Last Paper, Research, and Writing

Last course assignment is a Truman-style policy proposal on any issue of your choice, due by 11:59 pm on Friday, December 10.

• Sample (but on yours, use endnotes, not parenthetical references).
• Tips

Usual specs:

• Document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head.
• Essays should be double-spaced and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page.
• Cite your sources with endnotes in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.

During the last two weeks of the course, you will each make an oral presentation on your proposal.  They will be seven minutes, maximum, including time for questions and answers.  You may use PowerPoint for graphs and data, but not simply for repetition of what you are saying.

• The writing lecture
• The research lecture

Here is the web pages from which I worked:

• https://www1.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/writing.htm 
• https://gov116.blogspot.com/2021/10/research-2021.html

And of course, the great scene from The Wire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShWe-4mtV8w

To repeat some pointers:

• ALWAYS SEEK THE ORIGINAL SOURCE.
• AVOID DROPPED QUOTATIONS.
• "Avoid announcing the thesis statement as if it were a thesis statement. In other words, avoid using phrases such as `The purpose of this paper is . . . . ' or `In this paper, I will attempt to . . . ."
• In US English, use single quotation marks only for quotations within quotations, double quotation marks at all other times.
• In US English, periods and commas go inside quotation marks.  Superscripts follow closing punctuation

More Policy Feedback

For Thursday, Karch and Rose ch. 8, conclusion 

Racial and ethnic identity redux

From the email:

Not mandatory, but if you have time, this John Oliver video is worth talking about in small groups tomorrow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liptMbjF3EE&t=1220s 

 (As my previous email indicated, the Claremont in the video is the one in San Diego County.)

After the passage of the infrastructure bill, POTUS said:

Vice President Harris and I look forward to having a formal signing ceremony for this bipartisan infrastructure soon.  Because — but everybody is not — I’m not doing it this weekend because I want people who worked so hard to get this done — Democrats and Republicans — to be here when we sign it.

But we’re looking more forward to having shovels in the ground to begin rebuilding America.

​He might recall what President Obama said in 2010, the year after Congress enacted another large stimulus bill:

Infrastructure has the benefit of for every dollar you spend on infrastructure, you get a dollar and a half in stimulus because there are ripple effects from building roads or bridges or sewer lines. But the problem is, is that spending it out takes a long time, because there's really nothing -- there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects.

 

 From the mid-1970s on, federal deficits (solid line) were deeper in the hole (% of GDP) than aggregate state and local deficits (dotted line).  

Shriver Center on Poverty Law: more than 70 percent of hazardous waste sites officially listed on the National Priorities List are located within one mile of federally assisted housing. 

Superfund progress over time

No Child Left Behind...

RERUN!  JUKING THE STATS

Policy Feedback and the Parable of the Seeds

Vaccination rates and mandates

International comparisons

Matthew 13:3-9 (NIV)

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Progressive Era and the Social Gospel:  The American Economics Association started as a semi-religious group! 

Infant Mortality in the United States, 1915-2017: Large Social Inequalities have Persisted for Over a Century 
"The IMR in the US showed a consistently downward trend between 1915 and 2000, with the rate declining from 99.9 per 1,000 live births in 1916 to 6.9 in 2000, at an impressive pace of 3.1% per year (Figure 2). However, between 2001 and 2017, the IMR declined more slowly from 6.8 in 2001 to 5.8 in 2017, at an annual rate of 1.3%."

Again, Policy feedback:

• Generosity
• Duration
• Administrative control
• Coalition potential
• and Timing

The Road to Medicaid

• 1935: FDR signs the Social Security Act. In addition to benefits for the elderly, the Act establishes key social-welfare programs including:
• Unemployment insurance;
• Aid to the blind and "crippled children;"
• Aid to Dependent Children (later AFDC, aka "welfare");
• Public health.
• 1945: In a special message to Congress, President Harry Truman proposes a comprehensive, prepaid medical insurance plan for all people through the Social Security system.
• 1963: Mollie Orshansky publishes the first version of poverty thresholds, which would become the "poverty line."
• 1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Social Security Act Amendments of 1965 in the presence of Truman. The law establishes both Medicare and Medicaid.
• 1966:  Rocky! moves the Overton Window.
  
• 1972: Medicaid Eligibility for Elderly, Blind, and Disabled Individuals Linked to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Eligibility. Provides a uniform baseline income for eligibility to Medicaid, in conjunction with eligibility for SSI.
• 1981 Congress establishes home and community-based care waivers in Medicaid.
• 1982: Arizona: The Last State to Opt into Medicaid and the First with Statewide Managed Care
• 2010:  Obama signs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), for the first time prohibiting health insurance companies from denying or charging more for coverage based on an individual’s health status, providing for expansion of the Medicaid program, and subsidies for insurance purchased through State-based Marketplaces to ensure that private insurance is affordable. 

A

States and Feedback

For Thursday, Karch and Rose, ch. 4

Last course assignment is a policy proposal, Truman style

• Sample
• Tips

Key features of state government

• Balanced budget requirements
• Capital budgets and  credit ratings
• Revenue sources and limits
• Interstate competition
• Donor and recipient states

Intergovernmental lobbying

Regional Governors

• CONEG
• MGA
• GSGP

Partisan Governors

• RGA
• DGA

Other Examples of Government lobbying Government

• Los Angeles County
• San Francisco
• University of California (and a familiar face at Berkeley)

Policy feedback and the states

• Generosity
• Duration
• Administrative control
• Coalition potential

Unemployment Insurance

• Benefits by state
• Update

Evaluation II

Will break into small groups at 12:05.

For Tuesday, Karch & Rose, introduction, ch. 1-3.

