Mark B. Cohen

GOVERNMENT SERVICES 311 PHONE NUMBER

2008-12-03T07:27:00.000-08:00

On Thursday of last week, Mayor Bloomberg of New York released a detailed survery of citizen views of New York City services. It is on the New York city government website.One of his questions dealt with the public's experience with New York's highly promoted 311 system.Only 41% of New Yorkers recalled using the 311 system--open 24 hours a day--in the last year. Of these, only 48%--or 20% of the total New Yorkers polled--had their problem solved.The 311 system is not the panacea some see it as. And the Pennsylvnia Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, in a July, 2008 report, sees the 311 system--whose costs could prove to be open-ended--as one of the nine major threats to fiscal solvency in Philadelphia.It seems better to me to fund successful old programs like branch libraries than risky new programs like the 311 system. The 311 system is due to start at the about the same the branch libraries are due to be shut down.The first year costs for the 311 system, not counting $4.2 million already spent on calling center renovation, and assuming Philadelphia will be the first city to successfully run a 311 program without custom software, which likely will cost Philadelphia $4 million to $8 million, will about the same as the costs of running the shut down libraries were.I believe we know an awful lot right now on how to improve city services. I would hope that the Mayor and City Council could get input from community groups and others, and take dramatic steps to make a difference.

December 8, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71241-operator-wheres-nearest-library.html

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I have noted elsewhere that a conservative estimate of what it costs to run the 311 system is $4.5 million, and that is about the cost (which may be as low as $3.5 million) of running the 11 affected branch libraries.Former PA House Speaker Bob O'Donnell gave a speech to the Pennsylvania Press Club recently on November 24, 2008 in which he blasted the 311 system as a waste of money.And the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, in a report issued in July of 2008, said that the 311 system was one nine major financial risks the city was facing over the next five years.Just two days ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, a pioneer in using a 311 system, issued a report which said that just 41% of the residents of New York City recalled using the 311 system with the past year, and, of these, just 48%--or 20% of New Yorkers--had their complaints or inquiries resolved to their satisfaction

December 5, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/71299-outrageous.html#post951031

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The 311 System is supposed to be run by CURRENT CITY EMPLOYEES. They are bureaucrats. They are people who have been answering phones in other city agencies. I seriously doubt that there will be some magical improvement in results because they are using expensive software costing minimally $160,000 per year, and in all likelihood ultimately customized for the city of Philadelphia at a cost of $4 million to $8 million. I believe the customized software is necessary for the system to function properly; New Orleans is a conspicuous example of a city that tried to go without customized software and then faced massive public complaints about the 311 system. I have called city bureaucrats directly, and encouraged my staff, City Council staff, and constituents to also call them directly. I am aware of the problems with service delivery. I am highly skeptical, however, that these problems will be solved more easily if city bureaucrats get five or six times the number of complaints under the 311 system than they get now. The implicit cumulative demand of all the demands for better city services will be to raise taxes to pay for the better city services. That was the implicit cumulative demand of all the Sunset Review Audits conducted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and that helped end the Sunset Review Audits and the Sunset Review process in 1990.Program evaluation is not some brand new idea. The city archives are full of program evaluations, and so are scholarly journals, lists of master's and doctoral dissertations, foundation commissioned studies, non-profits like the National Civic League, newspapers, and the publicly available files of federal agencies dealing with the government. The idea that program evaluation began with 311 software, or that 311 software is necessary for program evaluation, is simply false.December 3, 2008http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71057-how-much-philadelphias-311-system-going-cost-2.html

*The issue with 311 is that it costs big bucks at a time in which library services, recreation services, and fire services are being cut. It would be fine with me to have 311 if we had the money to pay for it. When we are essentially paying for 311 services by cutting library services, then I have a real problem with that because I believe the value of library services is real, tangible, and long lasting, while the value of 311 services is essentially based on the misguided and inaccurate beliefs that there is no way to directly communicate with city officials today, and that there is no evaluation of city services today. I would suggest that the believers in evaluation here visit the city archives and look up the thousands of evaluations of city services that have been done in past administrations, and the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of audits of city spending by Philadelphia's many city controllers over the years. Furthermore, there are countless doctoral dissertations and master's dissertations that have also focused on the delivery of city services, as well as scholarly articles in various journals and articles in newspapers and magazines. The National Municipal League was formed around the turn of the 20th Century with program evaluation as a key goal, and the organization still exists today under the name of the National Civic League. A look at their program evaluations in different cities in different decades would be very interesting to at some of the posters and readers here. The concept of evaluation of city services did not begin with the developers of 311 software; it has been going on throughout our lifetimes with increasing detail as computers developed.December 1, 2008http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71057-how-much-philadelphias-311-system-going-cost-6.html

*The 311 System is a "choice," the managing director told me earlier today in a telephone conversation. It is starting at precisely the same time that the library closings are occurring, a situation, along with high likely total costs, that make clear that we can have libraries instead of the 311 system. Similarly we can have both libraries and the 311 system if we either cut somewhere else, get more federal or state aid, raise taxes, or if the economy improves and generates more revenue with the same tax dollars. The declining price of gas and Obama's stimulus plans makes the latter a real possibility. It is the arbitrary deadline for library cuts, variously reported as December 31 or January 16, that forces us to make a decision NOW. It is an arbitrary deadline that was announced after the legislature had for all practical purposes adjourned for the year (the House was in wrap-up session but the Senate was not), and that had the effect of completely shutting the legislature out of the process because the library shutdown was scheduled to occur before the legislature returned to session. I think the 311 system is a risky choice because its price tag is based on the faulty assumptions that (1) no customized software is needed; (2) that utilization of the highly publicized system will be LOWER than the current number of people who call the City Hall switchboard at the current time, and that the PR campaigns on its behalf by the city and software vendors will have no effect in generating business; (3) that the experience of other cities that 311 services usually do not reduce 911 calls and that 311 services are utilized by three to six or more times the total population of the city are irrelevant; and (4) that the city will not yield to the de facto demands for more expenditures of money by the complainants. I predict that the City will inevitably spend $4 million to $8 million on customized software, and that software will have to be updated and service from time to time a high further cost; that the utilization of 911 services will remain the same; that the total annual number of calls will be far closer to 9 million--six times the city population than the projected 1.5 million, about the number of people living in the city; that vacancies left by the departures of the callers into the 311 system will often be filled by new hires, and that the 311 system will be a generator of service demands and tax increases. I believe the maintenance of the branch libraries is both far more useful to getting people jobs and quality educations that is the 311 system, and that we already know many places where we usefully can spend more money at a cost of higher taxes if that is our true desire. There already is plenty of data available about how programs city work or fail to work that goes unread and unused because we are told that the public really values minute annual tax cuts more than services. The 311 system strikes me as being similar to Pennsylvania's old Sunset Review process, where we spent hundreds of thousands per agency to get reports back that we needed to spend a lot more money to improve them. Eventually, in 1990, the legislature decided that it could increase program spending without the Sunset Review process if that was our desire, and it was better to spend money on services rather than studies which produced results that were usually unsurprising.December 1, 2008http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71057-how-much-philadelphias-311-system-going-cost-6.html
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There has been no decrease in 911 calls in New York City. The 27 million calls per year to the 311 system are in addition to the 12 million calls per year to the 911 system.The vasts majority of people know the difference between an emergency and a non-emergency. What we are talking about is a significant new city function which will add significant costs to the City Treasury at a time of financial difficulty.We can be sure that people will not be calling demanding cuts in city services. People will be demanding more city services than now exist, and listening to any significant number of these demands will further raise the costs of the 311 system at a time in which the demands for maintenance of library, recreation, and fire services are not being heeded.December 1, 2008http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71057-how-much-philadelphias-311-system-going-cost-9.html

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New York gets about three calls per city resident, and San Francisco gets about eight calls per city resident. If Philadelphia only equals New York in calls per city resident (and we should surpass New York because our Pennsylvania suburbs that identify with the city and use some of our services are a much higher percentage of the metropolitan area than the New York State suburbs are compared to New York City), then we are easily looking at $6 million per year without the $4 million to $8 million customized software.$4 to $8 million in customized software would raise the start up costs from the $4.2 million for renovation plus the nearly $500,000 for consulting plus the $160 for software plus unspecified administrative costs--easily totaling $4.8 million--to between $8.8 million and $12.8 million.The 311 system certainly is not cheap or beyond public scrutiny. And nowhere does the article say that the City Hall switchboard is going to be shut down, or that agencies will not answer phone calls themselves. Nor does it say that vacancies in agencies caused by transfers to the 311 system will all not be filled.

December 1, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71057-how-much-philadelphias-311-system-going-cost-9.html

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There's ancient story about the old Congressman who advised a young Congressman."Vote for all appropriations, " the old Congressman said. "People love new programs. A program that does not exist can be said to do just about anything. Never vote against a new program."Vote against any tax increase," the old Congressman said. "People hate tax increases. Never vote for one."The U.S. Congress has cumulatively been following this kind of advice for a long time now, giving us a budget deficit that will soon hit 11 TRILLION dollars.The City of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania, though, have to pass balanced budgets with only a tiny bit of wiggle room. We have to look carefully at what new programs cost, especially when we are cutting popular existing programs like libraries, swimming pools, and fire engines.The 311 program is being sold as a great aid to improved service efficiency, but little is being said about its costs. The New York 311 system, for instance, started out employing 375 people, had start-up costs of $21 million, and operating costs of $27 million for its first year in 2003-2004. It generated many millions of phone calls, but the number of emergency calls to the 911 system stayed the same.Despite whatever efficiencies the 311 system may have generated, New York City now has a budget DEFICITof $4 billion, about the size of Philadelphia's TOTAL budget.In Minneapolis, the start-up costs were $6.2 Million, and the annual budget costs are $2.6 million.In April, 2004, Philadelphia Weekly reported that the city was spending $1.4 million to set up a 311 system, which should pay for itself by 2007, but that money apparently was inadequate to get the system off the ground, as nothing appears to have happened. Mark McDonald of the Daily News reported in December, 2006 that the Street Administration had decided to shelve the project.We need some real answers as to what Philadelphia's current 311 system costs, and how the money is going to be generated to pay for it. We need specific examples of demonstrated cost savings in other cities that developed 311 systems, and information as to how these cities now fare in budgeting compared to Philadelphia. For a very mixed review by average New Yorkers about the success and failures of the New York 311 system, see the ask-about-311 entry at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com for September 8, 2008. My efforts to produce a working link to that were unsuccessful.Average Philadelphians, looking at the 311 system prospectively, seem to be as divided about its merits as average New Yorkers. Heard in the Hall on philly.com on November 24, 2008 had a short item noting the opposition of former House Speaker Bob O'Donnell to the 311 system, and the opinions pro and con prospectively were strongly expressed in reader online responses. Again, I was unable to produce a working link.We are not Congress, and our Councilmen cannot endlessly run up debt to pay for current programs.

December 1, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71057-how-much-philadelphias-311-system-going-cost-10.html

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311 is costly wherever it is implemented.In Minneapolis, much smaller than Philadelphia, the start-up costs were $6.2 million and the annual costs are $2.6 million. In Chicago, which merged a lot of existing call centers into a single call center, the start-up costs were $5 million.In New Orleans, a scaled down 311 service has annual costs of $2 million a year to cover just one-third of the city departments. New Orleans claims only $313,000 in start-up costs.In Baltimore, starting costs for technology alone were $3 million, and at the start of the decade the annual costs were $4 million.One problem with comparing these numbers is that there is no central accounting system using uniform methods and providing uniform time periods of comparison. But it is clear that no matter what costs are counted and what costs are generally absorbed in other budget line items, the money spent is significant and it is money that can be used for other programs.

December 1, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/71017-interview-managing-director-camille-barnett-3.html

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Given the financial crisis the city has, the 311 system is probably a luxury we cannot afford.I would much rather have the libraries open, the swimming pools open, and the fire stations open than have a better set of statistics about the city's problems. If we cannot do something meaningful about the crisis we know about, how can we have any belief that we will be able to do something about problems yet to be discovered? More often than not, the problems are about a lack of money, and the Administration has made it clear that solutions to these are off the table. So the 311 system is about spending money to find areas where we need to spend more money that we don't have. This is a waste.If I am wrong and the 311 system is really valuable, perhaps the city could get the private sector to pay for it. My constituents would certainly be glad to have a bake sale for the 311 system if the city would pay for the libraries it is threatening to shut down.

November 30, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/71017-interview-managing-director-camille-barnett-6.html#post947368

PHILADELPHIA CITY BUDGET

2008-11-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

Just as battle lines are hardening comes the news that could end the battle: city wage tax revenues were up so much in November that city wage tax collections are now $24,404,000 AHEAD of where they were projected to be at the time the city passed the budget.If the $4,881,000 a month figure that the city is ahead of revenue projections were to hold, the city would gain an additional $34,167,000 AHEAD of wage tax revenue projections for the remaining seven months of the fiscal year, giving the city an additional $58,571,000 in wage tax revenue collections than was projected.As good as that news is for the city's fiscal health, it's not the most optimistic way to look at the numbers. In the first five months of the year, the city has collected $625,757,000 in wage tax revenues, an average of $125,141, 400 a month. If that trend were to continue for the rest of the fiscal year, the city would collect $1,501,567,000 in wage tax revenues this year, or $345,001,001 above the $1,156,566 projected in wage for this year.State revenues from income tax collections also grew in November, prompting me to request this update from the city.My theory is this: economic anxiety is causing many people to accept all overtime offered and to accept job offers they might have otherwise rejected.Wage tax revenues are not the whole story of course: the city property tax revenues and business privilege tax revenues have not yet been tabulated. And declines in real estate transfer tax revenues and sales tax revenues are eating up most of the wage tax surplus. But still, the three taxes combined are producing a net surplus above projections for the first five months of $4,209,000, a far cry from the desperate financial crisis we have been warned about. That comes out to $851,800 a month, or a net surplus above projections for these three taxes of $10,221,600.

December 17, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/72041-stunning-wage-tax-reveune-growth-threatens-end-city-fiscal-crisis.html

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The people whose services are being cut receive little if any benefit from the city tax cuts in the wage tax and the business privilege tax.It is absolutely wrong to cut services to low and moderate income people to pay for tax cuts for the more affluent.As an intellectual exercise, people should talk about eliminating library services in the areas of the city that have the greatest access to the internet, university libraries, bookstores, professional libraries, kindle, etc. Had Mayor Nutter proposed cutting library services to these areas, the outcry would have been so huge that the fiscal problem would have been solved already.

November 7, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/69667-who-budget-cuts-really-affect.html#post931321

PHILADELPHIA CITY COUNCIL

2008-09-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

I would urge caution on structural changes in the City Council. I tend to believe in the old adage that where there is no clear reason to change, there is reason not to change.Getting rid of two city council seats saves the city little if any money, as the "saved" money could well be used for substitute services.The Republican Party with its two at large seats and one district seat and heavy representation in the business community has been an active partner in city government for the past 56 years of Democratic administrations. While there are undoubtedly decisions that they have influenced that I and my late father Councilman David Cohen have disagreed with, I believe that inclusiveness is a positive value.Further, Republicans have power at a state level that they do not have at a city level. Consolidating Democratic power in the City Council might well lead to more Republican efforts to take power away from city government, as happened with the schools takeover after the charter was changed giving effective control of the school district to the Mayor of Philadelphia.Three seats our of 17 gives the Republicans 17.6% of the City Council with about 14% of the registered voters. This is closer to the registration than giving them 1 of 15 seats, or 6.7% of the City Council seats.I would be surprised if the 10th District does not soon vote Democratic for City Council, which would reduce the Republican percentage to 12.2%, putting the Republican percentage of seats below the current percentage of Republicans without eliminating the at-large seats. If the Republicans lose both the 10th District seat and the two at large seats, they will join the Republicans in Harrisburg, Erie, Scranton, and Reading in being totally without City Council representation.The lower the Republican percentage falls, the greater the possibility that an independent slate could beat one or two of the Republicans for the at large seats in a general election.All Philadelphia political groups are composed of Philadelphia citizens. Respecting these citizens, rather than trying to push them out of the way or marginalize them through structural change, seems to be the best way for Philadelphia to proceed. If the voters feel strongly enough about removing Republicans from Philadelphia government, they can do so under the current rules.

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/64592-goode-proposes-eliminating-gop-seats-3.html

REDISTRICTING

2008-06-05T14:38:00.001-07:00

The bill that Babette Josephs derailed takes power away from the Supreme Court--elected directly by the voters--and turns that power over the Legislative Reference Bureau, whose chief is elected by the legislature and whose staff is in direct touch with individual legislators on a day to day basis.The bill further takes the public hearing process away from the power-holder. Right now, the Supreme Court appointee to the Legislative Reference Bureau listens to the public testimony both before and after a plan is produced, but, under the proposed bill, hearings are held by a temporary commission on redistricting, which is only an advisory and public relations arm of the legislative reference bureau.I could see why, if the status quo was the Legislative Reference Bureau had power to propose redistricting plans, people might want to argue for a body not associated with the legislature, such as the Supreme Court, having a role in proposing redistricting plans.It is hard for me to see why people feel a body--the Legislative Reference Bureau-- dependent on the legislature for its daily working conditions, hiring, job retention, promotion, sick leave, personal leave, office space, vacation time, etc. is a more independent voice than a body--the Supreme Court-- that has its own terms of office, its own budget, its own administrators, and its own public support system.

May 29, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/58008-do-nothing-josephs-stands-way-reform-again.html#post783780

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Taking out the Supreme Court--which bans judges from any political participation except in their election years--and replacing the Supreme Court with the Governor of Pennsylvania, an intensely political person, makes very little sense.The purpose of getting the Supreme Court involved in the first place was to have expertise on the legal questions that mandated decennial redistricting according to presecribed criteria. The Secretary of the Commonwealth's office, the Chief Election Officer in House Bill 2420's terminology, has little legal expertise.Nor does the Legislative Reference Bureau, an agency that drafts bills, publishes regulations, and writes legislative citations, have any experience in statistical analysis, map drawing, or litigation on constitutional issues--areas of expertise that are vital in the redistricting process.Further, the Legislative Reference Bureau has not asked for authority in redistricting, and has not endorsed or embraced House Bill 2420 either. The Legislative Reference Bureau has warm relationships with many members of the General Assembly, especially knowing the more senior and higher ranking members quite well. It is unrealistic to expect that these relationships will be completely ignored when it gets feedback from legislators on the redistricting proposals.House Bill 2420 also slows down the redistricting process, making it necessary to postpone the primary elections to the Summer or the Fall of 2012. This decision of the bills drafters--moving the filing deadline for districting plans to Feburary 15, and the Court hearing date to March 15, with a decision likely sometime in April or May--has yet to be publicly explained.

May 12, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/56947-tell-your-state-reps-support-anti-gerrymandering-bill-2.html

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This bill is simultaneously overly detailed about insignificant things and not focused enough on important things.For instance, there are nine terms with definitions, but no definition of, or prohibition of, gerrymandering.There is a ban on districts being drawn "for the purpose of favoring a political party, incumbent legislator, or member of Congress of other person or group," but there is no ban on drawing districts to HARM the interests of any person or group, and no ban on favoring (no definition of that) "a political party, incumbent legislator or member of Congress or any other person or group" as long as the district is not drawn "for the purpose of" doing so.What this proposed constitutional amendment does is effectively ban honest discussion about how proposed changes affect individual members and force coded discussions about abstractions. The effect of this will be to make public input much harder to achieve.People concerned about redistricting should contact their legislators and say what kind of districts they want. There is accountability between legislators and their constituents. There is no accountability between the voters and the Legislative Reference Bureau or betwen the voters and the editorial page editors.

May 12, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/56947-tell-your-state-reps-support-anti-gerrymandering-bill.html

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To get redistricting plans that will be found to be constitutional by both the state courts and the federal courts, it is urgent that the Supreme Court be allowed to appoint a legal expert--a law school dean, a Bar Association leader, or an experienced appellate judge--to act as the mediator/tie breaker between legislative caucuses and to hear and evaluate public concerns with proposed plans.Redistricting is, above all, about a long series of legal issues. No matter what process is developed for plan drafting, the state and federal courts will ultimately have a final say. Getting a lawyer with a high enough reputation in the field of constitutional law to have the confidence of the Supreme Court in a key decision-making position makes a lot more sense than having lawyers who are experts in bill drafting do preliminary work and a politically appointed "chief election officer" act in a decision-making capacity.

May 12, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/56947-tell-your-state-reps-support-anti-gerrymandering-bill.html

EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAYS

2007-10-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

When something non-controversial happens, usually it isn't news. But, in my view, a resolution passed by the Democratic State Committee of Pennsylvania at its September 8, 2007 meeting was significant precisely because it was non-controversial.
That resolution said that it supported passage of a Pennsylvania bill banning discrimination in employment against gays. That bill is similar to bills that have passed in about twenty other states, the counties of Erie and Philadelphia, and various Pennsylvania municipalities.
Twenty-five years ago, the Philadelphia City Council became the first legislative body in Pennsylvania, and one of the first in the nation, to ban employment discrimination against gays. I helped my father, City Councilman David Cohen, work on that effort.

September 10, 2007

http://state-rep-mark-cohen-dem-pa.dailykos.com/

TERMS OF OFFICE

2007-10-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

Term limits are a bad idea for anyone, whether FBI supervisors, or career military, or judges required to retire at age 70, or elected officials.It is absurd to say that the importance of the positions requires rotation. The importance of any position is based on the competence of those who hold the position, and rotation for the sake of rotation drastically reduces competence and makes the position far less important.One of Arlen Specter's contributions to Philadelphia was in starting as District Attorney to recruit prosecutors based, in part, on their interest in pursuing a prosecutorial career. In doing so, he started a trend still in effect to this day which has enormously increased the competence of the District Attorney's office over time.

October 21, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/45624-inquirer-uncovers-republican-conspiracy-halt-corruption-investiagtions-philly.html#post606079

REFUGEES

2007-08-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Like the U.S. and not very many other countries, Israel is both a country with its own pragmatic interests and an ideal that stands beyond pragmatic interests. There is obviously a tension between these roles for the U.S., Israel, and other countries that face the same paradox.I would strongly hope that Israel will find a way to provide meaningful help to refugees from Darfur. The fact is that Jewish communities in the U.S. have been in the forefront of efforts to mobilize American sentiments to help the people of Darfur, and it ought to be possible for Israel to do likewise in the world community.When Hitler started killing many Jews, and threatened to kill many more Jews (as he ultimately did), the effect of that was to marginalize Jews in the minds of the world. President Roosevelt asked his neighbors in upstate New York whether they would accept Jewish refugees, and got a generally negative reception. A suggestion by the Ernest Greuning, then Governor of Alaska and of Jewish descent, that the U.S. send refugees from Nazi Germany to help settle Alaska, was also dismissed after some consideration. If the Jews were any good, the rationale went, why didn't Hitler want them?The Jews from Nazi Germany included some of the most brilliant and hardest working people in the world. Those who escaped the death camps made major contributions to the economic, scientific and military progress of the countries where they settled, as did their children and grandchildren.We should learn the lesson that the value of refugees is not determined by those who persecute them. The U.S., Israel, and other responsible countries and private sector organizations should do much more than has been done so far to secure the lives and the futures of the refugees.

August 19, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=557138#post557138

SENTENCING

2007-07-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

There is no question that there is a high degree of arbitrariness in sentences, which led Pennsylvania, other states, and the federal government to all push sentencing guidelines.But sentences still depend on the persuasiveness of legal counsel, the worldviews of judges, and the interactions between the defense and the prosecution. One judge once told me that he tends to reward defendants who make his life easier, and another judge once told me that they are so many legal precdents on all sides of just about all legal issues, that judges can often pretty much rule the way they want to.My favorite story about judicial sentencing concerns my good friend Eugene Maier, now a senior judge. Maier had a reputation as one of the toughest sentencing judges in City Hall.One day, a close friend of Maier's with an extensive criminal practice was scheduled to appear before Maier. Maier was not happy about this random assignment. He noted that the lawyer and he had been law school classmates, and had socialized together many times during law school and since. He considered the lawyer to be once of his closest personal friends. He thought, indeed, that they were so close that it might be reasonable to challenge whether Maier could be an objective judge of the lawyer's arguments. Maier concluded by saying he was therefore disqualifying himself from hearing the case, and that he would take the necessary steps to have the case assigned elsewhere.World traveled fast about Maier's decision. Before the friend was able to leave the building, a number of prospective clients had introduced themselves to Maier's friend and sought to have him represent them. If one of the toughest judges in City Hall--the toughest, by some measurements--would not hear any case in which the defendant was represented by one of Maier's closest friends, that enormously increased the lawyer's market value to defendants seeking to avoid really tough sentences.

December 2, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/general-discussion/71012-doreen-giulanos-private-sting-operation.html#post948477

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I favor the abolition of mandatory minimum sentences and legislation to achieve that. The state already spends more money on prisons than it does on either the Philadelphia School District or Pennsylvania State University, and every time a mandatory minimum sentence is adopted those costs are raised higher for the future.More and more of our prison dollars are being spent on health care for elderly and very sick prisoners; prison health care may be better health care than the same individuals might receive out of prison.(A New Jersey doctor who has been a friend of mine since elementary school, and who has provided medical care in New Jersey prisons, told me last year his belief that some people with AIDS were deliberately committing crimes in order to take advantage of prison health care.)One of the things I hope Speaker O'Brien's Commission on Crime Prevention will do is to look at the effect of mandatory minimum sentences on deterring crime. The claim that they do has been their chief legislative selling point, but that claim has not been generally subject to vigorous empirical examination.

July 22, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=536756#post536756

BUDGETS

2007-07-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

The final budget agreement immediately ended the furloughs, and there is a general sense that the workers will be paid for their forced day off.

The final budget agreement was good for labor, with more money for unionized workers in highway construction, mass transit, and education. Health care cost initiatives will enable money that would have gone to health care benefits or deductibles to go to salaries instead. Energy conservation measures will save workers dollars from going abroad and keep more money in the United States.

Both Governor Rendell and House Democratic Appropriations Chair Dwight Evans deserve credit for for insisting that no status quo budget was acceptable, that the budget had to move clearly in the direction of helping to solve urgent state and federal problems.

July 10, 2007

C:\Documents and Settings\lczikows\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLKBD\pennsylvania-state-workers-pay-the-price-for-republican-legislative-roadblock.htm

SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES

2007-06-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

I feel the issue here is not loyalty to the bad habits of smoking family members; true loyalty to smokers lies in efforts to encourage them to improve their health and stop smoking. Stopping smoking greatly improved the health of my father, my mother, my wife and scores of millions of other Americans.The issue is public health. Yes, here and there are smokers who lead long and healthy lives. But, on the whole, the more one smokes, the shorter one's life will be, the more one will miss work, the more doctors bills and hospital bills one will incur, and the more costs employers and taxpayers will have to pay to subsidize these health care costs.The Pennsylvania Restaurant Association strongly supports a tough anti-smoking bill. They know it will generate more new business than it loses; they are tired of losing business to people staying home; they are tired of arguing with customers and employees about the risks of passive smoke."The freedom of smokers ends where my nose begins," Rep. Phyllis Mundy said privately and in House debates. She is absolutely right. There are many millions of Americans who have died prematurely because of smoking, and the time has come to dramatically change the culture and get many more people to be healthy.

July 17, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=532649#post532649

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In a major victory for anti-smoking forces, the House tonight killed a weak substitute (Amendment A2970) for the strongly worded anti-smoking in public places bills introduced by Rep. Mike Gerber (D-Montgomery) and Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (Senate Bill 246) (R-Montgomery) by a vote of 113-82.Gerber and Reps Babette Josephs, Daylin Leach, Lawrence Curry and I strongly spoke out against the substitute introduced by Rep. Todd Eachus (D-Luzerne). Speaker Dennis O'Brien, the Northeast Philadelphia Republican generally allied with the Democrats in this legislative session, voted with the majority. Other Republicans in Southeastern Pennsylvania voted against the weakening substitute by a 16-8 margin; Southeastern Pennsylvania Democrats voted against the weakening substitute by a margin of 23 to 7.As I said in my speech on the House floor, the House itself had only banned smoking on the House floor in 1979, and then only on the second vote. The same issues of health versus personal choice raised in debate today were raised in that 1979 House debate. The ban on smoking in the House only passed by a 93 to 91 vote. But I said in my speech tonight that I got headaches after long floor sessions before that vote passed, and not afterwards. I recalled that 7 or 8 House members died in office in the previous two year legislative session (1977-1978) and that is about the number that died in office cumulatively over the past twenty years.Clearly, banning smoking on the House floor has been good for the health of members of the House of Representatives. Banning smoking in public places will also be good for the health of Pennsylvania citizens and will lower health insurance premiums and hospital costs across board over time.I expect that on Saturday, July 14, 2007, the House will pass a strong anti-smoking bill and send it to the Senate, which had passed a greatly weakened version of Senator Greenleaf's bill. The ultimate result should be a much stronger version than the Senate originally passed.

July 13, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=530372#post530372

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It is my belief that banning smoking in public places will add far more business to the eating and drinking establishments than it takes away. There are a good number of people who go out far less than they otherwise would because they feel uncomfortable with all the smoke. Less than 20% of Americans now smoke, and many of these would like to stop smoking.

If the state does pass a smoking ban in public places, this would be a real feather in the cap for Michael Nutter, whose victory in the primary election was in no small part due to his successful passage of the city smoking in public places ban.

June 25, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=517016#post517016

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By a vote of 29 to 21 tonight, the Senate has watered down its anti-smoking in public places bill. All Philadelphia state senators except Sen. Anthony Williams voted for this watering down amendment. Suburban Senators Andrew Dinniman, Edwin Erickson, Chuck McIlhenny ( the proposer of the amendment) Dominic Pileggi, and Tommy Tomlinson voted yes, while Senators Stuart Greenleaf and and John Rafferty , Connie Williams and Rob Wonderling voted no.Full or partical exemptions were added covering long-term care facilities, facilities for community mental health, drug and alcohol addiction treatment, cigar bars, gaming floors, private clubs; drinking establishments, and exhibitions for tobacco products.These are loopholes big enough to drive a truck through, but there still would be areas where smoking would be banned. If this is enacted, smoking would still be banned in restaurants that are not considered to be bars, public meetings, educational facilities, school buses, health facilities, auditoriums, arenas, theaters, museums, restaurants, concert halls, commerical establishments, retail stores, service lines, grocery stores, bingo halls, waiting rooms, hallways, polling places, restrooms, sports arenas, general uses of convention halls, elevators, public transit, public food assistance program and facility, shopping malls, general uses of exhibition halls, rotundas or lobbies, and at least 3/4 of sleeping quarters of hotels.On the other hand, there is little smoking that takes place in most of the places where smoking is banned, and a lot of smoking in the places where exemptions were included.I favor the strongest possible statewide smoking ban. I will be working with others to achieve this end.

June 25, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=517016#post517016

HIGHER EDUCATION

2007-05-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

I have proposed a state university for Philadelphia because state university tuition is so much lower than is tuition for Temple or Penn State, and a state university in Philadelphia would open up four year college attendance to people who are now unable to afford it without great difficulty.Penn State has at times offered college courses in Philadelphia, and, for all I know, may be doing so today. But there has been no talk of which I have been aware of having a branch campus here.One problem for any college expansion is the cost of aquiring land here; hopefully, someone can be found to donate land or sell to the state at an affordable price for a state university, and the same would be true for Penn State if it ever decided to expand here.

July 20, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=535683#post535683

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I held my second meeting today with two high-ranking officials of the State System of Higher Education about my idea to have a state university in Philadelphia. This is important because state university tuition is only half the tuition of Temple University, and the trend is that it will be even a lower percentage of Temple University's tuition in the future.One of the officials strongly agreed with me that a state university in Philadelphia could dramatically expand college attendance among low and moderate income students here. He promised me that he would produce a plan to create a state university in Philadelphia, and also one to bring course offerings from existing state universities to Philadelphia. I believe the need for affordable college education is so great here that both should be done. I would additionally favor making Community College of Philadelphia a four year institution, but that is a separate issue with separate bureaucratic structures.The high-ranking state official told of a recent study in Pittsburgh which found that the higher and higher rate of college attendance had left about three thousand students there without a reasonable chance of going to college there; there is some sentiment that Pittsburgh needs a state university as well.There is no question that the three state related colleges--Temple, Penn State, and the University of Pittsburgh--are "better" than the state universities in terms of selectivity of admissions, variety of course offerings, books in libraries, endowments, value of buildings, etc. But all the signs of academic excellence have the price of raising total costs, and thus making the education unaccessible to people who cannot afford the tuition or the risk of taking out loans.
Where should a new state university in Philadelphia be located, both in terms of a neighborhood and specific buildings that may be available? Ideally there would be someone willing to donate or sell at a low price land and buildings with empty space nearby that could be used.My gut sense is that the area betweeen Community College of Philadelphia and Temple University would be a good place to start looking. There is a lot of vacant space there, and a new state university there would tend to spur even more residential development than is planned at the current time. Further, the closeness to Philadelphia's two largest undergraduate institutions would enable a synergy that would make it easy to widen options for recruiting faculty members, enabling Temple graduate students to teach, and creating a greater student presence for extracurricular activities.I would welcome other ideas, either implementing my gut sense or suggesting other alternatives.What courses should it offer? The high-ranking state education official said business, education, and communication courses were the most popular. What do you think should be added?How can a campaign be developed to get the legislature to support expanded state university presence in Philadelphia? Obviously, it will require a lot of organization of both Philadelphians and others. I would welcome nominations of people and organizations to be involved.Would you be interested in helping get this off the ground? If so, respond here or send me a private message.The sad fact is that all or virtually all of the state colleges were added to state control after they failed as private institutions. In retrospect, the state should have tried to take over Philadelphia's campuses of Antioch University and Spring Garden College when they failed, but no such movement occurred.We cannot undo the past, but we can take bold strides ahead to create a better future.

May 24, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=37462

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College is not for everybody, but it should be for many more people in Philadelphia than it is. Philadelphia needs more people in the national job market, both to gain the ability to go elsewhere if that is in their individual best interest, and for the city as a whole to gain the ability to attract many more employers here in the interest of all residents.There are a lot of wonderful people attending college in Philadelphia who come from all over the state of Pennsylvania, and all over the East Coast, and--in small but growing numbers--all over the United States and the world. There is just one little segment of humanity that is an ever smaller percentage of the Philadelphia college population, and that is people who went to high school in Philadelphia.Community College of Philadelphia should not be the sole meaningful option available in Philadelphia for the vast majority of Philadelphia high school students. I am proud that it started from scratch in the 1960's, and has far more undergraduate students than the Philadelphia campuses of Penn, Temple, LaSalle, Holy Family, Philadelphia University and various other places combined--but it is not the total answer for Philadelphia's problems. There is absolutely no reason why Philadelphia cannot have both a state university and a community college just like Delaware County does. Philadelphia is an important part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and it is paradoxically both the county with the greatest financial needs and the county with a great amount of business and financial activity.Tony Payton's plan--which I would love to support--for free tuition for many students starts out with an estimated price tag of $350 million a year state wide. Expanding Pennsylvania's state university system would cost a small fraction of that.And no, in this cynical age, I have no contributors, friends, relatives, or associates looking to unload land for a state university. Nor do I know of any union pushing for this project at this time.What I have is a very strong desire to create new opportunities for hard pressed Philadelphia families similar to the opportunities that already exist in many of the rural areas of the state. There is a similarity between the economic problems of rural Pennsylvania and the economic problems of Philadelphia, but there is one distinction: our economic problems are far more deeply rooted and far more difficult to solve.If we want a city with greater potential than now exists, we need a city with more to offer than now exists. A state university is one such addition that Philadelphia urgently needs.

June 20, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=513849#post513849

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We should try to minimize the opportunity costs of getting a college education. Opportunity costs deal with foregone income as a result of pursuing a college education.A way to minimize opportunity costs is to maximize opportunities for working adults to attend college during the evening. When my mother earned her undergraduate degree in economics from George Washington University, evening classes were far less common that they were when I earned my law and MBA degrees that way.But, even today, with evening education offerings--and Internet college credit offerings--more numerous than ever before, there are still gaps in opportunities in various programs. Identifying these gaps and trying to fill them will open up the doors of college and graduate school to many--if they can afford the options offered.

July 7, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=277700#post277700

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I certainly favor greater state subsidy of scholarships and aid to state related schools (Temple, Penn State, and University of Pittsburgh), all 14 schools affiliated the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, all Pennsylvania community colleges.Further, I believe we need to open up a state school in Philadelphia (the closest popular option is West Chester State University, which is also the hardest SSHE school to get into precisely because of its popularity), and to establish 4 year community colleges around the state, as some other states have done.Why have we not done that so far? It costs money. Pennsylvania's $26 billion budget is considerably less than New Jersey's $31 billion dollar budget, even though New Jersey is a much smaller (and less fiscally responsible) state. How can we get Pennsylvania's commitment for higher education up where it should be? Incrementally, the way we do everything else. We need concerned citizens to speak out on the extremely college costs in Pennsylvania in order to create a climate of opinion where constructive change is possible over the long run.

