Reform They Can Believe In
Politicians' Self-Interest and the Future of Campaign Finance Reform
On the Newsstand:The Internet
Fall 2009
Fog of War Volume 36, Number 3, Fall 2009 Letter from the Editor Front Section Bursting at the Seams IAN MERRIFIELD Drug incarcerations, prison overcrowding, and community corrections Escaping the Poppy Field IVANA DJAK, NEIL PATEL American anti-opium efforts in Afghanistan The Source of the Problem ANGELA PRIMBAS Confronting prescription drug abuse Decriminalization in Massachusetts MATTHEW S. MILLER, KATHERINE LEE ... Read More
After Woodstock
Protest music for a new generation The anniversary of Woodstock has come and gone, and with it scores of revitalized folk records and overused tie-dye designs. Many years have passed since the anti-Vietnam movement flooded the streets of America, and time has brought international conflict, economic downturns, and changes in the ideology of our political leaders. The question left in ... Read More
E Pluribus Pluribus
Public discourse in the age of the Internet Republic.com 2.0 by Cass Sunstein Princeton University Press, September 2009, $24.95, 272 pp. Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen Dutton Adult, July 2009, $25.95, 272 pp. Cass Sunstein begins Republic.com 2.0 by asking his readers to imagine a world where their control over the media they consume is total.”It is some ... Read More
Congestion Pricing
The future of urban transportation While Washington debates the economic mayhem surrounding bailouts and foreclosures, a more mundane phenomenon quietly imposes tremendous economic costs on America’s urban areas: traffic jams. The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that urban traffic congestion causes a $78 billion annual drain on the economy, in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons ... Read More
Digital Leapfrog
The Australian government announced last week a massive 8-year, $31 billion investment in broadband that would leave the land down under with the most impressive internet infrastructure in the world. Not only does the plan promise tenfold faster download speeds (imagine streaming multiple HD movies at once), but promises to bring that speed to over 90% of Australian households. The ... Read More
From the Editor
Times are tough. In just the last few weeks the Dow Jones fell to a level not seen since 1997 and the unemployment rate in the United States, now over eight percent, reached a 25-year high. The bulk of the finance industry, including our largest and formerly most successful banks, exists only because the federal government has decided it must. ... Read More
We, the Curators
I’m surpised that Sam hasn’t blogged about this yet, but I’m happy enough to steal it from him: last Wednesday, the Supreme Court released a unanimous opinion in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum. For anyone who doesn’t recall, Summum is a small but gutsy religious faith that contributed a monument of its “Seven Aphorisms” to the Pleasant Grove city government, ... Read More
A Strange Article
Lamenting the downfall of traditional reading and how people raised on the internet (yes, thank you, that’d be us) are more or less illiterate. There’s a whiff of self-righteousness under a thick smog of condescending superiority, topped off with the occasional note of fear for an ill-defined apocalypse. Seriously, people, there are Luddites in every generation, and do you know ... Read More
