April 5, 2012—The Century Foundation welcomes Robert C. Hockett, professor of law at Cornell University Law School, as a new fellow. Hockett conducts research in the fields of organizational and financial law and economics, particularly as they relate to economic globalization and inequality. He is also a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In 2011, Hockett, Daniel Alpert, a Century Foundation fellow and a founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, and  Nouriel Roubini, New York University professor of economics, co-authored “The Way Forward,” a white paper that has been credited with providing a clear and concise explanation of the issues that gave rise to today’s global financial problems. The paper was published by the New America Foundation.

One of Hockett’s areas of focus at The Century Foundation will be developing ideas for enabling average workers to gain a greater stake in the ownership of firms, which is a concept that has been a priority of TCF since Edward Filene created it in 1919. One goal of those efforts is to raise workers’ incomes, which have not been keeping up with productivity improvements.

“Bob Hockett is a polymath who has a deep understanding of complex economic and legal issues. He also cares deeply about the human experience of inequality and, to understand that better, he has lived among homeless communities,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation.  “We are pleased to support his efforts to develop and promote strategies for closing the wealth gap.”

Prior to becoming a law professor, Hockett worked for the International Monetary Fund and clerked for the Hon. Deanell Reece Tacha, then Circuit Judge and later Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. While a graduate student and as a judicial clerk Hockett taught at Yale, Harvard, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Kansas. Hockett received his BA and JD degrees from the University of Kansas. He earned an MA from Oxford University, and a Master of Laws degree (LLM) and Doctor of Science of Law degree (JSD) from Yale Law School.

Hockett is the latest addition to a growing roster of Century Foundation fellows who are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the United States of the diffusion of global power. “Bob is an exceptionally creative thinker who bursts with smart ideas,” said Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs. “We are excited to have him enrich all of our work.”

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions. Its work focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

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April 3, 2012 –The Century Foundation today released Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice, a new book by Senior Fellow Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit, a labor and employment discrimination attorney. In the book, the authors describe how unions have, over the years, served as vehicles of economic security and mobility for American workers, and demonstrate how weak legal protections have left them vulnerable to attacks and dwindling in numbers. To strengthen unions and improve economic prospects for workers, the authors propose amending the Civil Rights Act to protect labor organizing.

Kahlenberg and Marvit believe that there is a special logic to including labor protections under the Civil Rights Act, given the broadly shared goals of the labor and civil rights movements: promoting equality and human dignity. As the nation commemorates the April 4 anniversary of the slaying of Martin Luther King, Jr., the authors note that King was gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support striking black sanitation workers. King was acutely aware of shared goals, interests, tactics, and enemies of the labor and civil rights movements. In a speech to the AFL-CIO he said, “The duality of interests of labor and Negroes makes any crisis which lacerates you, a crisis from which we bleed.”

The authors’ proposal is based on the fact that the Civil Rights Act has substantially stronger penalties and procedures than labor law. Most significantly, it allows plaintiffs to move their cases from the administrative agency—in this case, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—to federal court, where those alleging that they were unfairly dismissed for trying to organize a union could sue for compensatory and punitive damages. These remedies are not currently available under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). While terminating someone for trying to organize a union is technically illegal under NLRA, the penalties—back pay after extensive hearings—are so weak that firms frequently break the law and risk paying the penalties as a cost of doing business.

The authors address the argument that the Civil Rights Act should be limited to protecting individuals for discrimination based on immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or national origin, not acts of volition, such as trying to organize a union. They argue that the Civil Rights Act already protects against religious discrimination, where personal choices are involved. And they note that other laws protect against discrimination based on bankruptcy, pregnancy, being a member of the military, or being a whistleblower.

“Richard Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit have put forth an innovative and provocative plan that we expect will launch an important national conversation about the role of labor unions in reviving the economy and how best to protect the rights of workers, ” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation. “This is the kind of original, well-constructed and forward-looking effort that is the hallmark of our work at Century.”

According to the authors, reversing the disastrous collapse of organized labor in the U.S. would substantially boost the wages and benefits of union and non-union members alike, with no cost to the government. “Unions were critical to building the middle-class in the United States—improving salaries and benefits for both union and nonunion workers—but today public sector unions are under attack from conservative governors and state legislatures around the country, and weak private sector labor laws allow corporations to fire those who seek to form a union and pay only small penalties,” said Kahlenberg. “As Americans search for ways to address rising economic inequality, strengthening the ability of workers to unionize without fear of reprisal may be one of the most important steps available,” added Marvit.

For ordering information and additional multimedia presentations for Why Labor Organizing Should be a Civil Right, click here. Please contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723 for review copies of the book, media inquiries, or interview requests for Richard Kahlenberg or Moshe Marvit. For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page at www.tcf.org.

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions. Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

As Americans search for ways to address rising economic inequality, strengthening the ability of workers to form unions without fear of reprisal may be one of the most important steps available. Unions were critical to building the middle-class in the United States—improving salaries and benefits for both union and nonunion workers—but today, public sector unions are under attack from conservative governors and state legislatures around the country, and weak private sector labor laws allow corporations to fire those who seek to form a union and pay only small penalties. Should we amend the Civil Rights Act, which has powerful procedures and penalties, to ban discrimination based on union organizing? This panel will discuss the ideas outlined in a new book from The Century Foundation, Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice, by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit. The book, the thesis of which was outlined earlier this month in a New York Times op-ed, “A Civil Right to Unionize,” is already generating heated reaction.

 

What: Live webcast of a Century Foundation forum to discuss ideas in a new book: Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right

When: Tuesday, April 3, 2012, Webcast begins at 12:15 p.m.

Watch: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tcf-events

Event will be live-tweeted using the hashtag  #RightToUnionize.

