City Journal Audio

Nicole Gelinas and Brian Anderson discuss recent disaster-relief efforts in the United States, the federal government's role in such assistance, and how national flood insurance and other recovery programs could be reformed. Since 2005, Washington has spent nearly $300 billion on disaster recovery, with state and local governments spending billions more. This figure doesn't even include last year's devastating storm season, which ravaged Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Federal and local authorities should concentrate the bulk of their spending on the infrastructure necessary to limit storm damage, and on immediate relief after storms have struck. Right now, however, the majority of disaster-relief expenditure goes toward repairing flooded properties after hurricanes--a task better left to the private sector. Read Nicole Gelinas's story, "Storm Surge," in the Winter 2018 issue of City Journal.

E.J. McMahon and Seth Barron discuss recent corruption cases in New York and how the state government in Albany is attempting to revitalize struggling areas with "economic-development" programs. Last month, Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo, was found guilty on corruption charges for accepting more than $300,000 in bribes from two companies. Percoco's conviction reinforces the perception that New York politics operates on a "pay-to-play" model. Allegations of bid-rigging and other corrupt practices have dogged Albany ever since Governor Cuomo launched his signature economic-development plan, which provides subsidies to private firms to operate businesses in the state. Despite these efforts, New York continues to lose residents to other states every year. Edmund J. McMahon is founder and research director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, based in Albany. Follow him on Twitter @EjmEj.

Dennis Saffran and Seth Barron discuss New York City's misguided family-reunification policies, which can have fatal consequences for children in distressed homes. In the Summer 1997 Issue of City Journal, Saffran wrote an article entitled "Fatal Preservation," which chronicled attempts by New York's social-services agencies to keep children with their troubled and abusiveparents. The policy proved tragic for kids like six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, killed at the hands of her crack-addicted mother in 1995. Elisa's mother had regained custody of her daughter over the opposition of relatives and teachers. Too many other New York City children have met similar fates. More than 20 years later, Saffran finds that, on balance, little has changed. "Many in the social-work establishment, including officials in the administrations of New York City's last two mayors . . . have remained hostile to [reforms] and committed to the old family-preservation orthodoxy." Dennis Saffran is a Queens-based appellate attorney, writer, and former GOP candidate for the New York City Council. He can be reached on Twitter @dennisjsaffran.

Heather Mac Donald and Frank Furedi discuss the hostility to free speech that has provoked disturbing incidents on campuses across the country and the ideology behind safe spaces, micro-aggressions, and trigger warnings. Their discussion, from a Manhattan Institute event held in June 2017, was moderated by City Journal contributing editor Howard Husock. American universities are experiencing a profound cultural transformation. Student protests designed to shut downalternative opinions have become frequent and sometimes violent. Frank Furedi's What's Happened To The University? A Sociological Exploration of Its Infantilisation explores the origins of the anti-free speech climate at U.S. and U.K. universities. Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She has written extensively about political correctness on campus and was a recent target of student protests at several colleges, where she had been invited to discuss her New York Times bestseller, The War on Cops. Frank Furedi is emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. He has published articles in major newspapers in Europe and the United States and is the author of 17 books on topics including intellectual culture, parenting, education, and the politics of fear. Furedi is a frequent guest on British T.V. and radio.

Daniel DiSalvo joins Brian Anderson to discuss public-sector unions, freedom of speech, and the upcoming Supreme Court case, Janus v. AFSCME. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Janus next week. If the justices rule for the plaintiffs, employees of state and local governments across the country will be able to opt out of paying union fees. Public unions are often powerful political players, and a sharp drop in funding or membership could deal a heavy blow to their influence. "The general result of public-sector unions' outsize influence in politics over the last 30 years, especially at the state and local levels, is ever-larger and more expensive government," writes DiSalvo in his City Journal article, "Judgment Day for Public Unions." Daniel DiSalvo is an associate professor of political science at the City College of New York, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and author of Government Against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Amity Shlaes joins Seth Barron to discuss the competing goals of economic growth and income equality, and to take a look at how American presidents in the twentieth century have approached these issues. Polls show that support for income redistribution is growing among younger generations of Americans, but such policies have a poor track record of achieving their goals. As Shlaes writes in her feature story in the Winter 2018 Issue of City Journal: "Prioritizing equality over markets and growth hurts markets and growth and, most important, the low earners for whom social-justice advocates claim to fight." Amity Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and serves as presidential scholar at The King's College. She is the author of Coolidge and The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

John Tierney joins Seth Barron to discuss the Trump administration's plans to reform how infrastructure projects are managed and funded. Civil engineers and other experts (including here at City Journal) have warned for years that the country's roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and rail lines are in serious need of repair. Thanks in part to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, infrastructure is now at the top of the national agenda. But does the Trump administration actually have a workable strategy for infrastructure? John Tierney discusses the promise of the administration's fresh approach, which breaks from past efforts in reducing Washington's role. He wrote about the plan in his City Journal article, "Trump's Infrastructure Opportunity." Tierney is a contributing editor of City Journal and a contributing science columnist for the New York Times.

Max Eden joins Seth Barron to discuss student discipline and suspension policies, and how discipline "reform" has led to chaos in many classrooms. In January 2014, in an attempt to reduce out-of-school suspensions, an Obama administration directive forced thousands of American schools to change their discipline policies. Proponents of the new discipline rules say that teachers and school administrators have been racially discriminatory in meting out punishments, creating a massive disparity in suspension rates between white and black students. Their claims, however, ignore the significant discrepancies in student behavior. "We tend to see one of two things happen as suspensions drop: Schools get less safe or school administrators cheat," wrote Max Eden at National Review Online, meaning that the schools separate disruptive students in ways that don't technically count as "suspensions." Max Eden is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Nicole Gelinas joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss how New York City saved its subway system after decades of decay and rampant crime from the 1960s to the early-1990s. This episode originally aired on October 20, 2016. Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a columnist at the New York Post. Her story "How Gotham Saved Its Subways" appeared in the Summer 2016 Issue of City Journal.

Nicole Gelinas joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss the recent bombing at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and how the city is managing the streets in midtown Manhattan to handle not only gridlocked traffic but also the threat of vehicle-based terrorist attacks on pedestrians. On Monday, December 11, New York City was stunned when a 27-year-old man from Bangladesh attempted to detonate an amateur pipe bomb during the morning rush-hour commute. The incident took place less than two months after another man intentionally drove his truck onto a lower Manhattan bike path, killing eight people. Following a number of deadly vehicle-based attacks in Europe, large global cities have taken precautions to preventwould-be terrorists from running over pedestrians with motor vehicles. But in New York, measures taken by the NYPD and city transportation agencies have left many people wondering if the streets are any more secure than before. Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a columnist at the New York Post.