The story of mariachi music in Texas schools begins with Belle San Miguel Ortiz.

“There are several names that they’ve given me, from godmother to the queen of the mariachis, to la madrina, which is the same thing,” said Ortiz. “I was the very first teacher of mariachi anywhere in the world.”

That’s a tough thing to prove. But Ortiz stands by that claim. “A lot of people will say you’re not the first. Yes, I am.”

When Ortiz first started teaching music in Texas high schools, some people didn’t like what she was doing. “We’re talking about the late 50’s, when discrimination was at its highest. And many of my colleagues reported me saying that I was teaching choir but everything was in Spanish.”

As a Mexican American living in Texas though, she thought Mexican folk music was important. “I couldn’t understand why mariachi music was not taught, especially I thought in this area.”

Finally in 1970, Ortiz got permission to teach a high school mariachi class. It’s come a long way since then.

When I met Ortiz, who is now 79, she was judging a regional competition for a statewide high school mariachi contest.

Ten bands from South Texas participated in the competition. Each had about a dozen members. The boys wore ornate, embroidered suits and the girls wore floor length skirts, sashes, and jackets. The outfits were sewn with elaborate patterns and shiny buttons. The kids looked sharp.

They played violins, trumpets, and guitars. Students also played the two key mariachi instruments: The guitarrón – essentially an enormous guitar – and the vihuela, a small guitar. There was also the occasional harpist and flute player.

High school junior Jonathan Rivera nailed a fantastic harp solo.

“I went up there, and we were playing, and I was like okay, calm down, you’ve done this before,” said Rivera after his performance. “And then we started the song, it wasn’t even close to the solo, we just started the song, and I was already like, ooooh, it hit me, and I was like ‘Oh My Gosh,’ and I got nervous.”

If Rivera and the other students were nervous, it didn’t show. The students also took turns walking to center stage and belting out solos. I kept forgetting that I was watching 15, 16, and 17-year-olds up on stage.

They were great.

“Mariachi is more performing,” said Rivera. “You’re actually like a Broadway show, you go and you sing, and you act. When you go into mariachi, you could have the worst day of your life, your dog died, your parents are in the hospital, and your girlfriend left you, and you’re like oh you have a performance today, forgot about that. And you can’t go on stage, with your face all frowning and what not, you gotta go up there and smile, you gotta do that.”

Rivera also plays in a rock band. But like many of the students I met, he said he gravitated to mariachi because it connects him to his Mexican roots. Senior Celia Vallez chose mariachi as an elective in the sixth grade.

“And the primary reason was that the majority of my family doesn’t speak English, so I felt it was really a way for me to connect to them and back to my Mexican roots and heritage.”

Like other students I met, Vallez’ Spanish was not the best.

“Spanish is actually my first language, but over the years, I haven’t been able to use it as often. It still comes, but it’s not as naturally,” said Vallez. She said mariachi “definitely” helps.

Still, there are some who don’t understand this embrace of mariachi. I heard tales of parents who were upset that their children were wasting their time on this cantina music. It’s seen as kind of a joke by many, not worthy of musical study.

Texas State University in San Marcos is trying to change that attitude. It’s offering classes in mariachi methods and history. Undergraduates can earn a teaching certificate in mariachi music. And the school plans to offer a summertime masters program in mariachi in the near future.

When mariachi was first introduced there in the 1990’s, it was student taught.

“Then I went to the school of music and said, we need to take this class seriously like any other ensemble. You would never do this to orchestra, orchestra would never be student run with a faculty adviser,” said John Lopez, the coordinator of Latin Music Studies at Texas State.

He said putting mariachi in the classroom isn’t just culturally important for Latino students. It’s important musically; it’s a challenging genre.

“All other ensembles are either instrumental or they’re either vocal. But a mariachi is unique in the fact that every single person does sing and every single person does play, and they’re woven almost all the time together.”

Belle Ortiz, (left) “the godmother of the mariachis in Texas,” congratulates students from Southwest High School who advanced to the state finals. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Mariachis face another challenge: They have to memorize their music. That’s the way mariachis have always done it. The guys at the Mexican restaurants don’t get to have sheet music.

“They know a lot, a lot of songs. They need to be prepared at any time to play a song that somebody requests,” said Lopez.

That can be anything from Elvis to Lady Gaga, to pretty much everything in between.

There was none of that at the Texas high school competition though, just traditional Mexican folk music. And that made Belle Ortiz, the godmother of the mariachis, quite proud.

“How more beautiful can you get when students coming to me would say, ‘You know what, Mrs. O, my grandmother came in when I was playing and I was singing and she says, where did you learn that song?’ And they say, at school. She (grandmother) says, ‘I used to sing that when I was small, when I was little, when I was young young.’ And she says, ‘Can I sing it with you?’”

The document said it is lawful to kill a United States citizen abroad who is a “senior operational” leader of al-Qaeda or a related group, and that it would be lawful to kill an American citizen who poses an “imminent” threat to the United States.

“And of course most citizens will say, ‘Well what is an imminent threat?’” said Gary Solis, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “The answer is we don’t know in the abstract.”

Solis said the memo obtained by NBC continues an ongoing debate about targeted killings, but provides little new guidance. For example, the memo says the US government “could use lethal force in a foreign country outside the area of active hostilities.”

“And that too is part of the problem in that the battlefield is undefined,” said Solis. “We know that Afghanistan is a battlefield, one can reasonably say that Pakistan is a battlefield. But is Yemen a battlefield? Is Somalia a battlefield?”

In a place like Somalia, there’s no government the US can turn to and say we need you to arrest and extradite this individual. So, Solis asks: Is it not reasonable then to attack an American citizen on foreign soil who poses an imminent threat to American interests? And where could that attack take place?

“I mean if he’s in Paris, if he’s sitting in a sidewalk café drinking coffee, clearly we cannot attack him there because France has a working judicial and political system through which we can work,” said Solis. “But if he’s in ‘blue land’ or ‘red land’ or something like that where they don’t have a functioning government, what then?”

Objections to the Memo

Jameel Jaffer with The American Civil Liberties Union said he’s not comfortable with the guidance the administration is offering in this memo.

“The bottom-line is that the executive branch can carry out these targeted killings without ever presenting evidence to a court or even acknowledging to a court or to the public that the authority they’re claiming has been used. And that really is a pretty chilling proposition.”

Jaffer said the memo is filled with vaguely stated limits that are easy to manipulate. For example, he said the category of people the government claims it can kill is too broad, including not just people who present an imminent threat, but people who pose a continuing threat.

