Category Archives: Governance

279. Will California become Americas first failed state? | World news | The Observer

The trend is not good. This may well be what happens. Then? Will California become Americas first failed state?Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state government is issuing IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has

260. Entangled Giant gary wills.

Read the article that gets us here. Nonetheless, some of us entertain a fondness for the quaint old Constitution. It may be too late to return to its ideals, but the effort should be made. As Cyrano said, “One doesn’t fight in the hope of winning” (Mais on ne se bat pas dans l’espoir du

254. Editorial – A Threat to Fair Elections – NYTimes.com

This may be one of the most important decisions of the court.  It will be interesting and frightening. The Supreme Court may be about to radically change politics by striking down the longstanding rule that says corporations cannot spend directly on federal elections. If the floodgates open, money from big business could overwhelm the electoral

253. on Van Jones: Obama Sells Us Out to Political Terrorist Glenn Beck & His Lynch Mob

I tend to agree with what i know about this, that firing VanJones without supporting him is just wrong and a continuos part of Obama’s centrtist tendency even if th ecenter is way over there. Per my post and announcement last night, here’s the clip of my CNN debate with David Frum about the Van

252. From Sweden: The climate deal we need

The Tallberg forum has a dymposium getting ready for the Copenhagen 2009 meeting. The Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009 is one of the most important negotiations in modern history. The challenges and obstacles that face the negotiators are daunting. These stem partly from the overwhelming complexity of the subject matters involved (ranging from climate

251. The Way We Think

How do we get humanity from being expansive and exploitative and successful to some form of creativity, development without growth, still successful but more stress on gardening the environment and relationships and art,  and contained by something like what farmers called “husbandry” (which comes from “house boundary” in the 1200′s?) (now to manage, esp. with

241. Corporate free speech? Since when? – The Boston Globe

This case, coming before the Supreme Court, is going to be crucial for who owns the future. The Obama administration will defend the restraints on the grounds that corporations are different from individuals. “Corporations are artificial persons endowed by the government with significant special advantages that no natural person possesses,’’ solicitor general (and former Harvard

232. This by Krugamn is just terrific

On the difficult task of overcoming the corpoations and the lobbyists.. We tend to think of … a huge army of lobbyists permanently camped in the corridors of power, with corporations prepared to unleash misleading ads and organize fake grass-roots protests against any legislation that threatens their bottom line, as the way it always was.

224. Froomkin – Our Fuzzy President Is About To Come Into Focus

I have wondered where Dan at Huffington was hiding out. Turns out, thinking. This is really good. One possibility is that Obama, to everyone’s surprise, will come out with a strong bill much like the one he promised his supporters during the campaign. It is conceivable, after all, that the reason Obama hasn’t publicly issued

220. On taxes

We need to remember this and not expect that any solution will emerge without ferce struggle, as we are seeing goin on in the townhall meetings now. Just a harbinger as the situation seems to be deteriorating. The United States was founded, essentially, on resistance to taxes, and to this day, an aversion to the