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The majority of U.S. states have legalized marijuana for medical use and some states have legalized marijuana for recreational use; yet, marijuana remains illegal federally. Given the misalignment between state and federal policies, this paper seeks to explore how hospitals handle inpatients' medical marijuana use in states where medical marijuana is legal. To examine this phenomenon, we conducted an anonymous, online, cross-sectional survey of nurse leaders working in acute care inpatient settings in states that had legalized medical marijuana. Using descriptive statistics, we report on these nurse leaders' experiences. There were 811 survey responses—291 who worked in an acute care inpatient setting in a state that had legalized medical marijuana. Among those respondents, only a small percentage reported that inpatients had some access to their medical marijuana: 5.8% reported that the drug was kept in the pharmacy and dispensed like other prescriptions; another 3.4% indicated that patients kept the medical marijuana in their rooms and took it, as needed. Most respondents (55.6%) reported that patients were switched to an alternative medication during their inpatient hospital stays. Almost half (49.4%) of the nurse leaders who reported that alternative medications were used, reported that opioids were substituted, and the majority reported that the marijuana was safer than the opioids. These findings are concerning given the increase in opioid overdose deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies and services to support informal caregivers vary considerably across countries, This paper examines the role of caregivers and how perspectives on that role may influence the availability of benefits and services in three countries that differ considerably in their care systems - Sweden, Ireland and the United States. We developed a nine-dimensional framework for examining differences, including policies and how the role of caregiver is conceptualized. We found differences in the three countries in how services are organized, which reflected assumptions about the caregiver role. There were also similarities in the three countries. Caregivers held an ambiguous position within each social system and there was little concern for equity in the delivery of support services. Increased clarity about the role of caregivers may facilitate development of policies that more effectively meet their varied needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a reaction paper to the article in this journal issue entitled Human Service Cartels: The Soft Repression of the Mediocracy by David Stoesz. As such, it addresses two significant questions about the Stoesz article. One question is as follows: Are we really talking about a cartel? The other question is as follows: Isn't it the power elite that promotes societal control and repression? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the unspoken, implicit white racial logic of the brain disease model of addiction, which is based on seemingly universal, disembodied brains devoid of social or environmental influences. In the United States, this implicit white logic led to "context-free" neuroscience that made the social hierarchies of addiction and its consequences invisible to, and thus exacerbated by, national policies on opioids. The brain disease model of addiction was selectively deployed among the white middle-class population that had long accessed narcotics and pharmaceutical treatments for narcotics disorders from biomedical clinics, as opposed to from illegal sources subject to law enforcement. In turn, new treatments for opioid addiction were racially marketed to the same white clientele to which newly patented opioid analgesics were marketed, tapping into a circumscribed but highly lucrative consumer base that has long benefited from a legally protected, racially segregated safe space for white narcotics consumption. The connecting thread for the contemporary white opioid "crisis," therefore, is white race as a ghost variable in addiction neuroscience and in its pharmaceutical and biotechnological translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although stepfamilies exist in some form in nearly every country in the world, they are most common in Western countries. This paper provides a summary of laws, policies, and programs pertaining to stepfamilies in a selection of Western countries, with a special focus on the United States. Although stepfamilies have been prevalent throughout the West for decades, they remain "incompletely institutionalized," and governments have been slow to address their needs and concerns. There is large variation across Western countries with respect to how stepfamilies are treated under the law, with some countries employing more liberal definitions of "parents," "children," and "families," than others. In contrast, stepfamilies in the United States must contend with a complex and conflicting set of federal laws, state laws, and court precedents. Their legal status is uncertain and the way stepfamilies are treated is inconsistent across social programs and policies. Overall, there is clear bias against stepfamilies within most U.S. institutions. The review includes recommendations for change that would enhance stepfamily stability and quality of life in both Western and non-Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2009, the Obama Administration announced its intention to rapidly "turn around" 5,000 of the nation's lowest-performing schools. To do so, it relied on the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program to provide temporary funding for states and schools, and to mandate drastic, school-level reforms. Most of these reforms require massive administrative and teacher layoffs, especially under the "turnaround option." In the public debate about the SIG program, reforms such as turnarounds have been described as new and innovative. In reality, the nation has significant experience with them, particularly over the past 40 years. Turnaround-style reforms are not only based on unwarranted claims; they ignore