Hitting the Target

I went to a Target yesterday and to say it was a hot mess would be an understatement. Between empty shelves, some of which I know is a supplier problem and given most merchandise is from China makes sense; however, the problems centered more on merchandising and overall cleanliness. There is a labor shortage but Target has promised a higher wage structure and overall better working conditions, and I saw workers and no issues with checkouts, but there still is an overall shortage of workers willing to work in retail and fast food, the two largest sectors with hospitality facing this problem. Some hotels have already established a protocol that was done in the pandemic, self check in, no room service or housekeeping and that is remaining, less to do with rehiring workers and more in a permanent measure of internal housekeeping and profit boosting due to the lack of guests; that said this I seriously doubt will continue when travelers, particularly business travelers, return. As for restaurants, the ones open with strong reputations that remained during the pandemic were packed and that was during the lunch hour along the same streets only months ago were deserted. I do want to point out that while I walked in the wealthier section of Manhattan, the Upper East Side, I did see many empty storefronts and retail shops with nary a customer, some with signs that request an appointment, much like art galleries in SOHO, and that may be a sign of lack of staff or still residual Covid protocols, on that I am unsure.

As we reopen the issues of rentals and apartments still seem to favor the renter and with the housing market all over the place, last month sales declining, again there is also fewer discounts and incentives. My building is now undergoing massive staff changes as the door is now like the rest, revolving and with the decline in multi family units being built the reality is there are simply fewer tenants and the ones who came for the incentives are leaving as leases expire as well with the New York Times doing a feature on some who are in fact “neighbors” as many are planning to buy and move on. I would like to but with the upcoming evictions now delayed a month I will wait to see how that too effects the market – both in commercial and residential end.

So we have a shortage of labor, a push on evictions held, California looking into allocating funds for paying back rent on those most economically hit by the pandemic and of course the red states cutting extra unemployment, which runs out in September regardless, in time for school, September and October will be the true test as one more shortage remains – Teachers and Superintendents who are leaving in droves.

The complex ebb and flow of the labor market in economic downturns are usually quite predictive, the layoffs occur and the individuals hit the factories of education to upgrade their supposed lost skill set. This falsehood along with the one that students supposedly have thanks to the pandemic are two myths we have not truly gotten over but is perhaps fading with the reality that when you want to learn and work you do and you do so when you need or have to and not because a person is telling you to. Teachers have known this for years and Employers have simply just passed this cost on to the worker to absolve themselves of vesting into their staff’s long term growth. I read where Jeff Bezos in his quest to build Amazon felt the customer was the key, the worker less so. As the culture of Amazon has always been that workers are bees and when they have served their purpose they will die or just go to another hive. In a quote from a recent article about said culture of Amazon, Bezos believes: that people are essentially inherently lazy. The phrase that he would say is, essentially, people would expend the least amount of energy necessary to do what they want or need. And that my friends is the crux of Amazon’s entire system, from workers to customers we are inherently lazy. So much for a focus on customer service and with that it explains the massive turnover the company has with regards to its lower tier labor force. As for their corporate culture, the Times did a story on that years ago and found it toxic to say the least. I know of one woman who went to work for Amazon at night while trying to maintain her job at the storage facility I use and she was found in the back passed out from exhaustion and ended up getting fired from that job for not telling them that she was working two jobs and in turn putting herself and others at risk from both Covid and worker related injuries that could have occurred from her physical health. Amazon allure is that and then as you read the article, the focus on unionization becomes clear and not just with regards to Amazon but for all retail and restaurant work overall.

Which means the current situation with regards to recovery and restoring employment is much akin to the Great Migration of Black Americans in the Depression era that lasted well into the 70s. We are now seeing a similar turn of events only now in reverse with many Black Americans moving back to the South and energizing cities like Atlanta, or Montgomery, where they are electing Black Mayors; cities that are being revitalized with this new energized class of mobile, educated Black Professionals. And with that you are seeing why in those same states immense push back to restrict voting rights and develop a new type of Jim Crow. Ah yes the South shall rise again, they just did not think it would be by the Black people they drove out.

