Steve Cohens Blog

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent announcement that he would seek a third term as mayor brings back the issue of term limits and its connection to good government and long-term planning. I am against term limits anywhere, including the American presidency. The 22nd amendment was an anti-democratic, anti-government mistake, just as the term limit mandate in New York is a bad idea. The argument against term limits is simple and has two parts:

1) People should be able to vote for anyone they want (this is a concept known as democracy).
2) Term limits extend an elected official’s “lame duck” period from about a year to four.  read more »

As Congress desperately tries to pass legislation to bail out Wall Street and restore confidence in the American economy, it is also managing to allow tax credits for renewable energy to expire at the end of the year. According to Robert Pear's recent New York Times article: "The House and the Senate conceded Monday that they were in a stalemate over proposals to provide tax incentives for the production and use of renewable energy, leaving the future of the nascent industry in limbo."

Unfortunately, this tax incentive has gotten caught up in congressional tax policy gridlock - no one thinks this policy is a bad idea, but it's basically the hostage of a broader debate on the budget and tax policy.  read more »

As the financial markets continue their roller coaster ride, the issue of government’s role in our society returns to the front pages. While Congress considers a massive buyout of poorly thought out investments, many are arguing that if we are going to provide these subsidies we need to impose rules to prevent future crises. It’s time to re-examine the way we regulate our economy and hopefully develop a more sophisticated approach to regulation and a more sustainable basis for our economy.

Regulation is a set of rules or directives intended to cause specific behaviors in target populations. The goal of regulation is to influence individual or organizational behavior.  read more »

One of the simplest things we can do to improve our productivity and economic well being is to increase the efficiency of our use of energy. We are so wasteful that there is an enormous amount of low hanging fruit. As New York state begins to get serious about this, we should look west to California, for a place that really knows how to make the most out of a kilowatt.

Since 1981, I've taught public management at Columbia, and I am not one of those people who believe that government is incompetent and only the private sector is efficient and effective. Some work is best performed by government, some by nonprofits and some by the private sector.  read more »

At the end of June, when parts of Iowa were underwater, I wrote that the United States needed to develop a rainy day fund and do more to routinize emergency response and reconstruction. In that piece I mentioned that, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration: "The U.S. has sustained 78 weather-related disasters over the past 28 years in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total normalized losses for the 78 events exceed $600 billion."              

Now, we are all horrified by the impact of Hurricane Ike on the Gulf Coast and on Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city. The financial impact of this latest disaster is still being calculated, and even though the impact was not as great as it could have been or as devastating as some predicted, the financial cost will be huge.  read more »

In speaking about his support for the military "surge" in Iraq, John Mc Cain said that he would rather lose the Presidency than lose the war. It's too bad he hasn't followed the same principled approach on energy. The New York Times lead editorial this past Sunday reiterated a point I have made a number of times on this site. We cannot drill enough oil and gas to solve our energy crisis. There are too many people on this planet and we use more and more fuel every day. John McCain has missed an historic opportunity to develop an American consensus about renewable energy, instead taking on the expedient, poll-driven mantra of "drill, drill, drill: here and now".  read more »

On January 5th of this year, Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin wrote an op-ed in the New York Times opposing listing polar bears on the endangered species list. Her argument was well reasoned and thoughtful, although in the end, unsatisfactory. In her piece Governor Palin noted her support for policies that helped preserve polar bears:

"We have a ban on most hunting - only Alaska Native subsistence families can hunt polar bears - and measures to protect denning areas and prevent harassment of the bears. We are also participating in international efforts aimed at preserving polar bear populations worldwide.

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Last week Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed that New York City engage in a serious effort to develop alternative energy sources, and in return for his trouble he faced skepticism and even ridicule from a cynical media. Cartoons were drawn with King Kong trying to swat a windmill off the top of the Empire State Building. Still, even the tabloids could not dismiss the idea entirely. Bloomberg commands respect, and $4 a gallon gasoline has everyone looking for alternatives.

New York City has been built by people who dreamed large and were able to project into the future. Imagine the city without Central, Van Cortland or Prospect Parks.  read more »

The Brooklyn Children's Museum -- the hands-on instititution popular with tykes from Tremont to Poughkeepsie -- is slated to reopen as the first LEED-certified museum in New York City on Sept. 20, according to a spokeswoman for the project and Interior Design.

The Rafael-Vinoly-designed addition to the Crown Heights insititution will, according to the design mag, double the size of the museum to more than 100,000 square feet. The addition, covered in 8.1 million (!!) very, very yellow ceramic tiles, will presumably allow for more exhibition space (and maybe even bigger digs for Fantasia, the 17-foot-long Burmese Python?).

To achieve LEED-silver certification, the addition has "rapidly renewable and recycled materials" like "bamboo and recycled rubber flooring.  read more »

The Presidential nominating conventions are now approaching, first the Democrats' and then the Republicans'. The President hangs out at the Olympics, stomps his feet over the Russian invasion of Georgia and then makes another pass at gutting the Endangered Species Act by reducing the time and scientific analysis needed to assess the environmental impact of federal projects. The energy and climate issue have provided some environmental content to this campaign, but the folks running the country still don't see the stake we have in environmental sustainability.

What does an extinct frog have to do with human well-being? What does the environment have to do with economic wealth? Can't our technology solve any environmental problem we make? The short answer, as we learned nearly half a century ago from Rachael Carson and Barry Commoner, is that everything is connected to everything else.  read more »