Government Takeover Research Articles

Feeling Oceanic: Racial Identity and Postbellum Drift

In this essay we draw a historiographical line from J. M. W. Turner’s Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying (1840)—a representation of the Zong massacre—to Charles Chesnutt’s novel The Marrow of Tradition (1901). Turner’s optical opacities render black bodies faceless and fragmentary while also pulling the ground out from under the nominal spectator, an effect that joins typical period representations of black slaves and sailors with a self-reflexive counterpressure that implicates viewers (and readers) in sense-making operations that dissolve as much as they congeal. We offer a transatlantic reading of the painting that foreshadows postbellum concerns about the raced subject as it contends with identitarian drift. In Chesnutt’s narrative we find an unexpected intrusion of the oceanic (through a shipwreck nightmare) into the life of a Reconstruction-era woman who must come to grips with the specter of the sea’s between-space as the fluctuating nonsite where racial identity and ideology is formed and potentially re-formed. Olivia Carteret’s dreamscape coincides at the novel’s climax with the 1898 Wilmington riot, a white supremacist takeover of the local government. Shipwrecked and floating on the open water with her son, she encounters her mixed-race half sister Janet on an approaching boat. As a major conceit of the dream’s narrative, Olivia’s understanding of the legal and social stability of her son’s whiteness and the legitimacy of his inheritance is thrown into crisis as she is forced to recognize Janet as kin. We examine this scene in more detail to show how postbellum writers and artists appealed to the oceanic as an affective medium or canvas upon which negotiations of raced and gendered identities play out, especially those of subjects explicitly caught between national and ethnic imaginaries.

Cola di Rienzo and the reenactment of an ancient tale – finding the Prata Flaminia in fourteenth‐century Rome

From the anonymous contemporary biographer of Cola di Rienzo (c. 1313–54), we know that the self‐declared Roman tribune engaged in a theatrical approach to the assertion of power and employed stories and symbols of the city's ancient past to reinforce his short‐lived reign. One story from Livy was a natural fit for the flamboyant Cola in staging his takeover of Rome's government in May 1347, and yet has not received scholarly attention. This was the tale of Lucius Verginius, the fifth‐century B.C.E. centurion whose attempt to thwart the debauchery of his daughter by a ruling decemvir, instigated the so‐called second plebeian secession. Two important topographical touchstones for the story were the Aventine Hill where the plebs chose their new tribunes and the Prata Flaminia, later the Circus Flaminius, where they voted to make consul elections subject to their approval. Cola di Rienzo employed both of these locations in May 1347, with the former Prata Flaminia serving as the starting point for his march to the Capitoline to seize power. This article considers the reasons Cola would employ the Verginius tale, how he knew the site of the Prata Flaminia and possible reasons its true location was later forgotten until 1960.

Military Incursion, Tribalism and Poor Governance: The Consequences for Development in Nigeria

AbstractNigeria continues to face difficult challenges as a country comprising many ethnic groups with different socio-cultural, religious and economic backgrounds. This paper critically reviewed literature and found that these challenges have shaped Nigeria’s leadership and created unhealthy rivalry including, in particular, a deep sense of exploitation, marginalisation and oppression among certain ethnic groups. Despite Nigeria’s abundant natural resources, the early politicians became self-centred and failed to make good use of these resources to improve the well-being of poor Nigerians, especially those in the rural areas. Instead, it was found that the politicians were engaged in economic vandalism and political opportunism, which precipitated a premature military takeover of government.

Fascism as Action through Time (Or How It Can Happen Here)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how fascism may be identified by its actions, the stages through which a fascist rule takes power, and how to recognize it before it does so. The thesis is that a fascist takeover of a democratic government is rapid and unexpected. Its goal is a revolutionary reversal of representative government in the name of the people, while it accomplishes the opposite: a single-party corporate regime that replaces individual liberty with subtle, bureaucratic, and overt types of coercion. Rather than generate a generic definition of the many types of fascism, it is more useful to study how it affects the lives of ordinary people, the milieu out of which it develops, and what its precursors look like. Understanding fascism entails studying it from the point of view of those who lived under it and recorded their experiences, as well as from the analytic perspectives of social scientists. As Robert O. Paxton observes: “The fascist phenomenon was poorly understood at the beginning in part because it was unexpected.”1 We are facing the question again in 2017 with the surprise election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president of the United States by a minority of the popular vote and the evident support of the white nationalist milieu. Paxton proposes a five-stage theory for understanding fascism in its many varieties. A developmental sequence is proposed against which current events in the United States may be assessed.

Managing political imperatives in war time: strategic responses of Philips in Australia, 1939–1945

The Australian subsidiary of Dutch multi-national enterprise Philips came under secret service surveillance and faced risk of government takeover as enemy property during World War II. It was also excluded from Australian government contracts for war-related communications equipment at a time when it was forced to reduce civilian production. These threats to its assets and operations required the firm to develop an adaptive corporate strategy in order to respond to the political imperatives it faced; not just minimising political risk, but also taking advantage of the opportunities that war-related production offered during the war years and after.

