Massive Hiring In Store for Federal Government

The federal government’s workforce will be much larger out of necessity in three years according to a government survey.

…The survey makes clear that the majority of new hires will be needed in five broad fields — medical, security, law enforcement, legal and administrative.

Mission-critical jobs are those positions identified by the agencies as being essential for carrying out their services. The study estimates that the federal government will need to hire nearly 600,000 people for all positions over President Obama’s four years — increasing the current workforce by nearly one-third.

The medical and public health area is most in need of hires, according to the study. Stier described the Department of Veterans Affairs as a “dramatic example” of an agency with pressing needs, as a result of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. VA, according to the report, will need more than 48,000 hires over the next three years, including 19,000 nurses and 8,500 physicians.

There are a few implications here.  One is the obvious: Millennials will enjoy far greater representation in the federal bureacuracy, potentially leading to a new flavor of government.  This leads to the next consequence — the federal gov’t could be in a position to increasingly adopt new technologies with minimal training, given the technological proficiency of many youth.  Yes, many more young people than you’d think can barely turn on a computer, but those applying for federal jobs should be reasonably equipped with technical skills.

Health Care, Problem-Solving, and Partisanship

A very simple but powerful reminder the other day from Open Left’s Mike Lux:

Look, this should be obvious, but apparently it’s not: when some big piece of our economy is really messed up, but some major corporate interest is making lots and lots of money off the system, if that corporate interest doesn’t object to the “reform” being proposed, whatever legislation being proposed will not solve the actual problem. The 98-0 votes that folks like David Broder love and extol, the bipartisan bill signing ceremonies that thrill the hell out of everyone in DC – they don’t actually solve or resolve anything important.

If Democrats take the easy path, and get that big bipartisan love fest on the White House lawn, health care will still be messed up in all the ways it’s messed up now: health care costs (and the federal budget deficit) will still be spiraling up and up, the number of uninsured will keep going up as well, people who lose their jobs or have pre-existing conditions will still be priced out of the ability to get insurance. And instead of congratulating us for our great bipartisan compromise, voters will be pissed. President Obama and Congressional Democrats need to grit their teeth and stick to the business of comprehensive reform. It will make the insurance companies, and the Republicans, really mad. But failing to actually solve the problem AGAIN is a train wreck. Stick with it, folks, put your noses to the grindstone, and do what needs to be done.

Emphasis is mine. I think this piece of writing is interesting, especially when eyed through the lens of generational traits.

Scholars usually see millennials as resisting ideology in politics. Their parents — the boomers — make up a generation usually identified as the stubborn, “prophet” generation, championing a values-driven politics to the utmost degree. Millennials, on the other hand, are driven to finding the consensus opinion on issues. This might lead you to think that the latter would be demanding bipartisan discussions and consequently resist anything that would not be agreeable to the inside-the-Beltway-based punditry, Blue Dog Democrats, and/or the GOP.

But that isn’t happening. Winograd and Hais explain why:

Millennials are not interested in letting ideological posturing stand in the way of “getting stuff done,” as Obama likes to say, especially in an area as crucial as health care. Like the members of other generations, virtually all Millennials (90%) believe that it is time that health care is made more accessible and affordable for all Americans. However, only a third of Millennials, in contrast to about half of those in older generations, are concerned about the impact of greater governmental involvement in the health care system (36% vs. 47%). And, Millennials are far less likely than older generations to prefer once again deferring health care reform to avoid higher taxes or larger deficits.

The millennial value of problem-solving trumps collaboration here. The concerns that the pundits, Blue Dogs, and the GOP continue to raise (that government would be doing too much and have too much control over our lives should a public option be included) simply aren’t concerns for today’s youth. Millennials have always championed government activism if it means improving quality of life. And so, to us, any call for compromise based on a fear of too much government isn’t going to get much credence.

The bottom line is that Health Care Reform with a public option is good policy, and it’s what America needs now. Echoing Lux’s point above, you can be sure that if the insurance industry is opposed to anything in this debate, it’s probably a positive thing for the common good (including young people).