contrary research evidence about the potential of mass firings to improve organizational performance. Purpose: This paper considers the tensions with democratic education inherent in the federal SIG program's market-based school reforms. It examines the evolution of and intent behind the 2009 federal SIG program. From there, it considers the lessons offorty years of research on educational effectiveness and high-stakes accountability. It builds on this evidence, as well as the growing literature on communities' engagement in reform, in its analysis of the school turnaround research and practice. The paper culminates in a set of recommendations that are intended to re-center the purposes of public education for low-income students, students of color, and local communities in developing more equitable, democratic school turnarounds. Research Design: This article synthesizes forty years of research on school and district effectiveness, high-stakes accountability, and community engagement in school reform to evaluate the federal School Improvement Grant program's potential to cultivate democratic, equitable public schools. It also reviews the small, but rapidly growing literature on school turnarounds, paying particular attention to the ways in which this new field reproduces or departs from earlier literature that examined reform models that are analogous to the current SIG-funded school turnarounds. Conclusions: Based on the provisional lessons that are emerging from current SIG-inspired turnarounds, from research on earlier efforts to improve school and district effectiveness, and from pockets of promising community-based practices that are developing at local and national levels, we propose five steps that federal, state, and local policymakers can take toward fostering more equitable, democratic turnaround processes. First, increase current federal and state spending for public education, particularly as it is allocated for more democratic turnarounds. Second, focus turnaround policies on improving the quality of teaching and learning rather than on technical-structural changes. Third, engage a broad cross-section of schools' communities-- teachers, students, parents, and community organizations-- in planning and implementing turnaround strategies that are tailored to each school and district context. Fourth, incorporate multiple indicators of effectiveness-- apart from test scores-- that reflect the range of purposes for schools. Fifth, support ongoing, systematic research, evaluation, and dissemination examining all aspects of turnaround processes in schools and districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This volume focuses on the importance of state policy for ensuring equity in postsecondary access, achievement, and attainment. America has a federalist system of education that gives states significant autonomy in their governance of schools, colleges, and universities. This system has created significant variation across states; variation that provides opportunities for state governments to learn from one another. This volume underscores the importance of context and uses differentiation across state lines to highlight the roles internal and external factors play in policy development and issues pertaining to postsecondary access, achievement, and attainment. This collection of papers includes a diverse set of theoretical and methodological approaches to address a range of topics that makes clear the scope and importance of a multitude of state policies. This volume will serve as a source of new information regarding state policies that will be useful for policymakers and researchers alike. It is also suggests important new avenues for research that focus on theoretical and methodological considerations as well as topical areas including funding, accountability, transparency, and policy framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a case study of Transition House in Cambridge, MA, a pioneering feminist agency founded in 1976. Transition House has survived and is, today, a thriving agency. Based on interviews with and papers collected from those involved in founding and running it, as well as a few guests/clients, I argue that Transition House's evolution was impelled by three major forces shared with other early domestic violence agencies: changes in the culture due in part to successes of the battered women's movement in the early years, changes in the larger political-economic context due to national policies and economic trends, which make getting out of poverty in 2017 more difficult than it was in the 1970s, and learning from survivors and from evolving research on domestic violence. In 1976, the immediate focus was on women "battered" by their partners, and the agency was strongly identified with the women's movement. In 2017, the focus is on women who are battered by economic and social conditions as much as by their partners, and the agency is seen as a partner with the city and with other nonprofit agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences of economic downturns for states’ redistributive politics. We track state policies from 1980 through 2010 and illustrate how economic downturns led states to adopt budget-balancing policies by suppressing both the increased spending on programs benefiting the poor otherwise expected under Democratic Party control and the tax cuts for the wealthy otherwise expected under Republican Party control. We also undertake a natural experiment case study—comparing the forty Democratic and Republican governors in office right before (2007–2008) and after (2009–2010) the onset of the Great Recession. We find that Republican governors were less likely to propose spending and increased calls for spending cuts; yet, no similar shift in tax proposals was evident with continued calls for tax cuts to the wealthy. Democratic governors exhibited a similar pattern, but were less responsive and more likely to maintain their earlier policy proposals even after a significant downturn in the national economy. Together, these findings highlight how economic and political conditions interact with one another to shape “who gets