Stimulus package: RIP.
Byline: The Register-Guard The U.S. economy will survive last week's demise of the once-deemed-urgent economic stimulus package. Given Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's recent optimism about the economy, it can be rationally argued that the package was more about politics than policy. Indeed, political posturing...

World Heritage hero.
In your recent article on the history of World Heritage sites in Australia (The politics of preservation, September 2003), you mention that in 1984, the Commonwealth government of Bob Hawke received from the Australian Heritage Trust a recommendation to propose Queensland's Wet Tropics region for listing. We would like...

Stealth reform.
When the House Majority Leader begins to sound notes of caution on health care reminiscent of a Bill Kristol memo, you know the nation's fear and loathing of the Clinton plan has finally penetrated the Beltway. Beating the wobbly Health Care Express bus caravan into the nation's capital last...

Clinton at the crossroads.
UNTIL THE DEFEAT of George Bush, economic performance was a strong determinant of presidential approval. Using economic data as a predictor model, Bush should have been reelected easily. In 1992, the economy was recovering: growth was up, inflation was under control, interest rates were down, and unemployment was declining....

Chaos comes to Congress.
Chaos Theory says that the order one perceives is not the true order. Originally developed to attack forecast models for the weather, and later extended to the economy, chaos theory would apply nicely to the federal budget, where nothing ever turns out as advertised. Take the Clinton Administration's constant...

Unhealthy alternative.
SUPPORTERS of a radical health-care overhaul lost the argument about whether there's a health-care crisis, so they have moved to a fall-back position: creating one. The bipartisan Chafee-Breaux "incremental" proposal--the last best chance for government-run health care this year--would undermine the nation's health-care system, and create a whole new...

A newer deal.
TAX POLITICS are back in the news, as some of President Clinton's advisors are urging him to cut taxes on the middle class and thus repair his most significant broken campaign promise. Prominent among the proposals is a $300 child credit, estimated to cost roughly $14 billion. This is...

THE NEW SOCIAL QUESTION: RETHINKING THE WELFARE STATE.
THE NEW SOCIAL QUESTION: RETHINKING THE WELFARE STATE. By Pierre Rosanvallon. Translated from the French by Barbara Harshav. Princeton: Princeton University, 2000. Pp. xii + 139. $22 95. Rosanvallon brings remarkable historical and philosophical knowledge to this study of the welfare state in France and, to some...

Selling employers in welfare reform.
Businesses have moved slowly to hire people off welfare rolls, but more and more states are finding ways to encourage their participation. Editor's note: This article is part of an on going series looking at some of the new programs being developed in the states as welfare...

Then and now.
For 25 years NCSL has served the states. Some things have changed, others haven't. In some ways it was a different world in 1975 when NCSL was founded. America was in a terrible recession. Unemployment reached an average national high of 9.2 percent. Six million Americans were...