“It’s a phrase that in the administration’s view, no court is going to have the opportunity to interpret. And whatever ‘continuing threat’ means, it’s the administration that will get to decide.”

And Jaffer said remember, this is not just about what the Obama Administration could do. “Even if you trust this particular administration with this power, and I’m not saying you should, but even if you do, this is a power that will be available to the next administration, and it will be available in every future conflict.”

Is Targeted Killing A Good General Strategy?

The topic of targeted killings is sure to get much more attention in the days ahead. President Obama’s pick to head the CIA, John Brennan, has his Senate confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday. Brennan was the first official in the Obama administration to publicly acknowledge drone strikes last year. He called them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.”

Bill Martel, an associate professor of international security studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said he’s comfortable with the executive branch making snap decisions to protect American interests. But he wants the process more clearly defined and transparent.

“I would like to think in the course of things that we’d have courts that are reviewing this. I like further to think that Congress would be involved in those kinds of decisions,” sad Martel. “It’s interesting that Congress, according to reports, received this document back in June.”

President Obama is expected to unveil his own reform plan on Tuesday. The president has spoken a lot about the need for “comprehensive” immigration reform in recent weeks. That means taking on a lot. One of the downsides of this all-or-nothing approach is that a lot of immigration issues that have bipartisan support don’t get done.

Consider agriculture. Here’s the worst kept secret on fruit and vegetable farms in Arizona and California: “The existing workforce is approximately 70 percent illegal, or undocumented, or falsely documented workers,” said Tom Nasif, president of Western Growers, an association that represents fruit, vegetable, and nut farmers in Arizona and California.

Nasif arrived at that 70 percent figure from university and think tank studies, along with statistics from W-2 forms that have mismatched social security numbers.

Every farmer will insist they check legal documents before hiring. But it’s well known that phony documents are rampant on American farms. It’s a risky game: Workers with fraudulent papers can get deported. The farmer can lose his workforce — and his harvest.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle agree that the system needs fixing. A bill in Congress called AgJobs has enjoyed bipartisan support. It offers a path to citizenship for undocumented agricultural workers and makes it easier for growers to hire temporary immigrant workers. But the bill has died, mostly because politicians couldn’t reach a bigger compromise on the entire immigration problem.

Nasif said American agriculture can’t go on like this.

“When the legislature wants to act on a sticky issue, such as immigration reform, they can do it very quickly,” said Nasif, pointing to the example of Major League Baseball. When baseball teams exceeded their visa allotments, Congress quickly made things right in 2006.

Still waiting: An immigration reform rally in Fresno, Calif. during the spring of 2009. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“We have an adequate supply of outstanding baseball players in the United States. And so if anyone is taking jobs Americans would love to have, it’s foreign baseball players,” said Nasif.

(Nasif makes this point for effect, not because he wants foreign baseball players out of the country.)

Meanwhile, plenty of other interest groups want their own issues addressed as well. So-called “Dreamers,” young people brought to this country illegally by their parents as children, want a path to citizenship. And then there are high-tech companies that want more visas granted to foreign engineers and scientists.

On tech worker and agricultural visas, Democrats and Republicans actually agree on key points. But as political scientist Mark Jones at Houston’s Rice University points out, politics over who gives up what, or who gets what, in a massive immigration debate can kill smaller bills. With the AgJobs bill, the Democrats blocked it.

“They don’t want to give away what they know is the one immigration reform that most Republicans want without getting something in return,” said Jones.

Of course Republicans have stopped immigration-related bills that Democrats want too.

Frustrating, for many, but avoiding the piecemeal approach to immigration reform makes political sense to Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“It’s a very tough tactical question and it always has been. And the reason has to do with the most difficult issue of all, which is: Do you do some kind of legalization for the 10 to 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States? And every time the discussion comes of doing immigration reform piecemeal, the problem is that that’s the issue that gets left to last. And if that’s the issue that left to last, it probably does not happen.

That’s why many people on the bottom of the food chain in America – undocumented immigrants – favor going after comprehensive reform during this presidential term.

“It’s harder to do, but it’s harder if we keep another four years separating families, thousands of families,” said Alain Cisneros, a community organizer in Houston with the Texas Organizing Project.

Cisneros said working immigrants without papers are basically trapped – they can’t return to their home countries to visit family and they’re afraid to speak out against abusive employers. When he came here, he worked as a janitor cleaning buildings in downtown Houston.

Field workers in California’s Central Valley after a day’s work. When asked how many were in the US legally, none said they were. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“Clean up every single night for hours, go and clean up the buildings. I see many, many people just come in and for any reason get fired. And the companies pay less, like in the black market. And (the workers) don’t receive protection for the time working. I say, ‘This is something wrong.’”

Cisneros said with comprehensive immigration reform, everybody’s rights and needs will be on the table.

Like many who follow the immigration debate, Mark Jones at Rice University said if comprehensive reform has a chance of passing, now is the time.

“In the end, I think a lot will depend on what type of priority President Obama and the Democratic Party give to comprehensive immigration reform. If he really does make this the healthcare reform of his second term, it’s likely to be passed,” said Jones.

There are, of course, a lot of other important issues the president would like to address in the next four years. And don’t underestimate party politics. Hispanic voters have been flocking to the Democratic Party, in large part, because of the Party’s support for immigration reform. Jones said this puts Democrats in a position of strength.

“Really it’s in the best interest of the Republican Party to remove this issue. For the Democrats, it’s a win-win situation. Either they get the immigration reform they want, or they keep this alive as an issue that allows them to drive a wedge between the Republican Party and Hispanic voters, which means the Democratic Party just does better and better electorally.”

In Washington, political gamesmanship can mean stalemate. There hasn’t been meaningful immigration reform since 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president.

The University of North Dakota recognizes this huge potential – the school now offers an undergraduate major in unmanned aircraft systems operations. Most soon-to-be graduates will end up in jobs that support the military. But program head Ben Trapnell said civilian uses will eventually far outpace those for defense.

“Some of the big things, agricultural uses, we can get imagery to farmers a lot faster than having to wait for satellites to do the same thing.”

For instance, an unmanned plane could fly over a field and send back pictures to show where pests are located or where crops are moist.

“There’s the possibility of flying organs from one place to another to get them there faster for transplants,” said Trapnell, who has a list of about 90 potential civilian applications.

Today when we hear about unmanned aircraft, we’re accustomed to imagining a big military drone, basically a plane without a pilot. These fighter drones have to be big to carry missiles. But unmanned aircraft for civilian purposes can be built much smaller.

Jeff Johnson gave me a tour of the labs at Appareo Systems, a company that makes avionics equipment in Fargo, North Dakota.

