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Using Policy To Reorganize Power

GEORGE GOEHL, LAUREN JACOBS The American Prospect
Even the best structural reforms will not succeed without aggressive organizing.

Racialized Austerity: The Case of CUNY

Michael Fabricant & Steve Brier Gotham Gazette
Austerity policy-making over the past 50 years has been racialized, withering services in public agencies ranging from K-12 schooling to hospitals to higher education. Matters of race must be made more visible, placed at the center of policy-making.

books

How Capitalist Economics Structures Inequality

Gregory Heires Portside
The world economy, to the degree it still works at all, serves to benefit the few at the expense of the many. The author of the book under review does an economic deep dive into ways that can reverse that antidemocratic equation.

Sidelining Science Since Day One

J Carter, G Goldman, G Reed, G Reed, M Halpern, A Rosenberg Union of Concerned Scientists
This administration and its allies in Congress are undermining science-based policies, violating the principles of scientific integrity, showing contempt for the role of science in general, and seeking to dismantle the very processes by which science informs public policy.

books

‘White Trash’ — The Original Underclass

Alec MacGillis Pro Publica
Much of the political debate this election season concerns who will win the support of working class white voters. At the same time, as Alec MacGillis notes in this review of two new books on the history and present conditions of this sector of the population, much of this discourse strains under the influence of condescension, sentimentalism, and a host of explicitly or implicitly stated biases.

How Chicago's White Donor Class Distorts City Policy

Sean McElwee Demos
Chicago’s democracy is being distorted by an overwhelmingly, white, wealthy and male donor class. But public financing provides a clear solution. The “Fair Election Ordinance,” introduced on January 13, 2016 would match all small donor contributions up to $175, increasing the influence of the most diverse small and mid-level donor pool.

Activists Need to Realize that Most Americans Actually Agree With Them

George Lakey Waging Nonviolence
A large majority of Americans, 68 percent, in a recent ABC/Washington Post poll said our economic system favors the rich rather than the majority. About half of those who said they were Republicans agreed. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has been following opinion research and consistently found that the percentages of those who see too much wealth inequality were high among men and women, Democrats and Republicans, people with lower incomes, even those with higher incomes.

The Sharing Economy Must Share a Level Playing Field

Dean Baker Cato Unbound
Regulations serve a public purpose. It may not be necessary to maintain the same scope of regulation in all cases, and it certainly is not necessary to maintain the regulations in their current form, but it does not make sense to have one set of rules that apply to incumbent taxi services and a whole different set that applies to Uber. The appropriate policy going forward should be to modernize the regulatory structure and establish rules that apply equally ...
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