Arkansas School Desegegration Bibliography

The 1950s were a turbulent time in American race relations. One important event was the 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Karen Russ and Sarah Ziegenbein, two librarians at the University of Arkansas, provide the background in their wonderful bibliography (PDF) of documents related to the event:

In May 1955, the Little Rock School Board and Superintendent Virgil Blossom drew up a multi-year plan for integration. When students attempted to register in January of 1956 and were turned away, a lawsuit was filed. It would become known as Aaron v. Cooper, and end up in the United States Supreme Court before the issue was settled. While the case wound its way through the legal system, nine students were chosen to integrate Little Rock Central High. They were selected through discussions with African American teachers and principals across the city. The first round of integration was to take place with the start of the 1957-58 school year.

School was to start on September 2, 1957. The day before, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround Little Rock’s Central High, to prevent the African American students from entering. The “Crisis at Central High” had begun.

The bibliography, available in PDF here, contains Congressional documents, military reports, Presidential papers, and other documents, and provides a terrific resource for students who are interested in the topic.

Report on Iran Sanctions

Iran has been in the news quite a bit in recent months, due to the recent contested election outcome, the hostile stance towards U.S. ally Israel, and Iran's general diplomatic belligerence on nuclear weapons and other issues.

When dealing with hostile states, sanctions are a common tool to which foreign policy makers resort. Several laws and regulations have instituted trade restrictions on Iran in an attempt to reduce their aggressive activity. The Congressional Research Service has recently released a report (PDF) outlining some of these restrictions and assessing proposals to modify or expand them. The report reads:

While the oil and gas sector has been a focus of U.S. sanctions since the 1990s, the Obama Administration appears to be shifting—in U.S. regulations and in discussions with U.S. allies on a possible new U.N. Security Council Resolution—to targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for sanctions. This shift is intended to weaken the Guard as a proliferation-supporting organization, as well as to expose its role in trying to crush the democratic opposition in Iran. A growing trend in Congress, reflected in several bills that are have passed or are in various stages of consideration, would sanction Iranian officials who are human rights abusers, facilitate the democracy movement’s access to information, and express outright U.S. support for the overthrow of the regime.

It also reviews legislation making its way through Congress, including the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act in the House and the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, which has passed both the House and Senate and awaits conference committee action to resolve differences.

U.S. Volcano Monitoring

As the eruption of a volcano in Iceland continues, it's worth taking a look at volcanic activity and monitoring in the United States. The best source for information of this kind is the U.S. Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program, which monitors volcanic activity both to develop volcano science and to better avoid disaster situations.

Of particular interest are the long-term series of volcano assessments that stretch back decades, for the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii. This material is very interesting and occasionally unnerving. For example, the report on the huge volcanic system under Yellowstone National Park reads:

Possible future violent events in the active hydrothermal, magmatic, and tectonic system of Yellowstone National Park pose potential hazards to park visitors and infrastructure. Most of the national park and vicinity are sparsely populated, but significant numbers of people as well as park resources could nevertheless be at risk from these hazards. Depending on the nature and magnitude of a particular hazardous event and the particular time and season when it might occur, 70,000 to more than 100,000 persons could be affected; the most violent events could affect a broader region or even continent-wide areas.

Congressional Hearing on DC Metro

The GMU community might be interested in the Congressional hearing occurring now (as this is posted) on the state of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which is responsible for the regional subway system known colloquially to locals as Metro. The hearing is before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and was prompted in part by a spate of recent accidents, some fatal, as well as the Metro system's ongoing budget problems. Many of those safety and operational issues are outlined in a Congressional Research Service report available here (PDF).

Clicking here will take you to the Committee's web page on the hearing, which includes a link to the live feed (the archived footage will likely be available through that page later). From the site:

The Committee will address WMATA’s efforts to improve safety and service in the wake of a spate of accidents that have occurred within the Metro system over the past year; the short and long-term solutions for addressing the budget shortfall currently confronting WMATA; and the process for selecting a permanent General Manager for WMATA and establishing effective long term leadership.

