Medicare's New Hospital Payment System: Is It Working?

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The relationship between ports and governments has changed profoundly over the past quarter of a century. Many governments have sought to extract themselves from the business of port operations and, in many cases, the provision of port services has devolved to local governments, communities or private management and administration. As such devolution implies a change in governance model, this trend raises questions about consequent performance. This issue examines the changed port management environment, focusing particularly on government policies such as devolution, regulatory reform and newly imposed governance models, all of which have exerted a significant influence over the nature of that changed environment. The issue is structured so as to first explore the devolution and port reform approaches for 14 countries or regions, before examining how ports are governed and what the choice of governance might mean for their performance.
Part I introduces the issue, and provides a framework for defining the basic concepts involved in devolution; it paints a picture of the current port environment, its likely future evolution and the expected impact this will have on the functioning of ports. Part II examines the port industry in 14 countries or administrations, and presents the thinking behind any devolution programs that have been implemented. Part III focuses on port governance and devolution generally, and examines governance from both strategic management and economics perspectives, including topics such as governance models, supranational governance and stakeholder conflict. Part IV examines the measurement of port performance and closes by providing conclusions and a future research agenda.
This issue will be of interest to port managers, government officials and academics alike.

*Examines the relationship between ports and governments with a focus on devolution
*Divided into sections that provide an overview, evaluate the port industry, disucss port governance, and suggest new measures of port performance
*14 countries or regions are addressed

The End of Welfare?: Consequences of Federal Devolution for the Nation (Economic Policy Institute)

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The End of Welfare?: Consequences of Federal Devolution for the Nation (Economic Policy Institute)

Manufacturer: M.E. Sharpe
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0765604558

Federal Intergovernmental Grants and the States: Managing Devolution (Studies in Fiscal Federalism and State-Local Finance Series)

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Federal Intergovernmental Grants and the States: Managing Devolution (Studies in Fiscal Federalism and State-Local Finance Series)
Shama Gamkhar
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

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ASIN: 1840646802

Book Description

This book provides a long-term perspective on policies regarding intergovernmental grants in the US since the 1970s. This period spans six presidential administrations and encompasses a diverse set of political and economic conditions. Containing original research, the book contributes to critical assessments of intergovernmental grant issues such as:

• whether state and local government spending responds symmetrically to increases or decreases in federal aid

• the effects of converting categorical grants to block grants on program spending

• the political economy of federal aid distribution.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Strategic Finance, published by Institute of Management Accountants on October 1, 2000. The length of the article is 2307 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: beyond budgeting.(organizational devolution and performance management)
Author: Jeremy Hope
Publication: Strategic Finance (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 2000
Publisher: Institute of Management Accountants
Volume: 82 Issue: 4 Page: 30

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The coming of the devolution revolution.: An article from: Government Finance Review

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The coming of the devolution revolution.: An article from: Government Finance Review
Jeffrey L. Esser
Manufacturer: Government Finance Officers Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Government Finance Review, published by Government Finance Officers Association on February 1, 1996. The length of the article is 1132 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: The government's intergovernmental system is undergoing quiet but radical changes in the form of devolution. It is the return of power by the federal government to the state and local levels. This will provide new opportunities for improving programs through flexibility and defining responsibility. Finance officers have an important role in this devolution and in the downsizing of federal programs. They must understand the impact of the government's budgets and financial plans.

Citation Details
Title: The coming of the devolution revolution.
Author: Jeffrey L. Esser
Publication: Government Finance Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 1996
Publisher: Government Finance Officers Association
Volume: v12 Issue: n1 Page: p3(1)

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Devolution of Functions and Finances on Panchayats in Andhra Pradesh

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Devolution of Functions and Finances on Panchayats in Andhra Pradesh
K. Siva Subrahmanyam
Manufacturer: National Institute of Rural Development
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 8185542724

Devolution of Functions and Finances on Panchayats in Orissa

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Devolution of Functions and Finances on Panchayats in Orissa
A. C. Jena
Manufacturer: National Institute of Rural Development
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 8185542732

The Devolution Revolution Can the States Afford Devolution?

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The Devolution Revolution Can the States Afford Devolution?
Harold A. Hovey , and The Century Foundation/Twentieth Century Fund
Manufacturer: Century Foundation Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

One underlying premise of the move toward devolution is that states are more capable of successfully managing various tasks than the federal government because they are better able to adapt to the particular challenges within their borders. The resources available to states to carry out those duties, however, are also limited to their ability to raise revenues from their own residents.

