by Jane Anne Morris In the “Obamacare” decision, Chief Justice Roberts masterfully executed what the Zulu call “buffalo horns” — the pincer strategy. Purchase of health insurance is mandatory (a 5-4 vote), BUT states are not required to expand Medicaid to cover the people who can’t afford insurance (a 7-2 vote). The combination is …
Roberts Earns His Keep: The Supreme Court’s “ObamaCare” Decision (2012) Read More »
by Jane Anne Morris 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?
By Jane Anne Morris 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 …
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 with …
A Futures Market in Constitutional Rights? (1997) Read More »
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 …
A Futures Market in Constitutional Rights? (1997) Read More »
By Jane Anne Morris 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.
By Jane Anne Morris 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 …
Wisconsin’s Painfully Moderate Labor Uprising (2011) Read More »
When I first met Ward Morehouse in May 1995 at a weekend “Rethinking the Corporation” retreat in Wisconsin’s “driftless” region—he considered Wisconsin his “old stompin’ ground”–he asked to see my just-published first book. Returning the book the next morning, he made a few trenchant remarks that left no doubt that he had read the whole thing.
By Jane Anne Morris 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. …
by Jane Anne Morris 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, …
Eat, Sleep, Click: The Bicycle-Powered Internet (2012) Read More »