In the business world, everyone has a boss. When a problem arises, it gets taken to the boss for resolution. If the boss can’t solve the problem, they take it to the next person up the ladder and ask them to solve it. Eventually, if no one can solve the problem, it reaches the top […]

Accountability can imply many things: financial efficiency, honoring promises, imparting factual information, and taking responsibility for decisions that are made. When it comes to government, accountability doesn’t mean any of these things. It is just a fancy word thrown about to make politicians seem like they are looking out for our interests, but deniability and […]

There is no deed more somber a government can undertake than one of military action. Unleashing the tools of warfare on another people yields the very worst that humanity has to offer and leaves in its wake a shattered nation, a conquered people, and generations of despair. History often portrays wars of the past in […]

You’ve probably heard the expression “Quid Pro Quo” before. It means “an equal exchange.” Another way to say this is “You get what you pay for.” Whatever your phraseology, the concept is pretty simple. For any thing you want, you must have something to exchange for it. This concept is the basis for our entire […]

When we speak of democracy today, we understand it to mean a form of self-government. Indeed, the word is derived from the Greek word, demos, meaning people, combined with the Greek word, krati, meaning power or strength. In it’s present incarnation, democracy has become synonymous with the American system of politics. Yet just below the […]

Campaign finance reform is always on the periphery of politics, but not because the politicians in power want to change the very system that they have carefully constructed to maintain the status quo. Rather, these reforms are trotted out every so often as a means of placating the public, to assure us that our elected […]

Voting is fundamental to our system of democracy. It is through our votes that we pass initiatives that shape our laws. It is through our votes that we elect people to the halls of government. Without the ability to voice our political desires, democracy does not exist. But, as with so many other facets of […]

In democratic societies, government is said to be “for the people, by the people, and of the people.” In the broadest sense, one could infer from this that governing institutions such as ours are not controlled by hereditary clans or moneyed interests, but instead are an amalgam of the interests of the general public, instituted […]

By the end of the 19th century, business interests had grown so powerful in our society that their stranglehold on individual prosperity created an inequity between the common citizens and the wealthy, industrial class. Tired of working harder and getting less than those who owned the businesses they helped succeed, and angered by conditions that […]

To the average person living in a democracy, capitalism, and the social changes it forges, rarely is given much thought. And yet our very lives, not to mention our livelihoods, are so wholly connected to our capitalistic economy, that the line between people and business has become blurred, and the properties of one has been […]