Suchergebnisse

The objective of this study is to identify options, taking into account the circumstances of the Philippines, and distill lessons learned from the Philippine experience. The World Bank intends to ultimately integrate the herein findings and recommend best practices for private sector participation in TD systems and open access to TD grids in a comprehensive ESMAP report. The Philippine electricity industry has been undergoing restructuring directed and implemented in accordance with the Electric Power Industry Reform Act or EPIRA. Prior to the EPIRA, central management and control of both generation and transmission in the whole country was under the state‐owned National Power Corporation (NPC). Its electricity supply came from its own power plants and from Independent Power Producers (IPPs). It had sole ownership of the transmission grid and was also responsible for central systems planning and systems operations. Electricity was supplied to end‐users by franchised distribution utilities (DUs) which contracted with NPC and/or IPPs for electricity supply and with NPC for transmission of its power supply. There were also end-users not being supplied electricity by the DUs as they were 'directly connected' to the transmission grid by sub‐transmission assets.

The United States' population is rapidly changing, but the ways in which political scientists measure and understand representation have not kept apace. Marginal shifts in descriptive representation over the past two decades have run counter to widely espoused ideals regarding political accessibility and democratic competition. A central assumption often made by academics, and the public, has been that groups which are otherwise disadvantaged in politics may leverage their communities' numerical size as a political resource to gain influence. To this end, many studies of racial descriptive representation find that a larger minority population is associated with a higher likelihood of a racial minority running for and/or winning. However, these positive relationships between population growth and descriptive representation are tempered by an extensive literature documenting limits on racial minority groups' political incorporation. Moreover, current frameworks for understanding group competition or patterns of descriptive representation are silent about whether shifts in racial demographics may also have an effect on the balance of representation between women and men. These contradictions in debates over representation, and how groups gain influence, undermine the notion that eventually, marginalized groups will be fully incorporated into politics. White women have had de jure access to the voting franchise in the United States since 1920. In the intervening period, women have made up approximately half the population, and outnumbered male voters in every presidential election since 1964. Yet, women have held a quarter or less of all state legislative seats across the country for well over two decades, and only reached 100 members of Congress in 2014. The case for eventual incorporation is similarly dubious when we consider the racial composition of elected bodies. The racial balance of American communities is in flux largely due to Asian and Latina/o immigration, which will continue to be the case into the forecastable future. Presently, Asian Americans and Latina/os make up 23 percent of the U.S. population and are the two fastest growing racial groups in the country. Members of these immigrant communities hold less than ten percent of all state legislative seats, and a similar fraction of seats in the 115th Congress. Taken together, these yawning gaps between presence in the population and representation in elected office strongly suggest that "time" alone may be an insufficient remedy for underrepresentation. Moreover, for those who are living in the United States now, the current demographic makeup of state legislatures—which includes over 7500 elected seats nationally—raises doubts about their representative legitimacy. Asian American and Latina/o women and men typically have socioeconomic experiences, political perspectives and policy priorities that are distinct from that of their most likely descriptive representative—a White man. At the same time, state legislatures have been veritable policy engines for bills and resolutions related to immigration and immigrants in recent years. The National Council of State Legislatures reports that in 2015 state legislatures enacted 216 laws and passed 274 resolutions related to immigrants and immigration. Even as these bodies write, debate, and pass legislation targeting immigrant communities, Asian Americans and Latina/os are rarely in the room. Researchers increasingly point to the scarcity of female or racial minority candidates as a key explanatory factor, but seldom examine issues related to race and gender at the same time. As a result, the extant scholarship obscures the outsized effects that White men's candidacies have in defining American elections, and overlooks the distinct challenges that women of color face in getting on the ballot. This dissertation examines the intersecting roles of race and gender in elections, with particular attention to how they may be changing as immigrant communities become a larger proportion of the American population. I analyze the Gender Race and Communities in Elections dataset, which encompasses all state legislative general election winners and candidates from 1996-2015, and includes demographic information for candidates and their district populations. This original dataset provides the first opportunity to simultaneously analyze descriptive representation in state legislatures, for women and men in the four largest racial groups, at the national level. I also present the results of a national survey of state legislators, and in-depth interviews with political elites, in order to reveal race-gendered, informal, processes of candidate development and deterrence. I also show that practical opportunities to compete in elections are sharply, and simultaneously, constrained by candidates' race and gender. These constraints are most evident in the lopsided distribution of racial populations across districts, the uneven candidate development efforts of civic and political organizations, and the dominance of men in elite political networks, across racial groups. Based on my examination of Asian American and Latina/o candidates in elections, I advance a Race-Gendered Model for understanding the persistence of underrepresentation in state legislatures. I conceptualize elections as competitions for descriptive representation, and account for the disparate social and political experiences of women and men from different racial groups. Within this framework, race and gender simultaneously constrain potential candidates' access to elections, producing a frequent absence of competition for descriptive representation. This model uses an intersectional approach to explain why Asian American and Latina/o women and men do not run more often, and why the majority of ballots are made up exclusively of White male candidates. I demonstrate that the increasing "strength in numbers" of Asian American and Latina/o communities has primarily served as a resource for increasing the racial diversity of men in statehouses—to the limited extent that racial diversity has increased at all. I also show that the most advantaged descriptive group, White men, benefits from an absence of competition in most electoral contests. At the same time, the fastest growing groups of women—Asian Americans and Latinas—are also the groups most frequently excluded from competing. The Race-Gendered Model expands the intellectual terrain available to answer longstanding questions in the study of women and racial minorities' underrepresentation. Along the way, I argue that it is necessary to simultaneously consider why White men's overrepresentation is similarly persistent. More broadly, the theory of competition presented in this dissertation shifts away from a central focus on the advantages and disadvantages groups face during election campaigns. Instead, I argue that the choices voters face in electing a descriptive representative are limited long before election day.

Abstract: This contribution discusses the pragmatic effects of different rhetoric strategies conveying evidence of past ingroup violence after a long lasting social denial (Cohen, 2001). In particular, a case study is presented on the making of a civic discourse on controversial historical past: war crimes committed by the Italian Army during the colonial invasion of Ethiopia (1935-36). Although very well proved (Del Boca, 2005), these facts were only recently inserted in Italian history textbooks (Leone Mastrovito, 2010; Cajani, 2013). In this same period, evidence of these crimes was officially presented during discussions of the Italian Parliament. In spite of these recent acknowledgments of the Italian responsibilities for these crimes, a social myth is still widely shared by the public opinion, representing Italians as good fellows (Italiani, brava gente: cfr. Del Boca, 2005), unable to be cruel both in everyday life and in wartimes (Volpato et al., 2012). This specific situation, denying even the reality of facts happened, has been defined literal social denial, i.e. the deepest among the three possible states of denial (literal, interpretive, implicative: cfr. Cohen, 2001). The issue of literal social denial of past ingroup violence is at the intersection among theories on narratives on national past (László, 2003), social representations of history (Liu et al., 2014), conflict ethos (Bar-Tal et al., 2012; Kelman, 2008), group-based emotions (Allpress et al., 2010; Leone, 2000) and intergroup reconciliation processes (Nadler et al., 2008). Namely, understanding how a social denial could break down implies the theorization of human mind's reflexivity as grounded on historical awareness (Ortega y Gasset, 1930), and the notion of social change as primarily rooted in natality, i.e. the fact that each birth represents a new beginning (Arendt, 1958). Drawing on this theoretical background, we will present an ongoing research program (Leone, in press) on the literal social denial (Cohen, 2001) of war crimes committed by the Italian army during colonial period and on the pragmatic effects of different kinds of communication on this controversial past. In order to address this issue, we will particularly focus on the concept of parrhesia as defined by Foucault (1983): the communicative choice of «frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, [.] the moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy » (Foucault, 2001, p.19). Studies we conducted in this line tested the change in beliefs and the emotional reactions of young citizens confronted with mild or parrhesiastic descriptions of socially denied war crimes (Leone Sarrica, 2014, 2012). Empirical evidence will be discussed in order to reflect on our core idea: that a parrhesiastic communication is a risky tough necessary pragmatic move to break long lasting denial of ingroup wrongdoings, to trigger critical civic discourse in the place of social myths and to start reconciliation processes. Keywords : social denial, communication, reconciliation, parrhesia, war crimes***Résumé: ‪L'article traite des effets pragmatiques de différentes stratégies rhétoriques qui témoignent, suite à un déni social durable, de la violence perpétrée par un groupe social (Cohen, 2001). En particulier, une étude de cas est présentée sur la réalisation d'un discours civique sur un passé historique controversé, c'est-à-dire les crimes de guerre commis par l'armée italienne lors de l'invasion coloniale de l'Éthiopie (1935-36). Bien que très connus parmi les historiens (Del Boca, 2005), ces faits ne soient que récemment insérés dans les manuels d'histoire italienne (Leone Mastrovito, 2010; Cajani, 2013). Dans cette même période, la preuve de ces crimes a été officiellement présentée lors des discussions dans le Parlement italien. Malgré ces reconnaissances récentes des responsabilités italiennes pour ces crimes, un mythe social est encore largement partagé par l'opinion publique, représentant les Italiens comme de bons camarades (Italiani, brava gente: cf. Del Boca, 2005), incapables d'être cruels à la fois dans la vie quotidienne et en temps de guerre (Volpato et al., 2012). Cette situation spécifique, en supprimant même la réalité des faits, a été définie comme un refus social littéral, c'est-à-dire le plus profond parmi les trois états possibles de déni (littéral, interprétatif, implicatif: cf. Cohen, 2001). La question du déni social littéral de la violence dont son groupe est responsable se pose à l'intersection des théories concernant les récits sur le passé national (László, 2003), les représentations sociales de l'histoire (Liu et al., 2014), l'ethos de conflit (Bar-Tal et al., 2012; Kelman, 2008), les émotions basées sur le groupe (Allpress et al., 2010; Leone, 2000) et les processus de réconciliation des groupes (Nadler et al., 2008). À savoir, comprendre comment un déni social pourrait s'écrouler implique une théorisation de la réflexivité de l'esprit humain qui soit fondée sur la conscience historique (Ortega y Gasset, 1930) et la notion que le changement social soit principalement enraciné dans la natalité, alors que chaque naissance représente un nouveau départ (Arendt, 1958). En nous appuyant sur ce contexte théorique, nous présenterons un programme de recherche en cours (Leone, sous presse) portant sur le déni social littéral (Cohen, 2001) des crimes de guerre commis par l'armée italienne pendant la période coloniale et sur les effets pragmatiques de différents types de communication sur ce passé controversé. Pour aborder cette question, nous nous concentrerons particulièrement sur le concept de parrhésie tel qu'il est défini par Foucault (1983): c'est-à-dire le choix communicatif de «la franchise au lieu de la persuasion, de la vérité au lieu du mensonge ou du silence, [.] du devoir moral à la place de l'intérêt personnel et de l'apathie morale» (Foucault, 2001, p. 19). Les études que nous avons menées dans cette ligne de recherche ont exploré le changement des croyances et des réactions émotionnelles des jeunes citoyens Italiens confrontés à des descriptions légères ou parrhésiastiques de ces crimes de guerre socialement démentis (Leone Sarrica, 2014, 2012). Des preuves empiriques seront discutées afin de réfléchir à notre idée fondamentale: proposant que une communication parrhésiastique, tout en déclenchant des réactions dangereuses et difficiles à gérer, soit néanmoins la plus utile pour briser un déni durable des actes répréhensibles commis par le groupe, et soit l'unique solution viable pour provoquer un discours civique critique sur les mythes sociaux d'un passé idéalisé du groupe, favorisant le commencement des processus sociaux nécessaires pour une véritable réconciliation. Mots-clés: déni social, communication, réconciliation, parrhésie, guerre, crime

"Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman, then always be Batman." (Tagline zu The Lego Batman Movie, 2017) DC Comics' dunkler Ritter zählt zu den bekanntesten und profitabelsten fiktionalen Charakteren weltweit. Ein Grund für Batmans langanhaltende Beliebtheit liegt in seiner archetypischen Konzeption, die über die Jahrzehnte eine immense Vielzahl an verschiedenen Interpretationen und Medienadaptionen ermöglichte. Für Jeffrey A. Brown stellen Batmans multiple Identitäten potenzielle Zugänge zu verschiedenen kulturellen wie gesellschaftlichen Diskursen dar: "What, for example, does the modern Batman reveal about current racial issues, sexual identities, and gender politics?" (S. 12). Seine Untersuchung von überwiegend comicbasierten Iterationen der Figur bündelt bestehende kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf den Fledermausmann und ergänzt sie durch gegenwärtige Comic-Beispiele seit den DC-Relaunchs 'The New 52' (2011-2016, DC Comics) und 'DC Rebirth' (2016-2017, DC Comics). Eine kenntnisreiche und inspirierende Studie, die mit zahlreichen Tropen und Konventionen der Figur wie auch des Superheldengenres aufräumt, in Anbetracht der überwältigenden Materialfülle jedoch oft nur an der Oberfläche der komplexen Thematik kratzt. Browns Arbeit folgt einer klaren Struktur: Nach einer kurzen Einleitung stellt der Autor im folgenden Kapitel 'Batman and Multiplicity' seinen grundlegenden Ansatz zur Vielseitigkeit der Figur vor. Grundlage bildet der von Henry Jenkins in seinem einflussreichen Aufsatz Just Men in Tights: Rewriting Silver Age Comics in an Era of Multiplicity (erschienen in The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero, hg. v Angela Ndalianis, New York/London 2009, S. 16-43) geprägte Begriff der multiplicity. Dieser beschreibt eine selbstreflexive Tendenz in modernen Superheldengeschichten, in der verschiedene Versionen desselben Franchises gleichzeitig rezipiert werden und ein intertextuelles Netzwerk bilden: "Meaning becomes layered on top of variations, and continuity is derived through a ready acceptance of multplicity." (S. 29) Wie auch andere Superheldencomics bewegt sich Batman in einem Spannungsfeld zweier Extreme: Auf der einen Seite steht die Kanonisierung von Erzählsträngen, Ereignissen und Charaktereigenschaften, die die vom Verlag streng überwachte, bindende Continuity des Superhelden und seiner Storyworld ausmacht und sie vor auftretenden Unstimmigkeiten bewahrt. Auf der anderen Seite steht die Diversifikation der Figur in alternativen Erzähluniversen, die entweder innerhalb des DC-Multiversums zu übergreifenden Crossover-Events konvergieren oder als einmalige 'Elseworlds'-Geschichten bekannte Superheldenerzählungen in fremde Zeit- und Genresettings transponieren. Diese Variationen werden zwar meist nicht dem Kanon zugerechnet, doch erweitern sie das übergeordnete Bild des Superhelden und ermöglichen neue Lesarten. So zählt Frank Millers The Dark Knight Returns (1986, DC Comics) zu einem der prägendsten Batman-Comics aller Zeiten, doch wird die in der Zukunft der Figur angesetzte Geschichte nicht als Teil der offiziellen Batman-Continuity angesehen. In einem Abriss der wesentlichen Inkarnationen innerhalb von Batmans mittlerweile 80-jähriger Mediengeschichte stellt Brown die verschiedenen transmedialen Passagen des Superhelden im Kontext ihrer produktions- und zeitgeschichtlichen Entstehung gegenüber – erweitert durch einen Ausblick auf durch Batman inspirierte Nachahmer, Doppelgänger und Parodien erster und zweiter Ordnung sowohl in DC Comics wie auch in anderen Comicverlagen. Dass diese gegensätzlichen Identitäten und Storyworlds dennoch alle als Batman erkannt werden, liegt für Brown an Batmans paradoxem Wesen, zugleich extrem flexibel wie auch fest umrissen zu sein. Der Argumentation von Roberta Pearson und William Uricchio in ihrer bahnbrechenden Arbeit The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media (New York 1991) folgend bilden bestimmte Schlüsselkomponenten für Brown den kleinsten gemeinsamen Nenner der Figurenkonzeption, zu denen Batmans Geheimidentität als Milliardär Bruce Wayne und der tragische Mord an seinen Eltern gehören, sein ikonografisches Fledermauskostüm, seine Ausrüstung und Fertigkeiten, die Stadt Gotham City sowie das wiederkehrende Figurenensemble aus Verbündeten und Feinden. Daraus setzt sich für Brown eine Art Proto-Batman zusammen ('Batman Prime'), der ausgehend von den Comics der 1980er Jahren Batman als düsteren, ernsten und erbarmungslosen Vigilanten einer dystopischen Ausnahmegesellschaft zeichnet. Alle anderen Versionen würden sich an dieser Schablone abarbeiten, indem sie das Bild des Batman Prime bestätigten, variierten, invertierten, karikierten oder ganz aufgäben. Dieses verlockende Konzept des Batman Prime als Basis-DNA der Figur stößt jedoch an seine Grenzen. Pearson und Uricchio selbst scheinen diesem Konzept zu widersprechen, wenn sie Batman als 'floating signifier' bezeichnen, der weder durch einen bestimmten Autor, noch durch eine spezifische Zeitepoche oder einen Primärtext definiert ist. Der 'dark and gritty'-Batman stellt zwar die gegenwärtig dominante Lesart der Figur dar, doch ist sie nicht die endgültige. In seiner Untersuchung Hunting Down the Dark Knight Knight: Twenty-First Century Batman (London/New York 2012) macht Will Brooker darauf aufmerksam, wie im Kampf um die Deutungshoheit des dunklen Ritters die multiplicity der Figur durch einen offiziellen Kanon heruntergespielt wird, der eine bevorzugte Lesart der Figur über andere Versionen favorisiert, die nicht den Interessen der Produzent*innen und den Vorlieben des Publikums entsprechen. Im Herzen dieser Hierarchie aus Batman-Texten stehe für Brooker die binäre Opposition zwischen dem dunklen und humorlosen Vigilanten und einem fröhlichen, spielerischen und bunten Batman, die sich in einem konstanten Dialog befänden. Zusätzlich zu den von Pearson und Uricchio aufgezählten Merkmalen definiert Brown seinen Batman Prime über implizite Merkmale: "The baseline Batman Prime is also 'pinned down' as a rich, white, heterosexual, American male in his 30s. It is these implicit characteristics of Batman (and most superheroes) that naturalize a persistent valorization of racial and gendered privilege" (S. 28). Diese Erkenntnis bildet die Grundlage für die weiteren Kapitel des Buches. Ausgehend von Pearsons und Uricchios Beobachtung, dass Batman als rechtschaffener Verbrechensbekämpfer und Bewahrer des gesellschaftlichen Status quo extratextuell die dominante hegemoniale Ordnung unterstütze, betrachtet Brown den dunklen Ritter als fiktionale Verkörperung des Konzeptes der hegemonialen Männlichkeit nach R. W. Connell und J. W. Messerschmidt ("Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept". In: Gender & Society 19/6, Dezember 2005, S. 829-859), die die Dynamik einer sozial übergestellten Position von Männern über Nicht-Männer beschreibt: "Batman is an idealized heroic figure who conforms to a very traditionally privileged social category. While Batman may be the toughest, smartest, and most determined alpha-male in a fictional world filled with super-men and wonder-women, in his civilian guise as Bruce Wayne, he is also conventionally portrayed as an able-bodied, white, heterosexual, male billionaire." (S. 80) Entsprechend setzt sich das dritte Kapitel 'Batman and Sexuality' mit den verschiedenen Variationen auseinander, in denen Batman sich mit sexueller Repräsentation auseinandersetzt. Von der queeren Lesart des dynamischen Duos aus Batman und Robin über die hypermaskulinen und hyperfemininen Darstellungen des Dunklen Ritters und seinen weiblichen love interests und femme fatales (insbesondere Catwoman) beleuchtet Brown an einer Reihe von Beispielen offene Anknüpfungspunkte für homo- und heterosexuelle Interpretationen. Das vierte Kapitel 'Batman and Sons' begegnet Batmans Rolle als sowohl symbolische wie auch tatsächliche Vaterfigur innerhalb seiner Bat-Family aus Sidekicks und (Ersatz-)Söhnen, denen er seine über alle Zweifel erhabene, hegemoniale Ideologie aus Gerechtigkeit und sozialer Verantwortung aufdrückt. Wie das Beispiel seines leiblichen Sohnes Damian Wayne zeigt, der heimlich von der Schurkin Talia al Ghul zum Assassinen ausgebildet wird, steht der väterlichen Ordnung in Superheldengeschichten sehr oft das Klischee der bösen Mutter gegenüber, die Unordnung und Gefahr birgt: "The subsequent struggles over Damian's allegiance with either Batman's paternalistic authority or Talia's maternal symbolic authority represent an ideological struggle […] with a clear preference for the Law of the Father" (S. 84). Das Kapitel 'The Batwomen' verfolgt die bewegte Geschichte der beiden Frauenfiguren Batgirl und Batwoman, die zwischen sexualisierten Stereotypen, Reflexionen progressiver Genderrollen und den Herausforderungen der männlichen Welt von Batman stehen. 'The Other Batmen' (Kapitel Sechs) betrachtet anschließend ethnische und postkolonialistische Fragestellungen innerhalb des Batman-Universums. Die Idee, dass Batman seine kämpferischen Fertigkeiten bei seinen Reisen durch den exotischen Osten erlernte, wird im Sinne des Orientalismus-Diskurses als kulturelle Appropriation identifiziert, während in aktuellen Storylines über Batmans weltweite Rekrutierung von ausländischen Verbrechensbekämpfer*innen in Grant Morrisons Batman Incorporated (2010-2013, DC Comics) unbewusste neokoloniale Untertöne ausgemacht werden: "The cumulative result of Batman's appropriation and colonization of Otherness is a strained attempt to incorporate diversity within the character's fictional world, and an unintended perpetuation of America's assumption of normative whiteness as the pinnacle of achievement" (S. 143). Dagegen werden mit den Batman-Protegés Batwing und The Signal afro-amerikanische Perspektiven in die Welt des Superhelden eingeführt. Kapitel Sieben setzt sich mit Batmans dunkler Seite auseinander und seinem manichäistischen Kampf gegen seine Doppelgänger-Schurken wie auch seinen Superheldenkollegen Superman, wobei in der binären Gegenüberstellung von Gut und Böse Batmans liminale Rolle als Held, Antiheld und Schatten noch stärker hätte ausgebaut werden können. Im letzten Kapitel 'I'm the Goshdarn Batman! ' steht die ungewöhnliche Darstellung des dunklen Ritters als kleine, niedliche Gestalt im Geiste der japanischen 'kawaiii'-Ästhetik etwa in Comicbuchreihen wie Lil' Gotham (2012, DC Comics) oder der Zeichentrickserie Teen Titans Go (seit 2013, Cartoon Network) im Vordergrund, die das Bild des düsteren, allmächtigen Vigilanten konterkariert. Abgerundet wird das Kapitel mit einer kurzen Betrachtung des The Lego Batman Movie, in der subversiv Batmans hegemoniale Männlichkeit sowie seine überdramatische Ernsthaftigkeit und Hypervirilität der Lächerlichkeit preisgegeben wird. Am Ende bleibt Browns Buch ein Fazit schuldig, das alle Gedankenstränge des Buches zusammenfasst und einen Ausblick in die Zukunft wagt. Batman and the Multiplicity of Identity macht den Eindruck einer Aufsatzsammlung, die sich zwar an manchen Stellen zu wiederholen droht, im Ganzen jedoch ein erfrischendes Kaleidoskop kulturwissenschaftlicher Analysen gegenwärtiger Batman-Comics bildet, das durch tiefe Materialkenntnis besticht und vor allem durch die Fokussierung oft vernachlässigter Nebencharaktere überzeugt.

