Grandfather Clause Research Articles

Grandfathering and Greenhouse: The Role of Compensation and Adjustment Assistance in the Introduction of a Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme for Australia

The terms “grandfather clause” and “grandfathering” describe elements of a policy programme in which existing participants in an activity are protected from the impact of regulations, restrictions or charges applied to new entrants. In this paper, the role of grandfathering in the design of a carbon emissions trading scheme in Australia is assessed. It is argued that adjustment assistance policies such as those adopted in conjunction with previous microeconomic reform programmes are preferable to policies based on the free issue of emission permits. The suggestion that owners of capital assets should be compensated for changes in government policy that reduce the expected flow of income from those assets represents a radical, and undesirable, policy innovation.

The Case for Tax-Free Internet Access: A Primer on the Internet Tax Freedom Act

The Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) has reduced the cost of Internet access, spurred investment in the digital economy, and contributed to nine years of economic growth. However, the ITFA will expire in November 2007 unless Congress takes action. This report explains why Congress should make the current moratorium permanent and eliminate the grandfather clause which allows some states to tax Internet access at the expense of the nation as a whole. The report discusses the legislative history of the ITFA and the national benefits of tax free Internet access. Finally, the report reviews the objections cited by opponents of the moratorium and explain why these objections are unfounded.

‘A Public Expert in Matters of Account’: Defining the Chartered Accountant in England and Wales

This study addresses the attempts by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) to set its professional boundaries based on the performance of work in order to create a definition of the specialist chartered accountant or ‘public expert in matters of account’. The article, located in the 1880–1900 period, provides an insight into the activities and arenas in which chartered accountants could engage. The complexities associated with this demarcation between permissible and non-permissible activities, revealed through a series of ‘test cases’, were exacerbated by the ‘grandfather clauses’ contained in the ICAEW's Royal Charter.

Need for Informed Consent for Dentists Who Use Mercury Amalgam Restorative Material as Well as Technical Considerations in Removal of Dental Amalgam Restorations

Amalgam restorative material generally contains 50% mercury (Hg) in a complex mixture of copper, tin, silver, and zinc. It has been well documented that this mixture continually emits mercury vapor, which is dramatically increased by chewing, eating, brushing, and drinking hot liquids. Mercury has been demonstrated to have damaging effects on the kidney, central nervous system, and cardiovascular system, and has been implicated in gingival tattoos. While mercury amalgams may result in detrimental exposure to the patient, they can also be a danger in dental practices. In Europe, the federal governments of Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden have enacted legislation requiring that dental patients receive informed consent information about the dental restorative material that will be used. In the United States, a few state governments have enacted informed consent legislation for dental patients receiving dental restorations. These state legislations were enacted by Maine, California, Connecticut, and Vermont. It is a sad tragedy that mercury is causing such health damage to many people. The American Dental Association has said for the past 150 years that the mercury in amalgam is safe and does not leak; however, no clinical studies were ever done and the Food and Drug Administration approved amalgam under a grandfather clause. Subsequent studies have shown this claim of safety not to be true. Over ten years ago, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal published a comprehensive article calling mercury restorative material a major source of mercury exposure to the U.S. population. The authors of this paper recommend that federal and state legislation be passed throughout our country to ensure that consent forms are given to patients receiving silver-mercury amalgam restorative material.

Disfranchisement, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federal Courts: Alabama's 1901 Constitutional Convention Debates the Grandfather Clause

Disfranchisement, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federal Courts: Alabama's 1901 Constitutional Convention Debates the Grandfather Clause

Integrating new media and old media: Seven observations of convergence as a strategy for best practices in media organizations

