Craig Gurian

Craig Gurian is the editor of Remapping Debate.  He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia College, his law degree from Columbia Law School, and a master's degree in United States history from the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Craig's published work includes Let Them Rent Cake: George Pataki, Market Ideology, and the Attempt to Dismantle Rent Regulation in New York.

He is also Executive Director of the Anti-Discrimination Center and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

cg@remappingdebate.org
WSJ story exaggerates "price" of taxing the rich, cherry-picks data
Press Criticism | By Craig Gurian | State government, Taxes
With an attention grabbing headline warning about “the price of taxing the rich,” a subhead explaining that “the top 1% of earners fill the coffers of states like California and New York during a boom — and leave them starved for revenue in a bust,” and an obliging former California economic forecasting official ready to say that “the root of California’s woes is its reliance on taxing the wealthy,” a recent Wall Street Journal article will undoubtedly be brandished in tax fights both in Washington and in state capitals across the country. But none of it adds up. And, interestingly, one needn’t go beyond the four corners of the Journal’s “Saturday Essay” feature to figure that out. More
DOE actively misleads on risks of radiation exposure
Original Reporting | By Craig Gurian | Environment
Multiple agencies unable or unwilling to describe minimum level of airborne contamination that would generate concern about medium- and long-term health effects. One of the unanswered questions: How many “becquerels of Cesium-137 per cubic meter of air” would be “of concern” for the public? More
Will there be risks to U.S. travelers flying domestically in wake of Japan's nuclear disaster? Is anyone assessing?
Original Reporting | By Craig Gurian | Environment
One might imagine that U.S. government agencies are well-versed in the physics of how, when, over what period of time, and with what consequences, radioactive particles may rise to the altitude of the jet stream, there to be transported from Japanese air space across the Pacific Ocean until some subset of those particles were circulating in the jet stream over the United States. One might also imagine that a basic level of national security vigilance would mean that these agencies had definitive plans in place to coordinate with one another, apply established standards of radiological safety to the context of air travel in and through that jet stream, and update the public accordingly. At least in respect to the second set of imaginings, it appears that one would be wrong. More
Mubarak just became a dictator...this month?
Press Criticism | By Craig Gurian |
For years, New York Times reporters (or their editors) had been too "diplomatic" to use the "D" word. More
Too many old people
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Aging, Economy, Population
A shift in demographics to relatively smaller cohorts of young people is almost never viewed as presenting an opportunity, just as the challenge of how to successfully support a greater percentage of older people without lower living standards either for them or their younger compatriots is virtually never viewed as one worth facing and winning. More
We need our own pollster
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Government services, Media, Politics
The way a recent New York Times/CBS News poll framed the issues, and the way the poll omitted key policy choices, meant the results invariably stayed within the bounds of a relatively narrow range of policy options, rendering a broader spectrum of policy choices invisible. More
The few get to share; the many get to sacrifice
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Government services, Taxes
It’s hard to find a big-state governor who is not sounding a call for “shared sacrifice." It’s even harder to find one who really means it. At the same time we’re told that real sacrifice requires real pain, we also have to accept that businesses must be exempt from any pain. Instead, states must compete to beg for their favors. More
No negotiating with those who take constitutional authority hostage
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Civil rights, Federalism, Housing
Opposition to lawful federal authority has had a long and ugly history, from South Carolina’s secession 150 years ago this week, to massive resistance to integration in modern day America (in both the South and the North). It's not just a thing of the past. In Westchester County — one of the official poster children for limousine liberalism — it turns out that there is open, deliberate, and organized violation of a lawful desegregation order right now. And the Obama Administration is not lifting a finger. More

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