ABSTRAK STRATEGI PEMUNGUTAN PAJAK BUMI DAN BANGUNAN PEDESAAN DAN PERKOTAAN (PBB-P2) OLEH BADAN PELAYANAN PAJAK DAERAH (BPPD) KABUPATEN SIDOARJO TERHADAP PENDAPATAN ASLI DAERAH (PAD) KABUPATEN SIDOARJO Sektor pajak merupakan salah satu pendapatan terbesar negara dan juga di daerah. Dari semua jenis pajak, pajak PBB memiliki permasalahan yang paling kompleks dan juga memiliki dan nilai piutang tertinggi. Begitu pula di Kabupaten Sidoarjo pajak merupakan pendapatan daerah tertinggi dimana pajak PBB juga memiliki nilai piutang dan permasalahan yang kompleks. Sudah seharusnya pemerintah dalam tugasnya melakukan pemungutan pajak memberikan sebuah strategi yang tepat agar pendapatan dari sektor pajak PBB dapat optimal. Badan Pelayanan Pajak Daerah (BPPD) Kabupaten Sidoarjo merupakan instansi pemerintah yang bertugas dalam melakukan pemungutan sembilan macam pajak daerah yang salah satunya merupakan pajak PBB. Langkah BPPD Kabupaten Sidoarjo dalam melakukan strategi pemungutan pajak PBB adalah dengan melakukan strategi memudahkan proses pembayaran pajak PBB dimana pembayaran pajak PBB yang sudah dapat dilakukan melalui Kantor Pos dan berbagai macam Bank seperti diantaranya Bank Mandiri, OCBC NSIP, Bank BTN, Bank BNI, Bank Jatim yang di dukung juga pembayaran melalui melalui E-Banking di bank terkait serta bisa juga membayar melalui waralaba yang telah banyak tersebar berupa Indomart, Alfamart. Strategi pemungutan pajak tersebut merupakan strategi satu-satunya yang diterapkan di Jawa Timur. Selain itu BPPD Kabupaten Sidoarjo juga terus berupaya memberikan pelayanan yang prima kepada masyarakat pengguna jasa serta terus berinovasi sehingga terciptanya sebuah aplikasi E-PBB yang merupakan aplikasi berbasis Android yang dapat di akses di SmartPhone yang berguna untuk mempermudah segala kepengurusan mengenai pajak PBB di Sidoarjo. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif dengan pendekatan kualitatif. Lokasi penelitian yaitu Badan Pelayanan Pajak Daerah (BPPD) Kabupaten Sidoarjo. Teknik pengumpulan data terdiri dari observasi, wawancara, purposive sampling, dan dokumentasi. Teknik analisis data dilakukan dengan pengumpulan data, reduksi data, penyajian data, dan penarikan kesimpulan. Hasil penelitian menunjukan strategi pemungutan pajak PBB-P2 berdasarkan faktor peningkatan pelayanan publik di lingkungan birokrasi menurut Osborne & Plastrik, yaitu: 1) Strategi pengembangan struktur, BPPD Kabupaten Sidoarjo telah melakukan upaya untuk mengembangkan struktur dengan melakukan perampingan struktur organisasi yang mengakibatkan perubahan nilai dan norma, aturan hukum atau kode etik dan budaya pada strategi pemungutan pajak PBB di Sidoarjo. 2) Strategi penyederhanaan sistem dan prosedur, pada strategi ini BPPD Kabupaten Sidoarjo berupaya dengan menyediakan pelayanan yang prima terkait pelayanan PBB, serta dibuatkanya sebuah aplikasi berbasis Android E-PBB, dan inovasi pembayaran yang di permudah. 3) Strategi pengembangan infrastruktur, dalam pengembangan infrastruktur langkah yang telah di ambil BPPD Kabupaten Sidoarjo adalah dengan menyediakan fasilitas fisik berupa peralatan kantor pada umumnya dan peralatan sosialisasi berupa banner, poster dan pemasangan iklan. Menyediakan fasilitas pengembangan telematika berupa pengembangan sistem yang memungkin kan para wajib pajak membayar melalui berbagai bank bahkan dapat melalui indomart serta alfamart. Mengembangkan konsep strategi pemungutan pajak dari yang lama menjadi lebih baru dan terdigitalisasi. 4) Strategi pengembangan budaya dan kultur, yang meliputi membangun citra baik dan kepercayaan masyarakat terhadap instansi, meningkatkan budaya kerja pegawai yang positif, mengembangkan layanan prima sesuai dengan budaya dan jaman yang berkembang di masyarakat. 5) Strategi pengembangan kewirausahaan, pada strategi ini menghasilkan sebuah keputusan yang meliputi, menjalin mitra kerjasama dengan brbagai instansi untuk memperluas peluang pendapatan pajak, menghadirkan kemampuan berfikir kreatif dalam menciptakan solusi yang tepat dari permasalahan yang timbul, menciptakan sebuah inovasi aplikasi E-PBB untuk mempermudah segala kepengurusan mengenai PBB. Kata Kunci: Strategi, Pajak, PBB, Pemungutan, Badan Pelayanan Pajak Daerah Kabupaten Sidoarjo, BPPD, Inovasi ABSTRACT Collection Strategy Of Land And Building Tax By Badan Pelayanan Pajak Daerah (BPPD) Kabupaten Sidoarjo On Original Local Government RevenueThe tax sector is one of the largest income in country and also the regions. Of all types of taxes, the Land and Building (L&B) taxes has a complex problem and also has the highest arrears. Similarly, in Sidoarjo, taxes are regional revenues where the Land and Building (L&B) taxes also has high debts and complex issues. The government who levy L&B taxes should provide the right strategy for the sector of the L&B taxes to be optimal. The Regional Tax Service Board (BPPD) of Sidoarjo is a government institution responsible for local taxes, one of which is the L&B taxes. The step of BPPD of Sidoarjo in implementing L&B taxes strategy is to simplify the process of payment of PBB, so payment can be done through Post Office and various Bank such as Mandiri, OCBC NSIP, BTN, BNI, BANK JATIM, which also through e-Banking in related banks, and can also pay through a franchise that has been widespread in the form of Indomart, Alfamart. That tax collection strategy is the only strategy implemented in East Java. In addition, BPPD Sidoarjo also continues to provide excellent service for the community of service users and continue to innovate to create E-PBB applications. The application is accessed on SmartPhone which helps to facilitate all tax management in L&B taxes in Sidoarjo. The type of research used in this research is descriptive research with qualitative approach. The location of research is the Regional Tax Service Board (BPPD) of Sidoarjo Regency. Data collection techniques consist of interviews, purposive sampling, and documentation. Data analysis technique is done by searching data, data reduction, data presentation, and deduction of conclusion.The result of the research shows the strategy of collecting tax of PBB-P2 based on the improvement factor of public service in bureaucratic environment according to Osborne & Plastrik, that is: 1) Structural development strategy, BPPD Kabupaten Sidoarjo has made efforts to develop the structure by streamlining the organizational structure resulting in changes in values and norms, rules of law or code of ethics and culture on the strategy of tax collection in Sidoarjo. 2) The simplification strategy of the system and procedure, in this strategy BPPD Sidoarjo strives to provide excellent service related to L&B taxes services, and made an 'E-PBB' application based on Android who can acces with smartphone, and simplification payment innovation. 3) Strategy of infrastructure development, in infrastructure development step that has been taken by BPPD of Sidoarjo is by providing physical facility it is a office equipment in general and socialization equipment such as banners, posters and advertisement. Providing telematics development facilities in the form of system development that allows the tax payers to pay through various banks even through indomart and alfamart. Also develop the concept of tax collection strategy from the old one to be more recent and digitized. 4) Cultural and cultural development strategies, which include building a good image and public confidence in the institution, enhancing positive employee work culture, developing prime services in accordance with the culture and era that develops in the community. 5) Entrepreneurship development strategy, in this strategy produces a decision that includes, establishing partnerships with various agencies to expand tax revenue opportunities, bringing creative thinking ability in creating the right solutions from emerging problems, creating an innovative E-PBB application to simplify all the stewardship of the L&B taxes. Keywords : Strategy, Tax, Land and Building Taxes, Collection, Sidoarjo, BPPD, Innovation

