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Caitie Whelan

Caitie Whelan

Understanding Politicians' Power & Our Own

Not too long ago, I was giving a summertime workshop on policymaking. And everything I was saying could be boiled down to two syllables: power. The bones, marrow, and heart of policymaking is power - who has it, who stands to gain or lose it. And the more we understand

Understanding Why Politicians Take Foolish Votes

It's Washington D.C., 1957, Frank Church's first day as a United States Senator from Idaho. And Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson is turning the screws on him. "Now Frank, you are the youngest member of this Senate, and you have a great future..." the

How to Beef Up Cancer Funding in Two Steps

Who do you think the largest funder of cancer research in the world is? It's not Susan G. Komen or Lance Armstrong, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or the American Cancer Society. It's actually you and me. Our taxpayer dollars fund

What Gets Politicians Re-Elected

The other evening, I sat on the couch and read a story wrongly told. It was about a recent primary loss down south. The incumbent was outspent, the story went, the incumbent had extreme positions. The candidate who won had cash and moderateness on his side, the story explained. And

One Immediate Action for a Stronger Democracy

Just about every state legislator I talk to says the same thing: I don't hear from constituents. Now mine is a petite sample size; America has 7,575 state representatives/senators/delegates/assembly members and I've spoken to about 11 of them. But it's

A Good Thing to Know About the Politicians Who Represent Us

How is it that Senator Angus King, governor of Maine twice over and 80 years old to Maine's other Senator Susan Collins' 71 years, became the junior Senator from the Pine Tree State? One of the most significant words in policy: seniority. Senator Susan Collins came to

A Secret of the Most Effective Policymakers

What I want you to know about the late Congressman John Dingell is not that he served in the U.S. House for sixty years from Eisenhower to Obama. Or that he had a hand in Medicare, Obamacare, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species

Four Alternatives to Worrying About the Election

Worry has not been proven to cause warts. Or wisdom, for that matter. But it sure gets a lot of airtime in the build up to Election Day. That's November 5 for those following along at home. Check to make sure you're registered to vote here!

If We Want to Know How Politicians Make Decisions

Up here in Maine, lobster is queen, king, the whole dang chessboard. So the stuff really hit the fan when a sustainable seafood guide put Gulf of Maine lobster on their red list because North Atlantic right whales were getting tangled in fishing gear. "This designation is flat out

For When Pessimism Creeps In

"Our pride is not that we were swept up in the tragic whirlwind of history," wrote C.J. Price on November 27, 1963, "but that when we were, we were not found wanting." Mr. Price was the Administrator of Parkland Memorial Hospital. Five days earlier, President