This study examines convergence as both a concept and a process. It examines the current state of convergence, various definitions of convergence, convergence practices, and it identifies Seven Observations of Convergence to be used as a strategy for best practices for organizations to integrate new and old media. Everett Rogers (1995) diffusion of innovations and the five stages of the innovation process in organizations, coupled with innovation management research are theoretical foundations used to examine the infusion of technological changes into business practices in the media industry. The study is based on research conducted during the summer of 2002 that included in‐depth interviews, participation‐observation, and archival documents from three leading corporate media groups and convergence pioneers‐Tribune Company, Media‐General, and Belo Corp at their integrated business units in Chicago, Dallas, and Tampa, Florida. The three organizations were selected for field study because they are convergence pioneers that fell under the grandfather clause of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission 1975 cross‐ownership rule and were allowed to maintain ownership of their television broadcast and newspaper business units in the same market.

"A Living Death": Gothic Signification and the Nadir in The Marrow of Tradition

In his letter to Walter Hines Page dated 22 March 1899, Charles W. Chesnutt expressed dismay at the steady erosion of blacks' civil rights in turn-of-the-century America. Referring specifically to North Carolina's adoption of the grandfather clause that had been used to disenfranchise black male residents of several southern states, a the Supreme Court upheld in Williams v. Mississippi (1898), Chesnutt worried about the growing hostilities confronting black Americans. In language that displays mistrust of the jurisprudential wisdom of the nation's highest court, Chesnutt finds its to be but one more abuse of blacks: the Supreme Court of the United States is a dangerous place for a colored man to seek justice. He may go there with rights; he is apt to away with none at and with adverse shutting out even the hope of any future protection there; for the doctrine of stare decisis [the legal doctrine stipulating adherence to precedence] is as strongly intrenched [sic] there as the hopeless superiority of the Anglo-Saxon is in the Southern States. (To Be Author 121) As this passage makes clear, by the late 1890s, and especially following Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Chesnutt, like many African Americans, found the Supreme Court tacitly sympathetic to racist southern legislation. Beginning with the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 and continuing up through Williams v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court proved unwilling to overturn state laws that, it argued, only made possible the infringement of constitutional rights but did not target any particular group to suffer discrimination (Sundquist 237, 421). By deferring to states' rights throughout post-Reconstruction, the Supreme Court in effect allowed the persistent and deliberate hollowing out of black civil rights gained in the Reconstruction amendments. For Chesnutt, the fact that the Supreme Court had upheld Mississippi's outrageously unjust and unconstitutional law travestied the promise of Emancipation and revealed the Court to be a place of disheartening mystification (To Be Author 121). That a black person, in seeking from the Supreme Court redress for maimed fights, might come away with none at all, demonstrated the Court's role in restoring the political and social conditions of a quasi-slavery (emphasis added). As Eric J. Sundquist describes, blacks faced a return to a second slavery without the Court's protection of their constitutional rights (228). Moreover, as Chesnutt's comment underscores, because of stare decisis, an adverse decision by the Supreme Court effectively [shut] out even the hope of any future protection, thus threatening not just to recuperate white oppression of blacks but to make it a permanent feature of Jim Crow America. The prospect of permanent confinement to a second-class status made post-Reconstruction America the nadir moment for blacks. (1) Lacking legal protection of their recently won civil rights, African Americans confronted the specter of the antebellum South. In the same year that Chesnutt wrote to Page, he published The Conjure Woman (1899), a collection of thematically related stories that depicted the conditions of slave life on several neighboring North Carolina plantations. Hoping to counter the plantation nostalgia popularized by writers such as Thomas Nelson Page and Thomas Dixon, Chesnutt appropriated the local color dialect story to feature the oppressive brutality of the Old South's peculiar institution. Through their representation of slavery's dehumanization of blacks, the stories deromanticize the bygone southern idyll and haunt the post-Reconstruction South with its repressed history. Chesnutt's representation of conjure as a black folk-belief system involving the supernatural and giving agency to black resistance has generated analyses of The Conjure Woman as gothic fiction. …