"I, who know nothing, have wanted to meddle in it": Blaise de Monluc says he "meddles" in historiography in order to distinguish himself from "scholar" historians, as did the Du Bellay brothers who wrote at the same time. But they all express their views about political action through history: they write on history instead of writing history. Therefore Montaigne, in his Essays, emphasizes that one needs to be able to judge between history and the actors of history. The distinction between literary genres that opposes history to memoirs, "commentaries" and "essays", fails to explain these authors' relationship to history. I propose to consider this relationship from the perspective of "judging-history", – a history written by its actors, focusing on political action ("faits" and "dits" in XVIth-century French) and the conseils ("counsels", i.e. the actors' designs and deliberations). The first section explains the importance of judging-history during the reign of Francis I, due to the prevalent ideologies and practices of French monarchy at the time, but also due to the contemporaneous revival of philosophical, rhetorical and historiographical traditions which link counsels with discernment (discrétion), speeches (concions) and sincerity (parrhesia). Under Francis I's reign these practices and traditions were brought together. Indeed, humanists, the nobility of sword and the royal State called for a judging-history intended to train political elites. The second section demonstrates that an author, Guillaume du Bellay de Langey, and his work, the Ogdoades, embodied this hope, reconciling the pen and the sword. Having studied the birth of this unfinished work, I comment on the Ogdoades's Prologue (edited in this thesis), a manifesto and method which defines the relationships between rhetoric, judgement and political experience within historiography. I then study this method's implementation in the Ogdoades's extant passages. The third section focuses on the works of two Langey's most important heirs: his brother Martin du Bellay's Memoirs and Monluc's Commentaries. The artes historicae, in the second half of the XVIth century, emphasize the importance of parrhesia in historical writing: such a stance is not anti-rhetorical, but rather rejects the notion of authors writing as clercs d'armes ("clerks of arms", i.e., scholars writing on military matters) because in their writings they reveal their lack of political experience. The ars bene dicendi continues to fascinate Martin du Bellay and Monluc, whose writing attempts to be paradoxically eloquent, because it has been stripped of epidictic pageantry; the counsels' parrhesia make it possible to overcome the dichotomy between bien dire and bien faire – a dichotomy which is often supposed to characterize military memoirs' poetics. Monluc et Martin du Bellay seek to understand the scope and limits of their own capacities for action. The fourth section examines the role of judging-history and Langey's legacy in the Essays. For a long time we have known the affinities between Amyot, Bodin and Montaigne, but what we have ignored is Montaigne's links with the Du Bellays. Such a notion as judging-history allows us to understand the synthetical and yet comprehensive judgments that Montaigne makes on the actors of history. Seeking a way to act in a clear-headed and prudent manner, the essayist examines the possibility to speak and act freely. Therefore, his relationship with politics and rhetoric should be rethought in terms of conseil and discrétion. My conclusion draws a Guillaume du Bellay moment when history was not considered as a study of the past but as the reflective extension of the actors of history's deliberations and as a way to "dire sur ce qui peut advenir" (talk about what could happen next). ; « [M]oi, qui ne sçay rien, m'en suis voulu mesler » : Blaise de Monluc dit se « mêler » d'écrire l'histoire pour se distinguer des historiographes « lettrés », comme le font également, à la même époque, les frères du Bellay. Tous font cependant valoir leurs jugements sur l'action politique dans l'histoire : ils écrivent sur l'histoire plutôt qu'ils n'écrivent l'histoire. Ainsi Montaigne insiste, dans les Essais, sur la nécessité de savoir juger l'histoire et ses acteurs. La distinction générique qui oppose l'histoire aux Mémoires, aux « Commentaires » et aux « essais » s'avère peu opérante pour comprendre ces auteurs. Je propose d'aborder leur rapport à l'histoire sous l'angle de « l'histoire-jugement », une histoire écrite par ses acteurs, qui porte sur l'action politique (les « faits » et les « dits » dans la langue du XVIe siècle) et sur les « conseils », c'est-à-dire les intentions et délibérations des acteurs. La première partie explique l'importance qu'a prise l'histoire-jugement au temps de François Ier, en raison, d'abord, des idéologies et des pratiques de la monarchie contemporaine, puis par la « renaissance » de traditions philosophiques, rhétoriques et historiographiques qui associent le conseil au discernement (ou « discrétion »), aux discours (« concions » ou conciones) et à la franchise (ou parrêsia). Le règne de François Ier voit se nouer ces pratiques et ces traditions : les humanistes, la noblesse d'épée et l'État royal appellent de leurs vœux une histoire-jugement destinée à la formation des élites politiques. La deuxième partie montre qu'un auteur, Guillaume du Bellay de Langey, et une œuvre, ses Ogdoades, ont incarné cette aspiration, réunissant les lettres et les armes. Après avoir étudié la naissance de cette œuvre restée inachevée, j'analyse le Prologue des Ogdoades (ici édité), manifeste et méthode qui définit les rapports de la rhétorique, du jugement et de l'expérience politique dans l'historiographie ; puis j'étudie la mise en œuvre de cette méthode dans les fragments des Ogdoades. La troisième partie porte sur l'œuvre des deux plus importants héritiers de Langey : les Mémoires de son frère Martin du Bellay (qui comprennent une partie des Ogdoades) et les Commentaires de Monluc. Le discours sur l'historiographie, dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, insiste sur la parrêsia de l'historien ; un tel discours n'est pas anti-rhétorique mais rejette une écriture de « clerc d'armes » parce qu'elle révèle l'inexpérience politique de l'historien. L'ars bene dicendi ne laisse pas de fasciner Martin du Bellay et Monluc, dont l'écriture se veut paradoxalement éloquente, parce que dépouillée des fastes de l'épidictique ; la parrêsia des conseils permet de dépasser l'opposition du bien dire et du bien faire à laquelle on résume souvent la poétique des Mémoires d'épée. Monluc et Martin du Bellay cherchent ainsi à comprendre la portée et les limites de leur capacité d'agir. La quatrième partie examine la place de l'histoire-jugement et l'héritage de Langey dans les Essais : on sait depuis longtemps les affinités de Montaigne avec Amyot et Bodin, mais on ignorait qu'il en eût avec les Du Bellay. La notion d'histoire-jugement permet de comprendre les jugements, synthétiques et pourtant circonstanciés, que porte Montaigne sur les acteurs de l'histoire. Cherchant dans l'histoire les voies d'une prudence lucide, l'essayiste s'interroge sur la possibilité d'agir et de parler librement, ce qui autorise à penser son rapport à la politique et à la rhétorique en termes de conseil et de « discrétion ». La conclusion esquisse un moment Guillaume du Bellay, où l'histoire fut comprise non comme une étude du passé mais comme le prolongement réflexif des délibérations des acteurs de l'histoire, comme le moyen de « dire sur ce qui peut advenir ».

One of the most intriguing and indeed progressive features of the Labour government is its willingness to have itself judged against a wide range of targets, as set out in the Public Service Agreements (PSAs) which accompanied the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in 1998.The second Comprehensive Spending Review due in summer 2000 will be accompanied by a revised set of PSAs negotiated between the Treasury and individual departments. This second round of PSAs will rightly concentrate on the key policy outcomes which departments are aiming to deliver. The several hundred targets which assess the managerial effectiveness of the government machine will be covered by a separate series of Service Delivery Agreements. However, ironically the remarks by the Prime Minister on health service funding appear to undermine the whole CSR process, and threaten to turn the debate back to a focus on how much money gets spent on the public services, rather than the welcome focus on outcomes implied by the PSAs.The PSAs in effect set out in detail the government's strategy, which immediately raises the question of whether they should signal more clearly the government's priorities across the many different policy outcomes. Several of the articles in this issue of New Economy focus on the key areas of policy which should be central to the agenda of a centre‐left government: restoring full employment, eliminating child poverty and putting sustainable development at the heart of government strategy rather than at its margins. Matthew Taylor leads off by discussing the tensions which lie at the heart of the PSA process. Performance targets can have perverse outcomes if they are not designed carefully. The PSA process is highly centralising and may sti?Ÿe local initiative. It is not clear that modern government is best delivered by the Treasury telling everyone what to do.In an act of modest self‐indulgence the editor contributes an article to this issue which argues that a commitment to the attainment of full employment alongside a commitment to eliminating child poverty would represent a really powerful and radical agenda for the Government. Less weight should be given to closing the productivity gap, which is less of a problem than usually thought. Lisa Harker takes up the issues raised by the government's anti‐poverty strategy noting the absence of any debate about which of the poverty indicators the government intends to track should be given priority. She also notes that adopting a clear measure of income poverty brings challenges for government, raising the question of how far it should explicitly address poverty through higher bene?žts to provide 'security for those who cannot work'.The urgency of tackling child poverty is given weight by the chilling conclusion set out by John Micklewright and Kitty Stewart that on three key measures of child well‐being – child poverty, children in workless households and the teenage birth rate – the UK's performance is the worst in the EU. It is this 'child poverty gap' with our European partners which should make us ashamed not the productivity gap. Fran Bennett and Chris Roche argue for genuinely participatory approaches to the development of indicators of poverty and social exclusion which focus not just on what is measured, but also on who decides which indicators are important. This approach features heavily in debates in the developing world, but the OECD countries could learn from this experience. Chris Hewett and Matthew Rayment note discouragingly that seven major government departments made no reference to sustainable development in their aims and objectives as set out in the PSAs in 1998. By and large, the key environmental issues are still seen as only a priority for the DETR and no one else. It is not clear that any relationship between the PSAs and the government's sustainable development strategy is evidence of joined up government or merely coincidental overlapping government.The original PSAs made little or no reference to the goal of securing greater racial equality and Sarah Spencer takes up this omission by looking at a range of areas of public policy where a focus on outcome based measures relating to racial equality are needed. The achievement of race equality objectives necessitates a contribution from each of the key Whitehall departments responsible for domestic policy, and from all departments in relation to their own employment practices. Damian Tambini discusses the 'Ulysees Effect' by which the announcing of targets amid great fanfare forces the government to nail its colours to the mast. In the area of electronic service delivery, targets have so far been quite successful in jolting government agencies into taking action. If potential problems relating to data protection and social exclusion do not emerge, targets in this area will be seen as a useful tool of radical modernisation. However, if the negative effects of electronic service delivery do become more severe, then the government will have to face some difficult choices: abandon the targets, fudge the ?žgures, or push them through despite the negative consequences. Andrea Westall discusses four recently published IPPR reports relating to business or industrial policy. A common theme is that government has a role as a market maker and catalyst by bringing players together to encourage the formation of innovative solutions rather than intervening in a broad and possibly blunt way. This role requires an element of risk and 'letting go' rather than devising programmes with clearly de?žned outcomes and targets – somewhat anathema to the Treasury with its emphasis on performance targets as set out in the PSAs. Rebecca Harding looks at the establishment of regional venture capital funds, arguing that in the north of England the main problem may be the lack of demand for venture capital, so that it may not be the correct tool for supporting innovative small businesses in all regions. Robert Atkinson explodes some of the myths held about the emerging 'new economy'. This includes the notion that technological change is destroying employment (preposterous when viewed against the tremendous jobs growth in the US economy) or that economic change calls into question the continued viability of large corporations or the role of the state.Finally David Osmon offers a different model from the government's proposed public private partnership for achieving a more efficient London Underground. The combined infrastructure and operations of some underground lines could be leased to the private sector which could then compete with the publicly operated lines. If the private companies achieved efficiency savings they could then bid for further franchises and in the meantime those lines still in public ownership would be subject to competitive pressures to increase their efficiency. With all the uncertainty surrounding the current PPP this idea is worthy of consideration.

