New Blog Posts

  • Saving the World’s Poor: A Nobel Prize Winner on Development

    Jerry Wei, MPP On October 12th, Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his “analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.” The economist Tyler Cowen summarizes his research and ideas in a fantastic post here. While he advanced the economics discipline by developing the poverty measurement tools we continue to use…

  • Municipal Broadband – A Tool to Ease Internet Access Inequality in DC

    Conor McGrath, MPA, Staff Writer Brief Policy Perspectives In January, the White House rolled out a new initiative to promote expanded broadband internet access nationwide. Among the proposals was a strong position in favor of allowing local communities to build their own municipal broadband networks. The Federal Communications Commission backed the President’s proposal in March…

  • New Financial Aid Rule A ‘Big Win’ For Students

    Ashlynn Profit, MPA, Staff Writer Brief Policy Perspectives While the Obama administration’s adoption of “prior-prior-year” will simplify the federal financial aid application process for students, it could create more barriers if states and institutions don’t follow. As the federal government prepares to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, many proposals for simplifying the headache-inducing process of…

  • New Energy Bill Could Move USA Energy System into the 21st Century

    Amy Gutierrez, MPP, Staff Writer Brief Policy Perspectives It’s easy to focus solely on fossil fuel production when discussing energy policy. The current debates concerning hydraulic fracturing and the Keystone XL pipeline lead many to believe the United States can only innovate by drilling for fossil fuels. The Senate American Energy Innovation Act (SAEIA) dispels…

  • Worker Self-Directed Enterprises – A New Way of Thinking About the Workplace

    Ryan Thombs, MPP A democratic workplace in which the workers own and democratically decide how profit is distributed has long been the ideal of socialist thinkers. Marx referred to co-operatives, or democratically owned workplaces, as communism in The Civil War in France; and these ideas are echoed in  his other writings such as Das Kapital.…