Public Policy Commons^™

Book Review: Prostitution Narratives: Stories Of Survival In The Sex Trade, Edited By Caroline Norma And Melinda Tankard Reist, Abigail Bray

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Alice Paul Awards For Women Who Have Worked To Confront Men's Violence Against Women, Robert Brannon

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Prostitution Survivors: Backlash In Australia, Melinda Tankard Reist

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This report is a personal account of prostitution survivors facing harassment from representatives of the sex industry in Australia. At events to promote a new collection of stories by survivors of the industry—Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade—speakers were intimidated and insulted. The survivors describe their experiences and their determination to speak-out against prostitution, even in the face of opposition.

Happiness Index Methodology, Laura Musikanski, Scott Cloutier, Erica Bejarano, Davi Briggs, Julia Colbert, Gracie Strasser, Steven Russell

Journal of Sustainable Social Change

The Happiness Index is a comprehensive survey instrument that assesses happiness, well-being, and aspects of sustainability and resilience. The Happiness Alliance developed the Happiness Index to provide a survey instrument to community organizers, researchers, and others seeking to use a subjective well-being index and data. It is the only instrument of its kind freely available worldwide and translated into over ten languages. This instrument can be used to measure satisfaction with life and the conditions of life. It can also be used to define income inequality, trust in government, sense of community and other aspects of well-being within specific demographics …

The Fair And Laissez-Faire Markets: From A Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Baseline To A Fair Market, Eric L. Dixon

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The essay begins with a brief overview of the role of the neoliberal conception of the laissez-faire market in modern political economy. The essay then goes on to defend three claims: 1) the laissez-faire version of a market should not be considered the economic ideal or baseline version of a market because often the fundamental conditions required to reach a genuine equilibrium are unfulfilled under a laissez-faire environment, 2) a distribution resultant from a laissez-faire market should not be considered the ultima facie just distributive baseline because an unregulated market may allocate commodities according to morally arbitrary factors and requires …

Policy Changes For A Nutrition Education Program In Maine: Issues And Implications, Alan Majka, Janet C. Fairman, Kathryn Yerxa

Maine Policy Review

Food insecurity and preventable chronic disease have profound impacts on quality of life and health care costs in Maine. Many government programs have been developed to address these issues; however, effectiveness has often been limited by restrictive policies and less than optimal coordination. In this paper the authors draw upon their research and experiences in Maine, research conducted by others, and state and national statistics to elucidate some of these programs, including their efficacy, limitations, potential and threats to their sustainability. The authors contend that recent federal rule changes allow for greater impact through implementation of evidence-based strategies at the …

A Little Respect, Please, Christina Cerna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Simon Tisdall suggests that last month, when Mohammed Bouazizi (twenty-six years old), “an unemployed graduate, set himself on fire outside a government building in protest at police harassment,” his act became the “rallying cause for Tunisia’s disaffected legions of unemployed students, impoverished workers, trade unionists, lawyers and human rights activists.” The reaction to his act of self-immolation and death on January 4th led to the flight of President Ben Ali ten days later to Saudi Arabia and to the end of Ali's twenty-three-year rule of Tunisia. Time reported the event as follows: “When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight on Dec. …

Maine’S Future Housing Needs: An Mpr Interview With David Lakari, David Lakari

Maine Policy Review

Since 1994, David Lakari has been director and chair of the Maine State Housing Authority. The Maine State Housing Authority is an independent state agency and a $1.5 billion financial institution. Its mission is to help Maine’s low- and moderate-income citizens obtain and maintain decent, safe, and affordable housing and services suitable to their needs. In this interview, Lakari focuses on his concerns for the future, in particular, the need to find suitable housing options for one of Maine’s fastest-growing demographic groups—the middle-income elderly. While Maine has been doing a good job of building the capacity to house its wealthy …

Ten Years Of Affordable Housing Policy: Is Maine Making Progress-- A Symposium, Elizabeth H. Mitchell, Dennis P. King, James B. Hatch, Jay Hardy

Maine Policy Review

In December 1987 Governor McKernan appointed a 30-member, statewide task force to address the issue of affordable housing in Maine. The task force was charged with investigating the quality and cost of affordable housing for lower- and middle-income families, and recommending a set of actions to improve the quality of existing housing as well as to increase the supply of housing. In September 1998 the Task Force issued a report that prescribed a number of local and regional—as well as private and public—solutions to the problem of affordable housing. More than ten years later Maine housing advocates note that the …

A Challenge For The Next Decade: Preserving Affordable Rental Housing, Laura Burns

Maine Policy Review

Many of Maine’s low-income families and elderly residents have been able to secure affordable housing with help from a Section 8 certificate, which allows residents to pay no more than 30 percent of their income toward rent and ensures the federal government will make up the difference. Over the years, much of the development of Section 8 housing projects has been assisted by financial incentives and agreements between private and non-profit owners and the federal government. Yet recent changes in federal legislation remove many of these incentives and the agreements that go with them. As a result, some of Maine’s …

The Trouble With Connecticut, Kenneth J. Long

New England Journal of Public Policy

The problems of Connecticut, this author believes, parallel those of Nigeria, which are described by Chinua Achebe in The Trouble with Nigeria. Both places may be considered dirty, callous, ostentatious, and dishonest. The causes of these and other defects are also similar: unusually large disparities in living standards, high cost of living, localism, and lack of leadership. In Connecticut, gross inequities in taxation seem to intermingle with and reinforce all these roots of unpleasantness.

Providing Quality Leadership In Roxbury: A Profile Of Leon T. Nelson, Harold Horton

Trotter Review

Poor leadership is often the cause for the inept functioning and eventual collapse of an organization or agency. This is because the leader sets the tone and to a great extent determines whether or not an organization will be viable. Leon T. Nelson, president of the Greater Roxbury Chamber of Commerce, has done his utmost to live up to the organization's motto, "Quod facis bene fac," which means doing whatever you do as well as you possibly can.

In a community that underwent drastic demographic changes during the 1970s and 1980s, when numerous businesses led the "white flight" to suburbia, …

Book Review: The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, And Public Policy By William Julius Wilson, James Jennings

Trotter Review

William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged represents the debate of the last 10 to 20 years about race, poverty, and public policy. Part of Wilson’s rationale for the book is the belief that conservative policy analysts and ideologues have gained the upper hand in presenting their case about black urban poverty. He hopes to provide a framework of liberal analysis that will allow a better understanding of the causes of the intensifying black poverty.

Roxbury, Boston, And The Boston Smsa: Socioeconomic Trends 1960-1985, Sally Brewster Moulton

New England Journal of Public Policy

Socioeconomic trends for a primarily black and poor urban area, Roxbury, Massachusetts, are compared to those of the surrounding city of Boston and the Boston Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) for the period 1960 to 1985. Patterns in income, poverty, labor force participation, educational attainment, and racial composition are examined for each of the three areas. The chief purpose of the analysis is to determine the nature of gaps between Roxbury residents and the rest of the metropolitan area as well as the ways in which such gaps have changed over time.

The findings indicate that, despite growth in income, …