E-Briefing April 7, 2000 Solving the Nation's Problems: Advice to the presidential candidates Later this year, voters in the United States will be making an important choice about who will be the next president. Each candidate employs legions of advisers for counsel on everything from hairstyles to foreign policy. This week's University of Cincinnati e-briefing asks scholars to take on the role of adviser to the presidential candidates by offering concrete advice on the nation's most pressing problems and outlining what the next president's priorities should be. I. International affairs a. Relations with Russia b. Foreign and national security policy II. Family issues a. Women's rights b. Education c. Forget school vouchers d. Child care e. Family vs. work demands III. Economic issues a. Poverty and old age b. Children in poverty IV. Social Issues a. Pollution and energy b. Jails and crime c. Mental illness V. Political issues a. Campaign finance reform b. Voter apathy I.INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS A. RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA When it comes to U.S. relations with Russia and aiding its development in the post-Communist era, Z. Lew Melnyk, suggests a four-point strategy. The UC professor emeritus and Ukraine native specializes in the economic affairs of the former Soviet Union. He says that U.S. strategy so far has not been very clear. "It seems to me that, number one, we should stop any assistance until they stop the genocide in Chechnya. They are spending more on the war than they receive in assistance from the West," he said. "Number two, we should not give any financial assistance without requiring functioning safeguards that assure that the money we give is going to legitimate purposes such as new businesses, the development of young entrepreneurs and the educational system. Number three, we should demand from Mr. Putin a clearcut program on economic reforms and democratization of Russia's political processes, as well as insuring and protecting the constitutional rights of their national minorities. So far he has said virtually nothing. Putin has been quoted in Business Week saying that he wants to establish 'a dictatorship of the law.' In the former USSR, there was also a dictatorship of the law...the imposition of the will of the party. Number four, Russia must cease interfering in the internal affairs of and exerting political pressures on its neighbors." contact: 513-759-9992 B. FOREIGN AND NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY During the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy was pre-occupied with the question of how to deal with Soviet power and trying to contain it. According to Richard Harknett, associate professor of political science at UC, the next president faces a much more complex, multi-faceted challenge. The grand strategic question facing the United States in 2001 is how do you best protect a lead. "The United States is the dominant military and economic power in the world. It must be the goal of the next president to maintain that preeminent position, which can be undermined in only two ways. First, by the emergence of a highly-motivated significant challenger. Or second, by poor statecraft on the part of the United States." Harknett doesn't believe that between 2001-2004 (first term), there will be any country that emerges as a peer of the United States. One of the most important issues facing the next president will be deployment of a National Missile Defense System. He urges the next president to make a decision based on an overall assessment on its impact on the grand strategic question: maintaining the U.S. lead. "If handled poorly, deployment of NMD can lead to an undermining of America's preeminent global position, rather than enhance it," he said. contact: 513-556-3314 II FAMILY ISSUES A. WOMEN'S RIGHTS Pay inequity between men and women remains a problem that contributes to poverty, says Lisa Hogeland, director of UC's Center for Women's Studies. She appeals to the presidential candidates to enforce equal pay laws already on the books and to strengthen them with additional ones. "In 30 years of contemporary feminism, you would think this would not be a problem any longer. But for every dollar earned by men, women still earn only 75 cents. It used to be 59 cents, so things have improved, but not enough. Think of the impact this might have on the poverty of single mothers if equal pay for equal work was enforced," she said. contact: 513-556-6652 B. EDUCATION Margery Shupe, an academic counselor at UC's University College, would advise the candidates to get back to the basics to prepare kids for college. "They need to particularly focus on math and English. We also need better methods on the high school level of evaluating whether a student is learning and meeting academic standards so they can perform well in college." Shupe's expertise focuses on learning disabilities. She suggests the candidates check the research about the success of mentoring programs. "I think mentoring programs that focus on achievement in academics and that foster relationships with local professionals would be very helpful to students -- someone in addition