A comprehensive, yet user- friendly, resource for navigating the products and services of various U.S. and foreign government agencies, as well as multilateral organizations including the International Finance Corporation and Inter- American Development Bank. The book's target audience includes international business executives and public- sector officials. The book is organized the way business people think-- by product rather than by agency.

Thanks to Ron Schmidt for this image In John Maynard Keynes essay "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" one can find the following formulation of the cultural transformation of post-capitalism:"I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and
traditional virtue-that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love
of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who
take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the
good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day
virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things,
the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. For a least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair, for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."Keynes formulation of course draws from a long history of the virtues of vices stretching back to Mandeville and Smith, in which it is vice not virtue, selfishness not selflessness, that drives social change and progress. Where of course he differs from both is in seeing this as an unfortunate state of affairs, a necessary evil, and a temporary one. Keynes prediction has proven to not come true, not for the grandchildren of his era at least, and we are no closer to his cultural revolution than we are in the fifteen hour work week he envisioned.I would like to even go a step further and suggest that not only has Keynes prediction not come true, that the foul gods of avarice and usury not only continue to reign, but also that they have deposed any other rival ideals. In order to understand how this is true, it is necessary to extract a descriptive dimension to Keynes' pronouncement. We can argue that much of the twentieth century, at least in capitalist countries, there was something of a split between two cultures, one that could claim the name culture in the pursuit of art, literature, and philosophy, and the other dedicated to profit. The divide between these two can be seen in multiple places. In the university for one in which the real divide is not between science and the arts, but between the majors that have an immediate practical and profitable application and those that will always elicit the question, "what are you going to do with that?" This includes the sciences especially in their more research oriented and fundamental dimension, biology, physics, astronomy, zoology, etc., The divide can also be seen in popular culture, especially in film, which oriented around a calendar divided between blockbusters and prestige films, between films that make money and films that win awards. This divide between doing good for oneself, in the financial sense, and being good, divided knowledge and culture, imposing, as Marx put it, two separate yardsticks, two measurements. To go back to the college example, the person who pursued the ideals of "truth and beauty," to put it in the classic sense, would always have to answer the question of how they were going to make a living, and the person who pursued making a living might, upon reflection, have a nagging sense that they are missing out on something more. If this example does not hold up then think about the world of movies, split between the person who enjoys blockbusters and the person who enjoys not only prestige films, does anyone really like blatant Oscar bait, but what we used to call "art films," the category encompassing foreign and independent movies. This is also a split between two different yardsticks, two different measurements, one is assessed in terms of profit and the other in terms of some artistic merit. (If one wanted to put this in more sophisticated terms, those of Deleuze and Guattari, we could say that it is a matter of axioms and codes, but I will leave that aside for now)Contradictions have a way of resolving themselves and one of these two standards had to give (a very un-Deleuzian point, I know). What we have seen, contra Keynes, is not the return of the lilies of the field but the mowing down of everything in terms of profit. The rise of the Marvel movie is not just the dominance of a new genre, that of superhero films, but of a new standard in which box office is the only tool of evaluation. I remember reading somewhere that Disney was at one point unique among film studios in that it did not have a prestige division, a Sony Searchlight or whatever. Why bother releasing prestige films in December to possibly get an award that no one cares about when you could make more money releasing a new Spider-Man or Star Wars movie? I also think that the current conflict over the university is one of the revenge of the business majors against the rest. It is an attempt to impose one standard on the university, that which makes a profit, removing anything that would be concerned with anything else. It is hard to finish this line of thought without mentioning Trump, who stands out among Presidents in his absolute disinterest in anything resembling art or truth. Part of Trump's appeal to his voters is in his constantly saying again and again, who cares about art? who cares about literature? just stupid, and un-American nerds, as the following clip makes clear. (Oh, and for the record, I doubt he has seen Gone With the Wind, but he knows enough to know that it has the right nostalgia, and the right racial politics to appeal to his audience)Trump does very well among a particular class of capitalists, what some call lumpen capitalists, the small business owners, franchise owners, and, more significantly, entire fringe industries that border on scams. With respect to the latter, I just finished reading this book, Get Rich or Lie Trying, and the chapter on Trump University was truly shocking. I knew it was an multilevel marketing company, but I did not expect it to be such a transparent scheme. Ultimately, this might bring us to an economic explanation of this particular cultural revolution, what has made the business class more brazen and more transparent. I think we have to see this as a particular kind of class composition, not, as in the classic version aimed at the working class, at understanding its technical and political composition, but at the ruling class, or at least a segment of it. (Our current cultural battles over DEI and the like are really conflicts within the ruling class, between those companies that need to expand their customer and employee base, and thus their interest in diversity and those that see all such things as challenges to their regional control and fiefdoms.) A full analysis of the intersection of economy and culture in this transformation is more than I have space for, it seems enough now to say that we are in the grips of a different cultural revolution than the one Keynes predicted, and our lives, and those of our grandchildren, are possibly all the worse for it.

This report discusses potential future systems for waste-to-energy production in the Baltic Sea Region, and especially for the project REMOWE partner regions, the County of Västmanland in Sweden, Northern Savo in Finland, Lower Silesia in Poland, western part of Lithuania and Estonia. The waste-to-energy systems planned for in the partner regions are combustion of municipal solid waste (MSW) and solid recovered fuels from household and industry as well as anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge and agriculture waste. The potential future waste-to-energy systems in the partner regions include increased utilization of available waste resources. Examples of resources possible to use are straw that could be used for ethanol production and biowaste from households and manure that could be used for biogas production. If the utilization in all partner regions would reach the same level as already exists in the County of Västmanland it would correspond to an increased energy supply of 3 TWh/year which corresponds to about 2.5 % of the total energy use in the partner regions year 2008. An important aspect of future anaerobic processes for biogas production is the possibility to use the residue. West Lithuanian biogas production residue is planned to be dewatered up to 90 % of dry matter to make future utilization options possible. Pre-processing is necessary to be able to use the residue from digestion of solid waste as fertilizer. The pre-processing should include crushing, removal of metals, wood and plastics, and pulping. Without pre-processing it is possible to combust the residues with energy utilisation. Results from an investigation of the residues from biogas production tests using substrates from the project partner regions show a remaining energy potential of the digestate corresponding to 17 to 50% of the biogas energy. A combination of digestate combustion and fertilizer use could be a possibility. Hydrothermal carbonization, HTC, is a process that could be of interest to use for treating digestate in order both to utilize the energy left after biogas production but also for sanitation of the digestate. In this process heat is released and coal is produced. This process could also be of interest for waste-to-energy conversion of waste which is usually not usable for other biological process like e.g. biogas production, for example sharp leaved rush, straw or leaves from gardening etc. Initial tests on pulp and paper waste show promising results. Among the possible processes for increasing the output of biogas from anaerobic digestion using ultrasound technology for thickening of surplus waste water sludge can be mentioned. It allows increasing the biogas production up to 30 % and reducing the amount of organic substances in the digested sewage sludge by up to 25 %. Another area of possible improvement is the mixing in the digester. The mixing is important for distribution of microorganisms and nutrition, inoculation of fresh feed, homogenizing of the material and for the removal of end products of the metabolism. Studies of the digester for biowaste in the County of Västmanland indicate that about 30 % of digester volume can have dead and stagnant zones. 2 Waste-to-energy utilisation could also be possible to realise by further development and introduction of new processes and concepts. An option for solving the problem of old sewage sludge could be to use it in a gasifier to convert it to energy rich gases. Microbiological conversion of waste can be further developed to produce several different products, such as heat, power, fuels and chemicals, the development of so-called biorefineries. Also the biorefinery's water management can be renewed in order to remove toxic substances, minimize environmental impacts and produce pure, clean water. Finnoflag Oy has developed a technology that converts waste materials into e.g. fuels, chemicals, plastic and rubber via low-energy routes. The Finnoflag technology is based on the PMEU (Portable Microbe Enrichment Unit) which is a new innovative instrument for use in the microbe detection process and that is designed to create an optimal growth environment for microbes. For fibrous and well-structured biowaste dry digestion could be a good option for biogas production. Several different configurations have been tested in Germany. The garage digestion method has the advantage that an extensive pre- treatment of substrate is not necessary and no pumps or stirrers, which can be destroyed by disturbing materials, are involved. However, the efficiency of garage digesters is low compared to other digestion methods due to lack of effective substrate turbation. More research work is needed to improve the efficiency. Tests of five existing dry digestion processes show that the Tower-digester is the most suitable dry digestion method for household waste. Among the reviewed plants the Dranco-tower digester showed the best efficiency in reference to biogas potential. The plant design is robust enough to handle substrates like household waste with fractions of disturbing materials. The mixing in the reactor is based on the force of gravity and the used pumps are powerful and very resistant. Pyrolysis is a process of interest for converting wood based waste into energy products such as gas, bio-oil and/or solid fuel/carbon. This has been identified as a process suitable for a new business model with a franchise based model, offering an earning opportunity for small size entrepreneurs. Possible improvement of existing and new waste-to-energy systems also includes increasing the overall efficiency of the utilization of waste resources by integration of several processes. A study on integrating pellets production from the residues from straw-based ethanol production with an existing combined heat and power plant shows that the total production cost can be reduced by the integration. Possible development of waste-to-energy systems for the partner regions could be the following:  Estonian - biogas production using the organic waste, use of the digestate as fertilizer on demand or combustion for power and heat production, recycling plants for paper, plastics and other recyclable wastes and combustion for power and heat production after recycling  North Savo, Finland- the same options as for Estonia is of interest. Added to this is the potential for power and heat production from large amount of wood waste. Also the possibility for pellet production from wood waste could be of interest.  Western Lithuania- the same system as mentioned for Finland is also of interest for western Lithuania. 3  Lower Silesia, Poland- also for Lower Silesia high amounts of organic wastes is suitable to use for biogas production in anaerobic digestion. Recovered derived fuel (RDF) is already used as fuel for power and heat production. There are also some attempts to involve combustion of residual mixed waste in 1-2 of the most densely populated areas.  County of Västmanland, Sweden- Here a system for separate collection of the biowaste from households, digestion of the fraction together with ley crop silage from regional farmers to produce biogas and use of the digestate from the digestion process as fertilizer at farmland already exists and a new power and heat plant using recovered derived fuels is under construction. Further waste- to-energy plants for production of bioethanol from straw and biogas from agricultural waste could be possible. The potential future waste-to-energy systems are not only dependent on available technologies for waste-to-energy conversion but also on the development within the waste and energy areas including also economic and political aspects. There is a growing interest for waste prevention in waste management within the EU, and growing concern about food losses and food waste at global and national levels. During past decades the waste amounts have steadily increased with economic growth but due to waste prevention actions a decoupling of the waste amount and economic growth is foreseen. This has to be considered in development of future waste-to-energy systems. Further, policies and goals concerning fossil fuel free transportation systems and low carbon energy systems is of importance. Analysis of combined previous proposed scenarios for energy demand and use development and waste amount development for waste-to-energy in Sweden 2010 to 2050 shows that the contribution of waste-to-energy to the total energy supply in 2050 varies from 6 to 47 % depending on the scenarios combined. The lowest contribution occur for scenarios with low waste amounts combined with energy scenarios with low changes in energy demand while the highest contribution occurs for scenarios with high amount of waste combined with energy scenarios with large decrease in energy demand. ; REMOWE

