Economics assumes people are rational actors in the market, but we know a lot less about how to manage money than we think....The conservative approach to government stems from a basic tenet of free-market economics: that people always act rationally to maximize their own benefits, and that from this rises a general state of well-being for society as a whole. But this isn't always true. One of the hottest academic disciplines to arise in the last few decades is behavioral economics, which explores the ways in which people behave irrationally. In addition, easy-predictable problems with certain markets prevent us from achieving the best outcomes. These two facts have consequences for how we should think about government in certain instances. There are many ways in which the government can make better decisions with our money than we can, and there are many ways that the Ryan budget would make society worse off by getting rid of government programs. Here are five:
Retirement Insurance...Health Care...Addressing Poverty...Disaster Relief...
All the Little Things
While I've been focused so far on specific things that the federal government can do better than individuals or the private market, there are a number of tiny things that local governments do to create the world in which you live--building roads, taking out the trash, keeping traffic flowing, and turning street lights on at night. Basically, we can call this "running your community." ...
From the abstract:
Collaborative governance draws from diverse realms of practice and research in public administration. This article synthesizes and extends a suite of conceptual frameworks, research findings, and practice-based knowledge into an integrative framework for collaborative governance. The framework specifies a set of nested dimensions that encompass a larger system context, a collaborative governance regime, and its internal collaborative dynamics and actions that can generate impacts and adaptations across the systems. The framework provides a broad conceptual map for situating and exploring components of cross-boundary governance systems that range from policy or program-based intergovernmental cooperation to place-based regional collaboration with nongovernmental stakeholders to public-private partnerships. The framework integrates knowledge about individual incentives and barriers to collection action, collaborative social learning and conflict resolution processes, and institutional arrangements for cross-boundary collaboration. It is presented as a general framework that might be applied to analyses at different scales, in different policy arenas, and varying levels of complexity. The article also offers 10 propositions about the dynamic interactions among components within the framework and concludes with a discussion about the implications of the framework for theory, research, evaluation, and practice.
Big problems call for big solutions. And so, with the states mired in historically unpleasant fiscal times, many have decided they need to go far beyond Band-Aid solutions in favor of tourniquets and transplants....But although there's a real attraction to restructuring government in a variety of ways, it's not easy. Unless these efforts can actually reduce staff, increase productivity or save money by combining back office operations, it can be like reshuffling the chairs on a leaky boat (we hesitate to use the usual cliché because we don't really think the federal government or the states are as bad off as the Titanic).
See also:
Reorganization Magic
From the abstract:
As economic austerity threatens to sweep Europe, the highly unrealistic expectations about the benefits of government spending cuts are not fully appreciated by the public. It is unlikely that they will result in substantial expansion; to the contrary, potentially they are extremely contractionary. The strong analysis in this piece, using the British budget proposals as a key example, starkly shows that the required changes in investment, savings, and other variables by the private sector to produce growth are utterly implausible. Slow growth, or even recession, is the likely outcome.
From the introduction:
Although media and public attention have focused mostly on national policy making, program development, and funding decisions, intergovernmental relations and management remain vital to virtually all initiatives emanating from Washington, D.C. Yet a lack of adequate attention to intergovernmental matters--from policy formulation through policy implementation and evaluation--imperils effective and efficient governance in ways that are readily evident today. The intergovernmental confusion and clashes that attended governments' responses to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico suggested, for instance, that key government actors had not fully learned the lessons of the horribly bungled responses to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Hence, forces of coercion, cooperation, competition, and contestation continue to vie for intergovernmental preeminence.
The capacity--especially the federal government's capacity--to even recognize, let alone address, the intergovernmental sinews of our federal democracy has atrophied severely since the 1980s. This symposium focuses on the loss in 1996 of one element of such an institutional capacity--the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR)--but intergovernmental deinstitutionalization occurred across the board during the 1980s and 1990s. The president's Office of Management and Budget no longer has an explicit intergovernmental shop; the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs (called the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement under President Obama) is more pertinent to politics than to policy; the U.S. House and Senate no longer have subcommittees on intergovernmental relations; and the U.S. Government Accountability Office no longer has a formal intergovernmental unit. At the same time, partisanship, interest group advocacy, and confrontational politics have eroded support for the kinds of impartial research, objective data collection, bipartisan policy development, and collaborative performance produced by the ACIR and its former institutional cousins in Congress and the executive branch.
This symposium looks mainly at the trends and issues associated with the creation and demise of the ACIR, and assesses prospects for recreating lost capacities. These include monitoring intergovernmental trends, convening key stakeholders, conducting impartial research and data analysis, and recommending practical policies and management practices. The symposium also surveys the state ACIRs.
Articles include:
- Reflections on the Spirit and Work of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations by Bruce D. McDowell
- An ACIR Perspective on Intergovernmental Institutional Development by
Carl W. Stenberg
- Reflections of a Member of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations by Richard P. Nathan
- The U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations: Unique Artifact of a Bygone Era by John Kincaid
- The Current Status and Roles of State Advisory Commissions on Intergovernmental Relations in the U.S. Federal System by Richard L. Cole
- "Big Questions" about Intergovernmental Relations and Management: Who Will Address Them? by John Kincaid and Carl W. Stenberg
]]>From the summary:
Young Americans today across the ideological spectrum share a far more favorable view of the federal government than do their elders. Importantly, this so-called Millennial Generation may hold the key to reversing historic declines in public confidence in government--the major finding from a new survey commissioned by the Center for American Progress.
In this toolkit, we encourage community groups, worker centers, labor unions, and the public interest and private bar to reach out to local offices of the WHD and the SOL to build relationships and enter into collaborations. These arrangements can be mutually beneficial, helping both the agency and advocates fulfill their shared mission of protecting workers.
