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When he is not teaching law or writing articles on democracy, telecommunications and broadcasting at the University of Iowa, Nicholas Johnson has a quadrennial hobby he pursues.He asks candidates running for President in the early Iowa Caucus one question. It goes something like this: “I’ve now heard you denounce those powerful special interest lobbies in…

How deep is our democracy? Is it getting deeper or thinner and in what areas? Can adequate criteria be selected to rank the 50 states on a depth of democracy scale with one another? These questions make us think beyond the more general but memorable definition of “government of, by, and for the people.” Let’s…

Ella Honeycutt dedicates her days to supporting the cause of farmland preservation from her Morrow Bay office on the central coast of California. Now, as president of the Coastal San Luis Resource Conservation District she is sounding the alarm about risks associated with imports of Mexican vegetables from fields contaminated by polluted water and desperately…

Peter Barnes is what one could call a consumer-side, entrepreneur. In 1903 he helped start a socially responsible money market fund by the name of Working Assets — to provide an “easy way for people to make an impact with the money they save.” In 1986 he launched the Working Assets VISA Card — “an…

Last week enough U.S. Senators beat back a 400 page energy bill loaded with goodies for its chief backers — the oil, coal and nuclear industries. The opponents of this legislation, many of whom favor a basic program fostering energy efficiency and renewable energy in place of more fossil fuels and more radioactive fuels, surprised…

In November 1989 after House Speaker Torn Foley (D-WA) and his ally, Rep. Bob Michel (R- L) locked arms to ram through the House of Representatives a $35,000 pay raise for each legislator, plus another leap in the lawmakers` pensions, I called Mr. Foley on the telephone. Given both his squashing of public committee hearings…

The nomination of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States served as a multiple personality test for the United States Senate as well as for the nominee and his adversaries. For the U.S. Senate, the question is: what’s the rush? Why rush the nomination for a life-time position on the highest court…

Earlier this Spring I wrote a column on the overselling of office computer equipment and the underinforming of their negative characteristics. The PCs, their attachments and endlessly “new” software, produce more than carpal tunnel syndrome and eye fatigue. Increasingly they are producing questions as to what the conventional office workplace is getting for these spiraling…

It takes up very little office space but it is generating lots of newspaper space around the country. The soggy saga of the House of Representatives special bank for members is spilling its mischievous entrails gradually and embarrassingly about another abuse of Washington privilege. Each day more disclosures seep out about which member and which…

A forerunner of the impact which forthcoming international business agreements called GATT & NAFTA will have on our nation’s sovereignty came down recently in the form of a GATT panel decision regarding dolphins. The GATT panel, composed of three trade specialists from Hungary, Switzerland, Uruguay, ruled in favor of Mexico who challenged a U.S. law…