 

Who:

John Brittain, law professor, University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law, and former chief counsel, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights

Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow, The Century Foundation

David Madland, director, American Worker Project, Center for American Progress

Lynn Rhinehart, general counsel, AFL-CIO

Tom Woodruff, international executive vice president, SEIU

Harold Meyerson, columnist, the Washington Post (moderator)

Moshe Z. Marvit, labor and employment discrimination lawyer, will join the discussion during the question and answer period

 

Contact: events@tcf.org if you are having any problems accessing the webstream or if you would like to attend the event. The event will be held at 1333 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., 10^th Floor.

To RSVP, use “April 3” in the subject line of your email.

 

Media: Contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723 for information, interviews, or a copy of the book.

March 7, 2012—The Century Foundation today released The Future of School Integration: Socioeconomic Diversity as an Education Reform Strategy, edited by senior fellow Richard D. Kahlenberg. The volume provides exciting new research on socioeconomic integration plans a decade after Kahlenberg’s All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class Schools through Public School Choice (2001) helped introduce the concept of socioeconomic school integration to the broader education community.

The Future of School Integration seeks to answer important questions about how socioeconomic integration plans are faring and to provide guidance for how they can be sustained and expanded in the years to come. This research-driven volume features work by authors who offer a fresh perspective on critical issues such as the costs and benefits of socioeconomic integration, and the logistical and political feasibility of socioeconomic integration. “I’m particularly pleased that, in this volume, a new generation of researchers has taken on the challenge of studying the important effects of socioeconomic integration policies at the Pre-K, elementary, and secondary levels,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation.

Kahlenberg contributes a piece about the lessons that socioeconomic integration efforts  can bring to bear on the  policy debates on turning around failing schools and making charter schools work better.  “At a time when the gap between rich and poor is growing and economic school segregation is on the rise, it’s imperative that we learn more about the crucial efforts of school districts to improve outcomes for students by reducing concentrations of school poverty,” he said.

The volume features new research by Jeanne L. Reid (Columbia University’s Teachers College), Marco Basile (Harvard University), Sheneka M. Williams (University of Georgia), Ann Mantil (Harvard University), Anne G. Perkins (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education), and Stephanie Aberger (Expeditionary Learning). It also includes cutting-edge chapters by Kahlenberg, by Heather Schwartz of the RAND Corporation, and by Meredith Richards, Kori J. Stroub, and Jennifer Jellison Holmes of the University of Texas at Austin, recently published by The Century Foundation as independent reports.

These exceptional new voices in education research are building on the groundbreaking work led by Richard Kahlenberg at The Century Foundation. This work includes: Improving on No Child Left Behind: Getting Education Reform Back on Track (2008) and Divided We Fail: Coming Together through Public School Choice. The Report of The Century Foundation Task Force on the Common School, chaired by Lowell Weicker (2002), among other publications.

For ordering information for The Future of School Integration, visit here. Please contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723 for review copies of the book, media inquiries, or interview requests for Richard Kahlenberg or the chapter authors. For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page at www.tcf.org.

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions. Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

February 2, 2012––As the United States seeks to restore its role as the world’s leader in higher education, there is a renewed emphasis on increasing graduation from two-year institutions.  Most recently, President Barack Obama described the important role of community colleges in his State of the Union address.

The Century Foundation is assembling a task force of distinguished individuals from two-year and four-year institutions, scholars of higher education, and representatives of the business, philanthropic, and civil rights communities to consider strategies to strengthen community colleges.  The group will be co-chaired by Anthony Marx, president of the New York Public Library and former president of Amherst College, and Eduardo Padrón, the president of Miami Dade College.

The Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Separate and Unequal, which is supported by the Ford Foundation, will address an issue that has remained below the radar screen in national and regional discussions over improving college access and completion:  just as community colleges are being asked to do more than ever before, the racial and socioeconomic divide between two- and four-year institutions is growing.

“Community colleges should be open to, and attractive to, students of all economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds,” said Padrón.  “While two-year institutions must always provide access to low-income and working-class students, community colleges need to find ways to recruit middle-class students as well, or the political and financial support for the two-year sector will continue to decline.”

The larger issue, Marx suggested, is this:  “Will higher education reduce or exacerbate the growing economic divide in this nation?”  He continued, “If the better funded four-year sector caters to wealthier white students, while community colleges lose funding to educate low-income and minority students, the two-year sector will remain separate and unequal.”

Janice Nittoli, the president of The Century Foundation, said that Padrón and Marx were a perfect team to lead the task force.  “Eduardo Padrón has been a brilliant and innovative leader of the nation’s largest institution of higher education,” she said, “and Tony Marx, as president of Amherst, has been the conscience of the four-year sector, helping to put the issue of socioeconomic diversity and community college transfers on the national agenda. He is showing that same commitment to increasing access to our cultural and learning institutions in his leadership role at the New York Public Library. We’re thrilled to have the two of them co-chair this new task force.”

Jeannie Oakes and Douglas Wood of the Ford Foundation said the task force was an important step.  “There’s a stratification trend in higher education around the world,” Oakes said. “This task force will help bring that trend to light, document the challenges associated with it, and recommend ways that institutions can overcome it.” Added Wood: “The two-year sector educates an increasing number of American students. It’s essential that we find ways to strengthen it so that these students have more opportunities, not fewer.”

The Task Force will have its first meeting on February 17, 2012. The meeting will include a special presentation by U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter.  The Task Force will also hold meetings in May and September, after which it will issue a report with recommendations and background papers.

Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and the author of several volumes on inequality in both higher education and K–12 schooling, will serve as executive director of the Task Force.  He commented, “It’s disturbing to see that just as elementary and secondary education are becoming increasingly segregated by race and income, the same thing is happening in higher education.  The Task Force members have a considerable wealth of experience and wisdom, and I look forward to working with them to assemble recommendations on how to strengthen the community college sector.”

A list of Task Force members can be found here.

The Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Separate and Unequal is the latest in a long series of groups that The Century Foundation has assembled on important public policy issues such as election reform, elementary and secondary education, and U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions.  Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For media inquiries about the Task Force, contact Christy Hicks at (212) 452-7723. For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page at www.tcf.org.

See PDF release for list of Task Force members.