to their parents to offer guidance." contact: 513-556-1634 C: FORGET SCHOOL VOUCHERS School voucher programs and charter schools are not the solution to the educational problems we face, argues Marvin Berlowitz, UC professor of education and director of the Urban Center for Peace Research, Implementation, Development and Education (UCPRIDE). Instead these approaches will just exacerbate the growing disparities between the wealthy and the working poor. "Privatization must be resisted, and public education must receive a level of financial support commensurate with the top priority which it should be." contact: 513-556-3608 D. CHILD CARE Advocacy for quality programming and care for children from birth to age 5 must be an integral part of any humanitarian, intelligent, forward-thinking politician's campaign, according to Vicki Carr, director of the UC Arlitt Child and Family Research and Education Center. She urged the presidential candidates to view the profession of early childhood educators "as extremely important and invaluable versus 'anyone can watch children.'" Quality programs need substantial funding to provide appropriate environments, materials, staff salaries and support services. Furthermore, parents, regardless of income level, need access to these quality programs. contact: 513-556-3805 E. FAMILY VS. WORK DEMANDS UC sociologist David J. Maume Jr. wants the presidential candidates to find a way for workers to take family leave without sacrificing all their wages. He suggests the answer lies in unemployment funds collected by each state. Although the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 allows employees to take up to three months off to care for newborns or sick children, according to one national study, two-thirds of employees who didn't take family leave when they needed it cited lost wages as the reason they didn't. So far four states -- Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont and Washington -- have obtained the U.S. Department of Labor's approval to use unemployment funds to provide family leave to individuals taking time off from work to care for newborn babies. Maume, director of the Kunz Center for the Study of Work and Family at UC, suggests that the presidential candidates should support this initiative and encourage all states to fund family leave in this way. A survey by the National Partnership for Women in Families, an advocacy group, found that 79 percent of Americans support using unemployment funds for family leave, he said. "The demand is there and if you care about how the next generation turns out, it has to be a good thing to let employees stay home with their newborn children. This would allow an infant to get off on the right foot and allow parents to get off on the right foot," he said. contact: 513-556-4713 III. ECONOMIC ISSUES A. POVERTY & OLD AGE To prepare for a future in which there may be just as many elderly women who are divorced and not remarried as there are aged widows, a UC assistant professor of social work suggests the nation prepare to do something to keep these elderly single women from living in poverty. Currently, Social Security earnings are treated as individual earnings, so when a husband and wife divorce, each keeps their own benefits. Diane Marcus, an expert on aging issues in UC's School of Social Work, says the problem with that is that it leaves many divorced women with little Social Security income when they retire. "Let's face it, women take care of children and many of them hold low-paying jobs and pass up promotions in order to make time to care for the kids. That leaves them without much to live on later in life." Marcus advises the presidential candidates to make sure that a federal law is passed that mandates splitting the spouses' Social Security earnings upon divorce, just as assets accrued during the marriage are. Today, only 6 percent of elderly women are divorced and not remarried, but as the post-WWII generation grows older, that figure will boom, she said. According to recent census and Social Security Administration data on people aged 65 to 74, 22.2 percent of all unmarried aged women live in poverty. Of all unmarried aged men, 13.4 percent live in poverty while only 4.5 percent of married elderly couples live in poverty. contact: 513-556-4630 B. CHILDREN IN POVERTY Ellen Lynch, coordinator, Early Childhood Care and Education program, University College, suggests that the next president begin to back up our claim of "valuing children" by putting some money into programs that directly benefit the 13.5 million children who live in poverty. "The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that the federal government will have a surplus of $1.9 trillion over the next 10 years," she said. Instead of giving tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, the money should be used to expand health insurance for uninsured families, expand the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and provide additional housing vouchers for low-income families with children -- just to name a name a few. Finally, she urges strong presidential support of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. "This treaty is