The Right Embraces Sweden– and Misses the Point

There have been a number of stories this week around the online rightwing about how Sweden and the Nordic countries have moved right, probably inspired by this Economist story.  The story describes nations that seem hardcore Thatcherite: * Taxes have been cut: the corporate rate is 22%, far lower than America’s. * [Sweden’s]  budget deficit is […]

The Enduring Radicalism of Les Miserables

In discussing Les Miserables, most critics have focused on the spectacle (grand), on the acting (quite outstanding) or the use of real-time singing (quite effective), but far less has been written about Victor Hugo’s enduring radical politics being brought to the big screen. This is a case of a movie budget making poverty look nasty […]

Lincoln and the Founding of America’s Second Republic

Americans often engage in the conceit that we have the oldest written constitution in the world.   But that’s a false story, and a dangerous lie to boot. Yes, a Constitution was written in 1789.  And it fell apart in 1861 under the weight of its uncertainty on whether the United States was a collection of […]

Health Care Reform is THE anti-Poverty Program

A new study by the Census Bureau recalculates poverty based on a “supplemental poverty measure” that takes into account transfer payments by the government and various expenses that the traditional poverty rate misses.  The headline number is that with this supplemental measure, poverty is higher than the oficial rate but the more interesting data is on […]

The End of the Rightwing Coalition- And Where We Go From Here

The America of nostalgic visions of clean-cut suburban lawns, self-sufficient breadwinners, and homogenous communities heard its death rattle last Tuesday.    To be fair, we’ve been hearing the hoofbeats of the Grim Reaper coming for the Silent Majority since Al Gore received the majority of the votes in the 2000 election.  An extraordinary Supreme Court […]

Recent Freelance Policy Reports

  Networking the Green Economy 2011: How Broadband & Related Technologies Can Build a Green Economic Future.  (June 2011 )    Updated report sponsored by the Sierra Club, Blue-Green Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Communications Workers of America. How To Raise The Phone Bill Of The Average New Jersey Family: What S 2664 Will […]

Favorite Blogging and Online Media Pieces

Media Appearances and Video

Media Appearances and Video

Some clips from GritTV, policy panels and a few other events I have spoken at over recent years– plus some audio links as welll

Net Loss- My 2002 Book on Internet Policy

See profile of my book: Net Loss: Internet Prophets, Private Profits and the Costs to Community: published August 2002 by Penn State Press. See original version, Net Loss: The Political Economy of Community in the Age of the Internet– Ph.D. Dissertation in Sociology from UC-Berkeley 1998

Magazine Articles

Opeds, magazine articles and a few other pieces placed in progressive periodicals