Equity and Greenhouse Gas Responsibility

Disagreement over principles for the inclusion of developing countries in future global greenhouse gas caps remains an obstacle to the ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. [ Baer et al. ][1] argue that a transition from allocations based on past emissions (with a grandfather clause), such as the Kyoto Protocol, embodies for the industrialized nations, to allocations a new regime based on equal per capita emissions rights, is a necessary and fair solution that can lead to an effective global reduction regime. Such an allocation is consistent with numerous ethical principles and legal precedents, could facilitate trading in emissions permits, and can be implemented through a transitional period that accommodates the different situations and emissions levels of various countries. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/289/5488/2287

All That's Gold May Not Glitter

I. INTRODUCTION I own some common stock in a mining company called Canyon Resources, which owns (inter alia) a lease on a mine in Montana which contains 9.9 million ounces of gold and 30 million ounces of silver in mineralized rock. The mine(1) development project was in the process of obtaining the required permits in November 1998 when the voters of the State of Montana passed initiative which prohibited use of cyanide in a new or expanded mine operation. The practical effect of this prohibition is to make it economically unfeasible to extract the gold and silver from this mine. II. THE CYANIDE MINING PROCESS One of the mining methods used in the United States involves taking low-grade metal ore, crush[ing it,] and plac[ing it] in a pile on a leach pad.(2) The metallic minerals are then extracted sprinkling a leaching agent such as cyanide on top of the heap pile. As the leaching agent is drawn through the heap pile, it binds with the metallic ore and is `recovered through a system of collection channels beneath the heap'.(3) When this is recovered, the metallic mineral is extracted from the solution and the leaching agent is recycled for re-use.(4) If there is any loss or discharge of the leaching agent from the system [,it] will not only cause environmental damage but [will] also [cause] economic loss for the mining operation.(5) This process has been widely used in mines, including several in Montana,(6) for one hundred years or more. During the ten years prior to the 1998 initiative, Canyon Resources invested $70 million in preparing to operate the mine, with the expectation of extracting gold and silver worth up to $600 million.(7) III. INITIATIVE 137 On November 3, 1998, the anti-cyanide mining initiative (I-137) was passed by a 52-48% vote of the Montana electorate.(8) I-137 bars the use of cyanide leaching technology at new open-pit mines. Existing cyanide operations, including expansions, are allowed to continue.(9) So far as I can determine, this is the first statewide ban on cyanide process mining in the United States. Not surprisingly, at least two suits have been filed by other interested parties contesting the validity of I-137, and Canyon Resources is also considering litigation, though it first pursued possible avenues in the political process.(10) The mining community feels strongly that the effect of I-137 constitutes a taking of private for public use without just compensation,(11) in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.(12) As the Supreme Court stated in the early case of Pennsylvania Coal Company v. Mahon,(13) while may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.(14) Some values incident to property are subject to an implied limitation and must yield to the police power [, but that] implied limitation must have its limits....(15) When the diminution of values in reaches a certain magnitude, in most if not all cases there must be exercise of eminent domain and compensation....(16) IV. THE GRANDFATHER(17) CLAUSE IN I-137 I-137 provides that mine using heap leaching or vat leaching with cyanide ore processing reagents which was operating on November 3, 1998 could continue operating under its existing operating permit, presumably until the mine was exhausted. For Canyon Resources this would have been expected 12-14 years. Any mines already operating on that crucial date might continue their operations for much longer. Opponents of I-137 argued that cyanide had been used safely in mining in Montana and elsewhere for over one hundred years, with no harm to people, and little if evidence of injury to flora or fauna. Strong support for this position is the fact that the proponents of I-137 included the grandfather clause. If there was serious danger of harm to people, animals, or the environment, surely the correct action would be to stop the harmful activity immediately. …

OSHA proposes ergonomics standard

After several years of political controversy, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration has proposed a new standard designed to protect workers from repetitive stress injuries. The proposal would require companies to make one person responsible for ergonomic issues, to supply ergonomic resources and training on their use, to inform workers of ergonomic risk factors and symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders, and to set up a disability reporting system. Under the proposed standard, a company would have to establish a prevention program if just one worker suffers an ergonomic disability. OSHA claims its standard would be flexible and inexpensive. This proposal includes some unique provisions to expand flexibility, says Charles N. Jeffress, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health. We've given employers a quick-fix option and included a grandfather clause, both designed to limit what employers need to do while effectively protecting workers. OSHA estimates the standard would c...