“That little black box you’re seeing there is the device we made for the office of naval research,” he said pointing out a device that detects obstacles and keeps an unmanned aircraft from crashing into a building or other plane. The device is a cube small enough to hold in the palm of your hand.

“As small as that is, it’s too big,” said Johnson.

Jeff Johnson with Appareo Systems holds a GPS system. He says these devices need to get smaller still. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

The cube needs to be smaller because unmanned planes of the future will be really, really small. Picture a model airplane.

Johnson calls these flying machines UAV’s, short for unmanned aerial vehicles. He said making one small enough to be portable could be helpful, for instance, in fighting a forest fire.

“One of the applications we’ve been asked about is to have a person being able to carry a UAV on their back that they assemble and can send through a smoke plume to see what’s on the other side.”

These devices may be small, but they still need oversight when they’re in the air. In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration is in charge of that and is proceeding cautiously.

For now, the FAA has banned most uses of UAV’s while it figures out the risks these devices pose and draws up regulations. In the meantime, the agency has authorized UAV’s for important missions deemed “in the public interest.” That includes things like disaster relief and law enforcement. Still, operations are prohibited over densely-populated areas.

To the north, Canada is moving ahead more quickly. You can get a permit to fly a UAV in a matter of weeks through the agency Transport Canada. (Certification is handled on a case by case basis and certification timelines can vary.) But even with that license, you can’t fly a UAV higher than 400 feet.

Once certified, pilots can purchase a UAV from a company like Aeryon Labs in Waterloo, Ontario. They sell a device called “The Scout.”

“The system comes out of a small case or backpack, about the size of carry-on luggage. So the system can be deployed anywhere and carried by a single user,” said company Vice President Ian McDonald.

The Scout is like a helicopter, but uses four propellers to stay airborne. (It’s commonly called a quadrotor, or sometimes, quadcopter.) While in the sky, cameras take video or photos.

McDonald said in the past three years, his company has sold the Scout to military and commercial customers on every continent, except Antarctica.

“A customer in South Korea used the system as part of security planning and response for the 2012 nuclear summit,” said McDonald.

That summit attracted more than 50 world leaders, including President Obama.

McDonald said there are a few key reasons to use the Scout: Namely, it’s cheaper and safer than hiring a pilot to fly a plane or helicopter. And it flies lower to capture higher resolution images.

Add it all up, it’s big business. Already, worldwide sales for unmanned aerial vehicles top $7 billion, according to industry estimates from the Teal Group. (Note: link has outdated figure of $6.6 billion.) And that figure could more than double within a decade, especially as UAV’s start to get used for more civil applications.

Immigrant rights advocates want their issue addressed soon – establishing a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living and working in the United States. But standing in their way are many conservative lawmakers who regard this as a free pass, or amnesty, for rule breakers.

Down in Texas, I got to sit in on a meeting of grassroots immigrant rights activists in Houston. The meeting was led by Carlos Duarte with the group Mi Familia Vota, or My Family Votes. Duarte said they need to target four Republican Congressmen in Houston and two Republican US senators from Texas.

“Unless they understand that they will be without a job in the next election, unless they understand that, they are not going to sign an immigration reform that is really useful for the community as a whole,” said Duarte.

The people in the room nodded their heads. They see their time as now.

“The Latino voice has come out, we’ve made an impact, and people have to respond, right?” said Paloma Martinez with the Service Employees International Union. “And I think people will get fired up if we make that really clear, that it’s possible, it’s within reach. We have a vision and we can do it.”

Latinos flexed their muscle last November. Some 12 million voted, and they voted overwhelmingly, upwards of 75 percent, for President Obama. Immigration reform was a top issue for many of those Latino voters, and they rejected Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s focus on border enforcement and “so called” self-deportation.

Carlos Duarte said that Latinos must make politicians who sided with Romney know that they’ll lose their elections too if their position on immigration doesn’t change.

“We need to call members of Congress, we need to participate in rallies, we need to register to vote, and we need to vote. Because unless they understand that we are going to make them accountable through the vote, they are not going to be passing immigration reform.”

Immigrant rights activists in Houston putting together their political strategies. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

After the meeting, I spoke with César Espinosa, who moved to Texas from Mexico City when he was 4. He’s been living in the US undocumented for the past 23 years and runs an organization called Immigrant Families and Students In The Struggle. Like many immigrant rights organizers, Espinosa himself can’t vote. But he can rally others to vote for his interests.

“We have people power. We can move thousands and thousands of people to rallies to marches and things like that. When you can’t vote, you vote with your feet, you march,” said Espinosa.

Immigrant rights advocates are planning to make their presence felt in Washington in the coming months. Espinosa said they also want politicians to feel their presence in the pocketbook.

“Obviously they have people that donate to them. And we just target everybody, we cast a wide open net,” said Espinosa. “We approach them, and we tell them this is what immigration reform is, this is who we are, we share our stories with them so that they know that we’re not ghosts, that we are actual people who are contributing, who have roots here, who have business interests here.”

But will all this, and the recent momentum, be enough to get immigration reform done? It depends on your timeline, said political scientist Mark Jones at Rice University in Houston.

“In the short-term, there is no real consequence for alienating Hispanics, at least outside of a few marginal swing districts. In the long-term though, the Republican Party’s failure to retain and win a large share of the Hispanic vote will spell doom for the party as a viable national force.”

That could be about 8 to 10 years from now, by Jones’ estimate. But are Republican party leaders willing to think that far ahead? Jones said it’s hard to make the case that the Party is in crisis mode, especially in red-state Texas.

Mark Jones at Rice University in Houston. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“Because they look to see that they’re winning statewide elections by more than 10 points. They have close to two-thirds of the seats in the (Texas) Senate and State House. They really aren’t worried about the short-term.”

And on the national level, Jones said, “You’d be hard pressed to find more than a half-dozen Republican members of the US House who could possibly lose their seat due to Hispanics voting against them.”

On the flip side, consider the Republican politician who aligns with Democrats on immigration reform. They risk being challenged by a more conservative primary opponent come the mid-term elections.

But some Republicans are taking that risk. For instance, Senator Marco Rubio from Florida recently came forward with proposals that aren’t all that different from President Obama’s plans. Perhaps Rubio is thinking long-term because he has national aspirations. By many accounts, Rubio is interested in a run at the White House.

But immigrant activists I met, like Esther Reyes, executive director of the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, said they’re not focused on party lines.

“Our faith is not in any political party. Absolutely we can be used as pawns. Any community can be used as a pawn as far as politically, and for that reason, our strength is not in in a political party’s promises. Our strength is in our community.”