But not all the labor switch is due to that, some of it if not a larger portion was due to the Trump Immigration laws and positions, and when the pandemic hit the reality for those without legal status became more challenging once business shut doors and with that the jobs shuttered with them. Restaurants and hospitality are the largest employers of this classification, so is construction and agriculture which again contributes to some of the issues regarding those supply chains that are not always about materials. Think of the Covid victims in the meatpacking/food processing plants and that too is another group that may have elected to change patterns and move or move into different lines of work.

And lastly the women that we hear repeatedly about how they are the largest portion of population affected by the pandemic. Yes we get it we are the Immigrants and Minorities of all shapes and sizes and colors and we are always the last to get to the table. Why? Cause we put all that shit on the table, who do you think does it?

The one thing that has not been considered is how many women decided to use this as an opportunity to open new businesses, find partnerships and build a better community. That yet will be revealed and the reality is that many, particularly women of color, elected to retain their children in home schooling environments. The media has done an amazing job of illustrating the problems with this dynamic, from lack of broadband, to effective online learning for those children with special needs but in reality there are many who are thriving. The idea of homeschooling is not new, and like CRT it has roots in the 70s with the “Hippie” lifestyle embracing it, later the Evangelical Right taking it on to the point of publishing texts (full of bullshit religious garbage but hey that is how Lifeway became a massive Christian publishing house) to now many Black faces who are the largest growing segment of this type of education. The New Yorker recently did an article on the women who evolved this into a powerful cohort of home educators who may be adding a new element to a consistently changing dynamic of public education.

So for now we have many issues as to why the labor force is not returning in droves back to the low wage jobs they had and are for now looking to new paths and that may not be a bad thing. Catherine Rampall of The Washington Post did a decent essay on why that may be true and that is something that I have long been a champion of – Employers taking on the heavy lifting of training, and promoting their own. And they are looking outside the box to find employees and how to make the box a better wrapped one.

We have dumped much belief on this notion that it is College that trains and educates our workforce and this has in turn placed the focus on secondary education, certain programs and skills to join the workforce, with little to no flexibility on the “type” of skills one needs to find employment, add to this the costs to do so make it almost next to impossible for many to participate and in turn find jobs that will sufficiently compensate the structure that one needs to begin to enter the workforce; this is trickle down economics at its finest when you have massive debt as the ceiling to your home you cannot purchase. Note that the same time home purchases have risen and I suspect that thanks to the stimulus and now child care credits it is making that possible for many who never thought it would be. This again seems counter to the reality of what we are hearing, but automobile purchases are rising and this with a move away from urban cores makes sense. And again that will also affect where one works and who is the primary source of income. Yes folks I do believe at home work will be moving along as a part of the new normal, which despite the belief of it as a negative for women, I suspect otherwise. And yes folks online learning as well. Time will tell.

Dear Nasvhille

In the 18 months since I relocated here I have many highs and many lows.  I have frequently written about my issues adapting and assimilating into a culture not my own and to a city of which I had no previous experience or knowledge.  I came here in search of healing – physical and emotional – the former I am ongoing and pleased with, the latter has been put on hold.  Why?  Because what I have found is a city resistant to change and resentful yet oddly co-dependent upon outsiders.

I do not own a car and yet I have rented cars more than I have done in decades as even here car sharing as I knew it via Zipcar, Car2Go and RideShare does not exist here.  I see a type of car share available thru Enterprise but that is exclusively to State employees, so I walk and ride Metro as that is my main source of transportation.  I appreciate Metro and that the system is undergoing changes and upgrades with a Mayor who is a positive about public transport, so I work with what we got and it is not bad and could and should be better.  I have risked my life crossing streets and roads with no crosswalks nor sidewalks and I have been lucky, 300 people have not been so this past year.   The anger about such change is palpable and is centers around money and in a city that is undergoing as much gentrification as Nashville has the past 5 years the divisiveness is equally palpable.  And yes race is a factor but money governs the race on issue as it does color.