America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare SystemOvercoming Obamacare: Three Approaches to Reversing the Government Takeover of Health Care

America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare SystemOvercoming Obamacare: Three Approaches to Reversing the Government Takeover of Health Care

The Impact of Albanian Political Immigration to the US on the Establishment of Democracy in Albania

The United States have been a determening factor in favour of Albania’s existence as an independent country. For every researcher this is a very known fact. It was Presidnet Wilson who with his decisive verdict saved the territorial integrity of Albania whilsts there were certain plans with the intention of harming the albanian interest. The Albanian-American relations were at their best at the time of the government of King Zog. A great number of economic bilateral agreements took place in order to strengthen these relations. Diplomatic relations would disrupt with the takeover of Hoxha's communist government. The United States efforts to install in Albania a western democracy resulted unsuccessful. During the war and after, a US mission exercised his activity inside Albanian territory. This mission was led by Jacobs and Fultz. Enver Hoxha's request for recognition of Albania from the US government, received a responce in which the US would recognize Albania only after they analyzed the situation in Albania. Jacobs asked the Albanian government to recognize all political, economic and military agreements signed earlier by the US government and King Zog. This request was rejected by Hoxha, who sought recognition of the Albanian government without any condition. 1946 marked the final departure of the US Mission to Albania and the decay of US-Albanian relations. US were not ready to recognize a state that refused to practice free and democratic elections, a state that violated every human rights and freedoms. Albanians would had to wait half a century for the restoration of the diplomatic relations with the US. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n3p259

Lunatics, Idiots, Paupers, and Negro Seamen—Immigration Federalism and the Early American State

Why did it take the U.S. national government until 1882 to gain control over migration policies from the states, and what does this situation say about the strength of the early American State? This phenomenon is especially curious, since the control of entry into and across a nation is so fundamental to the very definition of a State. I argue that the delay of the national government takeover was not due to a lack of administrative capacity. Instead, there were regionally specific reasons that the states preferred to retain control of migration policy. The national government did not take over migration policy because of the strong nineteenth-century political-cultural understanding that many migration policies were properly within the province of local control. This article explains the timing and sequencing of state and federal controls over nineteenth-century migration policy and what this timing meant for the freedom of movement of many politically vulnerable classes of people.

A sub-national scale geospatial analysis of diamond deposit lootability: The case of the Central African Republic

The Central African Republic (CAR), a country with rich diamond deposits and a tumultuous political history, experienced a government takeover by the Seleka rebel coalition in 2013. It is within this context that we developed and implemented a geospatial approach for assessing the lootability of high value-to-weight resource deposits, using the case of diamonds in CAR as an example. According to current definitions of lootability, or the vulnerability of deposits to exploitation, CAR's two major diamond deposits are similarly lootable. However, using this geospatial approach, we demonstrate that the deposits experience differing political geographic, spatial location, and cultural geographic contexts, rendering the eastern deposits more lootable than the western deposits. The patterns identified through this detailed analysis highlight the geographic complexities surrounding the issue of conflict resources and lootability, and speak to the importance of examining these topics at the sub-national scale, rather than relying on national-scale statistics.

Right-Wing Conspiracy? Socialist Plot? The Origins of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Did the ACA signify a government takeover of the health care system, a first step on the road to socialism, as conservative critics charged? Or was it, rather, a sellout to the right wing, as liberal single-payer advocates proclaimed? The ACA's key provisions, the employer mandate and the individual mandate, were Republican policy ideas, and its fundamental principles were nearly identical to the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993 (HEART), a bill promoted by Republican senators to deflect support for President Bill Clinton's Health Security plan. Yet the ACA was also a policy legacy of the Clinton administration in important ways that rarely are acknowledged, notably Medicaid expansion and insurance company regulation. Although the ACA departed from the liberal vision of a single-payer plan and adhered closely to the objectives of those who believed that the health care system should encourage the free market, it included provisions that will make coverage more affordable, reliable, and accessible.

The Catholic Church, the Nigerian Civil War, and the Beginning of Organized Lay Apostolate Groups among the Igbos of Southeastern Nigeria

The socioeconomic crisis of the postwar period, the government takeover of mission schools, and the expulsion of expatriate missionaries opened the way for a larger role for the laity in Igboland South in eastern Nigeria, especially in evangelization and the organization of lay groups. Although these lay groups made some progress in addressing the problems of the period, taking the gospel message beyond conversion, adopting a more radical approach to evangelization, and building a healthier society remained substantial challenges.

