Neal Peirce / Aug 26 2010
For Release Sunday, August 29, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
It’s tough to underestimate the peril to impartial American justice that’s been highlighted in a new report on the big-time campaign money flowing into elections for justices on state supreme courts.
Total spending on the campaigns doubled in the past decade, from $83 million in the 1990s to $207 million in 2000-2009, according the report from three nonpartisan groups — the Justice at Stake Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
Equally alarming, those pushing the spending — corporations on one side, trial lawyers on the other — are using shell organizations such as the American Justice Partnership and the Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee to keep their involvement hidden.
Increasingly, the special interest groups are using questionnaires to pressure judges into signaling, during campaigns, how they’ll make courtroom decisions. And there’s been a surge of nasty and costly television ads, mimicking the ugliness that pollutes so much television political advertising today.
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Neal Peirce / Aug 20 2010
For Release Sunday, August 22, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
America’s public libraries, fast turning themselves into “one-stop shops” for digital job searches, appear to be staging one of their great historic transformations.
Responding to a rush of recession-time visitors, 88 percent of our libraries now offer access to job databases. And at least two-thirds of library staffs are helping applicants complete online job applications, according to a national survey by the American Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
As for access to free wireless services, 82 percent of libraries now provide it — up from just 37 percent four years ago. In two-thirds of cases, the libraries are the only source of free Internet service in their communities.
What’s amazing is that many libraries are able to maintain the bulk of their services and adapt to growing needs during a recession, even in the face of snowballing funding cuts by their local governments. More than 55 percent of urban libraries are reporting budget cuts, and a quarter have felt obliged to cut hours or close branches. Read More »
Neal Peirce / Aug 12 2010
For Release Sunday, August 15, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
The rest of the world is starting to notice the United States’ incarceration follies.
Case in point: “Why America locks up so many people,” the cover story of the British-based Economist magazine, showing the face of a forlorn Statue of Liberty behind bars.
The grim statistics noted: some 2.3 million people, more than the population of 15 of our states, are now incarcerated — one in 100 Americans. That’s quadruple our 1970 imprisonment rate. For hard-to-defend reasons, and at staggering fiscal cost, we incarcerate people at a rate five times Great Britain’s, nine times Germany’s, 12 times Japan’s.
Congress is on the brink of our first national reassessment in many decades. Sen. James Webb of Virginia is proposing a National Criminal Justice Commission instructed to take an 18-month, stem-to-stern look at the system, its shortcomings and alternatives. The bill recently passed the House without opposition; now the question is whether the Senate (where the measure has a 38 cosponsors) can avoid a procedural objection by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and bring it to a vote.
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Neal Peirce / Aug 06 2010
For Release Sunday, August 8, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
BRIDGEWATER, N.H. — With a classic glacial lake, steep mountainsides and grand vistas, the area around my family’s summer home draws visitors and would-be new residents like a magnet. The visioning statements that surrounding towns have adopted place high value on land stewardship and retaining a rural lifestyle.
But what do the towns’ actual zoning statutes actually call for? Overwhelmingly, they focus on suburban-style one- and two-acre lots, highly popular in recent years. And 68 percent of the the watershed is technically buildable.
So what’s to be done? A new Watershed Master Plan by the Newfound Lake Region Association, backed up by scientific analysis and polling of residents by nearby Plymouth State University, is designed to open a clear public dialogue and help towns resolve the tough development choices they face.
The Newfound area’s growth dilemma isn’t mentioned in “Putting Smart Growth to Work in Local Communities” — a report released last week by the International City/County Management Association under an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Neal Peirce / Jul 31 2010
For Release Sunday, August 1, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Can rising exports help us save our economic skin? Are smarter metropolitan-region strategies a part of any necessary game plan?
This is the case the Brookings Institution is making, and it makes some sense. We’re into a season of dire budget squeezes — federal, state and local. There’s a rising chorus of deep worry about fast-rising public debt.
But simply focusing on government cutbacks and shrinkage misses two critical points:
First, there’s no substitute for new wealth that eventually yields the taxes that pays off debts, even massive ones. Second, just stimulating our domestic consumer economy isn’t going to do the trick. The time has come to be looking early and hard beyond our own borders in today’s global economy, focusing on every opportunity for expanded export markets.
And here’s where the Brookings economists see a first wave of exciting new opportunities. Middle class consumption is literally exploding in Brazil, India and China. Last year those countries accounted for 8.4 percent of all middle class consumption in the world; by 2020, Brookings estimates, the figure could well reach 26 percent.
