Political Activity/Patronage

I just watched this 6.5 Minute TED Talk that pulls apart all the reasons that we become "disengaged" in the political process.
I think he has hit the nail on the head - he left me feeling a faint ray of hope - that we can use our power as voters to push for reforms of all of his points.
Please watch - only 6 minutes, and it gives us some answers and maybe a way forward !

https://www.ted.com/talks/...

Ferguson, MO — where Michael Brown was recently killed by a police officer, and the police department's first reaction was to protect the officer and keep the facts secret — is an unusual case of a local government where a scandal is likely to actually increase rather than decrease citizen participation in government.

There is...

Garbage is the principal regular point of contact between individuals and their local government. If people are happy with their garbage pickup, they are likely to be happy with their local government. For this reason, smart high-level local government officials make sure that garbage pickup is done well.

In Chicago, the members of the board of aldermen wanted to be given credit for garbage pickup. They also wanted to use it as a way to provide their supporters with jobs. To do...

According to an article last week in the Washington Post, the Fairfax County (VA) Attorney fired one of his office's assistant attorneys because she was elected to the council of a city within the county, even though he and his deputy who deals with personnel matters had given her permission to run for office. In a letter sent after...

It's the end of an era. Last week, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune, a federal magistrate declared that Chicago was released from the 1972 Shakman consent decree, which was supposed to end patronage (for a long time, however, patronage went underground; see my 2006 blog post...

An investigative piece in yesterday's New York Times raises an interesting issue regarding complicity in ethical misconduct:  is there an obligation not to be complicit with misconduct at a different governmental level when, arguably, that misconduct financially benefits one's own government?

According to the article, when Bayonne, NJ was in deep financial trouble in 2010, with the state talking about bailing it out the way it had bailed out Camden in 2002, the Port...