The number of Muslim Americans involved in terrorist threats declined in 2010 from the previous year, although you wouldn’t know that from the tone of a congressional hearing scheduled for Thursday on “the extent of radicalization of the American Muslim community.” Committee chairman Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, has been planning the hearing for months, partly as a response, he says, to the lack of cooperation some law enforcement officials have complained of within the Muslim-American community. Civil liberties groups and Muslim leaders, meanwhile, are decrying what ... Read More
Helping World’s Poor? There’s An App for That
March 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A growing number of foreign aid organizations have been coming around to the novel idea that the well-off could best help the world’s poor simply by giving them money. Don’t build roads or fund public health campaigns or proffer job skills — just give people cash. The idea has been floated, among other places, in the aptly titled book Just Give Money to the Poor, which Miller-McCune reviewed last summer. As far as how to go about doing that, though, a parallel seismic shift in the reality on the ground in the world’s poorest countries could enable aid organizations to scale up the ... Read More
Drug Testing Welfare Recipients in Vogue
February 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
State houses across the country have been taking up a controversial proposal the last few weeks to drug test welfare recipients. The Missouri house passed such a bill. West Virginia just voted one down. Kentucky, Nebraska, Oregon and Indiana have mulled the idea as well. Last summer, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch even floated it at the federal level as an amendment to the jobs bill that extended unemployment. "This amendment is a way to help people get off of drugs to become productive and healthy members of society, while ensuring that valuable taxpayer dollars aren't wasted," the Utah ... Read More
Might Public Broadcasting Follow BBC Model?
February 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
As politicians in Washington debate defunding public media outlets like NPR and PBS, out of a mix of concern for the deficit and political animosity for the concept, there’s one larger piece of context worth considering. America is the only major democracy in the West to rely almost entirely on commercial media to comprehensively inform its citizens. Public media here is a small niche, the domain, depending on your preferred stereotype, of urbanites, educated elites and liberal insiders. Out of a population of 300 million people in the U.S., about 8 percent in an average week listen to ... Read More