The Century Foundation today announces the appointment of five fellows, all of whom are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they will advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the U.S. of the diffusion of global power. The Century Foundation’s new fellows are:  

• Daniel Alpert, the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, who writes perceptively about the causes of the economic woes facing America and the rest of the world while recommending ambitious policy responses;
• Michael Cohen, a foreign policy analyst and author who writes about U.S. foreign policy, national security and foreign assistance, and whose critiques of U.S. military policy, and particularly America’s approach to the Afghanistan war, have proven to be prescient;
• Amy B. Dean, whose Century Foundation book, A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, and other work highlights innovative alternatives to traditional unions that have arisen throughout the country and how these local institutions realize economic change;
• Suzanne Mettler, a Cornell University political scientist who analyzes the problems of policymaking through tax expenditures, sources of the public’s alienation from government through examination of health care reform, and the implications for democracy of higher education policy and stagnating access to college; and
• Mark Thoma, a University of Oregon economist whose widely read blog, Economist’s View, synthesizes current economic research for non-experts and highlights ideas for strengthening American social insurance and employment opportunities.

The new fellows have been recruited to build on The Century Foundation’s efforts to promote fresh ideas and politically compelling narratives that can define a new vision for U.S. public policy.

The Century Foundation is a progressive non-partisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all.

“The Century Foundation aims to think expansively and with originality in ways that break the mold by bringing serious research to the examination of policy problems and their solution,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation. “We are so excited to provide this exceptional group of men and women with new platforms to call broader attention to their important ideas and insights.”

Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs, added, “Our new fellows share the rare ability to connect dots about the ways in which U.S. policy has gone astray and how it can be repaired in politically plausible ways over the course of the next decade. In each case, their insights are distinctive and not widely known by the general public, but their arguments are persuasive and have the potential to transform policy debates in the United States.”

More on the fellows:

Dan Alpert is the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, and its affiliates. He has more than thirty years of international merchant banking and investment banking experience, including a wide variety of workout and bankruptcy related restructuring experience. He has researched and written extensively on the housing and credit bubbles and the resulting economic crisis, and is widely quoted in leading publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Reuters,the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Forbes, and Fortune. He is a frequent guest commentator on the principal business news networks, including Bloomberg, CNBC, and Fox Business News, and also appears on CNNI and the BBC. He also is a contributor to Economonitor.com. Prior to forming Westwood Capital in 1995, he was a senior banker and partner of Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. He holds a BA in public policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael Cohen is regular writer and commentator on American politics and U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Live from the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America (Walker Books, 2008), as well as a columnist for Foreign Policy, where he writes a regular feature on politics and national security. He has previously been a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the American Security Project. He served in the U.S. Department of State as chief speechwriter for U.S. Representative to the United Nations Bill Richardson and Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat. He has worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was chief speechwriter for Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), and was a senior vice president at the strategic communications firm of Robinson, Lerer and Montgomery. He has also worked on political campaigns, both in the United States and overseas. He has been a frequent commentator on politics and international affairs, and his work has been featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. His research has focused on the growing role and influence of non-state actors, reforming the foreign assistance bureaucracy (with a particular focus on democracy promotion), and improving aid coordination between private and public actors.

Amy B. Dean is the principal of ABD Ventures, LLC, a consulting firm that works with social change organizations to develop new and innovative organizing strategies that link advocacy and public policy reforms. She is coauthor, with David B. Reynolds, of A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, a Century Foundation Book (Cornell University Press, 2009). In 2005, she founded Building Partnerships USA (BPUSA), a national organization dedicated to increasing civic and political participation to strengthen democracy and advance social and economic justice at the regional level. From 1993 to 2003, she served as president and CEO of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, the fifteenth largest regional labor federation in the country, representing more than ninety unions and 110,000 members, and was the youngest person and first woman to lead a major labor federation of the AFL-CIO. During that time, she established Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA), a nonprofit organization that connected economic research and community organizing. Under her leadership, WPUSA’s accomplishments included the nation’s first universal health care insurance for children regardless of immigration status, the enactment of San Jose’s first living wage ordinance governing public contracts, and the development of one of the nation’s first proposed community benefits ordinances, which tie the expenditure of public funds and public subsidies to measurable community benefits.

Suzanne Mettler is the Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University, where she conducts research on politics and public policy. Her most recent book is The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Programs Undermine American Democracy(University of Chicago Press, 2011). Her earlier books include Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Cornell University Press, 1998), which was awarded the Kammerer Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on U.S. national policy, and Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford University Press, 2005), which also won the Kammerer Award as well as the Greenstone Prize of the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association. She is coeditor, with Joe Soss and Jacob Hacker, of Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), and coeditor with Lawrence R. Jacobs of a special issue of the Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law focused on “Public Opinion, Health Policy and American Politics.” She has published articles in several journals, including American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, and Studies in American Political Development, and numerous book chapters in edited volumes.

Mark Thoma is a professor of economics at the University of Oregon and the author of the Economist’s View blog. He joined the University of Oregon faculty in 1987 and served as head of the economics department for five years. His research involves the effects of monetary policy on inflation, output, unemployment, interest rates, and other macroeconomic variables. He has conducted research in other areas, such as the relationship between the political party in power and macroeconomic outcomes. He received his PhD from Washington State University.

The new fellows, as well as Janice Nittoli and Greg Anrig, are available for interviews. Contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723. Learn more about The Century Foundation by visiting our web site at www.tcf.org or connecting with us via Twitter or Facebook

January 20, 2012—The Century Foundation welcomes Michael Cohen, a foreign policy analyst and author, as a new fellow.  Cohen writes about U.S. foreign policy, national security and foreign assistance. He is the author of Live from the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America (Walker Books, 2008), as well as a columnist for Foreign Policy, where he writes a regular feature on politics and national security. Cohen’s research has focused on the growing role and influence of non-state actors, reforming the foreign assistance bureaucracy (with a particular focus on democracy promotion), and improving aid coordination between private and public actors.

