Stories by Steven Hill
Western Europe has achieved a balance between capitalism's dynamism and socialism's humanity -- no wonder the Corporate State has to lie about its success.
Posted on Oct 8, 2007
Vicious battles over Supreme Court nominees could be avoided with term limits and mandatory retirement ages. Why should senators representing a minority of U.S. voters confirm a justice for life?
Posted on Aug 9, 2005
When you have
Tom Brokaw calling for election reform, it means that something is really wrong.
Posted on Dec 21, 2004
Forget about "money buying elections." Congressional redistricting in California allowed the politicians to handpick their voters before voters picked them.
Posted on Nov 23, 2004
Democrats have an alternative to attacking Ralph Nader – advocate instant runoff voting systems.
Posted on Jul 21, 2004
The Electoral College system isn't only cumbersome and outdated – it's anti-democratic.
Posted on Jun 29, 2004
Advocates of fair elections should work to ensure that we don't have another 'Florida' for the 2004 presidential election -- in Florida or any of the other 15 battleground states.
Posted on Apr 14, 2004
The rosy view that there is an 'emerging Democratic majority' in the US, must factor in how our 18th century winner-take-all electoral system often maintains minority control despite fewer votes.
Posted on Sep 25, 2003
When the presidency can be won by 527 votes in a nation of 300 million, something needs to be changed. Around the country, people are working to fix a wounded electoral system.
Posted on Feb 13, 2003
American media routinely fails to distinguish the unique political characteristics of the European landscape.
Posted on Dec 21, 2002
Perhaps young people don't vote because they have a better sense than adults that our political system truly is broken.
Posted on Nov 4, 2002
On March 5, cities in California and Vermont adopted "instant runoff voting" systems that could crack open American politics to new voices and better choices.
Posted on Mar 6, 2002
The year 2002 may go down in political history for the crass way Democrats and Republicans alike use "redistricting" rules to protect their power and disenfranchise voters.
Posted on Jan 15, 2002
Once the census data is provided to states this month, states will begin to redraw legislative districts to ensure they are equal in population. Lawyers love redistricting -- unscrupulous legislators generate tons of litigation -- but the practice rips voters off.
Posted on Mar 13, 2001
This may be the first presidential election that will result in victory by voting machine malfunction.
Posted on Dec 8, 2000
The historical moment has come to scrap the Electoral College and institute a national direct election.
Posted on Nov 14, 2000
Congressional leaders recently set a whole new standard for raising campaign funds -- now they are shaking down their fellow House members.
Posted on Jun 27, 2000
November promises to be a potentially historic shootout for both supporters and opponents of gun control.
Posted on May 30, 2000
It has been eight years since the "Year of the Woman" nearly doubled the number of women in Congress. But the United States still ranks 43rd in the world in its percentage of women elected to its national legislature -- a lower ranking than such nations as Mexico, South Africa or Seychelles.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Where did all the dissent over the WTO come from? It certainly didn't come from our elected officials, since our Winner Take All political system doesn't allow representatives to express carefully nuanced positions or vocal opposition to controversial issues like free trade.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Now that a federal appeals court has blocked the part of the Telecommunications Act concerned with indecent material on the Internet, First Amendment advocates can all breathe a sigh of relief. Or can we? The parts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that remain are far more damaging to the First Amendment than the sub-section known as the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Taken as a whole, the Telecommunications Act is a kind of "free trade" agreement for the corporate media. So, before we celebrate too wildly the federal appeals court's acceptance of an anti-censorship argument to strike down the CDA, we better ask ourselves: have we won the battle only to inadvertently contribute to losing the war?
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
LaborNet coordinator and labor journalist Steven Hill writes; "The Olympic flame less than a month away from arriving in Los Angeles to commence its cross-country torch relay to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Games. But already the United States is busy wracking up gold medals against our international competitors. Recently, a global survey was released that says that world business leaders give the gold medal to the U.S. economy as the most competitive in the world among industrialized nations. What business leaders mean when they say most competitive is this: low wages, few worker benefits, and deregulation."
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) recently announced her introduction of House Bill 2545 which would lift the 1967 federal law that mandates one seat per Congressional district, allowing states the option of electing their Congressional delegations by multi-seat proportional representation. Most third party efforts in the U.S. have already endorsed the idea. So has progressives Jesse Jackson and Lani Guinier, conservatives Kevin Phillips and Michael Lind, and the editors of USA Today. Justice Clarence Thomas has written favorably in his legal opinions of proportional systems as a race-neutral method of giving representation to racial minorities. Indeed, there is a startling convergence of thought on the subject taking place from both the left and the right, slowly gathering momentum since race conscious districts first came under attack in 1993.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a little-known international body that oversees crucial Internet functions. Depending on whose description you read, ICANN is either an innocuous non-profit with a narrow technical mandate, or the first step in corralling the Internet for commercial and other purposes. And despite the centrality of it's role in the online world, there has been almost no media coverage of ICANN.
Posted on Apr 1, 2000
