The corridor of gleaming high rises along Vancouver and Williams Avenues is a marked change from the early 2000s. When the Housing Authority of Portland (now known as Home Forward) applied for HOPE VI funds for the old Iris Court development, it was known as a rough area. Residents who lived there, or who knew of it by reputation …
Nearly 20 years ago, Stanford Professor Keith Krehbiel wrote a book showing that political parties are less important in legislative-executive politics than previously thought — challenging previous assumptions of American politics and influencing the work of many up-and-coming scholars. USC Price School of Public Policy Provost Professor Jeffery Jenkins was completing graduate school when Krehbiel released Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking in 1998.
By Dr. Shawn Flanigan
As part of my interdisciplinary freshman Honors course at San Diego State University titled “Housing, Home, and Homeland,” I had my twenty-six students spend several weeks reading and discussing Matthew Desmond’s renowned book Evicted, and then gave them an assignment to code an interview from Access to Opportunity research in San Diego. As a culminating experience, we visited the Monarch School, an innovative K-12 school for homeless youth in downtown San Diego ….
It was just another week for the Trump administration. A senior official resigned after admitting to major ethics violations, the President insulted millions of innocent brown-skinned Americans on Twitter, and quietly—so quietly that almost no one noticed—the Department of Health and Human Services pulled another Jenga block out of the teetering tower that is the Affordable Care Act. Fortunately, it did not fall.
But it did become more expensive. And in that understated tragedy, we find our mystery: Was that HHS’s intent all along?
This essay was originally published on the “Bill of Health” blog at Harvard Law School.
In this last piece in his “mandatory voting” series, Matt explains why he sees requiring voter turnout as the solution we should pursue, over many different options.
The most common “feature” of our current system—and one that would be maintained with most of these other electoral changes—is that even if your view “wins” at the polls, that does not mean that you represent the majority, but rather the majority of the most privileged.
USC Price Dean Jack H. Knott was joined by Bedrosian Faculty Affiliates Lisa Schweitzer and Erroll Southers (director of the Safe Communities Institute), in a discussion of the policy implications and responses to racism and extremism after the violence triggered by a white-nationalist rally in the Charlottesville, Virginia last month.
“White supremacy is not a historical construct we get to walk away from. We have to really interrogate how white supremacy informs public policies within the structures of our cities, within education and politics,” said Lisa Schweitzer. Erroll Southers indicated that he considered Charlottesville a pivotal moment for extremism in the country.
Matt Schauer, Master of Public Administration candidate (2018), returns to the topic of mandatory voting. In this post, he addresses some of the common arguments against the policy proposal as well as obstacles to implementation.
Last time I talked about the system that would be designed and the various benefits we would enjoy because of a mandatory voter turnout law. Now I cover some of the obstacles to overcome.
Requiring me to vote tramples my First Amendment right to free speech. How dare you!
Emily Lieb brings us another research update from Seattle from the Access to Opportunity Project:
What’s in a neighborhood? Scholars (and realtors) agree: Where a person lives determines how much access to opportunity she has. Good schools, safe streets, high-quality housing that appreciates in value, accessible jobs and services, clean air and water—all of these things make it possible for people to do the best they can for themselves and their families. Poor schools, high crime rates, bad housing, an unhealthy environment, and relative inaccessibility do the opposite. Each one of these things is an obstacle standing between a family and its potential.
Matt Schauer, Master of Public Administration candidate (2018), returns with a look at the benefits and drawbacks of mandatory voting.
You know your wacky neighbor or uncle always spouting some loony policy that no one seems to agree with, but somehow manages to be supported at election time, every time? These ideological extremists would be drowned out with a mandatory voting law.
How?
In Matt’s second piece on mandatory voting, he asks about the cost of low voter turnout.
Our society is made up of a wide range of groups with very different needs and aspirations, and therefore have different requirements of their candidates at election time. Thus, who actually participates has real material consequences in our community. So out of those who do choose to vote, who specifically is turning out?