Democracy Theme Park

JAM

  • “ObamaCare,” the Constitution, and Democracy: The Heart of the Matter (2012)

    In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the Obama Health Care Plan (OHCP), officially the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010). Is OHCP constitutional? What is a defensible and prudent green position on this question? Shrill arguments accompanied several cases challenging the law as they worked their way through…

  • Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing (1998)

    If you’re having trouble getting to sleep, you can count sheep, or read a book about the history of regulatory agencies. It may turn out to be the same thing. The nation’s first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), was established in 1887. Concerned citizens, having failed to solve their difficulties in more…

  • A Futures Market in Constitutional Rights? (1997)

    It’s the best of times, if you’re a rapacious corporation with money. It’s the worst of times, if you’re a citizen with democratic pretensions, or a living thing. Or a rock. Especially if you contain ore. Using money to buy power to get their way works great for corporations, what with the trade in human…

  • A Futures Market in Constitutional Rights? (1997)

    By Jane Anne Morris   It’s the best of times, if you’re a rapacious corporation with money. It’s the worst of times, if you’re a citizen with democratic pretensions, or a living thing. Or a rock. Especially if you contain ore. Using money to buy power to get their way works great for corporations, what…

  • Regulatory Agencies Have Failed Us–Let’s Fail Them: Out of the Agencies and Into the Legislatures (2010)

    Too Big to Fail? Regulatory agencies are not, and never were, the Great Protectors of the public interest that hazy origin myths suggest. Understanding regulatory failure entails accepting this inconvenient truth and then moving on. Are we ready to go beyond the usual ritualistic laments about how darned ineffective our “watchdog” agencies are? As the…

  • Wisconsin’s Painfully Moderate Labor Uprising (2011)

    What one can say with confidence is that… AFL-CIO business unionism does not meet the needs of working people at the end of the twentieth century. A qualitatively different unionism is needed. — Staughton Lynd, 1996 Madison, Wisconsin, September 2011. The world-famous Wisconsin Spring, sparked by a Republican attack on collective bargaining rights, took place…

  • Fukushima: A “Normal Accident” (2012)

    In retrospect (that is, after an accident has occurred), it is often easy to look back at a situation and describe it as an accident waiting to happen. Too often we just leave it at that, perhaps hoping that someone else will figure out how we could have foreseen it. Somebody has.

  • Eat, Sleep, Click: The Bicycle-Powered Internet (2012)

    Save a tree, bank online. Subscribe Online, reduce your carbon footprint. Listen to music online, watch movies online, read books online. No mess, no fuss. Google Inc. has photovoltaic (PV) solar panels on its headquarters. With all that footprint-lightening, you may soon be down to no ecological footprint at all, right? Since everyone wants the…

  • Wikipedia (Link, Link): A Cautionary Tale (2012)

    If you are an environmentalist, one sure way to become enraged is to read the World Book Encyclopedia‘s entries on Mining, or Nuclear Energy. They are so whimsical and unrelated to reality that you might wonder why so many consider World Book to be a reliable authority on anything. (Well, maybe aardvarks, but then I…

  • Green Eats Green. Nettled? (2011)

    It’s grid crash, or spring in the upper midwest. That winter diet of muskrat and tree bark goulash has not provided the vitamins and minerals you need to avoid slipping into a 33-degree lake. You can’t live on birdsong alone. Greens, too often called weeds, start appearing in the spring, when you need them the…

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Jane Anne Morris