July 6, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=277059#post277059

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A couple of months ago, I attended a fascinating lecture at USP on the implications to values of privacy and individual rights of the latest pharmaceutical research, which will be increasingly developing drugs based on individual personal characteristics, including race, sex, age, etc.I was impressed that USP was aware of the tensions that can exist between scientific research and public values, and was inviting the public to be informed as well as the students of science.While Penn is a giant school with strengths across the board, there certainly is plenty of room in the East Coast education market for a school which can build on its pharmaceutical tradition and offer quality education in the sciences. Its nearness to Penn and Drexel creates a lot of opportunities for synergy in research, teaching, and student interaction.As one who has graduate degrees from two private institutions that are nowhere near being in Penn's league (Penn was my undergraduate college; I got a law degree from Widener and an MBA from Lebanon Valley College), I found that a smaller institution can give a student advantages in greater focus, and more intense interaction with a smaller group of people. A smaller institution can also take a more personal interest in its students.I look forward to continued progress by USP.

June 28, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=273243#post273243

ETHICS

2007-05-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

The sudden resignation of Congressman Mark Foley raises questions of who knew what, when. It appears that a number of Congressmen, including some Congressional leaders, knew about Foley's sexual advances for some time and took no action.

It is time for a strong institutional response. Members of Congress, whatever their sexual orientation, ought not to be about the seduction or exploitation of minors. The sad parade of scandals in this area over many years must stop.

Past efforts to regulate sexual behavior of members of Congress have run aground because of legitimate privacy concerns. People who do not want government in everybody's bedrooms do not want government investigating sexual behavior. It is feared that investigations of the sexual behavior of members of Congress could be the beginning of sexual investigations of a lot of other people. But when a member of Congress seeks or accomplishes a sexual relationship with a minor, that is something different. That is inherently exploitive of the minor.

Minors are not disposable people. Sexually exploiting them, or attempting to sexually exploit them, can do long term emotional and psychological damage to them. They by definition cannot be consenting adults.

Congressional ethics rules should be amended to prohibit attempts to sexually solicit minors, to ban the direct sexual solicitation of minors, and to ban sexual contact with minors.
Any member of Congress who cannot live with such a ban should find some other way to make a living. Congressional pages, young Congressional interns, high school students, all should be be protected from the misdirected attentions of members of Congress and Congressional staff.
We have heard a lot about family values. It is long past time for Congress to demonstrate that it values the safe and secure emotional development of children.

Congress must not let the weaknesses of 1% or less of its members discredit Congress as an institution. When a minor meets a member of Congress, or corresponds with a member of Congress, his or her family and friends have a right to believe that minor is dealing with a person who behaves in a responsible and appropriate way.

Both the House and Senate should amend their rules to ban sexual solicitation of minors before going home to face the voters. If they are so immobolized that they cannot take this simple step to deal with this recurring institutional shame, they will not retain the trust they need to function successfully.

September 29, 2006

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/29/232839/844

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MILITARY DRAFT

2007-05-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

A military draft will create many new problems. It will be tremendously expensive and require more borrowing, cuts in existing programs, tax increases, or some combination of two or three of them. Rangel's proposal--the only one in a long time--costs over ONE TRILLION dollars a year because it takes the absurd position that everyone has to serve whether needed or not.The armed forces with the draftees will be less effective than they are now because the troops will be less well motivated. That is why leaders of all the branches of the armed forces have long opposed the draft. Many in the military spoke out against the draft before it was allowed to expire in 1973.A lot of people who will never be drafted will be worried that they will be drafted. So will their loved ones. Some will be so worried that they will leave our country. Others will merely threaten to leave our country.A lot of people will be hiring lawyers to get them through whatever exemptions are created along with the draft. Those with more money for lawyers and appeals if necessary will be ultimately far less likely to be drafted.A lot of people will be trying to shoehorn their religious convictions into whatever religious convictions turn out to be exempt from the draft.There will be a lot of disruptive anguish, angst, and actions at high schools, colleges, and other places where draft-eligible people hang out.We need an end to the War in Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz, in selling the war, said the U.S. would be out of Iraq in 90 days if we went in and toppled Saddam Hussein. The way things are going, we will be quite lucky to avoid 90 months in Iraq, and 90 years there is not impossible.We do not need a draft. A draft says that people exist for the government. Like most people, I believe that government exists for the benefit of the people.Just about every nation in the world has either emulated the U.S. and abolished its draft or greatly reduced the draft's role in the military. Even in Israel, a small country at odds with much larger countries, there are many military and non-military voice for abolishing its draft.Some day, military drafts will be as rare as slavery is today. The closer we get to a draft-free world, the less likely it will be that American lives will be lost in war. The more that being a soldier is voluntary, the more that those who want soldiers to enlist will have to sell the soldiers and the country at large as to the merits of the battles and wars to be fought.

September 4, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=569535#post569535

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Restoring the draft is a bad idea, whether it is advocated seriously or as a means of protest. A better idea would be to get rid of draft registration and the machinery that makes it seem like a credible option.It is a bad idea because it creates unmotivated soldiers, and a bad idea because it is ridiculously expensive and inherently controversial to implement. It is a bad idea because it devalues human life and asserts that human lives are at the mercy of government control. Only if we are fighting a foe as evil as Hitler--killing millions of people and threatening to kill many, many millions more--could a draft be justified in my mind.Yea, implementing a draft would increase anti-war sentiment. And increasing the number of people in poverty would increase anti-poverty sentiment. And eliminating college scholarships would increase the number of people demanding lower tuitions. And reducing medical access would increase the number of people demanding uinversal health care.But I am convinced that it is a mistake to believe that we can improve things by making them worse. What making them worse usually does is reduce hope and limit the will to meaningfully fight for change. It is the demonstrated ability to win improvements that leads to more successful fights for further improvements.Eliminating the draft in 1973 was a major reform of American life--led in the Senate by 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate Mike Gravel-- that everyone should be proud of. It asserted that the lives of citizens belong to the citizens themselves, and not to the government. It asserted that a foreign policy with military components has to have the backing of individual soldiers. It set limits on the kind of military adventurism that our national leaders could engage in.Our eliminating the draft led many other countries to do likewise. Today, virtually every country in the world that still has a draft also has a movement to end the draft. I would hope that within the next 20 or 30 years every country on earth would be free of a military draft; it would be a great step forward for humanity if that could happen.

August 16, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=554649#post554649

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The one bad thing about Jack Murtha's well deserved prominence as a critic of our tragic folly in Iraq is that it calls attention to his position as a supporter of restoring the military draft, and lends that position more credibility than it deserves.

Murtha's most recent statement was that Bush has so totally screwed up the war in Iraq that a draft might be needed. He was one of only two members of the House to vote for military draft restoration when House Republicans, scared that issue would cost Bush the election in 2004, forced a vote on the issue to undermine Democratic charges that the Bush Administration favored draft restoration.

I played a small role in forcing that vote when I got Philadelphia anti-draft leader Beverly Cocco--a moderate Republican with two teenage sons who works as a crossing guard and is an attractive and extraordinarily persuasive media spokesperson on this issue--in touch with people who got her national television coverage for her views. Beverly Cocco briefly became the most controversial crossing guard in America, as the Republican blogosphere, fearful of seeing her emerge in the Kerry campaign, treated her as a major Democratic spokesperson and ludicrously tried to trash her reputation. The extraordinary Republican overreaction to her appearance on national television helped fuel the House vote against draft restoration.
Restoring the military draft is strongly against the interests of the United States,and the interests of young Americans, no matter whether it is sold as means of protesting the war in Iraq or strengthening American ability to intervene at will in foreign conflicts abroad.
I am completely against military draft restoration no matter what its rationale is. I do not believe that it is a worthwhile solution for increasing male enrollment on college campuses (to avoid the draft), for increasing the number of men engaging in worthwhile alternative service programs (also to avoid the draft), or for increasing equality between men and women (if the draft is reinstated with women included.)

The endless search for liberal rationales to justify an expensive, militarily counterproductive, and extraordinarily disruptive and threatening presence in the lives of many scores of millions of people over time only serves to raise questions about the ability of the Democrats to govern effectively.

It is not true that a draft more equitably assigns the burdens of military risk across demographic categories of Americans. A lower percentage of American casusualties in Iraq are black than was the case in Vietnam, even though the black percentage of America has risen somewhat over the years.

Restoring the draft was one of the signature issues of the Democratic Leadership Council in its early days in the mid-1980's. When the Democrats regained control of the Senate after a six year hiatus in 1986, Senator Sam Nunn announced that hearings on draft restoration would be held promptly. I was one of many thousands of Americans who immediately contacted the Senate and asked to testify.

Senators in both parties were stunned at the depth of public outrage at Senator Nunn's statements. Senate Democratic leaders hastily announced that they would oppose restoring the draft, and no hearings would be held on the subject.

Senator Nunn would later somewhat re-evaluate his position as a staunch advocate of military responses on a global scale, and lead Democratic opposition to Goerge H.W. Bush's invasion of Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Countries throughout the world have abolished military drafts. If I do not live to see the day when every country everywhere has abolished its military draft, I am sure that some younger members of the Daily Kos community will do so.

Military drafts inherently assert that people exist to serve governments instead of governments existing to serve people. They give governments the right to decide how young people will spend precious years of their lives, and give governments the right to decide what risks to life and health they must endure. They give governments a coerced army to advance foreign policy goals, and reduce the need to persuade citizens of the worth of these goals.

President Lyndon Johnson's vast and unequaled domestic achievements--he was a major leader for expansions of civil rights, economic opportunites, and health care accessibility--were swallowed up by his vigorous prosecution of the War in Vietnam and his unquestioning support of the military draft.

Johnson famously read no books about Vietnam, but only read governmental reports, which tended to be limited in scope and self-congratulatory. Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers--a critical study of the American role in Vietnam commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara--out of desperation to get indisputable realities into the discussion as to our Vietnam policies.

Without a draft guaranteeing an endless supply of soldiers, the Johnson Administration would have under far more pressure to fully evaluate the assumptions behind a deeply flawed policy. The draft encouraged official hubris, and led to tragic misjudgements. It was a rare time in American history when many, many thousands of students and college professors were far better informed on foreign policy issues than was the White House or the State Department.
The military draft would have been defeated for reauthorization in the House of Representatives in 1971 if not for the failure of a few liberal Democrats to be in Washington on the day it came up. In 1973, it was killed due to a Senate filibuster on a reauthorization bill led by Democratic Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, a strong critic of the War in Vietnam. Gravel, defeated for re-election in 1980, has re-emerged in his late 70's as an anti-Iraq war protest candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008.

Restoring the military draft appeals to the idealism of shared sacrifice, the idealism of men willingly dying for their country, the idealism of no man's ambitions being greater the national interest.

Many idealists are wonderful people. But all idealisms are not created equal. Some idealisms have harmful and deadly consequences so great that they are far more threatening than helpful to public interests.

The draft was necessary for the winning of World War II, but it is not necessary to achieve any military or valid social purpose today. It deserves burial as a serious public policy option. To paraphrase George Santayanna, we must remember the past so that we do not have to relive it.

September 14, 2006

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/14/6049/20472

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PHARMACEUTICALS

2007-05-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

The state subsidies of prescription cost do not cover all prescriptions and that the cost of advertising drugs contributes to higher costs.I support both state and federal legislation to deal with these problems. Because Pennsylvania is the home of many prescription drug companies, it is especially difficult to get state legislative action. But I believe Governor Rendell's desire for great bulk state pruchasing of prescription drugs has merit as an attempt to lower drug costs for more people.

May 5, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=36090&page=2

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PUBLIC ASSISTANCE

2007-05-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

Anyone stealing money from the welfare system should be criminally prosecuted. Pennsylvania has had an elected Republican attorney general--Leroy Zimmerman, Ernie Preate, Mike Fisher, and now Tom Corbett--since 1980. Prosecutions for welfare theft by the State Attorney General's office have been few and far between, suggesting that there might not be much of a problem here.Pennsylvania's unemployment is at a thirty year low because of a combination of wise decisions--from cutting corporate taxes, to building up Pennsylvania's infrastructure, to encouraging new businesses, to reaching out especially to businesses on the cutting edge of modern technology, and to (I know conservatives will hate this) raising the state's minimum wage above the absurdly low federal level, thus drawing more people into the workforce.We all have an interest in seeing that Pennsylvania's welfare system is run as well as possible. Investigations of the welfare system are legitimate and appropriate.Nevertheless, it has been my experience that playing the welfare card is an especially intense old standby when Republicans are losing elections and fear they are losing ground. Welfare is just another example of the tiresome racial politics that has kept too many people's attention away from issues far more important to the interests of the middle class and the longterm public interests of us all.I believe that the results of the Philadelphia mayoral election will show that many thousands of Philadelphians are moving far beyond the ancient and longstanding politics of racial resentments. To whatever degree welfare probes are about exploiting political code words, there should be intense self-examination among the welfare probers.

April 30, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=35754

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IMMIGRATION

2007-05-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Immigrants are moving into houses almost everywhere, because there are so many millions of them.Anyone worried about immigrants as neighbors will be worried pretty much wherever one lives.I grew up sandwiched between immigrants from Russia and Switzerland on the south of by family home, and immigrants from the Ukraine on the north of my family home. I learned a little bit about the world without leaving my block.People basically have a choice with migration of blacks and immigrants to neighborhoods: they can panic and put their home up for sale at fire sale prices, and thus help cause the problems they fear. Or they can take a deep breath, relax, and try to talk to their new neighbors. If they take the latter course--my recommended course--they will increase their chances of both increasing the the value of their neighborhood and get to know some interesting and worthwhile people.

April 29, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=35568

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DRUG DEALERS

2007-05-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

The public policy problem with legalization is that many drugs are inherently dangerous; the legal problem is that they are illegal under federal law and the states have no power to trump federal law in this case. But making the drug trade less attractive may be a goal people in the legislature and our communities could rally around. We need would a series of ideas and programs to give the concept some weight.

Decriminalization of individual drug purchases without legalization of drugs would not make the drug trade less attractive for drug dealers. It would expand the market for illegal drugs and thus the profitablility of illegal drugs.Making the drug trade less attractive would have to move in the opposite direction of making it less profitable by finding new ways to reduce demand for illegal drugs. Improved education about them, better rehabilitation, greater use of legal substitutes and other things that could reduce demand would undermine the profitability of selling drugs.

July 21, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=536333#post536333

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Anyone frustrated at difficulties in cracking down on drug dealers should try to involve the drug unit of the D.A.'s office. Their presence tends to both reassure recalcitrant witnesses and to help focus an overworked and underappreciated police force on the need to crack down on a given area.Assistant D.A,'s specializing in drug prosecution also can be very good at spotting patterns, and focusing both residents and police on the specific proof needed to gain criminal convictions that stick on appeal in a given case.Another group of enforcement personnel you might want to involve is the Department of Licenses and Inspections, who might help shut down a drug house if it is supposed to be used for some legitimate commercial purpose.The Philadelphia Police Department is Philadelphia's number one law enforcement agency, but it is neither all-powerful nor all-responsible for the city's crime. Adding other agencies to your community's efforts can help the Police Department reach peak effectiveness.

April 27, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=35322&page=5

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GAMBLING

2007-05-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

Does it make sense to put a casino in Norristown along its riverfront or someplace else in Montgomery County? Does it make sense to put a casino someplace in Chester County? These are hitherto unasked questions that may be of relevance in the years ahead.State legislation has given the City of Philadelphia two stand-alone casino licenses. The mayoral administrations of Ed Rendell and John Street both lobbied for these licenses, as did the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, and the Philadelphia Hotel Association. Many thousands of temporary construction jobs and long-term casino operation jobs were promised to the city as a result. So was city revenues from gambling proceeds (4% of all money bet) and wage taxes from the jobs as well as business taxes from the casinos themselves.Now the Philadelphia City Council, acting unanimously, has three times voted for legislation impeding casino development. A public opinion poll has shown a slight plurality of Philadelphians think the casinos are more trouble than they they are worth.I suspect that a referendum on the casinos would produce a majority for them, because such a referendum would produce heavy pro-casino advertising and mobilization. But, however a referendum would turn out, it is clear that many Philadelphians are worried about the negative effects--traffic congestion, extra alcohol consumption, competition with other businesses, taking of relatively limited (although now underutilized) waterfront space--that are believed to go with casinos.The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its citizens have an economic stake in casino development as a revenue raising tool to reduce property taxes and the city of Philadelphia's wage tax. Philadelphia appears to be a good location for casinos because of its population and its accessibility to the Philadelphia and New Jersey suburbs and I-95.But Philadelphia is not the only option. The casinos located in Bucks and Delaware counties have been doing business at a level far in excess of projections, and do not appear to have generated significant local controversy. Surburban households, generally on an individual basis and in the aggregate, have significantly more disposable income than do Philadelphia households.And the fact is that the racetrack at Philadelphia Park in Bucks County long outlasted the racetrack at Liberty Bell Park in Northeast Philadelphia, which is now the site of the Franklin Mills shopping center, one of Pennsylvania's premier shopping locations.The Philadelphia suburbs continue to gain in population, while the City of Philadelphia continues to lose population as household size shrinks despite the creation of new middle class and upper middle class housing.Philadelphia is the smallest geographically of all Pennsylvania counties. Space considerations in Philadelphia are of less importance in other areas of Pennsylvania.So I think suburban alternatives are worth considering. Such consideration may lead Philadelphians to re-assert their desire for casinos, just as Philadelphia's eagerness to have the Barnes Museum has led to a re-evaluation of Lower Merion's complaints about traffic congestion there and anguished local pleas that Philadelphia is stealing its artistic treasures.Or, conversely, such consideration may lead to a consensus that suburban locations are indeed better for casinos in Pennsylvania than urban locations, and that placing casinos there is in the interest of the suburbs as well as in the interest of Philadelphia itself.

April 25, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=35410

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ABORTION

2007-05-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

If Roe v. Wade is reversed (I am too optimistic to say "when" Roe v. Wade is reversed) then the legislatures of all 50 states will have a chance to outlaw abortion. Pennsylvania is one of the states that could outlaw abortion, although I think it is unlikely that it would happen.What pro-choice groups and individuals should be doing is planning now. Who will be calling and emailing others to contact their legislators? Who will be contacting the press? Who has conscientious objection to contacting legislators? Who can persuade such people that such qualms are wrong? Who can call press conferences? What lists of voters and financial supporters are available? Who lives in each legislative district, especially districts with legislators with bad ratings from pro-choice groups?Centrists and those to the left of center, in my judgment, often become paralyzed by issues of procedure and process and stategy. There is a core doubt that the First Amendment really, truly applies to them and that contacting elected officials really means anything. Right-wing groups often get their way because their members either have a stronger sense of personal efficacy or are more easily pressured to act.NOW is the time to work out all these issues. If Roe v. Wade is reversed, we can sure that within weeks--possibly within days or even within hours--bills will be introduced in legislatures around the country abolishing the right to have an abortion and, in some cases, even criminalizing abortions. Those who are pro-choice are not then going to have a heck of a lot of time to engage in detailed strategizing and hand holding supporters who are fearful that contacting elected officials is somehow non-productive, counterproductive, undignified, morally compromising, or a matter of such complexity that only hired lobbyists and Phds in Political Science can do it.The simple, honest truth is that people who participate in attempting to influence elected officials and elections in general have a lot of power to do good or not to do good. Hopefully, over time this group of self-selected influentials will be more representative of the general public than it is today. Right now, the group of people willing to contact legislators on public policy issues has a strongly right of center cast--even in many overwhelmingly Democratic districts. That has to change somewhat if choice is to be preserved around the country and in Pennsylvania.

March 18, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=35091

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BOOK REVIEWS

2006-11-30T14:07:00.000-08:00

Confessions of a Civil Servant: Lessons in Changing America's Government and Military by Bob Stone

Very few longtime civil servants write their memoirs. This book shows that this is a mistake. The author makes the every day conflicts of civil service life live and breathe and shows how they can be overcome to serve great purposes in the public interest. Introduction writer Tom Peters quotes Peter Drucker's aphorism that "Ninety percent of what we call 'management' consists of making it difficult to get things done." He produces "12 Lessons in Stone" which summarize his approaches. Stone used (1) Demos and Models; (2) Heroes; (3) Stories and Storytellers; (4) Chroniclers; (5) Cheerleaders and Recognition; (6) New Language; (7) Seekers (of change); (8) Protectors (of innovators); (9) Support Groups; (10) End Runs (around hierarchies)/Pull (from outsiders) Strategy; (11) Field/"Real People" Focus, and (12) Speed to push his goals forward. The author himself describes his goals as "decentralization, deregulation, and devolution of authority in a value-centered organization." These were goals gradually developed after years of frustration mixed with achievement in the Defense Department, to which he had been recruited by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis in 1969. He quickly clashed with the centralization of all authority for planning imposed during the seven plus years of Secretary Robert McNamara. His first work was to research the question of how big the army should be. He led successful efforts to change the evaluation formula from on tons of artillery ammunition fired times lethal area per ton to one that applied informed military judgements to the weapons on both sides, what the army dubbed the Weighted Effect Indicators/Weighted Unit Value method. The effect of this change in formulas was to demonstrate the feasibility of NATO surpassing the Warsaw Pact in effectiveness, something later accomplished in the Carter and Reagan Administrations. From this effort, the author learned the power of asking naieve questions, such as "Why? What's that mean? Says who?" The author subsequently went on to become assistant secretary of defense for installations, where he rapidly shrunk regulations and improved the quality of life for residents of military bases. This raised hackles which put him under a glass ceiling for awhile, but he recovered with the Clinton/Gore election in 1992, when he got appointed to the National Performance Review staff, and ultimately became its leader in reinventing government. This book demonstrates his struggles and his triumphs and is essential reading for anyone seeking to aid in the cause of responsive government. "Some people look for things that went wrong and try to fix them," he said. "I look for things that went right and try to build upon them." He called himself "Mr. ReGo" (Reinventing Government) and "Energizer in Chief." His critics had undoubtedly had other words for him, but this book is a very clear record of his vision and accomplishments. It is an extremely useful introduction to the whole field of Reinventing Government, with its orientation of customer service and customer satisfaction and the eliminations of excess regulation and bureaucratic red tape. It is one man's anecdotal summary, but it provides a firm basis for more rigorous empiricial investigations by others. It is a call to action as well as a memoir, and as such it will likely be heeded by dedicated professionals for many years to come.

December 30, 2007

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A32Q9MQYTFQ4O4/ref=cm_pdp_rev_all/176-3219434-5351661?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview

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What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness by Stanley Bing

With this book, businessman and Fortune Magazine columnist Stanley Bing began a long and continuing career of attacking outrageous bosses and managerial practices. There is no shortage of material in these categories, and this book is a good introduction to how rich the field of managerial abuse is. This is not a book for true Machiavelli fans. Those who want to savor the finely nuanced distinctions and advices of Machiavelli's THE PRINCE will not be able to do so here. Indeed Bing delivers a classic put-down to the man he calls "the master": "the fact that it's very difficult to understand anything the master says gets in the way of our ability to walk, straight and secure, down his path." What we have dissected here is not Machiavelli the sagacious adviser and pioneer of the field of Political Science, but Machiavelli as a cultural icon standing for the extension of personal wealth and power to the exclusion of all other considerations. "To live true to the vision of the master, we must be as selfish, narcisstic, manipulative, driven and creative in getting what we want as we can be, not just in our important business actions, but where it really counts: in our hearts. You can do it. This book will help." A true Machiavellian, in the author's sense of the term, would always be unpredictable, and thus would gain the advantage of keeping everyone else off balance. In love with his destiny, always at war, for the most part a paranoid freak, he would think BIG, acquire his neighbor, move like a shark, eating as he goes, killing people's careers, but only if he could feel good about himself afterwards. A true Machiavellian would fire his own mother if necessary, make a virtue out of his obnoxiousness, be way upbeat, be satisfied with nobody but himself, embrace his own madness, do what he feels like doing, say what he feels like saying, delegate all the crummy tasks except the ones that he enjoys, respond poorly to criticism, perennially carry grudges, lie when necessary, be proud of his cruelty and see it as strength, permanently cripple those who disappoint him, torture people until they were only too happy to destroy themselves, feast on other people's discord, make you fear for your life, be loyal to people who could put up with him, have no patience for anybody, never say he's sorry, have no conscience to speak of, scream at people a lot, establish and maintain a psychotic level of control, would eat to kill, and would have fun with his career and his life. The author drifts in and out of satire and sober evaluation. His concluding paragraph summarizes much of the book: "Good may often be its own--and only--reward in this competitive, malevolent, and unfair world. This may be most true in business, where the unsympathetic aspects of human character are compensated most lavishly. But evil does have its limitations, ones that even the biggest, baddest Machiavellis around should keep in mind." This book would be a great supplement to courses on business ethics and courses on management. Its tongue in cheek evocations of Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Caligua grab attention and serve as a warning to the those humor-deprived people who might view sections of this book as a serious guide. Its graphs--based on no hard information whatsoever--demonstrate serious points. The "normal world view" is that the vast majority of people are friends or potential friends while the "Machiavelli world view" is that the vast majority of people are enemies or potential enemies. "The bigger you are" the "less you like" criticism. "Performance" is greater "with ruthless competition" than without it. The Machiavelli personality is high on fear, aggression, self, and golf to the exclusion of conscience and hobbies and to the marginalization of family and friends. The greater the control a Machiavelli has, the more fun he has. The joys of retirement--golf and not being bothered by idiots--wear off after a couple of years. This book, in short, could be retitled "How to Succeed in Business by Failing as a Human Being." In the author's words, "only individuals who are monmaniacal and driven to the exclusion of all else stand a chance of rising to the top." The price of success, the author says, "is to adjust your personality to remove as much conscience as is possible." The price of getting to the top, the author makes clear, is not worth it by the rules of the modern day Machiavellis.

December 19, 2007

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A32Q9MQYTFQ4O4/ref=cm_pdp_rev_all/176-3219434-5351661?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview

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A Leader For Business Organization Change Offers A Checklist For Leaders And Potential Leaders, September 18, 2007
The author, Richard A. Moran, is the National Director of Organizational Change Practice for Price Waterhouse. "He has worked," his biographical profile in the back of this book state, "for all types of organizations worldwide, from Apple Computer to Zurich Insurance. Moran helps organizations implement their strategies by keeping management focused and by getting lots of help from employees. He is the co-athor of the landmark study POSTCARDS FROM EMPLOYEES, which capture the perceptions of more than 50,000 employees regarding their organizations and managements as well as well as customer service and other work-related areas...." This book, a collection of 361 aphorisms gleaned from his experience, is in individual parts, both superficial and profound. The aphorisms are simple and not always appropriate for each individual in each situation. His advice on dating (don't date co-workers), oneupsmanship (get into the office a half hour before your boss), honesty (don't take sick days unless you are sick), holiday parties (don't get drunk there), traveling on corporate jets (know the seating protocol before you get there), and racist jokes (expect to be fired if you tell them) may strike people as overly obvious or overly general. What the author offers is a checklist of advice that is useful to anyone who works as part of, in cooperation with, a complex bureaucratic structure. "Most observations that made it to the pages of this book were learned from other people's mistakes, even though most of the blunders went unnoticed by the offenders. To them I am most indebted," he says. "....The obervations in this outlined in this book," the author says, "were not derived through the rigorous application of conjoint analysis in a JIT environment with the Black-Scholes methodology as a denominator. Rather, they are based on the simple organizational truths that I find people should know--but don't. I hope this book bridges the gap in the knowledge frontier and makes you more successful." Based on one's life experiences, one will have different views of the value of this book, and the value of the individual aphorisms it contains. My nominees for the best three dozen aphorisms are as follows: #5. "Simplify, don't complicate--especially processes, procedures, and policies." #7. "Spend five minutes figuring out how to communicate the decision for every ten minutes you spend deciding." #8. "Believe that change can happen, even after overwhelming evidence says that things never seem to get better." #15. "Don't promise what you can't deliver." #25. "Never confuse a memo with reality...most memos from the top are political fantasy." #27. "Don't look at change as bad." #31. "Share the credit for successful projects and make sure everyone's supervisor knows of everyone's contribution." #50. "If you're going to complain about something, have a solution in mind and make it clear what you want." #57. "Develop a high tolerance for ambiguity--you'll be more satisfied." #64. "Don't micromanage your people, your projects, or your own life." #86. "Read your job description but never be restricted by it. Do what needs to be done." #96. "When giving a talk or presentation, always consider what thought you want the audience to walk away with." #120. "Recognizing someone else's contribution will repay you doubly." #126. "Make time for life outside of work." #130. "You're never too old to change, learn a new job, start over, or try something new." #142. "Life is choices: always choose to do what you will remember ten years from now." #164. "You will never regret having spent too much time with your kids." #167. "Take risks with your ideas and with implementing them." #171. "Being good is important; being trusted is essential." #174. "Always strive for a deeper level of truth with business associates. Posturing and pretending is always transparent to everyone." #185. "Do something good early in your new job or assignment." #209. "Don't surround yourself with people who are like you; strive for difference and diversity." #226. "Those who do the work should have a say in how it's to be organized." #241. "Remember that almost all business is painfully simple. Strive to demsystify." #247. "Teamwork will become more and more important. Lean what it is and how to be a good team member." #251. "Don't get hung up defining whether you're working on a vision or a mission or goals or objectives--do what's important." #266. "Work on problems, not symptoms. Morale itself is never a problem; something is happening that causes low morale, which creates a problem." #288. "Be a supporter of the latest fad, but don't build your career around it." #308. "Performance evaluations take place every day, not every six months or every year." #322. "Technology cannot solve all problems. It can only make the real work cheaper, faster, and less tedious." #330. "Make decisions in a timely fashion, even if you're not 100% certain it's the right decision. Not deciding is a decision, too." #342. "Follw Stephen Covey's suggestion of knowing how to distinguish what's important and what's urgent." #344. "Treat everyone in the organization with respect and dignity whether it be the janitor or the president. Don't ever be patronizing." #352. "All employees--including the management--want to know three things when they show up for work: What's my job? How am I doing? and, How does my contribution help serve the organization's mission? #355. "Always know the answer to the question, "What business are we in?" The simplicity of this book does not undermine its profundity. This an excellent book for someone new to an organization, to someone trying to explain things to someone new to an organization, or to an experienced person fighting burnout, loss of focus, or simply too much to do to concentrate on what is essential. The author has written a provocative checklist of things everyone in leadership, or aspiring to leadership, ought to look at closely.

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Authority On Leadership Sees Attitude As Key, September 16, 2007
The author, leadership authority John Maxwell, says "Attitude is always a 'player' on your team....Your attitude and potential go hand in hand....A lot goes into an attitude--but a lot more comes out of it!....The key to having a good attitude is the willingness to change....The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside....Every successful person is someone who failed, yet never regarded himself as a failure....Attitude determines how far you can go on the success journey....Leaders have to give up to go up." Maxwell's book is full of commonsense aphorisms that are both thoughtful and appropriate. Taken together, along with personal reflections and apt quotations from people who are famous and/or insightful, they provide an excellent roadmap to analyzing the attitudes that people have, and taking practical steps toward improving them. Attitude impacts leadership. "Attitudes have the power to lift up or tear down a team....An attitude compounds when exposed to others....Attitude is catching....Bad attitudes compound faster than good ones....Attitudes are subjective so identifying a wrong one can be difficult." "Common rotten attitudes that ruin a team" include "an inability to admit wrongdoing....failing to forgive....petty jealousy....the disease of me...a critical spirit....a desire to hog all the credit....Rotten attitudes, left alone, ruin everything." Clara Barton, when asked to recall a wrong that was done to her, replied "I distinctly remember forgetting that." NBA basketball great Bill Russell said "The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I made my teammates play." These are examples of exemplary attitudes. The visionary Thomas Jefferson believed in the importance of attitude himself, saying "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." "Attitude determines success or failure," the author believes. He has seven attitude axioms: "Our attitude determines our approach to life...Our attitudes determines our relationships with people....Often our attitude is the only difference between success and failure....Our attitude at the beginning of a task will affect its outcome more than anything else....Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings....Our attitude can give us an uncommonly positive perspective....Your attitude is not particularly good because you are a religious person." The author believes that attitudes are shaped by the interrelationship between one's personality, environment, expression, feelings,self-image, opportunities for growth, associations with others, phiysical appearance, marriage, job and family. "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, " he says. To change one's attitude, one should evaluate your present attitude, realize that faith is stronger than fear, write a statement of purpose, including what you desire to accomplish each day, verbalizing to an encouraging friend what you intend to accomplish each day, and taking action on your goal every day. One must have the desire to change, to fall in love with the challenge of change and watch the desire to change grow. One must live one day at a time,change your thought patterns, develop good habits, and continually choose to have a right attitude. Attitudes can be strengthened by the overcoming of obstacles, by regarding failure as an event and not as a description of one's character, by seeing success as a journey and not as a destination, and by recognizing that leaders have to make sacrifices in order to go where they want to go. Martin Luther King and Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton are both exemplified in this book; King is viewed as typical of the best possible type of leaders because he so devoted his life to the service of others. This is an excellent book for persons, organizations, corporations, and groups stuck in a rut and needing renewal. The simple writing here contains many simple truths, with an emphasis on the belief that there is a large element of personal control in one's destiny. Those who read this book will find the investment of time to be well spent.

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The Essence of Leadership
by Mac Anderson

Author Mac Anderson is the founder of Successories, Inc., billed as "the leader in designing and marketing products for motivation and recognition." The author here combines the compelling photographs and quotations for which Successories is well known with wisdom from both his extensive business experience and his reading of other leadership gurus. A good leader, the author says, should "walk the talk; keep it simple and keep it real; celebrate successes; know that courage matters; keep hope alive; take responsibility; develop a 'service attitude'; aim for the heart; and make a difference when wherever" possible. "If you throw your heart over the fence, the rest will follow," the author says illustrating the virtue of Heartpower. "Don't be afraid to go out on a limb," the author says illustrating the virtue of Risk. "That's where the fruit is." "Integrity does not blow in the wind or change with the tide," the author says in promiting Integrity. "It is the inner image of our true selves." Other virtues the author promotes are LEADERSHIP ("By the work, one knows the workman," Jean de la Fontaine said), ATTITUDE ("Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference),DISCOVERY ("Leaders are like eagles," said Henry David Thoreau. "They don't flock, you find them one at a time"), GOALS ("Dream big dreams but never forget that realistic short-term goals are the keys to your success"), KINDNESS ("The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched," Helen Keller said. "They must be felt in the heart"), OPTIMISM ("Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement," Helen Keller said), VISION ("...The music makers...the dreamers of dreams...are the movers and shakers of the world forever it seems," said Arthur O'Shaughnessy), RECHARGE ("My attitude, my energy, my levels of motivation are directly tied to exercise"), PERSEVERANCE ("Go over, go under, go around, or go through, but never give up"), VALUES ("Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least," said Goethe),CULTIVATE ("Pull the weeds. Otherwise the team, just like the garden, cannot grow," said John Murphy), TRUST ("Trust, not technology, is the issue of the decade," said Tom Peters, EXCELLENCE ("Excellence is not an act...It's a habit," said Artistotle), SERVICE ("Service is the lifeblood of any organization. Everything flows from it, and is nourished by it. Customer service is not a department...it's an attitude"), LEADERSHIP ("A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be"), QUALITY ("In the race for quality, there is no finish line,"),FOCUS ("Focus on the critical few, not the insignificant many"), FEELINGS ("You may not remember what someone says or does, but you'll never forget about how they made you feel,"), SUCCESS ("Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value," Albert Einstein said), INTEGRITY ("Wisdom is knowing the right path to take. Integrity is taking it"), PASSION ("To love what you do and feel that it matters...How could anything be more fun," said Katherine Graham), and PURPOSE ("Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven," said Matthew in the New Testament). Ideals the author pushes include "aim for the heart;" "develop a service attitude," "think change"; "strive for authenticity;" "take action;" "hre great people;" "expect the unexpected;" "take the inch by inch approach;" "walk a mile in their shoes;" "embrace humor, hope, and optimism;" "reward the gift of imagination;" "manage your energy;" "develop a 'refuse to lose' attitude;" "reinforce core values;" "pull the weeds (among employees);" "create an attitude of ownership;" "make good habits;" "learn from Southwest Airlines (about making customers have fun and feel respected)"; "your customers must come in second (to your employees);" "make your brand stand for something;" "focus on your priorities;" "understand the soft stuff;" "lead with values;" "lead with integrity;" "love what you do;" "make a difference." The author has written a book to be read quickly, and a book to be reread time and again. The author has written a book to keep, and a book to give away. The author has boiled leadership down to its essence, and created a basis for future thought and research. It seems there are an unlimited number of books on leadership, and none are either omniscent or indispensable. The author has written a good book to read at the start of leadership responsibilities, and a good book to read when one is enmeshed in leadership responsiblities. The author has made a contribution both to leadership itself, and to aiding in the communication of what leaders do from veteran leaders to newer leaders. Woodrow Wilson famously said that the more time he had to prepare a speech, the shorter he could make it. With many years in the business of leadership instruction, the author has written a short but comprehensive outline of what leadership is all about in a manner that provokes sustained thought and provides inspiration. This book deserves a wide audience in business, government, volunteer organization, and non-profits. Wherever leadership is needed and there is doubt as to what leadership entails, this is a book to begin the discussions and help start developing the solutions.