Cohen discusses his current research agenda in a new Policycast on The Century Foundation website, www.tcf.org.  You can listen to the podcast here.

“Michael’s assessments of U.S. military policy are widely respected, and his criticisms of America’s approach to the Afghanistan war have proven to be prescient,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation.  “We are so excited to provide a new platform for Michael to assess our current approaches to important foreign policy matters and to further explore, develop, and promote new ideas and strategies for America’s role in an ever-changing world.”

He has previously been a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the American Security Project. He served as chief speechwriter for U.S. Representative to the United Nations Bill Richardson, Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT). He has worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was a senior vice president at Robinson, Lerer and Montgomery. He has also worked on political campaigns, both in the United States and overseas. He has been a frequent commentator on politics and international affairs, and his work has been featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Cohen is one of five newly appointed Century Foundation fellows, all of whom are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they will advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the United States of the diffusion of global power. The other new fellows are Daniel Alpert, the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, who writes perceptively about the causes of the economic woes facing America and the rest of the world while recommending ambitious policy responses; Amy B. Dean, whose Century Foundation book, A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, and other work highlights innovative alternatives to traditional unions that have arisen throughout the country and how these local institutions realize economic change; Suzanne Mettler, a Cornell University political scientist who analyzes the problems of policymaking through tax expenditures, sources of the public’s alienation from government through examination of health care reform, and the implications for democracy of higher education policy and stagnating access to college; and Mark Thoma, a University of Oregon economist whose widely read blog, Economist’s View, synthesizes current economic research for non-experts and highlights ideas for strengthening American social insurance and employment opportunities.

“Our new fellows share the rare ability to connect dots about the ways in which U.S. policy has gone astray and how it can be repaired in politically plausible ways over the course of the next decade,” said Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs. “In each case, their insights are distinctive and not widely known by the general public, but their arguments are persuasive and have the potential to transform policy debates in the United States.”

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions.  Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

January 20, 2012--The Century Foundation welcomes as a new fellow Mark Thoma, a professor of economics at the University of Oregon and the author of the Economist’s View blog. His widely read blog synthesizes current economic research for non-experts and highlights ideas for strengthening American social insurance and employment opportunities. His research involves the effects of monetary policy on inflation, output, unemployment, interest rates, and other macroeconomic variables. He also has conducted research in other areas, such as the relationship between the political party in power and macroeconomic outcomes.

Thoma discusses some of the important economic policy issues he will be examining and writing about in a new Policycast on The Century Foundation website, www.tcf.org.  You can listen to the podcast here.

“Mark pursues his own research about ways to improve the economic outlook for Americans, and he also has his finger on the pulse of the debate, discussion, and discovery around our current economic policy,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation. “We are so excited to provide a new platform for him both to continue his important research, and to connect his ideas with broad audiences that range from journalists, to policy makers, to interested citizens.”

Thoma joined the University of Oregon faculty in 1987 and served as head of the economics department for five years. He received his PhD from Washington State University.

Thoma is one of five newly appointed Century Foundation fellows, all of whom are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they will advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the United States of the diffusion of global power. The other  new fellows are: Daniel Alpert, the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, who writes perceptively about the causes of the economic woes facing America and the rest of the world while recommending ambitious policy responses;  Michael Cohen, a foreign policy analyst and author who writes about U.S. foreign policy, national security, and foreign assistance, and whose critiques of U.S. military policy, and particularly America’s approach to the Afghanistan war, have proven to be prescient; Amy B. Dean, whose Century Foundation book, A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, and other work highlights innovative alternatives to traditional unions that have arisen throughout the country and how these local institutions realize economic change; and Suzanne Mettler, a Cornell University political scientist who analyzes the problems of policymaking through tax expenditures, sources of the public’s alienation from government through examination of health care reform, and the implications for democracy of higher education policy and stagnating access to college.

“Our new fellows share the rare ability to connect dots about the ways in which U.S. policy has gone astray and how it can be repaired in politically plausible ways over the course of the next decade,” said Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs. “In each case, their insights are distinctive and not widely known by the general public, but their arguments are persuasive and have the potential to transform policy debates in the United States.”

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions.  Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

January 20, 2012--The Century Foundation welcomes as a new fellow Suzanne Mettler, an award-winning Cornell University political scientist who has written extensively about social policy, tax expenditures, health care reform, and higher education policy. Her most recent book is The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Mettler discusses her current research agenda in a new Policycast on The Century Foundation website, www.tcf.org.  You can listen to the podcast here .

“Suzanne writes with deep insight about the interrelationships between politics and policy, focusing particularly on the reasons why voters feel disconnected from government,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation. “We are so excited to provide a new platform that will provide broader visibility for her important work.”

Mettler’s earlier books include Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Cornell University Press, 1998), which was awarded the Kammerer Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on U.S. national policy, and Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford University Press, 2005), which also won the Kammerer Award as well as the Greenstone Prize of the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association.

Mettler is coeditor, with Joe Soss and Jacob Hacker, of Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), and coeditor with Lawrence R. Jacobs of a special issue of the Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law focused on “Public Opinion, Health Policy and American Politics.” She has published articles in several journals, including American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, and Studies in American Political Development, and numerous book chapters in edited volumes.

Mettler is one of five newly appointed Century Foundation fellows, all of whom are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they will advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the United States of the diffusion of global power. The other  new fellows are: Daniel Alpert, the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, who writes perceptively about the causes of the economic woes facing America and the rest of the world while recommending ambitious policy responses; Michael Cohen, a foreign policy analyst and author who writes about U.S. foreign policy, national security, and foreign assistance, and whose critiques of U.S. military policy, and particularly America’s approach to the Afghanistan war, have proven to be prescient; Amy B. Dean, whose Century Foundation book, A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, and other work highlights innovative alternatives to traditional unions that have arisen throughout the country and how these local institutions realize economic change;  and Mark Thoma, a University of Oregon economist whose widely read blog, Economist’s View, synthesizes current economic research for non-experts and highlights ideas for strengthening American social insurance and employment opportunities.

