What Really Needs to be Said About our Last Lamented Election
By Donella Meadows
–February 1, 2001–
Like you, I have been drowning in the gush of reaction to our recent election (or selection) — an election that will never quite be over, that will continue to prick like a thorn, that was clearly never intended, as our new president is already demonstrating, to unite instead of divide us.
I have heard no one, [...]
Trying Hard Here to Work up Some Feeling of National Unity
By Donella Meadows
–January 11, 2001–
I will never believe he won. I’ll always think he got a minority of both the popular and the electoral vote. To me he’ll always be President-Under-False-Pretense.
Well, but you know, the Rs would feel the same way if a few hundred Florida votes had tipped the other way. Only worse. If the tables were turned, the [...]
How Campaign Reform Could Clean up a lot of Hog Manure
By Donella Meadows
–January 20, 2000—-
“Campaign reform” is much too polite a phrase. “Ending corruption” is more like it. I could — and maybe I will –write a column a week from now till next fall’s election counting the ways campaign contributions corrupt our government, destroy our public assets and rob taxpayers.
Today’s example is industrial hog farming.
As recently as 20 years [...]
Welfare for Politicians Could Help the Welfare of the Rest of Us
By Donella Meadows
–May 20, 1997–
My dear fellow Americans,
A recent New York Times/CBS poll says that 89 percent of us think our political campaign system should be fundamentally changed. Just eight percent of us think it needs only minor tinkering. (The option “no change, our campaigns work splendidly” was not even offered as a choice.)
We’re not dummies.
According to the poll 68 [...]
A Week to Kick the TV Habit
By Donella Meadows
–April 17, 1997–
I can just see, ten or twenty years from now, a series of lawsuits that finally force executives of a few immensely profitable companies to admit that their product is addictive. They have always known that their business damages people and society. They manipulate its content to make it even more habit-forming and destructive. And they [...]