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Hazardous Crosscurrents: Confronting Inequality in an Era of Devolution (The Devolution Revolution)

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Hazardous Crosscurrents: Confronting Inequality in an Era of Devolution (The Devolution Revolution)
John D. Donahue
Manufacturer: Century Foundation Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0870784285

Book Description

The widening of the gap between the rich and the poor since the early 1970s has been well documented. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to whether the devolution of governmental responsibilities from the federal to state level will simplify or complicate efforts to alleviate inequality.

In this report, John D. Donahue analyzes devolution from the standpoint of four realms of public policy: workplace laws, education and job training, antipoverty efforts, and taxes. Policymakers attempting to improve life for Americans at the lower end of the income ladder are apt to consider using tools available in each of those areas. But, largely because of devolution, Donahue concludes, the effectiveness of those tools in addressing inequality is likely to be weakened.

Book Description

Theodor W. Adorno goes beyond conventional thematic analysis to gain a more complete understanding of Mahler's music through his character, his social and philosophical background, and his moment in musical history. Adorno examines the composer's works as a continuous and unified development that began with his childhood response to the marches and folk tunes of his native Bohemia.

Since its appearance in 1960 in German, Mahler has established itself as a classic of musical interpretation. Now available in English, the work is presented here in a translation that captures the stylistic brilliance of the original.

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69), one of the foremost members of the Frankfurt school of critical theory, studied with Alban Berg in Vienna during the late twenties, and was later the director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt from 1956 until his death. His works include Aesthectic Theory, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, The Jargon of Authenticity, Prism, and Philosophy of Modern Music.

Customer Reviews:

A dated classic.......2006-08-01

Anyone familiar with the growing oevre of Mahler biographies must have come across Adorno's now-classic work. Long considered the authoritative analysis of Mahler's psyche, next to Bruno Walter's first-hand account, this work has not aged well. Clogged with psychoanalytic jargon - yet strangely devoid of the details of Mahler's brief analysis with Freud himself - and weak on the facts, this book should be eclipsed by the far more informative, objective accounts of Mahler's life that have appeared in recent years. Carr's superb volume comes to mind.

provocative and stimulating analysis of Mahler's music.......2000-06-20

The subject of this classic of musical analysis is the complicated phenomenon of Mahler's music and our response to it. The treatment is philosophical/psychological/analytic and the abstractness and complexity of the prose is typical of what one would find in a doctoral thesis, except that it is beautifully written (and Jephcott's translation is itself a work of art).

To introduce the subject let me start with an experience of my own, which is no doubt typical. My introduction to Mahler's music was through the Ninth and Tenth symphonies, which is like starting a mountain climb already at the top of the mountain. I was 22 and naturally quite bowled over. Imagine my chagrin then at hearing the Fourth for the first time -- what is this Haydnesque genre piece that ends with a naive song? How could it have been written by the same composer? As always, though, Mahler's music works on one's subconscious and a few days later I felt compelled to listen again, and what a revelation this was! The first movement, in particular, is absolutely extraordinary. It starts with a curious repeated figure, four flutes in unison playing fifths plus a grace note, accompanied by bells; this leads directly into the deceptively classical-sounding main theme and reappears throughout the first movement (and also in the last) as a kind of magic talisman with multiple meanings. The main theme is followed by a striking sunny interlude in A, with bases rocking pizzicato in fifths, a scurrying violin figure, and violas trilling like insects singing in a meadow. I had the impression of an adult and child walking through a field on a summer day. There's a brief change to the minor, then some high sustained notes in the flutes. These are repeated more emphatically by high clarinets, heralding an ominous change, as if the bucolic scene were being overrun by scudding clouds. Things are not what they seemed, and we don't know where we are! Somehow, we've gotten lost in a forest inhabited by goblins, spooky though not actually menacing. There's a swirling sensation accompanied by dark intimations in the bass, chromatic muted trumpets, and repeated sustained high chords in the flutes; the effect is weirdly haunting. After a while a commotion in C develops, drums crescendo, and then suddenly pure terror -- a high trumpet playing fortissimo. By some process of pure magic, the music suddenly recovers its former equanimity and adult and child (who turn out to be one and the same) find themselves back in the sunny meadow. What sublime irony, and how true to human nature -- when we see something uncanny that disturbs us, we try to put it behind us, forget it. Mahler alone is capable of evoking such feelings. Only a magician could have written the Fourth, and Mahler's achievement here is just as great as in the very different late works, not to mention the middle symphonies.