Millennials and Today’s Lazy Journalism

Journalism today scares me. I’ll tell you why.

Our generation is investing our time and effort reinvigorating our nation’s civic life. Millennials are rising through the ranks of American society at a time when our team-oriented, pragmatic approach is necessary to successfully combat the problems confronting the U.S. Contrary to our Boomer parents, our activism is inside-out in nature, not outside-in. The way we make change is to infiltrate institutions and transform them from within. This form of activism requires a generation that pays attention to current events, one that leans toward political engagement as opposed to apathy. The political world saw our impact in the 2004 election, as Millennials were the only age group to vote for John Kerry, and it felt it in 2008, with Millennials favoring Barack Obama over John McCain by a 2-1 margin, and providing Obama with most of his margin of victory. While we still have a ways to go in convincing our political parties and the government to recruit more Millennials for positions with decision-making power, I don’t think many would argue that our generation is well on its way to Howe and Strauss’s vision of the generational powerhouse prophesied in Millennials Rising.

What’s surprising to me is that we have made such progress in the face of awful journalism. The tribute to Walter Cronkite following his recent death is appropriate and ironic. The media, dubbed “The Fourth Estate,” wax poetic on Cronkite’s integrity and objectivity, while epically failing to meet these same standards today. More ironic is that examples of these failures were released to the public this week when The Charleston Post and Courier secured and published e-mails between South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s staffers and the leading political journalists of mainstream news outlets. One such example is David Gregory, NBC’s moderator of Meet the Press. TPM Muckraker outlined a particularly concerning exchange taking place between Gregory and Sanford’s then-press secretary, Joel Sawyer.

Gregory’s first email to Sawyer was sent at 12:24 p.m. on Wednesday June 24 — that is, after Sanford had admitted to The State that he had actually been in Argentina, but before the famed stream-of-consciousness press conference where he admitted to an affair. Gregory wrote:

Hey Joel …
Left you a message. Wanted you to hear directly from me that I want to have the Gov on Sunday on Meet The Press. I think it’s exactly the right forum to answer the questions about his trip as well as giving him a platform to discuss the economy/stimulus and the future of the party. You know he will get a fair shake from me and coming on MTP puts all of this to rest.
Let’s talk when you can.

Gregory left two different phone numbers.

After the press conference, Sawyer replied:

David –
Thank you very much for taking the time to personally reach out to us. For the time being, we’re just going to let what the governor said today stand on its own. If we do some interviews in the future, I’ll let you know as soon as possible.

Gregory followed up quickly: “You aren’t doing anything at all this week…no other intvus anywhere?” Sawyer replied that they weren’t.
Gregory gave it one last shot:

Look, you guys have a lot of pitches .. I get it and I know this is a tough situation … Let me just say this is the place to have a wider conversation with some context about not just the personal but also the future for him and the party … This situation only exacerbates the issue of how the GOP recovers when another national leader suffers a setback like this. So coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to…and then move on. You can see (sic) you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.

Sawyer did not respond.

This exchange is a perfect example of the difference between Cronkite’s journalism skills – the skills we need the media to have today – versus the lacking skill of modern journalists like Gregory. Yes, it’s a business. But we need it to be a noble business, one that uncovers answers and information with the public’s interest at heart. In Gregory’s example, as moderator of MTP, shouldn’t he be framing the conversation? Gregory’s apparent willingness to allow any guest to dictate the direction of the interview is seriously problematic.

If Millennials want to continue to build and reinvigorate our civic institutions for the Twenty-First Century, I suggest we start with the media. Luckily we already have Scoop44 on board, a youth-run media outlet dedicating to chronicling the Obama administration from a youth perspective. Scoop44’s about page frequently describes itself as energetic, perhaps needling the traditional media’s penchant for lazy reporting. We also have a friend in Luke Russert at NBC, following in his dad’s footsteps and asking questions about youth issues like the impact of the economy and unemployment on our generation. But in order for us to make the largest mark on society, Millennials need more from today’s journalists.