In this paper authors argue that the main determinants of differences in prosperity across countries are differences in economic institutions. To solve the problem of development will entail reforming these institutions. Unfortunately, this is difficult because economic institutions are collective choices that are the outcome of a political process. The economic institutions of a society depend on the nature of political institutions and the distribution of political power in society. As yet, authors only have a highly preliminary understanding of the factors that lead a society into a political equilibrium which supports good economic institutions. However, it is clear that it is the political nature of an institutional equilibrium that makes it very difficult to reform economic institutions. The authors illustrate this with a series of pitfalls of institutional reforms. The author's analysis reveals challenges for those who would wish to solve the problem of development and poverty. That such challenges exist is hardly surprising and believe that the main reason for such challenges is the forces authors have outlined in this paper. Better development policy will only come when authors recognize this and understand these forces better. Nevertheless, some countries do undergo political transitions, reform their institutions, and move onto more successful paths of economic development.

 The Best Joke in Barbie Years ago I remember encountering Félix Guattari's little essay, "Everybody Wants to be a Fascist." At the time its title seemed more clever than prescient. (Although it is worth remembering how much fascism, and the encounter with fascism was integral to Deleuze and Guattari's theorizing, well beyond the reference to Reich). Now that we are living in a different relation to fascism the problem posed by Guattari (and Deleuze) of desire seems all the more pertinent and pressing. One of the problems of using the word fascism today, especially in the US, is that it is hard to reconcile our image as a politics, a politics of state control of everything, and the current politics of outrage aimed at M&Ms, Barbie, and Taylor Swift. How can fascism be so trivial and so petty? This could be understood as the Trump problem, although it is ultimately not limited to Trump. There are a whole bunch of pundits and people getting incredibly angry about the casting of movies and how many times football games cut away to Taylor Swift celebrating in the expensive seats. The Fox News Expanded Universe is all about finding villains everywhere in every library or diverse band of superheroes. It is difficult to reconcile the petty concerns of the pundit class with the formation of an authoritarian state. I have argued before that understanding Trump, or Trumpism, means rethinking the relationship between the particular and universal, imaginary and real. Or, as Angela Mitropoulis argues, the question of fascism now should be what does it look like in contemporary captitalism, one oriented less around the post-fordist assembly line than the franchise. Or as she puts it, "What would the combination of nationalist myth and the affective labour processes of the entertainment industry mean for the politics and techniques of fascism?"It is for this reason (among others) that Alberto Toscano's Late Fascism is such an important book. As he argues in that book fascism (as well as in an interview on Hotel Bar Sessions) fascism has to be understood as kind of license, a justification of violence and anger, and a pleasure in that justification. We have to give up the cartoon image of fascism as centralized and universal domination and see it as not only incomplete persecution, unevenly applied, but persecution of some coupled with the license to persecute for others. Fascism is liberation for the racist, sexist, and homophobe, who finally gets to say and act on their desires. As Toscano argues, "...what we need to dwell on to discern the fascist potentials in the anti-state state are those subjective investments in the naturalizations of violent mastery that go together with the promotion of possessive and racialized conceptions of freedom. Here we need to reflect not just on the fact neoliberalism operates through a racial state, or that, as commentators have begun to recognize and detail, it is shaped by a racist and civilizational imaginary that delimits who is capable of market freedoms (Toscano is not referring to Tosel, but that is an important part of Tosel's work) We must also attend to the fact that the anti-state state could become an object of popular attachment or better, populist investment, only through the mediation of race." Toscano's emphasis is on race in this passage, but it could be argued to apply to sexism, homophobia, etc., to the enforcement and maintenance of any of the old hierarchies. As Toscano cites Maria Antonietta Macciochhi later in the book, "You can't talk abut fascism unless you are also prepared to discuss patriarchy." Possessive includes the family as the first and most vital possession. At this point fascism does not sound too different from classical conservatism, especially if you take the definition of the latter to be the following: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."  However, what Toscano emphasizes is the libidinal pleasure that comes with this, it is not just a matter of who is in and who is not, who is protected and who is not, but in the pleasure that one gets from such exclusion, a pleasure that is extended and almost deputized to the masses. While conservative hierarchies and asymmetries passed through the hallowed institutions of the state and the courts, the fascist deputies take to the streets and the virtual street fights of social media. As Toscano argues, pitting Foucault's remarks about the sexual politics of fascism in the seventies against Guattari's analysis,"For Foucault, to the extent that there is an eroticization of power under Nazism, it is conditioned by a logic of delegation, deputizing and decentralization of what remains in form and content a vertical, exclusionary, and murderous kind of power. Fascism is not just the apotheosis of the leader above the sheeplike masses of his followers; it is also, in a less spectacular but perhaps more consequential manner the reinvention of the settle logic of petty sovereignty, a highly conditional but very real 'liberalising' and 'privatising' of the monopoly of violence...Foucault's insight into the 'erotic' of a power based on the deputizing of violence is a more fecund frame, I would argue, for the analysis of both classical and late fascisms than Guattari's hyperbolic claim that "the masses invested a fantastic collective death instinct in...the fascist machine' --which misses out on the materiality of that 'transfer of power' to a 'specific fringe of the masses' that Foucault diagnosed as critical to fascism's desirability."I think that Toscano's analysis picks up an important thread that runs from discussions of fascism from Benjamin to Foucault (and beyond). As Benjamin writes in the Work of Art essay "The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life."Today we could say that the right of expression includes a deputization of power and the pleasure in exercising it. In a capitalist society, in which the material conditions of existence must belong to the capitalist class, the only thing that can be extended to the masses is the power and pleasure to dominate others. Real wages keep on declining, but fascism offers the wages of whiteness, maleness, cisness, and so on, extending not the material control over one's existence but libidinal investment in the perks of one's identity.All of which brings me to Taylor Swift. I have watched with amusement and some horror as the fringes of the Fox News Expanded Universe have freaked out about Taylor Swift attending football games and, occasionally, being seen on television watching and enjoying the games. It is hard to spend even a moment thinking about something which has all of the subtlety of the "He-Man Woman Hater's Club," but I think that it is an interesting example of the kind of micro-fascism that sustains and makes possible the tendency towards macro-fascism. Three things are worth noting about this, first most of the conspiracy theories about Swift are not predicated on things that she has actually done, but what she might do, endorse Biden, campaign for Biden, etc., I think that this has to be seen as a mutation of conspiracy thinking from the actual effects of an action or event, Covid undermining Trump's presidency, to an imagined possible effect. One of the asymmetries of contemporary power is treating the fantasies or paranoid fears of one group as more valid than the actual conditions and dominations of another group. Second, and to be a little more dialectical, the fear of Swift on the right recognizes to what extent politics have been entirely subsumed by the spectacle fan form. (Hotel Bar Sessions did a show about this too) Trump's real opponent for hearts and minds, not to mention huge rallies, is not Biden but Swift. Lastly, and this really deserves its own post, some of the anger about Swift being at the game brings to mind Kate Manne's theory of misogyny, which at its core is about keeping women in their place. I would imagine that many of the men who object to seeing Swift at their games do not object to the cutaway shots of cheerleaders during the same game. It is not seeing women during the game that draws ire, but seeing one out of her place--someone who is enjoying being there and not there for their enjoyment.I used to be follow a fairly vulgar materialist line when it came to fascism. Give people, which is to say workers, actual control over their work, their lives, and their conditions and the appeal of the spectacle of fascist power would dissipate. It was a simple matter of real power versus its appearance. It increasingly seems that such an opposition overlooks the pleasures that today's mass media fascism make possible and extend to so many. It is hard to imagine a politics that could counter this that would not be a politics of affect, of the imagination, and of desires. Libidinal economy and micro-politics of desire seem less like some relic from the days of high theory and more and more like necessary conditions for thinking through the intertwining webs of desire and resentment that make up the intersection of culture, media, and politics. I think one of the pressing issues of the moment is the recognizing that all of these junk politics of grievances of popular culture should be taken seriously as the affective antechamber of fascism while at the same time not accepting them on their terms; there is nothing really to be gained by rallying to defend corporations and billionaires. 

