DON’T BLAME TEACHERS UNIONS FOR OUR FAILING SCHOOLS from Intelligence Squared US. Teachers unions: They’re powerful, they’re defensive, and they’re stubborn. And if it seems their leadership places a premium on protecting its members – above all other interests – we should not be surprised, because protecting jobs and wages is what unions were created [...]

The March 15, 2010 edition of Newsweek features the cover story: Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers. In no other profession are workers so insulated from accountability. The article discusses the problems with teachers unions as a significant barrier in attempts to reform education.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has served the United States Senate since 1993 where he was responsible for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold Act), the most influential piece of bi-partisan campaign finance reform legislation. A leading advocate for transparency of organized political lobbying, he is also an alumnus of the National Forensic League. In this [...]

Rajesh Aggarwal, Felix Meschke, and Tracy Wang of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson’s School of Management examine corporate contributions to political candidates for federal offices in the United States from 1991 to 2004. They find that firms that donate have operating characteristics consistent with the existence of a free cash flow problem. Further, donations are [...]

Scott Segal is co-head of the federal government relations and strategic communications practices at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP. A practicing lawyer, Mr. Segal assists clients with effective participation in the legislative and regulatory processes in many areas of government operation, including environment, energy, trade and consumer issues. He also has led campaigns for clients in [...]

The New School How to Return Democracy to the People Today, the need for campaign money affects who runs for public office and who wins our elections. Furthermore, once elected, our leaders must spend more and more time raising campaign funds, which means less time doing the public’s business – The New School Americans for [...]

Commonwealth Club A Troubling Nexus with Senators Bill Bradley and Alan Simpson speaking at The Commonwealth Club of California. Two former senators reach across the aisle to take an inside look at the impact of big money on our political system. They discuss how money influences who runs for office, who gets elected and the [...]

Leading a public discussion on ethics and public pension reform on June 24, 2009, State Representative Will Brownsberger (Belmont) responds to an audience member asking, “Why can’t we ban lobbyists?”

Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig introduces the Safra lecture series with a discussion on institutional corruption. He explores the prevalence of this form of corruption in fields ranging from politics to medicine to journalism, and describes his plan to study and contain this problem.