Laboratory Data: Clinical Dietitians' Perceptions Of Usefulness And Barriers

This study sought to determine the usefulness of lab data to clinical dietitians and perceptions of barriers to that use. A questionnaire was mailed to 2000 inpatient hospital dietitians (RD). A total of 969 RDs responded; analysis involved only those who indicated they were currently employed as clinical dietitians (N-969). The most frequent uses of lab data were for assessment of nutrition status (85%), improving nutrition care (73%), and understanding the illness/disease state (72%). Uses were not dependent on age, years of experience, route to registration, or whether one held an advanced degree. Certified Nutrition Support Dietitians (CNSD) were less likely to use lab results to avoid malpractice (P=.03). Top perceived barriers included physicians failing to routinely order labs necessary for nutrition assessment (45%), lab results not routinely available (38%), and unresponsive physicians to requests for certain lab tests (20%). RDs in the 45-54 yr range were least likely to identify lack of time as a barrier (P=.002). Those who became RDs through the grandfather clause were most likely to note they were unsure about discussing lab values with patient or family (P=.002). RDs with advanced degrees were less likely to view lack of knowledge as an obstacle (P=.0001); those at the baccalaureate-level were more likely to identify lab results not routinely available (P=.01) as problematic. Both CNSD RDs (P=.03) and RDs certified as diabetes educators (P=.004) were more likely to identify that the physician does not routinely order necessary labs for nutrition assessment than were RDs not certified in these specialties. Although the uses for lab data were not unexpected, barriers would appear to indicate that better communication with physicians is warranted.

Front Porch

frontporch Most Faulkner lovers remember two bracketing passages fromAbsalom, Absalom! with special clarity. In the first, Shreve McCannon, a Canadian freshman at Harvard , asks his Mississippian roommate, Quentin Compson, to explain his homeland . "Tell about the South" he demands. " What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all." In reply, Quentin tells Shreve the tragic , convoluted saga of the Sutpen family, scarred by hubris, violence, brutality, racial oppression, miscegenation, and misplaced honor. It's not a pretty story, but when it's finally told, Shreve asks Quentin something else. " Why do you hate the South?'" he wonders, and evokes a famous answer. " ? dont hate it,' Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; ? dont hate it,' he said. Idonthate //he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: Idont. Idont!Idonthate it!Idont hate it!" It's a curious question and a curious answer. If Shreve believes that Quentin hates the South, there ought not to be any mystery about why: his lurid tale ofsin and destruction would be enough to make lots of young people hate their birthplaces . But if Quentin doesn't hate the South in spite of everything, why is he so defensive about saying so, not only to his roommate, but also to himself, thinking and panting in "the iron New England dark"? Every reader will ponder Shreve's questions individually, but lots ofus are familiar with Quentin's reaction. Let's face it: the story of the South is full of hate and hateful things. Why the place should nevertheless inspire such fierce love from its critics has puzzled a lot ofus, especially the lovers themselves. Whatever our own answers, the fact remains that love and hatred are deeply mingled in the feelings ofmany South-watchers, and southern traditions have supplied plenty of justifications for both at once. The essays in this issue of Southern Cultures provide ample fodder for love and criticism at the very least, and perhaps for something stronger. The grimmest news comes first. This fall marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the "Wilmington Race Riot," a bloody uprisingin the leading port city ofNorth Carolina. The episode led to at least fourteen deaths, the overthrow of a biracial city government , and the exile of dozens of talented leaders from the local black community . Even more than many other examples ofracial violence, the disturbances in Wilmington were overtly political, growing out ofa so-called "white supremacy campaign" deliberately incited by North Carolina's white political leadership in order to win support for literacy tests, the "grandfather clause," and legalized segregation . The campaign was not an isolated incident, moreover, but part ofa successful movement throughout the South at the turn of the century to strip black men ofthe right to vote and make the previously sporadic restrictions oftheJim Crow system uniform and ironclad. State historians have never quite ignored this episode, and novelists have explored it as well, especially in Charles W. Chesnutt's haunting exploration of racial identity at the turn of the century, The Marrow of Tradition. Even so, it's probably safe to say that the Wilmington Race Riot and the "white supremacy campaign" are better known by scholarly specialists than by the general public, though commemorative exercises this fall may correct that situation a bit. Andrea M. Kirshenbaum contributes to the process of remembrance by exploring a neglected aspect of the tragedy. In common with their counterparts across the South, white male leaders in North Carolina not only appealed to racial prejudices in their effort to win support for disfranchisement, but they also drew on specific ideas about the nature ofmen and women. Replying to a defiant black journalist who had defended black men against accusations of rape, white politicians and newspaper editors insisted that black men were voracious sexual predators whose propensity to rape white women was inflamed by the taste of equality represented by the right to vote and hold office. By contrast, white women were the innocent and defenseless victims of bestial black men, and it was the natural duty ofwhite men to protect their women by keeping them indoors, committing violence against "uppity...

