wall Street reform package forged this week that will allow us to get cheaper credit or the health insurance reform law that will allow us to get cheaper and better health insurance), we need an organization of our own. And quickly, before voters make up their minds.

World Cup brings dreams of a World Election

It isn't easy to unite the world's attention in one place for one common purpose. Sport does it every two years: the Olympics during presidential summers and the World Cup two years later. It is a wonderful thing to remember that we Americans have much more in common with the people of Asia, Africa, Europe and South America than we differ, and following the rules and results of a soccer tournament at the same time as everyone else in the world is a palpable example of our commonality. 

The best and noblest extension of our essential commonality is a world election where all the people of the world have one vote.

Imagine it: candidates stumping for votes in different languages and in different continents, appealing to the better instincts of all of humankind. The same strong sense of national purpose that a presidential election generates when each citizen is asked to help shape the future of their country with their vote would be felt by all the people of the world as they are asked to help shape the future of the world.

Closer to home, we have a lot in common with the people of Mexico. Our economies are inextricably linked. Our labor markets and immigration policies are essentially two sides of the same coin. Our drug policies and violent crime challenges are similarly tied together. But we never get a chance to vote together -- Mexicans and Americans - ideas and proposals to improve our standard of living and solve problems. The nature of separate elections leads us away from thinking about solutions that improve lives on both sides of the Rio Grande. Imagine, instead, elections for something -- it almost doesn't matter what the office would be -- where we both voted among candidates looking for votes equally from Mexicans and Americans. Imagine the shifted dynamics in the development of the public will and the candidate platforms when millions more matter in the results of the election. Imagine the debates, both between the candidates and among the electorate, when everyone affected by the policies gets an equal vote in the outcome.

That democratic spirit could sweep the entire world.

For the first time in the history of the world, thanks largely to information technology, it is feasible for billions of us (if not quite all six billion of us) to vote in the same election at about the same time and all participate in the same debate on how best to improve our shared circumstances. 

I want to join a world debate triggered by an world election in my lifetime. Because the debate, discussion and eventual decision by the people will be among the best steps towards justice for all the people of the world we can possibly take.

"Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better, or equal hope in the world?" Abraham Lincoln

What do we need for a stronger economy? An entrepreneurial culture.

This is insightful.

Eric Lefkofsky, one of the most successful business leaders in Chicago believes that the key to sparking our Midwestern economy is a change in culture.

We have the cash. We have the talent. Why are we not growing as many new businesses as California or New York?

Because we don't value risk. We don't embrace entrepreneurs. We are stuck in a culture of risk-aversion.

And that is something we can change today.

Here is his example.

In order to innovate you need a culture that honors risk taking.  One of my co-panelists summed it up perfectly.  When the day comes where a 35 year old husband and father comes home from work one day and says to his wife, “honey I just quit my job today to launch a start-up” and she says “that’s great news” – that’s when you’ll have a culture that honors risk taking.

Unfortunately, we don’t have that culture yet in Chicago.  We don’t encourage people to drop everything and pursue their dreams.   We don’t encourage them to sit in front of a white board and sketch out untested solutions.  We don’t throw money at new ideas.

We don’t start off believing, we start off disbelieving.

The same is true in politics. Too often, the initial reaction to a bill or a proposal or a great idea is to say why it can't be done, why the established powers will never allow it and why it won't happen.

Instead, we need to embrace the new ideas and the new policies that are relevant for growing our economy, not the economy of 1930 or 1950 or 1970.

We need to look at immigration policy (something I debated last night on Beyond the Beltway) as an opportunity to forge a new North American Union, similar to the European Union, to reflect our inextricably linked destinies in Mexico, the US and Canada, rather than reflexively try to throw out the undocumented who stream north.

We need to look at higher education as an economic driver if we reject prestige-driven performance measures (like the US News and World Report rankings) and develop our own performance measures that focus on economic growth through smarter students at the lowest possible cost.

We need to look at our transportation network as another driver of economic growth, and realize our failure to embrace high speed rail for decades has put us at the mercy of oil-producing nations and kept our cities in the Midwest too far apart to operate as one regional unit -- sapping the potential of tying the intellectual capital of our universities to the business savvy of Chicago and smaller cities.