More specifically, this toolkit provides some helpful resources for advocates including: a brief overview of the roles and function of the WHD and the SOL; direction on how to set up a meeting with the agency; and some examples of historical collaborations between advocates and state and federal enforcement agencies. The Appendices contain talking points to use in meetings, additional examples of collaboration between community organizations and state and federal agencies, contact and key personnel information for WHD and SOL offices around the nation, a sample outreach letter to these agencies, and a scorecard for keeping track of progress around the country.
From the announcement:
The Office of the Federal Register (OFR) and the Government Printing Office (GPO) are moving the Federal Register Home Page and the Public Inspection Desk to www.OFR.gov. Please reset your bookmarks before July 26, 2010. This change is necessary to make way for a new edition the daily Federal Register, an unofficial "Web 2.0" prototype, which will be hosted on FederalRegister.gov.
The Federal Register Home Page on OFR.gov will continue to feature the electronic Public Inspection Desk, the Privacy Act Issuances for 2007 and 2009, and the OFR Catalog, which links to all Federal Register publications and services.
As of July 26, 2010, the FederalRegister.gov website will display an XML prototype of the daily Federal Register. It is not an official legal edition of the Federal Register, and does not replace the official print version or the official electronic version on GPO's Federal Digital System. OFR and GPO are posting the unofficial XML prototype of the Federal Register to gather public feedback, with the aim of granting it official status in the future. It will remain an unofficial informational resource until the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register issues a regulation granting it official legal status.
]]>The federal government during the Obama Administration has assertively sought to influence state policies, perhaps more so than any time since the 1960s. Sometimes it offers states more funding and flexibility; sometimes it seeks to constrain, guide, or direct state policy and budget decisions -- generally in service of its views of what domestic policies ought to be.
]]>The Department of Labor enforcement agencies foster and promote the welfare of wage earners
and retirees of the United States, by ensuring their safety, improving their working conditions,
and protecting their retirement and health care benefits. In carrying out this mission, the Agencies administer and enforce a variety of Federal labor laws that guarantee workers' rights to safe and healthful working conditions, a minimum hourly wage and overtime pay, and freedom from employment discrimination, as well as the integrity of their pensions and health plans
This site aims to make the enforcement data, collected by these agencies in the exercise of their mission, accessible and searchable, using common search criteria, by the public. It intends, also, to engage the public in new and creative ways of using this data. It is a work in progress, and new features, functionality, and search criteria will be added over time. It is foremost our invitation to you, the American public, to engage with us, and react to this first iteration of our work by telling us what you think and what you would like to see here.
Available now:
- Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA)
- Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA)
- Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)
- Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA)
- Wage & Hour Division (WHD)
Coming soon:
1. BUILD A DATA CATALOG
* Make the enforcement agencies datasets available for download in machine readable format.
* Provide metadata for all datasets.
* Publish the datasets on Data.Gov.
2. LAUNCH MASHUP COMPETITION OPPORTUNITIES
* Invite the Public to find innovative ways of using DOL's enforcement data to promote worker's
safety and protect worker's rights.
3. ADD NEW SEARCH CRITERIA
* Search by Company Name
* Additional Search granularity: Penalty Amount, Violation Type, Legislative Acts, etc.
4. COLLABORATION
* Integrate the Enforcement Data Warehouse with other Federal and State enforcement agencies data systems (i.e. EPA's enforcement data system).
5. USABILITY
* Provide data driven maps to allow visual access to the data.
* Provide an interactive dashboard.
Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily--this country has been built on cycles of crisis and renewal, and the forces that have made it great remain strong. But the government is broken. Securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke.
]]>Today, the country's primary labor market - regular jobs with reliable wages, benefits, and terms of employment - is being drained by a rise in temporary and contract work with no security. By using its power as a contractor and by enforcing laws already on the books, government can turn millions of bad jobs into good ones.
Articles include:
• Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers - Annette Bernhardt, Ruth Milkman and Nik Theodore
Rebuilding our economy on the back of illegal working conditions is morally untenable -- and it is bad economics.
• Dark and Bitter - Nancy Cleeland
Food workers increasingly exist in a legal limbo with no protections for wages, benefits, job security, or life and limb. Why are employers like Hershey off the hook?
• Decent Work - Robert Kuttner
How government can get back on the side of promoting good jobs.
• Forgotten Corners of the Economy - Stephen Franklin
As unemployment rises, the illegal treatment of day laborers only worsens. Where's the government?
• Good Jobs, Healthy Cities - Peter Dreier
Some city governments are using their economic muscle to promote good jobs.
• Government Paves the Way - Paul Sonn and Annette Bernhardt
A decent work agenda for the Obama administration.
• Stuck on the Low Road - David Bensman
Deregulation turned truck driving from a good job into a bad one. Now, thanks to local organizing and government action, there's a better road.
• The Good War and the Workers - Steve Fraser
World War II defense contracts raised labor standards. Government could use the same leverage in peacetime.
• Which Side Is Government On? - David Moberg
Millions of contract workers whose salaries are ultimately paid by government live in poverty. Uncle Sam should demand high standards, not pay as little as possible.
Billions are spent on government contracts. Track how much Federal money is spent near you and who it is going to.
USASpendingwatch.net is a (politics 2.0) website aiming to combine the federal expenses with their political context. This shall be the basis for better information navigation and investigation. Besides presenting new information and making analyses and interpretations using the data of USASpending.gov and other information sources ( govtrack.us ...) this website aims to provide a starting point for the community and citizens concerned about federal expenses and open government. Thus features like rating, sharing etc. are or will be implemented.
See also:
- Spendtrend.us