She said look at major social movement in history: No lawmaker just wakes up one day and says something like, you know what, today I’m going to give women the right to vote. Change will be through the groundswell, through constant pressure. The question is: Will immigrant rights activists be able to create enough of it?

“If everybody in the world drove the way Americans do today, then there would be in 2050 about nine-plus billion people, according to the UN, and those nine billion people would be driving 7.8 billion light duty vehicles.”

And those vehicles would require five times the oil production as today, spewing out a lot more greenhouse gasses.

“And those cars would take up enough land that it would take an area the size of the whole country Bangladesh just for the parking spaces,” said Sterman.

But what’s the answer then if we all want cars? One thought: We share them. Sterman loves this idea. He says more people need to really think about what car ownership entails.

“The insurance, the registration, the taxes, the parking, the maintenance, all of that stuff that you that pay for, whether you’re driving it or not,” said Sterman. “Most people, especially in cities, are coming to realize: No, this is a terrible thing. It’s hugely expensive to own a personal vehicle.”

Here in Boston, as well as more than 50 other cities in North America, the UK, and Spain, you can rent a Zipcar by the hour or day. Robin Chase co-founded the company in Boston 13 years ago.

“We started with four cars and built it up from there,” said Chase. Today, Zipcar has a fleet of nearly 10,000 vehicles and 760,000 members.

“Each car is used by 40 to 60 people, and of those people 15 to 20 sell or avoid buying a car,” Chase said.

That’s a lot less congestion and emissions.

An opportunity for global expansion

Last week, Avis bought Zipcar for around $500 million. With Avis’deeper pockets and vastly larger vehicle fleet, this could enable the Zipcar service, renting cars by the hour, to greatly expand.

Robin Chase is no longer affiliated with Zipcar. She’s now working on another car sharing start-up in Paris and sees huge opportunities for growth in car sharing globally.

“I just spent the last two years in Paris, and throughout Europe, it’s a given and accepted fact that cities are going to all become shared cars. Over the next 20 years that’s what we will see. And as we think about Asia and in India, those densely-populated cities, American cities are 1/5 the population density of those cities.”

And those already-crowded Chinese and Indian cities don’t yet have that many cars either. David Friedman, the deputy director of the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said consider this: Right now, there are about 700 cars per 1,000 people here in the US.

“In China, there’s about 44 cars for every 1,000 people. In India, there’s even less, there’s only about 12 cars for every 1,000 people,” said Friedman.

“So there’s a lot of room for China and India car ownership to grow. The question is: Are they going to take the US model, where we’ve saturated car use? Or are they going to adopt car sharing? So they don’t follow the same path of congestion, pollution and poor air quality that we tried over the last 40 years as our car ownership exploded.”

But do the Chinese want to share cars?

“Forget about it. No way. It’s not going to happen. Unthinkable,” said Michael Dunne, an independent car consultant based in Hong Kong. Dunne said in Asia cars are a social statement.

“It’s an image factor, big image factor. So at the office you’d say, What kind of car are you driving? I’m driving a Honda. This guy over here has a Nissan. I have a Chevy. What about you? ‘Well, I’m sharing a car with somebody else. Gee. Oh, you’re sharing a car? That means you can’t afford one.’”

But that doesn’t mean attitudes can’t change. People just need a nudge, said Susan Shaheen, the co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research shows that car sharing has been growing faster in the US than in Canada, for example.

“When we look at the difference between Canada and the US, US governments typically were much more supportive toward the car sharing concept in terms of grants, subsidies, access to on-street parking, and those types of things. So I think the role of the government is really important. And I think the signal, in particular, that it sends to the population in China is very important.”

In Singapore, the government has been sending that signal: car taxes, tolls, and usage fees are making car ownership prohibitively expensive. It costs more than $65,000 just to buy a permit to own a car there. No real surprise: some car sharing companies in Singapore are now open for business.

Local businesses would like them to stay a bit longer. There’s a simple reason. Jolin Zhou with the Boston-based Chinese tour operator Sunshine Travel told a story of a Chinese man who was recently visiting Boston with his teenage son on a college scouting trip.

“One day he asked my co-worker: ‘Can you recommend a meal, a good restaurant, and bring me there? The best restaurant in Boston, no matter how expensive.’ My co-worker brought him to a restaurant. They spent $1000 for two of them for dinner.”

Zhou told this story to about 75 businesspeople working in the hospitality industry at the State House in Boston. They were gathered for a tourism workshop, hosted by The Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, geared at attracting Chinese visitors.

The state of Massachusetts is following the lead of states like California, which has developed a “China Ready” program. They offer a learning kit to teach California businesses how to be better serve Chinese tourists and understand Chinese culture.

China has a middle class of some 300 million people, and more and more of them are travelling internationally. Travelers from China rank ninth in terms of foreign visitors to the United States, but they’re the fastest growing group by far. And they’re the third biggest spenders when they travel internationally, only behind the Germans and the Americans.

At the Massachusetts State House, people like Evan Saunders were offering local businesses advice on how to tap into those Chinese wallets. Saunders is the CEO of “Attract China,” a start-up that helps American businesses, like hotels and restaurants, get noticed online in China.

One of Saunders’ clients is the popular Boston restaurant, Legal Sea Foods.

Saunders said the word ‘legal,’ when associated with a restaurant, can be confusing for Chinese people. He said they market tested it and people in China thought legal meant, “maybe a government-associated company, that is involved in making sure people go to jail if they’re not serving the right things.”

Not exactly the image you want for your seafood restaurant.

Saunders is trying to correct that by branding Legal Sea Foods in China as “America’s Best Sea Food Destination.” He’s also making his client visible on the Chinese version of Google, where they’re more likely to be seen.

USS Constitution, Navy Yard, Charlestown, Mass. (Photo: FayFoto)

Haybina Hao, who is originally from China and now works with the National Tour Association in Kentucky, said it’s often the little things that resonate with foreign visitors. For example, Chinese people like soy milk in the morning, and they don’t like it served cold.

“So use a microwave, if possible. You can use glass, you can use a little mug to wake them up,” Hao told the people at the seminar in Boston. “They will be so happy for their hot milk.”

And Hao added, put disposable slippers in hotel rooms. “That really makes them feel great, just like home.”

Of course, everybody likes to feel catered to when they travel, no matter where they’re from. Americans have long expected the option of American-style food when we travel abroad, and that most everybody will speak at least some English.

David Ritchie, who directs sales and marketing for the Omni Parker House hotel in Boston, came to the State House to learn how to attract more Chinese travelers. He said he already knew about the slippers. However, he says “I didn’t realize how important milk and different little things (are) that probably would make a difference to people when they’re staying.”

