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Party polarization is perhaps the most significant political trend of the past several decades of American politics. Many observers have pinned hopes on institutional reforms to reinvigorate the political center. The Top Two primary is one of the most interesting and closely-watched of these reforms: a radically open primary system that removes much of the formal role for parties in the primary election and even allows for two candidates of the same party to face each other in the fall. Here we leverage the adoption of the Top Two in California and Washington to explore the reform's effects on legislator behavior. We find an inconsistent effect since the reform was adopted in these two states. The evidence for post-reform moderation is stronger in California than in Washington, but some of this stronger effect appears to stem from a contemporaneous policy change—district lines drawn by an independent redistricting commission—while still more might have emerged from a change in term limits that was also adopted at the same time. The results validate some claims made by reformers, but question others, and their magnitude casts some doubt on the potential for institutions to reverse the polarization trend.

Bidal Aguero was born on July 23, 1949, and attended Texas Technological College (later Texas Tech University) in the fall of 1967. While there, he became active a Mexican American student organization called Los Tertullianos, becoming vice-president in 1970 and president in 1971. Los Tertullianos organized gatherings and seminars to encourage Mexican American students to be more politically active. Aguero graduated from Texas Tech in December 1972 with a B.A. in music education and after working for Learn-Education Talent Search for seven months, he helped found COMA (Commerciantes Organizacion Mexicano Americano), the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce, in 1972. ; He joined La Raza Unida Party, ran for local offices such as county commissioner, and participated in organizing protests for injustices done against Mexican Americans. Aguero was one of those who filed a lawsuit against the Lubbock Independent School District to change its method of electing school trustees. Aguero has worked in several local social service organizations such as Defensa, Inc., Chicanos Unidos-Campensions, and Llano Estacado Farmworkers of Tejas and government groups such as the South Plains Association of Governments, the State of Texas, and the City of Lubbock. Aguero is currently publisher of one of the two weekly Spanish newspapers in Lubbock, El Editor. ; Aguero has worked in several local social service organizations such as Defensa, Inc., Chicanos Unidos-Campensions, and Llano Estacado Farmworkers of Tejas and government groups such as the South Plains Association of Governments, the State of Texas, and the City of Lubbock. Aguero is currently publisher of one of the two weekly Spanish newspapers in Lubbock, El Editor. ; Full biography can be found at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/ttusw/00042/tsw-00042.html ; The collection consists of personal, financial and business records, civil rights and social service organizational materials, and government papers. ; Bidal Aguero Papers, 1949-1988 and undated, Southwest ...

Controlling government is a primary focus of the politico-economic literature. Recently, various political institutions have been analyzed from this perspective, most importantly balanced budget rules, fiscal federalism, and direct democracy. However, one type of institution has been neglected so far: elected competitors to the government. Such institutional competition between the government and an independent agency can be found at the Swiss local level, where finance commissions compete with the government. In some parts of Switzerland, local finance commissions can ex ante criticize government projects and bring alternative policy proposals onto the political agenda, which are then voted on by the citizens. Thus, they become strong competitors to the government. We econometrically investigate this institutional setting by comparing the 26 Swiss cantons. We find the power of the local finance commission to have an economically relevant, statistically significant and robust negative effect on the tax burden and on public expenditures. Adapted from the source document.

Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Documents -- Volume 1 -- American Revolution -- 1. Albany Plan of Union, 1754 -- 2. James Otis: Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, 1764 -- 3. Stamp Act, March 22, 1765 -- 4. Samuel Adams: The Rights of the Colonists, November 20, 1772 -- 5. Tea Act, 1773 -- 6. Coercive Acts: Boston Port Act, March 31, 1774 -- Massachusetts Government Act, May 20, 1774 -- Administration of Justice Act, May 20, 1774 -- Quartering Act, June 2, 1774 -- 7. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774 -- 8. Minutemen Agreement, Ipswich, Massachusetts, January 24, 1775 -- 9. Lord North's Conciliatory Proposition, February 27, 1775 -- 10. Patrick Henry: Speech, March 23, 1775 -- 11. Resolutions of the Continental Congress: Adoption of the Continental Army, June 14, 1775 -- Appointment of George Washington as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, June 15, 1775 -- Washington's Commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, June 17, 1775 -- 12. Thomas Gage: Report on the Battle of Bunker Hill, July 25, 1775 -- 13. Olive Branch Petition, July 5, 1775 -- 14. Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775 -- 15. Royal Proclamation Declaring the Colonies in Rebellion, August 23, 1775 -- 16. Thomas Paine: Common Sense, January 1776 -- 17. Congress's Resolves on Independent State Governments, May 10 and 15, 1776 -- 18. John Adams: Thoughts on Government, April 1776 -- 19. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 -- 20. George Washington: Letter Regarding Reliance on Militia, September 24, 1776 -- 21. Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, 1776 -- 22. Continental Congress, Resolution to Disarm and Imprison Dissenters in Pennsylvania and Delaware, August 26, 1777