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Close Personal Friends of the Mayor
by Michael Stack

Michael Stack's fourth novel (the first about politics from this veteran Philadelphia politican) is a triumph at various levels. First, it is a darn good read for anyone interested in the machinations of local politics. Its characters are realistic portrayals of the people who participate in politics: public-spirited, but also self-interested; honest, but not saintly; responsible, but not masochistic; strong, but not incapable of yielding to superior power. The author's characters are artfully drawn. They come across as real people and not ideological caricatures. They are the kind of people one might want to have a beer with, not the kind of people who debate on CNN or wind up engraved at Mount Rushmore. They face moral and practical questions, and deal with them imperfectly but in a manner that saves face and minimizes conflict. A reader who cares about politics will find himself or herself caring about these protagonists and engrossed in their story. The author provides a case study--fictional but inspired by a real-life example--of how sheer willpower was able to triumph over the power of media and party organization. The author deals with timeless themes of the results of political participation on family life, the hanging onto power by those who have lost sense of its purpose, the battle between the old and the new, and the struggles of women and minorities to make their presence felt. The author also provides key insights into politics at its rawest in an era before the domination of public opinion polls, saturation television advertising, the blogosphere, 24 hour a day news coverage, and endless fundraisers. Second, the book's ironic title makes an important point. The mayor in question seems to have few or no close personal friends. His backers are on the whole motivated by self-interest or fear, and not by friendship. Harry Truman's well known saying--"If you want a friend in Washington,get a dog."--is not an absolute rule, but it is an aphorism that makes clear that claims of friendship in politics are inherently limited by the multitude of pressures, demands, and ambitions. Mayor James J. Walsh never appears in this book doing anything except engaging in politics; he seems to have no time for friendship. Third, the author creates a guessing game as to who in Philly history his characters most strongly resemble. "This book is a work of fiction," the standard disclaimer runs. "People, places, events and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental." Neverthess, some "purely coincidental" resemblances can be inferred by this reviewer. Despite a few references to later events, the author's description of the undated Philadelphia mayoral election uncannily resembles the 1967 mayoral election, where both the author and this reviewer were deeply involved. The fictional Mayor James J. Walsh appears to be very much like the real mayor James H. J. Tate; his Democratic challenger Bradley Wentworth appears very much like the real-life Alexander Hemphill; Republican candidate Morey Stern appears very much like 1967 Republican mayoral nominee Arlen Specter; Democratic City Chairman Gus Kelly appears to be very much like Democratic Chairman Francis R. Smith; campaign manager John Bell appears very much like author Michael Stack; Congressman William A. Corcoran appears very much like Congressman William Barrett; Councilman George Fox appears very much like Council President George Schwartz; House Speaker Ira Goldman appears very much like House Speaker Herbert Fineman; Herb McIlvaney appears very much like State Senator Herbert McGlinchey; Plumbers Union leader Jimmy O'Rourke appears very much like Plumbers Union leaders Jimmy O'Neill; AFL-CIO leader Ed Sweeney appears very much like AFL-CIO leader Ed Toohey; campaign aide Ellen Black appears very much like campaign aide Evelyn White; Police Commissioner Sal Nardi appears very much like Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo; black leader Wesley Johnson appears very much like black leader and Deputy Mayor Charles Bowser; U.S. Senator Lewis appears very much like U.S. Senator Joseph Clark; Lewis aide Mike Sullivan appears very much like Clark aide Mike Byrne. Campaign aide Ruth Wolfe appears to be a composite of the political savvy of campaign aide Natalie Saxe, the ambition of District Attorney Lynn Abraham, the speechwriting skill of Dick Doran, and the career strategy of Wilson Goode. And an offhand reference to a Council candidate named Kaplan appears to refer to my late father, longtime City Councilman David Cohen. Fourth, due to all the above, and likely other similarities with other actors in the 1967 Philadelphia mayoral election, the author has succeeded in giving this long-slighted historical event some of the recognition it deserves. The 1967 mayoral election was the year black voters became a decisive force for the first time; the year both that both the pride and resentments of voters of Italian descent emerged on the political stage; the year of the triumph of law and order politics; the only year in the history of the current city charter that Philadelphia got a majority of new City Council members; a year that demonstrated the vulnerability of the City's Democratic machine; a year that led to a rare general election defeat for current U.S. Senator Arlen Specter; a year that presaged both the rise of Frank Rizzo and his eventual fall from power. Any interested in studying the 1967 mayoral election or the rise of Frank Rizzo would do well to read this book. This book can be read in conjunction with John Taglianetti's Shaking Hands With the Devil to get an increased understanding of Philadelphia politics in the 1960's and 1970's. Fifth, this book calls renewed attention to the legendary Philadelphia Congressman William Barrett, whose fictional counterpart, Congressman William Corcoran, steals the show in this book, creating an insurgent campaign out of nothing, winning support through a shrewd mixture of persuasion and coercion, showing diplomatic skills that both dazzle and instruct, being a strong influence for inclusion of new people and new ideas, and being, in short, the indispensable man in converting what was widely perceived as a doomed effort into a political juggernaut. Barrett also deserves far more attention than he has gotten from historians. Sixth, the author raises here the implicit question as to the purpose of politics, the relationship between means and ends, and the limits of political commitments. The more impressive candidate as an individual was Republican nominee Mory Stern (Arlen Specter), but the author and his protagonists worked hard for James Walsh (Mayor James Tate) to preserve Democratic Party control of the city government and to strengthen the Democratic Party both statewide and nationally. Forty years later, this reviewer thinks that was the right thing to do, and suspects the author does also. The author though makes it clear that there was a legitimate question of what action was appropriate involved. The author also makes clear the ironic effect of term limits: it provided a rationale for support of the incumbent that might not have existed otherwise. The fact that Mayor Walsh could only serve one term if re-elected, while other candidates could serve two two terms, was a key motivating factor for the two characters showing mayoral ambition to support him. Without their support, he would likely not have won in the world of this novel. The same was true in the real world in the case of Mayor James Tate: he owed his victory to those who had a keen interest in there being an open seat four years later. This book should widely read by those who like a good political novel with genuine people instead of political caricatures. It should be read by those who interested in the political history of Philadelphia, and those who are veterans of Philadelphia politics. It is probably the best political novel about Philadelphia politics ever written.

*

On the Move
by Bono

This book documents the emergence of Rock superstar Bono as a major theological force in the interest of ending extreme poverty in Africa, where six thousand die of AIDS each day. He is becoming the Martin Luther King of Africa aid relief. "There is a continent--Africa--being consumed by flames. I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did--or did not do--to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do." This quote is accompanied by the words FREEDOM and EQUALITY repeated numerous times in the form of a map of Africa. Bono updates Isaiah 58:9-11 to report on the presence of God in today's world. "God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both of their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them." Bono founded the advocacy group DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) in 2002. It is a member of ONE, the Camapaign to Make Poverty History. In 2006 he launched Product (RED) to engage businesses in the fight against AIDS. He lives in Dublin, Ireland with his wife and four children. Bono wants the United States to give an additional one percent of its federal budget annually to end world poverty. Beside a picture of a barely clothed African child, Bono says "Where you live should no longer determine whether you live." He adds, "We hear that call in the One Campaign, a growing movement of more than two million Americans left and right together, united in the belief that where you live should no longer determine whether you live." Bono eloquently summarizes more of his agenda, "Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market--that's a justice issue. Holding children ransom for the debts of their grandparents--that's a justice issue. Withholding the life-saving medicines out of defeerence to the Office of Patents--that's a justice issue. And while the law is what wwe say it is, God is not silent on the subject." Bono is of both Protestant and Catholic ancestry in a land deeply divided by literal warfare over the differences between these religions. "Religion often gets in the way of God, " Bono says. "I was cynical. Not about God, but about God's politics." Bono was called to action by concept of the millennial year of 2000 being a Jubilee year, "an opportunity to cancel the chronic debts of the world's poorest people. They (the advocates of a Jubilee year) had the audacity to renew the Lord's call--and they were joined by Pope John Paul II, who, from an Irish half-Catholic's point of view, may have had a more direct line to the Almighty." This is a book to stir people to action by man who, the publisher notes, "has brought about tremendous change--billions of dollars in debt relief have been forgiven and thousands of lives have been saved. But more than that, he has opened our eyes to the dignity, beauty, and strength of this continent. His eloquence when speaking about Africa at the National Prayer Breakfast inspired this book. My hope is that it will inspire you as well." This is a book that does stir people to action, that ought to be read by people who want ideas on how to use their time and money to solve major problems facing the world. Bill Clinton, active in raising money and public consciousness for African relief in the years since he left the White House, describes this book as "Inspirational words from a man of faith and action. Bono's message is one of unparalled hope and challenge. He goes where others don't and makes us want to follow." A rock star as an international moral leader? It is an unusual concept to be sure. But Bono says, "When churches started deomonstrating on debt, governments listened--and acted. When churches started organizing, petitioning, and even that most unholy of acts today, God forbid, lobbying on AIDS and global health, governments listened and acted. "I'm here (at the National Prayer breakfast) today in all humility to say: you changed minds; you changed policy; you changed the world. "Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who God is or if God exists--most will agree that if there is a God, God has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives." Bono notes the intense interest in poverty in the scriptures. "It's not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. That's a lot of airtime, 2,100 mentions." He praises our country for doubling aid to Africa, tripling funding for global health, putting 900,000 people onto life-saving anti-viral drugs and providing 11,000,000 bed nets to protect children from malaria. "Outstanding human achievements. Counterintuitive. Historic. Be very, very proud. But here's the bad news. There is much more to do. There's a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the respons. And finally, it's not a questions about charity after all, is it? It's about justice." Bono works to incite his audience to action. "But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties; it doubts our concern; it questions our commitment." This is book that is moving, provocative, and insightful. The greater its audience, the greater will be the world's response to one of the great international challenges of our time.

*

Relationships 101 (Maxwell, John C.)
by John C. Maxwell

Leadership expert John Maxwell is extremely good at expressing complex truths in series of simple sentences that individually seem obvious. As the pages go by, one realizes one is being exposed to a well-thought out comprehensive world view as to how people should lead other people in a manner than benefits society as a whole. Relationships are important to success, the author writes, because relationships are the glue that holds team members together. What a leader needs to know about others, the author writes, is that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Leaders can encourage others, the author says, by believing in people before they have proved themselves. This is the key to motivating people to reach their potential. Leaders can connect with people, the author says, by always remembering that the heart comes before the head. Leaders can become better listeners, the author says, by treating every person as if he or she were the most important person in the world. Leaders can build trust with others, the author says, by having their words and actions match. The most important relationships, the author says, are at home. Succeed at home, and all other relationships become easier. A leader can serve and lead people at the same time by loving the people he or she leads more than his or her position, the author says. As the author always does in the many books he writes, he backs up his views with famous historical quotes and anecdotes.. He quotes longtime Reagan aide Michael Deaver on how Reagan managed the press--he liked people and succeeded in getting the press corps to like him--and his staff--he found ways to make clear to everyone how important they were to him. The author quotes President Harry Truman that "When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint--understand what he is trying to do--nine times out of ten he is trying to do right." He quotes President Woodrow Wilson as saying "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people" and President Lyndon Johnson as keeping a sign in his office saying "You ain't learnin' nothin' when you're doin' all the talkin." The author quotes World War I hero Marshal Ferdinand Foch: "There are no hopeless situations; there are only men and women who have grown helpless about them." The author quotes Pennsylvania Revolutionary War era great Benjamin Franklin as saying that "Those things that hurt, instruct." He quotes Pennsylvania founder William Penn as saying "Never despise or oppose what thou does not understand." The author quotes philosopher-poet-longshoreman Eric Hoffer: "It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at root of the troubles that afflict our world." He quotes Jeff MacNelly's comic strip character Shoe, a crusty newspaper editor, as saying "When it comes to believing in myself, I'm an agnostic." He quotes the evangelist Bill Glass as saying "Over 90% of prison inmates were told by their parents while growing up, 'Thy're going to put you in jail.'" The author says that solid relationships are built by respect, shared experiences, trust, reciprocity, and mutual enjoyment. The author says that important things to know about people is that everybody wants to be somebody, nobody cares how much you know until he knows how much you care, that everybody needs somebody to come alongside and help, and everybody can be somebody when somebody understands and believes him or her. The author says that most people don't have faith in themselves, most people don't have someone who has faith in them, most people can tell when someone else has faith in them, and most people will do anything to live up to faith in them. To become a believer in people, the author advises that people emphasize their strengths, list their past successes, instill confidence when they fail, visualize thier future successes, and expect a new level of living. Leaders should recognize that the heart comes first, they should connect in public and in private, they should connect with people one at a time, they should expect the best of them, and they should recognize that the tougher the challenge the greater the connection. Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher is cited for the many ways in which he makes meaningful connections with his employees; Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton is also cited for going out of his way to have a long talk with a company truckdriver to both pay him respect and gain information from him. The author's advice for developing listening skills is: look at the speaker, don't interrupt,focus on understanding, determine the need of the moment, check your emotions, suspend your judgment, sum up at major intervals, ask questions for clarity,and always make listening your priority. Personal integrity is key to building trust with others, the author says. Integrity is not determined by circumstances, not based on credentials, and not to be confused with reputation. One can become a person of integrity by committing oneself to honesty, reliability and confidentiality; deciding ahead of time that you don't have a price; and each day doing what you should do before what you want to do. To build a strong family, the author says, both partners have to work to stay together, express appreciation for each other, structure their lives to spend time together, deal with crises in a positive way, communicate continually, and share the same values. To serve and lead people at the same time, one should have a servant's heart, put others ahead of one's own agenda, possess the confidence to serve, initiate service to others, not be position conscious, and serve out of love. To improve one's servanthood, one should perform small acts of kindness for others; learn to walk slowly through the crowd, making it your agenda to get to know each person's needs, wants, and desires; and to move into action and start serving. Anyone in a leadership position, or aspiring to a leadership position, will benefit from reading this book. All the wisdom of the world can not be summarized in lists and aphorisms, but the author's methods go a long way to bringing common sense to the uncommon responsibilities many people face on a daily basis. This is an excellent book for those who wish to use their power to do much, much more than advance themselves.

*

Desperate deliverance: The story of African Americans in the Civil War
by Robert P Broadwater

Novels, movies, television shows and historical commemorations of the Civil War have generally created the impression of a conflict between white people: the North fighting to free the slaves, the South fighting to maintain slavery. But the author of this book--a white man with three ancestors who fought for the Union and one who fought for the Confederacy-- notes that the official figures show that 178,975 blacks were enrolled in the Union Army, and about 21% of them, 36,847, died of all causes. The overall percentage of deaths over enlistments in the Civil War was only 10.4%, he says. This is only the beginning of the black role in the Civil War. Over 200,000 blacks fled slavery to join the Union Army; some were accepted as soldiers and others were not, but those who were not often did very useful work at the garrisons in a support capacity. And some blacks fought for state militias on the Confederate side; while the North had many black regiments, the South had none. The author makes clear that the mission of the war to end slavery--he likes to think of it as the War of Black Independence--only became clear over time. At the start of the war, the enlistment of free blacks into the Confederate Army peaked and the enlistment of blacks into the Union Army stalled. He documents numerous attempts by blacks to form regiments that were ignored; at one point New York free blacks even offered to pay the entire cost of a black regiment themselves in order to entice the federal government to accept one. The reluctance to accept blacks as soldiers was caused by both prejudiced doubts that they could fight and political desires not to inflame the Confederates or to lose the loyalty of the pro-slavery boarder states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee which stayed on as part of the Union. It was originally hoped that it would be a short war after which everything could return to normal. But the intensity of Southern resistance soon became clear. General David Hunter, stationed at Port Royal in Charleston, South Carolina, immediately began to enroll fugitive slaves upon replacing General Sherman there on March 31, 1861 for what became known as the 1st South Carolina Colored Infantry. Hunter's approach was to inform Washington of what he was doing and assume he had permission to continue unless he was ordered to stop. On May 8, 1862 Hunter even issued his own early version of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Lincoln, fearful of the reactions from the boarder states, made him rescind his proclamation. Hunter on May 9,1862 began to round up able-bodied blackss from plantations and urge them to join the Union army. He would then return those who declined to their plantations. This was going to far for all but the Radical Republicans in Congress, and on August 10, 1862 he was forced to disband his regiment. But others who were used less controversial methods to recruit black troops kept doing so. A few days before Butler was forced to disband his regiment, General Ben Butler, in command of captured areas around New Orleans, wired Secretary of War Stanton on August 5, 1862: "I shall call on Africa to intervene, and I do not think I shall call in vain." By August 22,1862 Butler had issued a general order authorizing the enlistment of blacks, offering a bounty and generous pay. The hiring practices of his regiment was an early example of what is now known as "Don't ask, don't tell;" he got around orders requiring him to only enroll free blacks by simply not checking on who was free and who was not, and the author concludes that "most of the regiment was probably made up of runaway slaves." On the same day that Butler wired Scretary Stanton, a wire was sent to Stanton by General James Lane, in the Kansas-Missouri theatre, who also sought to recruit black troops. After the first battle in which his black troops had fought, Lane was enthusiastic in his praise. "It is useless to talk any more about Negro courage, " he said. "The men fought like tigers, each and every one of them, and the main difficulty was to hold them well in hand. Saddle and mount is the word. These are boys to clean out the bushwackers." Lane's troops functioned without authorization until January 13, 1863, when they became the 1st Kansas Colored Regiment. Lane also symbolizes the gradual transition of the Democratic Party from the party of slavery to the party of civil rights. "As an old Democrat, I felt a little repugnance at having anything to do with Negroes, but having got fairly over that, am in the work. They are just as good tools to crush the rebellion with as any that can be got." Other Democratic generals in the Union Army would soon be echoing these sentiments. The author focuses intensely on the formation of the early Negro regiments, and then starts listing subsequent ones in groups. He notes the reluctance of their commanders--all of whom were white--to order them into battle, but describes the military pressures that overcame such reluctance. The author also notes that some blacks won admission to state regiments on their own iniitiative: 65 year old Nicholas Biddle, a runaway slave long a resident of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, attached himself to the Washington Artillerists, and is considered by some to have been the first Union soldier to have been wounded in the Civil War "while marching through Baltimore with the first volunteers from Schuylkill County, 18 April 1861." The author details at length the resistance blacks faced in the Union Army. A black surgeon from Canada, given command over 8 white surgeons, was ulitmately forced to resign despite excellent performance because his subordinates felt demeaned at working under a black man. Even within battles, there was reluctance to have black soldiers be the first to attack. But the author notes that black soldiers were the most zealous, perhaps because they felt they had the biggest stake in the conflict. They took risks that white soldiers were reluctant to take, and they sometimes kept fighting rather than surrender even when battles had been lost. The author details Southern attempts to send captured black soldiers into slavery; Congress retaliated by threatening other actions against Southern captured soldiers, and this threat seems to have ended that Southern threat. The black regiments consistently won plaudits from their supervisors and observers, even when they lost battles, the author finds. And the author notes that in the last year of the war, when the Union Army losses had piled up, black soldiers played an important role in Union victories. Without discussing issues broader than the Civil War, the author sheds light on the disturbing historical paradox that so many backers of the Union became apathetic or actively hostile to the idea of full black participation in American life. The author documents the prejudice that advocates of black participation in the armed forces--white and black alike--had to overcome, and the step by step and sometimes guerilla tactics that had to be used to get black soldiers into uniform and into battle. The author even notes that Congress tried to iniitally pay black soldiers $10 a day while white soliders were being paid $13 a day, and pay at least one black doctor at the soldier's rate. Massachusetts black soldiers rejected the lesser salaries, and even rejected an attempt by the Massachusetts legislature to pay the difference. Their protest eventually led to Congress agreeing to pay the same salaries to black soldiers as to white soldiers. And the black doctor who got paid at the soldier's rate eventually got four years of back pay at the surgeons rate. The author has a keen sense of military detail, and devotees of military history will enjoy this book. Future historians should also use this book--culled largely from secondary sources listed in the back of the book--as a source of ideas for further research. This book is highly relevant to the history of American civil rights as well as the history of the Civil War. It answers the question of why Martin Luther King was so insistent on "Freedom NOW," why black history adds needed context to what has been traditionally considered American history, and how the armed forces got enmeshed in the tradition of separate units for blacks--a practiced not changed until the Truman Administration. This is an excellent book well worth reading by black and white alike, by those who care about military history and those who care about social history, by those interested in the Civil War and those interested in military history in general. It should lead readers to both seek greater historical recognition of black troops in the Civil War, and to seek greater understanding of the evolution of the role of blacks in American society.

*

Beware of Those Who Ask for Feedback by Richard A. Moran

Author Richard A. Moran, Ph.D.,is the National Director of Organization Change for Price Waterhouse. His biography in this book says "He has worked in all types of organizations worldwide, from Apple Computer to Zurich Insurance. Moran helps organizations implement their strategies by keeping management focused and by getting lots of help from employees. He is the author of NEVER CONFUSE A MEMO WITH REALITY. In addition he is co-author of the 1993 landmark studey, POSTCARDS FROM EMPLOYEES, which captured the perceptions of over 50,000 employees regarding their organizations and management as well as customer service and other work-related areas." The author says his "continuing source of material are those thousands of employees, at all levels of all organizations, who tell me the truth and make me aware of what a struggle it can be to thrive in today's complex organizations." The author describes this second collection of business related aphorisms as "a book of business bread and butter." He says he has continued his attempt, begun in his first book NEVER CONFUSE A MEMO WITH REALITY "to capture the conventional wisdom that people in business should know--but either ignore or never learned in the first place." He sees several advantage to his writing style: "First, it represents what many people know is the truth about life in today's organizations. Second, it is accessible: It features no complex models or theories that make anyone feel guilty or inadequate for not understanding. Third the lessons from the book apply. No matter what their level, industry, or position, people understand. Fourth, there is humor in the book that makes people chuckle about their own situations. And, lastly, the price is right." As in his first book, the advice offered is simply expressed and sometimes overgeneralized. But inevitably, what is familiar for one person will be a new insight for another. Once again, the author presents a checklist. A reader may wish to reject any individual item on it as in appropriate for his or her particular situation, but it is a valuable guide to both self-appraisal and organizational appraisal. There are 371 aphorisms or collections of aphorisms in this book. From my experience of more than 40 years in the workforce, the 40 most valueable are as follows: #1. Always tell the truth to employees and your boss. It's easier to remember what you said. #3. "Just because you're a supervisor doesn't mean you have a license to be a jerk." #7. "Beware those who ask for feedback. They are really asking for validation. #20. "Be more results-driven than methodology driven." #23. "Trust your instincts. There is a reason why people value your experience. You should as well." #29. "In your written work, say something meaningful in the first sentence." #31. "Too much resistance to a new system or change probably means there's something wrong with it. Employees will usually act in the organization's best interest. Listen to them." #43. "Doing a great job often means you'll get more work. Understand this and use it to your advantage." #57. "Work gravitates to the most competent." #71. "Never confuse making people happy with what needs to be done." #86. "Hope is a required ingredient for success." #95. "Progress is made when the choices that are presented are limited and clearly defined...." #120. "When the outcome of a meeting is to have another meeting, it has been a lousy meeting." #124. "Start with a rough draft as soon as possible and fill in the details as you go. You'll find the end product will be similar to the original intention." #125. "To what end? is always a good question to asky at the beginning of a big project." #130. "Never give up on projects until they are implemented." #140. "The goal is not to be busy. The goal is to contribute something of worth that will make you glow." #154. "Worry about the big things, and the little things will fall into place." #181. "There are no such things as communicationns, turnover, or morale problems. They are symptoms of other problems--usually autocratic managemetn. Don't try to fix the symptoms. Fix the problems." #183. "Never be embarrassed about where you grew up, where you went to school, how you look, your name, or anything else that it's too late to fix. Be proud of who you are." #192. "Next steps from meetings must always be clear." #201. "Casey Stengel said some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and some people say what happened. Be in the first category." #213. "Learn what the labor movement is all about, how it's changing, and what it means to your industry. Be unbiased as you learn." #214. "Spend time understanding what "real work" is. like working on an assembly line or driving trucks. It will ground you in reality." #233. The most effective suggestion system is the one where the CEO puts a sign over his or her door that says "Suggestion Box." #243. "Organization change will not occur unless employees believe it is in their best interest." #250. "When giving a talk, think of what people will remember. And that's only one or two things." #261. "Pessimistic futurists are to be ignored." #277. "Understand the concept before spending lots of time on the mechanics and the details." #281. An abundance of worker's compensation issues either means people are getting hurt or people don';t want to go back--or both. #283. "'Career path' implies a well-worn route. The truth is that you make your own way running around the organizational bushes and brambles." #296. "Listen to field people." #297. "Technology eventually evens out. Compete on service and talented people." #318. "'Find a passion and follow it' is all the career advice you'll ever need." #322. "Ask yourself, 'What can I be an expert in?' and become one." #327. "Bite off more than you can chew and chew it well." #331. "Facilitate or lead meetings with a point of veiw about what needs to be done and how we get there. Be open to changing your mind." #367. "Convert training into experience as soon as possible." This is an excellent book for someone new to working in or with a business organization of any size. It is also an excellent book for mid-career people looking for a checklist on how they are doing, and a general guide both to doing things better and doing better things. Finally, it is an excellent books for those suffering from burnout, lack of focus, or overwork.

*

What Would Maciavelli Do? by Stanley Bing

With this book, businessman and Fortune Magazine columnist Stanley Bing began a long and continuing career of attacking outrageous bosses and managerial practices. There is no shortage of material in these categories, and this book is a good introduction to how rich the field of managerial abuse is. This is not a book for true Machiavelli fans. Those who want to savor the finely nuanced distinctions and advices of Machiavelli's THE PRINCE will not be able to do so here. Indeed Bing delivers a classic put-down to the man he calls "the master": "the fact that it's very difficult to understand anything the master says gets in the way of our ability to walk, straight and secure, down his path." What we have dissected here is not Machiavelli the sagacious adviser and pioneer of the field of Political Science, but Machiavelli as a cultural icon standing for the extension of personal wealth and power to the exclusion of all other considerations. "To live true to the vision of the master, we must be as selfish, narcisstic, manipulative, driven and creative in getting what we want as we can be, not just in our important business actions, but where it really counts: in our hearts. You can do it. This book will help." A true Machiavellian, in the author's sense of the term, would always be unpredictable, and thus would gain the advantage of keeping everyone else off balance. In love with his destiny, always at war, for the most part a paranoid freak, he would think BIG, acquire his neighbor, move like a shark, eating as he goes, killing people's careers, but only if he could feel good about himself afterwards. A true Machiavellian would fire his own mother if necessary, make a virtue out of his obnoxiousness, be way upbeat, be satisfied with nobody but himself, embrace his own madness, do what he feels like doing, say what he feels like saying, delegate all the crummy tasks except the ones that he enjoys, respond poorly to criticism, perennially carry grudges, lie when necessary, be proud of his cruelty and see it as strength, permanently cripple those who disappoint him, torture people until they were only too happy to destroy themselves, feast on other people's discord, make you fear for your life, be loyal to people who could put up with him, have no patience for anybody, never say he's sorry, have no conscience to speak of, scream at people a lot, establish and maintain a psychotic level of control, would eat to kill, and would have fun with his career and his life. The author drifts in and out of satire and sober evaluation. His concluding paragraph summarizes much of the book: "Good may often be its own--and only--reward in this competitive, malevolent, and unfair world. This may be most true in business, where the unsympathetic aspects of human character are compensated most lavishly. But evil does have its limitations, ones that even the biggest, baddest Machiavellis around should keep in mind." This book would be a great supplement to courses on business ethics and courses on management. Its tongue in cheek evocations of Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Caligua grab attention and serve as a warning to the those humor-deprived people who might view sections of this book as a serious guide. Its graphs--based on no hard information whatsoever--demonstrate serious points. The "normal world view" is that the vast majority of people are friends or potential friends while the "Machiavelli world view" is that the vast majority of people are enemies or potential enemies. "The bigger you are" the "less you like" criticism. "Performance" is greater "with ruthless competition" than without it. The Machiavelli personality is high on fear, aggression, self, and golf to the exclusion of conscience and hobbies and to the marginalization of family and friends. The greater the control a Machiavelli has, the more fun he has. The joys of retirement--golf and not being bothered by idiots--wear off after a couple of years. This book, in short, could be retitled "How to Succeed in Business by Failing as a Human Being." In the author's words, "only individuals who are monmaniacal and driven to the exclusion of all else stand a chance of rising to the top." The price of success, the author says, "is to adjust your personality to remove as much conscience as is possible." The price of getting to the top, the author makes clear, is not worth it by the rules of the modern day Machiavellis.

*

Confessions of a Civil Servant by Bob Stone

Very few longtime civil servants write their memoirs. This book shows that this is a mistake. The author makes the every day conflicts of civil service life live and breathe and shows how they can be overcome to serve great purposes in the public interest. Introduction writer Tom Peters quotes Peter Drucker's aphorism that "Ninety percent of what we call 'management' consists of making it difficult to get things done." He produces "12 Lessons in Stone" which summarize his approaches. Stone used (1) Demos and Models; (2) Heroes; (3) Stories and Storytellers; (4) Chroniclers; (5) Cheerleaders and Recognition; (6) New Language; (7) Seekers (of change); (8) Protectors (of innovators); (9) Support Groups; (10) End Runs (around hierarchies)/Pull (from outsiders) Strategy; (11) Field/"Real People" Focus, and (12) Speed to push his goals forward. The author himself describes his goals as "decentralization, deregulation, and devolution of authority in a value-centered organization." These were goals gradually developed after years of frustration mixed with achievement in the Defense Department, to which he had been recruited by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis in 1969. He quickly clashed with the centralization of all authority for planning imposed during the seven plus years of Secretary Robert McNamara. His first work was to research the question of how big the army should be. He led successful efforts to change the evaluation formula from on tons of artillery ammunition fired times lethal area per ton to one that applied informed military judgements to the weapons on both sides, what the army dubbed the Weighted Effect Indicators/Weighted Unit Value method. The effect of this change in formulas was to demonstrate the feasibility of NATO surpassing the Warsaw Pact in effectiveness, something later accomplished in the Carter and Reagan Administrations. From this effort, the author learned the power of asking naieve questions, such as "Why? What's that mean? Says who?" The author subsequently went on to become assistant secretary of defense for installations, where he rapidly shrunk regulations and improved the quality of life for residents of military bases. This raised hackles which put him under a glass ceiling for awhile, but he recovered with the Clinton/Gore election in 1992, when he got appointed to the National Performance Review staff, and ultimately became its leader in reinventing government. This book demonstrates his struggles and his triumphs and is essential reading for anyone seeking to aid in the cause of responsive government. "Some people look for things that went wrong and try to fix them," he said. "I look for things that went right and try to build upon them." He called himself "Mr. ReGo" (Reinventing Government) and "Energizer in Chief." His critics had undoubtedly had other words for him, but this book is a very clear record of his vision and accomplishments. It is an extremely useful introduction to the whole field of Reinventing Government, with its orientation of customer service and customer satisfaction and the eliminations of excess regulation and bureaucratic red tape. It is one man's anecdotal summary, but it provides a firm basis for more rigorous empiricial investigations by others. It is a call to action as well as a memoir, and as such it will likely be heeded by dedicated professionals for many years to come.

*

50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism
by Mickey Z Edition: Paperback

Where There Is Injustice, Resistance is Possible, November 19, 2006
Mickey Z is a dissenting American radical who deeply admires diverse forms of passionate dissent. He is mainstream enough to cite legislation passed as a result of radical protest as a vindication of that protest, but his general vision of government is that of a passive agent, awaiting the next protest demonstration to get a sense of direction. The theme of this book is best stated in a quotation from Barbra Ehreneich. "Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots," she says. This a book for the age of soundbites and hyperlinks. It provides an introduction to many diverse individuals and social movements, so that virtually everyone will learn something from it. And it deals with Bob Dylan's complaint about history: "I've never seen a history book that tells me how anybody feels," he said. One of the few Presidents in this book to earn a mention--and perhaps the only President to be praised for an action taken--is Chester A. Arthur who--it turns out--at age 24 was a pioneering civil rights attorney representing Lizzie Jennings, the Rosa Parks of 1854, who sued and won after being denied admission to a New York City horse drawn carriage. Arthur's representation of Jennings is called a "classic 'who knew' situation. " It certainly justifies taking another look at Arthur. Another surprising fact--for me, at least--was the deep passion and antagonisms resulting from Jack Johnson, an African-American, being named heavyweight champion of the world in 1908: an uproar that perhaps slowed down black admission to other professional sports. And then, in a section on Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, there is this cogent political analysis from key Richard Nixon Presidential aide H.R. Haldeman on June 14, 1969: To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of all the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of Presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it is wrong, and the President can be wrong. I also like Martin Luther King's telegram to farmworker's leader Cesar Chavez,after a United Farmworker organizing victory, which puts King's eloquence, profundity, and coalition building on display all at once: The fight for equality must be fought on many fronts--in urban slums, in the sweatshops of the factories and fields. Our separate struggles are really one--a struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity. You and your valiant fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs forced upon exploited people. We are together with you in spirit and it determination that our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized. In summary, this is a provocative and stimulating little book which should encourage interest in American history, provide new insights to many readers, and provide no shortage of inspirational material. Because of ideological biases, which give violent protests a stature they do not deserve, it is less than the sum of its parts. But many of the parts are very, very good. Politicians seeking to keep the attention of audiences, columnists seeking to say memorable things, and teachers seeking to counter student apathy all can find useful material here.

Vito Marcantonio (Suny Series in American Labor History)
by Gerald MeyerEdition: Paperback

Vito Marcantonio and the Inherent Compromises of American Radicalism, November 18, 2006
Congressman Vito Marcantonio was once one of the most famous and most infamous political figures in America. Richard Nixon won a Senate seat in 1950 by linking his Democratic opponent's record to that of Marcantonio, and Marcantonio was harassed by fellow members of Congress and the media alike. He is likely the only member of Congress who ever served as a lawyer for the Communist Party, and the only member of Congress who relied on the Communist Party as a key component of his political machine. Yet the Communist Party was only one element of his electoral coalition. The Republican Party was the party that got him started (he was a protege of Republican Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who set an example for Marcantonio by once winning election to Congress on the Socialist Party ticket when the Republicans would not back him), and the Republican Party nominated Marcantonio in 1934, 1936, 1938, 1940, 1942, and 1944. Marcantonio only lost the Republican Party nomination narrowly in 1946 at the beginning of the Cold War when he was elected to Congress on the Democratic and American Labor Party tickets. By 1948, the law had been changed to make it impossible for him to seek the Republican and Democratic nominations while serving as the leader of the American Labor Party, but he won a plurality on the American Labor Party ticket standing alone. In 1950, the Democratic, Republican, and Liberal parties all nominated the same candidate, James Donovan, who defeated Marcantonio by a 4 to 3 margin, 49,448 to 36,095. As the statewide leader of the American Labor Party from 1941 on, and as an active leader of the American Labor Party from 1937 on, Marcantonio gained the power to cross-endorse Democratic and Republican candidates. He used this power to get Republicans elected in otherwise unfriendly districts, giving the Republican Party extra state legislative power in return for giving his own American Labor Party--and the Communists who somewhat influenced it--a national spokesman. The author presents exhaustive evidence of Marcantonio's deep passion for the welfare of his poverty stricken Italian-American, Puerto Rican, and African American constituents, a concern which made his office a model of constituent service and advocacy for the poor and discriminated against. Income from Marcantonio's law practice went to both supplementing his constituent service and his political campaigns. He died at age 52 in 1954 with less than $10,000 in assets. The author discusses at length the symbiotic relationship between Marcantonio and the Republican Party--and to a lesser degree, Marcantonio and the Democratic Party--but does not fully investigate the full implications of that alliance. We do not learn for instance how American Labor Party Republicans elected to the New York legislature used their power to advance or to thwart the public policy goals that Marcantonio pushed in Washington. This is a book that should be read for historical perspective by anyone pondering the past and potential future role of the Green Party in American politics, or third party politics in general. This book also sheds valuable light on the generally underreported story of the rise of Americans of Italian descent from poverty to solid middle class status, the early and since abandoned efforts to classify them as a racial minority analagous to African Americans, the development of bilingual education and other educational innovations of Marcantonio's friend, neighbor, and mentor Leonard Covello, the struggles for civil rights before Martin Luther King, Jr. led the Montgomery Bus Boycott a year and a few months after Marcantonio's death, and the role and limitations of political machines as social and political forces in New York City history. At a time in which Joe Lieberman has won election to the Senate as a third-party Republican-backed candidate, when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giulani--Marcantonio's polar opposite in many ways-- appears poised to be the first major American Presidential candidate of Italian descent, when the Green Party struggles against constant allegations that it's operational goals are to elect Republicans, the story of Vito Marcantonio and his long-dead allies and opponents has a surprising and growing continuing relevance.

