Applied Grand Strategy: Making Tough Choices in an Era of Limits and Constraint

This article hopes to contribute to the strategic content of U.S. foreign policy by offering a definition of grand strategy and case for reorienting U.S. policy around it. Rather than advocate a specific grand strategy—a matter still open for debate—the analysis concludes with a set of attributes to assess whether a proposed grand strategy constitutes a “good” grand strategy. It concludes by introducing the concept of an applied grand strategy approach, which may help to identify and assess the strategic implications of foreign policy choices.     

Multivariate analysis for estimating the age of a bloodstain

Our objective is to provide crime laboratories with a technique for estimating the age of a bloodstain. Toward that goal, we have used multiplexed, real-time RT-PCR (or qPCR) to determine the relative stability of different-sized segments of the same RNA species as well as differences in stability between two different RNAs' change over time in bloodstains. Our results indicate that a multivariate analysis of the changing ratio of the different RNA segments can be used to differentiate between samples of different ages in the defined population. Bloodstains from 29 of 30 donors could be partitioned into different ages using this technique. Although further improvements will be required before this approach can be implemented in crime laboratories, the multivariate analysis holds promise of providing a reliable approach for temporally linking a bloodstain to the commission of a crime or excluding a bloodstain as being irrelevant to the case in question.     

Marijuana But Not Alcohol Use During Adolescence Mediates the Association Between Transmissible Risk for Substance Use Disorder and Number of Lifetime Violent Offenses

Aim

This study determined the extent to which alcohol and marijuana use during adolescence mediates the relation between transmissible risk for substance use disorder (SUD) and lifetime number of different types of violent offenses.

Methods

The transmissible liability index was administered to 359 10-12 year old youths who were tracked to 22 years of age. Past year frequency of alcohol and marijuana consumption was longitudinally tracked to age 22 at which time lifetime violent offenses was recorded.

Results

Rate of increase in marijuana use mediated the association between transmissible risk and lifetime number of different types of violent offenses. No association was found between past year frequency of alcohol use and violent offenses.

Conclusions

Prevention directed at lowering the psychological characteristics associated with transmissible risk for SUD may also reduce violent offending.     

Differentiation of methylenedioxybenzylpiperazines (MDBPs) and methoxymethylbenzylpiperazines (MMBPs) By GC-IRD and GC-MS

The substituted benzylpiperazines, 3,4-methylenedioxybenzylpiperazine (3,4-MDBP), its regioisomer 2,3-methylenedioxybenzylpiperazine (2,3-MDBP) and four isobaric ring substituted methoxymethylbenzylpiperazines (MMBP) have almost identical mass spectra. Perfluoroacylation of the secondary amine nitrogen of these isomeric piperazines gave mass spectra with differences in relative abundance of some fragment ions. However, the spectra did not yield any unique fragments for specific identification of one isomer to the exclusion of the other compounds. Gas chromatography coupled with infrared detection (GC-IRD) provides direct confirmatory data for the structural differentiation between the six isomers. The mass spectra in combination with the vapor phase infrared spectra provide for specific confirmation of each of the isomeric piperazines. The underivatized and perfluoroacyl derivative forms of the ring substituted benzylpiperazines were resolved on the polar stationary phase Rtx-200.     

Does more federal environmental funding increase or decrease states' efforts?

We examine the flow of federal grants‐in‐aid from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the states. We simultaneously model two dependent variables (the flow of EPA funds, and state environmental and natural resource budgets) to identify the independent roles of state political institutions, political preferences, economic and demographic characteristics, and the task environment. Our central focus, though, is on the relationship between grants and state spending after taking into account those direct effects. We examine the evidence for positive association (a flypaper effect) and negative association (crowding out). We show the different roles for political institutions, political preferences, demographic and economic characteristics, and the task environment in each spending context. Most importantly, we find evidence for a flypaper effect between federal funds and state spending: Federal spending and state spending are positively correlated after accounting for the contribution of the unique factors. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

re-reading horror stories: maternity,disability and narrative in Doris Lessing's <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Fifth Child</Emphasis>