Sarbanes-Oxley and the Accounting Profession: Public Interest Implications

The USaccounting profession was caught up in, and some say responsible for, the whirlwind of accounting and business scandals that rocked the US markets in 2002. To restore investor confidence in financial information, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act created a new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board with the authority to set standards for auditors of publicly traded companies, thus ending a century of professional regulation of auditing. In this analysis we employ sociological theories of professionalism [1-4] to help understand the implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation for the accounting profession and for the public interest. We explain why professional self-regulation is important for retaining valuable economic franchises. We also explain why the public interest orientation of the profession is important and how government take-over of auditing standards potentially erodes the public accounting profession’s commitment to the public interest. Self-control over professional work, a key characteristic of professional status, is pre-empted by the newly created government oversight body PCAOB. With government takeover of oversight of auditing practice, claims to professional status are weakened and professional commitment to and involvement with vital work standards may suffer. In addition, the profession may no longer have incentives to promote the public interest or to innovate and change in response to changing conditions. We also trace events leading up to Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and conclude that underlying problems arising from internal work differentiation as consulting work became more profitable and glamorous and development of a commercially oriented work culture may continue to threaten the profession in the future. Finally, we speculate that the greatest costs may be opportunity costs as the profession no longer has the incentives or ability to innovate and embrace new forms of accountability.

The Government Takeover of the U.S. Telephone System During World War I

One of the most distinctive characteristics of the U.S. telephone system is that it has always been privately owned, in stark contrast to the pattern of government ownership followed by virtually every other nation. What is not widely known is how close the United States came to falling in line with the rest of the world. For the one-year period following July 31, 1918, the exigencies of World War I led the federal government to take over the U.S. telephone system. A close examination of this episode sheds new light into a number of current policy issues. The history confirms that natural monopoly was not solely responsible for AT&T’s return to dominance and reveals that the Kingsbury Commitment was more effective in deterring monopoly than generally believed. Instead, a significant force driving the re-monopolization of the telephone system was the U.S. Postmaster General, Albert Burleson — not Theodore Vail, President of AT&T. It also demonstrates that universal service was the result of government-imposed emulation of the postal system, not, as some have claimed, a post hoc rationalization for maintaining monopoly. The most remarkable question is, having once obtained control over the telephone system, why did the federal government ever let it go? The dynamics surrounding this decision reveal the inherent limits of relying on war to justify extraordinary actions. More importantly, it shows the difficulties that governments face in overseeing industries that are undergoing dynamic technological change and that require significant capital investments.

A Conversation with Donald Berwick on Implementing National Health Reform

Michael Birnbaum interviews Donald Berwick shortly after his departure from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about the national health care landscape. Berwick discusses the strategic vision, policy levers, operational challenges, and political significance of federal health care reform. He rejects the notion that the Affordable Care Act represents a government takeover of health care financing or service delivery but says the law's Medicaid expansion and its creation of health benefit exchanges present a "watershed moment for American federalism." Berwick argues that the solution to Medicare's cost-containment challenge lies in quality improvement. He is optimistic that accountable care organizations can deliver savings and suggests that shifting risk downstream to providers throws the health insurance model into question. Finally, looking to the future, Berwick sees a race against time to make American health care more affordable.

Three Ethical Roots of the Economic Crisis

On Sept 15, 2008, ‘‘Dark Monday,’’ the world witnessed a radical reshaping of Wall Street. Lehman Brothers fell toward bankruptcy; Merrill Lynch was sold to its rival, Bank of America; and AIG pleaded for $40 billion in government relief. Those calamities marched in step with a dismal parade including the US government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bailout of Bear Stearns, and the entire subprime debacle. We rightly blame Wall Street leaders for bungling business decisions, for misestimating risk and overloading banks with single-strategy investments. We now are living with the aftermath of these business mistakes. But how about ethical mistakes? Were they, too, part of the crisis? Of course we need and certainly will get more robust regulation. We have been reminded that banks are like utilities. We must keep the lights on; we must heat our homes. The biggest banks cannot fail; and that’s why at least the utility-like portion of banking will have to be regulated, and regulated more firmly. That’s an important

Political Significance of Reform

The terms used to describe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 seem so polemical and exaggerated — private takeover, socialized medicine, Obamacare, death panels — that many questions arise. Is this reform truly historic? Is it a big-bang reform or classic American incrementalism, building slowly and persistently on the existing system? Are there clear historical roots in this reform, and are there parts of the ACA that will potentially take the United States in a new direction? These are the questions addressed by the essays in this section. James A. Morone provides a broad historical look and shows us how social insurance, Lockean liberalism, a broken Congress, and our need for a neo-Progressive technical fix have shaped the U.S. health care system and this particular reform. Kimberly J. Morgan and Andrea Louise Campbell explain how the ACA is yet another example of the American penchant for delegated governance. Although technical feasibility and efficiency are often used to explain this preference, Morgan and Campbell show how classic liberal views for minimal government and interest-group mobilization are at the root of our reliance on delegation. Marie Gottschalk helps us understand why Democrats abandoned the movement for a single-payer system in lieu of a public option. She examines why this approach failed, as well as its costs and implications. In a response to the hyperbolic descriptions above, I then demonstrate how the ACA is neither extreme government takeover nor private privilege but is consistent with an established pattern of building up the U.S. health care state through investments in private provision and infrastructure, then hiding such investments from view. Finally, as a seasoned health policy analyst and herself a political player, Judith Feder considers the political and policy significance of the ACA in light of the long-term struggle to enact health care reform in the United States.