Who Runs For The Legislature?
by Gary F. MoncriefEdition: Paperback

Why Legislative Candidates Are Scarce, Inexperienced, and Often Unsuccessful, August 20, 2006
All over America, people complain about politicians. And all over America, politicians run for re-election unopposed. The three authors of this book--political scientists long interested in state legislatures--attempt to resolve this paradox by focusing on both the long-term factors leading to unopposed candidates and interviews with candidates running for the legislature as non-incumbents. 90% of incumbent legislators running for re-election win, the authors say. 1/3 of legislative seats in the U.S. are filled without opposition. Therefore, in a the formal sense of accountability being due impending contested elections, many incumbent legislators are not accountable to the public. The authors do not discuss informal but powerful means of accountability such as legislator/constituent and legislator/party contacts or media coverage or interest group pressures in any significant detail. As a long-term legislator running for re-election unopposed in a general election for the third time out of 18 successful candidacies, I am fascinated by the issues involved in this paradox. But I know what the answer is in many cases, including my own. Incumbents who run unopposed tend be hard workers. Yesterday--on a Saturday in August, for instance--I kept up with the news in newspapers and online, met with a constituent complaining about her low level of Social Security Disability income and committed my office to help her and her sister who has a similar problem, gave a newspaper interview after initially answering the reporter's questions by email, had discussions with two local business owners and a community leader, wrote a blog entry on my efforts at the National Conference of State Legislatures on behalf of internet network neutrality, and responded to one of the blog commenters. The work I do does not have the physical danger of being a policeman or a construction worker or a soldier in wartime, the level of economic sacrifice of being a social worker, the stress of being a small business person competing with Walmart, or the economic risks of being a daytrader. Nevertheless, it is real work leading to real achievements in the public interest. Directly on the point the authors raise, it is work that defends me from the accusations of a prospective challenger that I am not doing anything. My last general election challenger got 20% of the vote; my last on ballot primary challenger got 13% of the vote; my only write-in primary challenger got 5% of the vote. I discuss my record in some detail because my victory percentages are typical of the point the authors make: opposition candidates often do not want to run races that they cannot win. The political term for such candidates who carefully weigh the odds before proceeding is strategic candidates. The authors conclude that, at least in their sample, women were more likely to be cautious strategic candidates than men, but many, many men are in the cautious strategic candidate category too. The authors discuss the now universal and increasingly controversial pattern of trageting races that appear to be "winnable" for extra resources and drying up resources for races that appear to be unwinnable. Targeting both focuses resources and encourages bipartisanship simultaneously. It is a prime cause of unopposed candidacies because it is widely perceived that a candidate not targeted by his or her party has no realistic chance of winning. The Democratic Party's leading critic of longterm targeting practices is Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean. Dean's views may be influenced to a degree by his experience--referred to in this book--as the assistant minority leader in the Vermont House of Representatives, charged with aiding in the recruitment of legislative candidates as part of a long-term successful drive to create a Democratic majority in the Vermont House of Representatives. If this book is re-written for a second edition, the authors may want to give added focus to Dean's role as a Vermont candidate recruiter. (I confess to having been a Dean delegate at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and a backer of Dean's candidacy for Democratic National Chairman.) The authors find that candidates who do run for office fall into various categories. They often have less political experience than one would expect. Of their sample, 76.3% had never run for the legislature before, 75.2% do not currently hold any elective office, 90.3% do not currently hold any appointive office, 91.2% had never served on legislative staff, and 39.9% had never even held a political party position. Most of the candidates did have in common work on political campaigns. But 37.1% had not been active in federal campaigns, 34.1% had not been active in statewide campaigns, 26.6% had not been active in local campaigns, and 28.5% had not been active in state legislative campaigns. 27.8% decided to run with 2 months of the primary, 28.9% decided to run within 3 to 5 months before the primary, 23.5% decided to run 6 to 12 months before the primary, and 19.8% decided to run more than a year before the primary. 32.1% said running was entirely their idea; 46.6% had already thought about it when someone else encouraged them to run; and 21.3% had not seriously thought about it until someone else suggested it. 92.9% discussed their candidacy with family members before announcing. 69.3% discussed their candidacy with officials in the local party. Others consulted as part of the decision-making process include local elected officials and leaders in the state legislature (51.9% each), officials in the state party (50.5%) co-workers or business partners (49.4%), friends or neighborhood acquaintances (36.1%), friends or acquaintances in a service organization (33.2%), friends or acquaintances from church (28.7%), members of an interest group or association (19.4%), and others (9.3%). Those challenging incumbents in primaries discuss their decision with members of a greater variety of groups than do general election challengers, although members of both groups speak to only an average of five groups or individuals before making their decision to run. The top five sources of encouragement to run were officials in the local party (46.1%), local elected officials (33.5%),leaders in the state legislature (33.3%), officials in the state party (32.9%), and family members (32.7%). But some received encouragement to run from friends or acquaintances in the neighborhood (22.7%), co-workers or business partners (19.0%), friends or acquaintances in a service organization (17.7%), members of an interest group or association (13.6%), friends or acquaintances from church (13.1%), or other sources (7.8%). Despite a serious erosion of power over the years, party organizations still reign supreme in the area of recruiting and encouraging candidates. The candidates, the authors say, are pretty much normal folks--with the differences that they are likely to have above average civic involvement and political campaign involvement, to have above average incomes, and to be empty nesters at the time of their candidacy. They enjoy many aspects of campaigning--especially door to door campaigning--but intensely dislike fundraising. They are horrified by the viciousness of name-calling and character assassination that they are sometimes the victims of. They often--but not always--decide the experience of running for office was too frustrating and emotionally draining to be considered in the future. Political scientists will likely find the original survey data and review of the literature to be the most important parts of this book. But future candidates themselves will likely be most interested in the profiles of some of the candidates who were interviewed, their election outcomes, and samples of their campaign literature. Promises to listen to voters were the most frequently made. From a politician's point of view the most useful document in the book is unsuccessful legislative candidate Dave Custer's Things to Do Differently. They are, in streamlined form: (1)Qualify your answers on questionnaires and refer them to your position paper on the subject where possible; (2) Examine your issues and prioritize them; (3) Don't wrote off any newspaper endorsements; (4) Make a detailed plan to walk the district, and stick to it; (5) Try to find a catch phrase that describes what you want to do on an issue; (6) Write a position paper for each of your major issues; (7) Tell all your friends and coworkers that you are running for office; (8) If you can afford positive things to aid your campaign, do them whether they offend your sensitivities or not; (9) Use full color and a picture of yourself on every piece of literature you can; (10) Move to the political center on all issues where you can do so in good conscience; (11) Find a real blunt SOB to serve on your committee and criticize you when necessary; (12) Always have the outline of a speech in your pocket; (13) Videotape and re-videotape your canned speech and keep practicing improvement of the versions you watch; (14) Leave to your supporters the watching of the audience when you speak, and listen to their views of what works and doesn't work; (15) Be prepared to work harder than you have ever had to before. The idealism and civic dedication of many of the interviewed candidates comes through in this book, as does the idealism of the authors. Ironically, many of the candidates focused on are such hard workers, and such all-around good people, that their victories will likely lead ultimately to their running unopposed sometime in the future. Candidates willing to run, the authors note, are not professional politicians, and are in short supply. "The kinds of persons who run for the legislature are not the ones who spend every evening sitting in front of the television set," the authors conclude. "....It is our hope that readers will begin to see candidates as real people who undertake a difficult but vitally important role and will come to appreciate the effort that candidates put forth in running for election." The authors achieve this objective. If the political system does not always get "the best possible participants" for state legislatures playing "an increasingly important role in public policymaking," no one can that the authors did not do what they could to both straighten out the political maze that candidates must run through and humanize the candidates simultaneously.

The Airway to Everywhere: A History of All American Aviation, 1937-1953
by Walter David LewisEdition: Hardcover

How An Idea To Benefit Small Communities Become An Airline, July 18, 2006
Lytle S. Adams, a descendant of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, clearly saw that smaller communitiies were at a substantial disadvantage in the emerging field of airmail. The process of landing and take-off of airplanes was so time-consuming that it limited the number of stops an airplane could make to the larger communities with larger airports. So he developed a plan to solve the problem, a problem which was similar to the difficulty of bringing electricity to rural areas (solved by the Rural Electric Administration and the cooperatives it spawned), bringing transportation to rural areas (solved by the U.S. Interstate Highway network), bringing television to rural areas (solved by the laying of cable to them). His plan involved technical ingenuity: the development of a device to hook on to an overhead cable where containers of mail would be be placed, so that mail could be picked up on regularly defined roots without a plane taking the trouble to land to take-off. His idea gained political backing in the Roosevelt Administration and from the New Deal Democrats in Congress, because it fit in with their strategies to integrate isolated communities into the mainstream of American life. Through Roosevelt's daughter who had married into the DuPont family, he met Richard C. DuPont, an aviation enthusiast, who had the money and the skill to develop Adams' idea into a functioning company called All American Aviation. The Adams-DuPont relationship had tragic personal overtones, although it was extremely productive in the long run. DuPont did not give Adams the financial rewards he hoped for, added insult to injury by reworking Adams' technology to make it more effective, and ultimately bought him out as the relationship became increasingly bitter and mutually distrustful. And DuPont's dynamic corporate leadership--he had become head of the corporation at the age of 28-- led him to be offered to take over the U.S. Army's glider program as a special assistant to Army Air Forces Chief Henry H. "Hap" Arnold. In this position, DuPont was testing one of the new motorless airships, when the craft fell into a spin, his parachute malfunctioned, and he fell to his death at the age of 33. During World War II, the company's no-landing pickup system hit its peak in utilization, but it failed to make money and relied on governmental subsidies. After World War II, it faced the additional problem of steadily improving highways, which allowed mail to be picked up faster and cheaper without the no-landing pickup system. With its back to the wall, All-American Aviation was offered a chance to become a passenger airline serving new or under-utilized routes. It leaped at this chance for financial salvation, and evolved over time into Alleheny Airlines and then U.S. Air. The strengths of this book are many: detailed explanations of technology and technological changes, clear explanations of business strategy and the regulatory system, and concise explanations of both the internal politics of the company and the politics of Congress and the executive branch. This book is a great introduction to the field of airline regulation, a valuable addition to anyone's understanding of Pennsylvania business history, and a compelling case study of the importance and the limits of technological innovation. The concise nature of the book--and its technological orientation--means that some intriguing political angles go uncovered. The irony of a descendant of rivals of two of 19th Century America's leading Democrats--party founder Thomas Jefferson and and party definer Andrew Jackson--relying on New Deal regulation and Democratic Party allies to start his business goes unmentioned. And the political analysis of the company's large base of Congressional support is matter of fact and unquestioning of motives and rationales. Virtually no one who reads this book will ever look at the history of American air travel the same way again. This book is an inspiring example for those who seek to solve societal problems through business, and those who seek to grow new businesses from scratch. It offers a clear warning of the dangers--as well as the opportunities--posed by the search for venture capital.

John Kerry's Alternative Vision for America, July 14, 2006
"I don't consider myself a policy wonk," John Kerry writes, "but I was brought up to care about big issues and think for myself, not hire others to do the thinking for me." While preparing a detailed statement of his views in the middle of a Presidential campaign "is obviously a task in which I relied on the generous help of many talented and trustworthy advisors," it is clear that Kerry has attempted with a large degree of success to integrate their recommendations, his record and his life into a coherent whole. A book that relied more heavily on autobiography would have been more compelling. But Kerry, in what might have been his Achilles Heel in the 2004 general election, takes the idealistic position that "For my part, I intend to run a presidential campaign organized around a contest of ideas, values, and policies, rather than a clash of personalities or a war between political tribes." This approach clearly helped him get the Democratic nomination when major rivals Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, and Joseph Lieberman became mired in controversies, other rivals were not able to develop a broad enough appeal to become serious contenders, and serious contender John Edwards failed to match Kerry's breadth of appeal. The fundamental theme of this book, as one could guess from the title, is that John Kerry feels called to public service by a combination of life experiences and family background (he is the son of a diplomat father and a civic activist mother), and that he wishes to call others to public service as well. It was my thought in 2003-2004 that Howard Dean was the best of an excellent field of candidates. I filed for Delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Pennsylvania on behalf of Howard Dean the day he lost his make or break Wisconsin primary and stopped actively campaigning, and I became the only Dean delegate candidate in the Mid-Atlantic States to actually get elected. After Dean's formal withdrawal and release of his delegates, I made Pennsylvania's convention vote for Kerry unanimous and contributed his campaign. Kerry grew on me as a candidate in 2004, and he grows on me again in carefully reading this book. Kerry clearly conveys that he is a serious man with serious ideas for leading our country. He has written a book of continuing relevance for the years ahead, whether or not he seeks a future Presidential nomination. This is a book that can be utilized by anyone with a deep interest in Presidential politics, the future choices our country faces, and the differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. Because it covers a lot of subjects briefly, it is a book that can usefully be read sitting near a computer, so that one can use a search engine to learn more about whatever issues one finds intriguing. Kerry's first chapter--Why I am Running for President--sets out his general philosophy and an outline of his goals. "Democrats and Republicans must also take a long look at our recent tendency to compete in a politics of personal self-interest," he writes. "One of our central goals is to convince people to think beyond their own selfish interests and accept the responsibilities of citizenship and the mission of spreading freedom and democracy." Perhaps offering a counterpoint to Richard Nixon--who famously wrote a book entitled Six Crises--Kerry offers six challenges. These are The Challenge of Protecting America and Promoting Its Values and Interests, The Challenge of Expanding Our Common Wealth, The Challenge of Creating World-Class Schools, The Challenge of Creating a Modern Health-Care System, The Challenge of Defending the Environment and Achieving Energy Independence, and The Challenge of Reviving Democracy and Citizenship. His proposals are less than a detailed blueprint--the sheer number of them and the book's 200 pages would not allow for that--but much, much more than a general expression of concern. His chapter on health care, a perennial concern of mine in 33 years of service in the Pennsylvania legislature, for instance, recommends "a proposal that breaks new ground in the health-insurance debate by simultaneously addressing three challenges that are central to modernizing our health care system: first and foremost, bringing costs under control; offering access to affordable coverage, with plenty of choices, to every American; and guaranteeing that every child in America will have health care insurance." His goals have subgoals. For instance, he favors health insurance cost-reduction strategies such as having the federal government pay for 3/4 of catastrophic health insurance claims (those claims of $50,000 and over), "preventive care and programs to promote better overall health," public disclosure of incentives for benefit managers and doctors to prescribe individual drugs, expansion of generic drug offerings by plugging loopholes in patent law, letting states negotiate better prices for consumers by bargaining for bulk rates for their citizens, screening out frivolous medical malpractice claims, encouraging the use of new information technologies, expanding the use of patient record computerization, and reducing medical errors. This is certainly a useful place to begin for anyone who, like myself, is interested in having my state seek to comprehensively reform health care. In this book, he is not content to issue laundry lists. We see some of his persuasive power. He is an advocate--generally understated--for the positions he seeks. I cannot say I am unmoved by his advocacy. His strong passion for national service, for instance, has convinced me that the service learning requirements for students in Maryland--and the service learning options in many other states--is probably worth emulating in Pennsylvania. Kerry looks to help build America as a place "where everybody does serve, because there is work for all to do, a place for all to serve, and no reason at all to stay on the sidelines." "I see an America where, in a seamless web of service and concern," Kerry says, "we offer Americans the challenge and the chance to do their duty--and an America were Americans, in turn, step forward and give something back." In a Presidential campaign, voters are encouraged to engage in comparison shopping. Whether one favored Kerry or not in 2004, his book is an articulate and detailed exposition of his views, and is well worth reading by concerned people throughout the political spectrum who want a better country and are looking for specific directions in which to travel.

The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy
by Lisa DugganEdition: Paperback

A Critique of Neoliberalism and the Divided Resistance to It, July 4, 2006
Lisa Duggan is intensely interested in American politics, and has found political life in the United States to have been "such a wild ride, offering moments of of dizzying hope along with long stretches of political depression." She is grateful for "many ideas about political depression, and how to survive it," and she has written a excellent short book that helps make sense of many widely divergent political trends. Her book is well-summarized by its concluding paragraph, which I am breaking up into additional paragraphs for greater clarity: "Now at this moment of danger and opportunity, the progressive left is mobilizing against neoliberalism and possible new or continuing wars. "These mobilizations might become sites for factional struggles over the disciplining of troops, in the name of unity at a time of crisis and necessity. But such efforts will fail; the troops will not be disciplined, and the disciplinarians will be left to their bitterness. "Or, we might find ways of think, speaking, writing and acting that are engaged and curious about "other people's" struggles for social justice, that are respectfully affiliative and dialogic rather than pedagogical, that that look for the hopeful spots to expand upon, and that revel in the pleasure of political life. "For it is pleasure AND collective caretaking, love AND the egalitarian circulation of money--allied to clear and hard-headed political analysis offered generously--that will create the space for a progressive politics that might both imagine and create...something worth living for." The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND Money--summarize her argument. She expected upon her high school graduation in 1972, she writes, that "active and expanding social movements seemed capable of ameliorating conditions of injustice and inequality, poverty, war and imperialism....I had no idea I was not perched at a great beginning, but rather at a denouement, as the possibilities for progressive social change encountered daunting historical setbacks beginning in 1972...." Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination, privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade. Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes. Her belief is that all groups threatened by the neoliberal paradigm should unite against it, but such unity is threatened by endless differences of perspectives. By minutely analyzing many of the differences, and expanding understanding of diverse perspectives, she tries to remove them as obstacles towards people and organizations working together to achieve both unique and common aims. This is good book for those interested in the history and current significance of numerous progressive ideological arguments. It is a good book for organizers of umbrella organizations and elected officials who work with diverse social movements. By articulating points of difference, the author depersonalizes them and aids in overcoming them. Those who are interested in electoral strategies, however, will be disappointed. The interrelationship between neoliberalism as a governing ideology and neoliberalism as a political strategy is not discussed here. It is my view that greater and more focused and inclusive political organizing has the potential to win over a good number of the those who see support of neoliberalism's policy initiatives as a base-broadening tactic more than as a sacred cause. "There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture wars are provisional--and fading...." Reading this book adds to one's understanding of labels, and political and intellectual distinctions. It has too much jargon for my taste, but not so much as to be impenetrable. It is an excellent summarization and synthesis of the goals, ideologies, and histories of numerous social movements, both famous and obscure.

My Declaration of Independence
by James M. JeffordsEdition: Hardcover

How the Republican Party Lost A Leading Moderate Voice, June 24, 2006
As a Pennsylvania state legislative leader, I have suffered a demotion from Majority Whip to Minority Caucus Chairman for the past twelve years because several Democrats switched to the Republican Party in 1993 and 1994 and turned the Pennsylvania House over to the Republicans. Two of those converts were then defeated by Democratic nominees, but two others were not, and having the majority helped the Pennsylvania Republicans gain other seats. So I read the story of Jeffords' abandonment of the party that elected him, and his turning control of the U.S. Senate over to the Democrats, with a sense of having seen this before. Policy differences lead to personal confrontations and personal slights which, in turn, raise new questions about partisan commitments. The chance to play a starring role in the new party seems preferable to being an outcast in the old party. The change is made, and old alliances and friendships are sundered, while new ones are made. Running for re-election after a party switch can be tricky, but Jeffords, with four years left on his Senate term, "doubted" that he would be running again in 2006. In fact, he did not run again this year. With re-election clearly not a top priority for him--"it was the furthest thing from my thoughts at that point," he says--a major obstacle to switching parties was removed. The Jeffords switch came in May, 200l. George Bush had been elected President in key respects by a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision stopping the counting of votes in Florida where Bush held a lead of only a little more than 500 votes. The Democrats had gained four seats in the U.S. Senate in the 2000 elections, and the parties were now evenly divided in the Senate. It seemed quite possible that the Democrats had a future of surging ahead. Further, although he does not mention it, his home state clearly was trending Democratic, with Howard Dean as Governor, Patrick Leahy as the other U.S. Senator, and Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist who often sided with the Democrats, repeatedly elected with Democratic support as an Independent. For some reason, Sanders' name is never mentioned in this book; in 2006, he was the winning Democratic-backed candidate to succeed Jeffords. Jeffords had leverage in the budget negotiations, and was determined to use it. He decided his top priority, as chair of the Senate committee dealing with education, was giving new life to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by increasing special education funding by removing $200 billion a year from President Bush's tax cut and paying "40 percent of the national average per public expenditure for each disabled child's education." This formulation comes out to about 20% of total national special education expenses. Jeffords was motivated by personal values and constituent accountability in pushing his educational program. He did not share the belief that tax cuts for the wealthy were the highest Republican priority. "But how our children lag behind their international peers strikes me as a bigger long-term threat to our national security and stability than the rate of taxation paid on multimillion dollar estates," he writes. "In my mind, the education we give to all our children is far more important than the size of the fortunes left to a fortunate few...." "But tax cuts had not been what animated the people of Vermont I talked to on the campaign trail in the fall," he says. "They seemed to be far more concerned with meeting human needs." Ultimately, the Senate Republicans were able to regain the Senate control in the 2002 and 2004 elections, returning Jeffords to minority status and reducing the significance of his action. This book makes clear Jefford's enjoyment of being in the limelight, even though he was somewhat uncomfortable at times there. I cannot help but believe that the "Who Lost Jeffords?" question was likely a contributing factor in Trent Lott's being removed as Senate majority leader after the 2004 elections. This is a good short book for anyone interested in the differences between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate, the history of Vermont Senators, or the personal dynamics of the U.S. Senate, to read carefully. Jeffords clearly identifies with the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Vermont Senators George Aiken and Ralph Flanders, critics of the War in Vietnam and Sen. Joseph McCarthy respectively. It is the modern Republicans he has difficulty with. "There was an admixture of religion, a sense of stewardship, and plain common sense," he writes. "....(T)he issues that gave birth to the Republican Party are still among our most important challenges. Will we strengthen public education and the ladder of opportunity it provides? Or will be decide through our funding decisions that this is not a very high federal priority? Will we leave the land better than we found it for our descendants a hundred and fifty years hence? Or will we be blinded by the ensuing crises and leave it despoiled? Will we accord full rights to all Americans? Or will we continue to condone the denial of the protections of our laws to those who are gay? "It is clear what I hope for. This is the kind of Washington I hope to forge with what little influence is available to me. We have crying needs in our society that we must tackle rather than ignore. And we can never even begin if we are consumed by trying to take petty partisan advantage at every opportunity. The American people will not stand for it." When the Republican Party lost Jeffords, they lost a lot. He is typical of some voters. And I believe listening intently to his views would add a great deal to the Bush Administration and any successor administration. The negative, petty, and personal attacks on Jeffords that helped motivate him to leave the Republican Party are a case of a the quest for power overwhelming more lasting and important factors.

Achieving Our Country : Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
by Richard RortyEdition: Paperback

A Plea to Work for Governmental Action to the Academic Left, June 24, 2006
Richard Rorty is a prominent philosopher and academic with deep family roots in the anti-communist efforts of Norman Thomas' Socialist Party, the societal amelioration of the New Deal, and the Social Gospel movement. He is appalled by the failure of advocates of continued governmental involvement in societal problem-solving to win enough elections to keep political progress moving ahead during a time of ever-increasing globalization and general income stagnation. He sees a vibrant Academic Left--which he admits has valid critiques of the reformist Left with which he most identifies--but he is appalled that its members have little interest in developing workable programs for societal betterment or engaging in active campaigns for change or the inner workings of government. He is not David Horowitz. His attacks on the Academic Left are meant to persuade its members, not to rally support of others against them. He praises academic teachings against sadism, bullying, racism, sexism, and homophobia--but feels that merely dealing with how people relate to each other is an inadequate response to the many institutional failings of American society. He describes the Academic Left's abstention from wider political conflict as to the economic direction of our country as "an inability to do two things at once." "Sometime in the Seventies, " he writes, "American middle-class idealism went into a stall. Under Presidents Carter and Clinton, the Democratic Party has survived by distancing itself from unions and any mention of redistribution, and moving into a sterile vacuum called the "center."....So the choice between the two major parties has come down to a choice between cynical lies and terrified silence." In the Pennsylvania legislature, I have long been a leader of efforts to improve the economic welfare of struggling citizens: from repealing laws raising consumer prices and the law establishing welfare liens, to raising the minimum wage and establishing and increasing subsidized senior citizen prescriptions and property tax rebates. So I am in complete agreement with Rorty's argument for greater involvement to reduce economic injustices. He writes with a scathing eloquence and a deep political understanding that the only way to arouse public support on a national level for new policies is to be able to place them in a context of both patriotism and attention to the genuine needs of the American people. Because he is largely addressing the Academic Left, he spends too much time for my taste enmeshing himself in leftist sectarian discussions. I hope he persuades some of his intended audience, but his book is also useful for the more general audience of people who, in Robert Kennedy's words, "see suffering and want to stop it." "I have been arguing that...we Americans should not take the view of a detached cosmopolitan spectator," he writes. "We should face unpleasant truths about ourselves, but we should not take these truths to be the last word about our chances for happiness, or about our national character. Our national character is still in the making. Few in 1897 would have predicted the Progressive Movement, the forty-hour week, Women's Suffrage, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the successes of second-wave feminism, or the Gay Rights Movement. Nobody in 1997 can know that America will not, in the course of the next century, witness even greater moral progress. "(Walt)Whitman and (John) Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams--dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society--in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science. Their party, the party of hope, made twentieth-century America more than just an economic and military giant...." I don't think any one group is responsible for the failure of the public to adaquately organize to protect its common interests. I feel we need active organizing everywhere across ideological, geographical, generational, racial, religious, sexual, and other lines. So I do not attribute nearly the significance to the Academic Left that he does. But I think he has written a book well worth reading by those who very much want a more empowered public, as well as those who want university studies and faculty research to include a greater focus on how the vast knowledge of the universities and their faculties can be better employed for social good.

We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People
by Dan GillmorEdition: Paperback

A Journalist Passionately Embraces the Internet, June 21, 2006
Many people blame the Internet for accelerating the long-term decline of newspaper circulation, and think that the Internet is crippling the future of American journalism. Don Gillmor believes that the Internet has the potential to dramatically improve American journalism and widen its appeal. Gillmor is no naive innocent. He demonstrates that he has an extraordinarily detailed command of the interrelationships and applications of the many internet and software technologies and journalism. I met Gillmor in April, 2004, at the BloggerconII conference organized by Dave Winer and held at Harvard Law School. He held the attention of his audience of bloggers through his mixture of detailed knowledge and passionate advocacy for the worth of blogging and the value of it becoming an income-generating activity. No journalist should fail to read this book. Nor should any citizen consumer of journalism who participates online. Only a small part manifesto, this book is a detailed roadmap of the future of journalism for those informed enough and bold enough to take it. Those in business and government who are the subjects of journalism would also do well to read it. The future of journalism, Gillmor says, will be much more participatory in the future than it has been in the past. The many to many communications style of the Internet will become the style of successful journalism. Journalism will less about lecturing and more about leading a discussion. The "eat your spinach" school of civic advocacy will be replaced by a greater connection between readers and journalists in which readers will influence both the definition of news and the content of individual news stories. The proliferation of tens of millions of blogs means that the separation of news producers and news consumers is far less than it used to be. Everyone can produce news in the blogosphere. One duty of journalists is to sift the through the blogosphere and find out what is relevant. Another duty of journalists is to actively engage the public in the news gathering process. The definition of what professionalism in journalism is will be rapidly changing. What is now at the edges, Gillmour says, will and should be moved to the center. Public concerns that once were marginal now will become mainstream. As a Pennsylvania state legislator, I believe that this will have significant public policy effects--especially the areas of taxation and public welfare expenditures. For the first time, those with average and below average incomes are able to communicate their concerns to a mass audience. The more the digital divide in Internet access erodes, as the divide in telephone and television access has eroded, the greater the erosion will be of the upper middle class dominance of the political process. The stakes for putting the brakes on the trends Gillmor describes will get increasingly large in the years ahead. This is not just a book for journalists and the subjects of journalism, or even just a book for currently active internet participants. The detailed accounts of the consumer applications of various technologies of what he calls the "the read-write web" or "technology that makes we the media possible" are alone worth the effort to get through this book. Others may understand individual technologies better than Gillmor, but it is unlikely that anyone has a better understanding of how they all--HTML,mail lists and forums, weblogs, wikis, SMS, mobile connected cameras, internet "broadcasting," peer to peer, RSS,Technorati, API, and many others--come to together to create a radically different architecture of information, news, personal reach, and circle of potential friends and allies for many millions of Americans. This is not a book to be read and put aside. Gillmor clearly struggled to get his text into 241 pages, plus 36 pages of acknowledgements, websites, and detailed notes. While there is occasional redundancy, on the whole a longer book would have been clearer in some respects. This is a book to be carefully studied and used as a springboard to continued learning about new applications, new technologies, and new interrelationships as they emerge. The idea of the public as part of the media is not totally new. Going back at least to the 1940's, public opinion research focused on the stages of influence: the mass media first influenced the opinion leaders in a community, who then influenced others by word of mouth. What is new is the dramatically improved publishing capacity for the individual citizen, regardless of whether he or she had the community stature and web of influence to have been a community leader--formal or informal--in the past. The media had been steadily eroding the influence of opinion leaders, by influencing more and more people directly, but now the opinion leaders are back in record-high numbers and with greatly expanded spheres of influence. "I hope I've helped you understand how this media shift--this explosion of conversations--is taking place and where it is headed," Gllmour says on the last page of his book. "Most of all, I hope I've persuaded you to take up the challenge yourself. "Your voice matters. Now, if you have something to say, you can be heard. "You can make your own news. We all can. "Let's get started."

The Medium is the Massage
by Marshall McLuhanEdition: Paperback

Wisdom from the Prophet of the Internet, June 20, 2006
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) never conceived of the Internet. But the great communications theorist understood where communications was going, and the revolutionary effects of its direction. This book takes his sometimes impenetrable prose and places it in a context of compelling photographs, advertisements, and cartoons in order to dramatically illustrate the meaning of his words, and the radical effect that changes in communications technology have on the lives of all the world's citizens. "It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of the media," he writes. The Medium is the Massage begins and ends with quotes from Albert North Whitehead. The first is that "The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." The last is that "It is the business of the future to be dangerous." There always are jeremiads against the new by those who are accustomed to the old. McLuhan quotes Socrates: "The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves...You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing." The effects of the media on individuals are profound. "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty--psychic or physical." Media affect you, the individual citizen. "Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community's need to know. The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions--the patterns of mechanistic technologies--are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank--that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early 'mistakes.' We have already reached a point where remedial control, born of knowledge of media and their total effects on all of us, must be exerted...." Media affect your family. "The family circle has widened. The whirlpool of information fathered by the electric media--movies, Telstar, flight--far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage." Media affect your neighborhood. "Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of 'time' and 'space' and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstituted dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the new technology than 'a place for everything and everything in its place.' You can't GO home again." Media affect your education. "Today's television child is attuned to up-to-the-minute 'adult' news--inflation, rioting, war, taxes, crime, bathing beauties--and is bewildered when he enters the nineteenth century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules. It is naturally an environment much like any factory set-up with its inventories and assembly lines." Media affect your job. "From the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, there is a steady progress of fragmentation of the stages of work that constitute 'mechanization' and 'specialism.' These procedures cannot serve for survival or sanity in this new time. Under conditions of electric circuitry, all the fragmented job patterns tend to blend once more into involving and demanding roles or forms of work that more and more resemble teaching, learning, and 'human' service, in the older sense of dedicated loyalty." Media affect your government. "Nose-counting, a cherished part of the eighteenth century fragmentation process, has rapidly become a cumbersome and ineffectual form of social assessment in an environment of instant electric speeds. The public, in the sense of a great consensus of separate and distinct viewpoints, is finished. Today, the mass audience (the successor to the 'public') can be used as a creative, participating force. It is instead merely given packages of passive entertainment. Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's questions. A new form of 'politics' is emerging, and in ways we haven't yet noticed. The living room has become a voting booth. Participation via television in Freedom Marches, in war, revolution, pollution, and other events is changing EVERYTHING." Media affect our relationships with groups of other citizens. "The shock of recognition. In an electric information environment, minority groups can no longer be contained, ignored. Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening." This book is, in short, a superb introduction to McLuhan's thinking. Ideally, it would be read before any of McLuhan's other books. Understanding McLuhan takes some time and thought, but the effort is well worth it to understand today's media and today's world. "Only the hand that erases can write the true thing," McLuhan quotes Meister Eckhardt as saying. McLuhan erases preconceptions of media being relatively insignificant, and demonstrates how the media affect the way each of us sees the world in which we live. A memorable photo in the book is one of a middle-aged man dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase standing upon a surfboard, riding the waves. "In his amusement born of rational detachment of his own situation, Poe's mariner in 'The Descent Into the Maelstrom' staved off disaster by understanding the action of the whirlpool," says McLuhan's accompanying prose. "His insight offers a possible strategem for understanding our predicament, our electrically-configured whirl." The last cartoon in the book--from the New Yorker in 1966--summarizes McLuhan's essential theme. A young man with a guitar discusses McLuhan with his father in a well-appointed library. "You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says the enviroment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential, thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?" We all should get McLuhan. The development of Internet--likely even more transformative than television--has greatly revived interest in McLuhan's view of technological changes as changing us as people, and of creating a global village for all of us to live in. "We impose the form of the old on the content of the new. The malady lingers on," McLuhan warns. We should heed his warnings and recognize, embrace, and work for constructive improvements in the ever-changing world in which we live.

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Have You Ever Lied to a Pollster or Told Someone Else To Do It?

When my late friend Dick Doran (1935-2007) died earlier this year, I learned for the first time that my former supervisor when I was a Congressional intern in 1967 had published a novel entitled It Takes A Villain in 2003. Reading it, I became fascinated with its theme: political polling leads to the manipulation of public opinion by candidates with a lot of money from special interests. You can read my customer review of his novel--a fable in the tradition of George Orwell--at amazon.com.
The hero of this novel--a Dick Doran kind of guy named Charlie Coons--brilliantly orchestrates a campaign to have the constituency of Sen. Jo Stephenson, a courageous maverick elected over a big money Republican from Vermont in a special election two years before, lie to all polling inquires.
The cooperative Stephenson backers tell pollsters they like her opponent--the well named Ethan Allen Aiken--precisely because he is against political reforms and for big business domination of politics. Armed with this disinformation, the Aiken campaign produces counterproductive spots that drive undecided voters to Stephenson, hand her a landslide victory, and give pollsters and campaign consultants a nationwide black eye.
That Dick Doran emerged as one of our nation's strongest critics of political polling is an interesting tale. As executive director of the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee in 1969, he recommended a reform package requiring the city committee to endorse candidates based on public opinion polling; it was overwhelmingly voted down by the city's wardleaders, and both Doran and Democratic City Chairman Bill Green resigned their positions.
Green went on to be elected Mayor of Philadelphia in 1979, and appointed Doran as City Representative and Director of Commerce, a position that kept a permanent place for Doran as a part of the city's political/corporate/non-profit establishment; previously he had been head of a major corporate funded non-profit, the Greater Philadelphia First Corporation. It is reasonable to infer from this book that Doran was somewhat torn about his insider status.
It Takes A Villain Is full of cardboard characters who openly brag of the villainy in making big bucks for themselves and subverting the public interest in every way possible. My favorite villain is Dr. Ludwig Controller--a pschiatrist who has become the "Mr. Big" of the Washington lobbyist community--who Coons both admires for his success and wants to destroy as an effective lobbying force.
It is hard to imagine a real-life campaign successfully orchestrating an effort to deceive all the pollsters. It is also hard to imagine them doing it and keeping it such a secret that the opposition campaign relies on the disinformation as the gospel truth.
But this political fable raises the interesting question: have you ever lied to a pollster? Have you ever gotten anyone else to lie to a pollster?
The conventional wisdom has been that pollsters are the good guys, enabling the silent public to speak. But Doran says they merely enable the big money people to manipulate public opinion. Do you agree with this? Does it matter much if the poll is released publicly or kept a secret? Are we better off with more and more publicly released polls then we were when the vast majority of them were secret?

