› › How To Fix America

How to Fix America

Author : Phillip A. Barlag

Publisher : Createspace Independent Pub

Page : 98 pages

File Size : 38,3 MB

Release : 2012-09-23

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9781479377534

Get eBook

Book Description

Dissatisfaction with the American government is at an all-time high. There are lots of good ideas on policy changes that could make a measurable impact. But these all overlook one crucial fact: America has lost the structural ability to consistently deliver effective policy because of the decay in the system itself. Bad government can't be counted on to pass good laws. For all the great ideas and debate on issues like health care, immigration, taxes, defense, foreign policy and climate change, it's the system itself that needs rehabilitation. In 'How to Fix America, ' Phillip A. Barlag proposes a simple and elegant solution to modify the system from within. It's innovation, not revolution, that's required to take the best of the American system of government and build on a foundation that was laid with the ratification of the Constitution 225 years ago. In this neutral and balanced book, Barlag offers a radical call to moderation and civility, and offers an innovative but pragmatic way to reconnect elected officials with the people they are supposed to serve. For anyone interested in politics, American history or current affairs, this fast-paced book is a can't-miss.



Fix America!

Author : Cassandra Vert

Publisher :

Page : 472 pages

File Size : 39,27 MB

Release : 2011-04-01

Category :

ISBN : 9780983409601

Get eBook

Book Description

More than 20 nationally prominent authors, including Senator Al Franken, George Lakoff, Cory Doctorow, Barry Eisler, Joshua Holland, Joan Walsh, John Nichols, David Swanson, Robert Pollin, and Linda Beale provide more than 40 essays on what is wrong with politics, media, and the economy, and how to fix America.



American Fix

Author : Ryan Hampton

Publisher : Macmillan + ORM

Page : 295 pages

File Size : 50,80 MB

Release : 2018-08-28

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 1250196272

Get eBook

Book Description

Nearly every American knows someone who has been affected by the opioid crisis. Addiction is a trans-partisan issue that impacts individuals from every walk of life. Millions of Americans, tired of watching their loved ones die while politicians ignore this issue. Where is the solution? Where is the hope? Where's the outrage? Ryan Hampton is a young man who has made addiction and recovery reform his life's mission. Through the wildly successful non-profit organization Facing Addiction, Hampton has been rocketed to the center of America’s rising recovery movement—quickly emerging as the de facto leader of the national conversation on addiction. He understands firsthand how easy it is to develop a dependency on opioids, and how destructive it can quickly become. Now, he is waging a permanent campaign to change our way of thinking about and addressing addiction in this country. In American Fix, Hampton describes his personal struggle with addiction, outlines the challenges that the recovery movement currently faces, and offers a concrete, comprehensive plan of action towards making America’s addiction crisis a thing of the past.



Arbitrary Lines

Author : M. Nolan Gray

Publisher : Island Press

Page : 258 pages

File Size : 45,74 MB

Release : 2022-06-21

Category : Architecture

ISBN : 1642832545

Get eBook

Book Description

It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up



Forgotten Americans

Author : Isabel Sawhill

Publisher : Yale University Press

Page : 268 pages

File Size : 49,61 MB

Release : 2018-09-25

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0300241062

Get eBook

Book Description

A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation’s economic inequalities One of the country’s leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society—economic, cultural, and political—and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. While many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.



Good Enough for Government Work

Author : Amy E. Lerman

Publisher : University of Chicago Press

Page : 329 pages

File Size : 31,18 MB

Release : 2019-06-14

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 022663020X

Get eBook

Book Description

American government is in the midst of a reputation crisis. An overwhelming majority of citizens—Republicans and Democrats alike—hold negative perceptions of the government and believe it is wasteful, inefficient, and doing a generally poor job managing public programs and providing public services. When social problems arise, Americans are therefore skeptical that the government has the ability to respond effectively. It’s a serious problem, argues Amy E. Lerman, and it will not be a simple one to fix. With Good Enough for Government Work, Lerman uses surveys, experiments, and public opinion data to argue persuasively that the reputation of government is itself an impediment to government’s ability to achieve the common good. In addition to improving its efficiency and effectiveness, government therefore has an equally critical task: countering the belief that the public sector is mired in incompetence. Lerman takes readers through the main challenges. Negative perceptions are highly resistant to change, she shows, because we tend to perceive the world in a way that confirms our negative stereotypes of government—even in the face of new information. Those who hold particularly negative perceptions also begin to “opt out” in favor of private alternatives, such as sending their children to private schools, living in gated communities, and refusing to participate in public health insurance programs. When sufficient numbers of people opt out of public services, the result can be a decline in the objective quality of public provision. In this way, citizens’ beliefs about government can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with consequences for all. Lerman concludes with practical solutions for how the government might improve its reputation and roll back current efforts to eliminate or privatize even some of the most critical public services.