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Neal Peirce / Jul 23 2010
For Release Sunday, July 25, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Is the film industry snookering America’s taxpayers?
We’re accustomed to state governments putting up big capital for footloose auto factories, biotech firms, even airplane assembly plants.
But what are we to make of tax credits and other state-financed breaks to such big-time production companies as Disney, Time Warner and Sony and their film-making subcontractors? With most state budgets now mired in deep red ink, does this make any sense?
Louisiana, which had been attracting some filmmaking for decades, decided in 2002 to ramp up modest incentives in a really serious way, passing a bundle of subsidies for film production in the state.
The strategy paid off quickly, attracting such production firms as Disney and such stars as Dustin Hoffman.
Louisiana’s move did more. It triggered, as researcher William Luther reported for the Tax Foundation, “an explosion of movie production credits nationwide” as dozens of states tried by one way or another to outbid Louisiana. By 2009, 44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico were into the game.
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Neal Peirce / Jul 16 2010
For Release Sunday, July 18th, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Does it always take adversity to get an American region to “get its act together” in planning future growth?
The Puget Sound area anchored by Seattle suggests “no.” Geology and modern economics have blessed the region in astounding ways. There’s the natural legacy of glistening snow-capped mountain peaks and lush Douglas fir beside sparking watersides. Economically, the region’s had such world-renowned economic treasures as Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon.com, excellent ports and vibrant international trade.
Yet there’s been a dark underside to the region’s exuberant growth — to 4.7 million people — over the last decades. I vividly recall a 1989 helicopter ride marked by spectacular views of Mount Rainier, a rainbow at Snoqualmie Falls and picturesque villages. But I could also see bulldozed “progress” — a plethora of scarred hilltops, deep cuts into the magnificent evergreen tapestry.
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Neal Peirce / Jul 09 2010
For Release Sunday, July 11th, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Close to 40 years after Richard Nixon sparked America’s “war on drugs,” California voters this November get to vote on the war’s biggest challenge ever.
It’s a ballot initiative making it legal for any Californian 21 or older to grow or use marijuana. If passed, there will be no more requirement to prove medical need (today’s law in California and 12 other states). Cannabis would be subject to taxes, potentially yielding billions of dollars in state, county and city levies.
California will be voting in the wake of Gallup polling that shows nationwide support for legalizing marijuana up to 44 percent, an eight-point jump since 2005. Support is higher in California: recent polls show the legalization initiative leading by margins of 56 to 42 percent and 49 percent to 41 percent.
But that doesn’t assure passage: historically, a modest poll lead for an initiative can melt away, especially as opponents wage fierce negative campaigns close to election day. Stiff opposition to the marijuana measure is likely from California’s “prison-industrial-complex” including police chiefs, prosecutors and prison guards.
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Neal Peirce / Jul 01 2010
For Release Sunday, July 4th, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Profoundly immoral — and fiscal folly, to boot.
That’s how the United States’ continuing “war on drugs” and its horrendous impact on our neighbor Mexico deserves to be seen.
Why?
First, it’s our appetite for official forbidden drugs — marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine — that’s driving the chaos on our southern border and deep into Mexico. President Felipe Calderon expected — but has clearly failed — to crack the vicious drug rings through police and military power. But he’s dead right on one score:
“The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug consumption in the world. It is as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world.”
The conclusion is simple: if the United States were to decriminalize drugs, end the criminal prohibition on growing or selling them, prices would plummet.
This means that the massive profits the Mexican druglords reap — their “take” on an estimated $15 billion a year cross-border trade — would literally evaporate.
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Neal Peirce / Jun 26 2010
For Release Sunday, June 27, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
BALTIMORE — Forced “displacement,” “removal,” “resettlement” of peoples. Can it be made less painful?
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is working on a cure in the East Baltimore neighborhood beside the already huge and growing Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Maryland’s largest single employer.
There’s no doubt that forcing the breakup of neighborhoods is a global problem, whether triggered by civil wars, floods, fires, or just to clear prime city real estate for Olympic and World Cup-like events.
Yet for humans, displacement from their known settings may be exceedingly painful — a process Jane Jacobs highlighted in her 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Research psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove more recently underscored the point in her book, “Root Shock,” likening the psychological impact of forced removal from a familiar neighborhood to a plant being jerked from its native soil.
But holding neighborhoods static isn’t practical — they’re always in some flux, and spaces often do need to be found to accommodate job-creating industries, university expansions or creation of new parks.
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