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Power Knowledge

A collection of 32 issues

Decoding Those Political Ads

One chilly autumn evening, as I watched the Phillies kiss another win farewell, a political ad caught my eye. A young candidate in flannel was talking to a group of weather-worn fisherman on a pier. A real tough-guy voiceover promised that this candidate would hold so and so accountable, would

The Race We Aren't Talking About

I want to talk about 26 people in a rural pocket of Maine. But let's set the scene first. We're about 12 miles northwest of Portland in a town called Windham. It's home to about 19,000 people, give or take a few hundred

The Secret to Bipartisanship

White oaks are in a bad way. They need what we all need: sunlight, nourishment, some room to grow. But those wise old controlled burns – the ones the Narragansett, Wampanoag, Pequot used to do to thin out the beeches, birches, maples so the oaks could have some space already – those

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

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

How Much Do Your Legislators Make

"Bush horrified to learn Presidential salary," the October 2000 Onion article read. "A measly couple hundred grand a year?" the soon-to-be-president was "quoted" as saying. "Not per month, even? Because I've already spent more than $60 million to get this job.

Learning the Rules of the Game

If I asked you to join my baseball game, but you'd never played and didn't know the rules, you might find the experience a little frustrating. And democracy can be a bit like this, can't it? We're asked to participate – a healthy