But Ritchie said he can’t do too much more to cater to a specific group of visitors. For example, a few speakers suggested making Chinese food available at hotels. Ritchie balked at that.

“We invented the Boston crème pie, so we are the American iconic culinary institution,” Ritchie said. “I think we’re staying with our concept, I think it works.”

That’s the right strategy, said Donna Quadri, a professor of hospitality and tourism at NYU. She said touches like slippers for Asian travelers or tea for British visitors are nice, but you don’t want to be something you’re not.

“Travelers really want the authentic experience. When my cousins from Italy come to New York, you know what they want? They want steak and potatoes, right? They want an American hamburger from a neighborhood tavern. They want things that are quintessentially American,” said Quadri.

Quadri said it’s a mistake to make sweeping generalizations about what international visitors are looking for when they travel. But she said one thing everyone appreciates is hotel staff or guides who speak your language.

Nantucket Island, Mass. (Photo: Michael Galvin)

Jackie Ennis with the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism emphasized that point. “If 700 Chinese visitors show up on your doorstep for a museum tour, and you don’t have a Mandarin speaking guide, it could be a little awkward.”

But that’s something that each hotel or restaurant has to do on its own. Many people I met at the State House in Boston said they’re exploring things like Chinese menus or interpreters, but they aren’t quite ready to commit.

They’d better get moving. The US Department of Commerce projects the number of Chinese visitors coming to the US to nearly double within three years.

LaPierre claimed that Israel had “a whole lot of school shootings,” until they did what the NRA is advocating.

Some Israelis have called the comment ludicrous.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said there was no “series” of attacks at schools, and that security has been beefed up over the years to deal with terrorism, not senseless shootings.

The World’s Lisa Mullins spoke with Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science and international relations at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv.

Steinberg said there were periods where every Israeli school did have a security guard. But he said the situations at schools in Israel and the US are not comparable.

It many cases, it depends on which side of the fence you sit. And even then, answers aren’t so clear cut. Consider two auto towns, one in Michigan and another in Mexico. First, take the case of Michigan and one retired autoworker there.

Bob Bowen worked for the Ford Motor Company in Ypsilanti, Michigan for 35 years assembling cars. He retired in 1994. Today, he lives in a modest house in the Township of Ypsilanti. He collects a pension from Ford of $1,300 a month. He takes home another $1,200 in social security. He’s spending part of his retirement restoring a 1957, baby blue Ford Thunderbird.

“First car I bought,” said Bowen, who bought the car at age 18.

I asked Bowen if a young blue collar worker starting at Ford today could afford to buy a new car like that.

“Not too many, no,” he said.

Downtown Ypsilanti is making a comeback with new stores and restaurants. Bob Bowen calls the changes “aesthetic,” saying what the people really need are jobs. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“So he’s worked at Ford now for about eight years. And he’s worked up to pretty good pay grade, I think he’s around $17 or $18 an hour.”

That’s the same hourly wage Bowen got 20 years ago. And his grandson has no pension, less generous healthcare benefits and weaker job security. Bowen doesn’t see how his grandson can achieve the same middle class lifestyle he enjoyed in Ypsilanti.

“You’re supposed to save up enough money to buy a home,” said Bowen “You have to have a way to get to work, so that means you have to have a new car, so that’s pretty expensive. You have to have insurance, that’s expensive. You have to eat every day, contrary to what some conservatives think. And you have to save enough money so you can educate your children, if you have any children. Where’s that money coming from?”

Bowen added, forget about having enough money at the end of the month for your 401k. At least Bowen’s grandson, Bobby, has a job here. Another grandson had to move to Kentucky to find work and another one joined the military.

In the late 1970’s, some 20,000 people worked for Ford and General Motors in Ypsilanti. Today, only a few hundred work in the auto industry here. It’s the same story in cities throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.

To say the least, Ypsilanti has seen better days. Tax revenues have plummeted in the past 20 years. The city mayor says he’s considering combining fire and police into one. The parks and recreation department has a budget of $0. It’s just a web page that rarely gets updated. Downtown, auto row is no longer.

“So you take east of the river on Michigan Avenue, there used to a row of automotive dealerships there,” said Bowen “Along the north side, was a Pontiac dealership, which is now a Honda dealership. And then you go across to the other side, there was Lincoln Mercury, then there was a Chevy dealer, there was the Dodge dealer, and then there was an Oldsmobile dealer. Well all that’s left is the Honda dealer, which tells you something, right?”

Like many current and former auto workers I met, Bowen blames Washington for the changes around here. Another retired autoworker I met in Ypsilanti, Shirley Poling, said NAFTA was the “death knell of her town and permanent trade relations with China was the final nail in the coffin.”

At the same time, Bowen, and the others, understand that NAFTA was only one factor in their town’s problems. Jobs were moving away from here well before NAFTA was signed, and not just to Mexico. Technology has also made it possible for car makers to hire far fewer workers and be more productive.

The last downtown dealership on what was once auto row in Ypsilanti. Most car dealerships are located in nearby Ann Arbor. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Through it all, Bowen doesn’t blame the Mexican workers. He says wages are too low there and the workers are being exploited. Nor does he blame the men who run the Detroit car companies for what happened here.

“They’ve made some mistake in product choices, but it’s understandable how they made that, that’s past history. They’re a product of the environment that they have to exist in,” he says. “I’ve known these… These are decent people. GM executives I’ve know have been just as decent as the union brothers I knew. But they lived in a world where they had to compete with China. If General Motors, or Ford or Chrysler makes a car that no one can afford, they’ll go out of business.”

Detroit’s Big Three are far stronger than just a few years ago. The bailout from American taxpayers helped get GM and Chrysler back on their feet. And, most auto analysts agree: Detroit is putting out a better product.

That’s welcome news for American autoworkers who can earn bigger bonuses through profit sharing. Proponents of NAFTA also point out that American consumers can now purchase more affordable cars and have more variety to choose from. But people like Bob Bowen said laid off autoworkers in places like Ypsilanti can’t afford them.

“It’s almost like reading what happened after WWI where you’ve got a lost generation – you had so many people killed. Well in this case, it’s killed opportunities.”

Others I spoke with in Ypsilanti did express some reason for hope. When I visited four years ago, the main drag was almost entirely boarded up. Today, there are hip coffee shops, stores and restaurants. Apartment lofts have opened above them. Some artists and have moved to the area. And people from nearby Ann Arbor have come for cheaper real estate.

Bob Bowen said the changes are superficial. He said what would help people here more than anything else are new jobs.

