This article originally appeared on Forbes.com on 07/12/2019.
The cornucopia of policy ideas presented by Democratic presidential hopefuls is remarkable mainly in what’s been omitted: the need to overhaul Washington so that it can deliver public services effectively.
This article originally appeared on AmericaMagazine.org on 06/14/2019.
Washington has given up on governing. It doesn’t fix programs that everyone knows have long been broken. It doesn’t respond to public anger at Big Brother breathing down our necks in schools, hospitals and the workplace.
This article originally appeared on TheHill.com on 05/18/2019.
Fixing America’s decrepit infrastructure enjoys rare bipartisan support. But the recent announcement of a $2 trillion plan by President Trump, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was quickly doused by reality.
This article originally appeared on TheHill.com on 04/13/2019.
Centrist politics don’t offer the passion of absolutist solutions. In the words of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.): “Moderate is not a stance.
This article originally appeared in The Daily Beast on 03/18/2019.
Democrats are understandably fearful that the centrist message of Howard Schultz will appeal to voters. Schultz, they say, will ensure that Donald Trump is re-elected!
This article originally appeared on RealClearBooks.com on 02/22/2019.
Bad habits are hard to change, and even harder when America no longer has a meaningful public culture.
This article originally appeared on Newsweek.com on 02/13/2019.
Americans elected Donald Trump in 2016 on his pledge to “drain the swamp.” Two years later, they turned to Democrats to demand what Nancy Pelosi called “a new dawn.”
But fixing Washington requires more than new leaders and new variations on partisan orthodoxies.
This article originally appeared on NiskanenCenter.org on 02/09/2019.
America’s current governing system, created after the 1960s, dictates governing choices out of a huge legal machine, programmed with about 150 million words of federal law.
(February 4, 2019) This essay, adapted in part from Try Common Sense, was prepared for a February 19, 2019 forum co-hosted by the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University and Common Good.
This article originally appeared on The-American-Interest.com on 01/31/2019.
Diagnosing the bureaucratic causes of public failure, economic repression, and voter alienation.
This article originally appeared on NYPost.com on January 27, 2019.
For decades now, Americans have slogged through a rising tide of idiocies. Getting a permit to do something useful, say, open a restaurant or fix a bridge, can take years.
This article appeared on TheHill.com on June 4, 2018.
Civil service reform is long overdue, but you wouldn’t know it from the hue and cry over President Trump’s recent executive orders proposing modest reforms.
This article originally appeared on NYDailyNews.com on October 23, 2017.
New York is at the cusp of a major infrastructure building boom, but an obsolete New York statute from the 19th century called the Scaffold Law has already wasted $200 million on one project — the new Mario Cuomo (Tappan Zee) Bridge.
