Democratic Municipal Officials Digest - Week of 5/8/2017
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DEMOCRATIC MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS | | |
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| | | | Democratic Municipal Officials Digest
Week of 5/8/2017
Quick Links- Abbott Signs 'Sanctuary Cities' Bill Into Law - This bill imposes criminal punishment on local law enforcement for not spending their municipal budget to enforce federal detainer requests, and will remove local officials who support such departments.
Ideas for Cities
In Depth - The Deservingness Heuristic and the Politics of Health Care
- Citizens’ social aid opinions are strongly influenced by a simple heuristic: Are the recipients of these benefits deserving or not?
- People tend to tag the sick as deserving but the unemployed as not, because they see illness as a random event the individual has no control over, while out of work individuals can be blamed for their situation.
- However, neither illness nor unemployment are randomly distributed across society. Both have a much greater tendency to impact low income populations.
- This intrinsic bias that the sick deserve care negates the role political ideology usually plays in determining these opinions.
- Specific illnesses which are seen as the individual's fault (complications from smoking) are viewed as less deserving of help under the same reasoning.
Two important takeaways from this research. 1. The public might become more supportive of aid for unemployment if Democrats message it as a randomly assigned condition rather than the fault of the individual. 2. Republicans can reduce support for health care bymessaging illness as the victim's fault, something they have already started doing around the ACHA.
News for Democrats
Pic of the Week
DMO President Joe Buscaino marching with his city on May Day.
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