“Our new fellows share the rare ability to connect dots about the ways in which U.S. policy has gone astray and how it can be repaired in politically plausible ways over the course of the next decade,” said Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs. “In each case, their insights are distinctive and not widely known by the general public, but their arguments are persuasive and have the potential to transform policy debates in the United States.”

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions.  Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

January 20, 2012--The Century Foundation welcomes as a new fellow Amy B. Dean, who is one of the nation’s leading experts on regional efforts beyond traditional unions to strengthen worker protections, enhance civic participation, and advance progressive social and economic policy. Her Century Foundation book, A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement (Cornell University Press, 2009), and other work highlights innovative labor movements that have arisen throughout the country and how these local institutions realize economic change.

Dean discusses her research and activities around workers’ rights and opportunities in a new Policycast podcast on The Century Foundation web site, www.tcf.org.  You can listen to the podcast here.

“Amy is doing groundbreaking work in rethinking how working people can come together to improve everyone’s economic security,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation. “We are so excited to provide a new platform that gives more visibility to her fresh approach to these issues.”

Currently, Dean is the principal of ABD Ventures, LLC, a consulting firm that works with social change organizations to develop new and innovative organizing strategies that link advocacy and public policy reforms. Previously, in 2005, Dean founded Building Partnerships USA (BPUSA), a national organization dedicated to increasing civic and political participation to strengthen democracy and advance social and economic justice at the regional level. From 1993 to 2003, she served as president and CEO of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, the fifteenth-largest regional labor federation in the country, representing more than ninety unions and 110,000 members. She was the youngest person and first woman to lead a major labor federation of the AFL-CIO.

During that time, she established Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA), a nonprofit organization that connected economic research and community organizing. Under her leadership, WPUSA’s accomplishments included the nation’s first universal health care insurance for children regardless of immigration status, the enactment of San Jose’s first living wage ordinance governing public contracts, and the development of one of the nation’s first community benefits ordinances.

Dean is one of five newly appointed Century Foundation fellows, all of whom are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they will advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the United States of the diffusion of global power. The other  new fellows are: Daniel Alpert, the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, who writes perceptively about the causes of the economic woes facing America and the rest of the world while recommending ambitious policy responses; Michael Cohen, a foreign policy analyst and author who writes about U.S. foreign policy, national security, and foreign assistance, and whose critiques of U.S. military policy, and particularly America’s approach to the Afghanistan war, have proven to be prescient; Suzanne Mettler, a Cornell University political scientist who analyzes the problems of policymaking through tax expenditures, sources of the public’s alienation from government through examination of health care reform, and the implications for democracy of higher education policy and stagnating access to college; and Mark Thoma, a University of Oregon economist whose widely read blog, Economist’s View, synthesizes current economic research for non-experts and highlights ideas for strengthening American social insurance and employment opportunities.

“Our new fellows share the rare ability to connect dots about the ways in which U.S. policy has gone astray and how it can be repaired in politically plausible ways over the course of the next decade,” said Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs. “In each case, their insights are distinctive and not widely known by the general public, but their arguments are persuasive and have the potential to transform policy debates in the United States.”

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions.  Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

January 19, 2012—The Century Foundation welcomes Daniel Alpert, the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, as a new fellow. With more than thirty years of international merchant banking and investment banking experience, Alpert has written perceptively about the causes of the economic woes facing America and the rest of the world, and has recommended ambitious policy responses. In recent years, he has researched and written extensively on the housing and credit bubbles and the resulting economic crisis. In 2011, he conceived and co-authored, along with Nouriel Roubini, New York University Professor of Economics, and Robert Hockett, a Professor of Financial Law at Cornell University, “The Way Forward,” a white paper that has been credited with providing a clear and concise explanation of the issues that gave rise to today’s global financial problems. The paper was published by the New America Foundation.

Alpert discusses the global excess of labor, debt, and supply in the context of “The Way Forward,” as well as economic policy issues and solutions he will pursue as a TCF fellow, in a new Policycast on The Century Foundation website, www.tcf.org.  You can listen to the podcast here.

“Dan Alpert brings to The Century Foundation a unique understanding of today’s global economic crisis and its root causes, as well as fresh ideas and recommendations for addressing the problem,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation.  “We are so excited to provide a new platform for him to further explore, develop and promote these important national and international policy solutions.”

Alpert writes a well-known finance and macroeconomics blog, Dan Alpert’s 2 Cents, on Economonitor.com (a division of Roubini Global Economics). He is widely quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, and many other periodicals. He is a frequent guest commentator on Bloomberg, CNBC, and Fox Business News, and also appears on CNNI, PBS, and the BBC. He has also advised the U.S. Department of the Treasury on housing and mortgage issues.

Alpert was featured in Inside Job, the 2010 winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Prior to forming Westwood Capital in 1995, he was a partner in Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. He holds a BA in Public Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, and lives and works in Manhattan.

Alpert is one of five newly appointed Century Foundation fellows, all of whom are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they will advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the United States of the diffusion of global power. The other new fellows are: Michael Cohen, a foreign policy analyst and author who writes about U.S. foreign policy, national security, and foreign assistance, and whose critiques of U.S. military policy, and particularly America’s approach to the Afghanistan war, have proven to be prescient; Amy B. Dean, whose Century Foundation book, A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, and other work highlights innovative alternatives to traditional unions that have arisen throughout the country and how these local institutions realize economic change; Suzanne Mettler, a Cornell University political scientist who analyzes the problems of policymaking through tax expenditures, sources of the public’s alienation from government through examination of health care reform, and the implications for democracy of higher education policy and stagnating access to college; and Mark Thoma, a University of Oregon economist whose widely read blog, Economist’s View, synthesizes current economic research for non-experts and highlights ideas for strengthening American social insurance and employment opportunities.

“Our new fellows share the rare ability to connect dots about the ways in which U.S. policy has gone astray and how it can be repaired in politically plausible ways over the course of the next decade,” said Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs. “In each case, their insights are distinctive and not widely known by the general public, but their arguments are persuasive and have the potential to transform policy debates in the United States.”