The central issues raised in much of feminist literary theory's early scholarship remain prescient: how does narrative engage with the social‐historical? In what ways does it codify existing structures? How does it resist them? Whose stories are not being told, or read? In this article I use Doris Lessing's novel The Fifth Child (1988) as a text with which to begin to address the above questions by reading with attention to the mother story but also the ‘other’ stories operating both within and outside of the novel; in particular I am concerned with the convergence of maternity, disability and narrative. The novel's co-implication of sexual difference and corporeal difference reveals the ways in which the mother's story is both made possible and authorized by the disabled body of her child, and by his inability to tell his own story. Yet, if The Fifth Child is a horror story that uses the disabled child's body as its ground, it is also about the horror of maternity, in its conception and attendant choices. In this fictional story as well as in the social‐historical narrative circulating at the time of its publication in the late 1980s, both child and mother are indicted in their otherness and it is ultimately impossible to separate one from the other.     

Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and the Consumer Price Index

OASDI benefits are indexed for inflation to protect beneficiaries from the loss of purchasing power implied by inflation. In the absence of such indexing, the purchasing power of Social Security benefits would be eroded as rising prices raise the cost of living. By statute, cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security benefits are calculated using the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Some argue that this index does not accurately reflect the inflation experienced by the elderly population and should be changed to an elderly-specific price index such as the Experimental Consumer Price Index for Americans 62 Years of Age and Older, often referred to as the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E). Others argue that the measure of inflation underlying the COLA is technically biased, causing it to overestimate changes in the cost of living. This argument implies that current COLAs tend to increase, rather than merely maintain, the purchasing power of benefits over time. Potential bias in the CPI as a cost-of-living index arises from a number of sources, including incomplete accounting for the ability of consumers to substitute goods or change purchasing outlets in response to relative price changes. The BLS has constructed a new index called the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) that better accounts for those consumer adjustments. Price indexes are not true cost-of-living indexes, but approximations of cost-of-living indexes (COLI). The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2006a) explains the difference between the two: As it pertains to the CPI, the COLI for the current month is based on the answer to the following question: "What is the cost, at this month ' market prices, of achieving the standard of living actually attained in the base period?" This cost is a hypothetical expenditure-the lowest expenditure level necessary at this month's prices to achieve the base-period's living standard.... Unfortunately, because the cost of achieving a living standard cannot be observed directly, in operational terms, a COLI can only be approximated. Although the CPI cannot be said to equal a cost-of-living index, the concept of the COLI provides the CPI's measurement objective and the standard by which we define any bias in the CPI. While all versions of the CPI only approximate the actual changes in the cost of living, the CPI-E has several additional technical limitations. First, the CPI-E may better account for the goods and services typically purchased by the elderly, but the expenditure weights for the elderly are the only difference between the CPI-E and CPI-W. These weights are based on a much smaller sample than the other two indices, making it less precise. Second, the CPI-E does not account for differences in retail outlets frequented by the aged population or the prices they pay. Finally, the purchasing population measured in the CPI-E is not necessarily identical to the Social Security beneficiary population, where more than one-fifth of OASDI beneficiaries are under age 62. Likewise, over one-fifth of persons aged 62 or older are not beneficiaries, but they are included in the CPI-E population. Finally, changes in the index used to calculate COLAs directly affect the amount of benefits paid, and as a result, projected solvency of the Social Security program. A switch to the CPI-E for the December 2006 COLA (received in January 2007) would have resulted in an average monthly benefit OASDI benefits are indexed for inflation to protect beneficiaries from the loss of purchasing power implied by inflation. In the absence of such indexing, the purchasing power of Social Security benefits would be eroded as rising prices raise the cost of living. By statute, cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security benefits are calculated using the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Some argue that this index does not accurately reflect the inflation experienced by the elderly population and should be changed to an elderly-specific price index such as the Experimental Consumer Price Index for Americans 62 Years of Age and Older, often referred to as the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E). Others argue that the measure of inflation underlying the COLA is technically biased, causing it to overestimate changes in the cost of living. This argument implies that current COLAs tend to increase, rather than merely maintain, the purchasing power of benefits over time. Potential bias in the CPI as a cost-of-living index arises from a number of sources, including incomplete accounting for the ability of consumers to substitute goods or change purchasing outlets in response to relative price changes. The BLS has constructed a new index called the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) that better accounts for those consumer adjustments. Price indexes are not true cost-of-living indexes, but approximations of cost-of-living indexes (COLI). The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2006a) explains the difference between the two: As it pertains to the CPI, the COLI for the current month is based on the answer to the following question: "What is the cost, at this month ' market prices, of achieving the standard of living actually attained in the base period?" This cost is a hypothetical expenditure-the lowest expenditure level necessary at this month's prices to achieve the base-period's living standard.... Unfortunately, because the cost of achieving a living standard cannot be observed directly, in operational terms, a COLI can only be approximated. Although the CPI cannot be said to equal a cost-of-living index, the concept of the COLI provides the CPI's measurement objective and the standard by which we define any bias in the CPI. While all versions of the CPI only approximate the actual changes in the cost of living, the CPI-E has several additional technical limitations. First, the CPI-E may better account for the goods and services typically purchased by the elderly, but the expenditure weights for the elderly are the only difference between the CPI-E and CPI-W. These weights are based on a much smaller sample than the other two indices, making it less precise. Second, the CPI-E does not account for differences in retail outlets frequented by the aged population or the prices they pay. Finally, the purchasing population measured in the CPI-E is not necessarily identical to the Social Security beneficiary population, where more than one-fifth of OASDI beneficiaries are under age 62. Likewise, over one-fifth of persons aged 62 or older are not beneficiaries, but they are included in the CPI-E population. Finally, changes in the index used to calculate COLAs directly affect the amount of benefits paid, and as a result, projected solvency of the Social Security program. A switch to the CPI-E for the December 2006 COLA (received in January 2007) would have resulted in an average monthly benefit $0.90 higher than that received. If the December 2006 COLA had been adjusted by the Chained CPI-U instead, the average monthly benefit would have been $4.70 less than with current indexing. Any changes to the COLA that would cause faster growth in individual benefits would make the projected date of insolvency sooner, while slower growth would delay insolvency. Hobijn and Lagakos (2003) estimated that switching to the CPI-E for COLAs would move projected insolvency sooner by 3-5 years. A projection by SSA's Office of the Chief Actuary estimated that annual COLAs based on the Chained C-CPI-U beginning in 2006 would delay the date of OASDI insolvency by 4 years.     