Increasing the capital income tax may lead to faster growth

According to conventional economic wisdom, capital income taxes should be low. The purpose of this paper is to cast doubt on this general conclusion and to show that theory can also point in the opposite direction. The paper shows that under rather mild conditions, higher capital income taxes lead to faster growth in an overlapping generations economy with endogeneous growth. Government expenditures are fixed as a fraction of GNP and are financed with labor income taxes as well as capital income taxes. Since capital income accrues to the old, taxing it reliefs the tax burden on the young and leaves them with more income out of which to save. The net effect on savings is positive, if the interest elasticity of savings is sufficiently low, which it seems to be according to several estimates found in the literature. The basic argument is not seriously challenged by a grandfather clause for initial capital or by the old receiving some labor income as well. Extending the model to allow for multiple periods of lives, however, can overturn our results and support the conventional wisdom instead.

The Society for Vascular Surgery: Then and now

The Society for Vascular Surgery: Then and now

Crypt: In memoriam, Ralph Waldo Ellison, 1914-1994

Crypt*: In Memoriam, Ralph Waldo Ellison, 1914–1994 Michael S. Harper (bio) Back from the fingers of a twenty year old Barnard Rapunzel, raised on your embellished kidtales upcountry, and a garden too high for Plainfield to beat the frost, early and late; then the Bennington gang, chaotic hollers from the academy and still, such eloquence as The Lottery, a grand, poetic excuse for ritual; now Connecticut, where deep patterns of liquid science and art combine in sunsets, river wanderings, bluffs; you are Tuskegee Airman, gingertype: the annual football season of patterns in INVISIBLE MAN, who, defiantly, is not the author, leaping from rants to the bowels of Jack the Bear, a writer musing, in black and blue, over his memoir. overcome’um with grandfather clauses. The eagle of the Hudson in Moby Dick soars in zenith of birds, plunges in shadows of the caverns, regal forever. At the end, ‘who knows but that on the lower frequencies, I speak for you’; but it’s not over, as chaos reigns in the fictional light of polity, rainbow, without easy coalition. the artifact completes personality You are restless in the cylinder high above the patio, an empty chamber for the widow, Fanny, whose gaze will join yours out over the Hudson on Riverside Dr.: as ovenbird she will rescue those finished pages from the burning house, unfreezing inertia, releasing the cowering dog, as the cabin burns. Trinity Chapel is shabby, invited guests, the secret press, your brother, friends, students, in tutelage, and the word comes from the committal stopped dead at four score, seconds only, a lifetime. And here comes chaos: A man in a green jacket, with paltry tools, commands three swarthy, unkempt Hispanic workmen in unlaced nikes, such ceremony microscopic comfort for mourners (rollaway dolly grunting in hydraulics) and must be reminded of that democratic faith your prose lies in. Poet of invisibility, framed as Tarp limped in Fred Douglass’s remains, for Douglass’s house was set afire in Rochester, his portrait on the walls of the future, which was your dream. ‘You rascal, you’ you said to me; ‘uphill’ to your wondrous Fanny. You read Patrice’s birthday postcard from Bard; the music of his tears are restless compositions as he remembers lessons from the pit: ‘trained incapacity’ is shadow: blessed is the act. Remembering Ralph Ellison • John F. Callahan, Frequencies of Memory: A Eulogy for Ralph Waldo Ellison • Steve Cannon, Reminiscin’ in C: Remembering Ralph Waldo Ellison • Leon Forrest, Ralph Ellison Remembered • Michael S. Harper, “Crypt: In Memoriam, Ralph Waldo Ellison, 1914–1994” • Keneth Kinnamon, Ellison in Urbana: Memories and an Interview • David Levin, Ralph Ellison • Nathan A. Scott, Jr., Ellison’s Vision of Communitas • Richard Stern, Ralph Ellison Selected Works by Ralph Ellison • Cadillac Flambé • The Roof, the Steeple and the People Michael S. Harper Michael S. Harper is University Professor and Professor of English at Brown University. He recently co-edited Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep, an anthology of African American poetry from 1945 to the present. His forthcoming books of poems are Honorable Amendments and Collected Poems. Footnotes * Copyright © Michael S. Harper, 1995 Copyright © 1995 Charles H. Rowell

THE STATUS OF GERIATRIC MEDICINE

