January/February 2012

Americans Elect, a group that’s generously funded by secret Wall Street donors, according to Salon’s Jason Elliot, promises to put a third party on the ballot in fifty states. It should be immediately disowned by every responsible American. The party is obviously designed to appeal to moderates. I know that smart fellows like Peter Hart […]

Partisan redistricting of congressional seats has, of course, been a major factor in the gridlock that cripples Washington. Virginia provides a striking example of what it is doing to the states. In its recent general election, only 27 of 100 House of Delegates seats were contested by a Democrat and a Republican. All the rest […]

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how my son, a teacher in a high school in San Bern- adino, in southern California, had gradually realized that, despite his efforts to persuade his students to go to college, a significant number of them just weren’t interested. They wanted vocational training that would prepare them […]

A Pennsylvania police officer has been told he can’t run for the local school board because his bomb-sniffing dog is funded by the Department of Homeland Security. If that doesn’t make much sense to you, you should support the campaign by Carolyn Lerner, the Office of Special Counsel head previously praised in this column, to […]

If the Wall Street reforms enacted under Obama are as weak as many of us thought, why are Wall Street and the Republicans fighting so hard to sabotage them? The latest example of their efforts is the filibuster of Richard Cordray’s nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Several Republicans conceded that he was […]

“Since 2004 we’ve seen younger people voting much more Democratic than average and older people much more Republican than average,” concludes Andrew Kohut, in a study by the Pew Research Center, which he directs. I think this trend may have begun much earlier—thirty-three years ago, in fact. That’s when California voters adopted Proposition 13, which […]