February 17, 2007

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/3/23532/1622

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Dr. Dana Fisher's Activism, Inc. Focuses on Ethical Dilemmas of Volunteer Recruitment

In her new book Activism, Inc: How the Outsourcing of Progressive Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America, political sociologist Dr. Dana Fisher focuses on the ethics and practical effects of having organizations specializing in canvassing hire low-wage workers for progressive organizations to do the physically and emotionally draining work of door to door canvassing.
Michael Connery--at http://michael-connery.dailykos.com/-- wrote an excellent diary on this important book earlier today for the Daily Kos. Connery's diary and Fisher's podcast accessible from the dairy is vital must reading and listening for anyone who deals with canvassing operations.
The ethics of campaign recruitment is both an old subject and a subject perennially in need of current re-examination. The paradox is this: to get needed change requires people willing to sacrifice. The sacrifice may be greater than the benefit of the change for those who make the sacrifice. The biggest winners of the change may be those "free riders" who do nothing. But, if everyone does nothing, there will be no change and no winners at all. In the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his closest associates believed that the only way to win the battle for civil rights in the South was to get white people from the North involved. But doing so endangered the lives of white volunteers and blacks who worked with them.
It also hurt the feelings of black leaders, who felt that they were being devalued. These hurt feelings led to bitter rhetoric which undermined the climate of racial brotherhood that King was desiring to create. They also made it much easier for the FBI and other agencies interested in discrediting the civil rights movement to find grievances and rivalries with which to work.
Organizing social movements takes a leadership with extraordinary skill, dedication, competence, purpose, financial resources, media credibility, and luck. Critiquing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., likely the greatest organizer of social movements in the history of our country and a phenomenal moral leader on an international scale, shows how extraordinarily difficult and virtually impossible the task is. The window of opportunity is open just a small fraction of an inch.
A few of the civil rights volunteers were killed--Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner, Liuzzo most famously and others more obscurely. A much larger number were wounded or beaten or burned out.
An organizer of student volunteers--Allard K. Lowenstein, later an anti-war organizer and one-term Long Island Congressman--was killed in 1980 by a mentally disturbed volunteer furious that Lowenstein had exposed him to a destructive life-altering severe beating and had made what he considered manipulative and outrageous homosexual advances towards him.
As one who has organized volunteer work and seen the risks of physical and emotional injury that are associated with it, I have become very cautious in what I am willing to ask of people. I tend to believe in the applicability of the priniciple of the Hippocratic Oath for doctors: at least do no harm.
For instance, I vigorously argued against any attempt to advance the bill I was sponsoring--ultimately successfully--to raise Pennsylvania's minimum wage by 39% by 2007, by employing the tactics of civil disobedience. I feared civil disobedience would alienate the mainstream Republican conservatives whose support we needed to ultimately pass the bill.
I also feared that civil disobedience could provoke violence against some demonstrators that both would hurt the demonstrators and detract focus from the minimum wage efforts. I wanted people visiting legislators, not fellow activists in hospitals. I wanted people talking about raising the minimum wage, not raising bail money or money for legal fees. The debate over tactics ended when a very reasonable compromise was negotiated with legislative minimum wage skeptics who accepted the inevitability of our victory.
I am hardly alone in understanding the risks of activism. It is this understanding of risks that contributes to leading various progressive organizations to engage in the distancing from activism that Dr. Fisher describes. Yet she is absolutely right that the distancing from activism--and any maltreatment of activists by any responsible person--hurts the goal of building up a better more progressive society by limiting the pool of future activists and leaders of activists.
The truth is that there is not a heck of a lot of money for most people to make by political or social activism. Money is often especially important to those who are short of it or without it entirely. Civil service jobs generally pay more--and have far greater job security--than political ones do. Business and professional careeers have far greater economic potential than do careers in social or political activism.
There is no substitute for honesty in dealing with prospective political activists. They should be asked to volunteer and contribute time and money only to an extent that it does not interfere with their pursuing a successful life. They should not be asked to do unnecessary or unwise things or things that unnecessarily expose them to great personal risk.
Their dignity and worth as people should be recognized at all times. Neither their labor nor their bodies nor their enthusiasm should be exploited against their interests.
Working for progressive causes should be an ennobling, inspiring, and enthusiasm-building experience. That is a statement of an ideal, and we as a broad national progressive community need to figure out many practical steps to achieve this ideal despite all the difficulties inherently involved in doing so.

September 20, 2006

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/21/15831/8156

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WHEN BOSSES RULED PHILADELPHIA: THE EMERGENCE OF THE REPUBLICAN MACHINE, 1867-1933

By Peter McCaffery

Peter McCaffery takes a thorough and judicious look at how Republican political bosses hurt the city of Philadelphia from the end of the Civil War, when the Republican Party first gained favor (Lincoln's 1864 opponent George McClellan had strong Philadelphia roots) to the beginning of the New Deal, when the Republican Party precipitously began a long slow but seemingly irreversible decline that continues today. McCaffery finds some of the anti-bossism literature to be hyperbolic and short on perspective. But after weighing the evidence, he strongly comes out against the revisionist literature by Robert Merton and others suggesting that the political bosses were really good guys, just misunderstood urban liberals. "All the various leaders had something in common that has tended to be underrated or overlooked in the past: their ability and competence as professional politicians," McCaffery writes. State Republican Boss Matt Quay "was a classical scholar and son of a Presbyterian minister. He was also, in the opinion of Rudyard Kipling, the best literary critic in America. And Quay's most famous successor as Boss, U.S.Senator Boies Penrose, was in the words of this reviewer's late college sociology professor E. Digby Baltzell "Proper Philadelphia's most interesting and gifted politician in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." But McCaffery's indictments overwhelm his pleasantries toward his subjects. His first five chapters are somewhat even-handed, discussing the different means various bosses used to get political power with a guarded voice that, while somewhat critical, also seems to be somewhat admiring of the skill they showed in creating and grasping ever more levers of power. But Chapter 6, "Electoral Foundation and Functions of the Republican Machine," ends any doubt as to where McCaffery stands. He approving quotes an obituary for Boss Iz Durham, who died at the age of 53. "Of all the qualities of statesmanship he had none, " the North American wrote. "He had no ideals. His ambitions were all selfish. He leaves no monument in the shape of a good statute or ordinance or any piece of constructive legislation...no civic improvement or betterment." And he quotes Sam Bass Warner as saying the "failure of the industrial metropolis was political." Local and state professional political leaders: utterly avoided dealing with the mounting social welfare and economic and physical development issues which constituted both the disorders and the potential of the metropolis....The whole negative attitude toward government which characterized the Republican.... leadership encouraged a least-cost, low-quality orientation toward all public institutions and programs whether they were police departments, or schools, hospitals, or highways. Whether state or local Republican professional political leaders did more damage to Philadelphia, Warner says, would require "the most conscientious research" to determine. The low-cost low quality strategy was also ringing up debt. In dollars worth many times more than our current ones, city expenditures in the 1870's were exceeding income by over $1 million per year, and yearly expenditures in the city's floating debt (short term debt) exceeded four million a year, while the city's debt for permanent improvements had passed $58 million by 1874. Good things were done for the purpose of private profit, raising costs. Philadelphia's City Hall, an architectural marvel that today is a tourist attraction as well as the seat of city government, took 30 years to be built from time of inception, and provided a patronage empire for the boss of the Public Buildings Commission William Stokely, who used the power he gained from to become Mayor of Philadelphia. Stokely's arch-rival was gas trust boss James McManes, who also dominated Philadelphia politics for a period time because of the jobs he could give out at taxpayers expense. A subplot of this book is the gradual elimination of patronage and organizational arrangements under pressure from reformers and rival power holders. Politically potent but crime-ridden and violence-prone volunteer fire companies were abolished in 1871. The gas trust was abolished in 1887. The Public Buildings Commission was abolished in 1901. McCaffery does not dwell on it, but the whole array of elected ward officers in existence when Philadelphia took its current boundaries in 1854--school directors, tax collectors and assessors, guardians of the poor, aldermen, and representatives on the Board of Health--were all abolished as elective officials and replaced by appointive officials over time. And the number of Philadelphia City Councilmen--which peaked at an incredible 146 with the reform charter of 1887--was cut to 21 in 1919 and 17 in 1951. After the period of time covered by this book, magistrates--the Philadelphia equaivalent of Justices of the Peace--would be replaced by Municipal Court judges and constables elected by ward would be replaced by appointed writ servers. Step by step, year after year, century after century, the domain of the political machine would generally contract, although resourceful politicians would seek to expand the domains over which they had influence. The thrust of reformers with motivations from the pure to the cynical was to centralize, professionalize, and depoliticize. A long-term result of that has been a far lesser degree of opportunity for political involvement than exists in suburban and rural communities, with consequences that deserve intense scholarly examination. Bosses Quay and Penrose were often eager to wade into Philadelphia politics to legislatively expose and/or destroy a factional rival's political power bases. Penrose, considered by some to among the most corrupt politicians in American history, was often ready to play the reformer. His 1905 state legislative special session--called to counter growing Independent Republican strength which had cost the Republican Party seats in the 1905 elections-- produced personal registration of voters, a stricter civil service able to prohibit political activity by city employees, a civil service bill to establish a bona fide merit system, a corrupt practices act requiring candidates to file reports of campaign receipts and expenditures, and, most importantly, a uniform system of primary elections for all candidates for city and county offices. Poor enforcement, however, limited whatever reformist intent there was to the legislative package. Reading this book is valuable for participants in current Philadelphia politics as well as for scholars of political science and urban history and sociology. One sees tactics still in use today, from Republican efforts to try to control the financially weaker Democratic Party, to the creation of new patronage bases, to attempts to gain influence or control of public utilities and the distribution and enforcement of public contracts. One also gains insights into the development of Northeast Philadelphia, where today's odd and irregular road routes were caused by what landowner supported what candidate in long-forgotten elections over a century ago. McCaffery makes clear his belief that party machines were not mere agents of big business; they were an independent force that sought to control those businesses they had power over and often fought or ignored other business interests. Corporations and machines developed over the same time period independently of each other. Machines made some corporations their clients, but others became active enemies because of the threat that political machines represented to both their wealth and the quality of life in their city. The Philadelphia Republican machine was a narrow insular force as well: it discriminated against people with Jewish and Italian surnames and African-American ancestry in terms of both ward committee slots and City Hall jobs. This would play out fully in the mayoral elections from 1971 through 2003, when the Democrats would win nine mayoral elections, eight of them with candidates of Black, Jewish, or Italian ancestry. McCaffery clearly identifies with the non-partisan reform movement, which, with fits and starts, often offered a progressive vision that transcended the narrow economic interests of its advocates. Only the Committee of Seventy--which sought to be a permanent organization from its inception--survives today as a Philadelphia organization. Two of the heroes of the non-partisan reform movement he mentions have intersected with my family. Morris Llewellyn Cooke, Reform Mayor Rudolph Blankenburg's Director of Public Works, was a key advocate of rural electrification before and during the New Deal period, and he helped make the University of Pennsylvania Law School a major provider of attorneys for the fledgling Rural Electrification Administration. My father was one of the REA recruits from the Penn Law School, and it led him to a lifetime of both governmental service and civic activism. Franklin Spence Edmonds represented much of my legislative district in the state house after teaching at my alma maters Central High School and the University of Pennsylvania. He then moved to Montgomery County, won election to the State Senate from there, and helped found and serve as President of the Council of State Governments, an excellent research and networking organization that does much to advance state governmental information sharing and professionalism, and from which I and other state legislators have gained much. McCaffery's painstaking and original analysis covers a lot of ground in 257 pages, approximately 100 of which are charts, lists, appendices,cartoons, and footnotes. If one wants to begin to wade into the voluminous literature on urban reform movements and the outrageous shenanigans of political bosses that made them necessary, this book is a good place to start or finish, as it is excellent as either an introduction or a summary. It is an economical book in length worthy of intense study.

50 AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW: RECLAIMING AMERICAN PATRIOTISM

BY Mickey Z

Mickey Z is a dissenting American radical who deeply admires diverse forms of passionate dissent. He is mainstream enough to cite legislation passed as a result of radical protest as a vindication of that protest, but his general vision of government is that of a passive agent, awaiting the next protest demonstration to get a sense of direction. The theme of this book is best stated in a quotation from Barbra Ehreneich. "Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots," she says. This a book for the age of soundbites and hyperlinks. It provides an introduction to many diverse individuals and social movements, so that virtually everyone will learn something from it. And it deals with Bob Dylan's complaint about history: "I've never seen a history book that tells me how anybody feels," he said. One of the few Presidents in this book to earn a mention--and perhaps the only President to be praised for an action taken--is Chester A. Arthur who--it turns out--at age 24 was a pioneering civil rights attorney representing Lizzie Jennings, the Rosa Parks of 1854, who sued and won after being denied admission to a New York City horse drawn carriage. Arthur's representation of Jennings is called a "classic 'who knew' situation. " It certainly justifies taking another look at Arthur. Another surprising fact--for me, at least--was the deep passion and antagonisms resulting from Jack Johnson, an African-American, being named heavywieght champion of the world in 1908: an uproar that perhaps slowed down black admission to other professional sports. And then, in a section on Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers, there is this cogent political analysis from key Richard Nixon Presidential aide H.R. Haldeman on June 14, 1969: To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of all the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say; and you can't rely on their judgement. And the implicit infallibility of Presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it is wrong, and the President can be wrong. I also like Martin Luther King's telegram to farmworker's leader Cesar Chavez,after a United Farmworker organizing victory, which puts King's eloquence, profundity, and coalition building on display all at once: The fight for equality must be fought on many fronts--in urban slums, in the sweatshops of the factories and fields. Our separate struggles are really one--a struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity. You and your valiant fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs froced upon exploited people. We are together with you in spirit and it determination that our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized. In summary, this is a provocative and stimulating little book which should encourage interest in American history, provide new insights to many readers, and provide no shortage of inspirational material. Because of ideological biases, which give violent protests a stature they do not deserve, it is less than the sum of its parts. But many of the parts are very, very good. Politicians seeking to keep the attention of audiences, columnists seeking to say memorable things, and teachers seeking to counter student apathy all can find useful material here.

VITO MARCANTONIO
By Gerald Meyer

Congressman Vito Marcantonio was once one of the most famous and most infamous political figures in America. Richard Nixon won a Senate seat in 1950 by linking his Democratic opponent's record to that of Marcantonio, and Marcantonio was harassed by fellow members of Congress and the media alike. He is likely the only member of Congress who ever served as a lawyer for the Communist Party, and the only member of Congress who relied on the Communist Party as a key component of his political machine. Yet the Communist Party was only one element of his electoral coalition. The Republican Party was the party that got him started (he was a protege of Republican Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who set an example for Marcantonio by once winning election to Congress on the Socialist Party ticket when the Republicans would not back him), and the Republican Party nominated Marcantonio in 1934, 1936, 1938, 1940, 1942, and 1944. Marcantonio only lost the Republican Party nomination narrowly in 1946 at the beginning of the Cold War when he was elected to Congress on the Democratic and American Labor Party tickets. By 1948, the law had been changed to make it impossible for him to seek the Republican and Democratic nominations while serving as the leader of the American Labor Party, but he won a plurality on the American Labor Party ticket standing alone. In 1950, the Democratic, Republican, and Liberal parties all nominated the same candidate, James Donovan, who defeated Marcantonio by a 4 to 3 margin, 49,448 to 36,095. As the statewide leader of the American Labor Party from 1941 on, and as an active leader of the American Labor Party from 1937 on, Marcantonio gained the power to cross-endorse Democratic and Republican candidates. He used this power to get Republicans elected in otherwise unfriendly districts, giving the Republican Party extra state legislative power in return for giving his own American Labor Party--and the Communists who somewhat influenced it--a national spokesman. The author presents exhaustive evidence of Marcantonio's deep passion for the welfare of his poverty stricken Italian-American, Puerto Rican, and African American constituents, a concern which made his office a model of constituent service and advocacy for the poor and discriminated against. Income from Marcantonio's law practice went to both supplementing his constituent service and his political campaigns. He died at age 52 in 1954 with less than $10,000 in assets. The author discusses at length the symbiotic relationship between Marcantonio and the Republican Party--and to a lesser degree, Marcantonio and the Democratic Party--but does not fully investigate the full implications of that alliance. We do not learn for instance how American Labor Party Republicans elected to the New York legislature used their power to advance or to thwart the public policy goals that Marcantonio pushed in Washington. This is a book that should be read for historical perspective by anyone pondering the past and potential future role of the Green Party in American politics, or third party politics in general. This book also sheds valuable light on the generally underreported story of the rise of Americans of Italian descent from poverty to solid middle class status, the early and since abandoned efforts to classify them as a racial minority analagous to African Americans, the development of bilingual education and other educational innovations of Marcantonio's friend, neighbor, and mentor Leonard Covello, the struggles for civil rights before Martin Luther King, Jr. led the Montgomery Bus Boycott a year and a few months after Marcantonio's death, and the role and limitations of political machines as social and political forces in New York City history. At a time in which Joe Lieberman has won election to the Senate as a third-party Republican-backed candidate, when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giulani--Marcantonio's polar opposite in many ways-- appears appears poised to be the first major American Presidential candidate of Italian descent, when the Green Party struggles against constant allegations that it's operational goals are to elect Republicans, the story of Vito Marcantonio and his long-dead allies and opponents has a surprising and growing continuing relevance.

THE AIRWAY TO EVERYWHERE: A HISTORY OF ALL AMERICAN AVIATION, 1937-1953
By Walter David Lewis

Lytle S. Adams, a descendant of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, clearly saw that smaller communiities were at a substantial disadvantage in the emerging field of airmail. The process of landing and take-off of airplanes was so time-consuming that it limited the number of stops an airplane could make to the larger communities with larger airports. So he developed a plan to solve the problem, a problem which was similar to the difficulty of bringing electricity to rural areas (solved by the Rural Electric Administration and the cooperatives it spawned), bringing transportation to rural areas (solved by the U.S. Interstate Highway network), bringing television to rural areas (solved by the laying of cable to them). His plan involved tecnnical ingenuity: the development of a device to hook on to an overhead cable where containers of mail would be be placed, so that mail could be picked up on regularly defined roots without a plane taking the trouble to land to take-off. His idea gained political backing in the Roosevelt Administration and from the New Deal Democrats in Congress, because it fit in with their strategies to integrate isolated communities into the mainstream of American life. Through Roosevelt's daughter who had married into the DuPont family, he met Richard C. DuPont, an aviation enthusiast, who had the money and the skill to develop Adams' idea into a functioning company called All American Aviation. The Adams-DuPont relationship had tragic personal overtones, although it was extremely productive in the long run. DuPont did not give Adams the financial rewards he hoped for,added insult to injury by reworking Adams' technology to make it more effective, and ultimately bought him out as the relationship became increasingly bitter and mutually distrustful. And DuPont's dynamic corporate leadership--he had become head of the corporation at the age of 28-- led him to be offered to take over the U.S. Army's glider program as a special assistant to Army Air Forces Chief Henry H. "Hap" Arnold. In this position, DuPont was testing one of the new motorless airships, when the craft fell into a spin, his parachute malfunctioned, and he fell to his death at the age of 33. During World War II, the company's no-landing pickup system hit its peak in utilization, but it failed to make money and relied on governmental subsidies. After World War II, it faced the additional problem of steadily improving highways, which allowed mail to be picked up faster and cheaper without the no-landing pickup system. With its back to the wall, All-American Aviation was offered a chance to become a passenger airline serving new or under-utilized routes. It leaped at this chance for financial salvation, and evolved over time into Alleheny Airlines and then U.S. Air. The strengths of this book are many: detailed explanations of technology and technological changes, clear explanations of business strategy and the regulatory system, and concise explanations of both the internal politics of the company and the politics of Congress and the executive branch. This book is a great introduction to the field of airline regulation, a valuable addition to anyone's understanding of Pennsylvania business history, and a compelling case study of the importance and the limits of technological innovation. The concise nature of the book--and its technological orientation--means that some intriguing political angles go uncovered. The irony of a descendant of rivals of two of 19th Century America's leading Democrats--party founder Thomas Jefferson and and party definer Andrew Jackson--relying on New Deal regulation and Democratic Party allies to start his business goes unmentioned. And the political analysis of the company's large base of Congressional support is matter of fact and unquestioning of motives and rationales. Virtually no one who reads this book will ever look at the history of American air travel the same way again. This book is an inspiring example for those who seek to solve societal problems through business, and those who seek to grow new businesses from scratch. It offers a clear warning of the dangers--as well as the opportunities--posed by the search for venture capital.

A CALL TO SERVE
By John Kerry

"I don't consider myself a policy wonk," John Kerry writes, "but I was brought up to care about big issues and think for myself, not hire others to do the thinking for me." While preparing a detailed statement of his views in the middle of a Presidential campaign "is obviously a task in which I relied on the generous help of many talented and trustworthy advisors," it is clear that Kerry has attempted with a large degree of success to integrate their recommendations, his record and his life into a coherent whole. A book that relied more heavily on autobiography would have been more compelling. But Kerry, in what might have been his Achilles Heel in the 2004 general election, takes the idealistic position that "For my part, I intend to run a presidential campaign organized around a contest of ideas, values, and policies, rather than a clash of personalities or a war between political tribes." This approach clearly helped him get the Democratic nomination when major rivals Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, and Joseph Lieberman became mired in controversies, other rivals were not able to develop a broad enough appeal to become serious contenders, and serious contender John Edwards failed to match Kerry's breadth of appeal. The fundamental theme of this book, as one could guess from the title, is that John Kerry feels called to public service by a combination of life experiences and family backround (he is the son of a diplomat father and a civic activist mother), and that he wishes to call others to public service as well. It was my thought in 2003-2004 that Howard Dean was the best of an excellent field of candidates. I filed for Delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Pennsylvania on behalf of Howard Dean the day he lost his make or break Wisconsin primary and stopped actively campaigning, and I became the only Dean delegate candidate in the Mid-Atlantic States to actually get elected. After Dean's formal withdrawal and release of his delegates, I made Pennsylvania's convention vote for Kerry unanimous and contributed his campaign. Kerry grew on me as a candidate in 2004, and he grows on me again in carefully reading this book. Kerry clearly conveys that he is a serious man with serious ideas for leading our country. He has written a book of continuing relevance for the years ahead, whether or not he seeks a future Presidential nomination. This is a book that can be utilized by anyone with a deep interest in Presidential politics, the future choices our country faces, and the differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. Because it covers a lot of subjects briefly, it is a book that can usefully be read sitting near a computer, so that one can use a search engine to learn more about whatever issues one finds intriguing. Kerry's first chapter--Why I am Running for President--sets out his general philosophy and an outline of his goals. "Democrats and Republicans must also take a long look at our recent tendency to compete in a politics of personal self-interest," he writes. "One of our central goals is to convince people to think beyond their own selfish interests and accept the responsibilities of citizenship and the mission of spreading freedom and democracy." Perhaps offering a counterpoint to Richard Nixon--who famously wrote a book entitled Six Crises--Kerry offers six challenges. These are The Challenge of Protecting America and Promoting Its Values and Interests, The Challenge of Expanding Our Common Wealth, The Challenge of Creating World-Class Schools, The Challenge of Creating a Modern Health-Care System, The Challenge of Defending the Environment and Achieving Energy Independence, and The Challenge of Reviving Democracy and Citizenship. His proposals are less than a detailed blueprint--the sheer number of them and the book's 200 pages would not allow for that--but much, much more than a general expression of concern. His chapter on health care, a perennial concern of mine in 33 years of service in the Pennsylvania legislature, for instance, recommends "a proposal that breaks new ground in the health-insurance debate by simultaneously addressing three challengess that are central to modernizing our health care system: first and foremost, bringing costs under control; offering access to affordable coverage, with plenty of choices, to every American; and guaranteeing that every child in America will have health care insurance." His goals have subgoals. For instance, he favors health insurance cost-reduction strategies such as having the federal government pay for 3/4 of catastrophic health insurance claims (those claims of $50,000 and over), "preventive care and programs to promote better overall health," public disclosure of incentives for benefit managers and doctors to prescribe individual drugs, expansion of generic drug offerings by plugging loopholes in patent law, letting states negotiate better prices for consumers by bargaining for bulk rates for their citizens, screening out frivolous medical malpractice claims, encouraging the use of new information technologies, expanding the use of patient record computerization, and reducing medical errors. This is certainly a useful place to begin for anyone who, like myself, is interested in having my state seek to comprehensively reform health care. In this book, he is not content to issue laundry lists. We see some of his persuasive power. He is an advocate--generally understated--for the positions he seeks. I cannot say I am unmoved by his advocacy. His strong passion for national service, for instance, has convinced me that the service learning requirements for students in Maryland--and the service learning options in many other states--is probably worth emulating in Pennsylvania. Kerry looks to help build America as a place "where everybody does serve, because there is work for all to do, a place for all to serve, and no reason at all to stay on the sidelines." "I see an America where, in a seamless web of service and concern," Kerry says, "we offer Americans the challenge and the chance to do their duty--and an America were Americans, in turn, step forward and give something back." In a Presidential campaign, voters are encouraged to engage in comparison shopping. Whether one favored Kerry or not in 2004, his book is an articulate and detailed exposition of his views, and is well worth reading by concerned people throughout the political spectrum who want a better country and are looking for specific directions in which to travel.

THE TWILIGHT OF EQUALITY?: NEOLIBERALISM, CULTURAL POLITICS, AND THE ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY
By Lisa Duggan

Lisa Duggan is intensely interested in American politics, and has found political life in the United States to have been "such a wild ride, offering moments of of dizzying hope along with long stretches of political depression." She is grateful for "many ideas about political depression, and how to survive it," and she has written a excellent short book that helps make sense of many widely divergent political trends. Her book is well-summarized by its concluding paragraph, which I am breaking up into additional paragraphs for greater clarity: "Now at this moment of danger and opportunity, the progressive left is mobilizing against neoliberalism and possible new or continuing wars. "These mobilizations might become sites for factional struggles over the discipling of troops, in the name of unity at a time of crisis and necessity. But such efforts will fail; the troops will not be disciplined, and the disciplinarians will be left to their bitterness. "Or, we might find ways of think, speaking, writing and acting that are engaged and curious about "other people's" struggles for social justice, that are respectfully affiliative and dialogic rather than pedagogical, that that look for the hopeful spots to expand upon, and that revel in the pleasure of political life. "For it is pleasure AND collective caretaking, love AND the egalitarian circulation of money--allied to clear and hard-headed political analysis offered generously--that will create the space for a progressive politics that might both imagine and create...something worth living for." The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND Money--summarize her argument. She expected upon her high school graduation in 1972, she writes, that "active and expanding social movements seemed capable of ameliorating conditions of injustice and inequality, poverty, war and imperialism....I had no idea I was not perched at a great beginning, but rather at a denouement, as the possibilities for progressive social change encountered daunting historical setbacks beginning in 1972...." Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination, privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade. Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes. Her belief is that all groups threatened by the neoliberal paradigm should unite against it, but such unity is threatened by endless differences of perspectives. By minutely analyzing many of the differences, and expanding understanding of diverse perspectives, she tries to remove them as obstacles towards people and organizations working together to achieve both unique and common aims. This is good book for those interested in the history and current significance of numerous progressive ideological arguments. It is a good book for organizers of umbrella organizations and elected officials who work with diverse social movements. By articulating points of difference, the author depersonalizes them and aids in overcoming them. Those who are interested in electoral strategies, however, will be disappointed. The interrelationship between neoliberalism as a governing ideology and neoliberalism as a political strategy is not discussed here. It is my view that greater and more focused and inclusive political organizing has the potential to win over a good number of the those who see support of neoliberalism's policy initiatives as a base-broadening tactic more than as a sacred cause. "There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture wars are provisional--and fading...." Reading this book adds to one's understanding of labels, and political and intellectual distinctions. It has too much jargon for my taste, but not so much as to be impenetrable. It is an excellent summarization and synthesis of the goals, ideologies, and histories of numerous social movements, both famous and obscure.

MY DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
By James M. Jeffords

As a Pennsylvania state legislative leader, I have suffered a demotion from Majority Whip to Minority Caucus Chairman for the past twelve years because several Democrats switched to the Republican Party in 1993 and 1994 and turned the Pennsylvania House over to the Republicans. Two of those converts were then defeated by Democratic nominees, but two others were not, and having the majority helped the Pennsylvania Republicans gain other seats. So I read the story of Jeffords' abandonment of the party that elected him, and his turning control of the U.S. Senate over to the Democrats, with a sense of having seen this before. Policy differences lead to personal confrontations and personal slights which, in turn, raise new questions about partisan commitments. The chance to play a starring role in the new party seems preferable to being an outcast in the old party. The change is made, and old alliances and friendships are sundered, while new ones are made. Running for re-election after a party switch can be tricky, but Jeffords, with four years left on his Senate term, "doubted" that he would be running again in 2006. In fact, he did not run again this year. With re-election clearly not a top priority for him--"it was the furthest thing from my thoughts at that point," he says--a major obstacle to swictching parties was removed. The Jeffords switch came in May, 200l. George Bush had been elected President in key respects by a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision stopping the counting of votes in Florida where Bush held a lead of only a little more than 500 votes. The Democrats had gained four seats in the U.S. Senate in the 2000 elections, and the parties were now evenly divided in the Senate. It seemed quite possible that the Democrats had a future of surging ahead. Further, although he does not mention it, his home state clearly was trending Democratic, with Howard Dean as Governor, Patrick Leahy as the other U.S. Senator, and Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist who often sided with the Democrats, repeatedly elected with Democratic support as an Independent. For some reason, Sanders' name is never mentioned in this book; in 2006, he is the Democratic-backed candidate to succeed Jefords. Jeffords had leverage in the budget negotiations, and was determined to use it. He decided his top priority, as chair of the Senate committee dealing with education, was giving new life to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by increasing special education funding by removing $200 billion a year from President Bush's tax cut and paying "40 percent of the national average per public expenditure for each disabled child's education." This formulation comes out to about 20% of total national special education expenses. Jeffords was motivated by personal values and constituent accountability in pushing his educational program. He did not share the belief that tax cuts for the wealthy were the highest Republican priority. "But how our children lag behind their international peers strikes me as a bigger long-term threat to our national security and stability than the rate of taxation paid on multimillion dollar estates," he writes. "In my mind, the education we give to all our children is far more important than the size of the fortunes left to a fortunate few...." "But tax cuts had not been what animated the people of Vermont I talked to on the campaign trail in the fall," he says. "They seemed to be far more concerned with meeeting human needs." Ultimately, the Senate Republicans were able to regain the Senate control in the 2002 and 2004 elections, returning Jeffords to minority status and reducing the significance of his action. This book makes clear Jefford's enjoyment of being in the limelight, even though he was somewhat uncomfortable at times there. I cannot help but believe that the "Who Lost Jeffords?" question was likely a contributing factor in Trent Lott's being removed as Senate majority leader after the 2004 elections. This is a good short book for anyone interested in the differences between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate, the history of Vermont Senators, or the personal dynamics of the U.S. Senate, to read carefully. Jeffords clearly identifies with the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Vermont Senators George Aiken and Ralph Flanders, critics of the War in Vietnam and Sen. Joseph McCarthy repsectively. It is the modern Republicans he has difficulty with. "There was an admixture of religion, a sense of stewardship, and plain common sense," he writes. "....(T)he issues that gave birth to the Republican Party are still among our most important challenges. Will we strenghten public education and the ladder of opportunity it provides? Or will be decide through our funding decisions that this is not a very high federal priority? Will we leave the land better than we found it for our descendants a hundred and fifty years hence? Or will we be blinded by the ensuing crises and leave it despoiled? Will we accord full rights to all Americans? Or will we continue to condone the denial of the protections of our laws to those who are gay? "It is clear what I hope for. This is the kind of Washington I hope to forge with what little influence is available to me. We have crying needs in our society that we must tackle rather than ignore. And we can never even begin if we are consumed by trying to take petty partisan advantage at every opportunity. The American people will not stand for it." When the Republican Party lost Jeffords, they lost a lot. He is typical of some voters. And I believe listening intently to his views would add a great deal to the Bush Administration and any successor administration. The negative, petty, and personal attacks on Jeffords that helped motivate him to leave the Republican Party are a case of a the quest for power overwhelming more lasting and important factors.

ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: LEFTIST THOUGHT IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA
By Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty is a prominent philosopher and academic with deep family roots in the anti-communist efforts of Norman Thomas' Socialist Party, the societal amelioration of the New Deal, and the Social Gospel movement. He is appalled by the failure of advocates of continued governmental involvement in societal problem-solving to win enough elections to keep political progress moving ahead during a time of ever-increasing globalization and general income stagnation. He sees a vibrant Academic Left--which he admits has valid critiques of the reformist Left with which he most identifies--but he is appalled that its members have little interest in developing workable programs for societal betterment or engaging in active campaigns for change or the inner workings of government. He is not David Horowitz. His attacks on the Academic Left are meant to persuade its members, not to rally support of others against them. He praises academic teachings against sadism, bullying, racism, sexism, and homophobia--but feels that merely dealing with how people relate to each other is an inadaquate response to the many institutional failings of American society. He describes the Academic Left's abstention from wider political conflict as to the economic direction of our country as "an inability to do two things at once." "Sometime in the Seventies, " he writes, "American middle-class idealism went into a stall. Under Presidents Carter and Clinton, the Democratic Party has survived by distancing itself from unions and any mention of redistribution, and moving into a sterile vacuum called the "center."....So the choice between the two major parties has come down to a choice between cynical lies and terrified silence." In the Pennsylvania legislature, I have long been a leader of efforts to improve the economic welfare of struggling citizens: from repealing laws raising consumer prices and the law establishing welfare liens, to raising the minimum wage and establishing and increasing subsidized senior citizen prescriptions and property tax rebates. So I am in complete agreement with Rorty's argument for greater involvement to reduce economic injustices. He writes with a scathing eloquence and a deep political understanding that the only way to arouse public support on a national level for new policies is to be able to place them in a context of both patriotism and attention to the genuine needs of the American people. Because he is largely addressing the Academic Left, he spends too much time for my taste enmeshing himself in leftist sectarian discussions. I hope he persuades some of his intended audience, but his book is also useful for the more general audience of people who, in Robert Kennedy's words, "see suffering and want to stop it." "I have been arguing that...we Americans should not take the view of a detached cosmopolitan spectator," he writes. "We should face unpleasant truths about ourselves, but we should not take these truths to be the last word about our chances for happiness, or about our national character. Our national character is still in the making. Few in 1897 would have predicted the Progressive Movement, the forty-hour week, Women's Suffrage, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the successes of second-wave feminism, or the Gay Rights Movement. Nobody in 1997 can know that America will not, in the course of the next century, witness even greater moral progress. "(Walt)Whitman and (John) Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams--dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society--in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science. Their party, the party of hope, made twentieth-century America more than just an economic and military giant...." I don't think any one group is responsible for the failure of the public to adaquately organize to protect its common interests. I feel we need active organizing everywhere across ideological, geographical, generational,racial, religious, sexual, and other lines. So I do not attribute nearly the significance to the Academic Left that he does. But I think he has written a book well worth reading by those who very much want a more empowered public, as well as those who want university studies and faculty research to include a greater focus on how the vast knowledge of the universities and their faculties can be better employed for social good.

WE THE MEDIA
By Dan Gillmore

Many people blame the Internet for accelerating the long-term decline of newspaper circulation, and think that the Internet is crippling the future of American journalism. Don Gillmor believes that the Internet has the potential to dramatically improve American journalism and widen its appeal. Gillmor is no naive innocent. He demonstrates that he has an extraordinarily detailed command of the interrelationships and applications of the many internet and software technologies and journalism. I met Gillmor in April, 2004, at the BloggerconII conference organized by Dave Winer and held at Harvard Law School. He held the attention of his audience of bloggers through his mixture of detailed knowledge and passionate advocacy for the worth of blogging and the value of it becoming an income-generating activity. No journalist should fail to read this book. Nor should any citizen consumer of journalism who participates online. Only a small part manifesto, this book is a detailed roadmap of the future of journalism for those informed enough and bold enough to take it. Those in business and government who are the subjects of journalism would also do well to read it. The future of journalism, Gillmor says, will be much more participatory in the future than it has been in the past. The many to many communications style of the Internet will become the style of successful journalism. Journalism will less about lecturing and more about leading a discussion. The "eat your spinach" school of civic advocacy will be replaced by a greater connection between readers and journalists in which readers will influence both the definition of news and the content of individual news stories. The proliferation of tens of millions of blogs means that the separation of news producers and news consumers is far less than it used to be. Everyone can produce news in the blogosphere. One duty of journalists is to sift the through the blogosphere and find out what is relevant. Another duty of journalists is to actively engage the public in the news gathering process. The definition of what professionalism in journalism is will be rapidly changing. What is now at the edges, Gillmour says, will and should be moved to the center. Public concerns that once were marginal now will become mainstream. As a Pennsylvania state legislator, I believe that this will have significant public policy effects--especially the areas of taxation and public welfare expenditures. For the first time, those with average and below average incomes are able to communicate their concerns to a mass audience. The more the digital divide in Internet access erodes, as the divide in telephone and television access has eroded, the greater the erosion will be of the upper middle class dominance of the political process. The stakes for putting the brakes on the trends Gillmor describes will get increasingly large in the years ahead. This is not just a book for journalists and the subjects of journalism, or even just a book for currently active internet participants. The detailed accounts of the consumer applications of various technologies of what he calls the "the read-write web" or "technology that makes we the media possible" are alone worth the effort to get through this book. Others may understand individual technologies better than Gillmor, but it is unlikely that anyone has a better understanding of how they all--HTML,mail lists and forums,weblogs, wikis, SMS, mobile connected cameras, internet "broadcasting," peer to peer, RSS,Technorati, API, and many others--come to together to create a radically different architecture of information, news, personal reach, and circle of potential friends and allies for many millions of Americans. This is not a book to be read and put aside. Gillmor clearly struggled to get his text into 241 pages, plus 36 pages of acknowledgements, websites, and detailed notes. While there is occasional redundancy, on the whole a longer book would have been clearer in some respects. This is a book to be carefully studied and used as a springboard to continued learning about new applications, new technologies, and new interrelationships as they emerge. The idea of the public as part of the media is not totally new. Going back at least to the 1940's, public opinion research focused on the stages of influence: the mass media first influenced the opinion leaders in a community, who then influenced others by word of mouth. What is new is the dramatically improved publishing capacity for the individual citizen, regardless of whether he or she had the community stature and web of influence to have been a community leader--formal or informal--in the past. The media had been steadily eroding the influence of opinion leaders, by influencing more and more people directly, but now the opinion leaders are back in record-high numbers and with greatly expanded spheres of influence. "I hope I've helped you understand how this media shift--this explosion of conversations--is taking place and where it is headed," Gllmour says on the last page of his book. "Most of all, I hope I've persuaded you to take up the challenge yourself. "Your voice matters. Now, if you have something to say, you can be heard. "You can make your own news. We all can. "Let's get started."

THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE
By Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) never conceived of the Internet. But the great communications theorist understood where communications was going, and the revolutionary effects of its direction. This book takes his sometimes impenetrable prose and places it in a context of compelling photographs, advertisements, and cartoons in order to dramatically illustrate the meaning of his words, and the radical effect that changes in communications technology have on the lives of all the world's citizens. "It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of the media," he writes. The Medium is the Massage begins and ends with quotes from Albert North Whitehead. The first is that "The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." The last is that "It is the business of the future to be dangerous." There always are jeremiads against the new by those who are accustomed to the old. McLuhan quotes Socrates: "The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves...You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing." The effects of the media on individuals are profound. "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, pyschological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty--psychic or physical." Media affect you, the individual citizen. "Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community's need to know. The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions--the patterns of mechanistic technologies--are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank--that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early 'mistakes.' We have already reached a point where remedial control, born of knowledge of media and their total effects on all of us, must be exerted...." Media affect your family. "The family circle has widened. The whirlpool of information fathered by the electic media--movies, Telstar, flight--far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage." Media affect your neighborhood. "Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of 'time' and 'space' and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstitued dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the the new technology than 'a place for everything and everything in its place.' You can't GO home again." Media affect your education. "Today's television child is attuned to up-to-the-minute 'adult' news--inflation, rioting, war, taxes, crime, bathing beauties--and is bewildered when he enters the nineteenth century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules. It is naturally an environment much like any factory set-up with its inventories and assembly lines." Media affect your job. "From the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, there is a steady progress of fragmentation of the stages of work that constitute 'mechanization' and 'specialism.' These procedures cannot serve for survival or sanity in this new time. Under conditions of electric cicuitry, all the fragmented job patterns tend to blend once more into involving and demanding roles or forms of work that more and more resemble teaching, learning, and 'human' service, in the older sense of dedicated loyalty." Media affect your government. "Nose-counting, a cherished part of the eighteenth century fragmentation process, has rapidly become a cumbersome and ineffectual form of social assessment in an envrionment of instant electric speeds. The public, in the sense of a great consensus of separate and distinct viewpoints, is finished. Today, the mass audience (the successor to the 'public') can be used as a creative, participating force. It is instead merely given packages of passive entertainment. Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's questions. A new form of 'politics' is emerging, and in ways we haven't yet noticed. The living room has become a voting booth. Participation via television in Freedom Marches, in war, revolution, pollution, and other events is changing EVERYTHING." Media affect our relationships with groups of other citizens. "The shock of recognition. In an electric information environment, minority groups can no longer be contained, ignored. Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening." This book is, in short, a superb introduction to McLuhan's thinking. Ideally, it would be read before any of McLuhan's other books. Understanding McLuhan takes some time and thought, but the effort is well worth it to understand today's media and today's world. "Only the hand that erases can write the true thing," McLuhan quotes Meister Eckhardt as saying. McLuhan erases preconceptions of media being relatively insignificant, and demonstrates how the media affect the way each of us sees the world in which we live. A memorable photo in the book is one of a middle-aged man dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase standing upon a surfboard, riding the waves. "In his amusement born of rational detachment of his own situation, Poe's mariner in 'The Descent Into the Maelstrom' staved off disaster by understanding the action of the whirlpool," says McLuhan's accompanying prose. "His insight offers a possible strategem for understanding our predicament, our electrically-configured whirl." The last cartoon in the book--from the New Yorker in 1966--summarizes McLuhan's essential theme. A young man with a guitar discusses McLuhan with his father in a well-appointed library. "You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says the enviroment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential, thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?" We all should get McLuhan. The development of Internet--likely even more transformative than television--has greatly revived interest in McLuhan's view of technological changes as changing us as people, and of creating a global village for all of us to live in. "We impose the form of the old on the content of the new. The malady lingers on," McLuhan warns. We should heed his warnings and recognize, embrace, and work for constructive improvements in the ever-changing world in which we live.

THE QUOTABLE DAD
By Nick Lyons

I received this book yesterday as a Father's Day present. It is both brief and profound, with quotations from a wide range of leaders and writers on fatherhood from Jimmy Carter and Bill Cosby to John Wayne and William Carlos Williams. I would strongly recommend it as a Father's Day gift in the future. I would also recommend it to men on the verge of becoming fathers, men who have just become fathers, and fathers in need of some inspiration. The quotations also serve as a guide to contemporary books and authorities on fatherhood, such as Marcus Jacob Goldman's The Joy of Fatherhood, Peter Carey's The Granta Book of the Family, Kevin Osborn's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fatherhood, Annie Pigeon's Dad's Little Instruction Book, John L. Hart's Becoming A Father, Peter Mayle's How to Be a Pregnant Father, William Plummer's Wishing My Father Well, Paul Riser's Couplehood, Bill Cosby's Fatherhood, and H. Jackson Browne's A Father's Book of Wisdom. The book has eight chapters, focusing on becoming a father, being a better father, fathers and daughters, fathers and sons, a father's wisdom,the difficulty of fatherhood, appreciating one's father, and grandfatherhood. All the quotations in the book are at at least stimulating and provocative, and many are vital and profound. Five of my favorites are as follows: "A baby is God's opinion that life should go on," Carl Sandburg "I hope when you grow up you will dedicate your life to working out plans to make people happy instead of making them miserable, as war does today," Joseph P. Kennedy to 8 year old Edward M. Kennedy "Children need models rather than critics, " Joseph Joubert "I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work fifteen and sixteen hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottom of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the eloquence of his example," Mario Cuomo "The lone father is not a strong father. Fathering is a difficult and perilous journey and is done well with the help of other men," John L. Hart The time it takes to get through the book is short, and it is time well spent. The Quotable Dad is an excellent source of inspiration and insight for fathers old and new, and for future fathers galore.

YOU HAVE THE POWER: HOW TO TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND RESTORE DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
By Howard Dean

Howard Dean is proving himself to be one of the Democratic Party's more enduring leaders. Not yet 60, he has already served as Governor of Vermont, head of the Democratic Governors Association, a Democratic candidate for the party's 2004 presidential nomination, head of the political action committee Democracy for America, and since, February, 2005, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. With the Democrats poised to make big gains in 2006, Dean's future relevance is likely to continue for some time. I am not a neutral observer. I was a Dean delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004--his only delegate from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or the Mid-Atlantic states. And I have actively participated in Democracy for America and urged Pennsylvania's members of the Democratic National Committee to support his candidacy for this position. Dean's ascension to the Chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee from the ranks of unsuccessful Presidential candidates is unprecedented. Most Democratic National Committee chairs have been fundraisers and/or political technicians. Dean is the rare Democratic National Committee with a visible policy platform and a coherent set of ideas. This book is a summary and integration of Dean's views in a variety of areas: public policy platform; critiques of the Democratic Party (including Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council), the Republican Party (including George Bush, Newt Gingrich and the radical right), the media (including coverage of him and coverage of President Bush), a mix of moral exhortations to get actively involved in the political process, and pragmatic suggestions on how to strengthen the Democratic Party and why doing so is absolutely necessary. This book is also an excellent summary of how his two decades in Vermont's state government have shaped his worldview; he is a strong patriot for Vermont as well as for America. "Ours is a very nurturing state with a sense of neighborly obligation. You typically see this in rural states, where communities had to band together because they were relatively isolated and self-supporting. There's a strong ethic that says we're all in it together; and it translates into an almost ingrained sense of collective responsibility and a deep commitment to public programs that tie people together...." Dean's signature programs as Governor of Vermont were business tax cuts, an expansion of social welfare programs from the poor to the middle class by raising income eligibility requirments, parenting training programs for low-income families, offering home visits from social workers and nurses to mothers of newborns, annually balancing the budget, and saying no to undramatic traditional government spending in order to be able to finance some bold initiatives. "All because Vermonters believed that our community of like-minded, stable, middle-class citizens could be expanded to draw in people at risk. In other words, we really tried to help everyone enjoy the kind of security and stability that in much of America is now reserved for the upper reaches of the middle class and the wealthy. We rejected social Darwinism.... "We did what Republicans and Democrats in Washington have never been able to do: bring health care and child care supports and good public schools and help with higher education to those outside the upper middle class--without breaking the bank. "We made our ideals aout community and social responsibility into reality without getting caught up in overspending or spiraling debt." It is probably the best book ever written by a man on the cusp of becoming Democratic National Chairman. Written with the brevity, incisiveness and passion that has characterized Dean's public persona, it helps answer the questions of who Dean is, why he has a national constituency, what he stands for, and why both he and the Democratic Party are likely to have a long and successful future. The last chapter provides a good summary of his public policy beliefs: "We need to restore the balance between corporate power and the ballot box. "We need to restore the balance between corporate rights and citizen's rights. "We need to narrow the wealth gap to show people that capitalism works for them. "We need to always stand up against the politics of division and fear, whether we are progressive or conservative or in the middle. "We need political institutions that people can believe in. "And we need a media willing to perform their watchdog role and hold politicians accountable for telling the truth.... "We need campaign finance reform.... "We need more corporate accountability.... "We have to reempower labor.... "We need to increase voter turnout.... "Voting is not enough.... "Politicians can't solve our problems for us...." Dean makes clear that he is a genuine centrist who believes in balanced budgets and not a liberal in the 1960's free-spending sense of the word. He supported Jimmy Carter over Ted Kennedy for the 1980 Presidential nomination, and somewhat defines himself by that choice. In today's right-wing dominated climate, of course, the distinctions between Carter's centrism and Kennedy's liberalism have generally paled into insignificance. This is a great book for those seeking an introduction to Dean's beliefs, the Democratic Party's beliefs, and the public policy differences within the Democratic Party and between the Democratic and Republican parties. It is also a good book for those deeply enmeshed in the political process who would benefit from a good summary volume. There are far more detailed books, however, on all these subjects, as well as on the 2004 Presidential campaign and Dean's role as a leading opponent of the war in Iraq.

AFFECTIVE INTELLIGENCE AND POLITICAL JUDGMENT
By George E. Marcus

For many generations, both academia in various disciplines and journalism in the news and editorial departments have widely adhered to the idea that the ideal citizen is detached, disinterested, and well-informed. This ideal has persisted despite the generally observable phenomenon that people who are detached or disinterested very frequently lack the motivation to become well-informed. The authors of this book--two professors of political science and one professor of communications--seek to rehabilitate the reputation of those political actors who are motivated in significant part by an emotional commitment to one vision or another of significant societal improvement. They succeed admirably. No one who reads and studies this book will look at the politically passionate the same way again. "So when do we think about politics?" the authors ask. "When our emotions tell us to," they answer. "We posit that individuals monitor political affairs by responding habitually, and for the most part unthinkingly, to familiar and expected political symbols, that is, by relying on past thought, calculation, and evaluation. But the central claim of our theory is that when citizens encounter a novel or threatening actor, event or issue on the political horizon, a process of fresh evaluation and political judgment is required." The authors revise the traditional research paradigm. Political attentiveness, generally thought to be static in frequency, is seen as dynamic, along with affect, or feeling. Concepts of attitudes and party affiliation--traditionally thought of as having both thoughtful and habitual elements--are seen instead as being merely dominated by habitual behavior. Opposition between affect (feeling) and cognition is replaced by interaction between affect and cognition. The "intrumental orientation to political behavior" is replaced by a "mix of thoughtless reliance on habit and explicit calculation of interest." The "idealized notion of citizenship" is replaced by "political ideals and institutions informed by realism about psychological dynamics." Political issues, traditionally considered equivalent, are now considered a variable by issue type. Similarly, attentiveness and self-interest are no longer assumed to be considered contstansts but are considered variables. "Our research leads us to conceptualize affect and reason as two complementary mental states in a delicate, interactive, and highly functional dynamic balance," the authors state. "We...argue that affective systems manage both our response to novelty and our reliance on established habits. More importantly, our work suggests that in addition to managing our emotional reactions to things that are novel, threatening, and familiar, affect also influences when and how we think about such things." The authors invade the field of psychology and the neurosciences to present detailed findings. They discuss the brain's limbic region, which "governs behavior by monitoring primarily positive reinforcers and establishing dispositions." These dispositions are "attached to previous experiences (which) governs people's behavioral repertoires....The disposition system relies on emotional assignment to control the execution of habits: we sustain those habits about which we feel enthusiastic and we abandon those that cause us despair." The disposition system is contrasted with the surveillance system, "which acts to scan the environment for novelty and sudden intrusion of threat. It serves to warn us when we cannot rely on past learnings to handle what now confronts us and to warn us that some things and some people are powerful and dangerous. This system uses emotion to signal the consequences of its ongoing analyses. It generates moods of calmness, on the one hand, and anxiety, on the other...." After a detailed foray into the neurosciences to document these conclusions, the authors return to more traditional political science, analyzing in depth the detailed survey data in the 1980-1996 American National Election Studies, which focus on the attitudes of the American people towards the various Presidential candidates during this time period. They focus on the fluctuating levels of enthusiasm and anxiety towards various Presidential candidates, and find that as the level of anxiety towards a candidate that the voter would traditionally support on the basis of partisan affiliation rises, the voter searches the candidate's character and issue positions in far greater detail to see if the candidate is worthy of support. This provides a theoretical explanation for the power of negative campaigning, despite the fact that it is so widely widely detested. The affective intelligence theory is contrasted with the normal vote model and the rational choice model. Under the affective intelligence theory, the attentive voters are those who are either "habitually attentive" or those who are "anxious" about a candidate they would otherwise be inclined to support. "Those for whom new information generates anxiety" are "receptive to new information." In short, the decision on who to vote for is based on "either reliance on habituated cues or reasoned considerations when unfamiliar or threatening situations preclude routine reliance on habit." These conclusions are backed by statistical data from the ANES studies. Complacent voters place a 44% reliance on partisan cues, the find, while an anxious voter places only an 8% reliance on partisan cues. An anxious voter places almost twice as a great a share on reliance on candidate qualities than a complacent voter (35% to 19%), and almost twice as a great a share on policy preferences (57% to 35%). After their research was completed, I believe President Clinton helped prove that this intense focus on candidate qualities and policy preferences can ultimately work to benefit a candidate who makes voters anxious: the Democrats broke a long historical pattern and scored net gains of Congressional seats in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky scandals. This book is well worth reading and intensely studying by anyone who is active in political campaigns, by any journalist covering political campaigns, or by anyone studying political survey data. The authors seem to recognize the difficulties of penetrating the jargon they emply, and deal with the problem by frequent repetitions of the points they are making. A better written book would have been clearer and shorter. But the book is neither impenetrable or of excessive length, and the time it takes to master the points the authors are making is well worth the effort. The authors deserve credit for their success in both conceptualization and research design. Integrating the neurosciences with political science and communications is a useful innovation. The combing and combining of twenty years of Presidential polling data is also a useful and rather rare accomplishment. It will be difficult to find a more substantive and profound book on the creation and monitoring of public opinion than this one.

HOW TO LOSE EVERYTHING IN POLITICS EXCEPT MASSACHUSETTS
By Kristi Witker

Kristi Witker in 1972 was a journalist on a skiing vacation in Switzerland when she received an invitation to help with the McGovern campaign. It was the chance of lifetime. She took it. She later decided she had made the wrong choice, but she stuck it out and wrote about it. She received the offer because she traveled with Robert Kennedy's 1968 Presidential campaign,having been assigned to write a book on him for American Heritage Press. "Kennedy turned out to be an accessible candidate," she writes. "Traveling with the Kennedy campaign was a relaxing and enormously pleasureable experience." This book by a young woman who later became a successful television reporter is both hilarious and profound. Reading it provides a baseline for the political progress women have made. As Deputy Press Secretary, she was McGovern's highest ranking female staffer. Yet she was denied basic office furniture, and treated disrespectfully by other staff, who both withheld cooperation that she needed in order to do her job, and spread rumors about her sex life, which, she complains, was much more boring than she would have liked. A basic problem of the McGovern campaign was that it was led by the remnants of the Robert Kennedy campaign, who saw in McGovern's politics a chance to reclaim Kennedy's vision. But McGovern was not as well known, as charismatic, as politically skilled, and--perhaps most importantly--anywhere near as wealthy as Kennedy. "It looks like McGovern is nothing on his own, that he has to rely on the Kennedy ghost," Whitker fumes early in the campaign when a McGovern television commercial contains praise from RFK. Running as the Kennedy legacy candidate is hampered by Ted Kennedy's disinclination to campaign for McGovern in the primaries, and his refusal to accept McGovern's offer of the Vice-Presidential nomination. Ultimately, after various false starts (remember Tom Eagleton?), McGovern winds up with Kennedy borther-in-law Sargent Shriver as a runningmate, but it is too little, too late to secure the Kennedy constituency and unite the Democratic Party. She assails McGovern's lack of mastery of public policy mastery. "We have to do something on the economy," he tells a staff member." The staffer members asks what. "Something," McGovern repeats. McGovern's hatred of being committed to specific details led to a fatal lacks of clarity and inability to weed out bad ideas. His $1000 per person tax rebate was the quintessential bad idea. The limitations of McGovern's staff were also deadly. "His campaign was at first a minor effort appropriately run by minors, but as he came up, they felt they owned him and were determined not to share him. The candidate became their captive and they, in time, his limitation. These kids always had wildly impractical, rigid, theological notions about politics....(E)veryone had a title which suggested he was the boss. In fact, no one was." In the McGovern campaign, closeness to the center of the action was all. People wanted to be central staff, not field staff. Gary Hart did parlay his position as campaign manager (outranked by National Political Director Frank Mankiewcz though) into two terms in the U.S. Senate and two presidential candidacies. But a guy not mentioned in the book--Texas field staff director Bill Clinton--went a lot farther of course. So may his Texas co-worker Hillary Rodham, also not mentioned. What Clinton learned from McGovern was the importance of conducting a primary election campaign with the general election in mind. McGovern taught this lesson by failing to understand it. "Throughout the primaries," Witker writes,"McGovern and his staff had been running like a group of lemmings with blinders on, toward the sea, which, in their case, happened to be The Nomination. The Nomination was their only goal, a goal now out of all proportion because McGovern's longshot candidacy had made it seem unattainable. And because it had seemed unattainable, McGovern now credited it with mystical powers. If he won The Nomination, he would somehow become invincible and have anything he wanted." McGovern, a strong moral leader and an enduring political figure in the years since his 1972 campaign, could have been elected with a better campaign, Witker implies. That is difficult to say: in the 20th Century only Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton were able to defeat incumbent Republican presidents, and all had the benefit of deeply divided a Republican Party at the time. Both Witker's humor and political insights are still valuable today. No one should attempt to put together a large scale political operation without reading this book. And anyone grappling with the problems of how to run an extensive volunteer operation of any kind would also benefit. This is a great case study of the human resources issues involved in running a large volunteer operation. The campaign "was a once in a lifetime experience," Witker concludes. And, indeed, she never worked in a Presidential campaign again. Her summary of Republican appeal is an enduring one. "It was already a depressing year on top of a succession of depressing years: rising prices, falling stock market, scandals, the War, crime. Who wanted to think about goodness and justice and truth just now? It only reminded you of how little of it was around. Not many people trusted Nixon, but he wasn't taking away their money, or so they believed. No one knew whether to trust McGovern, but he was threatening to take away their money, so why bother to find out? Why listen?" Those who listen to Kristi Witker will benefit from the experience. If you are reading this review, you should read this book.

GRANDPA’S STORIES: MEMOIRS OF R. CHASE WHITAKER
By R. Chase Whitaker

In 1921, Princeton University junior R. Chase Whitaker was called home to what was then considered the rural part of Philadelphia (now it is known as Olney) from Princeton University to help save Whitaker's Mill, a business owned by the same family at same complex continuously since 1813. The family roots went back to England in the 1700's, where another branch of the family also had a Whitaker's Mill, which is now a museum. Chase Whitaker and his brother Howard succeeded in gradually modernizing plant operations that had failed to keep up with the times under the leadership of their brilliant but eccentric father James, who had turned down a faculty position at Princeton Univsity shortly after graduating there to continue the family tradition of working for Whitaker Mills. He was the sixth generation to do; Chase and Howard would be the seventh and final generation to lead the firm. It was "like a feudal village," one of Chase Whitaker's daughters told me on May 27, 2006, when a state commemorative plaque was placed on the parkland the family had donated to Philadelphia's Fairmount Park Commisssion after the company had been sold and transferred to Massachusetts in 1974. One of the themes of Whitaker's book is the gradual transition from a totally self-contained entity--which paid its employees in cash, which outside of family members had no college educated employees until the 1950's, which rented employees housing it owned, which had its own fleet of trucks, which produced its own power, which kept out unions until World War II pressure from the War Department gave it the choice of losing defense contracts or accepting unionization, which had a nearby farm, which did its own extensive construction, which had luxury executive housing for its CEO nearby--to a modern firm kept in business by sales, cost management, and technological innovation. The most famous character in the book is labor leader Solomon Stetin, who went on to lead the Textile Workers of America after his successful pressuring of Whitaker to recognize his union. Stetin was the real life leader who was to lead the union organizing drive on which the movie Norma Rae was based. Grandpa's Stories would be of greater relevance as a business book if more of the book dealt with Whitaker Mills. Instead, we are given a portrait of the Whitaker family in World War I, Princeton, dating, relating to his difficult parents and to his children, and coming to grips with his role as a relatively wealthy man basically submerged in a heavily blue collar world. His workday starts with his workers at 6:00 a.m., and he is frequently working with them doing difficult and sometimes dangerous skilled labor as well as attending to traditional management tasks. Whitaker comes off as a charming, conscientous, humane and decent man, who struggles with the demands of changing times and tries to do right with his suppliers, his customers, his workforce, and his country. This is a good book to give to anyone involved in running a struggling family business,or to one interested in the history of the textile industry, or the history of industrial Philadelphia.

WARRIOR POLITICS: WHY LEADERSHIP DEMANGS A PAGAN ETHOS
By Robert D. Kaplan

Every day, much is new in the world. The author argues that newness can be a mere distraction. In reality, he argues,foreign policy statecraft is essentially what it was in ancient times, before the rise of Christianity, mass communications, and widespread democracy.This is a bold assertion. It is one thing for a religious leader to plumb the depths of the Old Testament or the New Testament to provide insights to modern moral dilemmas. It is something else to assert that in important respects we still live in ancient times. One would hope that that thousands of years of experience, learning, and prayer would have fundamentally changed the way countries relate to each other.It is an assertion that leads to the discovery of unlikely heroes. For the last 14 years of his reign, from 23 A.D. to 37 A.D., the Roman Emperor Tiberius built a series of dungeons and torture chambers, and engaged in "obscene" cruelty. But, in the first nine years of his reign,he added military bases to the territories that Rome already possessed, and "combined diplomacy with the threat of force to preserve a peace that was favorable to Rome."The Han dynasty of China lasted over 400 years and "represented a grand harmony of peoples and systems," beginning in 206 B.C. The "wise delaying tactics" (the words of the great historian Livy) of Roman consul Quintus Fabius Maximus broke "the terrible continuity of Roman defeats." Said Fabius,"Never mind if they call your caution timidity, your wisdom sloth,your generalship weakness; it is better that a wise enemy should fear you than foolish friends should praise."The study of these and other ancients by governmental decision-makers is nothing new, Kaplan reminds us. Winston Churchill's early historical writings evoked memories of ancient historians that Churchill had presumably studied. Churchill writes of "civilization" versus "barbarism," fills his work with evocative battle scenes, great drama, and heroism. For Churchill, Kaplan writes, "glory is rooted in a morality of consequence, of actual results rather than good intentions."Niccolo Machiaevelli (1469-1527), the author of The Prince, also popularized ancient thinking: " he preferred a pagan ethic that elevated self-preservation over the Christian ethic of sacrifice, which he considered hypocritical."Machiavelli believed that ruthless tactics can be central to a statesman's virtue. "(V)irtue has little to do with individual perfection and everything to do with political result. Thus, for Machiavelli, a policy is defined not by its excellence but by its outcome; if it isn't effective, it can't be virtuous."The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)is also an intellectual heir of the ancients. "The sum of virtue," Hobbes writes, "is to be sociable with them that will be sociable, and formidable to them that will not."The ancient sources, and the great philosphers of modern or premodern times, are cited in service of an aggressive foreign policy. This book was very popular with intellectuals in the orbit of the Bush White House, for it is a series of skillful rhetorical arguments for interventionism, occasionally modified with warnings of dire consequences of failure.It is best suited for speechwriters, who can savor and appropriate eloquent sentence after eloquent sentence. It is also a good book for college classrooms, where its bold assertions provide grist for thousands of analytical term papers and theses.It is, though, not the best guide to actual foreign-policy making. In his numerous other works, Kaplan deals with reality in penetrating detail. Here, he marches across history with dazzling speed, uniting diverse historical subjects with present day events. This method spreads both insights and confusion. Mere mortals do not have the gift of prophecy. Alas, we do know which historical precedent is the most relevant until after a pending crisis is over. The inspirational words and deeds of the ancients are usually less relevant than detailed knowledge of the history of the conflict and the peoples involved.By all means, policymakers should read this book. They should be somewhat careful, however, about living it. The public virtue of successful ends cannot be totally separated from the individual private virtue of seeking morally desirable and appropriate means.

THE ALMANAC OF AMERICAN POLITICS, 2004
By Michael Barone

Before The Almanac of American Politics came along in the late 1960's, Congress was widely seen as either an impenetrable series of arcane rules, procedures, rituals, and conflicts which only experts could understand in detail--the prevailing view of political scientists--or a bunch of oddball characters who occasionally hindered or unjustly attracted attention from the great men serving as President--the prevailing view of journalists.The Alamanac of American Politics created a new and more accurate paradigm. The workings of Congress, it said, were comprehensible to informed and intelligent people. The personalities of Members of Congress, while occasionally idiosyncratic, were generally integrated with the purposeful actions members of Congress were taking on behalf of their geographical constituencies, their supporters, and their visions of local and national interests.In short, Members of Congress were rational actors acting within both a geographic and national context. Tip O'Neill's famous saying--"All politics are local"--was only partly true. All politics was also national. Citizens with national goals only had to find citizens with local sensitivites who shared their national goals to oppose incumbent Members of Congress.Congress is a far more competitive and short-tenured organization than it was before this series was written.Without The Almanac of American Politics, there would have been far fewer anti-war and pro-enviroment challenges in the early 1970's. The Democratic gains of 1974 and 1976 would have been far less sweeping. So would the Republican gains of 1980, 1994, and 2002. Had this series never been written, you never would have heard of Newt Gingrich.The compilation of information can be a profoundly political act. If you are at all interested in politics, you should read this book. You should not read it as a compilation of interesting trivia. You should read it knowing that people who count see it a guide to action.

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SOCIAL SECURITY

2006-09-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

Social Security Administration Analyst Susan Bussman gave members of the National Conference of State Legislatures' Labor and Workforce Development Committee a low-key but dramatic warning yesterday afternoon: President Bush has somewhat revised his Social Security "reform" plan, has the strong support of Social Security Subcommittee Chair Jim McCrery (R-Louisiana), and plans to bring it up for consideration again in 2007.
I was at the meeting representing the Pennsylvania legislature in the Committee's deliberations. Although my subsequent internet search revealed that this is a known fact among those who closely follow this issue (see a thorough analysis of the politics of 2007 Social Security schemes at http://socialsecurity.ourfuture.org/research-center/reports/socsecurity_and_06_elections.pdf), it is a fact that is too new to be widely known.)

August 15, 2006

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:GjYYJdbaHO4J:state-rep-mark-cohen-dem-pa.dailykos.com/main/2+%22daily+kos%22+mark+cohen&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

HEALTH

2006-09-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

Today, I was the leadoff the speaker at a Harrisburg state capitol rally against suicide. There are now about 50% more suicides each year (about 30,000) than homicides (about 20,000), and there are about 650,000 suicide attempts a year.

The high number of suicides is only slightly off the all-time record. Suicide usually results in large part from the physical weaknesses and chemical imbalances that cause mental illness, but the number of people who could attempt suicide is far higher than who do. Those who actually commit suicide--complete suicide according to the current language--are disproportionately the most vulnerable: gays, blacks, drug users, seriously mentally ill, those under pressure from either pressure to reduce dependency (those 15 through 24) or to increase dependency (those 75 or over). The Bush Administration record on suicide prevention is mixed. It has supported the doubling of suicide prevention funding passed by Congress in the wake of the recent suicide of the son Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Washington) and the the suicide three decades ago of the son of Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

The proliferation of grassoots groups around the nation in the past decade pushing suicide prevention has obviously been felt in the Bush Administration and in the Republican Congress. Bush has accepted the Clinton Adminstration's Suicide Prevention Initiative as a guide for his administration's policies, but his administration has threatened to shut down a suicide prevention hotline used disproportionately by gays.

The vast difference in resources between suicide prevention and crime prevention is jarring. I obtained $100,000 for suicide prevention awareness in this year's Pennsylvania budget, and this was hailed as a major achievement by Pennsylvania's suicide prevention community. But Pennsylvania spends about $1.5 billion a year in state prisons alone to fight crime.
I favor focus on suicide as a separate distinct problem. Completers (committers) of suicide that I have known include an uncle, a legislative staff member, the spouse of another legislative staff member, and a Philadelphia city councilman. I am sure that other deaths of people I know have been suicides even when family shame prevented them from being announced as such.
But it is obvious to me that suicide disproportionately affects those who are left behind by today's cruel and callous public policies. A society that valued all human lives, that had a safety net of services for the disadvantaged far greater than we have today, would have far less suicides.

I said at the rally that facing problems can give us the courage the solve them. That is true whether one looks at the increased incidence suicide over time as a problem in itself or as a symptom of broader societal disfunction. It is both, and we must deal with it on both levels.
It is outrageous, for instance, that Medicare pays 80% if the cost of treating physical illness, but only 50% of the cost of treating mental illness. It is shortsighted and tragic that families of murder victims are usually treated by society as victims themselves, even if the murder victim was criminally involved, while the families of suicide victims tend to be critically evaluated as possible causes of the suicide.

Every suicide, no less than every murder, is an example of a tragedy that should not have happened. As individuals and as a society, we can and should work to make suicide in the future as rare as the old prevalent of dueling to settle slights or insults is today.

September 12, 2006

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/12/23542/9347

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There was a time when Americans looked to the White House to lead in solving urgent national problems. That time is over. If urgent national problems are to be solved today, Americans must lead; state and local governments must follow; pressure must be built up on Washington so huge that no amount of campaign contributions or lobbyhist machinations can get in the way.
At the annual meeting of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, which I attended representing Pennsylvania as part of the annual National Conference of State Legislatures, the American Nurses Association presented a panel designed to demonstrate a commitment to taking the lead on urgent national problems.

The promise was made that state affiliates would educated in these issues, and that a truly national effort would be made.

August 16, 2006

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:GjYYJdbaHO4J:state-rep-mark-cohen-dem-pa.dailykos.com/main/2+%22daily+kos%22+mark+cohen&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

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All professional associations and all business advocacy groups would love to totally ban all suits against their members, which would save them a lot of money.That is totally unrealistic, of course, so they try to come as close to that as possible. It is totally unrealistic because without liabilty, all the financial incentives in health would be to cut corners and take risks with people's lives. Financial incentives are not the only factor determining people's behavior, but they are a major factor.Pennsylvania's subsidy enables most doctors to get the high incomes--often over $200,000 per year--they feel their hard work and extensive educational preparation entitles them to, while preserving the rights of those persons who are seriously injured by medical errors to sue.The whole problem with health insurance is that the vast majority of the time, many people do not need it; but the vast majority of people need it sooner or later. Most day to day medical care is affordable, but serious illnesses or conditions can be extremely expensive and financially disastrous to all but the wealthiest of people.Medical savings accounts are OK, but they are most useful for doctors bills or outpatient medical procedures. Spending a week in a hospital without health insurance would wipe out the balance of almost all medical savings accounts.

August 10, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=301523#post301523

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Pennsylvania for the past few years Pennsylvania has been subsidizing medical malpractice insurance with cigarette tax revenues. I have supported this policy.At some time in the future, Pennsylvania's malpractice insurance should become more affordable because the state has made various changes requested by the Medical Society and because there is now competition for medical insurance business which should drive down prices.Until there is agreement that the malpractice insurance has reached a level of affordability, I favor continuing the malpractice insurance subsidy.

August 9, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=301092#post301092

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Massachusetts--one half the population of Pennsylvania--has enacted a comprehensive and extremely complicated plan to ensure every person there. It contains the unique idea of taxing every individual for a health care insurance premium of roughly $300, and is feasible on paper (there are widespread doubts about actual implementation) in part because Massachusetts already spends much more than most other states do on health care.Both Vermont and Maine also have passed less ambitious and comprehensive health care plans. I and other legislators--along with interest groups ranging from the Hospital Association, the Chamber of Business and Industry, and the AFL-CIO, and Pennsylvania's pioneering and widely acclaimed Health Care Cost Containment Council, which I helped establish in 1986---are looking at these New England plans to see what we can support for here in Pennsylvania.In addition, Governor Rendell has set up a task force on health care financing reform, which began meeting long before the New England plans were finalized. Rendell's task force should be reporting within a month or so, and it's report will have the benefit of both in depth study and the New England plans.Based on the thoroughness of Rendell's preparation of past plans, I think that whatever his team comes up with will be taken extremely seriously in Harrisburg.I would not at all be surprised if there was kind of pool set up for small businesses and individuals to purchase health care more cheaply than at present.Getting more people covered is key to getting the financing necessary to provide more health care. Governor Romney said his "key insight" was that everybody now gets expensive and often too late health care through emergency rooms; what we need is cheaper, earlier and more useful health care in doctors' offices.

August 9, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=300778#post300778

HOUSING

2006-07-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

As a matter of public policy, I favor the city deferring taxes for low-income senior citizens caught in this dilemma until their death or until the house is put up for sale, whichever occurs first. I believe the City of Philadelphia should be compassionate to people who feel unable to leave a neighborhood which has gradually or suddenly become above their means as poperty owners.

June 3, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=501358#post501358

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The number of homes and condos being listed for sale continue to rise dramatically, while the actual number of sales for both homes and condos are rising only slowly. A continuation of these trends would seem to lead to reductions in home prices and a glut in the market, at least in the short run. At the very least, they should discourage short-term real estate speculation.On the other hand, the figures of Kevin C. Gillen, PhD, at http://www.goppelt.net/phpi/phpi/q06.pdf, offer reason for optimism for the strength of home ownership as an investment, coupled with caution as to affordablity for moderate income folks. More homes were sold in the first quarter of 2006 than at all but one first quarter (2005) in the last decade, including an all-time first quarter high of homes sold at $1million or more.The only neighborhood in Philadelphia to suffer price declines in the first quarter of 2006 was the overheated University City neighborhood, where prices have already risen 587% since the first quarter of 1980 and 322.5% since the first quarter of 1996.Philadelphia's House Price to Rent Ratio, equal to the U.S. average in 1980, has outpaced the U.S. average since 2005 after falling behind it in 1992. Philadelphia's change in housing inventories from April 2005 to April 2006 (39%) has risen more slowly than that of Phoenix (282%), Miami (236%), Washington, D.C. (230%), Los Angeles(149%), San Diego (91%), Boston (91%), New York (70%), San Francisco (65%), Detroit (46%), and Minneapolis (43%). We are higher though than Chicago (28%), Las Vegas (24%), Denver (19%), Atlanta (15%), Seattle (5%), Dallas (0%), and Houston (-3%).Further 10% of the homes purchased in Philadelphia in 2005 were not owner-occupied, lower than at least 10 other cities. Only 7% of the mortgage originations permitted negative amortization, also lower than at least ten other cities. Only 19% of 2005 Mortgage Originations in Philadelphia required interest-only payments, lower than at least 14 other cities. PMI Mortage Insurance Company was quoted in the April 10, 2006 Business Week, as saying that there was only a 12% chance of house price declines in Philadelphia over the next two years, a lower figure than in at least 10 other cities. The only bad news that Dr. Gillen offers is the decline in affordability of Philadelphia housing. As late as 2003, Philadelphia houses cost less than 1.5 times the average annual Philadelphia income, as was true in 1980. Since then however, Philadelphia houses have risen to costing 2.3 times the average annual Philadelphia income. Dr. Gillen does not report this, but in the last year that income figures were available (I think it was 2005, but it could have been 2004), average income fell while prices skyrocketed. Both trends cannot continue indefinitely; I suspect income stagnation is a cause of increasing inventory of houses and condos that TimK is reporting.I am greatful to Dr. Gillen, Ed Goppelt, and TimK for making all this information so readily available.

