The stock market is down, Ponzi schemes are up and the rest of us are left trying to make ends meet and support our favorite causes. But just because we're poor doesn't' mean that we have to be stingy!

Two weeks ago, my friend Marnie Webb and I launched...

Enormous efforts have been made by campaigns and public interest groups to register people to vote on November 4th. According to the Election Assistance Commission more than 2 million poll workers will be working at over 200,000 polling places this election. Unfortunately, what these new voters don't know is...

I have been to a Super Bowl, and even to one or two operas. I was at Invesco Field in Denver when Senator Obama accepted the Democratic nomination. Yet, I have never seen a large audience as quiet, rapt and intense as the young people at Columbia University watching the...

The Presidential Summit at the inaugural ServiceNation event at Columbia University tonight was fascinating to watch. But it wasn't so much the heavyweight presidential contenders that were mesmerizing, rather the thousands and thousands of young people who came to Columbia and sat on the lawn and the steps...

Cable news stations like to count. They cover important and inane events 24/7, they tell me how many days are left in the year (so I can plan my New Year's activities, I guess) and how many days Baby Caylee has been missing. And lately they've been telling me exactly...

The emails started to fly around yesterday in the late afternoon with the urgent subject line, "NARAL ENDORSES OBAMA!" In pained tones the senders, my circle of Hillary supporters, expressed their shock that one of the preeminent pro-choice organizations, one that they have supported in good times and bad, had...

I was reminded today of the importance of using low-tech ways, like a conference call, for connecting people to each other and to campaigns and candidates. Even in this, the Connected Age, when Twitter and YouTube are dominating election news in the way that blogs did in 2004....

There will be a lot going on in Pennsylvania tomorrow with the death match between Obama and Clinton coming down to the wire. A huge turnout and lots of new voters are expected which is always worrisome in large states like PA with lots of different municipalities (the Pittsburgh...

A Republican President drives us blithely into an economic recession with gasoline prices soaring. 2008? Nope,1982, although the similarities largely end there. Gas cost 91 cents a gallon then, the first music CD player was sold in Japan, and Michael Jackson was the coolest person on the planet with his...

The following piece is cross-posted on Personal Democracy Forum.

It's like the premise of a science fiction novel; what would happen if all of your friends disappeared in an instant? It would be like a neutron bomb that killed everyone around you, except you, and there you were...

I attended a boisterous rally of Hillary supporters in White Plains today. Hundreds of folks particularly union members who were nurses, teachers and, my favorite, the IUPAT. When the head of the painters union stood to speak he was flanked by about twenty or thirty of this
members, all...

The following post is also published on Personal Democracy Forum.

Do you know which sector is the tenth largest biggest business sector in the country as measured by its revenue and number of employees? It's the nonprofit sector, a sprawling, incongruous group of causes, agencies, universities and hospitals linked...

Cross-posted on techPresident.

As we race into the most compact primary schedule ever and the top two candidates for the Democrats continue to dominate the polls, I've realized that campaigns are a lot like ball games: the key ingredient that makes them both so much fun to watch is...

The following piece is published on Personal Democracy Forum as well as HuffPost's OffTheBus.

On September 20th, I spied a small article in the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline, "S.F. election results won't be known for weeks." The Secretary of State of California, Debra Bowen, determined that...

The death of Carol Anne Gotbaum in the custody of the Phoenix Police Department last Friday afternoon is a shocking, unbelievable and a sad personal story. But, this tragic event is also a lesson in the inappropriate militarization of civilian police departments since 9/11. The fundamental question is...

Dick Cheney finally landed his dream job for 100 minutes this past Saturday when W's medical team went up his rectum in search of intelligent life. I have pieced together the definitive history of the Cheney administration although there are no written records of any kind to archive and anyone...

In August 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act. The greatest impact of the new law for most of us was that daylight savings time starts tomorrow night, one month earlier than usual. The nominal explanations for the time change are that it saves energy - the later it...

Frantic! I am frantically searching for just the right snack for the State of the Union address. It's critically important that I find just the right thing to eat to listen to W talk about civil war and "bipartisanship" without having it come right back up again. Past the...

At long last, twenty-four months after the last group went home, we have a fresh batch of Tweedle Dems. All polished clean and shiny, they've announced from the steps of some stranger's lower-middle-class house that they are ready for the rigors of the presidency. They will show us how ready...