The discourses of incidents: cougars on Mt. Elden and in Sabino Canyon, Arizona

Incidents are relatively short periods of intensified discourse that arise from public responses to symbolically important actions by public officials, and an important part of the conflict that increasingly surrounds state wildlife management in the West. In an effort to better understand incidents as a facet of this conflict, we analyzed the discourses of two incidents in Arizona that were precipitated by the intended removal of cougars by managers in response to public safety concerns. We used newspaper content, 1999?C2007, to elucidate seminal patterns of public discourses and discourse coalitions as well as differences in discursive focus between incident periods and background periods. Cougars were mentioned in newspaper articles 13?C33 times more often during incidents compared with background periods. State wildlife agency commissioners and hunters were part of a discourse coalition that advocated killing cougars to solve problems, blamed cougars and those who promoted the animals?? intrinsic value and sought to retain power to define and solve cougar-related problems. Personnel from affected state and federal agencies expressed a similar discourse. Environmentalists, animal protection activists, and some elected officials were of a coalition that defined ??the problem?? primarily in terms of people??s behaviors, including behaviors associated with current institutional arrangements. This discourse advocated decentralizing power over cougar management. The discourses reflected different preferences for the allocations of power and use of lethal versus non-lethal methods, which aligned with apparent core beliefs and participants?? enfranchisement or disenfranchisement by current state-level management power arrangements.