In addition to WMATA management personnel, the committee will hear from a federal transportation official, a representative of the WMATA employees union, and a member of the WMATA rider advisory panel. Their full printed testimonies are available at the Oversight Committee's web page.

GAO Report on Iraq Drawdown

With the August 31 milestone for troop reductions in Iraq only a few months away, the Government Accountability Office has released a fairly thorough report on the ongoing withdrawal process and related progress and challenges. From the summary highlights page:

Several DOD organizations have issued coordinated plans for the execution of the drawdown and created new organizations to oversee, synchronize, and ensure unity of effort during the drawdown. To date, DOD reports that its drawdown efforts have exceeded its goals. For example, in January 2010, DOD reported that it had exceeded its target figure for withdrawing wheeled and tracked combat vehicles in Iraq, among other items, by over 2,600 pieces, yet a large amount of personnel, equipment, and bases remain to be drawn down. However, DOD has not (1) fully included contracted support in its operational planning for the drawdown, (2) allowed sufficient time in its guidance to ensure that all contracted services can be put on contract in a responsible manner, or (3) clearly defined the roles and responsibilities of various contract validation review boards.

The full report is available for download from the GAO here.

The U.S. Postal Service

Typically, when most individuals think of government functions and services, a few basic things come to mind first, like roads, defense, and postal delivery. This latter function, however, has been an ongoing source of discussion and debate, specifically with regard to the U.S. Postal Service's legally established monopoly and universal service obligations. This debate has taken on greater importance with the Postal Service's recent financial struggles. According to this recent report from the Congressional Research Service:

Recently, the USPS has experienced significant financial challenges. After running modest profits from FY2004 through FY2006, the USPS lost $5.3 billion in FY2007 and $2.8 billion in FY2008. In May 2009, the USPS warned that it might experience a cash shortage at the end of September 2009. Two months later, the Government Accountability Office added the USPS’s financial condition “to the list of high-risk areas needing attention by the Congress and the executive branch.”

The report goes on to say that Congress provided a temporary legislative fix to the budget situation by postponing a portion of the Postal Service's required contribution to its retirees' health benefits fund, but that significant uncertainty exists in the Service's future, and the coming years may see increased postage rates or even a delivery reduction from six mandated days a week to five.

In fact, this topic is not unfamiliar to the George Mason community. Two years ago, an expert panel led by Mason School of Public Policy faculty members Dr. A. Lee Fritschler and Dr. Christine Pommerening delivered a major report to the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission on many of these issues. From the SPP website:

The study's goal was to analyze the current scope and standards of universal service obligations and the postal monopoly under which the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) operates. The study considers how these obligations and monopoly rules might change in the future. The results consist of separate analyses of legal rules and statutes, historical trajectories, international experiences, economic and econometric models, public needs and expectations, and policy options regarding the USPS, universal service obligations, and letter and mailbox monopolies.

The full report, available from the Postal Regulatory Commission here, provides an enormous amount of information about the Postal Service and related policy. In the final appendix, the report provides several dozen policy options. A good overview of many of the relevant issues and some report conclusions was written by Dr. Fritschler for the Huffington Post here.

Stimulus Report from the Council of Economic Advisers

The President's Council of Economic Advisers, made up of some of the sharpest minds in economics, recently issued a report (PDF) on the effects of the fiscal stimulus bill, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. From the introduction of the report:

Our multifaceted analysis indicates that the Recovery Act has played an essential role in changing the trajectory of the economy. It has raised the level of GDP substantially in its first full year of existence and has saved or created between 2.2 and 2.8 million jobs as of the first quarter of 2010. The tax relief and income support provisions of the ARRA alone account for roughly half of the beneficial employment effects.

More here.