NAFTA was controversial from the start when negotiations began in the mid 1980’s. Many argued NAFTA would bleed American jobs to Mexico. Others said it would be a boon for the American economy. When President Clinton signed the bill, he said “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs.”

The trade agreement allowed for the free flow of fruits and vegetables between the US, Canada and Mexico. There have undoubtedly been winners and losers on both sides. Among the losers: Florida’s fresh tomato growers.

The state produces the most fresh tomatoes in the nation. But growers there say the free trade agreement has slowly bled their industry. And now, tomato growers, like Bob Spencer, are fighting back.

At Spencer’s packing operation – for his company West Coast Tomato in the city of Palmetto – we watch as thousands of Roma tomatoes roll by every minute on big leather belts. Spencer pointed out cameras that were taking photos of each tomato.

Tomato producer Bob Spencer, president of West Coast Tomato. The family-run business has been around 70 years. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“That picture is then sent up to these computers and it’s making a determination of the size and color of the tomato.”

Tomatoes were dropping off into different chutes, then seconds later, streams of nearly identical green tomatoes plopped into 25-pound cardboard boxes, bound for the Northeast and Canada. (Having uniform boxes ensures they’ll be ripe at the same time.)

On a typical day, West Coast Tomato packages about 750,000 pounds of tomatoes. Impressive, no doubt, but they’re running about a half million pounds below capacity. Spencer says their problems began shortly after NAFTA was signed some two decades ago.

“And what’s happened is the acreage in Florida has dropped as the competition from Mexico has had a dampening impact on our prices,” said Sepncer. “A lot of the people that I would go to conventions with 20 years ago are no longer here.”

According to the US Department of Agriculture, fresh tomato production in Florida has fallen 41 percent since NAFTA went into effect. Meanwhile tomato production in Mexico has gone the other way. Florida tomato growers argue they can’t compete with the lower wages and less environmental oversight in Mexico.

Florida growers were concerned when NAFTA was first signed and tariffs on imported tomatoes were dropped. But Spencer said they knew NAFTA’s passage was inevitable, so they lobbied for as much enforcement as they could get. That included a 1996 deal that set a minimum price for imported tomatoes.

“Little did we know that the enforcement we bargained for was really not going to be any enforcement at all. The end result is we had Barney for our policeman; we didn’t have Andy.”

For those of you under a certain age, that’s a reference to the Andy Griffith Show. Spencer’s point: enforcement of imported tomatoes has been weak. So, Spencer and other fresh tomato growers are asking the Department of Commerce to rip up the 1996 minimum price deal. That would then free them up to seek duties on imported Mexican tomatoes.

Workers make final checks for impurities as tomatoes roll by at West Coast Tomato. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Florida growers say the old agreement sets the base price too low and hasn’t been updated appropriately to reflect current prices. And further, they accuse the Mexican growers of dumping tomatoes below cost, also known as predatory pricing, to run them out of business.

“One of the tenets of American trade law for the last 50 years has been, you can ship into this country, you can ship in at costs below our costs. But you can’t ship in at costs below your costs of production,” said Spencer.

That’s a difficult accusation to prove though. And one that Mexican tomato farmer Martin Ley said they’re not guilty of doing. Ley has been speaking on behalf of growers in his country. He said they’re outselling Florida farmers because Mexican farmers are producing a better product, and one that American consumers can get year-round.

“Mexico has brought a tomato that is ripened naturally, is ripened on the plant, is ripened while it’s getting all the nutrients, and all the sugars and plants,” said Ley. “And that’s why it is a good tasting tomato, naturally.”

Ley warns that if the Florida growers get their way, consumers would be the biggest losers – he said we’d have fewer tomato varieties that cost more.

And other American farmers could lose if Florida tomato farmers win. The Mexican government is threatening retaliatory tariffs if the Commerce Department sides with American tomato producers. Martin Ley said free trade and NAFTA have worked as advertised.

“The transformation of the Mexican tomato industry has been amazing. NAFTA really made things easy for us to bring technology, to bring equipment, to bring new varieties. Now there is all kinds of cocktail tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, multiple color tomatoes, grape tomatoes, all kinds of stuff that has brought a lot of excitement to the store shelf.”

And this is also not a simple case of Mexicans winning and Americans losing, said trade analyst Claude Barfield with the Washington think tank the American Enterprise Institute. He said Mexican tomatoes sold in American grocery stores are helping employ a lot of Americans.

“We have a very large sector that is dependent on trade in terms of the support of cross border trade. And it’s not just the good itself, it’s not just a truck, but it’s the person who has to handle the financing, the people that have to handle the communications that bring this back and forth…”

…As well as lawyers and people stacking produce.

But Florida tomato producer Jim Grainger, owner of the Taylor & Fulton Packing Company, asks: What about him? He said that the federal government needs to stand behind American growers.

Fourth-generation Floridian Jim Grainger started farming for himself in 1984. Today he runs the Taylor & Fulton Packing Company. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

“I don’t want to see a foreign country put us out of business,” said Grainger. “They (the federal government) helped the car manufacturers in Detroit for the same reason, or comparable reasons. And we’re just looking for the same treatment. I mean we’re not Detroit, we’re Florida. And we don’t want to be put out of business by the Mexicans or the Canadians. We want to still be in the business of feeding the United States of America, period.”

Graninger added for good measure: His tomatoes are better than the Mexicans ones.

“I don’t think they’ll ever be better than ours in the state of Florida.”

Another Florida tomato grower I met said the remaining tomato producers can handle two or three more bad seasons, then they’ll all be gone. And if that happens, he said, fresh tomato production in Florida will be gone forever.

Then, he warns, we’ll all be eating Mexican tomatoes, no matter which country’s tomatoes we actually prefer.

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As urban areas and agricultural demands have increased up river, both in the United States and Mexico, the area down river, a vast expanse called the Colorado River Delta, has paid the price.

“The Delta at one time was enormous. If it were in existence today I would speculate that it would be one of the eighth wonders of the world, it was that massive and impressive a place,” said Patrick Graham with The Nature Conservancy in Arizona. “Today, it’s basically a dried mudflat.”

It’s been like this for nearly a half century, since the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona was closed in 1960. (Some water does reach the Delta during exceptionally wet years.)

Under a new agreement reached last week, the United States will get more water during times of drought. And in times of plenty, Mexico will be able to store excess water north of the border. And the Colorado River Delta also stands to benefit.

A restored 50-acre parcel in Mexico's Colorado River Delta where new trees have been planted. (Photo: Francisco Zamora/The Sonoran Institute)

That’s welcome news to people like Francisco Zamora, who directs the Sonoran Institute’s Colorado River Delta program. He said when his group planted trees last year on 50 acres in the Delta and provided a tiny amount of water for irrigation, the trees quickly bloomed.

