Going Mainstream With the Obama Vegetable Garden

I’m a cynic when it comes to The New York Times and its reporting on culture, trends, dining, and style. Though I’m a fan of what is now seemingly one of the few print newspapers left in the world, normally, by the time it reports on, for example, a breakthrough “underground” album, that album is no longer breakthrough and it’s certainly no longer underground. The inescapable truth of the mainstream media is that it reports on and is viewed by, well, the mainstream—and not the underground.

So when I read in The Times that group of fifth graders from a DC elementary school will help Michelle Obama dig up the soil for a planned 1,100-square-foot vegetable garden, my cynicism goes out the window and all I can think is “How cool is this?” If The Times is reporting on this, perhaps community gardening is becoming mainstream!

It’s sad that that’s still my reaction, particularly since, for years, I’ve reported on, and been involved in local food initiatives. There is still a Gee Whiz quality to the Slow Food movement that is foreign to some, as well as somewhat of an “I-drive-a-hybrid” righteousness, which only turns people on the outside off.

So to see the Obamas, who are, if anything, gifted in their groundedness, doing some good ol’ hippie gardening, maybe more people in the cities and ‘burbiest of ‘burbs with a big backyard will do the same, and it won’t be perceived as weird or “earthy.”

Organic gardening and community gardens are nothing new, but they are anything but mainstream in a world of Costco, Sam’s Club, and in an age when everything is in season—always, because it’s shipped in from who-knows-where. You know the workman’s adage that “it’s five o’ clock somewhere”? Same applies with seasons in the food industry.

Our, at least my, previous generalized notion of the White House and its occupants is so standard, buttoned-up, inside-the-Beltway Box, that thinking of Mrs. Obama, the president, their kids, and a group of nearby public schoolers getting their hands dirty as they plant cilantro, chard, and berries, is just wonderful. There’s really no other way to describe it.

Aside from community gardens that have served as glue for neighborhoods, providing much of the same sense of community as a place of worship does, around the country, countless public school districts are engaging their own community gardening projects, not only to instill a sense of agrarian savvy into youths who would otherwise never be exposed to that, but to also underscore the importance of knowing the source of your food.

There are too many programs to name in one Rooflines post, but what are some projects in your area? Let’s hear about them.

This piece originally ran March 20, 2009 on my blog at Rooflines, the blog of the National Housing Institute.

Just Because His Sleeves Are Rolled Up, It Doesn’t Mean He Means Business

I’m a little late weighing on on this, but this retrial of Jon Stewart v. Tucker Carlson is not sitting well with me.

Countless investors have lost life savings, IRAs, and more “skin” in any game that I’ve ever seen in this economic downturn, and for months, we seemed to accept the fact that while some institutions and individuals were more at fault than others, it was really the fault of many and subsequently everyone’s mess.

That is until last week. That’s when we found Jim Cramer of CNBC’s “Mad Money” to be a less-than-formidable scapegoat, a poster child, if you will, of CNBC’s and the overall business media’s knowledge of “the game” of Wall Street and how they at best, haven’t done their job in properly guiding people through the financial crisis, and, at worst, offered outright misinformation, resulting in massive reductions of personal wealth.

As a journalist, I always welcome heavy media analysis, not only because it gives us the opportunity to better provide useful information, but because it also promotes sustainable communities, inasmuch as an informed public can better make decisions for itself. I am also immediately skeptical when people start blaming the media for things.

But in the case with Jim Cramer, I find I don’t need to engage in that auto-analytic mode. Anyone who has even watched three minutes of Mad Money knows that Cramer, a former hedge fund manager, is a TV personality first. “Useful Information Provider” falls way, way, way down on the list.

CNBC has an average viewership of 300,000 (Bloomberg TV’s average is 10,000, and CNN’s is roughly 700,000), and you can find people tuned in to it in newsrooms and financial advisor offices around the country. People are watching the stock ticker, Market Watch, or even Squawk Box, but when Mad Money (I almost wrote “Mad TV”) comes on, I can’t imagine those 300,000 view Cramer like E.F. Hutton, particularly when he begins throwing around set props, pushing big buttons—things from which little kids might get visual amusement, but sophisticated traders and investors? I might be wrong, but I just don’t see it.

