Washington – If you’re tempted to think campaign MegaMillions no longer matter because maverick Republican Donald Trump is self-financed and Bernie Sanders has funded a nationwide rebellion with two million small donors, take a look down-ballot. MegaMoney is flooding into a high stakes battle for control of Congress. SuperPAC war chests and the lava of […]

Washington – If you think our tax system is rigged in favor of U.S. multi-national corporations, Exhibit A  is the laws passed by Congress that have let nearly 50 major American companies renounce their U.S. citizenship and merge with foreign companies in order to duck U.S. corporate income taxes. In the anodyne lingo of Wall […]

Washington – Given Donald Trump’s gutter politics – his foul mouth, his racist bigotry, his dark nativism, you have to ask yourself, “How does he keep winning?” and “Why does he so alarm the Republican Establishment?” And the answer lies not so much in personality politics, but in something more explosive:  Trump’s heresy against orthodox […]

Washington – In its focus on presidential personality politics, the mainstream media has overlooked a stunning watershed in U.S. political history  – campaign reform has jumped this year from a fringe issue, popular with grass roots reformers, to a high profile cause embraced by a major White House contender. This past week, Hillary Clinton promised […]

Washington – In a stunning defeat for what one judge called “gerrymandering on steroids,” a three-judge federal court has ruled that the Republican gerrymandering of North Carolina’s congressional districts in 2011 was unconstitutional on grounds that it was racially driven and illegally packed too many black voters into two districts. The court gave the legislature just […]

Washington – If you want to see what fires the grass roots passion for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and the populist rebellion against the U.S corporate and political elite, take a look at the latest case of an American corporation’s gaming the system for handouts and bailouts and then walking out on Uncle Sam and […]

Washington – Back in the 1960s, when I was covering Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and other civil rights activists for The New York Times, I remember die-hard segregationists hurling an accusation at Dr. King that he was an “outside agitator.” “You’re comin’ into our town,” they would bellow, whether it was Birmingham or […]

Washington – If the mean spirit of this year’s campaign upsets you or you’re worried about the lava of dark corporate and billionaire money corrupting our elections, consider one more New Year’s resolution: To get involved in civic action to rebuild government of, by and for the people. There are active grass roots campaigns coast to […]

Washington – If you wonder what price we all pay for corporate money flooding political campaigns ($1.7 billion in 2014), see Exhibit A — the attempt by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to exploit legal loopholes and  renounce its U.S. citizenship to become an Irish company and to duck U.S. corporate income taxes. Pfizer made no secret […]

Washington – Believe it or not, politicians are as fed up with and angry at the runaway campaign money race as voters. It’s almost impossible to get Republican and Democratic politicians to agree on anything these days. But when they’re being honest and they’ve stopped running for office, they see eye-to-eye on one thing: They […]