The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ; This is an oral history interview with George T. Frost. Commissioner Frost discusses the automobile business and working as a mail carrier during the Depression. He discusses various federal programs, such as the CCC and the WPA, and the need to economize. ; 15p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 sound disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program George T. Frost Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah George T. Frost Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Copyright © 2016 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The forty-five interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Frost, George T., an oral history by Mack S. Taft, circa 1960s, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with George T. Frost. Commissioner Frost discusses the automobile business and working as a mail carrier during the Depression. He discusses various federal programs, such as the CCC and the WPA, and the need to economize. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Commissioner Frost, where did you live between the years 1929-39? GF: I moved down here to go to the Utah State College in the fall of 1928. Then I went back to Wyoming. I was born and raised in Wyoming, and I went back home for a short season. Then I came back down, and I've been in Ogden ever since. MT: When did you start your business activity here in Ogden? GF: Well, I became associated with the automobile business way back in 1934 with a friend of mine, L. H. Strong, whose name I'm sure rings a bell with a lot of people. He and I were both looking for work, as were millions of other people. We decided to try the automobile business – or rather he did. I was working for him at the time in a little spot down here at about 3230 Washington Boulevard, where the Lincoln-Mercury dealer is now, opened up a little shop selling Studebakers. That was my beginning in the automobile business. Even prior to that, he and I were overhauling cars in the place where the present Ogden Bowling Alley is, here on 26th and Washington. Anything, in other words, to make a dime. It was just that serious, scrounging around, trying to make a nickel. MT: Just go ahead and talk about what you remember about those years. GF: Well, let me give you a typical example of how things were at that time. I mentioned starting in the automobile business, that is, selling automobiles in 2 1934. I went back to South Bend, Indiana, I recall – this comes vividly to my mind – to pick up a couple of Studebakers. We were caravanning at that time. In other words, to save a few nickels, rather than ship them, we would go drive one behind another. This was in November 1934. I got somewhere into Iowa, and got into a snowstorm, and I fought snow all the way through Iowa and into Nebraska. I couldn't find any chains, and I couldn't even find any mud hooks, you know, to give me a little traction, you know. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I somewhere in Nebraska ran short of funds. In fact, I didn't have any to start with, to speak of, so I wired Strong here in Ogden to send me some money because I was going to be out of funds pretty quick. I told him to send it to North Platt, Nebraska, and I would pick it up. When I got to North Platt, I went to Western Union, and there were no funds there. They hadn't heard. So I left word with them that if the money did come, to forward it onto Cheyenne. So I took off, and I arrived in Cheyenne and pulled into a service station to fill up the tank, which I was in the process of doing when a Highway Patrolman pulled up beside me. Very nicely he informed me that I had to have a permit to caravan cars across Wyoming. As I recall, it was $1.50 a car at that time. Anyway, it was very interesting and coincidental that when I paid him and paid for the gas, it took every cent that I had in my pocket. So here I was completely broke. So I went down to the telegraph station, and here was the funds. But this is the point. Try to compare it with today, and it is almost a laughing matter. There was $17, if you can imagine, and that $17 had to get me into Ogden. But 3 $17 in those days was quite a lot of money. Going back even before that, I got married in 1932, which was right square in the middle of the worst of the Depression. I was working for the power company at the time. Just a week before my marriage date, I lost my job. That is, due to normal attrition, they were trying to find places for the older men. I, being one of the younger ones, had to leave. I was making $90 a month. Big deal, as compared to today, but my wife and I decided to go ahead anyway. It was that year that I got kind of mixed up in selling automobiles, as I mentioned, trying to make a dime to live. But, anyhow, this $17 got me back to Ogden, but $17 wouldn't go very far today. I remember several months later, I was called back to the power company to take my job back. The older gentleman that took my place couldn't do the work, so they gave me my job back. So I had a $90 a month job, and I was very, very grateful for it. A few years later, I got that up to as high as $150 a month. Actually, we were doing very well. We bought and built a home at that time. It cost us a little over $4,300 for that home, and we lived in it for about 20 years. So that home, it would have been about 10 or 12 years ago, it sold for over $16,000, almost four times more than what I bought it and built it for. But $150 was actually a pretty fair and reasonable income. We were very appreciative and very grateful for it. You could buy a loaf of bread for around five or seven cents, eight cents at most, a quart of milk for five, six, or seven cents, which is a far cry from what it is today. I well remember those days. MT: What do you remember as being some of the problems of the businessman during those years.? 4 GF: Well, we had pretty well gotten out of the worst of the Depression by the time I decided to go into business for myself. That was in the fall of 1940. Times had not at all really returned to what could really be called normal, but we were climbing out of it. People were more optimistic, had more opportunity, let's say. We had no idea at that time that we were going to be involved in a war. But I remember when I got involved in the automobile business, at that time, a young friend of mine and I decided that we would take a chance. We took on the Hudson dealership. This is laughable, as compared with today, but we borrowed a little bit of money to get started. We borrowed $250 to get started, if you can imagine such a thing, to get started in business. But we did it, and we leased a place down here on the corner of 27th and Washington, and started selling Hudson automobiles. I stayed with my partner for about a year. Prior to that, I had filled out an application with the postal service for a job. At that time, a notice came through, and after about five or six years, I had forgotten about it completely. They notified me that I was eligible for an appointment at the post office. Well, this looked awfully good, as you can well imagine, to have a steady job with steady pay, and a permanent job, for life. At that time, nothing could sound more sweet to your ears, to a man who had lived through the Depression and had scrounged and saved and schemed and done everything, almost, that he could think of to live on, to have a good, permanent job offered you. So I sold out my share of the business, and it is almost laughable when we look back on it. Our total net worth was just slightly over $3,000. But yet we 5 lived, and we did it, and we provided for ourselves with the sale of the cars. Today it would be absolutely impossible for anyone to even dream of such a thing. That money wouldn't even be worth a week's effort. Anyhow, I stayed with the post office for a couple of years, and this is not meant to be any reflection whatever on the postal service or the mail carrier, but I got so tired and weary physically that it rather disgusted me to think that all I had the brains enough to do was walk around with a pack on my back that even a jackass could do. I thought, "This certainly isn't the life for me, to walk around with a pack on my back." But anyhow, during the interim, my business partner had closed down the business and gone into the war. So I made application and got that franchise back, and though we couldn't operate during the war, I had this franchise in my pocket, favorably speaking. As I walked around delivering mail, I made up my mind that as soon as possible I was going to get back in the automobile business because I could see that as soon as the war was over, there was going to be a boom because cars were awfully hard to get, were not even being built to speak of, outside of what the government needed and wanted. So when the time came, I stuck my neck out again to get started in the automobile business again. But this time, instead of $250, it cost me $5,000 just to get started and rent a place with an option to purchase that place. Even then, that was very small scale and, by today's standards, extremely small scale. I had, you might say, moderate success. But during those immediate post-war years, we could hardly get enough cars to meet the demands. 6 MT: What do you think that you learned and that the public learned as a result of the Depression? GF: I'm glad you asked that because I've alluded to this many times in my life. I've said to my own family, "I wouldn't wish you to go through a Depression like that, necessarily, but I can assure you that that was one of the finest experiences that those of us who went through it will have ever had because if anything in this world has taught me, and has taught those people, I think by and large every one of us who went through that Depression, if we learned anything, it was the value of a dollar. Better than that, to have a job and to appreciate the fact that you had a job and had a little respect for your employer." So I would say that the greatest lesson that we learned out it was respect for one another, appreciation for the country in which we lived, appreciation for an opportunity, appreciation for just being able to make an honest dollar, and that we had to work. I can assure you that there was no place then for the so-called drone because, I'll tell you, only that man who was willing to work and put forth an honest effort was working in those days. I think that those who had those jobs appreciate that fact. I would somehow wish, as I have sometimes said, that every young person of my children's age, who are grown up now and are raising children of their own, I wish they could have had this experience without having to go through it, if you know what I mean, so that they would appreciate the value. In other words, a sense of value, I would say, would be one of the greatest lessons that we ever learned out of that. MT: What do you remember about the New Deal and the recovery measures, say the 7 WPA and the CCC and other programs set forth by the New Deal? GF: I remember quite well the WPA. It did a lot of good. For example, the North Ogden Fork road was built during the WPA days. It's rather interesting that over the years we have been prone to criticize the judgment of those that built it, thinking that they built it in the wrong place. I just mentioned this simply because we, as a commission, have decided that we are going to keep that road open the year around. We have been pressured by many of the old-timers to change its location. After going over it with many of our engineers, we find that the present location is the best. So I commend them and, you might say, apologize for some of the things I myself might have said or thought. But that was built during the WPA days, and they did a world of good. Of course, this was merely a stop-gap measure, which we all recognize. The CCC actually, in my opinion from what I can see on the surface of it, I wish our present Job Corps were organized somewhat more along the lines of the CCC. We see evidence today, all over this land, especially in the forest of work done by the CCC – and I think that is one of the finest, if you need stop-gap measures – that that's one of the finest programs that this government has ever engaged in, is the CCC. That was more oriented in actual physical work, in doing things that needed to be done, on all, many areas, particularly I'm thinking of public lands. A lot of those boys who came out of there had learned how to work and certainly they appreciated what they were getting because I can tell you it was something that they hadn't had before. I'm sure those boys – this is no criticism either, but I think that it comes a little easier today than it did then – and 8 again, I think that it comes back to this matter of appreciation. I think that it is something that all of us to do more is develop a sense of appreciation. You mentioned, also, the NRA. Well, you see, we were controlled by the NRA, and it was a good thing. If we hadn't had that, I hate to think what would have taken place in our economy. It would have been utter chaos. A lot of people got hurt. It was a good thing. I think that those acts that were enacted by the Congress during those Roosevelt days, a lot of criticism is heaped upon the president and Congress for that. For as I look back, I can see that every one of them are necessary. They did a lot of good. They kept things under control. I feel, and a lot of people today feel, that it had gotten out of control. I want to go on record today for commending the President for the action he has taken recently in this wage and price controls. My only criticism, if I were to give one, would be that he should have done it couple of years ago, or more, or the president before him should have done it. But by and large, few of these programs; I think they were wise and good decisions, and I think they were necessary. Here again, I think that they taught us to get along and appreciate our opportunities in this country. I would just like to re-emphasize that if they haven't gone through this Depression that we were talking about, that they appreciate what their elders may have told them and can tell them about that time, and really appreciate the wonderful opportunities that we have in this great country, and show that appreciation by the way they act, by the things they say, and the things they do. You wouldn't see the problems then that you have today. On that side of the 9 coin, that was a good thing because there was a sense of gratitude for just an honest dollar and a meal on your table, which is not prevalent today. It is unfortunate that it exists, but that's the way it is. I wouldn't want to go back to those days in spite of all our problems today, but I'm glad that I had that experience. MT: Did you use any special ingenuity, either you or your wife, to secure food or anything along this line? GF: Yes, indeed. I'm glad you mention that. Of course all of us, many of us, had a little garden in our back yard. We tore up our lawns. We planted vegetables, and in order to conserve our water, we dug little wells in the basement of our home, actually, and put little electric pumps on them to water our lawns. Innumerable ways, did we devise ways and means to provide for ourselves because we didn't have the money. The money wasn't available, so we just, we had to improvise, and that was good. It more or less rekindled that old, pioneer spirit and initiative that our fore-bearers had to use in coming into this country. That was very common. You saw innumerable gardens around this country, and that was just one area. Of course you can well imagine that we had to make a lot of our clothes, those you could, you know. Bread lines were extremely common everywhere. People were lining up everywhere just to get a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. There was not much of it to be had, but I was able to, the one single thing that everyone was able to do, was to raise as much as they possibly could for their own food. Those of us who lived in the city found it a little more difficult. 10 MT: Did you have any experience of going to the rural area to pick up vegetables, or things along this line? GF: Well, actually, no, I didn't. I know a lot of people that did a great deal of it, you know. When the fall harvests were in, and the fruit was picked, many people would wait and kind of pick up the leavings, and it was very much appreciated. But like I said, those of us who were in the city, a lot of us, we raised what we could in our back yards, and it supplemented what we had on our table. But I personally did not get out in the rural areas and scrounge for these things, but a lot of people did, and they had to.