Government Mortgage Oversight Report

Here's the latest from the Congressional Oversight Panel, the Congressional body that oversees regulatory reform and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which released a major report on the mortgage relief program today (available here).

The Congressional Oversight Panel today released its April oversight report, "Evaluating Progress of TARP Foreclosure Mitigation Programs." The Panel commended recent changes to the mortgage modification program designed to reach more homeowners, but found that Treasury is still struggling to get its foreclosure programs off the ground even as the crisis continues unabated.

Since the Panel's last examination of foreclosure mitigation efforts in October 2009, Treasury has taken steps to address concerns that the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) did not adequately address foreclosures caused by unemployment or negative equity, including by establishing a voluntary principal reduction program. Despite these and other efforts, foreclosures continue at a rapid pace. In 2009, 2.8 million homeowners received a foreclosure notice, and nearly one in four homeowners with a mortgage currently has negative equity. While housing prices have begun to stabilize in many regions, home values in several metropolitan areas continue to fall sharply.

The exhaustive report provides an excellent overview of the successes and challenges faced by the national mortgage relief program, which has impacted several thousand mortgage holders and brokers.

NAS Report on Veterans' Health

A major question has existed for some time regarding a less overt consequence of war: the potential long-term health risks that combat can pose for soldiers. In 2006, a research committee at the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academies, found that veterans who'd served in the 1991 Gulf War exhibited higher incidences of brain and testicular cancer, neurological diseases like Parkinson’s, birth defects, postdeployment psychiatric conditions, and others.

The committee was tasked with updating that report last year and recently released the results of the update, titled Gulf War and Health: Volume 8. Health Effects of Serving in the Gulf War and available for free download here. The Institute's press release on the report provides a useful summary of findings:

Military service in the Persian Gulf War is a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder in some veterans and is also associated with multisymptom illness; gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome; substance abuse, particularly alcoholism; and psychiatric problems such as anxiety disorder, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine, the latest update in a series of reports on the Gulf War and veterans' health. There is some evidence that service during the conflict is linked to fibromyalgia and chronic widespread pain, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, sexual difficulties, and death due to causes such as car accidents in the early years after deployment, but the data are limited, said the committee that wrote the report.

The Institute of Medicine also provided a set of recommendations:

The report calls for a substantial commitment to improve identification and treatment of multisymptom illness in Gulf War veterans. The path forward should include continued monitoring of Gulf War veterans and development of better medical care for those with persistent, unexplained symptoms. Researchers should undertake studies comparing genetic variations and other differences in veterans experiencing multisymptom illness and asymptomatic veterans. It is likely that multisymptom illness results from the interactions between environmental exposures and genes, and genetics may predispose some individuals to illness, the committee noted. There are sufficient numbers of veterans to conduct meaningful comparisons given that nearly 700,000 U.S. personnel were deployed to the region and more than 250,000 of them suffer from persistant, unexplained symptoms. A consortium involving the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense, and National Institutes of Health could coordinate this effort and contribute the necessary resources.

The exhaustive report is an excellent resource for students studying related issues in the health, psychiatic, or national security arenas.

Substance Abuse Prevention CBA

Cost-Benefit Analysis is a common tool used to assess the advantages and disadvantages of public programs and policies. One of challenges, however, can be determining the proper assumptions of value. The commonly-used question to illustrate this challenge is, what is the value of a human life worth?

A good example of the use of cost-benefit analysis is found in the below report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The goal of the analysis is to essentially determine whether substance abuse programs, as administered by HHS, are worth it. From the report:

This report summarizes existing estimates of the cost of substance abuse and its damaging consequences. These cost estimates are used to evaluate the benefits of prevention in existing cost-benefit analyses and are available for use in new analyses. The estimates reviewed highlight the total annual cost of substance abuse from a number of perspectives including social cost and the direct costs to State government. The social perspective includes everyone's costs and benefits: People who abuse substances, family members, the general public, communities, and all level of government (Federal, State, and local).