A Way Forward

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-180
Author(s):  
Charley E. Willison
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
State Level ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chronic Homelessness ◽  
Policy Conflict ◽  
Economic Elite ◽  
Formerly Homeless

Overcoming challenges associated with decentralization and policy conflict across policy interests to address chronic homelessness in municipalities across the United States will be a big hurdle requiring substantial changes. Primary recommendations for reform include, first, aligning Continuums of Care with municipal government to ensure Continuums have access to necessary resources and governmental authority to design and implement policy across the variety of policy spaces including housing, healthcare, behavioral health, policing, and incarceration. Second, improving participatory equity in homeless policy decision-making to include minority groups and persons who are currently or formerly homeless will improve policy design and implementation to ensure policies targeting persons experiencing homelessness work to their intended goals and protect policy processes from bias toward economic elite stakeholders in pluralistic settings. Lastly, steps are recommended to align tangential state-level policies providing services for persons experiencing chronic homelessness but, by virtue of not being designed to target chronic homelessness, fail in implementation.

“I Prefer Panthers to Pigs”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean L. Malloy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Malcolm X ◽  
National Organization ◽  
Foreign Governments

This chapter looks at how the Black Power pioneers of the early 1960s discovered that relations between minority groups in the United States and the foreign governments or international organizations to which they appealed were seldom conducted on equal terms. While the mushrooming growth of the Black Panther Party (BPP) as a national organization in 1968 gave the party more leverage than Malcolm X or Williams had enjoyed as individuals, the Panthers still interacted with their potential state-level partners as supplicants rather than as equals. The ad hoc, person-to-person diplomacy that formed the foundation of these relationships often revealed ideological schisms both within the party and between the BPP and its potential allies.

The Integrated State

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-110
Author(s):  
Charley E. Willison
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
State Level ◽  
Risk Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Supportive Housing ◽  
Chronic Homelessness ◽  
Implementation Phase ◽  
Housing Regulation ◽  
Implementation Problems

San Francisco represents municipalities with a local supportive housing policy. San Francisco highlights the significance of policy implementation as a critical process that cannot be overlooked when examining policy success. San Francisco should seemingly be very well positioned to successfully tackle chronic homelessness compared to other cities across the United States with a centralized municipal Continuum of Care, strong local tax base, and historical investment in social and health services for at-risk groups. Yet, many efforts have stagnated at the implementation phase. San Francisco is a city with a very visible homelessness epidemic. The problem will not be solved until implementation problems can be overcome by improving participatory equity in political decision-making to include minorities and at-risk groups, limiting elected officials’ ability to interfere with bureaucrats’ duties to carry out supportive housing regulation, and improving state level coordination with municipal goals to reduce administrative burden and align funding mechanisms.

Comparing policy conflict on electricity transmission line sitings

2021 ◽  
pp. 095207672110368
Author(s):  
Jongeun You ◽  
Jill Yordy ◽  
Christopher M Weible ◽  
Kyudong Park ◽  
Tanya Heikkila ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Transmission Line ◽  
Transmission Lines ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electricity Transmission ◽  
Policy Conflict ◽  
Public Property ◽  
Energy Governance ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Over Time

Maintaining the quality and reliability of electricity transmission lines is central to effective energy governance. However, transmission line siting is often a contentious policy decision since permitting and constructing lines may involve private and public property, residents and communities, and localized and national concerns. Yet, policy conflict in transmission siting across cases and over time has remained largely understudied. This article derives and tests hypotheses about policy conflict in the context of transmission lines completed or constructed between 2017 and 2018 in the United States. In exploring the full population of transmission lines, we find that a majority exhibit relatively low and moderate levels of conflict and attention rather than high levels. We further examine a subset of six of these cases that represent a range of conflict and attention intensity. We describe variation in the diversity of actors and frames, advocacy coalitions, and the volume of discourse associated with transmission line siting over time. As problems related to energy governance have become more complex, energy siting disputes are likely to remain a fruitful area for research on policy conflict.

scholarly journals Grocery food taxes and U.S. county obesity and diabetes rates

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lingxiao Wang ◽  
Yuqing Zheng ◽  
Steven Buck ◽  
Diansheng Dong ◽  
Harry M. Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Variation ◽  
Cost Ratio ◽  
County Level ◽  
Benefit Cost Ratio ◽  
Percentage Point Increase ◽  
Obesity And Diabetes

Abstract Background Grocery food taxes represent a stable tax revenue stream for state and municipal government during times of adverse economic shocks such as that observed under the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Previous research, however, suggests a possible mechanism through which grocery taxes may adversely affect health. Our objectives are to document the spatial and temporal variation in grocery taxes and to empirically examine the statistical relationship between county-level grocery taxes and obesity and diabetes. Methods We collect and assemble a novel national dataset of annual county and state-level grocery taxes from 2009 through 2016. We link this data to three-year, county-level estimates based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on rates of obesity and diabetes and provide a nation-wide spatial characterization of grocery taxes and these two health outcomes. Using a county-level fixed effects estimator, we estimate the effect of grocery taxes on obesity and diabetes rates, also controlling for a subset of potential confounders that vary over time. Results We find a 1 percentage point increase in grocery taxes is associated with 0.588 and 0.215 percentage point increases in the county-level obesity and diabetes rates. Conclusion Counties with grocery taxes have increased prevalence of obesity and diabetes. We estimate the economic burden of increased obesity and diabetes rates resulting from grocery taxes to be $5.9 billion. Based on this estimate, the benefit-cost ratio of removing grocery taxes across the United States only considering the effects on obesity and diabetes rates is 1.90.

