Submitted by Matt Lewis on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 02:04
- Michael Sandel, Obama and Civic Idealism: "Unlike the anti-bigness liberalism of the progressive era and early New Deal, the social-welfare liberalism of FDR in 1944 is recognizable as the liberalism of our time. The great liberal causes of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s—civil rights, Medicare and Medicaid, racial and gender equality, federal support for education, a more generous welfare state—were about using government to provide equal opportunity and a social safety net, not about using government to rein in the political influence of big banks and corporations. Social-welfare liberalism seems a more practical doctrine than the anti-bigness version of earlier progressives. It is hard to imagine how to break up the large financial institutions and corporations that dominate modern economic life. And yet I believe it’s a mistake for contemporary liberals to give up on the old progressive project of exerting democratic control over economic institutions. In fact, it’s a mistake that has backfired on the Obama presidency. The initial reluctance of Barack Obama and his economic advisers to take a tougher line on the banks has led to a populist backlash that now threatens his agenda."
- Boston Globe, It's Money that Matters: "IDEAS: What are the psychological or sociological effects of inequality? Are you saying that the “social pain” you describe can be a cause of violence in unequal societies?
WILKINSON: I think people are extremely sensitive to status differentiation and to being looked down on, or disrespected, and those often seem to be the triggers to violence. We quote an American prison psychiatrist who goes so far as to say he’s never seen a serious act of violence that wasn’t provoked by loss of face or humiliation, and so on. And in more unequal societies, status matters even more. People judge each other more by status. There’s more insecurity. And people at the bottom are more often excluded from the markers of status, the jobs and housing and cars, so they become even more touchy about how they’re seen."
- Department of Energy, Progress in Implementing the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: "Certain states also faced fiscal challenges that contributed to the delay in the implementation of the Weatherization Program. For example, because of budget shortfalls associated with the economic downturn, certain states were under hiring freezes that applied to all employees regardless of the source of their funding, including those tasked with weatherization-related work. In other states, progress was impacted because personnel involved with the program were subject to significant state-wide furloughs. Further, the approval of state budgets was delayed in states such as Pennsylvania as legislators deliberated over how to address overall budget shortfalls. Lacking staff, states were unable to perform required implementation tasks necessary to handle the large infusion of Recovery Act Weatherization Program funding."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 21:52
- Steven Greenhouse, Plan to Seek Use of U.S. Contracts as a Wage Lever: "The Obama administration is planning to use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan. By altering how it awards $500 billion in contracts each year, the government would disqualify more companies with labor, environmental or other violations and give an edge to companies that offer better levels of pay, health coverage, pensions and other benefits, the officials said. ... One federal official said the proposed policy would encourage procurement officers to favor companies with better compensation packages only if choosing them did not add substantially to contract costs. As an example, he said, if two companies each bid $10 million for a contract, and one had considerably better wages and pensions than the other, that company would be favored."
- Pavan Trivedi, Borough President Stringer Provides a "Blueprint" for the Creation of a Truly Sustainable Food System in NYC : "In response to an increasing global interest in food sustainability, and to the lack of all-inclusive, tangible, local governmental initiatives in the field, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer has released “FoodNYC: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System.” The first of its kind, it serves as the most comprehensive effort to unify and reform New York City’s policies regarding the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food."
- Noah Kazis, Fun Facts About the Sad State of American Parking Policy: "If you haven't checked out the ITDP parking report we covered yesterday, it's a highly readable piece of research, walking you through parking policy's checkered past and potentially brighter future. In addition to describing six cases of innovative parking strategies, the authors draw from a wide-ranging body of evidence about the woeful state of most current parking policy, marshaling revealing facts and figures. We culled some of the ones that leap out the most. ... Parking typically represents a full 10 percent of development costs. What's more, the people who actually park only pay 5 percent of the cost of non-residential parking, meaning that public subsidies and developer capital pay for the rest. In San Francisco, parking requirements have reduced the number of affordable housing units nonprofit developers can build by 20 percent, with each residence costing 20 percent more to build than it would have without parking."