I could cite other personal examples, as could any Mahlerian. We might disagree about particulars, but each of us carries away something essential from Mahler's music and is enriched by it. And we are quite confident that the experience is qualitatively the same from listener to listener.

Adorno approaches the subject of our response to Mahler's music and what it means through his own experiences of it. But what a listener! It's as if a very learned friend with a doctorate in Mahler stopped by to discuss the subject over tea and ended up staying all week. A gifted writer and philosopher, as well as a professionally trained composer who studied with Berg, Adorno discusses all the symphonies except the Tenth and is always interesting even when you disagree with him. Musicological jargon is mostly avoided, although philosophical-rhetorical terms abound (he loves the word "aporia").

Two caveats. First, the treatment is vulnerable to the charge of "over-intellectualization". One recalls Mahler's reply to William Ritter, an early admirer:"... I find myself much less complicated than your image of me, which could almost throw me into a state of panic." It seems that we, and particularly Adorno, are the complicated ones. We project our feelings onto the music, which seems to invite them to an extent that would surprise even the composer. The mystery of why this is so, and the multifariousness of Mahler, the capacity of his music to be offensive, highly questionable, fascinating, and sublime all at the same time, form the subject of the book.

Second, and more seriously, he disparages Mahler's "ominous positivity" and thereby underestimates the Eighth Symphony at least (readers may agree that the finale of the Seventh is problematic; he does not discuss the extraordinary Tenth, which achieves a wholly serene, positive conclusion). But the positive in Mahler is an essential part of his dynamic disequilibrium; without it, there would be no aporia and the music would degenerate into mere cynicism. Most of the symphonies follow a pattern -- conflict, followed by attempted reconciliation and reconstruction. This process is entirely sincere, and if it fails even in Mahler's hands, it's because he's attempting to do the impossible. Even in the Sixth, the most "tragic" and "despairing" of the symphonies, a good performance will reveal powerful updrafts. To deny the positive in Mahler is to chop him in two. That Adorno's book is nonetheless required reading is testimony to the value of his other observations.

Who then is this book for? It is best for Mahlerians of long standing, those who are well past the first flush of discovery and have regained their musical equilibrium so to speak, and who want to put Mahler in perspective, or even just "share" opinions with an uncommonly intelligent and sensitive critic.

the musical crevices and fault-lines are probed with Adorno.......1998-06-22

If you know anything about Theodor Adorno, you might well be familiar with the entire edifice of western cultural and philosophic thought; Kant,Hegel,Kierkegaard,and Marx,the history of art,literature,painting and music. Less film,a realm Adorno never got to know. Here in Mahler,we have a concise profile of this one time neglected composer, long misunderstood,even today. I recall a rehearsal with Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic who couldn't quite understand Bernstein's raving from the heart,for clarity yet passion. Adorno knew Mahler's art much better than Mahler ever did for we learn this from Adorno, that Mahler simply abandoned himself to his own intuition to resolve his creative problems. Each chapter in this masterwork in miniature is self-sustaining. In the chapter "Tone" Adorno reveals the basic music materials of Mahler his orchestral pallete. The high positioned violins,in uncomfortable registers where they loose their souls to a menanced, shrill, thin timbre. The string section for Mahler is creatively undisciplined to begin with, each playing differing roles, each contributing its own independence, as in the opening of Mahler's "Ninth" Symphony, the melody tossed between the violins, tremoli in the violas, and the contrbass above or equal in register to all with harmonics. Mahler's progressiveness was in pure content,he was not one to pursue "tangible innovations" but secured his tenuous position with the diatonic mode,familiar scales and harmonic surfaces. A chiaroscuro of means (schatten) the shadows he creates with reliefs of foreground and background. Tonality is not so much renewed as an unheard voice enters the stage, Mahler's voice cracks,is overstrethched, the various woodwind passages like in the "Scherzo" of his "Seventh" Symphony. The forced tone is itself an expressive innovation of his own making a premonition of the darker legubrious brooding up the road in the orchestral works of Arnold Schoenberg. In fact we find ev! ery bit of these darker pages in Mahler before the horrors which await the citizens of Eastern Europe,even up to Bosnia. Adorno's focus is always how Mahler creates meaning within familiar confines,the roads that lead to simple harmonies. He disrupts the stability of rhythm,of gesture that once was, the familiar in Mahler's orchestral context becomes something quite different, no longer can the romantic symphony depend on redemption. Bruckner could depend on this, for he already found his spirituality, whereas Mahler spent his life in pursuit of it . Adorno in the chapter "Novel" reveals the non-progressive side of Mahler.He needed to depend on some stability so his musical characters come and go untarnished at times, the lowlife natural trombone,to the intimate/elegant solo violin, and the cracking horn moments in Mahler. This is where we find "Stufenreichtum" the richness of texture,the musical thread running from the full orchestral (tutti) everyone's voice heard, to the single voice the solos. This is Mahler's context from the distance "in sehr weiter entfernung" to the immediate. It is this expressive immediacy, he learned from Beethoven that gives way to developed chaos as his life wears away. The overblown vacuous "Eighth Symphony" resolved nothing for his real creativity, and the "Ninth" the ideas begin toward the irrational,Mahler is serious even in the "Rondo-Burleske" from the "Ninth",the almost improvised gesture reminded me of Charles Ives,who was writing just about the same time. Adorno's chapter "Variant-Form" we learn Mahler's technique progressed away from what an academic would consider "good" Mahler needn't be as glib as Richard Strauss,nor as consummate as Wagner. He learned music in another way and pointed toward a profound goal. A goal in which his music simply breaks its own voice "Durchbruch" as Adorno mentions where there was no comfort in traditional moments. Adorno opens thi! s expressive vault of Mahler and we can see Mahler again. As recently as Pierre Boulez in his ongoing recordings with The Chicago Symphony we find a Mahler quite as a turning point to the 20th century. Well Boulez brings Mahler into our century whether we want him there or not. Boulez brings a sublime ugliness at times to Mahler's simplicity, the functional predictable movements of harmony creates a kind of timbral dirt. Mahler wanted this. No we are not done with his marvelous "Symphonies" we can contemplate them for some time.

