Archives

A new brief by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire shows that income inequality in New England is rising at the highest rate in the nation, caused by the loss of manufacturing jobs for low-skilled workers and the increased demand for high-skilled and high-tech employment. Laura's guests are Ross Gittell, Author of the Brief, James R. Carter Professor at UNH and Senior Fellow at the Carsey Institute; and Cynthia Mil Duncan, Director of the Carsey Institute and Professor of Sociology at UNH.

There are a variety of bills and amendments being discussed in the New Hampshire legislature, including Governor Lynch's education funding amendment, mandatory seatbelts, civil unions, boat speed limits and a bill to outlaw cellphone use in cars. We'll get the lowdown on the legislature with our panel of reporters. Laura's guests are Scott Spradling, Political Director for WMUR Television; Josh Rogers, State House Reporter for NHPR and Eric Moskowitz, State House Reporter for the Concord Monitor.

It's a term picked up by conservative political blogger Andrew Sullivan that means political campaigning through YouTube-style video, and it's a sign of how much of a role the internet will play in the 2008 Presidential election. More and more candidates are hiring internet-savvy consultants to help them use online sites like MySpace and YouTube to get their message out to the people, through videos, chats, podcasts and social networking. But the internet will also serve as a forum where user-generated content like the now infamous Hillary Clinton 1984(video) mashup can make an impact in a campaign, for better or for worse. We'll look at how the presidential candidates are using the internet - and how the internet is using them. Laura's guests are James Pindell, Political Correspondent for the Washington Bureau of the Boston Globe and former editor for PolitcsNH.com, a New Hampshire political news website; Patrick Hynes, founder and proprietor of Ankle Biting Pundits, a long-time Republican consultant and President of New Media Strategics which currently has Senator John McCain as a client; and Andrew Rasiej, a long-time Democratic consultant, chairman of the Howard Dean Technology Advisory Council for the 2004 election and cofounder of TechPresident.com, a new group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, and how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign.

The leading expert on all things Monopoly gives us the history of the Monopoly game, its explosive growth since Parker Brothers introduced it in 1935 and the global impact it has had more than seventy years later with more than 200,000,000 copies sold worldwide and countless special editions of the game from The Simpsons to Star Wars. Laura's guest is Philip Orbanes, president of the specialty games company Winning Moves. He was formerly a Senior Vice-President of Research and Development at Parker Brothers and is now a consulting member of the board of directors for Hasbro Games. He has been the chief judge at Monopoly championships for almost thirty years and has written several books, his latest being "Monopoly: America's Game".

President Bush's signature domestic achievement, The No Child Left Behind Act, turned five this year in January and is up for reauthorization in Congress. We'll look at what kind of response this major education reform effort has had over the years and where it stands now in terms of being reauthorized, including new legislation just introduced by more than 50 Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate that would allow states to opt out of the testing mandates and could have a major impact on the law. Laura's guests are Michael Sentance, Secretary's Regional Representative for Region I of the U.S. Department of Education, based out of Boston and Grace Nelson, Coordinator of Public Education and School Support for the National Education Association of New Hampshire.