what, when, and how from government,” as well as clarify that we must ask and answer these questions separately for taxing and spending to capture the complex politics of redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WE PRESENT AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK for use by fellows of the Fogarty International Center--sponsored Advanced Certificate Program in Research Ethics for Central and Eastern Europe to identify gaps in the public policies establishing research ethics review systems that impede them from doing their job of protecting human research subjects. The framework, illustrated by examples from post-Communist countries, employs a logic model based on the public policy and public management literature. This paper is part of a collection of papers analyzing the Fogarty International Center's International Research Ethics Education and Curriculum program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the history of New York City’s Greenmarket program, a municipal farmers market program designed to bring fresh local food to New Yorkers as well as to prevent the loss of regional farmland to increasing suburbanization. In the 38 years since it was established, Greenmarket has expanded from a single location with 7 vendors to 195 vendors selling at fifty-three markets across all five boroughs. This paper traces tensions created by the program’s growth, its shifting place in the city’s food retail environment, and its current renewed commitment to the original goals. Drawing on primary documents, New York Times articles, and other popular press, this paper presents a comprehensive history of NYC’s Greenmarket, describes its unique position in New York City, and ability to serve as a model for other cities’ food planning efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Solar photovoltaic (PV) system prices in the United States display considerable heterogeneity both across geographic locations and within a given location. Such heterogeneity may arise due to state and federal policies, differences in market structure, and other factors that influence demand and costs. This paper examines the relative importance of such factors on equilibrium solar PV system prices in the United States using a detailed dataset of roughly 100,000 recent residential and small commercial installations. As expected, we find that PV system prices differ based on characteristics of the systems. More interestingly, we find evidence suggesting that search costs and imperfect competition affect solar PV pricing. Installer density substantially lowers prices, while regions with relatively generous financial incentives for solar PV are associated with higher prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances several reasons why EU competition policy on vertical restraints has been a failure. First, the distinction between price and nonprice restraints is inconsistent, since the economic effects of both practices are similar. Second, EU competition law creates a number of inefficiencies that cause a negative impact on social welfare; an example is the ban on absolute territorial protection that does not allow a full protection from free-riding. Third, it is doubtful that the inefficiencies of EU competition law can be justified by the market integration goal, since the rules may turn out to be ineffective in reaching this objective. Fourth, EU competition law on vertical restraints has created negative side effects: it has put an end to experimentation and innovation of competition rules at the member-state level and induced private interests groups to spend a lot of effort in lobbying national regulators. The example of resale price maintenance for books serves as an illustration of the latter problem. Several of the above pitfalls have been indicated by Richard Markovits in his treatise on U.S. antitrust law and EU competition law. These criticisms are supported in this paper and further expanded by a discussion of additional errors that have made the EU competition rules on vertical restraints a policy failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how financial deregulation and the partisan underpinnings of deregulation shaped the path of income inequality in the United States. Using time-series data from 1914 to 2010, we assess the effect of partisan politics on financial deregulation and, in turn, the effect of deregulation on income inequality. We find that financial deregulation has generally declined when Democrats attain more power in Washington and that deregulation has contributed to rising inequality. We also learn that the partisan effect on deregulation has diminished since the early 1980s, suggesting that one way partisan politics has contributed to the recent rise in inequality is related to convergence on matters of financial deregulation. We explore several potential explanations for this post–1980 partisan convergence, finding evidence supporting the idea that globalization, the increasing availability of credit, and shifts in campaign finance were contributing factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electricity industry restructuring is only now beginning to focus on the role of utilities in distributed generation (DG). This paper examines whether, as restructuring unfolds, regulators may permit investor-owned distribution companies to own DG, and if so, under what terms. Concomitantly, the paper explores how ownership of DG by distribution companies impacts electricity restructuring. The paper concludes that regulated utilities should readily obtain approval to install DG on utility sites as long as the utility remains vertically integrated. Approval is also possible for vertically integrated or restructured utilities to provide DG at customer sites if it is shareholder-funded and connected on the customer's side of the meter. However, distribution company ownership of DG at utility sites or on the utility's side of the meter conflicts with electricity industry restructuring. Regulatory approval under restructuring is therefore highly problematical. Should regulatory approval be granted, the need to mitigate vertical