I live on 4th Ave S, one way that runs across the city towards the south end of county and intersects with many highway exchanges.  The cross street, Chestnut, is adjacent to the east-west connection of the city and is equally busy on a daily basis.

Behind my home is an upcoming area of Wedgewood  Houston and the bars, apartments and other facilities that run adjacent to the train tracks are new and growing businesses that once housed artists and others who understood in exchange for low rents they would have to tolerate the noise, congestion and other delays that the CSX train exchange just akin to the area causes.

But now they are leaving and the new are arriving. I pay 1800 dollars a month rent. Again, I don’t own a car which brings the why but more importantly the how when I am a Substitute Teacher in the lowest paying professions in the lowest paying districts in the region.  I am a writer in my down time and have been fortunate to find many who support the creative arts here that are not just about music and for them I am grateful but had I not resources and a willingness to compromise I would be living in box next to the tracks.

That said when one works along tracks the endless train noise is surreal.  I wear earplugs in my home 24/7 and when I have the windows open I have to wear additional ear coverage to protect my hearing.  The trains horns often are beyond the 140 decibels as stated by law and in turn often go longer than the 4 horn range they are to do at each crossing.  So ostensibly I hear 8 per run but often to be angry, punitive or just for laughs they ring them consistently through the crossings or up to 13 rings in a 5 minute time frame.   This does not include the vibration caused by the speed of the trains which often is excessive past the legal limits.  Again nothing surprises me with CSX as their financial problems are well documented so they do what they do regardless as they run unregulated and largely ignored here. 

Additionally the trains stop often with only one to two cars blocking the pass. Irony that is always at rush hours in the am or pm.  They can block for upwards to hours (yes as in plural) at a time to only a few minutes.  In that time frame I see cars backed up to the major crossing of Lafayette and watch School buses, Public Buses, Emergency Vehicles, Police and regular cars resort to some of the most bizarre changes in routes to sheer dangerous behavior, driving in reverse, turning around on a one way, on sidewalks, thru the park across the street all to divert.  We, the residents of the sole apartment building, are either trapped in our homes or unable to access our homes due to the backup.  We are on the fourth replacement of a Turn Only sign to the point the men decided to place it behind a stone wall so now for certain the cars have a clear sidewalk in which to drive.

I have watched cars try to outrace the trains and in turn get stuck on the tracks adding more delays and confusion.  My favorite this week was a Police car that turned on its blues after sitting pushing the far left lane to turn in order for him to re-route. When I have asked other Police about this they have informed me it is not their job.  So I have taken it upon myself to direct traffic, be verbally abused, threatened and harassed as well as thanked to get cars and people moving. Frankly the endless noise, the honking of horns the angry yelling  compels me to do this and not the kindness of my heart.  The waste of energy and air quality is another as I have been recovering from the other kind of healing which was the primary reason I came here and it has led me to be housebound by choice.  As a result it has enabled me to witness to some of the most troubling incidents and traffic seen most often on major highways on a daily basis.  No traffic reporter ever covers this and it is well worth a camera to see and hear what I do. 

On days when I have to work and need to go South I cannot as the bus is stranded with me.  I have to walk, get an Uber or find some other route to get to a job that ostensibly pays me barely enough to pay said rent.   That is my choice but I need to live close to a transit center and to Vanderbilt to access my medical care.  And to move again the costs would not be offset as the rents are largely the same throughout the city in this area. 

There are many potential solutions to some of the problems that exist.  A Silent Zone mandate that could be evoked at night and could be passed via  resolution through the City Council and on to the legislature. There are the same with the 20 minute rule that stops blocking of intersections. And all of it can begin through the local officials that govern the city. But like the schools should I want respect in Nashville I need to be from Nashville.  I am an outsider and I am not worthy of respect nor attention. I see it in the schools from the Staff to the Students and they wonder why there is a crisis in them but that is for another blog at another time.

