During the “lost decade," Japan had universal healthcare, less inequality, the highest life expectancy, and low rates of infant mortality, crime, and incarceration.
Posted on Oct 8, 2007, Source: The Washington Post
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 Aug 9, 2005, Source: Pacific News Service
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?
Forget about "money buying elections." Congressional redistricting in California allowed the politicians to handpick their voters before voters picked them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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."
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.
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.