To the Editor: The current controversies1-4 surrounding the status of geriatric medicine are rooted in the rigid acceptance of the existing specialty-subspecialty paradigm for certification and classification of our medical disciplines. Since geriatric medicine and geriatricians are, in reality, square-pegs which do not fit in the round holes of the latter system, a modification of our conceptual framework is required if we are to resolve these debates. With the help of analogies taken from evolutionary biology and quantum mechanics, I modestly propose a different way of analyzing the nature of geriatric medicine, geriatricians, and the certification process. In his essay, “What If Anything Is a Zebra?”,5 Stephen J. Gould discusses the question of whether zebras are a single evolutionary unit or horses with stripes. Are geriatricians an entity unto themselves or are they a variation of the family medicine (FM)/internal medicine (IM) generalists? FM/IM generalists should be able to deliver quality geriatric medical care; however, that fact does not make them geriatricians any more than FM generalists who deliver quality pediatric care are pediatricians. Maintaining the necessary expertise to practice quality generalist internal or family medicine is a demanding and rigorous endeavor. The latter statement equally applies to those physicians who exclusively practice geriatric medicine. I agree with Beck6 that geriatric medicine is a unique discipline. The global skills and knowledge requirements of the FM/IM generalists and the geriatrician are different, and each have reached a magnitude which virtually precludes the possibility of maintaining simultaneous expertise in both fields. A geriatrician is a geriatrician, not a FM/IM generalist with stripes. Burton and Solomon3 have argued that geriatric medicine is a primary care specialty, while Morley4 has argued that it is a subspecialty. Both arguments are very convincing. Ettinger and Hazzard1 state that geriatricians clinically do mostly primary care, but they also list a number of unique functions for the geriatrician that are clearly features of the subspecialist. When Niels Bohr was confronted with conflicting experimental evidence that light demonstrated both wave-like and particle-like behavior, he was able to correctly resolve the problem only after first rejecting the “either-or” approach of his debating colleagues. Bohr's principle of complementarity7 holds that both the wave and particle theories are necessary to provide a complete description of light. Both primary care and subspecialty criteria are necessary to provide a complete description of geriatric medicine. Geriatric medicine is both a primary care specialty and a subspecialty. Geriatricians are both generalists and subspecialists. The philosophical rationale for the certification process for geriatricians is an enigma. Consider the following two facts. First, after successful completion of a 2-year fellowship in geriatric medicine and passing the certifying examination, a new geriatrician receives only a “certificate of Added Qualifications in Geriatric Medicine”! How are we to attract the “best and the brightest” physicians if we certify ourselves as essentially second-class citizens? Second, all physicians who have received the certificate of Added Qualifications in Geriatric Medicine (CAQG) from the American Board of Family Practice are required to keep their recertification in Family Practice, even if they practice only geriatric medicine. Failure to comply with the latter requirement may result in the loss of the CAQG. Because I practice full-time geriatric medicine, I have not practiced family medicine in a recognizable form for 12 years. Yet, I am required to be recertified in Family Practice every 7 years, while my recertification in Geriatric Medicine is only every 10 years! The latter recertification process violates the adage (attributed to William Osier) that to see patients without study is to sail a stormy sea, but to study without seeing patients is not to sail at all. More significantly, however, it reinforces the perception that geriatric medicine is not a legitimate discipline. The certifying process for geriatricians should result in a Board certification. What is a geriatrician? A geriatrician is a physician who exclusively practices the art and science of geriatric medicine, which is a unique and special discipline. A geriatrician is a physician who has completed a core training in internal medicine or family medicine and a fellowship in geriatric medicine (or the experiential equivalent for the grandfather clause physicians). A geriatrician is both a generalist and a subspecialist. A certified geriatrician should be Board certified. I agree with Ettinger and Hazzard1 that we are what we do; however, in order to successfully convey this idea to others, we will need to modify some of our concepts and procedures.

