The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) appropriated $8 billion for high and conventional speed passenger rail. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) was responsible for soliciting applications, evaluating them to determine program eligibility and technical merits, and selecting awards, which were announced in January 2010. This report examines the extent to which FRA: (1) applied its established criteria to select projects; (2) followed recommended practices for awarding discretionary grants; and (3) communicated outcomes to the public, compared with selected other Recovery Act competitive grant programs. Includes recommendations. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.

Anti-Muslim racism with its attendant xenophobia and (the fear of) Salafist hostility are two of the most essential problems facing Europe today. Both result from the enormous failure of the continent’s integration policies, which have either insisted on immigrants’ rigid assimilation or left immigrants to fend for themselves. This book radically breaks with contemporary approaches to immigrant assimilation and integration. Instead it examines non-institutional approaches that facilitate immigrant inclusion through the examples of three alternative small-scale projects that have impacted the lives of urban working-class youth, specifically with second-generation immigrant roots, in Vienna, Austria. These projects involve online gaming, hip hop as an art form, and social work as emancipatory pedagogic practice (commonly referred to as street work). After exploring historic and structural conditions of marginalization in Austria, the book investigates working-class teenagers’ social networks and describes an online game designed to provide a platform for interaction between non-immigrant and immigrant youth who usually either do not interact or display prejudice when they engage each other. Hip hop can provide both a necessary outlet for alienated youth to articulate their frustrations and a highly effective tool for transforming inclusion conflicts. This is achieved through offering individual teens the necessary means to gain the resilience and social grounding necessary to help overcome exclusion and marginalization. In addition to the individual young person’s agency, the inclusion process, of course, also requires corresponding efforts by the majority society. Social work with marginalized youth is crucial for successful inclusion. Specifically individual support in small-scale settings provides a unique opportunity to open up spaces for discouraged and disaffected teenagers to gain self-worth and dignity. While the book focuses on identity formation and the teenagers’ agency, it argues that only projects that include both “newcomer” and “native” can aid in overcoming exclusionary attitudes and policies, eventually allowing some form of social bonding to take place.

Public Administration and Public Affairs demonstrates how to govern efficiently, effectively, and responsibly in an age of political corruption and crises in public finance. Providing a comprehensive, accessible and humorous introduction to the field of Public Administration, this text is designed specifically for those with little to no background in the field. Now in its 13th edition, this beloved book includes: Engaging, timely new sections designed to make students think, such as "Why Are So Many Leaders Losers?" and "Even Terrorists Like Good Government" Comparisons throughout of the challenges and opportunities found in the nonprofit sector vs. the public sector (sections such as "The Dissatisfied Bureaucrat, the Satisfied Nonprofit Professional?") Extensive new material on e-governance, performance management, HRM, intersectoral and intergovernmental administration, government contracting, public budgeting, and ethics. The 13th edition is complete with an Instructor’s Manual, Testbank, and PowerPoint slides for instructors, as well as Learning Objectives and Self-test Questions for students, making it the ideal primer for public administration/management, public affairs, and nonprofit management courses.

Contains an inventory of evaluation reports produced by and for selected Federal agencies, including GAO evaluation reports that relate to the programs of those agencies.