The desire to turn the Fairgrounds south of my home to a major Soccer stadium is laughable. One way out one way in when you live on 4th Ave S.  There are too other ways to resolve this but again my voice is not heard.  I am trouble, difficult, confrontational.  Live with it or should I take my degrees, my education, my training and my money and taxes with me to where they will both respect and hear me?

I see my Doctors next week and I plan on changing my course of treatment to accelerate my healing and I can write anywhere. I have me the wonderful people of Ingram and they have already inspired me to go beyond what I believe and that I can do anywhere.

I go now to the Festival of Books with the hopes to be there as a Writer but also as a Visitor.  The reality is that Nashville doesn’t want people like me here – Pro transit, sidewalks, pro education and public schools and someone who cares and who has the audacity to ask questions and expect answers.

I have taken to Twitter to air my complaints repeatedly to the Mayor’s office who told me to contact CSX directly. Been there done that and got nowhere but thanks.  I have contacted Colby Sledge’s office, my representative with regards to the problem and sent him film of what it like to live adjacent to this literally potential train wreck.    I have spoken to the neighboring business, to the Church, the Shelter and the Daycare/Schools nearby and they all feel the same way but in true Southern fashion the response is: “Its always been that way.”  That resignation permeates all my dialogues here as if change is simply for one’s pocket and any other kind means to give up something.  Be that good or bad it means giving it up and they are not having any of that now y’hear!

My most recent exchange with said Mayor’s office that if I wanted to go around the train I was told to go via Oak Street. Yes I am aware of that (I live here and all of that)  but again I don’t have a car.   I bus it and the delays to the bus is another issue and yet this is a street pegged for lite rail.  We had this in Seattle and we have light rail and trains, and buses and ferries that transport people. We have bike lanes and trolley cars and we have sidewalks and crosswalks.. gosh why would anyone leave such a nirvana.  I am asked repeatedly: “Why did you come here?”  And my answer is that very question.

Pack and Go

Once again I read an article that somehow gives the impression that Millennial’s have utterly re-invented the wheel and by god it works!

Self moving has been around a better part of a decade. There are U-Pack, PODS, Door-To-Door and a few others that enable individuals to pack their own containers and have them relocated where they can have them unpacked at their leisure versus hiring a professional moving company to do it all. You can hire local movers to load/unload and or simply deliver goods to a location for a flat fee versus hourly, although that is still the most common method.

Estimation of moving companies are done vaguely and verbally. That is something that can be changed and easily validated and verified. Google Maps can tell you travel time estimation and you can expedite the loading and unloading by having everything ready and tipping the movers upfront. But you still need to know weight and the costs if going transcontinental and that is the true weight of the matter. 

What this article says is that most millennial seem clueless about the subject and of course once again need hand holding and walk abouts/self talking and whatever else they do to confirm their beliefs/actions/skills. And it all must be done via the magical 3×5 card they hold incessantly.

The moving industry could use some disruption and despite the belief that there is increasing regulation there is not as moving companies have the upper hand when it comes to moving. There are more complaints about moving companies across the country than any other industry and I am one of them.

Allied Van Lines quoted in the article is the agency that ripped me off when I moved across country. There is little recourse and legal means in which to seek restitution. If you use Allied or their local partners (such as Hanson Brothers in Seattle) you are fucked. It is that simple.

When I read how Atlas scans and bar codes items to have an accurate list, estimate weight and in turn costs upfront that is the company I will use in the future. Locally I go to Better Business, Consumer Reports and even Google/Yelp to find those businesses that are well reviewed. In Seattle I always used Adam’s Moving Company as they often over estimated to err on the side of caution but came in well under and that was also because I was prepared to expedite the process, tipped up front 20 bucks and another 20 upon completion of load. So for 40 bucks or so I had an easy delivery/moving. (You also tip according to your belief of load time/work ethic etc, so the bigger the move the bigger the tip) 

I cannot say the same for Hanson Brothers or Allied. If you want to get ripped off use them. Allied has immense complaints and I relied on Hanson which had positive reviews not realizing that their partner did not. Again that is my problem and that I did not take the extra insurance which I doubt they would have paid regardless as they are thieves. That is their business, theft.