Recognizing the mechanisms underlying seismic activity and tracking temporal and spatial patterns of earthquakes represent primary inputs to monitor active volcanoes and forecast eruptions. To quantify this seismicity, catalogs are established to summarize the history of the observed types and number of volcano-seismic events. In volcano observatories the detection and posterior classification or labeling of the events is manually performed by technicians, often suffering a lack of unified criteria and eventually resulting in poorly reliable labeled databases. State-of-the-art automatic Volcano-Seismic Recognition (VSR) systems allow real-time monitoring and consistent catalogs. VSR systems are generally designed to monitor one station of one volcano, decreasing their efficiency when used to recognize events from another station, in a different eruptive scenario or at different volcanoes. We propose a Volcano-Independent VSR (VI.VSR) solution for creating an exportable VSR system, whose aim is to generate labeled catalogs for observatories which do not have the resources for deploying their own systems. VI.VSR trains universal recognition models with data of several volcanoes to obtain portable and robust characteristics. We have designed the VULCAN.ears ecosystem to facilitate the VI.VSR application in observatories, including the pyVERSO tool to perform VSR tasks in an intuitive way, its graphical interface, geoStudio, and liveVSR for real-time monitoring. Case studies are presented at Deception, Colima, Popocatépetl and Arenal volcanoes testing VI.VSR models in challenging scenarios, obtaining encouraging recognition results in the 70–80% accuracy range. VI.VSR technology represents a major breakthrough to monitor volcanoes with minimal effort, providing reliable seismic catalogs to characterise real-time changes. ; European Union'sHorizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant 749249

The meaning of the GP contract has changed since the last major upheaval in the mid-1960s. The government has always dealt with general practitioners as independent contractors, but the way in which it treated them in 1990 was entirely different from the way in which they were treated in 1966. In 1966, the profession's independent contractor status effectively served to protect professional autonomy. In 1990, with the change in the form of government towards a "contract state," general practitioners were treated as independent contractors more in the sense of business entrepreneurs. The article finishes by raising the issue of how general practitioners can gain control over the medicopolitical agenda in the future.

The World Bank Group's self-evaluation systems have expanded since they started 40 years ago, and compliance with requirements is mostly strong. They systems mesh well with the independent evaluation systems for which they provide information and the systems have been emulated and adapted by other development agencies. However, the self-evaluation systems primarily focus on results reporting and accountability needs and do not provide the information necessary to help the Bank Group transform into a "Solutions Bank" or develop learning to enhance performance as emphasized in its 2013 strategy. Information generated through the systems is not regularly mined for knowledge and learning except by IEG, and its use for project and portfolio performance management can be improved. The systems produce corporate results measures but need to produce value to staff and line management and to the primary beneficiaries of the "Solutions Bank"—client governments, implementing agencies, firms, and beneficiaries and citizens.

This report presents the findings from RMIT University's evaluation of the Independent Family Advocacy and Support (IFAS) pilot run by Victoria Legal Aid (VLA). IFAS IFAS is a pilot service that provides non-legal advocacy and support to parents and primary carers who are involved in the investigation stage of the child protection system. The three main priority groups for IFAS are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, families where one or both parents have an intellectual disability, and since late 2020, culturally and linguistically diverse families. IFAS aims to divert families away from the child protection system and to increase access to legal services. The three IFAS pilot areas are Greater Bendigo, Ballarat and Darebin/Moreland, although Ballarat is not in scope for this evaluation as IFAS did not commence operations there until late 2020. During the evaluation period, from 02/01/2019 to 06/05/2021, IFAS provided advocacy and support to 282 parents and caregivers. This includes 68 Aboriginal parents or parents of Aboriginal children, 56 parents with intellectual disability and 57 parents from culturally and linguistically diverse families. IFAS also provided an additional 762 instances of referrals and advice. Approach to evaluation The evaluation was conducted in two parts, a midterm review and a final evaluation. Qualitative data was collected using interviews and focus groups with people who have used IFAS, IFAS staff, DFFH staff and other professional stakeholders. Quantitative data were provided by IFAS, VLA, DFFH and sourced from other publicly available data. Overall findings The overall findings from the evaluation are very positive. IFAS is highly valued by clients, who found it vital support through very distressing experiences. The IFAS approach works both in supporting parents and primary carers during the investigation phase of the child protection system and in diverting them away from the court system. The evaluation team recommend that IFAS is made available to all parents and primary caregivers who require support or assistance to reach decisions or take actions in response to child protection investigations. Views of parents and primary caregivers Parents and primary caregivers trust IFAS to help them navigate the child protection system. Parents told the evaluation team that IFAS builds the capacity of parents to self-advocate, helps calm their reactions and increases accountability of child protection practitioners. The only negative feedback from IFAS clients related to limitations of the pilot, mainly that advocacy was no longer available if they progressed to the court system. Views of child protection practitioners Child protection practitioners had more varied feedback, with those who better understood the model highly valuing IFAS. For these practitioners, IFAS enabled communication through mediation, allowing them to work effectively with families. Some practitioners found engaging with IFAS counterproductive, confusing or frustrating. This appeared to have occurred largely where there was either a lack of understanding of the IFAS model, or a perception that the representational advocacy approach was not helpful. It appears that many negative experiences could have been avoided if the model were better understood. Cost-benefit The evaluation team undertook a cost-benefit analysis, which estimates IFAS diverts 20% of referred clients away from court, resulting in an estimated saving of $3.52 to the Victorian government for every dollar invested in IFAS. Areas for development The evaluation also identified some specific areas for further development, including improving understanding of IFAS by stakeholders and ongoing support for lived experience perspectives. The data prompted considerations for expansion of the scope of IFAS, both geographically and in the child protection system. Finally, the evaluation considered the experience of children whose parents had used IFAS, finding no direct impact, but significant indirect impact where IFAS had supported families to address protective concerns identified by DFFH. Evaluation limitations The evaluation was limited by barriers to linking datasets and the impact of Victorian government COVID-19 restrictions, principally changes to the Children's Court processes.

