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We argue that the United States has experienced a decline of economic, political, and military power since the 1970s, and that this decline can be attributed in part to the fragmentation of the American corporate elite. In the mid-twentieth century, this elite – constrained by a highly legitimate state, a relatively powerful labor movement, and an active financial community – adopted a moderate and pragmatic strategy for dealing with the political issues of the day. The “enlightened self-interest” of corporate leaders contributed to a strong economy with a relatively low level of inequality and an expanding middle class. This arrangement broke down in the 1970s, however, as increasing foreign competition and two energy crises led to spiraling inflation and lower profits. In response, the corporate elite waged an aggressive (and ultimately successful) assault on government regulation and organized labor. This success had the paradoxical effect of undermining the elite’s own sources of cohesion, however. Having won the war against government and labor, the group no longer needed to be organized. The marginalization of the commercial banks and the acquisition wave of the 1980s exacerbated the fragmentation of the corporate elite. No longer able to act collectively by the 1990s, the corporate elite was now incapable of addressing issues of business and societal-wide concern. Although increasingly able to gain individual favors from the state, the elite’s collective weakness has contributed to the political gridlock and social decay that plague American society in the twenty-first century.

This chapter presents a case study of the lesbian and gay rights movement following the Supreme Court's decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which was a critical defeat in the campaign for sodomy repeal. Activists responded with a dramatic wave of mobilization by staging protests, successful appeals for organizational donations, building coalitions, and shifting institutional venues. This case provides a paradox for the dominant perspectives within social movement theory and legal mobilization literature, which often traces mobilization back to the expansion of political opportunities. The defeat in Bowers signaled a closing of political opportunities for activists. Drawing from a growing body of literature on political threats and heeding the call to specify the mechanisms of movement dynamics, I show how the defeat in Bowers was translated into proactive mobilization.

Since the shootings at Kent State University (KSU) in 1970, students and activists have held commemorative ceremonies to mark that event. The university ignored that past and decided to build a gym annex covering part of the land on which the National Guard had maneuvered in 1970. Led by the May 4th Coalition, activists sought to persuade the university to change the building's location. The student concern was the preservation of what they viewed as “sacred” ground which would be buried underneath the annex. At the 1977 annual commemoration speakers raised the annex issue and the newly formed May 4th Coalition ultimately occupied the site of the planned building with a tent city. That occupation was forcefully removed, and the university did build the facility where planned. The physical and spatial aspects of the commemoration of the Kent State shootings did, over time, lead the university to take on the responsibility to memorialize that conflict. This paper focuses on two interrelated issues: (1) the efforts of the May 4th Coalition and residents of Tent City to block or move the gym annex and (2) the refusal of KSU for years to recognize the broad significance of the events of May 1970 and their attempt to ignore or bury it.

The change from using clinical endpoints to surrogate marker endpoints in antiretroviral (ARV) trials for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease, combined with the multiplicity of factors that may influence the effectiveness of ART in the community, requires the systematic integration of data through mathematical modeling in order for these data to be useful for most decision makers. Many issues must be considered in the construction of such models, but once constructed the models may be used to compare the expected value, epidemiological, and budget impacts of competing therapies and programs to help select the most cost effective approaches given local conditions.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

After briefly reviewing the past history of Bayesian econometrics and Alan Greenspan's (2004) recent description of his use of Bayesian methods in managing policy-making risk, some of the issues and needs that he mentions are discussed and linked to past and present Bayesian econometric research. Then a review of some recent Bayesian econometric research and needs is presented. Finally, some thoughts are presented that relate to the future of Bayesian econometrics.