But it all starts with embracing risk and embracing the failure that comes with risk. We should reject the safe path. That leads to mediocrity. It's a powerful thought that our personal valuation of risk can lead to major economic growth for the region -- and significantly better public policies.

How do we build a social norm that celebrates risk?

Taxes....to bury the Axis

We're in the middle of two wars.

The way to pay for those wars is through taxes.

In 1943, in the midst of World War Two, the Walt Disney company put out this video starring Donald Duck to explain why "every American should pay their income tax, gladly and proudly."



(Thanks to Adam Bonin for the link)

Video: Change Washington's thinking by recruiting your mayor

Courtesy of the Kansas City Light Rail blog, here is some video of me at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association's annual meeting talking about the power of one individual to change the thinking of federal legislators by convincing their local elected officials to support high speed rail. 

I'm a believer in progressive advocacy starting from the bottom up. 

The start of Obama's health insurance reform: Room 400 of the Capitol Building in Springfield

I'm a bit inspired by Glenn Beck tonight to write up this post I've been percolating for a few weeks.

He's explaining on his TV show how both Barack Obama is a revolutionary straight out of the 60s implementing a decades-long plan to take over the country. That's why, in his view, President Obama spent so much time passing health care reform. Now the radical is ready for the next sucker punch to America in order to launch a socialist takeover.  That's his theory as to why President Barack Obama spent so much of his political capital to pass health insurance reform into law.

Here is mine.

This picture is Room 400 of the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield (thanks to http://www.ilstatehouse.com/ for the link). It's a beautiful Senate hearing room on the 4th floor. And it's where State Senator Barack Obama spent hours and hours in 2003 and 2004 holding hearings as the Chair of the Health and Human Services Committee.

You see, when the Democrats took control of the Illinois Senate in November 2002, Senator Barack Obama could have chaired almost any committee he wanted as a member with some seniority. He chose Health and Human Services. Because even then, one can surmise, he knew that our fundamentally broken health care system was one of the largest anchors pulling down the standard of living of regular folks. And that finding out how to improve that system to help regular people was one of the best uses of his political capital.

I remember watching him chair a committee hearing. The room was packed, but tired, because there was a lot of testimony and a lot of witnesses. State governments administer very large health insurance programs (Medicaid is a joint federal-state program and states have a lot of flexibility to design their own systems) and at the time, Illinois was in the midst of a significant expansion of Medicaid through a new AllKids program. It was rather groundbreaking stuff. There were a lot of experts and advocacy groups sharing perspectives on the consequences of the failures of our health care system and proposals to better regulate insurance companies or expand eligibility to Medicaid for lower-income people, week after week. The hearings were long and frequent. The subject matter was difficult and complicated. And Chairman Obama drank it all in. One question he asked a health care expert at the end of her testimony during a long hearing captured for me his approach to health care policy: "for my own edification, would you mind elaborating on...."  He was personally intellectually engaged in the very knotty problem of diagnosing the structural shortcomings of our health care system and prescribing policy solutions to ameliorate the worst shortcomings.

He spent the time to learn and understand how bad our health insurance really is in practice. He knows the details. He knows the nuances. He knows the consequences. He understands, as only a legislator engaged in the battle for policy improvements against a hostile industry can know, just how important better regulations and policies are to improve the lives of and prevent catastrophes to regular people. And he knew all this before he went to Washington.

So when President Obama faced conventional wisdom in Washington suggesting he scale back the year-long effort or settle for small steps and moving on to the next issue, he refused to quit. And I'm convinced all those hours in Room 400 of the Capitol Building chairing the Health and Human Services Committee came back to him while in the Oval Office these last 14 months to steel his resolve to see health insurance reform through. Because he knew -- he knew -- how people would continue to suffer needlessly without it.

That knowledge of how bad our health system is now and the understanding of why major (but commonsense) government regulations over the for-profit health insurance companies that drove President Obama is also the key for why more and more people over the last week are turning to support the new law. Because as people learn what the law does (and then learn that, before the Obama law, insurance companies could and did throw people out of coverage when they got sick and could and did refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing condition and could and did take premiums for years and then not pay for medical bills after a lifetime cap), people come to the same conclusion that Chairman Barack Obama came to in Springfield: we need the government to regulate the insurance companies. A lot.

