Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

In ‘Open Government Data,’ What’s Really Open?

March 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Acceptable Data / Transparency Graphic

In the fall, the United States joined seven other countries — with hopefully more to come — in forming the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative designed to hold countries on a global stage to a commitment to open government and its close relative, “open government data.” These terms, though, have created a bit of philosophical and grammatical confusion. “Eventually it became clear to us that it was really the word ‘open’ that caused problems,” said Harlan Yu, a doctoral candidate in computer science at Princeton University, who has written a new working ... Read More

How Incumbents in Washington Hurt the Economy

March 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Earmarks Per Population

Conventional wisdom suggests that states are better-served in Washington by elected officials who can stay there long enough to accumulate power, get things done, and funnel home some of that government largesse. The longer an incumbent serves, the higher he or she rises in party ranks, and the more likely constituents will benefit. (The people of Maine, for instance, may be bigger losers than the GOP following the retirement announcement this week of long-serving and well-respected Senator Olympia Snowe.) There is new research, however, that suggests really powerful politicians may ... Read More

Housing Crisis Hits Poor Renters Hard

February 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Affordable and Available Units per 100 ELI Renter Households

Since the American housing crisis began five years ago, policymakers have devoted the bulk of their attention to the bubble’s most visible victims, homeowners who’ve lost their houses to foreclosure, or who look like they may any day now. This group has been the subject of congressional inquiries and legal settlements and numerous election-year speeches. Just this week, California’s attorney general has been pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive some of the debt owed by underwater homeowners. Considerably less attention has gone to a population deeply impacted by the housing ... Read More

How the Military Can Change Personalities, Slightly

February 24, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

What life experience is more immersive than marriage, more prolonged than college, more tightly regimented than the average job? Ah yes — military service, which starts with recruiters boldly announcing their intention to make a new man of every trainee. Surely drill sergeants believe they can change personalities. But psychologists generally believe that our personalities don’t change much over time. Just sticking to the Big Five, we remain mostly agreeable, extroverted, conscientious, neurotic, and open-minded throughout our lives. “A lot of the discussion in the literature is ... Read More

Public Schools Good for People Without Kids, Too

February 22, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Few things ignite a community quite like this question: if you don’t have children in the local public schools, should you have to help pay for those schools? Tax exemptions for specific demographic groups like senior citizens, for example, are often rationalized as lightening the burden on residents who don’t benefit from public schools. When school bond measures fail across the country, it’s often a sign of torn communities unsure of who should foot the bill for new investments in education (although maintaining existing facilities seems to be more palatable). Opponents of such ... Read More

Think Tanks Are Nonpartisan? Think Again

February 17, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

One of the strangest institutions in Washington — and perhaps the hardest to comprehend from the outside — is the think tank, that quasi-academic, sort-of-political organization that offers, as its primary output, ideas. Universally, think tanks claim to be nonpartisan, and as tax-exempt nonprofits, this is a basic requirement in the tax code. But most people in Washington know the ideological leanings of think tanks that may obscure this fact in their titles: There’s the Cato Institute (libertarian), the Heritage Foundation (conservative), the Brookings Institution (moderate liberal) ... Read More

Surplus Government Property: Homeless Help vs. Revenue

February 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

For the past 25 years, many organizations that serve the homeless in America have been able to do so with a free supply of real estate: surplus federal property that the government no longer wants. Old warehouses have been turned into food banks. Small agency office buildings have been converted to counseling centers. Decommissioned military housing now sometimes shelters the homeless. But in a reality of the recession, as America’s homeless ranks have risen, so too has the pressure in Washington to make a buck by selling these properties. “The issue has kind of devolved into a ... Read More

Gender Wage Gap Skewed By Survey Flaws

February 10, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The wage gap between the sexes in America has been narrowing much faster than observers ever realized, although this revelation by a pair of University of Georgia researchers isn’t as good a tiding as it could be. Jeremy Reynolds and Jeffrey Wenger, who have stumbled upon a quirk in existing survey data that could also color how we measure all types of other sociological trends, say statisticians have been as much as 50 percent off in tracking the progress of women’s wages in the work force. “But that’s only because things were worse in the past than we had realized,” Reynolds ... Read More

House Puts Transportation in Partisan Crossfire

February 8, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The U.S. House transportation bill released last week by Rep. John Mica contained a number of provisions that immediately alarmed transit and smart growth advocates and their Democratic supporters on Capitol Hill. The bill would cut subsidies to Amtrak, eliminate dedicated money for bike and pedestrian programs, and scrap guaranteed funding for mass transit. Throw in controversial plans to pay for some of the legislation with domestic oil drilling, and America has, yet again, a partisan dogfight. Transportation, though, is supposed to be different. There is a long history in Washington of ... Read More

Better Super Bowl Makes for Better Ads

February 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

A curious thing sometimes happens when we watch a violent movie, or a thrilling TV show, or when we listen to, say, Al Green. Afterward, we take that aggression or excitement that we’ve just built up and apply it to whatever’s at hand. Academics have a name for this phenomenon: excitation transfer theory. You might want to remember this as you’re watching some entertainment ripe for serious suspense this Sunday — the Super Bowl. “As you’re watching a suspenseful game, there’s a certain level of arousal that develops,” said Colleen Bee, an assistant professor of marketing ... Read More