“It’s really amazing how fast they grow and how quickly they produce habitat. We’ve seen many species of birds using the habitat, and other wildlife, mammals and the bobcat, and there are a few beavers we’ve seen along the river.”

Again, that’s from a tiny amount of water. Under the agreement reached this week, more than a thousand times as much water will be added to the Delta, over a five-year period.

This water will come from Mexico’s share of the river. Or more specifically, from Mexican farmers who are willing to sell back some water on the open market. Overall, the plan calls for Mexican farmers to give back about 3 percent of their water allocation. This loss should be offset by planned improvements to irrigation canals in Mexico.

There’s another source of water that’ll be coming to the Delta. Under the five-year agreement, there will also be a special, one-time only burst of water sent down river. This water is being collected and stored north of the border. And when it is released, all at once, it will mimic a natural springtime flow from a wet year. Francisco Zamora said it’s not hard to predict what will happen.

“It will create a functional ecosystem that will benefit the species. And that’s what we learned, the delta is very resilient. You add water and the habitat comes back, the birds come back, the wildlife comes back. And that’s why the delta is a good example of hope.”

Zamora talks optimistically about the regeneration of endangered birds and fish in both Mexico and the southwestern United States. He also talks about the resurgence of commercial fish and recreational opportunities in the Delta.

A Cucapá (person of the river) surveys the delta, where ancestral fishing once supported 20,000 Native Americans. (Photo: Peter McBride)

“The way I describe it is we are kind of reconnecting the people with the river.”

And while this is undoubtedly good news for the conservation movement in Mexico and the southwestern United States, the amounts of water being restored to the Delta will be far smaller than what would’ve happened naturally, say 150 years ago. The magnificent Delta of old will likely never be restored, as least as long as people are around.

Pat Graham at The Nature Conservancy said the new agreement is a first step. “But it’s a good first step, because for the first time the environment has been factored into these water management decisions at this scale. And it’s not only important ecologically, but I think symbolically to provide the opportunity to restore the river, the delta.”

The new agreement could begin delivering additional water to the Delta as early next spring.

Host of The World, Aaron Schachter, spoke with Hal Sirkin, a senior partner in the Boston Consulting Group in Chicago. Sirkin co-authored a new study about global attitudes toward American-made products called “Made In America, Again.”

Take the case of engineer Steve Katsaros. He came up with a pretty good idea to help people without electricity: take a light bulb and attach some small solar panels.

“Let me show you something, I’ll give you a good sound byte here,” said Katsaros as he showed off a LED bulb surrounded by a bubble of hard plastic, the same material used in car headlights.

He dropped it on concrete, then picked it up — not a scratch.

Katsaros is hoping to sell these bulbs to many of the 1.3 billion people in the developing world who use kerosene lamps, which are polluting and more expensive to use. But his company Nokero — which combines the words “no” and “kerosene” — only has 13 employees worldwide. No matter how good a product he may have, there’s just only so many his team can sell.

Steve Kateros, CEO of Nokero, holds up one of his solar-powered light bulbs. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

Now in Denver a small group of international development companies has an idea to help companies like Nokero by making the process of doing work in the developing world easier, and in the process combat global poverty. Their solution comes in the form of a long-abandoned 19th century horse barn.

“We’re standing in front of a 25,000 square-foot, 110-year-old horse barn,” said Andrew Romanoff with the Colorado organization IDE, a 30-year old group focused on anti-poverty efforts in parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

“Once upon a time this building housed both the trolleys that the Denver City Railway Company operated and the horses that drew those trolleys.”

Today, many of building’s windows are blown out or boarded up. Inside, the brick walls have been charred by fire. The building, which is owned by the city of Denver (The Denver Housing Authority), has sat this way for two decades. Then Romanoff’s group came along. It’s costing the city and IDE some $2.3 million to renovate. Romanoff says this place should look pretty different by next summer.

“Inside the building, although it’s difficult to tell now once you get past the dirt floors and pigeons, you’ll find office space eventually for 30 different organizations and 120 employees. Half of the floor plan is designated as common space, so you’ll find conference rooms, and board rooms, a lunch room, a lecture hall.”

This idea, sharing workspace, is nothing new. You can find hundreds of examples across the world with entrepreneurs, artists or non-profits doing this. But Romanoff said this one will be a little different.

“This is the first shard space initiative dedicated to international development, to our knowledge.”

IDE has recruited companies working on projects in agriculture, health, and microfinance to come on board. The common theme: fighting global poverty. When Steve Katsaros, the guy who makes solar light bulbs, heard about the horse barn, he says he was all in.

“(I) just loved the idea of getting everybody together because there’s so much opportunity for, ‘Hey, you’re going to Nigeria, I need this bit of information there, or I’ve got a connection in Kenya, or I’ve got an entity in Chile that you might want to meet with.’ So we’re going to have a lot of this interaction.”

Interaction with people like Avery Bang, executive director of the group, Bridges to Prosperity. Her organization builds foot bridges in places like Haiti, Rwanda, and East Timor. Bang said she’s looking forward to being in close contact with other Denver companies, learning how they deal with things like negotiating with foreign ministries. And she’s also eager to share more mundane resources.

“As an executive director, I don’t like to deal with the financial accounting, payroll, human resources, travel logistics. A lot of the less obvious, less tactile shared services, I think will actually become one of the primary benefits of being in this building.”

To get a better sense of how a shared space operates, I took a tour of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship in Cambridge, MA. Bill Aulet, the center director, showed me around pointing out shared computers, phones, conference rooms, and the kitchen. “We have our food groups over here: We have Raman noodles, we have Red Bull, coffee,” said Aulet, clearly joking, but not joking at the same time.

The idea of shared space is deeply engrained in East Cambridge, for both MIT students and alumni. And the number of successful companies that began in these few square blocks is staggering. If you combined the companies started by MIT alumni into a new country, it’d be the 11th biggest economy in the world.

Avery Bang, executive director of Bridges To Prosperity, stands in the horse barn where her new office will soon be. (Photo: Jason Margolis)

But here’s a question: Do these businesses thrive because of the culture of collaboration? Or are these just really smart people who would do well anywhere?

“We did a lot of research on this,” said Aulet. “And there’s a big question about whether shared space is really the factor. We believe that shared space is a positive thing. What it does is it builds a sense of community. And the learning that goes on is lateral learning, not just hierarchical learning. And there’s also this sense of community, in when it’s an entrepreneur, the oscillations that you go through, the ups and downs emotionally, you want to have a group that supports you in that as well.”

