Debt's Dominion

Debt's Dominion

Author: David A. Skeel Jr.

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-04-24

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1400828503

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Bankruptcy in America, in stark contrast to its status in most other countries, typically signifies not a debtor's last gasp but an opportunity to catch one's breath and recoup. Why has the nation's legal system evolved to allow both corporate and individual debtors greater control over their fate than imaginable elsewhere? Masterfully probing the political dynamics behind this question, David Skeel here provides the first complete account of the remarkable journey American bankruptcy law has taken from its beginnings in 1800, when Congress lifted the country's first bankruptcy code right out of English law, to the present day. Skeel shows that the confluence of three forces that emerged over many years--an organized creditor lobby, pro-debtor ideological currents, and an increasingly powerful bankruptcy bar--explains the distinctive contours of American bankruptcy law. Their interplay, he argues in clear, inviting prose, has seen efforts to legislate bankruptcy become a compelling battle royale between bankers and lawyers--one in which the bankers recently seem to have gained the upper hand. Skeel demonstrates, for example, that a fiercely divided bankruptcy commission and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress have yielded the recent, ideologically charged battles over consumer bankruptcy. The uniqueness of American bankruptcy has often been noted, but it has never been explained. As different as twenty-first century America is from the horse-and-buggy era origins of our bankruptcy laws, Skeel shows that the same political factors continue to shape our unique response to financial distress.


Reinventing Detroit

Reinventing Detroit

Author: Michael Peter Smith

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 135149399X

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This book addresses the questions of what went wrong with Detroit and what can be done to reinvent the Motor City. Various answers to the former-deindustrialization, white flight, and a disappearing tax base-are now well understood. Less discussed are potential paths forward, stemming from alternative explanations of Detroit's long-term decline and reconsideration of the challenges the city currently faces. Urban crisis-socioeconomic, fiscal, and political-has seemingly narrowed the range of possible interventions. Growth-oriented redevelopment strategies have not reversed Detroit's decline, but in the wake of crisis, officials have increasingly funnelled limited public resources into the city's commercial core via an implicit policy of "urban triage." The crisis has also led to the emergency management of the city by extra-democratic entities. As a disruptive historical event, Detroit's crisis is a moment teeming with political possibilities. The critical rethinking of Detroit's past, present, and future is essential reading for both urban studies scholars and the general public.


Urban Emergency (Mis)Management and the Crisis of Neoliberalism

Urban Emergency (Mis)Management and the Crisis of Neoliberalism

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-08-24

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 9004446176

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Urban Emergency (Mis)Management and the Crisis of Neoliberalism: Flint, MI in Context examines the malfeasance and mismanagement that poisoned a city’s water. The authors emphasize the structural forces that engendered the water crisis, and, especially, the long history of racial oppression, racist government policies, and everyday forms of inequality, that shape the life chances for Flint’s residents.


Ratf**ked

Ratf**ked

Author: David Daley

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1631491628

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The explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting. With Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrats swooned, a small cadre of Republican operatives, including Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, and Chris Jankowski began plotting their comeback with a simple yet ingenious plan. These men had devised a way to take a tradition of dirty tricks—known to political insiders as “ratf**king”—to a whole new, unprecedented level. Flooding state races with a gold rush of dark money made possible by Citizens United, the Republicans reshaped state legislatures, where the power to redistrict is held. Reconstructing this never- told-before story, David Daley examines the far-reaching effects of this so-called REDMAP program, which has radically altered America’s electoral map and created a firewall in the House, insulating the party and its wealthy donors from popular democracy. Ratf**ked pulls back the curtain on one of the greatest heists in American political history.


A Dream Foreclosed

A Dream Foreclosed

Author: Laura Gottesdiener

Publisher: Zuccotti Park Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1884519210

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A moving exploration of homeownership, freedom, and the American Dream in light of the ongoing financial crisis and mass foreclosure.


Subnational Capital Markets in Developing Countries

Subnational Capital Markets in Developing Countries

Author: Mila Freire

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13: 9780821354643

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This publication has been prepared by staff members of the World Bank and selected guest contributors. It sets out a framework to study subnational governments as borrowers and the range of credit markets in which they may operate. It also contains a number of case studies which detail the recent experience of 18 countries in developing markets for subnational borrowers., and offer insights into lessons to be drawn on fostering responsible credit market access within a framework of fiscal and financial discipline. Other issues discussed include: the issuing of municipal debt and its characteristics, and the role of macroeconomic conditions and market development in the success or failure of those borrowings.


Local Redistribution and Local Democracy

Local Redistribution and Local Democracy

Author: Clayton P. Gillette

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2011-06-28

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0300125658

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DIVThe traditional theory of urban finance argues against local redistribution of wealth on the assumption that such action is likely to chase away the relatively wealthy, leaving only the impoverished behind. Nevertheless, Clayton P. Gillette observes, local governments engage in substantial redistribution, both to the wealthy and to the poor. In this thoughtful book, Gillette examines whether recent campaigns to enact "living wage" ordinances and other local redistributive programs represent gaps in the traditional theory or political opportunism. He then investigates the role of the courts in distinguishing between these explanations. The author argues that courts have greater capacity to review local programs than is typically assumed. He concludes that when a single interest group dominates the political process, judicial intervention to determine a program's legal validity may be appropriate. But if the political contest involves competing groups, courts should defer to local political judgments. /div


Landscape as Infrastructure

Landscape as Infrastructure

Author: Pierre Belanger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 131724317X

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As ecology becomes the new engineering, the projection of landscape as infrastructure—the contemporary alignment of the disciplines of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and urban planning— has become pressing. Predominant challenges facing urban regions and territories today—including shifting climates, material flows, and population mobilities, are addressed and strategized here. Responding to the under-performance of master planning and over-exertion of technological systems at the end of twentieth century, this book argues for the strategic design of "infrastructural ecologies," describing a synthetic landscape of living, biophysical systems that operate as urban infrastructures to shape and direct the future of urban economies and cultures into the 21st century. Pierre Bélanger is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. As part of the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Advansed Studies Program, Bélanger teaches and coordinates graduate courses on the convergence of ecology, infrastructure and urbanism in the interrelated fields of design, planning and engineering. Dr. Bélanger is author of the 35th edition of the Pamphlet Architecture Series from Princeton Architectural Press, GOING LIVE: from States to Systems (pa35.net), co-editor with Jennifer Sigler of the 39th issue of Harvard Design Magazine, Wet Matter, and co-author of the forthcoming volume ECOLOGIES OF POWER: Mapping Military Geographies & Logistical Landscapes of the U.S. Department of Defense. As a landscape architect and urbanist, he is the recipient of the 2008 Canada Prix de Rome in Architecture and the Curator for the Canada Pavilion ad Canadian Exhibition, "EXTRACTION," at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (extraction.ca).


Disciplining the Poor

Disciplining the Poor

Author: Joe Soss

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-11-30

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0226768767

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This volume lays out the underlying logic of contemporary poverty governance in the United States. The authors argue that poverty governance has been transformed in the United States by two significant developments.