Any thoughts on the state of the media and its relationship with Millennials as we continue to gain more power across the nation?

Culture Wars Fading Away

The Center for American Progress released a report by Ruy Teixeira this week, “The Coming End of the Culture Wars,” in which Teixeira examines the increasing impotence of social and cultural issues in today’s political debate.

The report makes a few conclusions that should be familiar to FM readers.

Teixeira views the ongoing millennial boom as one reason for the decline in the social issue’s prominence. Given the millennials’ socially liberal views on many traditionally contentious social issues, they don’t seem particularly “alarmed” when conservative concern trolls warn Americans of the country’s leftward shift.

CAP’s Progressive Studies Program’s ideology survey similarly found that 18- to 29-year old Millennials were the most progressive generation by far on a comprehensive 10-item progressive cultural index covering topics ranging from religion, abortion, and homosexuality to race, immigration, and the family. Each item on this index had a 0-10 point range, with the most progressive response on each item receiving 10 points and the most conservative response receiving zero points. Millennials scored 56.6 out of 100 on the index, compared to a range of 46.4 to 52.9 for older generations.

And as more millennials ascend into positions of power and, thus, control the debate, more substantive, quality of life issues will be prevalent, drowning out discussions on issues such as abortion.

Another strong cause for the decreased power of the culture wars is found in demographics.

…The culturally conservative white working class has been declining rapidly as a proportion of the electorate for years. Exit polls show that the proportion of white working-class voters—scoring just 46.3 out of a 100 on the Progressive Studies Program comprehensive 10-item progressive cultural index covering topics ranging from religion, abortion, and homosexuality to race, immigration, and the family—is down 15 points since 1988, while the proportion of far more culturally progressive white college graduate voters (53.3 on the index) is up 4 points, and the proportion of minority voters (54.7 on the index) is up 11 points. State after state since 1988 has replicated this general pattern—a sharp decline in the share of white working-class voters accompanied by increases in the shares of minority voters and, in most cases, of increasingly progressive white college graduate voters.

Along with the decline in white working class voters, the numbers of traditionally progressive portions of the population are on the rise. Single women and professionals headline this group.

It’s very important to point out that millennials aren’t more progressive due to their increased diversity. Teixeira’s report finds that white millennials are more progressive than many of their older siblings and parents.

But it is worth stressing that white Millennials, while not as culturally progressive as their minority counterparts, are still much more progressive than the overall population. Both white college graduate (56.1 on the PSP index) and white working-class Millennials (54.2) are more culturally progressive than older white college-graduate (53.5) and especially white working-class (45.6) adults. The difference between white working-class Millennials and older generations of the white working class is particularly important since it suggests that the white working class as a whole will become significantly less culturally conservative as culturally progressive white working-class Millennials replace conservative older white working-class voters in the electorate. This will severely undercut the popular appeal of culture wars politics, since this segment of the population has provided the bulk of support for such politics.

Teixera concludes by noting that conservatives will most likely continue to inject what they think are divisive issues into the political debate for political gain, though they’ll find these efforts to be less successful with time. With the millennials coming into power, the American political dialogue should change for the better thanks to a far more focused discussion of the issues that can drastically improve Americans’ quality of life.

Friedman’s Epiphany – Shedding the ‘Quiet’ Label

Future Majority has cited Thomas Friedman’s attack on the Millennials, which he labeled “Generation Q,” many a time. Young people today are too quiet, Friedman wrote, arguing that our timidity is a sign that we’re apathetic and not concerned with the world around us going to hell in a handbasket.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

[...]

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

Then, on December 7, 2008, Friedman again pricks young people, labeling our generational philosophy as “quietism” in the context of arguing for responsible spending in the stimulus bill.

Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today. I understand why they aren’t. They’re so worried about just getting a job or paying next semester’s tuition. But we must not take their quietism as license to do whatever we want with this bailout cash. They are going to have to pay this money back. And therefore, we have an incredibly weighty obligation to make sure that we not only spend every stimulus dollar wisely but also with an eye to creating new technologies.

So today, Friedman’s piece is written about an experience he had in India with young American women while attending the Energy and Resources Institute Climate Conference. While there, two young Americans and one of their mothers asked Friedman to take a ride with them in a plug-in electric- and solar-powered car. Friedman, impressed, says yes, and away they go.

Friedman learns about the friends’ partnership with the Indian Youth Climate Network, which now connects climate leaders from across the country, and he’s amazed. The women tell him of their “climate caravan,” which they organized to spread the message of energy conservation. Environmentally-friendly solar-powered and electric cars were donated by an Indian electric car company (one of the women knew the CEO), and the women then hopped inside them, traveling 2,100 miles across India, organizing entertainment at each stop to attract interest. The women trained local youth to begin their own initiatives.

Friedman sounds verklempt as he wraps up his column.

I met Howe and Ringwald after a tiring day, but I have to admit that as soon as they started telling me their story it really made me smile. After a year of watching adults engage in devastating recklessness in the financial markets and depressing fecklessness in the global climate talks, it’s refreshing to know that the world keeps minting idealistic young people who are not waiting for governments to act, but are starting their own projects and driving innovation.

A couple possibilities here.

1.) Friedman has seen the light, realizing that Millennials aren’t “quiet,” but have a different way of going about things than Friedman’s generation.

2.) Millennial activism in America doesn’t count for anything in Friedman’s eyes, but in India — it’s worth a few hundred words in the New York Times.

I’m hoping it’s numero uno, and that Friedman never uses the word “quiet” again.

And let’s get something else straight — the reason I write about Friedman is not a demonstration of the vanity that sometimes is ascribed to Millennials. I really don’t care what Friedman himself thinks about young people. But I do care about others being fooled into thinking young people aren’t doing anything simply because Friedman can’t handle the philosophical discrepancy between the way his generation did things and the way ours does. Hopefully Friedman took care of that with his trip to India and his car ride.

Friedman aside, kudos to those young women — Caroline Howe and Alexis Ringwald — for doing their part by piecing together a great program that is truly making a difference.

Millennials as a Political Generation

Neil Howe (of Millennials Rising fame) and Reena Nadler co-authored a report that has just been released by the New America Foundation as a part of its Next Social Contract Initiative. The report’s title is “‘Yes We Can’: The Emergence of Millennials as a Political Generation.”

I’ll be blogging more about this report soon, once I’ve pulled out the good stuff (which will be hard, because it’s full of it), but I thought I’d at least share it for now.

This report demonstrates why 2008 was such a big shock to our political system and why last year is merely the tip of the iceberg. Definitely a must read — check it out.

Geritol please? Congress is Oldest Ever

The oldest Congress ever was sworn in today.

According to the chambers’ historical offices, the average age of the House is 57 and the average age of the Senate is 63, USA Today reports.  USA Today also notes that the average increased following Obama’s exit to the presidency, and John Sununu’s (R-NH) departure.  He was 44 years old.

What does this mean?

Well, those dedicated readers know that I think highly of the Millennial Generation.  The diversity, skill set, and collaborative temperament inherent in today’s young people certainly bodes well for society as we move forward.

Unfortunately, Boomers and Gen Xers that are currently in Congress lack many of these gifts.  And so, while Millennial activists and decision-makers collaborate to pragmatically solve problems, older, dogmatic representatives and senators continue to drive Congress’s agenda.  The news cycle today had more on Burris’s inability to walk on the floor of the Senate than it did on the stimulus package in Congress’s hands.

