Month: August 2006

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More on public financing

  By Elections and Voting

I am reposting something I posted in response to a debate at Young Philly Politics, which began with a good post from Hannah Miller. ——– There is no one solution to the campaign financing mess. Hannah is right: we need free TV time for candidates. We also have to ban candidates who take the free time from purchasing additional media time. That would make campaigning less expensive. But Hannah and Neil Oxman are wrong about public financing. This is one area where there really is no trade-off between spending on schools or economic development and spending on public financing of campaigns. Continue reading

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What does an endorsement mean?

  By Health Care

Many years ago, a month or so before his was elected to his second term in the House of Representatives Barney Frank wrote a funny piece in The New Republic about his first term in office. Unfortunately it is not yet in the TNR archives. I recall, however, that Barney wrote something like this: “After looking over my first term, I have to say that I’ve cast a few votes that I find myself disapproving. And I certainly missed some opportunities to speak out on some important issues. But, taking my record as a whole, and especially after comparing it to that of my opponent, I believe I’m certainly the lesser of two evils and maybe even a bit better than that. So I intend to vote for myself in November.” I recall this now because there is a dispute in Neighborhood Networks about whether to endorse Casey for Senate… Continue reading

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Progressives and Crime

  By Criminal Justice

Whenever crime becomes a major issue—as it has in Philadelphia right now—we progressives offer up a set of answers to the crime problem. Most of our answers focus on what we call the “root causes” of crime. We talk about the economic distress in neighborhoods that leaves too many people without decent jobs. We talk about the problems in families that leaves too many children without the supervision, and in some case, the love, they need to grow up right. We talk about the inadequate education that leaves too many of our young people without the skills they need to make it in the contemporary economy. We talk about the lack of after school programs, recreation programs, and mentoring programs to help the many young people who are at-risk for turning to crime. Everyone one of those ideas is right. Without economic growth that includes everyone, without decent schools that… Continue reading