New America in the News: 2007

What a year! But Chicago rolls with the punches. (Chicago Sun-Times)
"If you go back a year ago and look at the stories, and look at what the lending community was doing, [the problems do] tend to unfold more slowly in places like Chicago that are more stable," said Ellen Seidman, executive vice president at ShoreBank Corp. and the director of the Financial Services and Education Project at the New America Foundation. ...

Amid so much uncertainty, the U.S. government may have no other choice but to more closely embrace Musharraf, said Steven Clemons, director of foreign policy programs for the New America Foundation.

The Assosciated Press published a review of the surge in loan elimination in private schools for middle- to upper-class income students, and quoted Michael Dannenberg, Education Program Director with the New America Foundation.

... Michael Dannenberg, a scholar at the New America Foundation, notes that's also approximately the figure Congress spent this year to cut student loan interest rates from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent -- for the whole country. ...

On the front of the New York Times business section today, economics columnist David Leonhardt names Bernard Schwartz Senior Fellow Shannon Brownlee’s book “Overtreated” as the best economics book of the year. Below is an excerpt from the article:

"...I’m going with Ms. Brownlee’s book [economics book of the year] because it’s the best description I have yet read of a huge economic problem that we know how to solve -- but is so often misunderstood.

Farai Chideya (Host): In a country that long defined itself in black and white, this past decade marked a watershed moment. Latinos surpassed African-Americans to become the largest ethnic group in America; Mexican immigration was just one driving force behind the change. According to cultural critic Gregory Rodriguez Mexican immigration will transform the way Americans view race. It's the premise of his new book, "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds." And Gregory joins me now. ... So you kick off your book in 1519 with Hernan Cortes.

If Daniel Levy is right, the way out of the morass the Bush administration has stumbled into in the Middle East is through the Palestinian territory.

To drain the swamp in which al-Qaeda and other U.S. adversaries operate and make it harder for this nation's foes in the Middle East "to speak above the heads" of moderate Arab leaders, Levy says, a way must be found to end Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territory.

If there is one thing that the past two weeks have shown, it’s that America is about to enter a new age of talk.

Even if there weren’t going to be an election next November that would usher in a new administration, the United States, under President Bush, would be entering a new age of talk. Seven years of President Bush’s Don’t-Talk-to-Evil policy are over, even under the helm of the administration that crafted it.

Washington's leaders have been pushing many policy buttons to stem the worsening housing and credit crisis. They've yet to find the off button, however, and that's prompting a search for more-aggressive solutions.

...In the deadlock over the State Children's Health Insurance Program -- known in California as Healthy Families -- the administration wanted to focus on children in families making about $41,000 for a family of four, or about twice the federal poverty level. Congressional Democrats and some Republicans wanted to allow states to cover kids in families making up to $62,000, or three times the national poverty level.