Government Must Do More (far more) to Ensure Fair Housing

By Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA (Fair housing protest, 1964 Uploaded by Jmabel) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

“When high-income black families cannot qualify for a prime loan and are steered away from white suburbs, the goals of the Fair Housing Act are not fulfilled,” [former Vice President Walter Mondale] said. “When the federal and state governments will pay to build new suburban highways, streets, sewers, schools and parks, but then allow these communities to exclude affordable housing and nonwhite citizens, the goals of the Fair Housing Act are not fulfilled. When we build most new subsidized housing in poor black or Latino neighborhoods, the goals of the Fair Housing Act are not fulfilled.”

—NY Times Editorial, “The Architecture of Segregation“

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The C.I.A. to Adopt Model of Mayoral Control

“[John Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.] said that the Defense Department’s structure of having a single military commander in charge of all operations in a particular region— the way a four-star commander runs United States Central Command— was an efficient structure that led to better accountability.”

–Mark Mazzetti, “C.I.A. to Be Overhauled To Fight Modern Threats” on the N.Y. Times

Multifactorial Approaches, Rather Than One-Dimensional Approaches

“Multigenerational poverty is self-evidently more than a question of housing. It is unlikely to yield to even the best-intentioned one-dimensional approach.

Multifactorial approaches may be more productive.”

–Thomas B. Edsall, “Does Moving Poor People Work” on the NY Times

The Impact of Environment on Sitzfleisch

“We don’t need to be victims of our emotions,” Mr. Mischel says. “We have a prefrontal cortex that allows us to evaluate whether or not we like the emotions that are running us.” This is harder for children exposed to chronic stress, because their limbic systems go into overdrive. But crucially, if their environment changes, their self-control abilities can improve, he says. [bold added]

–Walter Mischel, the infamous Marshmallow test man, in an article by Pamela Druckerman “Learning How to Exert Self-Control” in the NY Times