Rutgers University Press Blog

Millennials Hold the Key to the Auto Industry’s Future

Morley Winograd, co-author with Michael D. Hais of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, served as Senior Policy Advisor to Vice President Gore where he witnessed the events described in this article. Both authors are also fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute. This article was originally posted on the NDN blog.

As the announcement of Rick Wagoner’s resignation as CEO of General Motors makes clear, the enormous investments the federal government has been making in private enterprises, including the auto industry, will severely test  the ability of private sector executives to meet the expectations of their new government bosses. The long-term credibility of Detroit  now rests on their ability to win over the rising generation of Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, who are the future consumers for the auto industry—and the core of President Obama’s political support. Their environmental focus and civic minded attitudes will challenge executives to align their private sector goals with public policy in ways the country has not witnessed since the New Deal. Sadly, so far, it’s a test many business leaders seem likely to fail.

In the case of the American auto industry this failure has deep roots. Attempts to nudge Detroit into producing more fuel-efficient vehicles have been going on since the 1973-4 Arab Oil embargo, which led Congress to establish Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFÉ) standards for cars and light trucks.  When Bill Clinton became President he agreed to delay the adoption of higher CAFÉ standards until it could be proven that such goals were attainable. 

New York Times Book Review essay on a return to boarding houses

The New York Times Book Review
March 29, 2009
Essay
Brother, Can You Spare a Room?
By CALEB CRAIN

As mortgages and rent become harder to pay, readers may be taking Balzac and Isherwood down from the shelf, eyeing the sleeper-sofa in the TV nook appraisingly, and wondering: Would it be un-­American to take in boarders? Or is boarding the sort of thing that happens only in European novels?

In fact, once upon a time, the boardinghouse thrived in America, especially in New York. In 1856, Walt Whitman claimed that almost three-quarters of Manhattanites lived in one. He may have been exaggerating slightly, but the historian Wendy Gamber has estimated that “up to 30 percent of all 19th-century households took in boarders,” and the 1860 census counted 2,651 boardinghouse keepers in New York State alone. In 1857, foreseeing that the phenomenon might not last forever, Thomas Butler Gunn undertook to record it for posterity in The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses, which is available in an opportunely reprinted edition from Rutgers University Press ($23.95) as well as a facsimile edition from Cornell University Library ($23.99). “I wonder what they were!” Gunn imagines a future researcher asking, and for an answer, he provides chapters on the Hand-to-Mouth Boardinghouse, the Fashionable Boardinghouse Where You Don’t Get Enough to Eat and the Boardinghouse Where the Landlady Drinks, among other representative types. New Yorkers of the 21st century will probably recognize the 8-by-6-foot rooms and the walls soiled where mosquitoes “have encountered Destiny in the shape of the slippers or boot-soles of former occupants.” But the unceasing drama of boardinghouse life — the flirtations, drunkenness, mutual irritation, backbiting, whining, eccentricity, conspiracy, chiseling and deceit — may come as a surprise. The closest modern parallel may be the comments section of a blog.

In The Shadow of the Giant is "Procative and highly informative" says The Washington Post

 The Southern Colony

By Review Manuel Roig-Franzia
Sunday, March 29, 2009; B07

IN THE SHADOW OF THE GIANT
The Americanization Of Modern Mexico
By Joseph Contreras
Rutgers Univ. 276 pp. $24.95

When I traveled to Mexico City in 2005 to check out my new digs as The Washington Post's bureau chief there, Mexican friends recommended that I shop for groceries at Walmart. Never mind that there was a beautiful, traditional open market offering luscious, tree-ripened mangoes and other delights within walking distance of our house in Coyoacan, one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. Also within walking distance were two Starbucks, as I found out when Mexican sources frequently suggested meeting there. I wanted authentic Mexican experiences; they wanted Frappuccinos.

Joseph Contreras, author of the provocative and highly informative "In the Shadow of the Giant," discovered much the same. A longtime foreign correspondent who is now a U.N. public information officer in Sudan, Contreras served two tours of duty as Newsweek's Mexico City bureau chief. During his first, in the mid-1980s, there was precisely one McDonald's in all of Mexico, he notes. When he returned on a reporting trip in 2000, there were 292.

Click here to continue reading this review.

Michael Rockland speaks at FDU

Noted NJ author and Rutgers University Professor Michael Rockland spoke at Fairleigh Dickinson University back in February 2009, as the opening lecture in the series, "Politics on the Public Mind." Prof. Rockland discussed his most recent book, "The George Washington Bridge: Poetry in Steel," an appreciation and history of one of the New Jersey / New York area's most prominent landmarks.

Positive Partisanship for a New Era

"Bipartisanship. Other than 'stimulus' or 'bailout,' perhaps no word has been written or spoken more often by politicians and pundits alike in Washington since the inauguration of Barack Obama. Commentators have generally characterized President Obama's attempts to engage Republicans as almost completely unsuccessful, while Republicans have derided his efforts as charming but ineffective, especially in light of the more partisan approach of his party’s Congressional leadership. Liberals such as Thomas Frank dismissed bipartisanship as a 'silly Beltway obsession,' calling it 'the most cynical stance possible.'

This article continues on the NDN Blog.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of NDN and the New Policy Institute and co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, named one of the 10 favorite books by the New York Times in 2008.

Dr. Guy Clifton on Washington Journal

Dr. Guy Clifton, author of Flatlined: Resuscitating American Medicine discussed his book on C-SPAN's Washington Journal recently. Flatlined deals with problems in the current health care system, and offers possible solutions.