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Demystifying State Legislatures

A collection of 18 issues

The Power We're Leaving on the Table

I returned home from Wichita. But my baggage did not. Hours were spent with hold muzak and kind, fairly powerless customer service agents. What I needed was someone on the inside. Someone with the heft to get the train moving. The thing with American democracy is that we get to

A 5-Minute Democracy Strengthener

Today is all about state legislatures. And if you are thinking, "Well, that's juicy!" you would be correct. But first, let's set the scene. American democracy is like a three-layer cake – let's say it's a coconut chiffon. The first layer

The Race We Aren't Talking About

I want to talk about 26 people in a rural pocket of Maine. But let's set the scene first. We're about 12 miles northwest of Portland in a town called Windham. It's home to about 19,000 people, give or take a few hundred

Understanding Politicians' Power & Our Own

Not too long ago, I was giving a summertime workshop on policymaking. And everything I was saying could be boiled down to two syllables: power. The bones, marrow, and heart of policymaking is power - who has it, who stands to gain or lose it. And the more we understand

Understanding Why Politicians Take Foolish Votes

It's Washington D.C., 1957, Frank Church's first day as a United States Senator from Idaho. And Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson is turning the screws on him. "Now Frank, you are the youngest member of this Senate, and you have a great future..." the

One Immediate Action for a Stronger Democracy

Just about every state legislator I talk to says the same thing: I don't hear from constituents. Now mine is a petite sample size; America has 7,575 state representatives/senators/delegates/assembly members and I've spoken to about 11 of them. But it's

How Much Do Your Legislators Make

"Bush horrified to learn Presidential salary," the October 2000 Onion article read. "A measly couple hundred grand a year?" the soon-to-be-president was "quoted" as saying. "Not per month, even? Because I've already spent more than $60 million to get this job.

Why Term Limits Don't Quite Strengthen Democracy

There is a bumper sticker I see from time to time: "Congress isn't a nursing home. Support term limits." With 65 members (15%) of the U.S. House and 34 members (34%) of the Senate over 70, Congress does appear to lead the country in workplace

The Key Thing 6 of the Last 8 U.S. Presidents Have in Common

What do four of the last six Speakers of the U.S. House and six of the last eight Presidents of the United States have in common? They all love lemon scones! That's not actually true. Let's take a short stroll through the origin stories of

A Simple Tool to Up Your Policy Game

Our lives have many different kinds of calendars. The calendar of months and four seasons, the school calendar (I still find myself talking about autumn as the fall semester), the calendar of Q1 and Q2 and..., the calendar of planting tomatoes and picking asters, the calendar of the fiscal year