Tag: The City
-
The Enduring Appeal of Perversity Arguments and Unintended Consequences Warnings
James Forman, Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize last week for his book Locking Up Our Own. It is well-deserved. That book–and his earlier work wrangling with Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow–shows the ways that we have arrived at the wicked problem of mass incarceration through something much harder to disdain than evil scheming by distant elites. We…
-
“The purpose of law enforcement, with respect to transactional crimes, is to make sure that they have ‘good’ criminals.”
Keith Humphreys shares this interview with Vanda Felbab-Brown. There are no dull moments, but here’s one I think should give us lefties pause: what will replace the underground marijuana economy? Felbab-Brown explains: Most of the time governments tend to fight illicit economies and not think about what will replace them. Policies are often premised on the…
-
Arendt, Antisemitism, and the Chicago Teachers’ Union Strike
I am one of those ideologically-impure liberals that worries a lot about public sector unions. On the one hand, I favor workplace democracy and collaboration; on the other hand, I worry about the fact that as union membership has declined, the majority of remaining union members haved tended to be at the top of the…
-
Democracy Means Asking the Right Questions
Whenever I talk to students about democracy, I like to emphasize that the original term for democratic rule was isonomy. Consider the account Otanes gives in Herodotus’ History: “[T]he rule of the multitude [plêthos de archon] has… the loveliest name of all, equality [isonomiên]…. It determines offices by lot, and holds power accountable, and conducts all deliberating…
-
Land Use, Density, and Local Control
I’ve been looking for good articles on local governance, in part related to the Tufts Summer Institute, and in part related to my goal of transforming my ethics course so that it takes up the paired questions of the Good Life and the Good Citizen. One resource for this is Sharon Meagher’s textbook Philosophy and…
-
What can small groups do?
I’ve just returned from two weeks at the Tufts Summer Institute of Civic Studies, which culminated in a conference attended by 117 researchers, practitioners, philanthropists, and public officials interested in expanding the role of citizens in our democracy. Peter Levine summed up the conference here: The Frontiers conference was modeled on No Better Time, a…
-
Walmart Coming to DC
Walmart is planning to open several new “urban” stores in the District, and I’m pretty excited about it. (via) One of them will be just two blocks away from me, and I plan to shop there. Right now, I do most of my shopping at the rundown, overpriced Safeway or at the Costco off the 495…
-
The Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear
It was a policy wonk’s rally. People who know too much to think activism can be effective in the current media environment. People who spent the last decade protesting the war or Gauntanamo to no avail, only to watch the Tea Party become a major force with minuscule numbers because of a television network’s support. I think some are confusing the…
-
A New Way Forward on DC Voting Rights?
If you’ve ever been to my home city, Washington, DC, you’ve probably noticed that the license plates say “Taxation without Representation.” That’s because DC residents (like Puerto Ricans and inhabitants of the US territories and “overseas possessions”) are not represented in Congress by voting members. Instead, we have a non-voting delegate, much like the American…
-
Policing Theory
In a recent report on British policing, Denis O’Connor criticized the growing use of paramilitary policing in the UK: “British police risk losing the battle for the public’s consent if they win public order through tactics that appear to be unfair, aggressive and inconsistent,” he said. “This harms not just the reputation of the individual…