Issue-Attention Cycle at work:  live ammo on movie sets.

• California
• New York

From last time:

Census data rest on self-reporting.  There is no method for verification.

The spike in Native Americans 

Survey: 34% of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application

Constitutional reform (Schuck, ch. 12)

ALL POLICY INVOLVES TRADEOFFS

For discussion:

JAMA Study

Financial Incentives and Other Nudges Do Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccinations among the Vaccine Hesitant

Can financial incentives, public health messages and other behavioral nudges –approaches deployed by state and local governments, employers, and health systems – increase SARS-CoV-2 vaccination rates among the vaccine hesitant in the US? In mid-2021, we randomly assigned unvaccinated members of a Medicaid managed care health plan to $10 or $50 financial incentives, different public health messages, a simple appointment scheduler, or control to assess impacts on SARS-CoV-2 vaccination intentions and vaccine uptake within 30 days of intervention. While messages increased vaccination intentions, none of the treatments increased overall vaccination rates. Consistent with backlash concerns, financial incentives and negative messages decreased vaccination rates for some subgroups. Financial incentives and other behavioral nudges do not meaningfully increase SARS-CoV-2 vaccination rates amongst the vaccine hesitant.

Full text available for download here:https://www.nber.org/papers/w29403 

.................................

Thirumurthy, Harsha and Milkman, Katherine L. and Volpp, Kevin and Buttenheim, Alison and Pope, Devin G., Association Between Statewide Financial Incentive Programs and COVID-19 Vaccination Rates (August 27, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3912786 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3912786

 

To encourage COVID-19 vaccination, many states in the US have introduced financial incentives ranging from small, guaranteed rewards to lotteries that give vaccinated individuals a chance to win $1 million or more. We compiled information on statewide incentive programs along with data on daily vaccine doses administered per 100,000 individuals in each state. Leveraging variation across states in the daily presence of incentives, we used difference-in-differences regressions to examine the association between these incentive program indicators and vaccination rates. Difference-in-differences analysis showed that 24 statewide incentive programs were associated with a non-significant relative decline in daily vaccination rates of 8.9 per 100,000 individuals (95% CI [-64.3,46.5]; p=0.75). Furthermore, there was no significant difference in vaccination trends between states with and without incentives in any of the 14 days before or after incentives were introduced. Lotteries and other incentives offered by 24 states were not associated with a significant change in COVID-19 vaccination rates. More substantial incentives or mandates may be necessary to raise vaccination rates.

Evaluation I

For Thursday, Schuck, ch. 13.

James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy (New York: Basic Books, 1989), ch. 9, cited in Schuck, 323-324

Outputs: what employees do on a day-to-day basis.

Outcomes: how the world changes because of the outputs

	Outputs are visible to managers	are hard for managers to see
Outcomes are easy to measure	production organization (tax system) simple repetitive stable tasks; specialized skills.  Easy to stress measurable outputs & outcomes over hard-to-measure (satisfaction)	craft organization (Forest Service, wartime military) application of general sets of skills to unique tasks, but with stable, similar outcomes. Relies heavily on ethos and sense of duty of workers.
are hard to measure	procedural organizations (OSHA, peacetime military -- see Powell passage below) specialized skills; stable tasks, but unique outcomes. SOPs are especially important	coping organization (colleges, police departments) application of generic skills to unique tasks, but outcomes cannot be evaluated in absence of alternatives.  "

Colin Powell on working the numbers:

If, for example, you are going to judge me on AWOL rates, I’m going to send a sergeant out by 6:30 a.m. to bloodhound the kid who failed to show up for 6:00 a.m. reveille.  The guy’s not considered AWOL until midnight.  So drag him back before then and keep that AWOL rate down.  I vigorously set out to better every indicator by which my brigade was statistically judged.  And then went on to do the things that I thought counted.

Issue One: Capacity

• Congressional agencies
• Inspectors General

Issue Two:  What do we measure?

•  "Passing" and outcome measures

Issue Three: Causality

• An alternative explanation for the drop in crime. (And an updated analysis)

Issue Four:  Reactivity

• Teaching to the test
• Compstat
•  Juking the crime stats in real life?

The spike in Native Americans 

In episode 42, members of the Soprano crime family meet Chief Doug Smith, a sleazy casino operator.

SIL: No offense, chief, but, uh... you don't look much like an Indian.
SMITH: Frankly I passed most of my life as white, until I had a racial awakening and discovered my Mohonk blood. My grandmother on my father's side, her mother was a quarter Mohonk.
TONY: And all this happened when the casino bill got passed, right?
SMITH: Better late than never.

Survey: 34% of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application

Six- Page Paper

 Choose one:

• In chapter 11, Schuck lists a number of policy successes.  Having read Stone, you know that one person's success story is another person's horror story.  Explain an alternative frame for one of Schuck's policy successes, showing how a critic would take a dimmer view.  Which side would you agree with?
• Pick an example of policy feedback since the 2016 election.  Explain how an existing policy has created the political conditions for its own survival, growth, decay, or evolution.  Examples could include the Affordable Care Act, renewable energy, Head Start, SNAP, SSI, and farm subsidies -- among many others.
• Pick any chapter of Responsive States and write an update.  That is, how have the patterns that Karch and Rose describe persisted or changed in recent years? Do shifts in the partisan composition of state governments require revision of the analysis?
• Write an essay on any relevant policy topic, subject to my approval.

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Instructions

• Document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head.
• Essays should be double-spaced and no more than six pages long. I will not read past the sixth page.
• Cite your sources with endnotes in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.
• Turn in essays to the class Sakai dropbox by 11:59 PM, Friday, November 12. I reserve the right to dock late essays one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.