A successful entrepreneur I met in Cambridge said you need a physical space to keep talented people tethered to the area and energized. In Denver, people like Avery Bang are starting to feel that way.

“We are a group of folks, a lot of return Peace Corps volunteers, a lot of folks that have spent years living and working in rural areas abroad, coming back and saying, ‘Well, there needs to be solutions to these problems.’ And I think Denver is positioned very strongly to be that center.”

Right now, that center is a dilapidated brick building in a depressed part of town. But the people I met in Denver say the scrappiness of the project makes it all the more appealing.

Last month, President Obama nominated General Joseph Dunford to replace Allen.

If confirmed, Dunford would become the sixth American commander to lead the war in Afghanistan since the conflict began 11 years ago.

The World’s Jason Margolis has more.

Very little is known about General Dunford. Unlike other high-ranking generals, Dunford hasn’t been much in the public eye. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has praised Dunford as “an exceptionally gifted strategic leader.” President Obama has urged his quick confirmation.

I went through my Rolodex of military experts and insiders today, and person after person said they didn’t know enough about Dunford to comment.

Marine veteran Paul Kane does know the man though.

Paul Kane: “I’m on a first name basis with him: My name is Paul, and his name is Sir.”

Kane served under Dunford training the first Marines that entered Iraq before the war began. Kane is also a former fellow at Harvard’s International Security Program. Kane went on to serve Iraq, along with Dunford, who made his name at least among other Marines.

Paul Kane: “He was the commander for the Fifth Marine regiment, which was during that initial part of the war in Iraq one of the most active and involved with some of the heaviest fighting. He has a nickname, he’s known in the Marine Corps as fighting Joe Dunford because of that particular command.”

In 2005, Dunford returned to the Marine Corps headquarters in Washington. He rose up to become the second highest ranking officer in the Marine Corps.

Paul Kane: “The role he’s had in the Marine Corps is assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, which is essentially the chief operating officer for the Marine Corps, so he oversees the day to day operations of the United States Marine Corps.”

When Dunford took over that task, the US military was exiting Iraq and surging in Afghanistan. Dunsford has been to Afghanistan, but has never served a tour there. Tom Donnelly with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington says this makes Dunford a curious choice.

Tom Donnelly: “The question is not what’s right about General Dunford, which there may be a lot, but how come General Rodriguez who is the natural successor to General Allen isn’t getting the job?”

Donnelly was referring to General David Rodriguez who has spent significant spent time in Afghanistan. Donnelly says he thinks the White House tapped Dunford because he’s divorced from the Afghanistan surge and is not emotionally tied into the operation.

Tom Donnelly: “So, I think this is at least in part a way of giving the White House a freer hand in designing the policy and then outlining the pace of the drawdown between now and 2014, and in defining whatever the residual force might be.”

Accurate or not, political scientist Stephen Biddle at George Washington University doesn’t see Dunford’s lack of experience in Afghanistan as a positive. But…

Stephen Biddle: “The administration clearly does not believe that that kind of experience is necessary – General Allen didn’t either before taking command in Kabul, nor did General Petraeus for that matter.”

Biddle has met Dunford once. He describes him as “thoughtful and smart.” And Biddle says while Dunford isn’t as well-known as some other generals…

Stephen Biddle: “Obviously he’s had a very accomplished military career, no one reaches this rank and an appointment like this without that.”

Marine veteran Paul Kane thinks Dunford is the right man for the job. He described him as a “straight shooter, no nonsense, and loyal.”

Paul Kane: “I live about 20 minutes from the Bethesda Navy Hospital where there are a lot of very seriously wounded soldiers and Marines. I had a friend who was out there in the hospital, and half the times I would be going into visit him General Dunford would be there, not in uniform, just making the rounds at the hospital to visit these wounded soldiers and their families. So he is an exceptional leader.”

If confirmed, Dunford would preside over the withdrawal of 68,000 American troops by the end of 2014. And it’s highly likely that Dunford’s name would be forever mentioned in the history books as the last leader of a full contingent of American troops in Afghanistan.

But Eric Zencey, a political economist with the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, wants you to understand just what GDP is actually telling us.

“I think GDP should re-named, so that we don’t mistake it for a measure of well-being. I think we should call it gross domestic transactions,” said Zencey. “That’s all it is, it totes up the monetary value of all the transactions. And if it had that name that would help break the association people have with the idea that more GDP is better. It’s like hmmm, more transactions are better? Well it depends on what you’re transacting.”

For example, the billions of dollars that are pouring into post Sandy clean-up will boost our GDP as money changes hands. Of course, a lot of shuttered businesses will hamper GDP growth.

So does all this adding and subtracting give us a real measure of economic progress? Zencey is part of the movement that doesn’t think so.

“So the movement for kind of a sane approach to the economy is to measure the actual thing you’re trying to do, which is improve the living standards and well-being of people.”

When I first spoke with Zencey a few years ago, he and others like him were largely ignored by mainstream economists and policymakers. They still are. But the movement is gaining some momentum.

This spring, some 600 international scholars and leaders gathered at the United Nations to discuss happiness and well-being as measures of economic progress. The meeting was convened by the kingdom of Bhutan, which is known for its Gross National Happiness index. Several states, including Vermont, have also begun measuring well-being to gauge economic vitality.

Many still dismiss these ideas as flaky, anti-consumer, or radical left-wing political engineering. Still, some big names are giving them credence. Here’s Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke this summer.

But just how do you quantify well-being? Last year, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, or the OECD, based in Paris unveiled its “Better Life Index.” They have a very cool Web site where you can compare how 36 countries stack up on a variety of measures, things like levels of education, health, and your sense of community.

Anthony Gooch with the OECD said no one country comes off as the overall winner. Determining the strongest economies depends on what you value. If you care about life satisfaction, Denmark is the place to be. If safety is your thing, then it’s Japan.

“The US performs very strongly on quality of housing, on income, it performs strongly on civic engagement,” said Gooch. “It performs pretty well on jobs. There are some areas where it doesn’t do so strongly, for example the sense of work life balance compared to the other 35 countries isn’t strong.”

So where does all of this new economic thinking go from here? I put that question to Eric Zencey in Vermont.

“Yea, what is the path ahead? What kind of strategies are there? And that’s a very difficult question…”

Zencey concedes, it’ll be difficult to get policymakers to subscribe to these new economic measures. But with the campaigns now over, politicians don’t need to worry about every week’s economic indicator. And that might open the door to some new ways of thinking… at least until the next campaign cycle.

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