Author: SCM

From AlterNet: If the “free-market” theories of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman were correct, the United States of the last three decades should have experienced a golden age in which the lavish rewards flowing to the titans of...

From Governing magazine. Bill Bott | June 30, 2011 If we are ever going to master customer service, one of the hurdles that government needs to clear is the idea that the customer is always right. Quite frankly, this statement...

From Washington Post comes this counterpoint to the Joel Klein column from yesterday: By Valerie Strauss This is the latest in a back-and-forth between Joel Klein, former New York City Schools chancellor, and Aaron Pallas, a...

By Joel Klein Three years ago, in a New York Times article detailing her bid to become head of the American Federation of Teachers union, Randi Weingarten boasted that despite my calls for “radical reform” to New York City’s...

From Education Week: The United States’ education system is neither coherent nor likely to see great improvements based on its current attempts at reform, a report released this week by the National Center on Education and the...

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF of New York Times With Tea Party conservatives and many Republicans balking at raising the debt ceiling, let me offer them an example of a nation that lives up to their ideals. It has among the lowest tax...

The following article first appeared in Mother Jones. In 2008, a liberal Democrat was elected president. Landslide votes gave Democrats huge congressional majorities. Eight years of war and scandal and George W. Bush had...

The legality of texting while lawmaking has been cause for debate, but Texas may be the first state to ban the practice altogether. From Governing Magazine: Scores of states and cities have recently enacted bans on texting while...

By John O’Leary in governing.com: When writing about how to enhance the performance of public-sector organizations, I am frequently accused of two things. I am accused of being an apologist for big government, because I...