Thomas Friedman Strikes Again: ‘Quietism’ Follows Today’s Youth, Who Should Be ‘More Radical’

On October 10th of last year, Thomas Friedman wrote about The Millennial Generation, showing everyone that his “expertise” on foreign affairs and energy policy doesn’t extend to generational discussion.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

…

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Friedman waded into generational waters again this morning, and while the content was slightly better (the overall gist of the column made good points), he showed again that he does not understand the Millennial brand of activism.

The carnage was mostly restricted to the intro:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Tom Brokaw’s book “The Greatest Generation,” that classic about our parents and their incredible sacrifices during World War II. What I’ve been thinking about actually is this: What book will our kids write about us? “The Greediest Generation?” “The Complacent Generation?” Or maybe: “The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on My Visa Card.”

Our kids should be so much more radical than they are today. I understand why they aren’t. They’re so worried about just getting a job or paying next semester’s tuition. But we must not take their quietism as license to do whatever we want with this bailout cash. They are going to have to pay this money back. And therefore, we have an incredibly weighty obligation to make sure that we not only spend every stimulus dollar wisely but also with an eye to creating new technologies.

Friedman is still on his radical shtick, once again arguing that times are so dire that we need to sit in the streets and chain ourselves to bulldozers. Friedman believes that the only way to act with urgency is to go crazy, like much of the Boomer activists did, marching in streets, braving teargas, screaming chants, and disrupting society. But we know that we can show appreciation for how urgent this moment is in our own way. Today’s youth were involved in this election at a rate not seen since 1972. CIRCLE finds that about 23 million young Americans cast a ballot this year, over 3 million more than the number in 2004. How many times do we need to cite data that shows that Millennials volunteer at record rates? Friedman once again equates activism with being “radical,” and he’s wrong.

Friedman writes about Millennials as if we’re still seven years old, too distracted with getting the latest toy that comes with our Happy Meal to understand what’s going on. Friedman acts like we’re impotent, like we didn’t just make history ourselves, uniting behind a candidate, sweeping him through the Democratic primary and into the White House. Yes, Tom, that happened. And we did it.

Boomers do owe us. They got us into this mess. Millennials aren’t being “quiet” because we’re not aware of what’s going on. We’re doing our thing, working through the establishment, changing the system from the inside out. And we’re also watching to make sure the Baby Boomers stay focused on their “weighty obligation.” We’ve already turned the political world upside down. We’re not afraid to do it again.

Infrastructure and Its Importance to our Future

I’ve recently become interested in urban planning and the impact of the Millennial Generation on its future.  I’m originally from an area smack dab in the middle of the rust belt.  I’ve read about and observed the many mid-size industrial cities around my hometown, especially Youngstown, Ohio, struggle with keeping crime under control, working around massive population loss, and selling people on the notion that it is important to rebuild these cities’ urban cores.

Luckily, many of these cities are already getting back on track.  Youngstown, for example, is being guided by the Youngstown 2010 project, a community-drafted plan established in 2002.  Cleveland’s downtown got an overhaul in the early 1990s.  But there is still more work to be done.  In doing this work, we need to make sure we understand what resources these communities need in order to solidify plans like these and put them into action.

Many people might ask why this has any connection with Millennials — why is it important to rebuild these cities when its citizens have been moving to suburbs for years?  Why is it important to invest in these urban areas when those young people fortunate enough to go to school will just move away after school?  An article in the Washington Business Journal about the connection between the future of urban planning and its connection with Generation X and Millennials gave me an answer.

Millennials are actually pre-disposed to living in urban areas.  Their focus on community and convenience demands a short commute to whatever resource they need in their community.  Ask any Millennial who uses the Internet to do research for a school project, chats on AIM with two friends, listens to music, and checks on the score of his favorite team’s baseball game all at once — they like to multi-task; they like productivity.

The most important factor in figuring out where we’ll be living in the future is to look at how we’ll be living. Just as the automobile in the 1940s and ’50s and racial turbulence in the 1960s and ’70s drove their parents and grandparents to the suburbs, look for today’s younger generations to affect what tomorrow’s communities will look like.