The Democracy Fix

Author : Caroline Fredrickson

Publisher : The New Press

Page : 175 pages

File Size : 22,90 MB

Release : 2019-04-23

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1620973901

Get eBook

Book Description

The former special assistant for legislative affairs to President Clinton, president of the American Constitution Society, and author of the "damn fine" (Elle) Under the Bus shows how the left can undo the right's damage and take the country back Despite representing the beliefs of a minority of the American public on many issues, conservatives are in power not just in Washington, DC, but also in state capitals and courtrooms across the country. They got there because, while progressives fought to death over the nuances of policy and to bring attention to specific issues, conservatives focused on simply gaining power by gaming our democracy. They understood that policy follows power, not the other way around. Now, in a sensational new book, Caroline Fredrickson—who has had a front-row seat on the political drama in DC for decades while working to shape progressive policies as special assistant for legislative affairs to President Clinton, chief of staff to Senator Maria Cantwell, deputy chief of staff to Senator Tom Daschle, and president of the American Constitution Society—argues that it's time for progressives to focus on winning. She shows us how we can learn from the Right by having the determination to focus on judicial elections, state power, and voter laws without stooping to their dishonest, rule-breaking tactics. We must be ruthless in thinking through how to change the rules of the game to regain power, expand the franchise, end voter suppression, win judicial elections, and fight for transparency and fairness in our political system, and Fredrickson shows us how.



There Will Be No Miracles Here

Author : Casey Gerald

Publisher : Penguin

Page : 372 pages

File Size : 44,51 MB

Release : 2018-10-02

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 0735214212

Get eBook

Book Description

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR AND THE NEW YORK TIMES A PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB PICK "Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary." —Marlon James "Staccato prose and peripatetic storytelling combine the cadences of the Bible with an urgency reminiscent of James Baldwin in this powerfully emotional memoir." —BookPage The testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live. Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey--following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team--is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme. There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Hereinspires us to question--even shatter--and reimagine our most cherished myths.



The National Road

Author : Tom Zoellner

Publisher : Catapult

Page : 186 pages

File Size : 16,85 MB

Release : 2020-10-13

Category : Literary Collections

ISBN : 1640092919

Get eBook

Book Description

This collection of "eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character" serves to remind us that despite our differences we all belong to the same land (Publishers Weekly). “How was it possible, I wondered, that all of this American land––in every direction––could be fastened together into a whole?” What does it mean when a nation accustomed to moving begins to settle down, when political discord threatens unity, and when technology disrupts traditional ways of building communities? Is a shared soil enough to reinvigorate a national spirit? From the embaattled newsrooms of small town newspapers to the pornography film sets of the Los Angeles basin, from the check–out lanes of Dollar General to the holy sites of Mormonism, from the nation’s highest peaks to the razed remains of a cherished home, like a latter–day Woody Guthrie, Tom Zoellner takes to the highways and byways of a vast land in search of the soul of its people. By turns nostalgic and probing, incisive and enraged, Zoellner’s reflections reveal a nation divided by faith, politics, and shifting economies, but––more importantly––one united by a shared sense of ownership in the common land.



Politics Inc.

Author : John Raidt

Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield

Page : 265 pages

File Size : 15,7 MB

Release : 2022-03-02

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 153815126X

Get eBook

Book Description

The book examines the dynamics driving the country’s deeply troubled political culture and highlights reforms needed in the post-Trump era to strengthen US democracy. The author paints a clear and sobering portrait of a mercenary election industry and its support structure tailored to perpetuate and exploit America's social and political division. He shows how corrosive partisan animosity, dysfunctional political institutions, and even Trumpism are symptoms of a broken system dominated by a self-serving party duopoly. Having hacked the democratic process for its own ends, the cartel’s intrigues continue to undermine functional compromise and the virtues essential for self-governance. Without timely structural reform outlined in the narrative, Politics Inc., abetted by technological, social, and cultural factors, will continue to undermine the country from the far right and far left. The stakes could not be higher. At risk is the nation’s security and the future of democracy at home and around the globe.