After the Nov. 5, 2024 vote, we must learn to rebuild our “civic muscles” – reading and discussing local news, learning the issues at stake, getting engaged in decisions. Read More
Thomas Paine Redux
Can A City Be Governed Without Corruption?
At the turn of the last century, progressive “muckraking” author Lincoln Steffans asked this question of major American cities. Tammany Hall reigned in New York. Kickbacks to city officials were common for work done in the cities. He concluded the real problem was the people living in the cities who didn’t care enough to learn… Read More
Biden Must Step Down
I am writing to you today with some sadness and a lot of urgency. I, like many other loyal Democrats, feel strongly that President Biden MUST step down. Read More
A Living Wage is the Bedrock For Our Nation’s Future
The “Living Wage” content provides a detailed historical and current overview of the challenges faced by American households in achieving a living wage. It effectively highlights the disparities in income, living costs, and wealth distribution. Read More
The Cost of Corruption
There is growing evidence of corruption in our governance structures. And it is time for citizens to demand transparency and investigate. Life is complicated. Managing kids, partner. Getting food onto the table. Keeping appointments. Staying on top of the email inbox. So paying attention to those people who oversee the purity of our drinking water,… Read More
Expressing Gratitude in Tribal Languages
This is created to celebrate Thanksgiving, November 24, 2022. It intends to honor the home locations of the people attending Thanksgiving celebrations this year in two New England towns, Waterbury VT and Salisbury CT. The hope is that learning to say “thank you” in the words of the native people on whose land we celebrate… Read More
Featured
Saving Democracy… A Reading List
These books on “Saving Democracy… One Day At A Time” help explain how we got into this ferocious division in the United States. Some of them suggest how to get beyond it. All of them suggest how vitally important it is that we do.
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Is Governance the Issue? Do We Care?
Our nation, according to media reports, is as divided as it has been since the Civil War. But it is hard to know what divides us. Are our agencies of government causing the problem? Or do we have conflicting understandings of what governance, the process of implementing our laws and policies, is? Do our country’s… Read More
Infrastructure Returns to USA ….But Not Maintenance
Maintaining our infrastructure is expensive. ITDP estimates the cost to maintain the public’s built infrastructure at 1.4% of the cost to build the infrastructure. What this $1 Trillion infrastructure bill is intended to cover are the one time renovations required in our most essential infrastructure systems. The money will address the renovations needed for roads, bridges, electric and water systems, etc. for the decades of neglect. The money does NOT address the cost of maintaining our infrastructure. Read More
Rediscovering Capitalism
Whether we call large tech companies that regulate and shape the stream of private business models that might use them capitalist free enterprise corporations or utilities, it is clear that they have the unregulated, unreviewed power to make decisions, much like the early Robber Barons, that shape the business models that reward their interests and kill business models that do not. Nor are there any clear remedies for enabling public interests or private companies to engage in inquiry about policy decisions by these companies that shape the way our economy, as well as our society, functions.
In the spirit of “asset stewardship”, it is time, as President Biden said, to encourage “the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies.†.
Our Common Purpose: Dramatically Expand Civic Infrastructure Capacity
This article is based on a report, OUR COMMON PURPOSE, produced in June, 2020, by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his New Yorker article of 11/16/20, Evan Osnos likened the report to the civic equivalent of the 9/11 Commission Report. It offers bipartisan recommendations in the form of six Strategies, with between two and eight… Read More
Our Common Purpose: Ensure the Responsiveness of Political Institutions
This article is based on a report, OUR COMMON PURPOSE, produced in June, 2020, by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his New Yorker article of 11/16/20, Evan Osnos likened the report to the civic equivalent of the 9/11 Commission Report. It offers bipartisan recommendations in the form of six Strategies, with between two and eight… Read More
Our Common Purpose: Empower Voters
This article is based on a report, OUR COMMON PURPOSE, produced in June, 2020, by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In his New Yorker article of 11/16/20, Evan Osnos likened the report to the civic equivalent of the 9/11 Commission Report. It offers bipartisan recommendations in the form of six Strategies, with between two and eight… Read More
Our Common Purpose: Achieve Equality of Voice and Representation
The debate over the electoral college, which in recent history, has resulted in three presidents taking office with a lower actual vote count than their competition, has raised the question of who gets to be heard in the selection of a president. The weakening, in 2013, of the protections in the national Voting Rights Act raises questions about voice and representation, as does the expanding range of methods to disenfranchise eligible voters. Read More
How Will Future Government Look?
Gather together about 130 citizens and 25 civil society and think tank representatives. Invite them to review the present and speculate on how government will look in the future. Review and synthesize the resulting discussions. Out comes four different scenarios: DIY Democracy  (page 32) Private Algocracy  (page 38) Super Collaborative Government  (page 44) Over-Regulatocracy  … Read More
Performance Reporting – Who Cares?
y Jeff Tryens, former Deputy Director for Performance Mangement, New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg Call it what you will – performance management, managing for results, data-driven decision making – it‘s what good government managers aspire to these days. We true believers are convinced that reliable, timely data on inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes… Read More
Santa Ana Police and John Birch Society
In 2020, after the horrific killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, viewed around the world on public media, the question of police reform is again on the minds of legislators and policy makers at the local, state and federal levels. A familiarity of the evolutionary history, tracing how a municipal department could,… Read More
Race and Governance: Some Protest Is Required
“Asset Stewardship” can refer to city building, transit, power grids, school buildings. It can also refer to governance. Like physical assets structured on behalf of the citizenry, good governance is an asset needing stewardship, as well. With nightly protests in Portland, Oregon now heading into the third month (July 2020), the Federal government has sent… Read More
IRS Can End Child Poverty
This year the US government will lose $207 BILLION because the government made a policy decision to allow rich people to pay significantly less taxes, dividends and long term capital gains are taxed a a lower level than regular income. You have to be really rich to get taxed less. That’s a lot of money… Read More
Bringing Police Back Under Municipal Control
The US is entering a new wave of police reform intended to shape a police department that is responsible to the community it serves. But this in not the first time in America that municipal policing has undergone reform. Understanding the reasons for prior reforms and what went wrong, may help the country to get… Read More