Seçimler, demokratik yapıların beraberinde getirdiği hem önemli bir hak, hem de yerine getirilmesi gereken bir yükümlülüktür. Belirli birtakım şartları taşıyarak seçmen hüviyeti kazanmış bireylerin yönetsel yapıya sinen iradelerinin, tercihlerinin tezahürüdür. Demokratik yapıda daha dar kapsamda gerçekleştirilen yerel seçimler ise, yerel yönetime ilişkin bir irade beyanı niteliği taşımakta, bireyin özgürce yaptığı yerel bir siyasi tercihi ortaya koymaktadır. Bireyin kararına etki edebilmenin tek yolunun onu ikna etmek olduğu bu yapıda, yerel seçim kampanyaları ikna işlevini üstlenen yegane enstrümanlardır. Söz konusu enstrümanlar ne denli etkili kullanılabilirse, seçmen tercihine o kadar etkide bulunulabilir ve yerel seçimden istenen başarı o denli elde edilebilir. Bu bağlamda, yerel seçim kampanyalarının seçmen tercihi üzerindeki etkisine odaklanan çalışma, Sivas örneğinde gerçekleştirilen bir alan araştırmasına dayanmaktadır. Araştırmadan elde edilen veriler göstermektedir ki, yerel seçim kampanyaları yerel seçimler için gerekli, seçmenin aday tercihinde etkili ve genel seçim kampanyaları kadar özen gösterilmesi gereken kampanyalardır. Bu kampanyaların aktardığı bilgiler güvenilirlik açısından genel itibariyle sorunlu olarak algılanmakta, halkı kutuplaştırması, kaynak israfı ve gürültü kirliliği en olumsuz yanı olarak ön plana çıkmaktadır. Kampanya yapısına, yapılacak icraatlara, iletişim araç ve yöntemlerine, partiye, hassasiyet gösterilecek konulara, başkan adayına ve siyasi rakiplere ilişkin unsurlar farklı düzeyde de olsa etkileşimsel bir biçimde yerel seçim kampanyasının başarısında rol oynamakta; söz konusu kampanyalar seçmenler üzerinde daha çok ilgilendirici, bilgilendirici, yönlendirici ve pekiştirici bir işlev üstlenmektedir ; Elections, which democratic structures bring about, lead both to an important right and a liability to be fulfilled. For the sustainability of the existing democratic structures, elections are held at regular intervals and according to predetermined criteria and legal regulations. Only in this way, can the will and preferences of the individuals who acquire a franchise by possessing requisite qualifications, be reflected in a governmental structure. Local elections, which are held in a narrower scope in democratic structure, indicate the declaration of intention with regard to local government and present local political preferences individuals makes freely. In this respect, local elections, in which local political actors are elected is not very much different from general elections with the political atmosphere, contacts established with electorates, the activities engaged in and success or failure that comes as a result of these activities. During local elections two way interactions with voters are established and campaigns aiming to persuade electorates are carried out to affect their voting behaviors. In this context where the only way to influence individuals decisions is persuasion, local election campaigns are the only instruments that can fulfill the function of persuasion. The more influential these instruments are, the more influential they can be on voters' choice, and thus the more successful parties will be in local elections. Based on these presuppositions, the study, which aims to reveal the effects of local election campaigns on voters, is based on field research in Sivas sample. In this study, which is in general survey model, purposeful sampling was used and face-to-face interviews were conducted with voters. Data were collected by asking multi-dimensional question to voters in Sivas with regard to their assessments of local election campaigns. In this context, the study sought to answer the following research questions: Research Question 1: What are the views of participants with regard to local election campaigns and to what extend views are determined by the profile of participants? Research Question 2: What elements of local election campaigns do participants attach importance to and to what extend are they valued? Research Question 3: What kind of distribution do valued elements of Local Election Campaigns show in terms of participant profile? Research Question 4: What functions do local election campaigns fulfill and to what extend are these function fulfilled? The results of the study can be summarized as follows:Local election campaigns have potential effect on voters' candidate preferences. It was found that those who are strongly linked to the party they think of voting for, who show great interest to politics, artisans and self-employed people are more influenced from local election campaigns. There is a common opinion that local election campaigns are given as much importance as general elections and local election campaigns are necessary for local elections. Those who are strongly tied to the party they think of voting for, those who show strong interest in politics, those who position themselves in the left, industrialists-tradesmen, retired people, students and self-employed people believe more profoundly that local election campaigns are necessary for local elections. Local election campaigns are generally perceived to be problematic in terms of the reliability of the information they transmit. In line with this, it was found that those who are strongly linked to the party, those who show strong interest in politics, housewives, artisans and women have more optimistic views with regard to the information transmitted in local election campaigns. The most negative sides of local election campaigns are that they polarize people, cause waste of resources and noise pollution. While male voters focus on waste of resources and polarization of people as negative sides of campaigns, female voters emphasize polarization of people and noise pollution. For married people the most negative sides are the waste of resources and polarization of people, while single people emphasize polarization of people and noise pollution as negative sides. Those aged between 18 and 28 emphasize polarization of people and noise pollution, according to those aged between 29 and 39 waste of resources and polarization of people are the most negative sides and for those aged between 40 and 50 polarization of people and waste of resources are the most negative sides. Those aged 51 and above emphasize noise pollution and waste of resources as the most negative sides of local elections. The elements regarded important in local election campaigns are categorized under seven headings: campaign's structure, actions to be taken, means and methods of communication, the party, the issues to be sensitive to, the mayor candidate, and political rivals. Although they have different levels of influence, all of these elements play an interactional role in the success of local election campaigns. In this context, those who show very high interest in politics value the elements of campaign structure more compared to those who show very weak interest in politics. Besides, those whose monthly family income is between 1001 and 2000 TL compared to those whose monthly family income is 3001 TL and above and female voters compared to male voters value the elements with regard to campaign structure more. Those who are very strongly and strongly tied to the party they think of voting for regard the elements with regard to the actions to be taken more important compared to those who are very weakly linked to the party. Those who are strongly, very strongly or mildly linked to the party they think of voting for value means and methods of communication more compared to those who are very weakly linked to their party. Those who show high, very high or mild interest in politics value means and methods of communication more compared to those who show very low interest in politics. And those who show high interest in politics value means and methods of communication compared to those mildly interested in politics. Those who position themselves to the left or center-right value means and methods of communication compared to those who does not position themselves in any category and those aged between 18 and 28 value means and methods of communication more than those aged 51 and above. Those who are very strongly, strongly, weakly and mildly tied to the party they think of voting for, value party related issues more than those who are very weakly tied to the party they think of voting for. Those who are very strongly linked to the party they vote for value party related to issues more compared to those who are mildly linked to the party. Those who are highly interested in politics value party related to issues more compared to those who are mildly interested in politics. Those who position themselves in the center-left, radical right and center-right value party related to issues more than those who do not position themselves in any category and women value party related to issues more compared to men. There is no significant difference in terms of the issues to be sensitive to according to participant profile. Those who are very strongly linked to the party they vote for attach more importance to the issues related to mayor candidate compared to those who are very weakly or mildly linked to their parties. Those who show strong interest in politics attach more importance to the issues related to mayor candidates compared to those who have mild level interest to politics. Those who are very strongly and strongly attached to the party they think of voting for perceive elements with regard to political rivals more important compared to those who are very weakly linked. Those who feel very strongly attached to their parties perceive elements with regard to political rivals more important compared to those who feel mildly attached to their parties. Those who show very strong interest in politics perceive elements with regard to political rivals more important compared to those who show very weak and mild level of interest. Besides, those who show strong interest in politics perceive elements with regard to political rivals more important compared to those who show very weak, mild level or weak interest in politics. Those who position themselves in center-left, radical right and center right perceive elements with regard to political rivals more important compared to those who do not position themselves anywhere. Literate voters perceive elements with regard to political rivals more important compared to primary school graduates. Those whose monthly family income level is between 1001 and 2000 TL perceive elements with regard to political rivals more important compared to those whose monthly family income level is 3001 TL and above. It is thought that local election campaigns fulfill their functions at a medium level it mostly fulfilled its interest attracting, informative, directive and consolidating function, and fulfill its educational, transformational, entertaining and socializing function at the lowest level. In this context, for the success of local election campaigns the followings are the basic criteria: campaigns are to be conducted according to the region or city, micro level and region specific action plans should be adopted, rigorous and detailed plans should be developed, an effective campaign team should be organized, steps to be taken in short, medium and long term are to be planned carefully, application of this plan should be checked and the people who carry out the campaign should have the consciousness that they are not alone in local elections and that they are in a contest for votes with different rivals.

This is a book about directorship. More precisely, it's about nominee directors, who are nominated by IFC and other development finance institutions (DFIs) to the boards of investee companies to fulfill a dual mandate: first, they are expected to perform all the duties and tasks of a board member. Second, they are also charged with improving the corporate governance, sustainability, and ethical behavior of the investee company. This need exists because the empirical evidence indicates that in many developing countries it is nearly impossible to create long-term shareholder value without marked improvements in these areas. This book, based on sound research and real-life examples, offers not only a useful learning platform but also, the authors hope, an entertaining read. It focuses on directorship and leadership skills in the boardroom and does not attempt to cover the whole 'waterfront' on corporate governance issues. Many other publications (including some found on the IFC website) deal extensively with the structures, processes, and legal frameworks of corporate governance. The story emphasizes the learning and adapting that must go on for a nominee director to be effective in encouraging change and improvement on the board and in the company. It draws on specific situations to illustrate that IFC rules and instructions cannot always be perfectly followed: the nominee director is in the 'heat of the battle,' under time pressure, and confronted with dilemmas and uncertainty that only in hindsight can be structured and analyzed clearly. The target audience of the incredible adventures of Carla is nominee directors, especially those who are newly appointed or candidates who are considering taking on such a role. It aims to expose them to the challenges in the behavioral dimension of corporate governance and to help them learn, through Carla's experience, the actions and communications that can help them, or not help them, achieve the goals they are committed to.