Meek Mill’s fame as a rapper, combined with his 2017 imprisonment for probation violations, has made him a poster child for probation reform. The jockeying to influence the judge’s decision regarding Mill ‘s sentence did little to improve Pennsylvania’s dismal reputation for mixing politics and administration.
Category Archives: Public Policy Issue
Hamilton: A PA Times View
Plays, songs, a popular 21st century resurrection. What was the guy about? This PA Times article explains.
Government 101–Federal Authority Limited
As this story relates, Trump’s sound and fury about stripping federal funds from police in “sanctuary cities” hasn’t gone over well in court. Chicago sued Attorney General Sessions on a variety of grounds, including the 10th Amendment’s reserving, for the states and the people, all powers not specifically granted by the Constitution to the federal government which, Chicago argues, includes micro-managing how local police treat people being questioned or held for a crime. The judge has ruled that this argument, along with others advanced by Chicago (and by other cities in separate lawsuits), deserves to be heard. So, Presidential threats wither again under court scrutiny as this punitive policy is put on hold. Stay tuned.
College a Crap-Shoot?
This article disputes how much colleges are responsible for the return on investment (ROI) graduates earn over the course of their careers as a result of the money and time spent earning their degrees. I expect my student readers will be paying closest attention here, so I encourage them to click into the embedded links, which are key to how the author is constructing his argument.
YOU Count More Than Your College
Was reading about college ROI (Return on Investment) this morning, starting with the ROI piece also posted here. This article on the value of elite colleges caught my eye because it fits my 50 years’ experience at low tuition City University of New York: Motivated, hard-working students “make it” in their careers. I base this mostly on my John Jay College of Criminal Justice students over 3+ decades. but also on my fellow business school alums from Baruch College who, despite decidedly lower income roots, match the career success rate of grads from elite business schools.
Why College Takes So Long
The road to a degree is anything but smooth, this story says. The structural problem with public college systems is the extreme fragmentation, compounded by the autonomy so central to the faculty culture that dominates in academe’. The fragmentation arises mainly from all but inevitable public policy choices over the years — politicians of all stripes benefited from the creation and expansion of local campuses. Faculty autonomy, which rests upon individual professors “academic freedom” to pursue truth, has morphed into a collective privilege, where the faculty of Department X deems itself the final word on X education, which includes deeming as unworthy courses in the discipline from other colleges. So students have to go around the bush again.
Government Bets on a Gamer
Curt Schilling, economic redevelopment and a corporate HQ revitalizing downtown. Sounded great to almost all Rhode Island officials, and too good to be true to only a few. Guess who was right?
Debtor’s Prison?
Are not these jail cells better utilized for felony suspects, or has Tulsa run out of those? Increasing number going to jail for not paying fines – Tulsa World: Local.
When Men Murder Women
This one is for readers involved in criminal justice research, including related areas such as domestic violence. The message here for women in relationships gone south is pretty stark, and the data in this report could also be looked at in other ways or built upon to explore differences in region, state by state gun-ownership and so on. This post initiates a new category in this blog–public policy issues–that those in policy and administration fields may find particularly interesting.