- Jim Sleeper, A Truth that Barely Speaks Its Name: "Alexander Hamilton hoped that "reflection and choice" would grow in what we now call the public sphere, a place that could be noisy but luminous, with constellations of respected seers focusing us on key decisions. Instead we're in outer space, every speaker a shooting star amid whirling swarms of asteroids. Our political universe seems increasingly incoherent and amnesiac, lurching ever more frighteningly toward "accident and force." But something very orderly explains it, too: the taboo against serious criticism of business and finance capital. It keeps Tea Partiers from seeing that corporate 'speech' and corporate welfare are dissolving the public sphere and their freedom. Michael Moore's movie Capitalism tried to show it. But the taboo held. Why?"
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Fri, 02/26/2010 - 13:09
- Kirwan Institute, Race and Recovery Index: "The Race-Recovery Index, a project of the Kirwan Institute, is designed to measure how all people, but particularly marginalized populations, are faring in the midst of the national recovery efforts. The two primary tools for measurement that will be used on a monthly basis will be the national unemployment figures by race, and the Federal contract procurement of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). Additional forms of measurement may eventually be added. ... An overall look at Federal ARRA contracting reveals noticeable inequality. Despite the fact that Women-owned, Latino-owned, and Black-owned businesses account for 28.2%, 6.8%, and 5.2% of all U.S. businesses respectively, as of February 1, 2010 they had only received 2.4%, 1.6%, and 1.1% of the value of Federal ARRA contracts that have been procured (see Table 3)."
- Nebraska Appleseed, Back to School, Back to Work: Winning Strategies for Building Economic Opportunity in Nebraska: "“Nebraska has the opportunity to create policies, pathways, and partnerships that will make sure Nebraska businesses have the skilled workers they need and families have the opportunity to build a better life” states Rebecca Gould, Executive Director of the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, “Building education, job training, and work supports opportunities for low-income Nebraskans is key for economic recovery today and state prosperity in the future.”"
- Chris Dillow, Taxis and Taxes: "The best evidence we have on the income elasticity of labour supply - the nearest we’re likely to get to a natural experiment - is consistent with higher taxes actually calling forth greater, not smaller, labour supply. Yes, of course there is a Laffer curve - it‘s just that we might be on the upward-sloping part of it."
- Mark Weisbrot, Independent Latin America Forms Its Own Organization: "Latin America took another historic step forward this week with the creation of a new regional organization of 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The United States and Canada were excluded. The increasing independence of Latin America has been one of the most important geopolitical changes over the last decade, affecting not only the region but the rest of the world as well. For example, Brazil has publicly supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium and opposed further sanctions against the country. Latin America, once under the control of the United States, is increasingly emerging as a power bloc with its own interests and agenda."
- Edward Skidelsky, Words that Think for Us: The Hollowness of Human Capital: "Of the many harms inflicted by economics on the English language, “human capital” is the most grievous. ... The phrase “human capital” is now so thoroughly naturalised that we seldom pause to ponder its implications. What is capital anyway? Capital is not a particular kind of good, but any good viewed in relation to certain interests. A donkey is capital to the wood-carrier. A derelict church is capital to the restaurant entrepreneur. Capital, in short, is wealth viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to more wealth. The phrase “human capital” insinuates that human beings too are to be viewed in this light—as instruments of the productive process. We have all of us attained the status which Aristotle reserved for slaves, that of living tools. What a triumph for the dismal science! Keynes naively supposed that economic growth was for the sake of personal cultivation. His modern successors have put him right: personal cultivation is for the sake of economic growth.’"
Submitted by Matt Lewis on Sat, 02/20/2010 - 17:51
- NY Times, A Diploma in 10th Grade?: "The Times reported this week that under a program starting next year, some high school sophomores in eight states will have a chance to earn a diploma and head straight to community college. To do so, however, they will have to pass academic tests known as board exams. If they don’t pass the tests in the 10th grade, they can take them again in their junior and senior years. The National Center on Education and the Economy, the nonprofit group that is organizing the program, says that students will have to meet basic requirements before they go to college and that it hopes this will reduce the need for remedial classes in college."
