Sunroom Desk

Each week, I find news articles, blog posts, video files, and research reports of interest to the citizens and representatives of Glendale, California. Check out the Paperweight section in the sidebar for this week’s finds, or go to the Paperweight archives page (link also in header) for past weeks’ articles.

Last week’s articles covered the Chinese premier’s criticism of U.S. financial policy at the Davos Economic Summit, taxpayers’ disappointment with the bank bailouts, the California budget crisis, the City of Glendale’s wish list for federal stimulus funds, and the LA Times confusion over the boundary between Atwater Village and Glendale.

My favorite from last week was Rewriting the Rulebook for 21st Century Capitalism, which is an optimistic but I hope accurate assessment of the new administration’s direction. Excerpts:

Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments directed at the great challenges of energy, climate, food production, water and biodiversity.
…Conservatives are aghast. The bail-out of the auto industry was hard enough to swallow. Government investments in infrastructure and research and development are viewed with scorn, compared with the tried and true (if disastrously failed) tax cuts of the Bush era.
…Public-private efforts to steer the economy to a safe technological harbour will be the order of the new era.
There is plenty of room for blunders, to be sure. Government activism can founder on the shoals of massive budget deficits, tax-cutting populism pushed by the right, politically motivated investments such as corn-based ethanol rather than science-based public investments, and more. Yet Obama is absolutely correct that we have no choice but to try.