May 25, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256031#post256031

CRIME

2006-07-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

A President committed to reducing crime could:(1) Order the same kind of scrutiny towards American imports for illegal drugs that American air passengers now get every day;(2) Give high-crime areas of the United States financial resources to hire thousands of new police, parole workers, recreation workers, tutors, and others who would aggressively work to get our criminally inclined young people out of criminal subcultures and into the American mainstream;(3) Keep a close rein on the CIA, the State Department, and the Defense Department to stop or at least severely limit deals with drug suppliers achieving foreign policy objectives by easing access to American consumers or otherwise strengthening their ability to get illegal drugs into the United States;(4) Find a way consistent with the second amendment to reduce the flow of guns into the hands of criminals and potential criminals in urban areas;(5) Work to expand access to the middle class through better schools, greater college aid, and clear pathways to job opportunities in order to reduce the appeal of criminal lifestyles;(6) Effectively pressure large American corporations to dramatically reduce films, gangsta rap music, video game murders and other media that collectively glorify criminal subcultures and evangelize for violence, drug use, theft, rape, and other crimes;(7) Work with responsible media elements to develop and distribute and fund alternate media creating compelling images and catchy music and responsible role models of people playing by the rules and having a good, long life as a result.I am sure that many other things could be done as well. A Presidency aggressively committed to reducing crime would undoubtedly lead to a lot of innovative thought and active public discussion and research as to what works and what does not work in the fight against crime.

August 12, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=551724#post551724

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During my years in the state legislature, I have voted successfully to re-establish the death penalty and to make death penalty appeals end quicker, to establish and increase mandatory minimum sentences for numerous crimes, to ban guns in schools and on route to schools, to set up special schools for students with severe discipline problems and/or significant criminal records, to allow the admission of DNA evidence, to clear up loopholes allowing guilty people to escape punishment, to meet the conditions of France for extraditing convicted murderer Ira Einhorn, to construct various additional prisons, to more intensely surveill those whose records show them more likely to commit serious crimes, to allow prosecutors expanded wiretapping power, to expand witness protection programs, and to establish and expand programs protecting battered men and women from brutal spouses or lovers.I have worked successfully to increase funding for public education to the extent that Philadelphia schools now get about 63% of their budget from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to give social workers power to remove children from the homes of parents or guardians who brutalize them, to establish and increase the penalties for hate crimes, to establish boot camps for young and salvageable offenders, to make it clear despite prior precedent that the crime of rape applies to single women who are not virgins, to maintain and increase funding for drug and alchol abuse treatment programs, to create added penalties for crimes against law enforcement officers, to make driving under the influence of drugs a crime, to toughen penalties against drunk drivers and people who fail to pay required child support, to allow confiscation of proceeds from crimes, and to ban legal profiteering from the commission of crimes.I do not think we have done enough. My search for increased workable ideas in the fight against crime is one of the reason for my purchase of various public policy books on crime and my eagerness to serve on Speaker Dennis O'Brien's proposed Commission on Crime Prevention.We have gone from about 10,000 Pennsylvanians in state and local prisons when I was first elected to about 60,000 today, from total annual spending of about $100 million a year for state prisons to over $1.6 billion a year today for state prisons. We need more resources to fight crime--such as financial support for police and intensive resources to monitor and train at risk youths for worthwhile societal roles. We need the same kind of intensive federal supervision of goods shipped into the U.S.--which too often harbor illegal drugs--that we have of airline passengers today. We need the same kind of outrage and resources directed against those who kill law enforcement officers as against those who kill Americans abroad.

August 12, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=551724#post551724

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We need more efforts to prevent crimes from occurring. We need to educate all students in peaceful conflict resolution strategies. We need to target those who are most at risk. We need to stigmatize going to prison so that it does not give street cred, so that it is not an acceptable rite of passage. We need to make it clear that life has value, that illegal drugs kill some people and shorten the lives of many. We need a much broader understanding of what legitimate career options are, the futility of either buying or selling illegal drugs, and that those who sell drugs are not community friends or service providers but community enemies.All this takes a lot of money. Some of this is being done by city agencies to some extent already; the mayor has his cabinet will be briefing legislators in detail on what is being done after Labor Day. Reducing the flow of guns in Philadelphia would be helpful for the simple reason that it is much easier to kill or maim someone with a gun than with any other weapon. But I certainly agree that the problem goes far beyond guns.Pennsylvania is something like 8th per capita in prison spending, but only 30th per capita in overall anti-crime spending. I have tried repeatedly without success to get the state to spend more money on fighting crime; Philadelphia certainly could use it.Despite the major problems we now face, there are signs that some good things are occurring. Only about 3% of all Philadelphia murders are of strangers; random murder is now close to being extinct. Spousal violence is way down from its peak across the country. And the current increase in murders follows some of the lowest yearly murder totals since the 1960's.

August 8, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=299799#post299799

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While no one can dispute that crime in cities is greater than in suburbs, crime in the suburbs is clearly growing faster. There is nothing in a suburban location that stops the existence of street crime, and much that both attracts criminals and leads citizens to leave their guard down.It is easier to cover up the commission of non-obvious murders there, because the police are less suspicious of so-called accidents. And crime sometimes goes to the suburbs for the same reason that Jesse James robbed banks: James said he robbed banks because "That's where the money is."If one excludes the large number of crimes that are committed both against criminals by other criminals and against people in poverty by other people in poverty, the crime rate against middle class Philadelphians is far lower than the crime rate against the city as a whole. It is still higher than the crime rate in many suburbs, but not so high that people should be paralyzed by fear.

May 26, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256194#post256194

CITY CONTROLLER

2006-07-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

Alan Butkovitz, a 15 year veteran of the legislature, was elected last November in the last election to succeed Saidel. Butkovitz is in the process of thoroughly examining the powers of the office and studying intently how his predessessors handled the job. He is a diligent, thorough, and innovative man who has great potential in this position.

June 4, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=260054#post260054

LIBRARIES

2006-07-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

The Northeast Library is jammed with people almost all the time.Shutting down the Holmesburg Library and telling all its many patrons to come to the Northeast Library will only increase waits and reduce service. The last thing the Northeast Library and its existing clientele need is more people there at most times.Similarly, the Coleman Library in Northwest Philadelphia would get some of the overflow if the Ogontz Library is shut down and the Logan Library is shut down. That library too is jammed almost all the time.It doesn't take any detailed study to see that libraries being shut down serve a vital purpose. Government budgeting has this in common with family budgeting: if you cannot afford existing expenditures, you cannot afford new expenditures.New York City, BTW, with five years of the 311 system under its belt, now has a deficit of $4 billion, about the size of Philly's total budget, which it will take a combination of taxes and program cuts to pay off.

November 30, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/71017-interview-managing-director-camille-barnett-4.html

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I am afraid that two libraries in my district--both of which have charter schools nearby--are going to be shut down, leaving many people without access to books, the internet, and job data bases.These libraries are full of people from modest means taking responsibility for their own futures and those of their children, precisely the kind of behavior that is most needed in our city today.I am afraid that library near my district will be shut down in Northeast Philadelphia, having the same kind of impact on my constitutents and others.I am afraid that the 311 system will be an expensive acquisition for the City of Philadelphia. Nobody here has talked about its costs, but the New York Times for December 1, 2003 found that in its first year, the 311 system had start up costs of $21 million and operating costs of $27 million per year. It had a total staff of 375 people, and generated millions of calls, while the total number of calls to the 911 system remained the same.Let's start asking tough questions about how much the 311 system is going to cost, and what programs are going to have to be cut, or what taxes are going to have to be raised, in order to pay for it.

November 30, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/71017-interview-managing-director-camille-barnett-5.html

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I would recommend that people looking to donate books give them to a high school library. Pennsylvania schools generally, and Philadelphia schools in particular, rank school libraries as low priorities. The State library system says a school library should spend $38 per student per year, but the state average is only about $18 and the city average is less than $7.

June 4, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=260057#post260057

PRIVACY

2006-07-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

It certainly is fascinating information for all concerned citizens to ponder. The linked articles don't deal with it, but I believe I have read that some of the sellers of widely used social software are also in the data mining business. I believe I am accurate in recalling that Greg Palast has written of Choice Data Point's connections with one or more of the social software providers.Obviously, people should be careful of what they write online. Email and internet postings might as well be written in stone and protected by a phalanx of armed guards; they are extremely hard to get rid of. Even psuedononymous postings might well be cracked and somehow indexed under a person's name.For the vast majority of people the vast majority of the time, being the subject of a large database file will have no effect. But if some one somehow gets in the way of somebody who has access to this database, one can expect a lot of derogatory information to come piling out.It is not generally known that Martin Luther King was one of the major figures in the history of American copyright law. This happened when private concerns started making a lot of money selling King's speeches. King's lawyers, seeking a source of income to support King while he advanced his civil rights activities, argued that King's speeches were only in the public domain for the specific audience that was present to hear them. For everyone else, they were King's private property, and they had to pay royalties to use them. The U.S. Supreme Court bought this argument, and it revolutionized American copyright law.Similarly, it can be argued that information is only in the public domain for the purpose in which it was generated, and not for permanent database collection. I would hope the Supreme Court would buy this argument, and I would love to work on a case like this as an attorney, either representing clients, or more likely due to an extremely demanding schedule, as the writer of an amicus brief.A country in which intimate personal knowledge about hundreds of millions of people is in data bases to be employed at will against the interests of any of those hundreds of millions of people at the whim of the data base ower or whoever contracts with the data base owner is not a free country. I am introducing shortly a bill seeking to guarantee privacy of cell phone records, and it is obvious from this thread that much more has to be done at both state and federal levels to protect our citizens.

June 14, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=265949#post265949

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Seand and ChiefSalsa may well be right that laughter and ridicule is the best defense against intrusive data mining. Just as in the FBI's massive investigations as to who once was a communist, and who associated with one or more people who once were a communinist, and who associated with one or more people who associated with one or more who once were a communist, most of the information that comes out is of mind-numbing triviality and complete insignificance.On the other hand, information about people's relationships can be used to manipulate people. The FBI in the late 1940's found that a communist named Morris Childs was so disillusioned with communism that he had almost completely dropped out of the Communist Party. They recruited him as an agent. With their extensive knowledge of the Communist Party--probably far greater than possessed by any single communist--they plotted a brilliant comeback campaign for Childs which led him to rise to the number two position in the Communist Party based on his uncanny knowldedge of the relationships and opinions of each person who counted in the Communist Party.The FBI then successfully worked to make Childs indispensable to the Communist Party so that he would hold onto his top leadership position. With the FBI's helpful knowledge of the key people in the Soviet hierarchy, he successfully solicited the money to finance the party organization, financing they kept getting until the Soviet Union dissolved. The FBI then widely leaked the information that the Soviet Union was financing the American Communist Party, trying to discredit the Communist Party simultaneously with trying to keep it alive, and keeping Childs as a high-ranking leader of it. Child's autobiography discusses these somewhat contradictory efforts--brilliant and repulsive simultaneously-- in extraordinary detail.Similarly, in their notorious COINTELPRO operation, the FBI sent tapes of alleged Martin Luther King sexual encounters to his wife and friends, and undermined various organizations by feeding false information to close friends of radical leaders they disapproved of. Relationships, organizations, and marriages were destroyed by these kind of tactics.These kind of tactics were employed against Democrats like George McGovern and Ed Muskie in 1971 and 1972, and helped contribute to the Nixon landslide just as Watergate was unfolding. Part of the fascination with the Watergate tapes is hearing Nixon's inquiries, suggestions, and enjoyment with these tactics.These kind of tactics undermine trust between persons and make talking, planning, or outreach far more difficult. They are not what one would expect from high-ranking people in an extraordinarily idealistic nation.

June 15, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=266007#post266007

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The news that records of all phone calls from various telephone companies (including Verizon) have gone into a database is outrageous. It is well worthy of the effort that the ACLU and other organizations are making to dismantle this system of surveillance.When one person calls another, he or she is not doing something for which answers and explanations should normally be provided. Of course, one can come with scenarios of illegal activity which justify surveillance: that is why we have legally authorized wiretapping under certain very limited circumstances. A database of all phone calls made, coupled with databases of health care records, databases of financial records, databases of political activities, databases of books and magazines purchased, databases of internet searches made, etc. are creating a future in which many, many details about people's lives will be available to those who have access to the data bases.If the right to privacy that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court believes is covered by the U.S. Constitution is to be meaningful, it should cover this kind of absurdly overbroad intrusiveness.A future in which the minutiae of each person's life is publicly available to those with access to the data base is a future in which people will be operating in a state of fear. Thought, social interaction, and access to needed advice and professional help all will be curtailed. This is not the type of country many tens of millions of Americans would want to live in.

May 24, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=255206#post255206

RACE RELATIONS

2006-07-05T12:29:00.000-07:00

You don't fight racial stereotypes with more racial stereotypes. You fight racial stereotypes by making clear you recognize people of all races as individual human beings, and by setting an example for others to encourage them to do likewise. Indivividual human beings are responsible for their own actions, but the race they are a member of is not responsible.

June 21, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=514431#post514431

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We all are fundamentallly members of the human race more than of any individual race. Growing anthropological and DNA research suggests common ancestors with the unlikeliest people: Al Sharpton, for instance, appears to be a cousin of Strom Thurmond. That the 1948 States Rights Party candidate, Thurmond, is likely related to the 2004 black insurgent Democrat makes for one of the oddest political family dynasties on record or imaginable.K. Leroy Irvis--the wisest and most articulate and most eloquent of the one thousand or so legislators with whom I have served in the Pennsylvania legislature and a leader of civil rights demonstrations in Pittsburgh while Martin Luther King was a student--was a big proponent of the theory of The Human Race. He had researched his ancestry long before it was fashionable to do, and had learned he had Dutch, English, and Indian ancestors as well as African ones. Irvis gave numerous speeches while in the legislature and in his retirement about The Human Race and the problems it faced, but I cannot remember a single instance where his theme was picked up by others. The vast majority of people seem comfortable with their racial identities, and are reluctant to even subtly challenge them.But race is to a major degree a social construct. Around the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries--and long before that--people in the United States often considered Jews, Irish, Italians, Poles, and others to be members of separate races. What we now consider to be religious intermarriage--a generally boring topic today--was considered by many to be very similar or equivalent to the then hot topic of racial intermarriage.A whole field of sociology asks and seeks to answer the question of how diverse ethnic groups then considered to be separate races gradually over time came to be considered to be white. The intriguing subtext of these inquiries is whether or not it is possible for black people to someday be considered white.

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=35622

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A racist is not an amateur sociologist who studies the prevalence of different traits among members of different races.A racist is a person who believes that one race is composed of superior people who are entitled to special rights and privileges by virture of their race and other races are composed of inferior people who are entitled to neither legal rights nor respect from people of the best race.Racists see people as stereotypes and not as individuals.Racists look to make a case for the inferiority of the race or races they dislike, without much if any attention to reality.

September 17, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=327776#post327776

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I have no doubt that there is more friendly interaction and mutual respect between people of different races than there used to be. Racial polarization in elections is at an all-time low. More white people are accepting the idea that there might be desirable housing in predominantly black neighborhoods than ever before, and far fewer white people desire to sell their houses because a black neighbor moved in than ever before.That being said, there still are obvious signs of cultural differences and mutual discomfort. I continue to be struck by the large numbers of events that I attend that are either virtually all white or virtually all black--from professional events to lobbying events to community events to funerals. There clearly are a good number of people who feel uncomfortable attending events where the vast majority of the crowd will be from a different race, or that are held in a neighborhood generally populated by people of a different race.Both white people and black people have complained to me about the general officiousness of various sales clerks. Sales clerks are often temporary employees who are under great pressure to see that there is no shoplifting.Many black people believe that they are under suspicion the minute they enter various stores, and that they are made uncomfortable by pressure from sales clerks. I would hope that stores would recognize this and in their own interest find other ways to discourage shoplifting without discouraging shopping.

June 14, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=265386#post265386

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Judging all of Northeast Philadelphia by the attitudes expressed by some is as wrong as judging all people of a race, religion, national origin, etc. by the worst behavior of some group members.People of different races share many common problems and have many common aspirations. Focusing on the common good for all people can unite people of different races, incomes, occupations, neighborhoods, etc. Generally speaking, Northeast Philadelphia--like other Philadelphia neighborhoods--could use more leadership focused on problem solving and a lesser focus on scapegoating for existing problems.

May 11, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=248213#post248213

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Focus on Racial Differences Rarely Leads Anywhere
Throughout my life, I have known various people of different races who were at least extremely focused--and sometimes obsessed--with questions and grievances about the behavior of people of one or more other races. When they were in this mode, they had very limited effectiveness in doing much about their grievances.To the degree they were able to surmount a fixation on racial differences, they were able to have a much greater positive effect. Treating people of other races as people--as opposed to treating them as targets--can allow one to influence their behavior to some degree. It can also allow one to find allies of all races to deal with problems such as rundown housing, excessive noise, kids running around without adult supervision, etc.Forty and fifty years ago, when a black family moved into a white neighborhood, dozens of houses would quickly go up for sale; when a second black family moved, scores more would up for scale; when a third black family moved in, there would hundreds more up for sale. This kind of panic selling undermined real estate values and led to massive and virtually immediate changes in the composition of neighborhoods.This is not happening in Northeast Philadelphia today. Neighborhood change is happening at a much slower rate, and is influenced far more by deaths and job-related residential changes than by the fears that motivated so many in the past. We should use the time that we now have to work to build bridges among the ever-changing composition of groups in Northeast Philadelphia. The fact of change is nothing new: there were few Jews or people of Italian descent in Northeast Philadelphia before World War II, and many veterans of Northeast Philadelphia can recall with great specificity when the first person of many ethnic groups moved into their block.

Post Date 5.11.06
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=248254#post248254

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Dissident74--in post 15--had the best one-liner I have ever seen on the subject of racism, when he said that "Racism is misdirected anger." I think he is absolutely right on this.We can all go to dictionaries to get definitions of what racism is, but many interactions of daily life do not fit clearly either inside or outside the various definitions. Being justifiably angry at any person is not racism, but extrapolating that anger towards an entire race of people is. There is not a tremendous need in our society for people to become what could be called "racism police." What there is a tremendous need for is people willing to make a determined effort to get along with, come to understand, and be friends with people of other backrounds, including, but not limited to, people of other racial backrounds.There is a lot to be angry about in Philadelphia. The genuine problems of Philadelphia are a key reason why there has been significant middle class flight out of the city, and out of other cities. Introspection about one's personal attitudes can be personally useful, but an accusatory tone towards others is generally less useful than finding ways to work together, play together, and live together, and encouraging others to do likewise.There have been vast improvements in my lifetime. When I was a young man, many people used to express great fear of miscegnation (racial intermarriage) and use that fear to justify racial hostility. Today, I would guess that many people on this blog never even heard of that term.People are conflicted about issues of race. Period. People know people of other races who fit racial stereotypes, and people of other races who do not fit racial stereotypes. Knowing people over time usually leads to the discovery that sometimes they view things in a stereotypical way, but most times they do not.The late Philadelphia Mayor and School Board President Richardson Dilworth occasionally used inflammatory language himself out of his frustration with racial problems. In the mid-1960's, when people were talking about quick solutions to racial problems, he warned that racial problems were so serious that "it could take 30 years to solve them." Of course, his dire prediction then seems wildly optimistic today.Around the beginning of the 20th century, when my grandparents were getting their naturalization certificates, race was a far more inclusive concept than it is today. People from Ireland and Italy and Jews, for instance, were all considered to be people of different races. Gradually, over time, it came to be accepted that people from Ireland and Italy and Jews were, in fact, white.My hope is that, sometime in the future, people of all races will somehow be considered just to be people. My legislative hero, the late House Speaker K. Leroy Irvis, used to talk repeatedly of "the human race." It is time for moreand more of us to start thinking in these terms rather than becoming what centenarian African-American leader Samuel Evans refers to as "warring tribes."

May 12, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=248883#post248883

PROPERTY TAX

2006-07-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

Shortly before 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 14, 2006, the House joined the Senate in passing the largest and widest coverage senior citizen property tax rebate plan in the history of Pennsylvania.I was an active supporter of this plan, speaking in its favor twice on the House floor and actively encouraging my fellow Democrats in caucus to vote for it. It is a major step forward for stabilizing neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, as it will greatly reduce the chances of a senior citizen having to sell his or her home in order to pay property taxes.

June 14, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=265906#post265906

OIL

2006-07-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

It's interesting to see how oil company spokespersons and experts who have to deal with oil companies on a regular basis use feel-good euphemisms to gloss over the unpleasant fact that gas prices prices rise immediately in case of a supply crisis, but fall very slowly when that supply crisis has eased.That is the case right now, when gas prices should have fallen precipitously.Instead, an industry spokesman says pricing contains as "asymmetric bias to the upside" and the head of a research institute describes the "rockets and feathers effect" under which prices surge up rapidly, and then fall slowly.What we need are effective alternative energy policies to cut through this rhetorical fog. See the following link from CNN for more information about the obfuscation:http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/18/news...rtune/?cnn=yes

May 20, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=253268#post253268

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Governor Ed Rendell continued his exemplary and ever-improving record of environmental leadership today when he set the goal of preparing legislation for introduction by the end of July that would require all transportation fuels sold in Pennsylvania to be blended with cleaner-burning alternative fuels produced domestically.Rendell's announcement was made on the same day as the opening of a WoGo ethanol fueling station in Lititz, Lancaster County. It is the first station in Pennsylvania--and in the Northeast--which is offering an 85% ethanol blend to the public.Rendell hopes to ultimately be able to replace 900 million gallons of gas and diesel with alternatives. He expects that ten years from now, Pennsylvania will be importing 900 million gallons from the Persian Gulf.Four states--Hawaii, Minnesota, Montana, and Washington--have implemented a fuel standard for ethanol or biodiesel, and other states are considering it. Ethanol comes from corn and timber, while biodiesel is soy-based.Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, says that about four gallons out of 10 sold in the U.S. are now mixed with ethanol, which usually comprises 10%. All cars can accept a 10% blend.Only a fraction of the cars on the road, about 5 million out of 220 million-- can accept the 85% ethanol mixture now being sold in Lititz--typically large trucks and luxury sedans. Most states--including Pennsylvania neighbors Maryland, Ohio and West Virginia--have at least one gas station that sells 85% ethanol gas. But it is sold at only 600 out of the country's 180,000 gas stations.Renewable Fuels Association spokesman Hartwig says the price of ethanol-blended fuels is generally competitive with fuels that are not blended, although ethanol can bring down the price of gasoline in places where it is readily available.Clearly, to use E-85, the 85% ethanol gas, will take a long-term change in both the design of cars and the equipment and supplying of gas stations.This posting is a summary of an Associated Press article by Marc Levy posted today in the website of the Allentown Morning Call and today's broadcast on KYW Radio by Tony Romeo. I thank Grassrootspa.com for calling these reports to my attention.

http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/state/all-a1_rendellmay11,0,312088.story?coll=...http://kyw1060.com/pages/34419.php?

May 11, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=248560#post248560

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13% of the people polled in an April IssuesPa/Pew Poll--which also asked people where they stand on other issues--said they believe gas prices are now the state's most important problem. This compares to just 6% of the people who said that in a March poll.The federal government can do much more about this problem than state governments can. Whether the numbers of people who answer in this way continues to increase around the country--and whether these people mobilize in some way to let their opinion be widely known--will have some impact on what governmental actions are taken to reduce gas prices, develop alternative energy sources, and aid mass transportation.

May 11, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=248224#post248224

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MTBE can be sent by pipeline because it does not mix with water, while the water-mixing ethanol can only be sent by tanker truck, a more time-consuming and labor intensive process. Supposedly, this conversion process should have been completed by May 5--three days ago--and therefore price and supply problems should now be easing.I would welcome reading replies from anyone with insights into this issue. It would be good to know how deep a price reduction we can expect once the conversion process is completed, and what could be done to speed the conversion process if, in fact, the May 5 deadline has not been met. It would also be good to get ideas on what further governmental role, if any, is appropriate here.

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=246097#post246097

May 8, 2006

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The facts behind Lord Acton's well-known aphorism that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" are probably a factor here. The great wealth that can accrue to producers of oil undoubtedly leads to bribes, coups, intense palace politics, and desperate attempts to hang onto political power by cruel and unusual means.I agree that higher oil prices will inevitably be a fact of life. That is why I am leading the push in the Pennsylvania legislature for plug-in hybrid cars,and why I am strong supporter of numerous forms of alternative energy. I think the replacement of MTBE by ethanol is a step in the right direction which is very much in the public interest that it succeed.Experts generally agree that we already have reached, or will soon reach, world peak production of oil. The U.S. peak production level was reached in 1970. As the economies of India--with about four times U.S. population--and China--with about five times U.S. population--continue to thrive, they will inevitably continue to bid up the price of oil. To the degree that this reduces unnecessary travel and unnecessary consumption, there will be some public benefits to this.But we have to be aware that higher price oil inevitably creates economic hardships, and we have to seek out measures to reduce these hardships on people--the vast majority of citizens--who are either in debt or who have little or any cash reserves.

May 8, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=246365#post246365

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I have decided to introduce a resolution in the Pennsylvania House calling for the federal government to lift the 54 cent tariff (tax) on ethanol imports, which should save 8 cents a gallon. I thank Eldondre for first calling the issue to my attention.This is only a small step in the direction of affordable gasoline, but it is a small step which should be taken. It is action by governments at the state and federal level that led to the adoption of 10% ethanol in each gallon of gas requirement, and the federal government should be trying to help keep the cost of ethanol down to spare the motorists.Both New York Senator Charles Schumer, a leader for consumer rights, and President Bush have announced their support for dropping the tariff at least temporarily. This will not likely play well in Iowa--the ethanol capitol of the U.S.--but should be generally popular in the Congress and in the country. And Iowa can't complain too much, because only governmental decisions gave ethanol the favorable position it now enjoys.http://nysun.com/article/32312/

May 9, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=246783#post246783

ECONOMICS

2006-07-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Most politicians deal with reality, while most economists deal with theory.Theories with powerful backers are extremely hard to dislodge because so many businesses have a vested interest in propping them up.Where are all the unemployed Pennsylvanians who have been laid off since the minimum wage hit $6.25 an hour in Pennsylvania on January 1, 2007 or $7.15 on July 1, 2007? Where are all the businesses who relocated to Pennsylvania from New York and New Jersey during the interregnum where the minimum wage was higher there than here? Examples of the results predicted by the theory are few and far between.The theory is unemployment rises when minimum wages go up. The real live practical experience is that more often than not, unemployment actually goes down when minimum wages go up because more people go into the work force and fill up vacancies.The movement to raise minimum wages is national and worldwide. Minimum wages would not keep rising in countries throughout the world if unemployment kept rising with them or if inflation jumped out of control. Business communities are not exactly powerless anywhere.The economic theory on the minimum wage is, in fact, largely wrong. Indeed it contradicts conservative economic theory on welfare reform, which holds that the way to get people off welfare is to make the economic difference between working and not working as large as possible. The conservative welfare reform theorists are right, and the conservative minimum wage theorists are wrong.

I am committed to using governmental power to raise standards of living to the greatest possible degree. I am hardly unique in that commitment.I am loyal to the interests of my constituents, and not theories of economists that have little relationship to reality.Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve Board started out as an Ayn Rand ideological theorist. But, as his career evolved, he became interested in how things actually worked. He learned that theories are places to begin a search for truth, but they are not truth itself. He became legendary for developing a network of obscure governmental statisticians working for various governmental departments, who would promptly report changes in what they measured to him before it was generally known.Greenspan was a great Federal Reserve Board Chairman because cared about what actually happened. He was repeatedly re-appointed by Presidents of both parties because he lived in the world of reality. More minimum wage economists should shun corporate patronage and join Greenspan in that world.

August 2, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=544773#post544773

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While I would like to get the Brookings report and evaluate its findings in greater detail, I believe it shows the decline of union jobs in the manufacturing sector more than anything else.

Manufacturing businesses all over the city of Philadelphia and all over America have been shutting down in recent decades. My legislative district is typical. The old Kelsey-Hays plant in Olney is now a major shopping center at Front and Olney Square. The old Exide plant accross from Hill Creek Apartments at Adams and Rising Sun Avenue is now a smaller shopping center. The old Sears distribution center is now a shopping center across from Friends Hospital at Adams and Roosevelt Boulevard. The old Whitaker Mills factory complex is now part of Tacony Creek Park at Rising Sun Avenue and Tabor Road.

In some respects, my legislative district is a better place, with far more convenient shopping opportunities and additional parkland. And all the new shopping centers drove the owners of a small shopping center to put it up for sale, leading to the construction of my legislative district's most beautiful school, the Grover Washington Middle School, at Olney Avenue near Rising Sun Avenue.

But despite whatever good comes of deindustrialization, the loss of good paying jobs carries a terrible burden for blue collar families. They often can simply not get comparable jobs. So they suffer considerable downward mobility, as individuals, families, and neighborhoods.

We certainly need the continuous retraining to upgrade skills that Bill Clinton talked about and delivered to a considerable degree during his Administration. And we need to continuously upgrade our educational system to help produce more white collar jobs that serve useful purposes than ever before in an age in which bureaucracy in both government and business is under steady attack from diverse sources.

We need to find ways currently unimaginable to redevelop our manufacturing capabilities in an era in which we are competing with extremely low wage countries. And we need to continously encourage the development of productive new industries to employ the many new people who enter the workforce each year.

A country without a strong middle class is neither stable nor internally strong. We are drifting towards being a country of the most financially secure upper middle class in history with an ever growing population in poverty, near poverty, and general financial need.

This is not really a good picture, and we need public support to take corrective public actions. The Brookings study is a good contribution to this increasingly widespread effort to inform the American people of the growth of economic distress in the midst of great prosperity at the top of the economic ladder.

June 25, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=271431#post271431

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Privatization is almost always a means to reduce governmental accountability as well as saving money.Privatization leads to deniability for governmental leaders. If only they had known, then it would be different. Generally, the less the privatization the better for accountability at all levels, from the U.S. armed forces, to the prisons, to the schools.

May 28, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256917#post256917

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The number of shopping malls now probably exceeds the demand for them. The older and weaker shopping malls are now in some difficulty.The Cheltenham shopping mall came back after major improvements, as did the much smaller mall at Levick Street and Oxford Avenue in the Lawndale/Oxford Circle section of my legislative district.If developers see an opportunity in remaking the older malls, the host communities are quite lucky. It will be the times in which the market fails to attract developers that will pose the greatest problem for Glenolden and other similar suburban and urban communities.

May 26, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256193#post256193

GUN LAWS

2006-07-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

NRA Belief in 1st Amendment Aids Gun Trafficking
by State Rep Mark Cohen Dem PA
Thu Oct 05, 2006 at 11:06:37 PM PDT
The National Rifle Association is well-known for its belief in the 2nd Amendment, which it has sold rather successfully--if not really accurately--as guaranteeing a right of gun ownership.
But the NRA's real powerbase lies in its exploitation of the 1st Amendment. There is probably no cause in America with adherents who are as willing to speak out over and over again.
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Tom Ferrick emailed me and other legislators today to ask how we had voted in the straw vote the Pennsylvania House had in the Committee of the Whole on the one gun a month proposal to curb gun trafficking. I emailed Ferrick back that I had voted for it, although it had lost 2 to 1, largely on the votes of Pennsylvania's many rural legislators. I have an A+ rating from the Brady Center and a failing or near-failing rating from the National Rifle Association. Their world of happy go lucky hunters is radically different from the urban world of daily murders with handguns that I live in.
If I had a lot of money, I would be tempted to run ads with the following theme: Remember the constitutional amendment providing criminal penalties for Bush opponents who contacted their legislators? IT NEVER PASSED. Let your elected officials know what you think!
Of course, there is no such thing as a proposed amendment banning Bush opponents from contacting their legislators. But, judging from the mail and phone calls going to legislative offices, there might as well have been. Decade after decade, in constituency after constituency, the right wing feels empowered to express its views while the vast majority of people do not.
The blogosphere is helping change all this, but not fast enough for my tastes. The social movement that the Daily Kos represents has to increase the sense of personal efficacy among its members if progressives are going to win on a lot of issues.
The Pennsylvania legislature is typical of many legislative bodies around the country. Any cause that organizes its members to contact us has at the very least a genuine fighting chance of winning.
Because of a few thousand liquor store clerks and managers with unparalleled networking skills, Pennsylvania has successfully resisted corporate and media pressure to scrap its state liquor stores.
Because gay community leaders have discovered that Pennsylvania legislators pay attention to people who pay attention to them, Pennsylvania has not constitutionally banned gay marriage.
Because union and minimum wage activists started organizing in districts where powerful legislators initially opposed minimum wage increases, the Pennsylvania legislature accepted my goal of a $7.15 minimum wage in 2007--a figure 39% higher than the previously effectove federal figure.
It is possible to resist right-wing pressure and achieve progressive goals. Those of us in the Daily Kos community know that. Hopefully, more and more of our allies will come to see that as well in the future.
The National Rifle Association does not really speak for Pennsylvania. But it speaks loudly in a vacuum. When that vacuum is ultimately filled, Pennsylvania will be able to join other states in passing sensible gun safety legislation. Until then, the Tony Auth cartoon in the October 5, 2006 Inquirer--featuring a legislator hiding under desk yelling "duck and cover" when shots ring out--has some relationship to reality. The cartoon is titled "Shots Ring Out...Harrisburg takes action."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/6/2637/53248

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The National Rifle Association is now, and has been for decades, the dominant legislative force on gun regulation. The NRA has both a vociferous grass-roots membership, and a well-oiled political and communications machine well-funded by gun manufacturers.About a dozen years ago, over the strong objection of the Philadelphia delegation in the House and Senate, the National Rifle Association got a bill enacted banning local governments from adopting gun-control regulations. This had the effect of legally opening up gun ownership to many more people, and making much more difficult efforts of the Philadelphia police department to keep track of illegal guns.While anything is theoretically possible, there is no reasonable likelihood of the legislature doing anything to restrict the proliferation of guns in Pennsylvania at any time in the forseeable future.In Pennsylvania the courts are an elected branch of government, giving voters here a small level of added protection from arbitrary decision-making than exists at the federal level. Seeking to convince the courts to declare Pennsylvania's law banning local actions in the gun area unconstitutional is a reasonable attempt to meet the needs of the citizens of Philadelphia.The NRA is, of course, active in judicial elections as well, but it does not appear to have the same degree of influence with the judiciary as it does with the legislative branch. Getting the State Supreme Court to declare the anti-Philadelphia law unconstitutional is a longshot, but it is a lesser longshot than getting the legislature to act.

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=36090

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The effort to achieve a limitation of one gun purchase a month is an attempt to make it difficult for gun dealers to legally aid in the arming of drug dealers, gang leaders, and other criminals. The concept was first enacted in South Carolina, where it worked to greatly slow down the flow of guns to New York City and other places.The political problem is that one gun a month takes on the National Rifle Association. In most of Pennsylvania, the National Rifle Association is a powerful grassroots organization. In many legislative districts, it is the leading grassroots organization. Having the National Rifle Association on one's side comes close to guaranteeing victory in many legislative districts, and not having the backing of the NRA is a major political vulnerabilty which it can take tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to have any realistic chance of overcoming.Realistically, to achieve one gun a month in the next ten or twenty years requires a massive statewide organizing campaign that could easily cost $5 million to $10 million a year. This would pay for a large number of paid organizers, and television, radio, and Internet ads. In no district is there an NRA majority, but the task is to mobilize the non-NRA majority behind a specific legislative program. The task is made more difficult by a lack of public understanding as to the purpose of one gun a month. I have not had any constituents tell me they support one gun a month, and I have had two who told me that they oppose one a month because they think it is far too lenient: "Why does anybody need one gun a month?" was the question both asked. "How about one gun a year or one gun a lifetime?" one of them suggested.Nothing shows the difference from the gun culture in rural, suburban, and Western Pennsylvania like these responses. Especially in rural Pennsylvania, hunting is a significant source of food in many communities. It is also a significant source of father/son bonding, and a staple of the self-identity of many men and a small but growing number of women. The NRA--overwhelmingly funded by the gun industry--has done a masterful long-term job of identifying itself with the hunters and with those who are afraid of crime and view carrying a gun as a solution to crime. A successful campaign for one gun a month would have to neutralize the gun culture.Every once in a while, individuals decide that it is a worthwhile expenditure of personal funds to finance a long-shot candidacy for public office with a personal donation of $1 million or more. To get one a month legislation enacted requires a bunch of people to make a similar commitment to achieving one gun a month.I suspect that a precondition to get such people to step forward requires others not in the same financial league to make other commitments. I could contribute or raise in excess of $1000 a year to help finance such an effort. If many others will step forward pledging whatever personal or fundraising resources that they have, some progress for one gun a month may be possible.If not, gun availability will continue to make it easy for the growth of a widespread criminal subculture to infinitely renew itself as key members die off, go to prison, or come to recognize the futility of being a part of it.