- Matt Yglesias, The Spending Tug: "I’ve previously mentioned Kinder & Kam’s US Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion but it helps shed some light on this issue. They use National Election Survey data and show that if you restrict your attention to white Americans then ethnocentric views (both in terms of positive views of whites and negative views of non-whites) is correlated with hostility to means-tested welfare programs. The relationship remains statistically significant even when you control for partisanship and for self-described political beliefs regarding egalitarianism and limited government. But if you look at views on social insurance programs—Social Security and Medicare—you get the reverse result. Ethnocentrism is associated with support for increases in Social Security and Medicare spending, again even when you control for partisanship and self-described political beliefs regarding egalitarianism and limited government. And what seems to matter here isn’t dislike for non-whites, but positive solidaristic feelings about other white people."
- Wall Street Journal, SBA-Backed Loans are Bright Spot in Gloomy Climate: "SBA-backed loans in the past have made up only a small portion of overall small-business loans—around 7% to 8% according to the SBA's estimations, and as little as 1% by other counts. But thanks to stimulus-related measures, SBA loans this year could be "pushing 10% to 15%," according to industry expert Bob Coleman, who keeps a pulse on SBA lending through his independent publication, the Coleman Report. Business owners who have been turned down for conventional loans say they're having better luck applying for SBA loans. Dale McCoy, who owns Lite Metals Company Inc., a foundry in Ravenna, Ohio, says he approached several banks between June and October but was unable to get approval for a $735,000 loan to cover debt on the company's purchase of a small, captive foundry specializing in airplane wheels that is currently profitable."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Thu, 02/18/2010 - 11:10
- Interview of Dan Ariely, How U.S. Feels About Wealth Gap: "Right now the top 20 percent of the people have about 85 percent of the wealth. People think that they only own 68 percent of the wealth, so people underestimate the inequity, but if you ask them what's kind of an ideal world in the Rawls kind of sense that you would actually want to participate in, they say 33 percent. So they say in an ideal world, we want the top 20 percent to own more than 20 percent, we want them to be wealthier, but we want them to own about 33 percent of the wealth. ... The main lesson for me from this whole study is that when we look at the political arena, we kind of have this huge polarization, and yet when we ask people a question that is not tainted by saying Republicans or Democrats -- it's just formed and here are the numbers, and what kind of society do you want to live in -- the answers come out quite close. And for me that's kind of the optimistic outcome of all of this is in fact as a society, I think we're much more similar to each other than the political arena plays out how it looks like."
- Gina Livermore, Work-Oriented Social Security Disability Beneficiaries: "The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) programs provide income support to working-age individuals (age 18 to 65) deemed unable to engage in substantial gainful activity (SGA) due to a significant and long-lasting health condition. Given these program eligibility criteria, it is not surprising that only about 10 percent of SSI and SSDI beneficiaries are working at any given time. However, many more indicate that their personal goals include work or that they see themselves working in the near future.... In 2004, 40 percent of working-age disability beneficiaries reported having work goals or expectations. Based on the current number of disability program participants, that percentage translates into about 4.5 million individuals"
- Urban Institute, Health Care Spending Under Reform: Less Uncompensated Care and Lower Costs to Small Employers: "In this brief, we estimate that the annual cost of uncompensated health care for the uninsured would decrease from $61 billion to $25 billion under health reform legislation passed in the House. Because the government finances about three-quarters of uncompensated care, up to $27 billion per year could be used to offset the expansion of Medicaid and subsidies to employers and individuals. Overall, employers' net costs would increase by 2.9 percent over the current system, but small employers' net costs would decrease 8 percent due to employer subsidies, the expansion of Medicaid, and exemptions from penalties for not offering insurance."