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all.   Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions.  Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

December 8, 2011 – Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation, today announced the appointment of Philip Li as chief administrative officer of the progressive think tank founded in 1919 by retail innovator Edward Filene.  Li comes to Century from the Brooklyn Community Foundation, where he served as chief operating officer. He will join Century on December 19, and will oversee all administrative operations, including finance, human resources, and technology.

“Phil has many good ideas and broad experience that ranges from nonprofit administration to corporate finance,” said Nittoli. “He also is widely respected in the New York City public service community. I believe he will be a great asset to The Century Foundation as our chief administrative officer, and I am delighted to welcome him to the team.”

At the Brooklyn Community Foundation, Li oversaw finance, human resources, technology, public programming, and administration. Before joining BCF, he worked with nonprofit organizations and foundations as a philanthropic services consultant at Changing Our World. He also served as the executive director of the Coro New York Leadership Center, which trains and develops new generations of civic leaders. He spent a dozen years on Wall Street, starting at Merrill Lynch as a systems analyst and finishing at Moody’s Investors Service as a high yield bond analyst. A recipient of a United Way of New York City award for community service, Phil serves on a number of nonprofit boards and is a trustee of a family foundation. A resident of Brooklyn, Phil earned a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from The Wharton School.

“The Century Foundation has a long and distinguished history of doing important and influential policy work,” said Li. “I look forward to working under Janice’s innovative and energetic leadership to provide an environment that supports and enhances the ability of our fellows and staff to continue to produce and promote cutting-edge progressive thinking on issues of compelling importance to this country.”

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

New York City, December 13, 2006—Coercive strategies to block a determined Iran from developing a nuclear-weapons capability are unlikely to work, argues Barry Posen, but treating Iran’s nuclearization as the most dangerous of possible outcomes could lead to dangerous miscalculations.

Posen, a leading security and defense policy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues in, A Nuclear-Armed Iran: A Difficult, But Not Impossible Policy Problem, his provocative new report for The Century Foundation, that even if Iran acquired nuclear arms, negative impacts on peace and security in the region can be minimized.

While a nuclear Iran would be a setback to the nonproliferation regime, argues Posen, a strategy of containment and deterrence—which proved effective against vastly more formidable adversaries, including the Soviet Union—would effectively dampen the negative repercussions of a nuclear Iran. “Containment and deterrence is mu ch resisted as a viable alternative” in the Washington political debate, writes Posen, but “such criticisms are not useful for policy analysis unless the viability of alternative strategies” is considered.

None of the options to prevent Iran ’s nuclearization are promising. After assessing the options for economic coercion and military strikes, Posen concludes that sanctions powerful enough to force Iran’s hand are unlikely to win U.N. adoption, and that military options are both risky and counterproductive. A military strike could set back but not halt Iran ’s nuclear program—and at the cost of strengthening the regime and providing “a potent political/ideological rationale for violence against the U.S. and its friends for many years to come.” Compared to these strategies, Posen argues that containment and deterrence is “likely to achieve U.S. strategic goals, and do so at lower risks and costs.”

In the report, Posen also dissects the various criticism of a containment strategy. Would a nuclear Iran be more likely to engage in reckless provocations, as some have argued? Posen shows that if the past is any indication, it is difficult to use nuclear weapons for strategic advantage and that either the United States or Israel could deter a nuclear Iran from using its arsenal. Moreover, argues Posen, the notion that Iran would pass nuclear weapons on to a terrorist group is far-fet ch ed, since su ch action serves no strategic purpose, invites retaliation, and cannot be controlled. “It is,” he argues, “perhaps the most self-destructive thing that any na tion state can do.”

While an Iranian bomb would heighten proliferation risks by other na tions, these challenges are ma na geable as well. Posen argues that the U.S. and its allies can take steps that would reduce these risks, including:

• Making it clear Iran’s use of nuclear weapons, for blackmail or war, would be met with nuclear retaliation;
• Reinvigorating efforts to stabilize the Persian Gulf and the Middle East.
• Forgoing efforts to overthrow Iran's clerical regime.

Posen’s analysis is a must read for anyone who wants to better understand America’s interests and options vis a vis the Islamic Republic.

Barry R. Posen is director of the Security Studies and the Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is affiliated with the Security Studies Program. He serves on the Executive Committee of Seminar XXI, an educational program for senior military officers and government officials in the nationalsecurity policy community. He has written two books, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks and The Sources of Military Doctrine, which won two awards: The American Political Science Association’s Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award and Ohio State University Edward J. Furniss Jr. Book Award. His most recent article is “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of US Hegemony,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003).

A Nuclear-Armed Iran: A Difficult, But Not Impossible Policy Problem is part of a series of reports commissioned by The Century Foundation to inform the policy debate about Iran-related issues. Other reports in the series include:

Dealing with Tehran: Assessing U.S. Diplomatic Options toward Iran, by Flynt Leverett, senior fellow and director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative in the American Strategy Program, New America Foundation.

The End of the” Summer of Diplomacy”: Assessing U.S. Military Options on Iran, by Sam Gardiner, Colonel, USAF (ret.)

Sanctions Against Iran: Key Issues, by Bruce Jentleson, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy Studies, Duke University (forthcoming)

Fundamentalists, Pragmatists. and the Rights of the Nation: Iranian Politics and Nuclear Confrontation, by Gareth Smyth, Tehran Bureau Chief, Financial Times

The authors are available for interviews. Contact Christy Hicks hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

The Reports can be downloaded from The Century Foundation Web site at

www.tcf.org

November 10, 2011—The Century Foundation is pleased to welcome Thanassis Cambanis as its newest fellow. A journalist who has covered the Middle East for nearly a decade, Cambanis is the author of A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, which was published in 2010.

“We are so pleased that Thanassis is joining our team of smart, forward-thinking fellows,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation. “His work on the larger meaning of the Arab Spring fits in well with Century’s own focus on the implications for American values of a world marked by more diffuse power.”

