January 24, 2007
Senator, Call Your Office
The Senate Republicans have filibustered the minimum-wage increase. You've got to hand it to them: they have no compunction in blocking something that they don't like, regardless of whether someone says it is popular or not. They aren't cowed like the Democrats were over habeas corpus. But that doesn't mean that concerted political action can't help cow them. Take a...
January 21, 2007
Five sweet rollcalls: not a bad start
The 100 hours agenda greased through the House, splitting the Republicans and unifying the Democrats on highly popular issues. Nice work, Ms. Pelosi!
January 18, 2007
Now What?
Now that the House Democrats have passed their 100-hours agenda (much of which will die in the Senate), where should they go next? I think that the obvious next choice is the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow employees to form unions based upon signing cards rather than go through the laborious process of elections. Those elections are so...
January 11, 2007
Jane Doe, Navy wife, and her abortion
After a court ordered the Navy to provide an abortion for a sailor's wife carrying an anencephalic fetus, the Justice Department successfully sued the sailor to make him pay the $3000 cost out of his $20,000 salary. The new Democratic Congressional majority ought to force a vote in each chamber on a bill to refund that money to the sailor.
January 05, 2007
November 29, 2006
Bring back the OTA
As long as we're looking for good and relatively easy ideas for the 110th Congress, here's one of the easiest (and possibly one of the best); re-creation of the Office of Technology Assessment. Although the official history, this description from the OTA's website serves as an excellent description of its mission and accomplishments: The Office of Technology Assessment occupied a...
November 28, 2006
November 22, 2006
Toward civility
The outgoing chair of the House Intelligence Committee claims the right to gag members of the minority staff. Incoming chairs should take note, and copy. Turnabout is fair play.
November 12, 2006
Organizational Mobilization
Mark is right that Democrats should be thinking of how to undercut the extra-governmental mobilization that continues to advantage republicans. For example, there's just no way that Democats can expect to continue to win control of the House if they give up even 2 or 3 percent of the vote to the Republicans on accountof the turnout apparatus. But I'm...
Leveling the playing field
Let's look at the mechanisms Karl Rove hoped to use to create a permanent majority and disable as many of them as possible.
Risk-spreading and the entrepreneurial spirit
Social insurance encourages entrepreneurship by making entrepreneurial failure less personally catastrophic.
November 11, 2006
The Long Term
In my last long posting, I tried to set out what I see as the short-term agenda for Democrats, by which I mean over the next two years. Here I'm going to take a relatively short stab at the long-term story (by which I mean the four years starting in 2009, presuming that Dems do what I suggest in the...
November 10, 2006
The Zasloff Addendum
I appreciate JZ's addition to my proposed Democratic agenda below. A brief response. a) My basic principle is to bring up nothing in this Congress, if possible, that splits Democrats in any significant way. There are multiple reasons for this. First, the Democrats' majority is now large, and there are a significant number of Blue Dogs in it. Ambitious programs...