- NY Times, Phillip Martin, Who Led His Tribe to Wealth, Is Dead at 83: "Phillip Martin, a former chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, who guided his tribe from grinding poverty in the red clay hills of east central Mississippi to become proprietor of one of the state’s leading business empires, died Feb. 4 in Jackson, Miss. ... When Chief Martin was first elected in 1979, the Choctaws in Mississippi were still relegated to the hardscrabble existence that had repressed them for generations. In 1831, a year after passage of the federal Indian Removal Act, most of the Choctaws were forced to walk what became known as the Trail of Tears to resettlement in the Oklahoma Territories. Over the decades, those Choctaws who remained in Mississippi eked out livings through sharecropping and unskilled labor. Into the early 1970s unemployment on the reservation stood at nearly 75 percent. Chief Martin changed all that, and the turnaround was all the more remarkable because it was well under way before the rise of tribal casinos after passage of the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. “He was truly one of the first and most important leaders in the drive for tribal self-determination,” Joseph Kalt, co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, said in an interview. “Chief Martin led this movement in which first the Mississippi Choctaw and then many other Indian nations have said: ‘We’re just going to run everything ourselves. We’re building our own schools, our own police department, our own health program, our own economy.’ ”"
Submitted by Matt Lewis on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 00:36
- Contra Costa Times, Stimulus housing plan slow to take shape: "A year into a $6 billion federal program to buy up, rehab and sell abandoned properties in hard-hit neighborhoods, the bulk of the first $40 million in Bay Area grants remains unspent. Cities and counties are struggling to get their hands on the right homes, competing with cash-carrying investors and thwarted by banks reluctant to put foreclosed houses on the market. The creeping pace of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program seems to defy both the idea of rapid federal stimulus and the fast flow of houses bobbing into foreclosure — one every 18 minutes in the Bay Area. Housing experts say its troubles are partly attributable to red tape and overwhelmed banks, but mostly to what they never anticipated: a surge in the market for beleaguered properties."
- Harley Shaiken, Put the brakes on Toyota's NUMMI plant closure in Fremont: "President Barack Obama mentioned "jobs" 23 times in his State of the Union address, underscoring that the fragile recovery is bypassing millions of Americans. About the last thing the economy needs is a major plant closing. Nonetheless, Toyota is going ahead with plans to close the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. assembly plant — a joint venture started in 1984 with General Motors — in Fremont, on April 1. Nearly 5,000 NUMMI jobs will evaporate and up to 50,000 jobs are at risk, including those at 1,000 suppliers throughout the state, according to the company's own numbers. At stake for thousands are homes, college educations and a middle-class lifestyle that came out of decades of hard work."
- NY Times, In Detroit, Is There Life After The Big Three?: "CRUISE the blighted streets that shoot off in either direction from 8 Mile Road, and the scars of the automotive crisis abound. “For sale” signs adorn the front of long-shuttered metal, paint and tool-and-die shops. And at factories still in business, the small number of cars in the parking lots testify that the shops are working below capacity. But pull into the bustling headquarters of W Industries, a compound of imposing black structures at 8 Mile and Hoover Street, and you’ll encounter a more hopeful vision of Detroit’s future. Once an exclusive supplier to the auto industry, this machine tool and parts company is rolling in new business."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 13:37
- Dianne Stewart and Michael Lipsky, Public Capacity and Public Trust: "As our research at Demos reveals, too many people now see government only as polarized politics or as an undifferentiated, ineffective bureaucracy. The public has lost touch with the ways the quality of life of communities depends on government... [Our] work suggests several steps that can begin to create a more constructive climate... leaders can help citizens understand public systems and structures and the taxes that support them as necessary means to achieve the common good. Years of conservative rhetoric have ingrained in our national psyche the idea that the public good is best served by the dogged pursuit of private interest and that taxes merely deprive individuals and companies of their own money. While campaigning successfully to be governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick turned an opponent's demand to "give back" taxpayers' money into an appeal to people's innate sense of community. "It is their money," he declared during a debate, "but it's also their broken road. And it's their overcrowded school. It's their broken neighborhood and broken neighbor. ... It's not this idea that people earn what they earn and have no responsibility for the Commonwealth. We have a responsibility, in addition to personal responsibility, to take charge of shared responsibility.""
