Pan American solidarity, 1932-1940.

On the first day of his first administration, President Franklin Roosevelt announced: In the field of world policy, I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the Good Neighbor -- the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others -- the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors. Although Roosevelt\u27s verbal touch was needed to give this foreign policy a name, definite changes in the Latin American policy of the United States had already appeared during the preceding Hoover administration. Indeed, Calvin Coolidge was probably defining his own peculiar version of the Good Neighbor policy when he asserted at the Sixth International Conference of the American states at Havana, in 1928, that it is better for the people to make their own mistakes than to have someone else make their mistakes for them

Anomalous Behavior of 2+ Excitations around 132Sn

In certain neutron-rich Te isotopes, a decrease in the energy of the first excited 2+ state is accompanied by a decrease in the E2 strength to that state from the ground state, contradicting simple systematics and general intuition about quadrupole collectivity. We use a separable quadrupole-plus-pairing Hamiltonian and the quasiparticle random phase approximation to calculate energies, B(E2,0+ -> 2+) strengths, and g factors for the lowest 2+ states near 132Sn (Z >= 50). We trace the anomalous behavior in the Te isotopes to a reduced neutron pairing above the N = 82 magic gap.Comment: 1 figure added. to be published in Phys. Rev.

Challenges to Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations and Takeaways Amid the COVID-19 Experience:

The American democratic system of government is being put to its greatest test since the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, as the country endeavors to cope with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. That is, considerable pressure continues to build up at the fault lines of governance inherent in the country’s unique federal form of government which explicitly and implicitly expects national, state, and local levels to work together while they also may function as separate, autonomous entities to promote and provide for the general welfare. These fault lines exist where governance and service provision matters necessitate the collective attention and action of two or more levels of government. Both cooperation and conflict are possible interactive outcomes in these situations. This article provides an early assessment of how national, state, and local governments have worked together since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently a “report card” of sorts on the functioning of intergovernmental relations in the U.S. at the present time. More specifically, the article will examine the current condition of interstate, interlocal, state-local, and national-state relations. While the findings and observations reported here are certainly enlightening, they should be viewed as preliminary. Followed up research should be conducted to determine if there have been any policy learning has occurred and if such information has been used in improve the quality of governance in keeping with citizen expectations of American federalism