market power is likely to precipitate the disaggregation of the distribution company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars agree that nationalism remains an important aspect of the new vocabulary of neoliberalism, little is known about how these discourses operate on the ground and in particular contexts. In this paper, we investigate how a specific adaption of national identity, one that underscores the values of cultural integrity, is used to naturalize neoliberal shifts in the tequila industry. Tequila has long circulated in the images and myths of Mexican identity. However, in the last two decades, the Mexican government has increasingly relied on tequila's reputation as the nation's 'spirit' to obscure changes in tequila regulatory policies that are linked to broader neoliberal changes in Mexico. Extralocal actors--in particular, multinational companies--have more influence over the direction the industry is taking and the institutions that regulate it, while tequila production is increasingly untethered from the communities and traditions that make it distinct. Here, we examine how private and public actors mobilize the language of authenticity, place, and quality to justify the adoption of neoliberal measures in the tequila industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conditions under which local governments are likely to engage in formalized intergovernmental developmental cooperation. The author theorizes that policy competition, informational and divisional transaction costs, and resources condition the likelihood of institutional collective action. Data from a variety of sources—including a unique author-conducted survey of local officials in Colorado—are used to test hypotheses in a dyadic model of local cooperation. Results indicate that agreements are more likely in competitive policymaking environments and when jurisdictions have more informational resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers a conceptual framework in which 'the family' is situated as an object of governmental intervention, on the one hand, and a site of discursive proliferation, on the other hand. Reading across the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Donzelot, I argue that the family served an important, but often overlooked, role in Foucauldian conceptualizations of sovereign, disciplinary, and biopolitical modalities of power. In particular, the elaboration of disciplinary institutions and biopolitical governance converged in the family household; as a central point in these governmental strategies, the family's relationship to sexuality, child-rearing, and kinship provoked anxieties over race, nation building, sexuality, and gender. After reviewing how these concerns overlapped in US immigration policies, I analyze the debates concerning noncitizen family detention policy in the United States. I show how a series of proposals for family detention and release congealed around competing discourses of childhood innocence and criminality, prison and home, and parental authority and security. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that state and nonstate actors produce multiple normative family subjects through strategic spatializations of state and familial power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant issues still confront the field of emotional or behavioral disorders (E/BD) in providing a free, appropriate, public educational (FAPE) program for these students. This paper reviews recent case law for several critical areas of concern to the field today, including: (a) response to intervention (RTI) and child find procedures, (b) required mental health services, and (c) the controversial use of restraint to manage aggressive behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current status of-at-risk and adjudicated youth with behavioral challenges provides a context for addressing needed future directions for research and practice in fields that impact this population. This context includes the myriad characteristics and complex needs of these youth, the programs and services currently available in communities and secure settings, and youth outcomes following incarceration. Recent and emerging national, state, and local initiatives and the benefits that have been realized or are anticipated from their application are presented. The challenges to achieving and sustaining these systems changes are then discussed. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and practice, based on the issues raised in this special issue and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the United States welcomes foreign-born students and trainees and, less warmly, temporary workers such as H-1B visa holders, it places an array of requirements, obstacles, and delays upon persons who would like to make the U.S. their permanent home. The number of people in the queue for legal permanent residence (LPR) is, however, difficult to ascertain. This paper estimates the number of highly skilled foreign-born persons waiting for LPR via the three main employment-based categories, separately by whether they are living in the United States or abroad, as well as the number of family members. We find that as of the end of FY 2006 there were about half a million employment-based principals awaiting LPR in the United States, together with over half a million family members, plus over 125 thousand principals and family members waiting abroad. These numbers dwarf the visas available annually – 120,120 plus any not used in the family preferences – suggesting that the long delays in gaining legal permanent residence are a visa number problem, not an administrative processing problem, as many believe. The backlog thus cannot be eliminated without a large change in public policy. The delay in gaining legal permanent residence could contribute to the decision of many highly skilled foreign-born to leave the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of the “war on drugs,” little research has examined Americans’ attitudes toward drug-related issues. In particular, the extant literature has not considered period and cohort effects for views