Applicability of management guidelines for surfing resources in California

Shore & Beach ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Edward Atkin ◽  
Dan Reineman ◽  
Jesse Reiblich ◽  
David Revell
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Guidelines ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Coastal Marine ◽  
Management Measures ◽  
Legal Frameworks

Surf breaks are finite, valuable, and vulnerable natural resources, that not only influence community and cultural identities, but are a source of revenue and provide a range of health benefits. Despite these values, surf breaks largely lack recognition as coastal resources and therefore the associated management measures required to maintain them. Some countries, especially those endowed with high-quality surf breaks and where the sport of surfing is accepted as mainstream, have recognized the value of surfing resources and have specific policies for their conservation. In Aotearoa New Zealand surf breaks are included within national environmental policy. Aotearoa New Zealand has recently produced Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources (MGSR), which were developed in conjunction with universities, regional authorities, not-for-profit entities, and government agencies. The MGSR provide recommendations for both consenting authorities and those wishing to undertake activities in the coastal marine area, as well as tools and techniques to aid in the management of surfing resources. While the MGSR are firmly aligned with Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural and legal frameworks, much of their content is applicable to surf breaks worldwide. In the United States, there are several national-level and state-level statutes that are generally relevant to various aspects of surfing resources, but there is no law or policy that directly addresses them. This paper describes the MGSR, considers California’s existing governance frameworks, and examines the potential benefits of adapting and expanding the MGSR in this state.

Can increases in Twitter posts predict increases in cumulative incidence of COVID-19 in the United States? Evidence that social media can inform epidemic surveillance. (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruoyan Sun ◽  
Henna Budhwani
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Cumulative Incidence ◽  
Hot Spots ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Education Attainment ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
Per Capita

BACKGROUND Though public health systems are responding rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic, outcomes from publicly available, crowd-sourced big data may assist in helping to identify hot spots, prioritize equipment allocation and staffing, while also informing health policy related to “shelter in place” and social distancing recommendations. OBJECTIVE To assess if the rising state-level prevalence of COVID-19 related posts on Twitter (tweets) is predictive of state-level cumulative COVID-19 incidence after controlling for socio-economic characteristics. METHODS We identified extracted COVID-19 related tweets from January 21st to March 7th (2020) across all 50 states (N = 7,427,057). Tweets were combined with state-level characteristics and confirmed COVID-19 cases to determine the association between public commentary and cumulative incidence. RESULTS The cumulative incidence of COVID-19 cases varied significantly across states. Ratio of tweet increase (p=0.03), number of physicians per 1,000 population (p=0.01), education attainment (p=0.006), income per capita (p = 0.002), and percentage of adult population (p=0.003) were positively associated with cumulative incidence. Ratio of tweet increase was significantly associated with the logarithmic of cumulative incidence (p=0.06) with a coefficient of 0.26. CONCLUSIONS An increase in the prevalence of state-level tweets was predictive of an increase in COVID-19 diagnoses, providing evidence that Twitter can be a valuable surveillance tool for public health.

Doing Justice, Preventing Crime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tonry
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Case Processing ◽  
Three Strikes ◽  
Moral Cost ◽  
Main Ideas

In the 2020s, no informed person disagrees that punishment policies and practices in the United States are unprincipled, chaotic, and much too often unjust. The financial costs are enormous. The moral cost is greater: countless individual injustices; mass incarceration; the world’s highest imprisonment rate; extreme disparities, especially affecting members of racial and ethnic minority groups; high rates of wrongful conviction; assembly-line case processing; and a general absence of respectful consideration of offenders’ interests, circumstances, and needs. The main ideas in this book about doing justice and preventing crime are simple: Treat people charged with and convicted of crimes justly, fairly, and even-handedly, as anyone would want done for themselves or their children. Take sympathetic account of the circumstances of peoples’ lives. Punish no one more severely than he or she deserves. Those propositions are implicit in the rule of law and its requirement that the human dignity of every person be respected. Three major structural changes are needed. First, selection of judges and prosecutors, and their day-to-day work, must be insulated from political influence. Second, mandatory minimum sentence, three-strikes, life without parole, truth in sentencing, and similar laws must be repealed. Third, correctional and prosecution systems must be centralized in unified state agencies.

Dissent in the Atlantic World, 1787–1830

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Carté Engel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Church And State ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Population ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
General Role

The very term ‘Dissenter’ became problematic in the United States, following the passing of the First Amendment. The formal separation of Church and state embodied in the First Amendment was followed by the ending of state-level tax support for churches. None of the states established after 1792 had formal religious establishments. Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists accounted for the majority of the American population both at the beginning and end of this period, but this simple fact masks an important compositional shift. While the denominations of Old Dissent declined relatively, Methodism grew quickly, representing a third of the population by 1850. Dissenters thus faced several different challenges. Primary among these were how to understand the idea of ‘denomination’ and also the more general role of institutional religion in a post-establishment society. Concerns about missions, and the positions of women and African Americans are best understood within this context.

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