Cambanis writes “The Internationalist” column for the Boston Globe Ideas section, and is a correspondent for the Atlantic. He also regularly contributes to the New York Times, the Boston Globe (where he served as a foreign correspondent in Iraq and the Middle East), and other publications. He is currently working on a book about the efforts of Egyptian revolutionaries to create a new political order after Mubarak.

Cambanis teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs in New York City, where he lives with his family. In 2009 Cambanis served as a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.  He received his master’s degree in public affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. He studied history and creative writing for his bachelor’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can follow Cambanis on Twitter.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.

 

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Addressing the long-term budget deficit requires balancing spending cuts with additional revenue, especially given the singular focus on spending cuts in recent legislation. But an analysis released today by The Century Foundation and the Economic Policy Institute shows that the administration’s revenue proposals, though laudable, would nonetheless leave revenue well below needed levels. The report offers a menu of supplemental options to restore revenue adequacy.

For Joint Select Committee, many good options, by policy analyst Andrew Fieldhouse, analyzes the president’s revenue recommendations for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (JSC) and offers a menu of alternative or supplemental progressive revenue options to reduce the deficit and finance job creation initiatives.

To adequately, equitably, and efficiently fund government, the report recommends some combination of additional progressive revenue options, including:

·         enacting a millionaire surcharge ($383 billion);

·         taxing capital gains as ordinary income ($168 billion);

·         further limiting the tax benefit of itemized deductions ($888 billion);

·         enacting a progressive estate tax ($73 billion);

·         enacting a financial speculation tax ($821 billion);

·         enacting a cap-and-trade program and a refundable climate dividend ($472 billion);

·         enacting a sweetened beverage tax ($184 billion); and

·         ending the deferral of foreign corporate income ($114 billion).

Combining all of these policies would raise $3.1 trillion over 2012-21 (excluding various interaction effects) relative to the president’s recommendations for the JSC, bringing projected revenue roughly in line with current law revenue levels and significantly improving the long-term fiscal outlook.

The report itemizes each of the president’s revenue recommendations for the JSC, including ending the Bush-era income tax cuts for upper-income households, reinstating the estate tax at its 2009 parameters, limiting tax preferences for upper-income households, taxing carried interest as ordinary income, and ending a host of business tax preferences and loopholes.

The president’s recommendations are distributionally progressive. Relative to current tax policy, over 95 percent of all the tax increases would be borne by the highest-income 5 percent of households—those with incomes above $227,000—and millionaires would absorb two-thirds of the tax changes. 

The president’s recommendations represent an improvement relative to unsustainably low levels of revenue under current tax policies, raising $1.3 trillion over 2012-21 relative to current policy. Nonetheless, the recommendations fall $3.4 trillion below levels scheduled under current law. Even with the president’s recommendations, revenue inadequacy (largely driven by the Bush-era tax cuts) would remain a primary driver of budget deficits.

“Preserving most of the Bush-era tax cuts and shielding 98% of households from any form of tax increase, relative to our unsustainable tax policies, makes it exceptionally difficult to adequately fund our civil society,” said Fieldhouse.

This report and other information on budget issues can be found at Century’s website and at EPI’s website. For further information contact TCF’s Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or EPI’s Phoebe Salig at psilag@epi.org

July 18, 2011 – Janice Nittoli, associate vice president and managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation, has been named president of The Century Foundation. The announcement about her selection, which was the result of a national search, was made today by Alan Brinkley, the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University, who serves as chairman of The Century Foundation Board of Trustees.

Nittoli will succeed Richard C. Leone, who has been president of The Century Foundation for twenty-two years. In September 2010, Leone announced his retirement from the leadership of Century and agreed to continue to head of the foundation until the search process was completed. Leone will remain affiliated with Century as a senior fellow.

“The Century Foundation has been extraordinarily fortunate to have had the leadership of Dick Leone for the last twenty-two years, and we are equally fortunate to have a successor who promises to be another truly great president of the institution,” said Brinkley.  “She is energetic, articulate, and above all committed to the progressive vision as it faces some of its most difficult challenges.  All of us welcome Janice to The Century Foundation and look forward to working with her as we move forward.”

“Janice Nittoli has impressive credentials and a strong commitment to progressive values,” Leone added. “In these turbulent times, with growing inequality and a fraying safety net, she has the right stuff to keep Century in the forefront of the fight for fairness.”

Nittoli has been with the Rockefeller Foundation since 2006, where she has provided leadership and strategic direction for the foundation’s Campaign for American Workers. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Foundation, she was a senior executive at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation dedicated to improving the lives of poor children, their families, and communities. Prior to her foundation work, she served as president of the National Center for Health Education, a national nonprofit that designs and disseminates school- and community-based health education programs. She also has served in several capacities in New York City government. She was assistant commissioner in the Department of Health, where she managed the health system for the city’s correctional facilities. In addition, she was a senior official in the city’s Human Resources Administration and at the Board of Education. Before these appointments, she worked on social policy issues for New York City Council President Carol Bellamy.

“I’m deeply honored and quite delighted to have been entrusted with the leadership of The Century Foundation,” Nittoli said.  “I look forward to building on Dick Leone’s record of achievement and to working with Century’s talented staff to advance the mission with which Edward Filene charged us almost a century ago.”

Nittoli will take over the helm of the ninety-two-year-old progressive policy organization on August 29, 2011. She will lead an institution that has produced groundbreaking research on economic inequality and cutting edge work in education policy at both the K–12 and higher education level; played a significant role in the fight against Social Security privatization; created the task force that led directly to the Help America Vote Act; created a commission on homeland security that was a part of the process of shaping the new federal department of that name, and whose co-chair, former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, was subsequently tapped to head the 9/11 Commission; made important contributions to the national debates over the federal budget, deficit reduction, and health care reform, and been a distinctive voice in foreign policy debates. Century recently released the report of its international task force on Afghanistan, co-chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi, who twice represented the United Nations in Afghanistan, and Thomas R. Pickering, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Russia, and India. That report shifted the terms of debate over next steps for responding to the stalemate that has evolved in Afghanistan. The organization currently is involved in a partnership with the Economic Policy Institute and Demos, which produced a highly detailed and widely praised budgetary blueprint that established a progressive pole in the debate.