So, when Jim Cramer sat there, with his sleeves rolled up, as is his trademark look, looking like he was ready for a fight, and ate the porridge spoon fed from Jon Stewart, it could be viewed in a number of ways: an admission of guilt, steering watchers to buy stocks of Bear Stearns only days before it went under, an acknowledgment of sub-par financial analysis, a tacit recognition that he was playing “the Game” even when he knew better, or simply as a feeble entertainer unfamiliar with the lashings of a quick-tongued comedian, or, most likely, all of the above.

But none of that matters, I think. Good for Jon Stewart for calling this guy out, but at the end of the day, I think it makes for just another inter-Cable foe; more Premium Package Enmity, like Olbermann v. O’Reilly. While Jon Stewart and the Daily Show provide an invaluable service when it comes to not only entertainment, but also to information dissemination, this battle is another time-waster. Cramer is an entertainer, and frankly, a bizarre target for Stewart. I recall the more useful conflict between Stewart and Tucker Carlson, then of CNN’s Crossfire, when Stewart, using colorful language, criticized the program’s “either/or” delivery of the news. THAT’S the type of programming we need to rally against—the stuff that doesn’t report the news, but takes news, tears it in half, and has it fight itself in a TV studio.

Don’t waste your time blaming the Jim Cramers of the world for the financial crisis, there are much, much, larger fish to fry, both within the media and on Wall Street.

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Good Times WIth U.S. Senate Wi-Fi

At the Dirkson Senate Office, when you try to access their wireless network, you have to agree that you've read the following disclaimer:

United States Senate Wireless Network

You have accessed the United States Senate Wireless Network. If you have the proper credentials then you may proceed with your login process. Warning, by moving forward on this system you agree to the fact that you have no privacy on this system and that you will probably be monitored.

Makes you think twice if you really want to check your e-mail, don't it?

NJ’s COAH: Finding Common (and Vacant) Ground

A version of this post first ran on Rooflines -- the blog of the National Housing Institute -- BΩS

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As New Jersey’s Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH, continues to defend its plan to use a growth-share model to encourage towns to build working class and affordable housing, we’re reminded of one thing that became clear a long, long time ago.

Full consensus is going to be hard to reach, but common ground is attainable.

Since everyone appears, at least in public, to share the same philosophy that communities should have socioeconomic diversity, there needs to be some common ground between the builders and affordable housing advocates who argue the new rules will allow suburbs to not live up to their intended housing goals, and those towns—about half of the state’s 566 municipalities—who argue they will be burdened—both financially and spatially—in being required to build far too much affordable housing based on current models.

Most of the remaining municipalities are currently participating in the COAH process, with the Council granting credit for approximately 70,000 affordable units, 36,000 of which have been completed, 14,000 of which were rehabilitated, and 10,000 that were transferred through Regional Contribution Agreements—a since-legislatively revoked method of fulfilling a town’s growth-share requirement where a municipality can transfer funds intended for affordable housing to another town.

It’s been 30 years since the original court decision that put the wheels in motion for the state to establish some sort of affordable housing guidelines, and they’ve been remodeled several times since. The most recent, established in 2004, outlines a growth-share model that encourages 4:1 ratio for market rate and affordable units, as well as one affordable unit for every 16 jobs created.

COAH has said repeatedly that it’s model is a guideline and that it would work with individual towns as they submit their 10-year COAH proposals, but the balking continues, the posturing mounts. Tough economic times only adds superficial logic (often outlined in the breathtakingly uninformed reader comments in various New Jersey newspaper Web sites) to the case that towns can’t afford to build and that the state should not be mandating them to do so.

So the latest, where The New Jersey League of Municipalities, a voluntary organization of towns throughout the state, has accused state officials of withholding materials that include a state-wide vacant land assessment, is just another step in forestalling goals that we should all work for: inclusive communities, workforce housing, not being priced out of your town.

COAH, according to an article in The Star-Ledger, responded in kind with a 130-page response to the challenges, that makes the case for the new rules, arguing that the agency had been reasonable in fielding municipal concerns.

