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An interesting read on the role that lobbying, activist, and advocacy groups play in choosing candidates, before voters get a chance to vote. The grown of the “invisible primary”

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AZ ranks 51 for teachers...

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Free land, diverted taxes, create a “community fund” for Amazon to direct its taxes to projects it chooses, reduced construction costs... 

What cities will do to attract Amazon for “economic development” opportunities. Who pays? Who benefits? 

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President Donald Trump is set to sign a new executive order today that is expected to reduce the enforcement of laws and regulations limiting political activity by tax-exempt churches and other religious groups.

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American women are now more educated than men, but they still earn less than their husbands. 

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Interested in learning more about policy process, in particular in the AZ legislature? If so, this class is for you! 

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The same day as our lecture on lobbying and advocacy among nonprofits, Dr Ashcraft does an interview on KJZZ about changing organizational tax status.

He notes that most nonprofits are public charities, why organizations want to 501(c)4 status, and what the expenditure test means. Everything we talked about in class! 

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What happens when a program doesnt results in the intended output and outcomes? Are they measuring the effect wrong? Should there be a new policy? Does this mean the policy isnt working? Or maybe the police force in DC was already doing a good job and not using force unnecessarily? Are body cameras in DC a solution in search of a problem? Do the cameras still increase legitimacy? Should they keep them or get rid of them?

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This article posted the same day as our class discussion comparing public, non-profit, and for-profit organizations.

The Mentor Network is the largest for-profit foster care company in the US. Investigations note 86 children had died between 2005 and 2014 in the company's care. The report concludes that

"profit at times came before child welfare“

Are there some public services / goods that we don’t want for-profit companies managing? Are there other services and goods we don’t want government managing? When are nonprofits the best option for balancing mission, financial motive, and speed / flexibility?

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A great presentation of data and indicators to show how Trump’s policies will affect energy & environment. There are especially nice data visualizations related to the North Dakota Access Pipeline, withdrawal from Paris Climate Agreement, proposed changes to  national parks & monuments, and ending the reduction of reliance on coal. Some are predictions of outputs & outcomes, others are outputs and outcomes that have already occurred. 

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Thaler was in the nudge video we watched in class. He just won the Nobel Prize for his work! 

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In local news, Arizona state agency, a public organization, refuses to allow a member of the public (e.g. media) to view records. 

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The child-poverty rate fell to a record low in 2016 (15.6%). But it’s still too high - way too high for a country with so much wealth (we are behind 30 other industrialized economies including Poland, Mexico, and Estonia, as well as countries like Japan, Germany, and France. 

The causes of this decline in the US child-poverty rate:

Expansion of the safety net—in particular through the food-stamp program and provisions like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.

That finding comes from a new analysis of government and academic data by Isaac Shapiro and Danilo Trisi, both researchers at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan, Washington-based think tank. The child-poverty rate declined to 15.6 percent in 2016, the researchers found, down from a post-recession high of 18.1 percent in 2012 and from 28.4 percent in 1967. 

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Regulatory policy gone awry

The FDA sent this to the company:

“Your Nashoba Granola label lists ingredient ‘Love,’”

“‘Love’ is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient.”

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Policy design and implementation we can learn from. Banning rapid-fire firearms has helped reduce mass shootings and total firearm deaths in Australia from 1979-2013 - the same time that mass shootings have been increasing in the US. Just one of the many policy tools the US could use to address mass shootings. Others might include:

Partial bans: automatic assault rifles

Tax: raise prices on all gun sales and gun related equipment (use tax revenue for emergency victim funds)

inconvenience: reduce number of places people can buy guns (currently you can buy guns at more places in US than there are Starbucks in the world)

Regulate: require licenses and annual renewal for all gun purchases, ownership, etc (we do this for cars)

Insurance: require insurance for gun owners (like cars)

Age limits: set age restrictions

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This example from Australia is often used by gun control advocates as evidence (an example) of how to pass successful gun control legislation and how hard it is to implement real reform.

The massacre was a turning point for Australia, which incentivized “the ruling center-right Liberal Party” to join “groups from across the political spectrum to work on legislation to sharply restrict the availability of guns.” We haven’t seen these events move parties to work together on gun control in the US.

What is preventing this policy problem from moving beyond debate to enactment and implementation?