about drug control issues, although there are theoretical reasons to expect both to be important. In this paper the roles of period and cohort effects, net of individual-level predictors, for attitudes toward both governmental spending to address drug addiction and legalizing marijuana use were examined. Data from the General Social Surveys (1975 through 2006) were used. The logistic regression results showed variations in attitudes over time for both addiction spending and legalizing marijuana use. Cohort effects were also evident. The results suggest that a liberalization of attitudes, both over time and across cohorts, may be occurring, especially for the legalization of marijuana use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we seek to demonstrate the continued utility of research into the social production of scale in relation to the politics of natural-resource distribution, ownership, and control. While traditionally oriented toward sociospatial theory and urban governance, research has begun to convey the importance of scale as a discursive framing device at the center of multiple kinds of environmental politics. Our approach draws from recent literature to show the material-discursive `difference that nature makes' in constituting the grounds of scalar struggle in mineral development. We argue that the fixity of certain natural-resource deposits and the concomitant local socioecological impact of extraction stands in stark contradiction to the multiscalar forces that vie over their development. Our central argument is that this contradiction ensures that struggles over natural- resource development are necessarily struggles over scale-the scale of ownership and the scale of distributional benefits and costs. The politics of natural resources must be couched in scalar terms and those who gain access to resources must build stable institutional-scatar platforms for the production of resource wealth. We illustrate this through an analysis of US Congressional debate over reform of the infamous `1872 Mining Law' in 1993 as an exemplary moment of scalar politics. In this case, we not only attempt to show how the concept of scale frames these debates, but also how the failure to reform the 19th-century law allowed for the institutional materialization of particular scalar conduits for capital accumulation in the mining sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers included in this symposium provide a compelling rationale for the role of health as an engine of economic growth, and thus for investing in health improvement as an important step in improving economic growth in the Mississippi Delta. This newer model of the relation between health and wealth, positioning health as an investment and as an important determinant of economic growth, has substantial implications for health-related public policy and for the business sector. Societal support of health promoting initiatives through public policy, especially for children and for the poor, are important efforts for improving health and for realizing the economic benefits of health improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social policy toward low-income women in the United States, as evidenced both by Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) and by the AFDC programme that preceded it, is in part an artefact of long-standing conceptions of the nature of citizenship. This view sees citizenship as resting primarily on civil and political rights, not on rights with respect to economic, social, and cultural matters. Drawing on scholarly literature on the development of international human rights regimes, the feminist literature that analyses social policy both comparatively and in terms of US domestic policy, and literature regarding contemporary movements among low-income persons, this paper analyses the efforts of one organization, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), to challenge US policy via international human rights law and international enforcement mechanisms. We will suggest that, despite some of the flaws of the KWRU, their approach is a promising one for low-income women. In particular, we wish to suggest that a broader conception of citizenship that takes into account economic, cultural, and social rights is necessary to create a more equitable and democratic polity for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses whether persons convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI) are at increased risk of alcohol-related general aviation accidents. Past research has shown a clear link between DWI convictions and pilot-error accidents in commercial aviation. However, no study in the literature has addressed whether DWI convictions are associated with an increased risk of alcohol-related aircraft accidents. To evaluate a hypothesis, a total of 308912 pilot records over a 10-year period were analyzed using logistic regression. After potentially confounding variables were controlled, DWI convictions were found to be associated with alcohol-related aviation accidents. Pilots with DWI convictions were about 3.5 times more likely than pilots without convictions to have alcohol-related general aviation accidents. Actual or potential applications of this research include providing policy makers with data-driven information that is useful in improving decisions related to the medical certification of pilots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing regulatory contracts for the operators of power transmission networks has become a critical policy issue in the United States. In this paper, a regulatory contract is proposed that induces network operators to optimally expand the grid, which is crucial for the emergence of efficient wholesale power markets, while also satisfying the other traditional regulatory objectives. The proposed mechanism is readily implementable, since it builds on a contract currently in place in England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relates the history of assessment policy in Arizona using an extensive base of interview, observation, and archival data. In less than a decade, two radical shifts took