Just consider developer Jim Abdo’s successful bet in the late 1990s that Gen X-ers (born from 1965 to 1980) would line up for new places in the city if he helped remake Logan Circle.

“Generation X and Generation Y are putting much more emphasis on life-work balance,” says Adam Ducker, managing director at Richard Charles Lesser & Co., a real estate firm based in Bethesda.

One of the main ways to achieve a better life-work balance, Ducker says, is foregoing a large home in the suburbs and the long commute it carries for a smaller home closer to work. Commuting in exchange for a bigger house was a deal baby boomers were willing to make for their family. For younger generations, that’s not a reasonable trade-off.

As you read, a community re-formed on the basis of convenience is a necessary ingredient in rebuilding our urban areas.  In addition, their dedication to the environment is another reason why Millennials might be interested in living in an urban community.  An overhaul of the mass transit system would appeal to younger people in this time of high gas prices and environmental concerns.

So where does infrastructure come into play?

Well, the problem with urban redevelopment is that, many times, the projects that are a part of the process get stalled in Congress or other legislatures because they are labeled as “pork.”  For example, John McCain is on record saying that he will pay for many of his own plans — like reinstating Bush’s tax cuts — by eliminating the pork from Congress.  And while you can already see the problem developing there, McCain adds to it by advocating for a gas tax holiday; this will eliminate the funding for many of the projects involving our nation’s infrastructure, further paralyzing development (while not getting any economic benefit).

Bob Herbert wrote a terrific piece for his column in the New York Times about the importance of infrastructure and its tendency to fly under the rader due to its… unsexy… nature.

I sat in on a meeting Thursday as Mr. Diaz and several other mayors, including Michael Bloomberg of New York, met in Manhattan to discuss ways of getting the federal government involved in large-scale infrastructure and transportation initiatives. The mayors are trying to spread the message that investing in a sound infrastructure is essential for continued economic development.

This may seem obvious, but infrastructure proponents are having a terrible time getting traction on this issue. Infrastructure initiatives are expensive, and not sexy. But there are powerful returns on these investments. They tend to pay for themselves many times over (can you imagine New York City without the subways?) and the projects are job creators.

With President Bush on the way out, the burden of leading an effort to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure would fall on either Barack Obama or John McCain. Representatives of each candidate attended Thursday’s meeting but did not participate.

The mayors talked about clogged highways, the high price of gasoline and an air transportation system that seems to get more pitiful by the day. Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian, Miss., called on the presidential candidates to take a bold, creative approach to the nation’s transportation needs, including substantial investments in railroad infrastructure.

Mr. Smith believes the nation should devote the same level of commitment to developing a first-rate passenger rail system as was marshaled for the interstate highway system in the Eisenhower era.

My whole point in writing about this issue today is to articulate the link between progress for the future (and we have to look at what Millennials will want, since, according to the Washington Business Journal article, they’ll be 30% of the population and transitioning to homeowner status by 2012) with the need for infrastructure.  Bob Herbert is write — it’s not an attractive issue to talk about, just like it’s not fun to sit in construction delays on a highway, but placed in context, it’s crucial for our future.

We could have vibrant communities, with small grocery stores, coffeehouses, laundry facilities, movie theaters, drug stores, and apartments all included.  We could have a state-of-the-art mass transit system linking these communities in many of our urban areas. We could have a light rail highway set up in the mold of the Eisenhower highway system.  But without a focus on infrastructure, none of this will get off the ground.

Memorial Day reading

Are you reading anything interesting this long weekend?

I’m in the middle of Counselor by Ted Sorensen.  I’m only about seventy pages in right now, but the book has rave reviews and so far the writing style has been top notch.  Of course, you wouldn’t expect anything else from one of the best (if not the best) presidential speechwriters in our nation’s history.

Next up will be Youth to Power by Mike Connery.   I can’t get away from generational politics.  The more this election drama plays out, the more I get sucked in.

What are you reading?