So using Bellhops or Upakt does what exactly? Adding a middle man to an already complex industry. The real change needs to come in regulation and laws that will protect consumers. Think of the banks and how even the little done by the Consumer Protection Agency that Il Douchebag wants to eliminate has done for the financial industry if that was extended to the moving industry.

That is the real change and disruption the industry needs.

Start-Ups Seek to Take Some of the Pain Out of Moving

By GLORIA DAWSON
THE NEW YORK TIMES
DEC. 24, 2016

Adam Pittenger, who has moved six times in six years, shares his home in Hoboken, N.J., with his girlfriend and a roommate. With his frequent firsthand experience as a guide, he started a company this year to help make moving less of a chore.

His company, called Moved, is one of several that hope to shake up the nearly $17 billion moving industry with new technology and on-demand services. Meanwhile, traditional moving companies are coming up with their own innovations as more consumers prefer to conduct their business on computers and smartphones.

Through a mobile app that incorporates chat features, Moved can help customers through a laundry list of responsibilities: selling furniture, donating goods, ordering boxes, changing addresses and finding packing, moving and storage services.

Moved’s “concierge” services — locating and coordinating with service providers — are free; customers pay for what they use. Moved makes money through referral fees from its partners, which it says are vetted. All of the moving companies it works with are licensed and insured, Mr. Pittenger said.

“We’re the experience layer in between consumer and service provider, so consumers don’t have to spend the time researching and coordinating,” said Mr. Pittenger, 27, the chief operating officer of Moved, which is based in New York. “When they are busy at work and going about their day, moving tasks are getting done in the background.”

Mr. Pittenger is part of a younger generation who are renting and living with roommates rather than purchasing homes; they move more often as a result. Adults ages 18 to 34 have the highest rate of migration, according to the United States Census Bureau. While they made up about 34 percent of the total population of the United States from 2007 to 2012, they accounted for over 43 percent of people who moved.

After a slump during the recession, the industry as a whole has returned to growth, and revenue is expected to continue to grow for the next five years, according to IBISWorld, a research company.

“I think people are less stuck in the homeowner mentality,” said Cameron Doody, a founder of Bellhops, a company in Chattanooga, Tenn., that provides moving services. People are “valuing mobility more than ever before. We’re seeing a big shift in people that are holding out longer to buy homes for the flexibility of being able to rent.”

Mr. Doody, 30, who has moved five times in the last four years, focuses on a type of mover he thinks the larger companies have left behind.

“Traditionally, customers have been bucketed into two categories,” he said. “You’re either the do-it-yourselfer, where you’re renting a truck and begging your friends to help you, or you go to professional moving companies,” frequently for a large home move.

As Mr. Doody sees it, the frequent do-it-yourself mover would hire a professional if it weren’t so costly. Bellhops uses algorithms to make small-scale moves — typically involving local moves of apartments and small homes — more affordable, he said. A typical two-bedroom apartment move with Bellhops costs under $400, according to the company.

Bellhops’ moving services are available in Kansas City, Mo.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Athens, Ga.; and about 50 other towns and cities with major universities.

Mr. Doody’s company works with school organizations to find students to work as movers. The company performs background checks on them through a third party. Customers receive a biography of their “bellhop” when they schedule a move. Once the move is complete, customers rate the movers much as a passenger would rate a driver after an Uber ride.

Companies like Moved are what Lesli Bertoli, vice president and general manager of Allied Van Lines, calls lead generators. These companies “need someone else to go to the house and do the work,” she said.

Customers of Allied work directly with one of the company’s members, who consist of 350 independent moving companies.

