With campaign finance reform stalled in Washington, the real work of cleaning up American politics has shifted to the states. Look at what’s happened in Vermont, Massachusetts, and—of all places—Arizona.
Robert Dreyfuss
Robert Dreyfuss is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He can be reached through his website.
Posted inFeatures
Reforming Reform
E ven as it prepares for yet another attempt to ban unregulated soft money in the form of the modest McCain-Feingold bill, the movement for campaign finance reform is further than ever from its goal of getting money out of politics. That’s because passing McCain-Feingold would have little effect in the real world. Much of […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Reform Beyond the Beltway
While Congress is deadlocked, real campaign finance reform is moving ahead in the states.
Posted inFeatures
News Flash: Corporate Life Is Harsh
Is journalism the only industry whose quality is adversely affected by the capitalist drive to increase profit margins? You might think so, judging by the media response to the resignation of Jay T. Harris, publisher of the San Jose Mercury News. Harris abruptly quit his job as chief of the Knight Ridder–owned daily earlier this […]
Posted inFeatures
Philip Morris Money
In Virginia, fresh-faced, environmentally minded schoolchildren gather biological samples and test water quality in rivers and waterways, part of the Izaak Walton League’s Save Our Streams initiative. In Chicago, amid Tai Chi classes and body massages, families with young children enjoy performance art and teenagers flock to an all-night “rave,” all part of the Museum […]
Posted inAmerica and the World
The New China Lobby
Who bought American indulgence of China? Surprise–multinational corporations that fly the U.S. flag.
Posted inFeatures
The Double-Edge Wedge
This year’s presidential election may be the first in which gay and lesbian voters play a decisive role. That could be bad news for George W. Bush, who last April held a widely publicized meeting with a dozen gay Republican backers, amid hints that he’d like to corral homosexuals into his compassionate-conservative corner. “I welcome […]
Posted inEnergy and the Environment
Toxic Cash: How Lobbyists Poisoned the EPA
Despite some eleventh-hour heroics by environmentalists, the Republican Congress has been offering lots of goodies to industry polluters — thanks largely to the corporate lobbyists who wrote much of the legislation.
Posted inFeatures
Specters of Socialism
It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks. W.W. Norton and Company, 79 pages, $26.95. Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks have written a cold and bloodless book that dissects the failure of socialism in America the way a forensic pathologist would slice into, pick apart, […]