Retrospective and prospective on program impact assessment

Edward Suchman, sociologist, founded our field in 1967 with the book, Evaluation Research: Principles and Practices in Public Service and Social Action Programs. (In the background was Howard Freeman, sociologist, as a program developer for the Russell Sage Foundation.) Suchman cited Campbell and Stanley (1963/1966) as a part of recommended methodology. Thus by a sort of grandfather clause, I became a program evaluation methodologist. This explains in part why I, at age 77.9, am the oldest of the retrospectors and prospectors Midge Smith has assembled. Campbell and Stanley (1963/ 1966) and Campbell (1957) were originally designed to help social psychologists and educators retain the logic of causal inference of the laboratory experiment while moving out into the uncontrolled real world. They tried to specify what “controlled experiments” were controlling, and examine whether or not these threats to validity, these rival hypotheses, could be rendered implausible by other means than random assignment or experimental isolation. (While logical positivist in general orientation, we were post-positivist in recognizing that discretionary judgments of plausibility were the closest one could get to “control” or “proof.“) “Reforms as Experiments” (1969) was my first paper targeted to the program evaluation agenda. Cook and Campbell (1979) fused these foci.

Grandfather Clauses and Optimal Portfolio Revision

Introduction Adverse changes in the tax treatment of particular securities are often accompanied by grandfather clauses that shield existing holders from the changes. If these holders consider selling their positions, they should realize that any repurchases of these securities will be subject to the new, more severe tax law. By focusing on a particular provision in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, this article illustrates how to derive an optimal investment policy in the presence of grandfather clauses. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 required property-liability insurers to reduce their tax deductions for losses by 15 percent of their tax-free income,(1) effectively raising their marginal tax rate on tax-exempt income. A grandfather clause stated that the rule applies only to income from tax-exempt bonds purchased after August 8, 1986. Effects of this change are quite important: From 1986 to 1989, over 30 percent of property-liability insurers' financial assets were in tax-exempt bonds, and these insurers held about 16.4 percent of all tax-exempt bonds outstanding (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1990). The literature relating tax law to investment policy grew along two branches. The first derived tax-induced trading strategies under the assumption that all investors are taxed alike. For example, Constantinides (1983, 1984) and Constantinides and Ingersoll (1984) analyzed optimal deferral and realization of capital gains and losses in stock and bond markets. The second branch focused on the fact that not all investors are taxed alike. Schaefer (1982) showed that differentially taxed investors usually disagree on the relative value of securities and, consequently, choose to hold different sets of securities. Furthermore, the set of securities held by any class of investors may very well change over time. Subsequent work (e.g., Dybvig and Ross, 1986; Dammon and Green, 1987; Dermody and Prisman, 1988) analyzed equilibrium prices in the presence of differential taxation. The analysis here differs from both of these approaches. Whereas the first branch studied tax-induced trading in a particular asset, this article analyzes tax-induced trading across assets. And while the second branch studied