place: from basic skills and standardized testing to progressive reform by performance testing to high-stakes standardized testing based on state standards. We argue that the shape of assessment policy and policy change had more to do with political spectacle and the struggle for power, position, resources, and the control over public schools than with empirical or rational analysis, moral imperative, or democratic debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a rational-choice explanation for the adoption of deterrent work-welfare programmes by recent governments in Britain and the US. Such programmes require the recipients of welfare or unemployment benefits to participate in a training programme or work activity in exchange for receiving their benefits and reflect a New Right (in contrast to a social democratic) conception of social citizenship. Governments design such policies to generate a partial separating equilibrium under which some claimants identified by the state as undeserving are discouraged from seeking benefits. These programmes are intended lo overcome problems of free-riding and false claiming viewed, by the New Right, as inherent in state-administered benefit systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economics can be used to analyze public sector decision making because individuals make these decisions within a framework of incentives and constraints that are a product of individual preferences and institutional structure. Considering the emphasis on law enforcement in U.S. drug policy in this context, this paper presents an analysis of the incentives and constraints affecting drug policy that explains a reluctance to change the policy even in the face of considerable evidence that some reforms could be cost effective. Two specific incentives for an emphasis on enforcement are presented. First, police agencies have an incentive to allocate more resources to drug enforcement due to the factors that determine police budgets. Second, asset forfeiture laws give police agencies a direct monetary reward for making drug arrests. We conclude that understanding drug policy requires an examination of the incentives and constraints that affect the behavior of those who are responsible for policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a cross-sectional analysis of emergency relief, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions in the 48 American states. It analyzes sir outcomes: state emergency-relief expenditures and federal emergency-relief expenditures from 1933 to 1935; the timing of passage of unemployment-compensation legislation; the timing of passage of old-age pension legislation; and the contents of old-age pension and unemployment-compensation legislation. These outcomes represent different dimensions of social policy and are used to appraise three theoretical approaches: economic, democratic politics, and statist explanations. In the analysis, the sample is split into industrialized and nonindustrialized states, in accordance with recent cross-national research on social policy and social spending. Although the results yield some support for all three perspectives, the statist perspective is especially well supported. The findings suggest that the different perspectives are limited in applicability to specific outcomes or samples, or both. The superior performance of the statist perspective is due to its applicability across outcomes and subsamples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of social indicators is valuable for understanding the role that the social sciences play in the political arena. One common pattern is for a particular social indicator to become frozen in place once it takes on political significance, and this can result in ironic consequences. This study traces out the case of indicators of aggregate productivity trends in the United States. These measures were initially developed as part of an underconsumptionist argument that was linked to the political left, but there was considerable debate over different measurement schemes. Over time, one particular measure of trends in aggregate productivity became central for wage negotiations and for government policy. This created a context in which the slower rates of growth of this measure of productivity in the 1970s helped to validate the views of those on the political right who saw the need for greater restrictions on wage gains and government civilian spending. The paper raises questions about the value of this particular measure and ends by emphasizing the problems of locking in place an "objective" social indicator when the reality being measured is in continua! flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the text of a position paper submitted by the American College of Preventive Medicine to United States President Bill Clinton and members of US Congress on August 26, 1997 which comments on the settlement between the state Attorneys General and the tobacco industry on June 20, 1997.

In June 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled on Arizona's 2010 immigration law. The court unanimously sustained the most in/famous part of the law, which requires state law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest if there is reason to suspect that the individual might be an 'illegal' immigrant. However, it blocked the implementation of other provisions, with the majority of judges rejecting measures that would have subjected individuals to criminal penalties for activities like seeking work. It has become apparent that the ruling is likely to set the ground rules for the immigration debate, with supporters of the Arizona law pushing for 'show me your papers' provisions in more states and opponents trying to overturn criminal sanctions for those who do not have the papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the position paper of the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) on in-service programs in learning disabilities. Purpose of inservice programs; Situations where in-service programs are most effective; Recommendations by the NJCLD for the design and implementation of in-service programs.