Back in July 2008, when the state refined its latest COAH model, I argued that the Department of Community Affairs, the agency that oversees COAH, and its commissioner, Joe Doria, should go on a state-wide tour, selling the plan at public meetings, much like Gov. Jon Corzine did on his pitch to raise tolls on some key state roadways. Not everyone agreed with him, but there was an element of respect for the outreach tour—an element that he would be happy to re-tap this year as he seeks reelection. But beyond that, I thought that the state should take a real look at rethinking affordable housing:

• We need to move away from the property-tax-based funding for social mandates that benefit everyone (yes, even you there, living on the horse farm in bucolic northwest New Jersey). The implementation of an affordable housing policy that works and is reasonable can be funded by more than just property owners.

• The developer’s fee—the aforementioned 2.5 percent fee—and the municipal mandate system of funding affordable housing is ludicrous. This is important because it could very well thwart all economic growth in New Jersey with ratable-generating enterprise moving over to places like Pennsylvania.

Hopefully because they were reading Bowie of Suburbia, the state Legislature last month voted on a moratorium for this developer’s fee that exempts projects through July 2010, calling it an impediment to economic recovery, but housing advocates have rallied against the moratorium, saying that a freeze would pose a missed opportunity to generate revenue. The fee, they said, would help to promote that roadmap to more inclusive communities.

Diane Sterner, executive director of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey wrote in a February 2009 op-ed in The Trenton Times that:

[W]e are all responsible in some way for creating the homes we need so our state can grow and prosper. Residential developers pay fees to build. When private individuals build or purchase a home, they pay a real estate transfer fee. A portion of this goes into the state’s housing trust fund to finance housing development.

Agreed, but in a time when major institutions, particularly nonprofits like hospitals and universities, are also struggling with dwindling endowments, but looking to simultaneously expand and remain competitive in the country, a developer’s fee is ever-problematic. The housing advocate’s argument for a developer’s fee goes back to the fundamental case that fees are needed to encourage development. Yes, but let’s do it by way of:

• Creating a value-added tax, like a gas tax that would be used strictly for infrastructure. This can be criticized as a regressive tax, but think of the open space tax that New Jersey voters consistently approve.

We need to get on the stick, and we need to do it now. This economic downturn is scaring a lot of people and it’s only a matter of time before voters are fooled by the shell-game mentality that providing affordable housing is a costly burden for our towns.

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Who Will Lead Highland Park?

It's always bittersweet when you have a rising star within your own elected local government. On the one hand, it's good that you've got someone on your side who is motivated to make a name for him or herself, while elevating the profile of your town. If all goes well, that person's best interests are interwoven with the best interests of the community.

But when the town becomes too small for that person's aspirations, they move on.

For a long time, this was the case with Highland Park, NJ Mayor Meryl Frank, who, after more than nine years as mayor of this tiny Middlesex County borough of 14,000 whose identity, in addition to tree-lined streets, diverse housing stock, good public schools, and tight-knit community, is defined by its bedroom community status for large nearby institutions like Johnson & Johnson and Rutgers University.

Mayor Frank last week was sworn in as the United States representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. It's not clear how this will affect her mayoral incumbency, but her resignation is likely as she says she will stay on temporarily to ensure a smooth transition to a new administration.

Throughout the 2008 presidential election, Frank, a Democrat, was an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton, and, subsequently, Barack Obama, and raised a lot of money in the process. Her appointment is the product of higher aspirations, and her legacy in Highland Park will be noted. In 2004, she created the Task Force on Ethics and Good Government, which is instituting wide-ranging rules and guidelines to assure clean government in Highland Park. Working with Borough council, she helped to develop Highland Park 2020, a long-term vision for the Borough, that focuses on creating a community that is economically, environmentally and socially sustainable. The plan highlights affordability, conservation and strong community relations, according to the Highland Park Web site.

Her term has also been marked with the ongoing redevelopment effort of Raritan Avenue, Highland Park's main street corridor.

Now Highland Park faces a change in leadership. The process to replace Frank, who is in the middle of her third term, is controlled by the local Democratic Municipal Committee. They will provide three candidates for Council consideration, and Council will then vote on who will carry out her term. This process should be public -- the local Dems should invite the community to participate in the process, as well as encourage Party outsiders to seek the spot -- those less qualified will be weeded out in the process.