- Duncan Green, Well-Being v. Growth with Equity: What are the Pros and Cons?: "Well-being would reconnect us to the lived experiences of poor people. Some aspects of well-being – things like freedom from shame, humiliation and anxiety, may seem fuzzy to economists and the ‘measurement community’, but they are instantly recognizable to poor people themselves, and anyone who has spent time in poor communities. I also find it much more positive, human and engaging than the rather arid and legalistic language of rights and the ‘rights-based approach’, which can sometimes sound like little more than an endless series of complaints, and yet well-being covers much of the same ground as the rights framework."
- Daniel Little, Works Councils and US Labor Relations: "In most countries [other than the US] legislation establishes the opportunity or the mandate for a second form of worker representation within the workplace, the works council. Industry-wide unions establish wage levels; public policy stipulates the level of the "social wage"; and works councils provide an institutionalized context in which management and employees consult with each other, exchange workplace information, and work out firm-specific implementations of industry-wide agreements. And, as Kathleen Thelen demonstrates, differences in the institutions surrounding labor in a market society can have major effects on important social and economic factors in the societies in which they are embedded"
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 20:29
- Thorvaldur Gylfason and others, The Nordics in the Global Crisis: ".... the Nordic model itself contributes to resilience. The comprehensive safety net, one of the attributes of the Nordic model, has proved to be robust also in times of crisis. The entitlements are not tied to the fate of individual companies or particular markets, and risks are widely shared in the society. While forest plants are shutting down in Finland and car manufacturing is sharply contracting in Sweden, the governments are firmly rejecting requests for support of ailing industries. Still, there are no crowds protesting in the streets, largely because flexible work arrangements, based both on general and company-specific agreements between businesses and labour, alleviate a rise in unemployment. Structural change is enhanced by the employment protection legislation, which is more liberal than in most other EU countries. A well-educated labour force, another of the attributes of the Nordic model, facilitates adjustment by making it easier to upgrade skills through additional training. Provided that governments continue to be able to take the decisions needed to safeguard competitiveness and the sustainability of public finances, the Nordic model can be both robust and resilient. The Nordic model with its welfare state, labour market institutions and high rate of investment in human capital, is not the source of the current problems. On the contrary, the Nordic model, properly implemented, can be part of the solution."
- Don Peck, How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America: "The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.....We are in a very deep hole, and we’ve been in it for a relatively long time already. Concerns over deficits are understandable, but in these times, our bias should be toward doing too much rather than doing too little. That implies some small risk to the government’s ability to continue borrowing in the future; and it implies somewhat higher taxes in the future too. But that seems a trade worth making. We are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe, one that could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come. We have a civic—and indeed a moral—responsibility to do everything in our power to stop it now, before it gets even worse."
- Dean Baker, Progressive Taxes Win Big in Oregon: "The political establishment continues to be obsessed with the victory of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race. In fact, they are so obsessed they managed to almost completely overlook the success of two important tax initiatives in Oregon the following week. Oregon voters passed by a margin of 54 to 46 a tax measure that would raise the tax rate on taxpayers with an income of more than $250,000 a year. They also approved a measure that would raise the tax paid by corporations in Oregon. Together the two measures are projected to raise $750 million over the next two years, approximately 5 percent of the state's $14 billon budget."
- The Onion, Wal-Mart Cuts Over 13,000 of What It Calls Jobs: "Retail giant Wal-Mart has announced in recent weeks that, effective immediately, it is cutting as many as 13,000 of what it somehow has the audacity to refer to as "jobs" from its corporate payroll. "Obviously, it is a sad day whenever we have to let go of any of the people we have dehumanized so thoroughly that we can barely muster the will to describe them as employees," Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke told reporters. "However, this is a business, and we must do what we can to stay competitive while still paying our existing workforce what we actually refer to with a straight face as wages.""