Under protest: the rise of student resistance at the University of Fort Hare

Under Protest, by Fort Hare alumnus Daniel Massey, combines a trove of previously untapped university records with the recollections of dozens of former students to dig deep into the complex past of the institution that educated figures like Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Robert Mugabe. Through the eyes of former students, we see just how the university veered sharply off the course intended by its missionary founders and apartheid trustees, giving birth to many of the most important leaders in South Africa’s struggle for democracy. Massey interviews Fort Harians ranging from Govan Mbeki and Wycliffe Tsotsi to Jeff Baqwa and Thenjiwe Mtintso, who explain the vital role Fort Hare played in the development of their activism. He pays particular attention to the 1960 government takeover, showing how the authorities’ attempt to stifle student protest ended up creating the hothouse conditions that eventually brought apartheid to its knees.

Profits Before Health: An Insurance Tell-All

Profits Before Health: An Insurance Tell-All

Public Goods, Public Utilities, and the Public's Health

The battle over dismantling health reform dominates today s health policy agenda. Some opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148)--now typically referred to as the Affordable Care Act (ACA)--comes from those on the political left who see health care as public good similar to the military, the fire department, and the court system (Physicians for National Health Program, 2010). Only government can fund and deliver public goods, because the private market cannot be relied on to do so with the equity and efficiency required for critical services needed by everyone. Many on the political right fear a government takeover of the health care system that will lead to the loss of the very market-driven, creative solutions that are so desperately needed to reign in the cost escalations that threaten to make health care unaffordable. I see the ACA as politically shrewd compromise that captures the principal benefits of both camps and creates the least disruptive path to workable framework that can ultimately lead to universal health insurance coverage at sustainable prices. This middle ground is achieved through the ACA'S requirements shifting the health care system from lightly regulated market commodity to heavily regulated public utility. Public utilities are privately owned firms that provide necessities in monopoly or near-monopoly situations. Because unfettered monopolies can price gouge, they are required to accept extensive government regulation to ensure that they do not abuse their market power. Some public utilities are complete monopolies (for example, regional electric, water, and gas companies), and others (for example, cable television, telecommunications) have some modest competition. However, all public utilities are profit-driven, privately owned businesses, which distinguishes them from public goods that are funded and operated by the public sector. Public utility regulation has two fundamental characteristics. First, all utilities are legally obligated to serve virtually everyone, despite the known unprofitability of certain customers and customer groups. All customers are allowed to use as much of utility's services as they like, with occasional exceptions such as temporary limits on lawn watering during droughts. Second, the prices that are charged to consumers are determined by public commissions rather than private corporations. Public utility commissions have essentially unrestricted access to firm's books. This provides them with far greater insight into company's financing than is required of publicly held companies, let alone privately owned businesses and other proprietorships. Contrast that environment with how health insurers operated up till now. Insurers could select their customers and set their own prices, like any other seller of goods and services in private market. Insurers do contend with some government regulation handled primarily at the state level, but these regulations are limited to issues such as fiscal solvency requirements, state-mandated benefits, patient protection laws for managed care plans, and truth-in-advertising and other marketing practices. However, state regulation does not address consumer accessibility or pricing. In 1996, enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) (EL. 104191) created federal-level regulation for insurers in the large-group and self-insured employer markets. HIPAA requires insurers to cover all group members, regardless of preexisting conditions, and to renew all insurance plans, regardless of claims experience. However, HIPAA's impact is limited in that it does not address pricing. This makes guaranteed issue and guaranteed renewability hollow promise, because annual premiums can be hiked at the whim of the insurance company. Undesirable clients can simply be priced out of the market. And HIPAA does not apply to the individual and small-group markets, the areas where consumer rights are most constrained. …

From Church to State: the Queensland Government take-over of Anglican Missions in North Queensland

The bansfer of administrative and financial responsibility from the Anglican Church to the Queensland Government was an epiphanal event, in that it brought to the surface many issues underlying Anglican missionary policy and practice, the relationship between church and state, and the relationship of both with the Aboriginal people through the 75 years of Anglican government. Significantly the Aborigines who grew up on missions were thought of, and referred to, as 'inmates' until the end of this missionary era.