I was speaking the other day before a group of people that I hadn’t known for very long about the need for a new constitutional convention. I advanced the opinion that the flaws that have become obvious in our governmental structure – the disproportionate representation for rural areas, the electoral college, the ludicrous notion that…

I am old enough to remember when media coverage of politics – TV and radio only in those days – was governed by the FCC’s fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine said, essentially, that if you wanted to report on an election, all sides, and all candidates, needed to be given equal time. This was both…

From time to time, people who know how interested in politics I am ask me if I watch the Presidential debates.  I always reply: "No, I'm not interested," and try to change the subject. But why don't I want to watch?  There's plenty of drama.  Donald Trump talks about whatever comes into his head, without…

Today, a friend asked me why I never seem to want to talk about national politics.  Anyone who knows me is aware of my willingness to discuss politics in general, and state and local politics in particular.  So why do I avoid talking about national politics? I thought about it for a while, and replied…

I don't remember not being able to read.   I do have a clear memory ( I was two or three) of being lifted up and placed in the center of a big bed — covered in one of those old-fashioned bedspreads with raised embroidery.   My father surrounded me with what seemed like a sea of…

"Politics is the art of the possible." The phrase, practically a cliché in political circles, is usually attributed to Otto von Bismarck , the Prussian politician who unified Germany in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century.  Bismarck, of course, said it in German : Die Politik ist die Lehre vom Möglichen.  The word he…

For the ordinary citizen, the political season is a short two month period from Labor Day to the November election day of an even-numbered year.   Most ordinary civic-minded citizens of our democracy limit their interest to that brief expanse of time.  Sadly, an ever-increasing number of our citizens don't even have that much involvement..but…

In 1969, I was working for System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, in the job I wound up in after I was almost sent to Vietnam.   (I'll write about that and about the complicated mix on anti-war revulsion and sense of duty that I felt at the time in conjunction with a forthcoming poem).  1969…

In an earlier post, I said, without further explanation that we are slouching towards oligarchy in this country.   I'd like to explain what I meant Oligarchy is an ugly word; for that matter, it is an ugly concept, especially to a small "d" democrat like myself - rule by an elite.  Slouching means to move…

I've been struggling lately to write the introductions to a set of more serious poems.  I'll get there, but meanwhile, a brief excursion.  President Obama has been showing a hint of passion lately, but for most of his two terms in office, the following clerihew applied: Barack Obama Avoided drama. When Republicans began to whine,…