Archive
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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.
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The Undertow
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Instant Replay: Three Strikes Was the Right Call
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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.
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The New Dialectic
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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.
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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.
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Pork and the Public Interest
How conservatives read their own cynicism into public life.
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What's Trust Got to Do With It?
Everything. Cynicism is crippling our capacity to deal with public problems.
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Happy Returns: How the Working Poor Got Tax Relief
Left and right agree on one way to spell relief: EITC. But how much relief?
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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.
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Making the Poor Count
The poverty line came from a woman with a passion and a memory.
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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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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?
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Orphans of Separatism: The Painful Politics of Transracial Adoption
Liberals' misguided efforts to respect race may harm children -- and deepen racial intolerance.
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Talent and the Winner-Take-All Society
Rising inequality reflects the growing importance of winner-take-all markets.
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Imagesbusters, the Sequel
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Secret Justice: When National Security Trumps Citizen Rights
A series of recent court decisions upholds star-chamber proceedings.
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Health Care: Reformers' Rounds
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Only Connect
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Spheres of Affluence
The fantasy of free trade still commands broad allegiance despite mounting evidence that it's not optimal for either economic growth or national interest.
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Citizen Keynes
Skidelsky's dazzling biography gets Keynes the man just right, and his economics somewhat wrong.
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The Evasion of Politics
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Friend or Faux?
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Altered States
The globalized economy disarms the nation-state. We need a blend of familiar Keynesian insights and new institutions.
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A Few Good Men
More men are taking family life seriously. But they are still a minority, and the system still punishes those who choose the daddy track.
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Voters in the Crosshairs
New technologies were supposed to enable campaigns to reach more voters. Instead, they ended up fragmenting and alienating much of the electorate.
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Ad Missions
Insurance companies aren't just selling policies. They're selling ideology too.
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The Joys of Recession
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Government Lite
Two cheers for the Gore Report. The vice president is good on repairing the means, oddly silent on the ends.
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Back to the Future
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Can Markets Govern?
Let's have responsive government, but in the end a citizen cannot be reduced to a consumer.
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Depressing Our Way to Recovery
Deficit obsession is a sure recipe for sluggish growth.
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System Crash
Supposedly, a knowledge economy produces competitiveness and secure jobs. IBM employees in upstate New York learned otherwise.
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Keynes, Einstein, and Scientific Revolution
Economics follows the wrong model of physics. Keynes appreciated that jobs, savings, and growth are all relative.
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Back by Popular Demand
With mass unemployment again afflicting the world, it's time to rediscover Keynes -- the real Keynes.
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Delivering Health Reform
Can the Clintons find the votes for health care reform without wrecking the logic of universal coverage, cost-control, and managed competition?
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Imagebusters
Revulsion against television violence offers cheap indignation. Unfortunately, imagebusting does little about the deeper sources of our violent society.
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The Gender Gap Mystique
Women are newly influential in politics, but those who court the gender gap on the cheap will not succeed. Women's interests, issues, and voting preferences are every bit as complex as men's -- and demand equal respect.
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The Left's Obsessive Opposition
My liberal friends are being too hard on Bill Clinton. His mandate and congressional majority are wafer thin, and he's doing well with what he has. Would you rather have George Bush?
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The Myth of the New Democrats
There isn't much new or Democratic about the New Democrats. They preach the same brand of conservative politics that has run this country into the ground.
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Lani Guinier's Constitution
Guinier's critics were only half right. She is a political radical--but no quota queen. As a constitutionalist, she was neither separatist nor undemocratic. She would have gotten along nicely with James Madison.
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The New Immigration and the Old Civil Rights
The new immigration infuses America with new minority groups. This spells trouble for the old strategies of black uplift. New coalitions will require new concepts of disadvantage, affirmative action, and desert.
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Going South
NAFTA defenders say Mexico can't lure high-wage jobs away, but they are already heading across the border -- and the treaty will only make matters worse.
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The Coming Budget Battle
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Blood Knots
Our society and our laws have an outrageous biological bias. The author's own odyssey suggests why adoption is a much-scorned but often superior alternative to reproductive heroics.
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Money Talks, Reform Walks
Last time around, campaign finance reform failed because it lacked public financing. Twenty years later, Congress seems determined to make the same mistake.
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Forecasting Follies
Using models to predict presidential elections can be fun. Too bad they don't work.
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Journal of Graphic Fantasies
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Market, State, and Dystopia
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Separatist But Equal?
Detroit's all-black academies are neither as bad as the critics claim nor as uplifting as their defenders insist. Considering the alternatives, they are worth a try.
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Hispanic USA
We are witnessing the Hispanization of the United States, not the Americanization of Hispanics.
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Ending Welfare Reform as We Know It
Liberals who embrace welfare reform have conceded too much of the argument to the right. The main problem is not lazy, shiftless welfare mothers; it's the collapse of the lower middle-class economy.
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Cracking Down
Commentary on "The House That Crack Built"
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Ethnodrama and Reality
Commentary on "The House That Crack Built"
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The House That Crack Built: The Inmates of Clark County Jail
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Imprisoners' Dilemma
Low-level drug dealers will keep appearing, no matter how many jails we build.
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The Rhetoric of Reform
How to thwart reactionary rhetoric.
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Beyond McPopulism
Can Clinton Put People First?
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Can Clinton Govern?
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Do Europeans Do It Better?
We can learn a lot from European labor policy, but beware naive Sweden-envy.
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But Where Are the Jobs?
Here's one more course-correction for Clinton. Otherwise, look for more low-wage jobs.
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The Feeble Strength of One
Suing the boss seems smart, but the company has home-court advantage.
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Solidaritas at Harvard
Meet the Harvard of the labor movement, a model of the new unionism.
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Employee Voice in Competitive Markets
The new global economy demands new models of worker regulation.
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Models of Labor Law Reform
A guide for the perplexed.
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Up Against the Wall Street Journal
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Affirmative Action and the Rhetoric of Reaction
Beyond "quota queens."
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The Other Drug War
Universal health care reform demands that we finally control skyrocketing drug prices.
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A Constitutional Litmus Test
Justice may be blind, but in appointing justices Clinton needs to be far-sighted.
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The Political Court
After a decade of court-packing, now is not ime to pretend the courts are apolitical.
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