Deciding whether to use a start-up “really depends on what you’re moving and where you’re moving,” Ms. Bertoli said. “If you were moving your entire house and leaving the state, I’m not sure I want to leave that to someone from an app.”

Scott Michael, president and chief operating officer of the American Moving & Storage Association, a trade association with 3,500 members, urges customers to do a thorough background check on any moving company they work with.

“Just because someone says something on the app or website doesn’t ensure that its true,” he said. “It might be better to select a mover yourself so that you can do the research” on that company.

Other companies are working with traditional movers but use their own technology to streamline the process. Unpakt, based in New York, lets customers compare bids and reviews from numerous companies. The hope is to make moving easier for consumers while helping traditional companies grow.

Ghostruck, a Seattle start-up, works with licensed, professional moving companies that pick up work during downtime. Its name is the term for a truck that comes back empty from a delivery.

Customers plug in their moving details and snap a few photos of their possessions, and Ghostruck offers a rate.

Many of Ghostruck’s customers are using professional movers for the first time, but they don’t want to haggle. They definitely don’t want to make a phone call. The company allows customers to price and book a move completely online with no human interaction.

“We frequently have people booking at midnight or 2 in the morning,” said Nathanael Nienaber, the chief executive. He said the company was best suited for small apartment moves. Customers often book about three days before they intend to move, and the average cost is $250 to $450.

Jack Griffin, the chief executive of Atlas Van Lines, which has nearly 500 movers in the United States and Canada, has been approached by start-ups and says he applauds their thinking. But he cautioned that the moving industry was complicated.

“Our business is highly regulated and getting more so,” Mr. Griffin said. There are regulatory measures, including safety and cargo protection, that companies must comply with. Companies moving single items or traveling intrastate may have more luck breaking in, he said.

Atlas, like many other traditional moving companies, is not ignoring new technologies, though. Atlas agents apply bar codes, scan and itemize customers’ goods to prevent loss; use an online system to calculate weight and estimate a moving price immediately; and have automated their claims process.

“We spend a lot on technology to try to smooth out a stressful life experience,” Mr. Griffin said, adding that these investments may help the moving industry avoid the fate of other disrupted industries. After all, he said, “I’m sure taxi drivers thought they weren’t threatened by Uber.”

Tough Choices

I am watching the Obama Press Conference in response to his budget and while I have always said Obama is a fantastic speaker who has a manner than evokes both intelligence and leadership. I have found myself, however, frustrated by his leadership and frankly I am deeply concerned that while long on platitudes regarding Sustainability I am skeptical that any of the good things will happen from the result of the budget but the bad will somehow manage to be salvaged in an increasingly divisive Congress.

In addition, as mentioned in the earlier blog post, States are increasingly strapped and they too have a political agenda that they are using to further their cause. At times it seems that is less about finances and more about party politics when it comes to looking forward with regards to America’s place in the world – both environmentally and economically.

I will let that play out as it will and I in turn refer to the American Prospect who wrote this in response to what they believe the outcome to this commitment to Clean Energy.

Clean Energy’s Cat-and-Mouse Game

The president’s new budget has a lot of proposals for green energy, but what if states fail to implement them?

Monica Potts | February 15, 2011 | web only

A day after the State of the Union Address — in which Obama outlined a massive public investment in clean-energy infrastructure — the president went on a trip to Wisconsin. He visited a renewable-energy tech manufacturer, an aluminum manufacturer and a wind turbine plant: “It’s here in Manitowoc that the race for the 21st Century will be won,” he said in one Wisconsin town.

But just the month before, the state’s newly elected Republican Governor, Scott Walker, turned down federal money for a high-speed rail line that would have connected Milwaukee to Madison. The money was part of Obama’s stimulus plan — the last time Obama put big money behind programs designed to green the future. Walker said the rail project was an example of excessive government spending: “[It] brought a new cost that we could ill afford at the time; we’re going to be crushed in our transportation budget.”

Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican who also won in November, turned down federal transportation dollars as well, and other governors, from Texas to Florida, have decried federal government spending and promised to send the money back to Washington. Whether they actually do or not, this highlights a big problem with Obama’s agenda — an agenda that was reinforced when his Fiscal Year 2012 budget proposal was released yesterday. Getting his spending proposals through an obstinate Congress is merely Obama’s first challenge. Even if he convinces the House and the Senate to spend the money, he has to convince governors to take it — and use it for what it’s intended for.

The task is even harder when one considers the rhetorical ground Obama has conceded to the right on matters of federal spending. Most of the “savings” in this budget come from cutting a number of domestic spending programs deeply — he would cut funding for the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, and funding for community services and home heating aid for low-income families. Whether this political move puts Obama at an advantage compared to House Republicans who want to make even deeper cuts is up for debate, it certainly posits government spending as an ill that must be reduced.

No matter now many empty gestures the president makes to appease deficit hawks, Republican governors eager to portray Obama as a typical tax-and-spend liberal are likely to continue to turn down federal money — and renewable energy initiatives are bound to be the hardest hit. Many states, however reluctantly, were forced to take stimulus money to try to curb deep state-budget deficits, but there is no such pressure when it comes to public investment in green infrastructure. These grants aren’t cash assistance to states running in the red, but rather efforts to use the federal government’s enormous spending power to fundamentally change the way the country does business.

Some of the proposed spending on green energy would take the form of tax incentives and grants to states. To put advanced-technology vehicles on the road, the budget proposes $200 million in competitive grants meant to help communities make infrastructure changes that support electric vehicles and “remove regulatory barriers.” It would also create a $100 million “Race to Green” competition for state and local governments to improve their building codes and standards. Most important, the budget proposes spending $556 billion on rail transportation and other green infrastructure projects. “Too often, transportation dollars are viewed from the perspective of an individual State or locality,” the proposal says, and that’s true — states have a lot of say in how their transportation dollars are spent.

Of course, the budget also proposes direct federal spending and federal tax credits for research and innovation, loan guarantees for renewable energy companies, and efforts to cut oil and coal subsidies. (It would also, because of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent deluge of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, increase Department of Interior funds to better oversee the energy industry.) That means the national agenda will hew more closely to the president’s agenda with those programs. But even then the administration can’t ensure that federal spending won’t be counteracted by state-level policies — even if states use federal money to become home to clean-energy research and innovation hubs, like those that would be funded by Department of Energy grants, they can still maintain state-level policies that make them friendly huge factory farming operations that emit greenhouse gases.

Until now, states have struck out on their own on renewable-energy legislation, largely because the federal government under Bush was so silent on the issue. Thirty-four states have some form of a renewable-energy standard, and most of these require utilities to source a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources. But most state-level plans have been modest; what’s been missing is an aggressive regulatory and financing push from the federal government. The budget reiterated Obama’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to levels that are 83 percent below those in 2005 by the year 2050, but doesn’t lay out how, exactly, the standard will be met.

The day after the State of the Union, while Obama was in Wisconsin, I attended a blogger roundtable with Obama’s senior advisor, David Axelroad, and Brian Deese, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. Both tried to hammer home the point that clean-energy investment isn’t just about protecting the environment, but about positioning the country to thrive economically as well. I asked about the state issue, and Axelrod said that programs like the Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” initiative — a program that allows states to compete for federal grants by designing their own plans to meet certain initiatives — would help, and that the administration wants to work with governors. He pointed out that Obama’s visit to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, was to a factory that had been abandoned but now employed people again, largely because of tax incentives. “That’s not a vision we should turn our backs on. That’s a prescription for success in the future. And we have to keep going out there and making the case to the American people. And hopefully, the American people, in their individual states, will make that case to their governors and we can move them on some of this, those who are resistant.”

Obama does this often: He stakes his claim on the side of rational compromise, and hopes that the American people will see the opposition as unreasonable. Obama has set this up as a political bet, but given that Republicans see their goal as thwarting the president regardless of what he proposes, it’s one he risks losing.