I'm proud that Chairman Barack Obama delivered on health insurance reform for the country. And Glenn Beck's theories of the source of Obama's determination to improve the system notwithstanding, I'm heartened that a big part of the basis of his drive to improve the system came from a full and complete diagnosis of the fundamental shortcomings of our health care system forged in Room 400.

The future of successful cities: massive expansion of universities

This New York Times article explains how New York University intends to expand its physical campus in the City by 40%.

Forty percent!

There are 40,000-some students at NYU today. By 2031, NYU expects to educate 46,500.

That's how to lead the future! As University President John Sexton said "for New York to be a great city, we need N.Y.U. to be a great university."

That means Chicago should be actively encouraging Northwestern, DePaul, Loyola, UIC and the University of Chicago (not to mention Columbia, Roosevelt and Robert Morris) to each be expanding as aggressively as their endowments can support. That's how we'll build the future leaders of our economy. And that's how we'll make Chicago great.

Similarly, Downstate cities in Illinois should do everything in their power to grow the universities in their communities. They should bend over backwards to attract for-profit colleges like Robert Morris to their downtowns. And every community should see their community colleges as engines for growth to spin-off private colleges and other partnerships to grow their educational engine.

I know there's always some blowback from 'the community' that opposes university expansion. That means the expansion should be inclusive of the people who live around the university (especially with investments like hiring students to assist public schoolteachers with their classrooms once a week -- a great program I participated in at the University of Chicago). But it should not mean that expansion is halted. The only path to greatness as a city, region and nation is through intelligence and wisdom. Universities more than any other institution generate that intellectual capital. We need them to be larger and stronger.

Great video on taxing banks a tiny fraction to fund the government

While this is from a UK campaign, the premise is an excellent one: tax banks' speculative investments by a tiny bit in order to fund the government.

It's a great idea and long overdue, especially as income inequality is at its highest level since the 1920s and massive government budget deficits are hurting our economy (we're not investing in education nearly enough, as an example).

They call it the Robin Hood tax. I like it.

Scott Lee Cohen shows Illinois should use runoffs for primary elections

Illinois primaries should use a runoff, like Chicago elections, to make sure we don't nominate someone the majority of voters wouldn't want.

Scott Lee Cohen's 26% victory (ahead of well-respected Deputy Majority Leader Art Turner's 22% showing) in a six-man race has shown the danger of our plurality elections. When anyone can win with 26% of the vote.....anyone can win.

Republicans might also be feeling a bit concerned with their gubernatorial nominee Senator Bill Brady. He earned 20% of the vote – a virtual tie with his colleague Senator Kirk Dillard. Conventional wisdom suggests the conservative Downstater Brady might be a weaker candidate than the majority of Republicans would have liked.

The easiest way to fix this problem is to hold a runoff election. If no one earns the support of the majority of voters, then no one has yet earned the nomination. A runoff a month or two later between the top two candidates would settle the question and ensure the nominee has the most support in the party.

Does anyone doubt that Representative Turner would earn more support among Democrats than Scott Lee Cohen? And while it's an open question whether Senator Dillard would earn more support than Senator Brady among Republicans, it's a question that ought to be asked and answered in a runoff election. A runoff would guarantee the right person who represent the party, because that person would earn a majority of support, not just 20 or 26 percent in a multi-candidate lottery.

Some political scientists would note that primary runoff elections were traditionally used in Southern states to deny blacks a chance to ever elect anyone. In the land of Obama, that isn't a problem. African-American candidates can earn a majority of the primary vote in Illinois. Just ask Robin Kelly who earned 58% of the vote this week (or Jesse White).

Some others might argue that spending another month or two in a runoff election would take too long. With our early February primary, there is plenty of time to hold a runoff in late March or April. And another month of exposure to the top two candidates in a runoff election would be a very helpful thing for democracy.

Both Chicago and Springfield voters are used to runoffs in city elections. The Illinois General Assembly should require the use of runoffs for statewide primary elections as well to avoid any more mistakes where the person the majority of the party wouldn't want wins the primary.