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Fri, 02/05/2010 - 23:56
- Clay Risen, All Bark, No Bite: The Decline of Germany's Social Democrats: "On September 25, 2009, two days before Germany’s national elections, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) debuted its campaign mascot: the terrier. ... Terriers are wonderful animals and adored by Germans, but they hardly made for a compelling image of political fortitude. Nor, come that Sunday, did the SPD."
- Jonathan Heathcote and Fabrizio Perri, Economic Inequality During Recessions: "In 1992, Sweden experienced a severe recession that caused a dramatic increase in earnings inequality. However, inequality in total household pre-tax income and in disposable income (which includes taxes) barely moved. Compared to Sweden, the government in the US plays a smaller role, and taxes and transfers only partially offset widening earnings inequality in recessions. In particular, inequality in total household income [in the United States] increased during the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s."
- Alexander Gelber and Joshua Mitchell, Work in the Home and the Market: Understanding Single Women's Choices: "... our finding that the increase in market work corresponds largely to a decrease in housework suggests that public policies affecting labour force incentives may largely shift people from one productive activity to another. In a world of ideal data, we would also be able to observe the intensity with which they perform home and market work, and how much they value what they produce. Nonetheless, since the policy reforms we examine were motivated in part by decreasing the “unproductive” activity of “idle” single mothers, it is notable that the policies seem to have shifted individuals from work at home to work in the market."
- Edward Glaeser, Success of the Left in Europe, The Right in US: "Over decades, the success of the left in Europe and the right in the United States has led to wildly different beliefs about the nature of poverty and success. We found that 60 percent of Americans thought that the poor were lazy, while only 26 percent of European share that view. Fifty four percent of Europeans think luck determines income; only 30 percent of Americans concur. These differences don’t reflect economic reality. The American poor work longer hours than their European counterparts. They instead reflect the long-run ability of politics to shape public opinion. Institutions, like proportional representation, that empower the left do a good job of explaining which nations have opinions associated with the left, like the view that chance determines success."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Tue, 02/02/2010 - 14:02
- David Cutler and Others, Explaining the Rise in Educational Gradiants: "The long-standing inverse relationship between education and mortality strengthened substantially later in the 20th century. This paper examines the reasons for this increase. We show that behavioral risk factors are not of primary importance. Smoking has declined more for the better educated, but not enough to explain the trend. Obesity has risen at similar rates across education groups, and control of blood pressure and cholesterol has increased fairly uniformly as well. Rather, our results show that the mortality returns to risk factors, and conditional on risk factors, the return to education, have grown over time."
- Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Traveling with the Dog: Greyhound and American Journeys: ".... bus travel remains a visible and viable working-class space. It is not ghettoized; it is public. In no sense off limits, it is in plain view. The Greyhound dog leaping across the skyline is a working-class flag. Praise the common man. If I keep going in this vein, I will end by suggesting that the resolution of all our political problems rests in a new itinerary for senators and congresspeople: let them ride the buses. But I risk giving the company too much credit. Greyhound hasn’t been a friend to its employees. The company has been the focus of two famous union strikes—in 1983 and in the early 1990s, both characterized by intense levels of acrimony, bitterness, and physical violence. During the upheaval of the 1990s, Greyhound called in nonunion bus drivers; in Redding, California, a picketing striker was killed by a bus driven by a strikebreaker. Greyhound eventually prevailed and effectively broke the bus drivers’ union. The striker’s death isn’t commemorated in any Greyhound station, as far as I know, giving the story the tragic air of the battles waged against the Wobblies in the early twentieth century. Ask the defeated strikers if the dog belongs on a working-class flag. Still, though the company is no self-conscious respecter of worker rights, the terminals remain community parks of the working class, with management, employees, and patrons trapped in a slightly abusive relationship."
- Joyce Foundation, New Tools in the Advocacy Toolkit: Microtargeting, Netroots Mobilization and e-advocacy: "Historically, policy advocates have effectively pressed their causes using compelling research, good ideas, and the right relationships. However, in the past few years, sophisticated issue advocates have increasingly begun to identify and mobilize supporters through a whole new suite of new media-anchored strategies and tactics, including microtargeting, social networking, and e-advocacy."
