Give Mayors a Role in the Obama Administration
This year's presidential campaign has not involved the "urban decline" rhetoric that rallied politicians - and policymakers - to the cause of cities in the mid 1960s and late 1970s.
View ArticleThe Best Part of Rachel Maddow's Obama Interview
Chatting with Rachel Maddow last night (see below), as Matt Yglesias just pointed out, Obama explained the critical role that national governments play in stimulating urban growth in the developing...
View ArticleThe New Narrative: Cities Aren’t Cesspools
That Barack Obama won the "city vote" – 83% of Philadelphia County, 76% of Chicago’s Cook County, 68.5% of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County – is no surprise. The victory was no small affair, either: The...
View ArticleDon't Attach the Wrong Strings to the Auto Bailout
Tucked into one of two possible Senate "vehicles" for the auto industry bailout is a seemingly benign, even sweet, deal: tax relief for new car purchases. Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of...
View ArticleWHOUP! Rybak for Cities Czar?
The Minnesota Independent picked up on an interesting conversation Minnesota Public Radio had with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.
View ArticleIs Obama Really a Budget Hawk?
As President-elect Obama outlines his plans for economic stimulus – or economic "recovery" as the Times’s Carl Hulse noted rather cheekily this morning – he has been singing paeans to budget hawks...
View ArticleWho Cares About New York?
With auto bailouts, stimulus packages, and presidential transitions to worry about, the nation's cities are often overlooked by our media gods. Sure, every once in a while a crooked mayor like Kwame...
View ArticleWHO's UP? Carrion Nabs Urban Policy Spot
The selection of Adolfo Carrion, Bronx Borough President, to lead the White Office of Urban Policy (WHOUP) is particularly important as the federal government unleashes the $787 billion economic...
View ArticleMr. Forbes, Mark My House to Market!
It's really quite practical to blame financial crises on accountants: they're generally anonymous and boring, they're always sifting through receipts, and they can create money out of thin air if they...
View ArticleThe Beast Runs Free
The Treasury Department is slowly restraining the Capitalist Beast.
View ArticleDon't Call It A Comeback
For the last week or so there has been a faint drumbeat of positive economic news.
View ArticleBankrolled But Bankrupt: The Senate Fails Homeowners Again
As the economy and the housing and job markets worsen, middle-class households continue to lose equity in their homes and are less able to afford their mortgage payments.
View ArticleOf Course We Need Lobbysists, Said the Lobbyist
During the presidential campaign and again during the transition, lobbyists were in an uproar about restrictions Obama placed on their money and on hiring them.
View ArticleJack Kemp and the Failed Republican Urban Agenda
When I sat down with him last summer, Frank Jackson, the soft-spoken mayor of Cleveland, looked puzzled when I asked if the Republican Party could ever formulate an urban agenda.
View ArticleLast Call for Mortgage Reform
As housing prices rose earlier this decade, mortgage originators, brokers, servicers, and investors created and promoted ever more deceptive products to extract further profits from current and...
View ArticleSwiped! Did The Credit Card Industry Just Hijack Credit Card Reform Legislation?
The prevailing wisdom in this week’s press reports about credit card reform legislation now being debated in the Senate is that Senator Dodd’s version is stronger than the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of...
View ArticleThe First Hundred Days
Since President Obama signed the stimulus package into law 100 days ago, the U.S. economy certainly seems to have stabilized.
View ArticleGetting Steamy About The Administration's Unrequited Love
America's mayors, as Politico puts its, are "steamed" about the White House's decision to pull hundreds of administration officials out of last weekend's annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
View ArticleThe Quijote of the South Rides Again: An Incomplete Policy Review of Gov....
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's admission of an extramarital Argentinean affair will dominate headlines for the next several days.
View ArticleOur Shadowy Government: Czars, Health Reform, And Bush's Resurgence
In recent months, something of a parlor game has developed in which the media competes to draw comparisons between the Bush and Obama administrations. Purported examples include the continued use of...
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