the equilibrium implications of differential taxation, this article assumes that price movements can induce differentially taxed investors to switch from one asset to another in order to focus on an interesting investment problem. Furthermore, this is the first study of the effects of a grandfathered tax change on optimal trading strategies. The next section formalizes the investment problem of a property-liability insurer that holds exempt bonds bought before August 8, 1986. Then, using historical parameters, we show that the value of the option to switch between bond classes and the value of the grandfather clause have nontrivial magnitudes. The Model and Optimal Investment Policy This section first develops the model in the absence of capital gains taxation in order to illustrate clearly and simply the methodology and the main results. The second part of the section adds capital gains taxation to the model. No Capital Gains Taxation Assume the existence of two types of perpetuities. Both types pay $1, before taxes, each year, but the income from one type is tax-exempt, and the income from the other type is taxable. In an equilibrium characterized by differential taxation, the prices of the exempt and taxable securities will differ in a way that reflects the level of interest rates and the relative wealths of the different tax classes. Consequently, the difference between the two prices can be modeled as fluctuating randomly over time. For simplicity, we model the spread between taxables and exempts by fixing the price of the exempt perpetuity at some constant, |P.sub.E~, and letting the price of the taxable perpetuity, |P.sub.T~, fluctuate randomly. Now consider the investment decision facing a property-liability insurer. …

Motor Vehicle Fatalities and the Minimum Drinking Age

To the Editor.— Decker et al 1 raise a good question: Do young people respond better to general or to youth-targeted measures aimed at reducing fatal accidents? However, the finding by Decker et al that nighttime (alcoholprobable) fatalities among persons aged 19 through 20 years did not decrease after Tennessee enacted stricter anti— driving under the influence of alcohol laws in 1982, but did fall after the drinking age was raised from 19 to 21 years in 1984, is not an adequate answer. The largest decrease in the rate of nighttime fatal crashes (NFCs) among persons aged 19 through 20 years in Tennessee occurred in 1985, 2 when more than half this age group could still drink legally under the grandfather clause (under which the 21 drinking age was phased in over 2 years). Persons aged 20 years had a particularly large decrease in the rate of NFCs in 1985,

Erratum:&&A Survey of Drug Products Removed from the Market

AbstractA survey of drug product removal from the market was conducted for the years of 1980–1984 covering 24 firms and 95 products. The questionnaires were mailed to 46 firms and covered 200 products, 152 single entities and 48 combination products. Useable responses included 71 single entities and 24 combination products. The percentages of mode of product approval for the final sample were NDA 50%; ANDA, 16%, and grandfather clause, 34%. The mean life span was 20.4 years. The primary reasons for removal of the products were economic, 65%; regulatory, 27% and other, 8%. There was a significant difference in the approval modes and a marginally significant difference for the reasons of product removal from the market for the two product types. The reason for product removal was different for products approved under the three modes of approval, but this was only marginally significant statistically. The X2 test was used for these determinations. More drug products were removed from the market than were add...