David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, proclaimed the Small Business Administration a "billion-dollar waste—a rathole," and set out to abolish the agency. His scathing critique was but the latest attack on an agency better known as the "Small Scandal Administration." Loans to criminals, government contracts for minority "fronts," the classification of American Motors as a small business, Whitewater, and other scandals—the Small Business Administration has lurched from one embarrassment to another. Despite the scandals and the policy failures, the SBA thrives and small business remains a sacred cow in American politics. Part of this sacredness comes from the agency's longstanding record of pioneering affirmative action. Jonathan Bean reveals that even before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the SBA promoted African American businesses, encouraged the hiring of minorities, and monitored the employment practices of loan recipients. Under Nixon, the agency expanded racial preferences. During the Reagan administration, politicians wrapped themselves in the mantle of minority enterprise even as they denounced quotas elsewhere. Created by Congress in 1953, the SBA does not conform to traditional interpretations of interest-group democracy. Even though the public—and Congress—favors small enterprise, there has never been a unified group of small business owners requesting the government's help. Indeed, the SBA often has failed to address the real problems of "Mom and Pop" shop owners, fueling the ongoing debate about the agency's viability.

In this hilarious, sharp, smart, and savagely on-target analysis of the standard Liberal bromides, political commentator Mark Goldblatt argues that the righteous stands of the modern American Left are nothing more than bumper sticker sayings: catchy phrases with nothing of substance underneath. In Bumper Sticker Liberalism, Goldblatt peels back the idiocies of the political Left—be they global warming deceptions, government controlled health care demands, or irrational pleas for peace—to reveal the emptiness of these ideas. Wonderfully biting, aggressively entertaining, Goldblatt’s Bumper Sticker Liberalism is funny and insulting…in just the Right way.

Annual editions: Social Problems 96/97 is one in a series of over sixty-five volumes, each designed to provide convenient, inexpensive access to a wide range of current, carefully selected articles from some of the most respected magazines, newspapers, and journals published today.

In the wake of the black civil rights movement, other disadvantaged groups of Americans began to make headway. In the first book to take a broad perspective on this wide-ranging and far-reaching phenomenon, Skrentny exposes the connections between the diverse actions and circumstances that contributed to this revolution.

A review devoted to the historical statistical and comparative study of politics, economics and public law.

With seven of its justices appointed by Republican presidents, today's Supreme Court has significantly altered America's legal landscape since 1986 by tilting constitutional jurisprudence to the right. That was the goal of Presidents Reagan and Bush in filling court vacancies and has been felt in cases related to federalism, economic rights, and affirmative action. However, liberal issues such as abortion have moved only marginally to the right, while rulings by the Court on school prayer and gay rights have moved constitutional doctrine slightly to the left. In this collection of original articles, prominent constitutional scholars are joined by new voices from the cutting edge of academia to subject the Rehnquist Court to closer scrutiny and to show that its brand of conservatism is less extreme than many have supposed. Reflecting views across the political spectrum, the contributors help readers understand the Court dynamic, its constrained conservatism, and the forces that shape constitutional law in general. As these authors show, the overall pattern of decision-making in the Rehnquist era cannot be attributed to any single, unified approach to constitutional analysis. Instead, today's Court can only be understood as the product of a complex interaction among individual justices, each with an idiosyncratic view of the proper interpretation of the Constitution and the role of the Court in the American political system. These provocative essays are designed to provide readers with insight into this interaction by focusing on each member of the bench. From the staunch conservatism of Clarence Thomas, to the "accommodationism" of Sandra Day O'Connor, to the "liberal constitutionalism" of David Souter, the essays analyze the unique approach of each justice to interpreting the Constitution. They also show that the current justices are the product of a nomination and confirmation process that has undergone a major transformation in recent decades one which favors experienced, often unknown jurists over high-profile public servants. By concentrating attention on its members, "Rehnquist Justice" allows us to better understand the Supreme Court as a whole. And by assessing today's judiciary in light of a public philosophy that looks askance at government, it shows us that the Supreme Court has truly become a mirror of its times."