June 29, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=274061#post274061

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CHELTENHAM

2006-07-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

While I don't want to encourage anyone to leave the city, I think that Cheltenham Township is a fine collection of diverse people and communities.Cheltenham has quality restaurants, bars, country clubs, parks, golf courses, schools, libraries, fire companies, civic organizations, concerts, houses of worship, adult educational opportunities, etc. There are plenty of opportunities to meet other people for social, civic, religious, recreational, political, business and personal purposes.Cheltenham is also closer to center city Philadelphia than the vast majority of suburbs, and is also convenient to Philadelphia neighborhoods in Northeast and Northwest Philadelphia.

June 30, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=274160#post274160

MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA

2006-07-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

The Mayor of Philadelphia has no magic wand. No matter who he or she is, the Mayor of Philadelphia has to form alliances with others in city government, state government, and the federal government to get things done.The city budget is all of $4 billion. Over 25% of the city's opulation lives in poverty. Crime is much too high; obviously zero crime should be the goal. The spirit of hopelessness that so many here share is due to problems that seem intractable, and not just the personality of the top leadership of city government.Land is limited. People live and work close together and cannot easily escape each other. Because of the limited nature of the land--Philadelphia is geographically the smallest of the counties in Pennsylvania although it has the most miles of streets--the land is intensely regulated and bitterly fought over. The multiyear battle over casino siting is an example of how difficult any change is in the city because the number of people potentially suffering adverse impact from any change is greater here than anywhere else in Pennsylvania.Michael Nutter comes into the Mayor's office with abilities to think clearly, communicate effectively, work hard, and inspire confidence in many people who have confidence in little else. He does not have the ability, however, to either passively accept the current levels of federal and state funding for the city, or to spend his time merely practicing a politics of denunciation and distancing from other sources of power and popular support.

November 3, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/46337-dissapointing-nutter-ads.html#post617983

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Mistakes In Rizzo Administration
(1) Raising wage taxes from 3.31% to 4.31% despite repeatedly taking a public anti-tax increase stand;(2) Dramatically increasing number of city patronage jobs, with little or no screening of qualifications and motivations of employees;(3) Leaving to the subsequent Green Administration the challenge of improving police-community relations and reducing the incidence of police brutality and crime aimed at individual police;(4) Taking far too seriously threats of demonstrations by left-wing radicals on July 4, 1976, and making a nationally ridiculed major effort to deter anyone from visiting Philadelphia on the 200th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence;(5) Campaigning for Richard Nixon for President almost from the day he was sworn in as Mayor, while creating an adversarial relationship with the Democratic Party and thousands of independent Democrats; (6) Engaging in wiretapping and attempting sting operations against various Democratic leaders who were innocent of any crime that he had them investigated for;(7) Engaging in divisive public attacks on media, students, minorities, liberals, charities, universities, national Democrats and local political opponents; (8) Spending two years not talking to any media after getting negative coverage from media quotes of some of his colorful statements;(9) Fighting a recall petition in the courts instead of before the voters;(10) Seeking to amend the charter to allow a third consecutive term despite knowing that a majority of the city had wanted to recall him after his record-high wage tax increase;(11) Urging voters to "Vote White" in favor of the charter change allowing him a third consecutive term; (12) Maintaining an adversarial relationship with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and supporters of public education in general.That's a good dozen mistakes, and if you talk to a broader group of people than you have talked to so far and read about his actual performance in office, you will find many more mistakes.

June 7, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=504471#post504471

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"The brothers and sisters" statement made by John Street and quoted above was a one-time event that is not really representative as to how he has functioned during his 6 1/2 years as mayor or his 19 years in City Council. At the time he made the speech, he was under attack from various black groups and the Philadelphia Daily News for not giving black contractors enough city business, and this offensive and wrong-headed speech was his way of responding to the criticism he had been receiving.

None of the prospective candidates for mayor have made similar statements.I believe that all mayoral candidates should campaign city wide and address the issues that affect us all. I would hope that the general response to black candidates campaigning in whites communities, and white candidates in black communities, would be interest and respect and not just waving the bloody flag of racially polarized politics.Whoever wins has to govern. Whoever loses will likely not go away, but will likely be involved in political, governmental or civic life in one form or another. The goal of citizens should be to make this a stronger, more cohesive city by getting away from the divisive politics of the past and towards a brighter, more forward-looking future.There are plenty of legitimate issue differences to debate. The stage should not be stolen by exploitation of the gaffes of the past.

June 28, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=272945#post272945

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Michael Nutter's impending resignation from the Philadelphia City Council shows his strong determination to enter the Philadelphia mayoral race in the 2007 primary. Although Jon Saidel earlier gained the flexibility of not being bound to a public work schedule by not seeking re-election in 2005 as City Controller, Nutter becomes the earliest person in Philadelphia history to resign from an elected position to run for Mayor.The provision requiring a resignation from municipal office to run for another office has more often than not been followed by a losing political campaign. But Frank Rizzo in 1971 (police commissioner), Wilson Goode in 1982 (managing director), and John Street in 1998 (city council president) have successfully made the transition to the mayor's office.No councilman has been elected Mayor of Philadelphia without having served as city council president since the 1830's. But Nutter certainly has a lot going for him. His strong advocacy of business tax cuts makes him a favorite of the business community and assures a strong fundraising base. His record on ethics legislation gives him solid credentials for those most concerned about honest government. His leadership on the smoking ban positions him as an outstanding champion of public health.He is extremely well focused, issue-oriented, and driven man. His preparation for City Council hearings was extremely thorough. My late father, City Councilman David Cohen, liked to say that Nutter's effective cross-examination of City Council witnesses at public hearings made him "more like a lawyer than any of the lawyers on City Council."His early resignation shows the ever greater dependence on fundraising as the key to victory. Fundraising requires an enormous amount of time with potential donors on a one to one or small group basis. It is no longer an afterthought that was begun after a campaign team was assembled and organized support was obtained. Today fundraising is increasingly seen as the key to election victory far more than any other factor and even more than all other factors combined.How well Nutter does depends on his competition. Chaka Fattah is the best-known candidate in the field as the election campaign starts, and Dwight Evans and Jon Saidel are also quite well-known. Tom Knox certainly has the financial resources to become a household name, and John Dougherty has shown an impressive mixture of fundraising ability and organizational skill.Past mayoral primaries have been polarized largely along racial lines to a far greater degree than other city elections. There is no inherent reason why that has to forever be the case. As candidates become more and more to be seen as people rather than as racial stereotypes, mayoral candidates should be able to more and more people of different races than their own.Whatever happens in the mayoral race, Nutter can take pride in his contributions to a better city government through his record in city council. His leaving assures that there will be at least three new council people elected in 2007 but filling his shoes will not be an easy task for anyone.

June 27, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=272100#post272100

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Philadelphia is not very analagous to either Massachusetts (with its string of Republican governors going back to 1986) or New York (with its two Republican Mayors going back to 1993), other than being, with them, reliably Democratic in federal elections.The main difference is one of demography. Philadelphia has more black voters than white voters, and neither New York nor Massachusetts has anywhere near this ratio. Indeed, Massachusetts has never elected a black mayor of Boston or a black Congressman. New York's sole black mayor served but a single term.It is a rare election in which black voters do not give over 90% of their votes to the Democratic Party nominees. Republicans usually have no campaign workers at all in black precincts, pay little or no attention to black media, and give blacks only a token number of patronage jobs. The Republicans have never slated a black candidate for Mayor in the history of Philadelphia, and no black has yet been mentioned for the Republican nomination in 2007.I understand the political leverage that might be gained by threatening to support a Republican. Those who make that threat certainly gain the attention of the Democratic Party. But it should be understood that the actual chances of electing a Republican are slim indeed, even when Republicans help nominate a polarizing Democrat like Frank Rizzo (in 1971 and 1975), by switching tens of thousand of Republicans into the Democratic Party, or John Street (in 1999) by running millions of dollars of negative ads against primary opponents Marty Weinberg and John White.
Philadelphia tomorrow can be much more than it is today. We can get our variegated neighborhoods together with governmental and economic interests to create a future that will grow our city and enrich our lives.

August 18, 2004

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=43473#post43473

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The next mayor of Philadelphia should be someone who can lead, who can unite, and who can build upon the successes of the past.The next mayor of Philadelphia will inevitably be a Democrat, as only 17.1% of the city is now registered Republican and the Republicans have last elected a Mayor in 1947.The next mayor of Philadelphia should be someone who is pro-labor but against labor abuses, pro-business but also able to support neighborhood and environmental interests, and above all, a wise mixture of stability and innovation.Being mayor of a large city is an extremely tough job. We need a mayor who vision, character, and achievements on behalf of the city will win the confidence of city and suburban residents alike.

August 18, 2004

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=43424#post43424

HUMAN RIGHTS

2006-07-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

The genius of Jackson-Vanik was that it found a constructive long-term way to help solve the problems of late 20th century victims of communism without use of military force.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:IPo_uw-pbkkJ:therubberstamp.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_therubberstamp_archive.html+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=444

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BANKRUPTCY LAW

2006-07-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

I share your outrage at this bill, but I can answer your question as to arguments for it.One argument for it is that it may lead to a lowering of interest rates and fees, as fewer credit card bills will remain unpaid. (No, there was no mandate of such a result).A second argument for this bill is that the Democrats have to show they are not merely "excusers of bad behavior" such as not paying bills. (No, this bill contained no exemptions for people bankrupt as a result of illness, disability, job loss or other factors beyond one's control.)This IS a terrible bill, with insult added to injury by Democrats trying to prove themselves "relevant" to big money contributors by supporting it too.If the Democrats are to become the majority party in the lifetime of any living person, we will have to prove ourselves "relevant" to our core constituency: ordinary people who need help from government. This is difficult to do when the most outrageous anti-consumer legislation is cloaked with a bi-partisan.

April 20, 2005

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:XZ7koDE6weoJ:third-estate.blogspot.com/2005/04/more-on-bankruptcy-bill.html+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=437

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VOTER REGISTRATION

2006-07-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

During my 31 years in the Pennsylvania legislature, I have helped bring mail registration, statewide mail registration forms, and driver's license application mail registration to Pennsylvania. There is much that still needs to be done.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:7e-mLqFfMZwJ:electionreform.meetup.com/lists/us/pa/havertown/+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=434

MEDIA

2006-06-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

To quote Don Imus' ironic prediction of his own doom. "My goal is to goad people into saying something that ruins their life, " Imus said.From both consuming the media and listening to some reporters privately, I think that this attitude is becoming much more prevalent in the media than it used to be, but is far from universal and far from being the majority sentiment. The vast majority of reporters, I am convinced, are primarily interested in getting relevant information out for the benefit or entertainment of their readers.

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=35625

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Next to New Hampshire, Pennsylvania is probably the most conservative blue state in America. A strong right wing media presence--led by Richard Mellon Scaife, a major funder of just about every group of economic conservatives in America and the publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, a Bible of Pennsylvania conservative politics--has created an unrepresentative echo chamber of conservative ideas in what ought to be a state with a consistent liberal and centrist majority.

The Capitol Press corps in Harrisburg is a product of this conservatism. To the best of my knowledge, no African-American, or person of Asian or Latino descent, has been a Capitol correspondent for a daily Pennsylvania newspaper, radio, or television station for nearly 30 years. If any signifucant number of existing Capitol reporters have voted for a Democratic Presidential nominee, those persons have done an excellent job in keeping it--and the values that could produce such a vote--a secret.

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:GjYYJdbaHO4J:state-rep-mark-cohen-dem-pa.dailykos.com/main/2+%22daily+kos%22+mark+cohen&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

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As one who occasionally helps colleagues with speeches, and who had speechwriting duties as a U.S. Senate intern years ago, I am not sure where this line of inquiry is leading.

Ultimately, it is the duty of whoever speaks words, or allows written words to carry one's name, to stand behind the words that will be attributed to oneself. A Ted Kennedy or John Kerry speech written by Robert Shrum is still a Ted Kennedy or John Kerry speech.

I guess the issue here is whether fraud is involved. If Jesse Malkin is in fact the main author of Michele Malkin's works, does this mean he is fraudulently allowing his words to come from the mouth of an Asian American woman? Is this this arrangement the equivalent of a white owned construction business pretending to be minority owned to fit in under affirmative action guidelines?

In other words, should the byline sometimes read by Jesse Malkin? Or should the byline always read by Michele and Jess Malkin?

Or should we merely recognize that popular figures have more demands for words by them than they can fulfill, and that a large number of words attributed to prominent people are in fact written by others, concepts of authenticity to the contrary?

These are sometimes troubling issues, and they show why letters in a famous person's own handwriting are so valued as unquestionably the person's own work.

April 4, 2005

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The fairness doctrine helped reinforce a politics of moderation and inclusiveness. The collapse of the fairness doctrine and its corollary rules blurred the distinctions between news, political advocacy, and political advertising, and helped lead to the polarizing cacophony of strident talking heads that we have today.

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I strongly agree with you that liberal media are virtually non-existent. What we have are some media--like the Inquirer and Daily News--which give some coverage to a few liberal positions and some endorsements to a few liberal politicians. But we virtually never have any mass media--not counting specialized publications such as The Nation that clearly target the liberal audience--that devote themselves evangelistically to promoting a wide range of liberal causes and candidates.

June 3, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=259765#post259765

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The problem with Knight Ridder ownership has been that it has no real stake in the region. It sees neighborhoods as markets, citizens as consumers, businesses as potential advertisers, and the city of Philadelphia and its residents as targets to attack for the edification and enjoyment of its suburban readers. As a result of this depersonalized approach, both the Inquirer and Daily News have suffered extremely low market shares compared to newspapers in many other cities.Under the leadership of people such as John Knight and Eugene Roberts, the Philadelphia Inquirer was in the 1970's and early 1980's at the forefront of American journalism. Under today's leadership and its immediate predessessors, it has sunk into mediocrity and ever-increasing negativity.There is value in having a newspaper owned by people with a history in our region and a future in our region. We do not need the neutrality of nihilism or the objectivity of those whose dominant feelings are anger, envy and hopelessness. Climbing a bureaucratic ladder--as Knight Ridder editors have, by definition, excelled in doing, is not necessarily a very high form of human achievement. The Knight Ridder bureacracy has seemed to excel in expelling those with visions of excellence in favor of time servers and nitpickers.I look forward to a Tierney/Toll era at the Inquirer. While I would have preferred Democratic ownership, I think an honest Republican allegiance is preferable to the editorial posturings, evasions, and duplicities that we now have. This area is overwhelmingly Democratic, and Republican strongholds are harder than ever to find. I have a degree of faith that the public will be able to hold any new locally based leadership to standards of fairness easier than it can dealing with a far-away corporate headquarters.

May 24, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=254213#post254213

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Numerous media boycotts have been announced over the years, for both extreme media negativity and for perceived media bias. Both newspaper circulation (except for free newspapers) and television news viewership continue to hit new lows every year. An awful lot of people are fed up with what passes for news, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down.I would urge those concerned about excessive coverage of violence to write to offending media outlets, and encourage others to do so. Announce public meetings on the subject, and send out press releases on your meetings and your letters. Set up one or more websites and blogs on the subject. Get across the point that distorted perceptions of reality adversely affect the quality of life in the Delaware Valley. Meet with alternative media sources that woiuld be sympathetic with your point of view to encourage them to publicize your concerns.A boycott probably would be more effective if it is the culmination of a long attempt at persuasion rather the beginning of such an attempt. It's difficult to escalate if you have already launched your most dangerous weapon, and its difficult to maintain serious public interest if your most dangerous weapon has proven to be ineffective.

May 15, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=250257#post250257

FRENCH WINE BAN

2006-06-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

Having successfully led opposition in the Pennsylvania legislature to efforts to ban the sale of French wine in Pennsylvania, and then having successfully defended my actions on the O’Reilly Factor on May 8, 2003, (”You might have convinced me,” O’Reilly told me)I am glad to see the anti-French hysteria has waned and the France bashers have generally gone on to other things. I am one of many Americans who will be working to cure whatever ill effects of French bashing remain for many year to come. Our common history has produced too much good for it to be destroyed for narrow partisan political reasons.

December 24, 2003

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:7slWai5pWlwJ:paxnortona.notfrisco2.com/%3Fp%3D1084+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=337

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The American people understood that France was an independent country which had been helpful to the U.S. at key times in important ways, and Americans simply did not believe either in restricting their own consumer rights or in politicizing trade with other countries

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:vWv4dyHrNeAJ:francoamericanrelations.quickseek.com/+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=427

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ARTS

2006-06-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

The Barnes is coming to Philadelphia, and far more residents of Montgomery County will see its exhibits in downtown Philadelphia than would see it if it stays in Lower Merion. One would never know this the way some folks talk, but Philadelphia and Montgomery County (which was a part of Philadelphia County for the first hundred years or so of Pennsylvania history) are not foreign countries.The simple fact is that far more residents of Montgomery County are going to see the Barnes exhiibits if they are in Philadelphia than they would if they remain in Lower Merion. A good chunk of Montgomery County is in Philadelphia every month, probably a far higher chunk than is in Lower Merion every month.

October 14, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=25582

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If I am elected to Congress, I will work to increase the federal budget for the arts, just as I have successfully done in Pennsylvania.

October 30, 2003

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PARKS

2006-06-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Judge John Herron's decision preserving Burholme Park in its totality for future generations despite massive political pressure on the other side is a great victory for community interests.Sixty years ago, Temple University tried to take over Hunting Park for its own purposes, and was defeated by the resistance of the Fairmount Park Commission. Temple's presence in Philadelphia is far, far larger now than it was then, but Hunting Park remains. Temple's experience followed that of the University of Pennsylvania, which failed to take over a city park about 100 years ago, and is perhaps now 100 times as large as it was then.Judge Herron, a former prosecutor whose reputation as a reformer allowed him to be elected on a reform slate backed by Governor Robert P. Casey in 1987, spent nine days generally long days, in the courtroom hearing detailed testimony on the case.One witness to the proceedings told me that Herron was so thorughly prepared that he knew the facts of the case and the law relevant to the case better than the well-prepared and vigorous lawyers on either side.This decision is victory for all the many scores of thousands of people who visit Burholme Park on a regular basis, including me and my family. It is a victory for those Friends of Burholme Park activists who refused to be discouraged, such as Tim Kearney, Fred Maurer, Jean Gavin, and Paul Canty and for attorney Sam Stretton and his associates.I especially like Judge Herron's statement, quoted by the Inquirer, to the effect that the park adds value to living in the city of Philadelphia for many Philadelphians. He is absolutely right about that: nearness to parks of substantial size is a stabilizing factor for the city of Philadelphia, which increases city revenues from real estate taxes and real estate transfer taxes. To cut the size of Burholme Park would be a real negative for the future of its surrounding and nearby neighborhoods.There is plenty of available space in Philadelphia for Fox Chase Cancer Center to expand. I like the idea of former Rep. George Kenney of using the land at Byberry; there also may be suitable land in around my district in or near the Cardone company complex on the old Sears on the Boulveard distribution center headquarters. Had the Fox Chase Cancer Center been willing to consider alternatives earlier, they could have had what is now the very large property owned by a Toyota dealership on Cottman Avenue.I believe that the Fox Chase Cancer Center should be working immediately on its expansion plans, should forego prolongation of the controversy, and drop its appeal. Appellate courts in Pennsylvania are bound by Judge Herron's finding of the facts; all they are allowed to reverse is his finding of the law relevant to the facts. His thorough preparation and extraordinary judicial craftsmanship makes any reversal of his decision highly unlikely.

December 9, 2008

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/architecture-urban-planning/71394-save-burholme-park-3.html#post953560

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More statues are hardly the top priority for an underfunded park system.The park needs more money for maintenance, planting, recreational and environmental facilities.The statues are all or virtually all funded and maintained by donations. It is unlikely that the Hunting Park site is high up on anybody's radar screen for donations.

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?t=36227

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I agree with many of the details of the strategic plan, and especially the view that what is needed is strong public and private leadership to put together the pieces of public and private policies that will determine the Park's future. Closely allied with leadership is the question of money, a question which the Plan skirts. The City appropriated $11 million for the Park in 1970 under Mayor James Tate--which, adjusted for inflation, is about $50 million in today's money. But the City in 2004 only appropriated $14 million. This is an unexplained shortfall that should be carefully investigated and reversed to the degree possible. Second, there should be an aggressive plan to get more funds from the Pennsylvania and federal governments as well. And all funds that the park helps raise stay in the park--we have to move towards this goal over time. Certainly, there is no shortage of maintenance problems for park commissioners to focus on. And there is no shortage of bold steps--such as the luring of the Barnes Museum to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway that represents the Commission's most recent landmark success--either. But public advocacy--and advocacy to relevant funders at state, federal, and private sector levels--is a vital key. With strong leadership from the Park Commission members, top staffers, and the wonderful welter of advocacy and improvement groups that have sprung up around the Park, the Park can build upon its past successes and achieve new levels of greatness.

May 15, 2005

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Yes, Pete McPhillips, Burholme Park is in Perzel's district. That fact alone--to say nothing of his position as Speaker of the House--gives him some leverage in this this matter. Formally, it is a decision of the Fairmount Park Commission and the City of Philadelphia, both of which support this decision.This is far from the first time that there has been a proposal to take land from Fairmount Park for other purposes. Both Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the Schuylkill Expressway were built on what was then part of Fairmount Park, as was the Art Museum. (The Fairmount Park Commission still maintains a substantial degree of control over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway).In the early 1940's, then State Representative James H.J. Tate--later Mayor of Philadelphia from February, 1962 through the early days of January, 1972--led the successful opposition to Temple University's takeover of Hunting Park, something hundreds of thousands of Hunting Park users over the years should be grateful for. So therefore Temple built all along Broad Street, taking over one piece of land at a time.Currently, LaSalle University has won permission to eventually take over a park at Ogontz and Lindley Avenues; one of Councilman David Cohen's last official acts was to oppose this. As Philadelphia land becomes more valuable, there may well be other plans to raid both Fairmount Park and the considerable number of other parks under the direct control of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation.The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a state park in Northeast Philadelphia--Benjamin Rush State Park. I held up approval of a plan to put what is now the Delaware Valley Veterans Home there until the geographical description of the land was corrected, agreement was reached on what land would be substituted, and agreement was reached that if the state ever gave up on getting the necessary federal approval for the Delaward Valley Veterans Home, then the land would revert back to the Benjamin Rush State Park.I had leverage in this decision--which ultimately resulted in a decision that pleased both advocates for veterans and state parks--because state legislative approval was required. No state action is required for Burholme Park to give up land to the Fox Chase Cancer Center.

May 28, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256891#post256891

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I agree that the Fox Chase Cancer Center should find other ways to expand than by taking over part of Burholme Park. I have made clear my opposition to the takeover. I was a featured speaker yesterday in the dedication of an historical marker commemorating the long history of the Whitaker Mills textile plant complex, and the generous decision of the heirs of the Whitaker family to donate the land to the Fairmount Park system.Fairmount Park should be gaining land over time, not losing it. Parkland should not be considered a landbank except in extraordinary circumstances.But I am not on the Fairmount Park Commission, nor am in City Council, nor do I either represent the Burholme Park area or does my district even even border the Burholme Park area, although it is close to Burholme Park.One of the leaders of the movement to maintain the full size of Burholme Park is Tim Kearney. Kearney is, for the second consecutive time, the Democratic nominee against House Speaker John Perzel, who does represent Burholme Park. A Kearney victory--or even a Kearney close race--would send a very clear message that Northeast Philadelphia voters want Burholme Park to be maintained as it.Kearney also agrees, as do I, about the general economic points you are making. His victory--or even strong showing--would send a real message to state legislators in Harrisburg that they should be more proactive in trying to create meaningful economic benefits for the average citizen.

May 28, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256774#post256774

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Northwood is a wonderful neighborhood, and I was sorry that the 2001 Legislative Reapportionment Plan had to take it away from my district as part of the decennial redrawing of district lines because of population changes.I last visited the Northwood Park when I went with many other family friends and relatives to console Flora Becker, Judge Becker's widow, last Wednesday night. The park is small but beautiful, and it adds to the general perception of Northwood as a beautiful urban oasis. Walking down Judge Becker's block, I saw anew the many positive qualities of Northwood that kept him living in the modest house in which he grew up for his entire life.Changing the name of Northwood Park would be a blow to the strong neighborhood identity that exists there. Naming it after a police officer who was killed in the line of duty would only reinforce the fear of crime and lead to more flight from the neighborhood. Other ways to remember the dedicated and conscientious Officer Skerski would be much more appropriate.

May 26, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256519#post256519

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The problem with the Logan Triangle land is that it is not totally impossible to build there. It is just extremely expensive. There is no reason for any business or residential developer to pay a heavy premium to build there. But the fact that it is barely possible under extremely limited circumstances to build there has inhibited recreational development. Philadelphia hates to close the door on the potential for new tax ratables.What makes the most sense to me, as I have argued in another post, is to have the city lease the land to the Fairmount Park Commission for a 99 year period at $1 a year, with the right to get it back with substantial notice, say five years. The day might well come when development of Broad Street is such that the land becomes extremely valuable for private investment, but many of us are unlikely to live to see that day.Any substantial building there--a recreation center no less than houses or businesses--is in great structural danger without a massive financial investment. I think it makes much more sense to have an extension of Hunting Park there, which could include various various recrational activities that enhance living in the surrounding neighborhoods.

May 25, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256141#post256141

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Neither 16th and Stenton (West Oak Lane) or the empty land caused by the removal of the sinking homes (Logan) are in Olney. Olney is the area close to (SURPRISE!) Olney Avenue, both to the east and the west of it. All neighborhood boundaries are vague and in the eye of the beholder, but 16th and Stenton and the Logan sinking homes are clearly out of the Olney area.In a sense, it would be great if it was totally impossible to build there. Then the focus would be on competing plans for a park (we could easily extend the nearby Hunting Park) and an urban farm. The urban farm idea might not cost the city anything, but the park would be far more useful to every day life.The problem is that, with enough investment to strengthen the foundations, commercial buildings could be built there. Similarly, if one was one going to build $500,000 houses there, one could spend enough money for strong foundations to cover the basic instability of the land.The rub is obvious: there is no good reason at the current time to build anything there. The neighborhood as it now stands is simply not attractive to people who want to invest large sums of money in either commercial space or housing. Nor is there any likelihood of imminent change.So, barring some deep-pocket suitor, i.e. Temple (which has no reason to want to build anything there either), what makes the most sense to me is a 99 year lease at $1 a year to the Fairmount Park Commission, which the city could cancel with, say, five years advance notice. Some day that land could well be valuable for other purposes, but in the meantime neighbors could use the land for constructive recreational pursuits.

May 20, 2006

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=253281#post253281

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES

2006-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

One of the most consistently radical unions in America is the United Electrical Workers, which left the CIO over 50 years ago in a McCarthy-era dispute.The United Electrical Workers has long taken the position that no union leader should be paid more than the highest paid worker. The result of this principled position is the vast majority of their union leaders leave to take jobs elsewhere and the union leadership experiences gained with the United Electrical Workers are ultimately applied to the benefit of other unions (and sometimes corporations) which pay considerably higher salaries.The argument that salaries of public sector workers can never be raised because others are suffering is so widespread that public sector unionism has become nearly universal in an age in which private sector unionism is down to 8% of the total. The only reason that the federal government does not have collective bargaining for its workers is that Congress passed a law against it.It is not the low income workers who pay the vast majority of taxes. Pennsylvania exempts low income people from the state income tax, and thanks to legislation pushed through by my father, Councilman David Cohen, the City of Philadelphia will do likewise after the Street Administration ends.Next to the public sector, the largest concentration of union workers is now in the non-profit sector, where the same arguments are raised against higher salaries as in the public sector. Community Legal Services, the United Way, and many other non-profits have unionized professional and non-professional employees because those who devote their lives to improving the welfare of those who need help most are victimized by appeals that they can't in good conscience get salaries at or near their market value as long as others are suffering.It is the goal of right-wing business leaders to drive down the income of the middle class in the direction of the income of the poor. That should not be the goal of progressives.It is the goal of right-wing business to dumb down the public sector by depriving it of experienced leaders. That should not be the goal of progressives either.Those who believe that the Medicaid cuts should be restored should organize on that basis. Conflating Medicaid cut restoration--a $250,000,000 cost--with salary increases for legislators, judges, and district attorneys--a $5,000,000 cost--is a diversion from solving the underlying problems affecting low income people.

July 5, 2005

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:sY2Thxvoej4J:youngphillypolitics.blogspot.com/2005/07/kudos-to-john-street.html+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=257

JUDICIAL SELECTION

2006-06-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

The danger of so-call "merit selection" is that it leads to a system of unaccountable executive power in which the case of Bush v. Gore, where the U.S. Supreme Court stopped a recount which likely would have led to a Gore Presidency, becomes the standard judicial operating procedure.Let's be clear: "merit selection" is the equivalent of turning the management and complete control of the henhouses over to the foxes. "Merit selection" has no inherent standard other than approval of the dominant power structure. Only in rare circumstances is there any objective comparison of the qualifications of would-be judges under "merit" selection. Instead, nebulous praise is offered for the most sellable characteristics of whoever the "merit" appointee is. New Jersey, one of the states in clear contention for being the most corrupt in the nation, has long had "merit selection" for its judges."Merit selection" keeps the public out of the process. Having the public as part of the process is a safeguard. Taking the public out of the process is a regressive step backwards.To the best of my knowledge, there has not been a single study objectively comparing the quality of judges produced under "merit selection" with the quality of judges produced by popular election. The improvement in quality has always been assumed, and therefore not a fit subject of actual investigation.Recent press accounts of the efforts of Arlen Specter to secure a third Circuit nomination for Carolyn Short, a former aide of Specter's whose legal website advertised her aggressive defense of corporate leaders accused of sexual harassment before she resigned to join Specter's office, focused on the fact that Short was married to Joseph Torsella, a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2004. They could have mentioned also that her late father Robert Short was once Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.That she was married to a recent Democratic Congressional candidate disqualified Short for the 3rd Circuit according to inside sources familiar with the federal decision-making. So Specter has apparently worked out a deal whereby Short will replace Judge Pratter on the Pennsylvania district court when Pratter is confirmed for the 3rd Circuit. Short's campaign contributions to Specter and Rick Santorum were approvingly noted by the Evening Bulletin.If there were genuine concern about merit, every leader of the Bar Association in Pennsylvania would be calling press conferences to denounce this situation. In the real world, however, we see absolute silence from the legal establishment. Public opinion polls of the legal profession nationally have found the legal profession to be about 65% to 70% Democratic in party affiliation. But the federal courts are now over 85% Republcan. Republican Party affiliation and activity is key to "merit" as long as we have a Republican President, and the reverse would be true if we had a Democratic President.Strong partisan Democrats occasionally quote Harry Truman: "I always vote for the better candidate. That's the Democrat." This kind of partisanship is the essence of the federal judicial selection process. It serves as a stern warning for those who idealistically believe that "merit selection" offers a genuine improvement in quality of judges.

October 16, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/politics/45354-system-unaccountable-executive-power-danger.html#post601745

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The fact is that the Governor is the most important official in state government. He has tremendous powers over appointments, the implementation of laws, and the granting of contracts.All a governor has to do with a merit selection panel is to make certain that it includes among its recommendations those people the governor wants to appoint. It does not really matter who else the panel recommends or who sits on the panel.Just about any governor just any time can get just about any panel to recommend the people he wants to appoint among a large of people. I know this a wild coincidence, but each governor has disproportionately found merit appointees among those who supported his gubernatorial candidacy. Unless there is some meaningful definition of merit, merit basically translates into support for the Governor demonstrated by the nominee or his key backers. This is similar to the federal definition of merit that has long prevailed, with support for the President the key criterion for the vast majority of appointments.

September 14, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=577287#post577287

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The essence of judicial reform is the taking away of power from the citizenry and the turning of power now in the hands of the public at large to whoever is Governor of Pennsylvania and whoever the key backers of whoever is Governor are.I have personally known Governors Milton Shapp, Dick Thornburgh, Bob Casey, Tom Ridge, Mark Schweiker, and Ed Rendell and Acting Governor Mark Singel. They are all fine men. Four out of the seven of them are lawyers. But none of them are omniscient. All of them have disproportionately found the qualities of merit in the ranks of their supporters when it came time to make appointments.I do not like the auction-like qualities of some judicial (and other) elections. Nor do I like gubernatorial administrations being dominated by large campaign contributors or fundraisers. In the worst case circumstance, if I have a choice between having judges decided by who spends the most money in judicial elections and between who raises and/or contributes the most money to a governor's campaign, I would prefer the former.There is nothing magical about either elections or appointments. But elections give the public a say in who their judges are, and that fact alone serves to screen out extremists and create a significant public debate about who the best judges are. There is no similar public debate, for instance, when it comes time to filling vacancies for unelected administrative law judges in workers compensation, public utility regulation, environmental law, or other areas of state government.

September 13, 2007

http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=576241#post576241

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Investigative reporting has been sorely lacking in comparing the chances of public interest attorneys, plaintiffs' attorneys, union attorneys and corporate attorneys of gaining seats on the federal bench -- or in examining the client and prior law firm base of judges who have ruled that gun manufacturers have no liability to families of murder victims; that tobacco companies have no liability to families of cancer victims; that the scope of permissible affirmative-action programs should be steadily reduced.

Advocates of “merit selection” hew to the line that merit is to be determined by the nebulous criterion of reputation rather than by objective measurable criteria. They do not seek civil service tests or advanced legal degrees or even extra hours of continuing legal education to measure legal knowledge, or any specific measure of legal scholarship, or any specific measure of experience, objectivity or character. They believe that the definition of merit varies from individual to individual, from case to case, from day to day.

A system of elections in which all citizens have the right to participate is more likely to serve public interests than a system in which participation is limited to economic, legal and political elites.

March, 1998

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=wv&vol=fall99%5C26653c&invol=1

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I hope anybody who is hurt by a narrow loss on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will remember the great victory of defeating a progressive centrist judge on the basis of his expense vouchers. Many thousands of individual Pennsylvania citizens--perhaps even millions of Pennsylvania citizens--will suffer financial losses far greater than Nigro's expense vouchers as a result of his loss.As a result of his loss, the weaker financial party will be disadvantaged in areas ranging from divorce to governmental benefits to individual dealings with corporations and governmental agencies. It ain't about expense vouchers, folks. It's about whether you want a Democratic Supreme Court and all the policy which that imnplies or an all Republican Supreme Court by 2020 as Republicans probe for weaknesses in Ralph Cappy and Max Baer in future elections.The attitude of "I am for the Democrat as long as there is nothing he or she can be attacked on" is the attitude that is the most effective form of Republican propaganda yet devised. If a Democrat is alive, there is something he or she can be attacked on.In California, Democrats had the sense to know that empowering right-wing Republicans is not a good idea. Some day, hopefully soon, Pennsylvania Democrats may reach the same conclusion. If we don't, we are doomed to be an insignificant minority in Pennsylvania despite our voter registration lead, and our core constituency will suffer greatly.

November 10, 2005

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ag8RK7lYcOcJ:aboveavgjane.blogspot.com/2005/11/no-we-dont-want-your-firstborn.html+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=310

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HATE CRIMES

2006-06-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hate crimes deserve to be taken even more seriously than ordinary crimes because they victimize all they threaten as well as all they directly harm.

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:syoQCmmmnK0J:www.theamancioproject.org/About_Hate.htm+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=191

ISRAEL

2006-06-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Racism claims superiority, while Zionism merely claims difference. Racism seeks the persecution of long powerless groups, while Zionism seeks to protect the members of a group long persecuted. Racism seeks to degrade its victims, while Zionism seeks to protect those who have been victims. The U.N. was right to repeal its discredited resolution.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:CF8g39vxyksJ:rchaimqoton.blogspot.com/2006/04/reactions-to-zionism.html+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=410

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AIPAC plays valuable roles in expanding the pro-Israel communities in the United States, and in putting them in touch with those who influence the direction of American foreign policy. AIPAC is a diverse, broad-based organization which seeks to synthesize the views of its backers with objective information to pursue the advocacy of policies that benefit both the United States and Israel. No organization can better articulate the American interests in a strong U.S.-Israel military alliance than AIPAC can.

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/American_Israel_Public_Affairs_Committee_-_Supporters/id/608067

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

2006-06-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

"The cumulative effect of the Bakke, Grutter, and Bollinger cases is that no one has a legal right to have any demographic characteristic they possess be considered a favorable point on their behalf, but an employer has a right to take into account the goals of the organization and the interests of American society in making decisions. This is a moderate, inclusive position that ably balances the various legal interests involved."

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:CRPZnWpmP8kJ:www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Affirmative_action+%22mark+b+cohen%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=170

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