the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history. It has been ratified by every country in the world except two: Somalia and the United States. This legal commitment to children is long overdue." contact: 513-556-1621 IV. SOCIAL ISSUES A. POLLUTION/ENERGY Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban Design David Gosling of UC's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning "America needs to kick its gasoline addiction, its needless, debilitating reliance on imported oil. We're vulnerable to economic blackmail from the Middle East when we don't need to be. We have all the tools at hand to kick our oil habit. We just need the drive to do so." Gosling added that with its multitude of rivers, waterfalls, lakes and ready access to two oceans, America contains a wealthy source of cheap electric power to fuel our transportation needs through tidal or hydroelectric power. In addition, the U.S. has tremendous coal reserves that would fuel our energy needs for centuries if only we concentrated on finding clean ways to convert that energy for transportation and other uses. "Unfortunately, America's political leaders seem to lack the vision or courage to face off against the oil, airline and other special-interest lobbies." contact: 513-751-7376 B. JAILS/CRIME A form of legalized drug use would end the problems our nation's problems with drug crime, said Marvin Berlowitz, UC professor of education and director of the Urban Center for Peace Research, Implementation, Development and Education (UCPRIDE). "It's interesting to note that over the past decade, the prison population has increased and we've built more prisons, yet the rate of violent crime has decreased." Berlowitz says the majority of new cases sent to prison involve non-violent crime such as drug abuse, which means the courts are imprisoning people for medical problems. "I think it's interesting that perhaps the one issue in the entire spectrum on which Angela Davis, William F. Buckley Jr. and I agree is that the possession of drugs should be decriminalized people should not go to prison for it." Berlowitz advocates the adoption of a plan similar to one used in the Netherlands. Addicts are supplied with drugs under the court conditions of supervision and rehabilitation. "Not only would we stop making organized crime and drug lords rich, but we would also end the corruption of our government and the governments of other countries. We'd stop forcing addicts into a life of crime to support their habit, and we would end the prison industrial complex. Building, supplying and operating prisons have become big business and in many places. Convict labor is lucrative, and companies are contracting with prisons to use their cheap labor." contact: 513-556-3608 C. MENTAL ILLNESS The nation would be a healthier place overall, Joyce Borkin, suggests, if health insurance companies were required to cover mental illness the same way they do physical illness. "They either don't cover it at all now or, if they do, don't cover it very well," said the UC professor of social work. "First we need to stop thinking of mental illness as something other than an illness and start treating it as a brain disease, which it is. Clearly it is time we started covering mental illness as we do other illnesses." contact: 513-556-4629 V. POLITICAL ISSUES A. CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM Terry Grundy, director of the Neighborhood Vision Council, United Way & Community Chest, and UC adjunct associate professor of planning who teaches "Urban Lobbying," says the lack of meaningful campaign finance reform threatens to undermine our democratic traditions: "Americans fear that their government is bought or in danger of it...Only a sweeping overhaul of current campaign financing mechanisms has a chance of cleansing the moneychangers who serve well-heeled special interest groups from the temple of representative democracy. However, history teaches us that every one of the limited campaign finance reform initiatives passed since the Nixon administration has been circumvented by moneyed special interest, either in the courts or in...the daily practice of political influence peddling. Comprehensive campaign finance reform is the key to overcoming the pervasive political cynicism that keeps voters away from the polls in droves." contact: 513-762-7150 B. VOTER APATHY Marvin Berlowitz suggest the presidential candidates make social and economic justice their central issues and once they do, they'll probably have to form a new party. "They should stop listening to focus groups and start listening to the interests of the people. We have the only major industrial capitalist country in the world that does not have a labor party. We're limited to a choice between the party of the rich and a party of the wealthy. The working people and poor people have no candidate and no party, which is why voter turnout in this country is among the worst in the world." contact: 513-556-3608 Click here to view previous UC e-briefings. E-mail reillymb@email.uc.edu if you would like to become a regular recipient of UC's e-briefings. Please provide your name, media affiliation, snail-mail address, e-mail address, phone and fax number.