Nittoli received a bachelor’s degree from Marymount Manhattan College and a master’s degree in public and international affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.  She has published book chapters and articles on a variety of issues in human services and public policy and has taught graduate-level classes in research methods and public policy.  She is active on several nonprofit boards dedicated to youth and community services.

For media inquiries contact Christy Hicks at (212) 452-7723 or hicks@tcf.org. To learn more about The Century Foundation, visit our web site at www.tcf.org.

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Effective and fair strategies for reducing the deficit necessarily include revenue increases on the highest-income households, particularly now, when income distribution is extraordinarily skewed to the top and federal revenue is at the lowest level relative to the economy since 1950.  In The facts support raising revenues from highest-income households, Andrew Fieldhouse, Economic Policy Institute/The Century Foundation Federal Budget Policy Analyst, and Isaac Shapiro, EPI Director of Regulatory Policy Research, discuss the key facts that indicate why taxes should be raised on the highest-income households:

 

• Meager revenues and Bush-era tax cuts contribute greatly to the deficit.
• The top one percent of households benefited disproportionately from the Bush-era tax cuts.
• Recent income gains for the highest-income one percent have far exceeded gains for everyone else, leading to dramatic income concentration at the top of the scale. Now, more than ever, the highest-income households are in a better position to pay taxes.
• Wealth is even more concentrated at the top than income, and the main wealth tax—the estate tax—has been sharply reduced in recent years.
• Reasonable proposals for taxing the highest-income households can raise significant amounts of revenue.
• By not taxing the highest-income households, deficit reduction relies too heavily on spending cuts that harm low- and middle-income Americans.
• Raising taxes on the highest-income households reduces the deficit without having much impact on the economic recovery or job growth.
• Few small business owners have exceptionally high incomes, and thus few would be affected by these tax increases on the highest-income households.
• Even if taxes on those with the highest incomes are substantially increased, income gains at the top over time would still dramatically outpace gains among the rest of the population.
• The progressivity of the federal income-tax system offsets the regressive nature of federal payroll taxes and state and local tax systems.

 

This report and other information on budget issues can be found at Century’s website and at EPI’s website. For further information contact TCF’s Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or EPI’s Phoebe Salig at psilag@epi.org

WASHINGTON, D.C.---The debt ceiling deal that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday will lead to massive job loss in the short term and threatens economic growth in the long run, a new Economic Policy Institute/The Century Foundation analysis finds.  The spending cuts in the agreement to raise the debt ceiling, along with the failure to extend the payroll tax holiday and emergency unemployment insurance, will cost the economy 1.8 million jobs through 2012.  The deal disproportionately cuts the non-security discretionary (NSD) part of the federal budget to the lowest level in more than 50 years, potentially halving investments in education, transportation infrastructure, housing, health and infant nutrition over the next decade.

Debt ceiling deal threatens deep job losses and public investment by policy analysts Andrew Fieldhouse and Ethan Pollack finds that the spending cuts in the deal will reduce GDP by $43 billion in 2012, lowering employment by roughly 323,000 jobs.  The failure to extend the payroll tax cut will reduce GDP by $128 billion, resulting in roughly 972,000 fewer jobs, and the failure to continue emergency unemployment benefits will reduce GDP by $70 billion, resulting in roughly 528,000 fewer jobs.  In other words, the debt ceiling deal will result in more jobs lost in 2012, relative to current budget policy, than have been created since employment troughed in early 2010.

Over half of the deal’s spending cuts will come from the NSD portion of the budget, which represents only 15% of the total federal budget.  The deal’s initial spending cuts reduce NSD from 3.5% to 2% of GDP in 2021, the lowest level in over 50 years.  If the committee tasked with producing additional cuts cannot agree to a plan, or if Congress does not pass it, the sequestration mechanism would reduce NSD further, to 1.7% of GDP.  At the 1.7% level, NSD spending would be roughly half of what it is right now.

This report and other information on budget issues can be found at Century’s website and at EPI’s website. For further information contact TCF’s Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or EPI’s Phoebe Salig at psilag@epi.org

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A targeted, partially refundable tax rebate would be more effective than the current payroll tax cut that President Obama endorsed extending in his speech Monday night, a new Economic Policy Institute/The Century Foundation Issue Brief finds. In A bigger and better economic boost, Federal Budget Policy Analyst Andrew Fieldhouse explains that a modified version of the lump-sum tax rebates that were part of the 2008 Economic Stimulus Act (ESA) would cost the government roughly the same amount as the payroll tax cut but would generate more economic activity while doing more to alleviate poverty and help working families.

Enacted in December, the payroll tax cut reduced employees’ share of Social Security payroll taxes from 6.2% to 4.2%. The payroll tax cut replaced the Making Work Pay tax credit that had been implemented as part of the 2009 Recovery Act.

Because the payroll tax cut was not targeted to low- and middle-income workers—the workers most likely to spend it—it was not as effective in generating economic activity as a lump-sum tax rebate would have been. Multipliers developed by Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi suggest a refundable lump-sum tax rebate would result in roughly 12% more jobs created per dollar than the payroll tax cut.

Furthermore, the payroll tax cut actually increased taxes for all individuals making less than $20,000 annually. Tens of millions of the lowest-income workers had more disposable income under Making Work Pay than they did under the payroll tax cut.

Finally, the payroll tax cut exposed Social Security to greater political risk by reducing payroll tax receipts and making the program partially dependent on general revenue. Social Security is designed to have a dedicated funding source; a lump-sum tax rebate would leave this funding source intact.

This issue brief and other information on budget issues can be found at Century’s website and at EPI’s website.