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Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OONIX8

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Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy
Theodor W. Adorno
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOR5X2

Book Description

Contents include: Diary of the 4th Chicago Underground Film Festival. A look at Skywald (70s New York comics publisher). Sexy Girlfriends - a philosophy. Depilation for fun & profit - bald women and body-hair stylists through the ages. The tragedy of film stars who die young... often horribly. The Public Information Film. Children as instruments of evil. A Return to Animal Farm Part II - readers comment on bestial porn.

Book Description

Basic TV Technology is the essential basic guide to the fundamentals underlying all television and video systems, written for students and nontechnical professionals. You don't need to have a math or science background in order to understand this explanation of how the principal pieces of equipment work, what their functions are, and how they are integrated to form a complex video system. An understanding of this material will be necessary for you to succeed in the real world, where one person often has to perform many different roles and functions within a production. Armed with some basic technical background information, you'll be more effective at figuring out new applications and at problem-solving.

The fourth edition of Basic TV Technology has been updated to reflect the industry shift to digital video and includes new information on compression, television standards, LCD displays, HD, and equipment.

This book features the accessible Media Manual format, in which every topic is covered in two pages: one of explanatory text and one of figures.

Need more information on TV technologies, go to: http://www.insightmedia.info/newsletters.php

*Gentle introduction to video technology
*No science or math background necessary
*Includes abundant illustrations

Customer Reviews:

Useful and Concise.......2001-07-22

I read this book to refresh my basic grasp of television technology concepts, and for that purpose it worked perfectly. Organized into small sections which build slowly from simple ideas (electricity basics) to complex tools (video servers). The book also includes a useful list of further reading material and a reference glossary.

Need a copy first.......2000-12-07

If you send me a copy of this book I will write a review.

Book Description

This official MCSA/MCSE SELF-PACED TRAINING KIT teaches IT professionals how to implement and administer a Windows 2000-based network infrastructure-as they prepare for MCP Exam 70-216, a core requirement for MCSE certification and an elective for MCSA. Work at your own pace through a system of skill-building lessons and hands-on exercises. And use the special exam-prep section-more than 200 pages-plus a testing tool to assess what you know and where to focus your studies-before taking the actual exam. Topics map directly to the objectives measured by the exam, including installing, managing, and troubleshooting DNS, DHCP, remote access, network protocols, addressing and routing, name resolution services, and certificate services. You get the newly revised and expanded study guide in print and on CD-ROM; exam preparation, including objective-by-objective review; test-readiness tool; MICROSOFT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NETWORKING, Second Edition, eBook; and a 120-day evaluation version of Windows 2000 Server. PLUS, LIMITED-TIME OFFER: this kit includes a voucher for a 15% discount on the exam fee at VUE testing centers.

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