Original Reporting

Original Reporting | By Diana Jean Schemo | Government services, Taxes
Attempts to oust elected officials mid-term no longer represent a last resort for voters fed up with egregious acts of corruption, but an increasingly common response to elected officials who make unpopular decisions. Often those decisions involve raising taxes and fees that pay for public services like police, fire fighters, and clean water. What is involved in the effort to convince a skeptical public that the costs of not having public services are higher than the costs of maintaining those services? More
Original Reporting | By Greg Marx | Environment, Transportation, Urban Policy
With budget battles looming in an era of divided government, the fate of the federal transportation bill will be one of the key questions for the next Congress. Alongside the funding debate, though, the U.S. faces another fundamental challenge: since the interstate era, there's been no real consensus about what the goals of the national transportation project should be. The next national network will be the most complex one America has ever built: are our institutions up to the task? More
Original Reporting | By Greg Marx | Immigration
America’s legal immigration process, long notorious for being slow, inefficient, and inconsistent, has been making gains in recent years. But those improvements have come at a real cost — the fees charged to immigrants and naturalized citizens went up sharply in 2007, and many are rising again this fall. The trend raises the question: to what extent should applicants bear the lion's share of the cost of the legal immigration process? For that matter, should U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that reviews the applications, be fee-funded at all? More
Original Reporting | By Greg Marx | Education, Housing
When the Department of Housing and Urban Development last week announced $100 million in grants to promote sustainable regional planning, it was a big day for the Obama Administration’s flagship effort to build a “geography of opportunity.” A closer look, though, shows outstanding questions about what role racial and economic integration play in the new metropolitan agenda — and about how hard the federal government is prepared to push for those goals when it encounters local resistance. More
Original Reporting | By Mike Alberti | Banking
Remapping Debate translates 18 years of FDIC data into interactive form; top 5 banks viewable within and across sectors. More
Original Reporting | By Diana Jean Schemo | Education
As various education debates rage, schooling in the tools of democracy not part of national discussion. More
Original Reporting | By Mike Alberti, By Adam Kroopnick | Media
Remapping Debate recently visited Union Square Park in New York to sample what some people had to say about the state of press coverage today. More
Original Reporting | By Diana Jean Schemo | Economy, Pensions
With 78 million Baby Boomers heading into retirement over the next 20-plus years, how will cuts in guaranteed monthly pension benefits to both public and private sector workers — in addition to those that have already been implemented — affect the ability of future retirees to engage in economy-sustaining consumer spending? More

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