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Vol. 6 No. 21March 1995
Features
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How Low Can You Go? Shoot Now, Think Later
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The Contract and the Consumer
The conservatives haven't made "tort reform" a crusade to stop a flood of products liability litigation. There is no such flood. This is a straight payoff to their benefactors. -
Who Owns the Future?
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Liberalism's Third Crisis
This isn't the first time liberals have faced reverses and needed to reframe their ideas. -
State of the Debate: The Sale of a Generation
Generation X is a hot marketing concept, used as a hook to sell everything from condoms to cars. Can right-wingers use it to sell their ideas? -
Gingrich's Time Bomb: The Consequences of the Contract
Did anyone read the fine print? The Contract with America has been devilishly constructed with provisions that will set off a fiscal -- and social -- explosion years from now. -
Behind the Numbers: Class Dismissed?
The Democrats have hinged their political strategy upon the empirically shaky notion that most Americans consider themselves middle class. The consequences are not just rhetorical. -
A New Conversation: How to Rebuild the Democratic Party
Let's face it: The Democratic Party got into some bad relationships. It doesn't need a new message so much as a whole new conversation with the American people. -
Health Reform, Meet Tax Reform
The current tax treatment of health benefits makes no sense. A feasible strategy for health reform should now put tax reform at its center. But which kind? -
Sex, Lies, and The Scarlet Letter
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Hidden Kingdom: Disney's Political Blueprint
Walt Disney dubbed one of his attractions the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), but the name might better describe his design for private government. -
Clinton's Not-So-Good Deeds
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Abandoned Surgery: Business and the Failure of Health Reform
Business once seemed a potential ally in national health reform. Then it turned around and became instrumental in reform's defeat. The inside story of what happened and why. -
Devil in the Details
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Our NAIRU Limit: The Governing Myth of Economic Policy
It's now a familiar story: The Fed raises interest rates to slow the economy. But new research suggests that we are needlessly sacrificing prosperity on the altar of false economic assumptions. -
Perrier in the Newsroom
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Vol. 6 No. 20December 1994
Features
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What Happened to Health Care Reform?
Republicans killed it. The White House strategy misfired. Reformers couldn't unite. The center failed. And the moment was lost. -
Up From 1994
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How Low Can You Go?
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Devil in the Details
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Cracking Open the IQ Box
The Bell Curve has given genetic determinism new currency, but the science on which it rests is even less persuasive today than it was a century ago. -
Who Killed Campaign Finance Reform? (and How To Revive It)
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The Inequality Express
While the trend toward greater inequality is no longer in doubt, recent work in the social sciences suggests a number of possible explanations. We can now begin to sort them out. -
Bank Failure: The Financial Marginalization of the Poor
In poor areas across the country, banks have been replaced with check-cashers and pawn shops. While both liberals and conservatives extol the virtues of savings, the recent trend encourages just the opposite. -
The New School Wars: How Outcome-Based Education Blew Up
It seemed like a conservative idea; then progressive educators got hold of it. Now a firestorm has erupted that could jeopardize the effort to raise national curriculum standards. -
Do Poor Women Have a Right to Bear Children?
The current movement to reform welfare implies an uncomfortable thought: Perhaps poor women don't have the right to bear children. Are we really prepared to say that? -
Friends of Bill? Why Liberals Should Let Up on Clinton
In Clinton's first two years, myopic liberals complained about his compromises and disparaged his accomplishments. Now there will be fewer accomplishments and bigger compromises. Insisting on purity could only make things worse.
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Vol. 5 No. 19September 1994
Features
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The Disengaged
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How Money Votes: An Oklahoma Story
Bill Brewster, junior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, works hard on behalf of the money that elected him. Unfortunately, he is emblematic of a system that skews politics away from the people. -
Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?
Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. -
What I Really Say about Balancing the Budget
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Reviving Community Development
Critics have called for abandoning the struggle for community development just as some of the most promising initiatives are being launched. -
The People Vs. the Parties
Could either party nominate a full-menu libertarian or populist? Our national political logjam explains why artifice has become endemic. -
Voting Rites: Why We Need a New Concept of Citizenship
In the primal act of citizenship, we face the ballot alone, face to face with our own ignorance. -
Is The American Economic Model the Answer?
The financial elites that favor the "American" model -- deregulation, weak unions, and a minimalist welfare state -- ask the wrong question: how to compete against countries with lower wages and living standards. -
Diary of the American Nightmare
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Incredible News
The rise of infotainment and tabloid TV news reflects popular acceptance of the summons to turn news into play -- which people are willing to do when they have given up on public life.
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Vol. 5 No. 18June 1994
Features
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The Undertow
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Self-Fulfilling Prophets: Inflated Zeal at the Federal Reserve
Greenspan's rate increases needlessly threaten to abort the recovery. A more accountable central bank is long overdue. -
Whose Confirmation Mess?
Who really politicized the Supreme Court? All it took to end the bloody confirmation battles were a few middle-of-the-road nominees. -
The False Messiah: Pete Peterson's Revelations Are Not Gospel
Virtually without challenge, Pete Peterson claims to be a champion of the middle class. But his proposals would actually cut taxes for the rich and benefits for middle-income people. -
The Skills Myth
Almost everyone seems to believe that workers are losing income because they lack the proper skills. But there's a better explanation: they've lost bargaining power. -
Instant Replay: Three Strikes Was the Right Call
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Can We Keep Guns away from Kids?
The Brady Bill was a modest beginning. But if we want to stop youth violence, we need to crack down on the black markets for firearms. -
The New Dialectic
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Divided Families, Whole Children
Listening to the children of divorce can help us understand how to mend the damage of marital discord and family breakup. -
The New Crusade for the Old Family
A new wave of family restorationists says that the evidence on families is in and that the remedies are clear. Their case doesn't hold up. -
Seismic Stimulus: The California Quake's Creative Destruction
The earth literally had to move to jolt Congress into passing a stiumulus package -- and to lift California out of recession. -
The Consequences of Single Motherhood
Children of single-parent families suffer measurable harm. But the problems of the family are far more complex than the popular debate often suggests.
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Vol. 5 No. 17March 1994
Features
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Seductions of Sim: Policy as a Simulation Game
For those who always thought public policy was a game anyone could play, it finally is. But beware of what the game assumes. -
The Global Hiring Hall: Why We Need Worldwide Labor Standards
Years ago we decided to banish child labor within our borders. Will such standards now be extended to the global economy -- or abandoned entirely? -
Imagesbusters, the Sequel
Can't we fight televised mayhem and the real thing too? -
Happy Returns: How the Working Poor Got Tax Relief
Left and right agree on one way to spell relief: EITC. But how much relief? -
Talent and the Winner-Take-All Society
Rising inequality reflects the growing importance of winner-take-all markets. -
Wild Pitch: 'Three Strikes, You're Out' and Other Bad Calls on Crime
Gut-level intuition is driving the country toward depserate and ineffective measures. -
Pork and the Public Interest
How conservatives read their own cynicism into public life. -
Orphans of Separatism: The Painful Politics of Transracial Adoption
Liberals' misguided efforts to respect race may harm children -- and deepen racial intolerance. -
What's Trust Got to Do With It?
Everything. Cynicism is crippling our capacity to deal with public problems. -
Only Connect
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Secret Justice: When National Security Trumps Citizen Rights
A series of recent court decisions upholds star-chamber proceedings. -
Health Care: Reformers' Rounds
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Making the Poor Count
The poverty line came from a woman with a passion and a memory. -
The Predators' Accomplice: How High Theory Abetted Speculative Excess
The prosecutor builds a case against academic apologists for the casino economy.
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