This article analyzes changes in the target, content and technological aspects of training primary school teachers in higher pedagogical education in the introduction of the federal state educational standards of primary education of second generation. Key idea of the changes in the system of training primary school teachers in high school should be a mastery of the future of teacher experience in the implementation of the activity method in primary school as the priority method in education of young students; experience in organizing the space of spiritual and moral development of junior schoolchildren by means of educational and extracurricular activities, experience of self-expression and self-realization in the independent professional activity.

This article outlines the research of a multi-national team to develop a new travel aid to increase the independent mobility of blind and partially sighted people. The MoBIC travel aid (MoTA) consists of two inter-related components: the MoBIC Pre-Journey System (MoPS) assists users in exploring maps and planning journeys; and the MoBIC Outdoor System (MoODS) allows them to execute these plans by providing orientation and navigation assistance during journeys. The MoODS is a secondary aid, complementing primary aids such as the long cane or guide dog. The process by which initial prototypes of the system were developed is outlined and the elicitation of user requirements is discussed. Some results of initial evaluations conducted in the United Kingdom and the first field trials conducted in Germany are also presented.

Bidal Aguero was born on July 23, 1949, and attended Texas Technological College (later Texas Tech University) in the fall of 1967. While there, he became active a Mexican American student organization called Los Tertullianos, becoming vice-president in 1970 and president in 1971. Los Tertullianos organized gatherings and seminars to encourage Mexican American students to be more politically active. Aguero graduated from Texas Tech in December 1972 with a B.A. in music education and after working for Learn-Education Talent Search for seven months, he helped found COMA (Commerciantes Organizacion Mexicano Americano), the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce, in 1972. ; He joined La Raza Unida Party, ran for local offices such as county commissioner, and participated in organizing protests for injustices done against Mexican Americans. Aguero was one of those who filed a lawsuit against the Lubbock Independent School District to change its method of electing school trustees. Aguero has worked in several local social service organizations such as Defensa, Inc., Chicanos Unidos-Campensions, and Llano Estacado Farmworkers of Tejas and government groups such as the South Plains Association of Governments, the State of Texas, and the City of Lubbock. Aguero is currently publisher of one of the two weekly Spanish newspapers in Lubbock, El Editor. ; Aguero has worked in several local social service organizations such as Defensa, Inc., Chicanos Unidos-Campensions, and Llano Estacado Farmworkers of Tejas and government groups such as the South Plains Association of Governments, the State of Texas, and the City of Lubbock. Aguero is currently publisher of one of the two weekly Spanish newspapers in Lubbock, El Editor. ; Full biography can be found at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/ttusw/00042/tsw-00042.html ; The collection consists of personal, financial and business records, civil rights and social service organizational materials, and government papers. ; Bidal Aguero Papers, 1949-1988 and undated, Southwest ...

"Autonomous" workers include most gig-platform drivers, like those working globally for Uber and Lyft, who are usually classified as independent contractors and are ineligible for labor protections and benefits. The "new economy" and its business model, with its fissurization and increased use of contingent and outsourced workers hired as independent contractors, provide employers flexibility and lower costs by shifting labor costs to the workers. Many of these workers operate more as employees rather than genuine independent contractors or self-employed entrepreneurs, causing lost employee labor benefits and costing the government billions of lost tax dollars. Legal attempts continue to classify these workers as employees by means of adjudication or legislation interpreting the legal test of "control" to have them fit into the traditional employment relationship. California recently passed a law using a three-prong test to allow drivers who are dependent on a primary hiring company to be presumed as employees with full rights and benefits. Still, there are many drivers who will be independent contractors. However, the City of Seattle is trying an approach different from expanding the "employee" definition and has embraced the market practice of the employers' use of independent contractors, and has legislatively provided the drivers, as independent contractors, with a voice through collective bargaining, wherein they could gain labor rights and benefits. Issues of federal preemption and antitrust limitations are discussed, and future legislation at the state or local level looks possible. The choice provided employers is that labor rights are provided to their workers as employees or as independent contractors. This Article proposes a model of granting labor rights to the ride hailing drivers by legislation at the state or local government level that stays under the legal radar of federal preemption and meets the requirements of the antitrust law. Comparisons will be made with global trends and experiences in ...