Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America

Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America PDF Author: Philip K. Howard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039307238X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
How to restore the can-do spirit that made America great, from the author of the best-selling The Death of Common Sense. Americans are losing the freedom to make sense of daily choices—teachers can’t maintain order in the classroom, managers are trained to avoid candor, schools ban tag, and companies plaster inane warnings on everything: “Remove Baby Before Folding Stroller.” Philip K. Howard’s urgent argument is full of examples, often darkly humorous. He describes the historical and cultural forces that led to this mess and lays out the basic shift in approach needed to fix it. Today we are flooded with legal threats that prevent us from taking responsibility. We must rebuild boundaries of law that protect an open field of freedom. The voices here will ring true to every reader. The analysis is powerful, and the solution unavoidable. What’s at stake, Howard explains in this seminal book, is the vitality of American culture.

Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America

Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America PDF Author: Philip K. Howard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039307238X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book

Book Description
How to restore the can-do spirit that made America great, from the author of the best-selling The Death of Common Sense. Americans are losing the freedom to make sense of daily choices—teachers can’t maintain order in the classroom, managers are trained to avoid candor, schools ban tag, and companies plaster inane warnings on everything: “Remove Baby Before Folding Stroller.” Philip K. Howard’s urgent argument is full of examples, often darkly humorous. He describes the historical and cultural forces that led to this mess and lays out the basic shift in approach needed to fix it. Today we are flooded with legal threats that prevent us from taking responsibility. We must rebuild boundaries of law that protect an open field of freedom. The voices here will ring true to every reader. The analysis is powerful, and the solution unavoidable. What’s at stake, Howard explains in this seminal book, is the vitality of American culture.

The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government

The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government PDF Author: Philip K. Howard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393242110
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The secret to good government is a question no one in Washington is asking: “What’s the right thing to do?” What’s wrong in Washington is deeper than you think. Yes, there’s gridlock, polarization, and self-dealing. But hidden underneath is something bigger and more destructive. It’s a broken governing system. From that comes wasteful government, rising debt, failing schools, expensive health care, and economic hardship. Rules have replaced leadership in America. Bureaucracy, regulation, and outmoded law tie our hands and confine policy choices. Nobody asks, “What’s the right thing to do here?” Instead, they wonder, “What does the rule book say?” There’s a fatal flaw in America’s governing system—trying to decree correctness through rigid laws will never work. Public paralysis is the inevitable result of the steady accretion of detailed rules. America is now run by dead people—by political leaders from the past who enacted mandatory programs that churn ahead regardless of waste, irrelevance, or new priorities. America needs to radically simplify its operating system and give people—officials and citizens alike—the freedom to be practical. Rules can’t accomplish our goals. Only humans can get things done. In The Rule of Nobody Philip K. Howard argues for a return to the framers’ vision of public law—setting goals and boundaries, not dictating daily choices. This incendiary book explains how America went wrong and offers a guide for how to liberate human ingenuity to meet the challenges of this century.

Comeback America

Comeback America PDF Author: David M. Walker
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588369765
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
He's one of America's most capable, canny, candid, and independent financial experts. Now David M. Walker sounds a call to action. Comeback America is a tough-minded, innovative, inspiring guide to help us avoid the approaching economic abyss and put the country back on track again. As comptroller general of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—"the nation's top auditor"—Walker warned Congress and the administration as the federal surplus became a giant deficit under George W. Bush. As president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, he now works full-time to raise public awareness regarding mounting debt burdens being imposed on future generations. Comeback America is his crucial manifesto, a way for President Obama to end out-of-control government spending and reform our tax, retirement, health care, defense, and other systems—before it's too late. Walker believes that by 2030, absent significant reforms to current government programs and policies, federal taxes could double from current levels, meaning less money and poorer education for kids—which will hurt families along with our nation's economic strength and position in the world. If our foreign creditors—such as China—decide to buy fewer of our Treasury bonds, interest rates will rise and cars and homes will become less affordable. But it doesn't have to be that way. Comeback America shows how we can return to our founding principles of fiscal responsibility and stewardship for future generations. The book includes bold ideas to control spending, save Social Security, dramatically alter Medicare, and simplify the tax code—all taking into account the Obama Administration's current efforts, which receive never-before-published assessments both complimentary and critical. Nonpartisan, nonideological, and filled with a love of the country its esteemed author has spent his life serving, Comeback America is a book for anyone interested in America's economic future—in other words, a book everyone should read.

Judicial Process in America

Judicial Process in America PDF Author: Robert A. Carp
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1544316720
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
Known for shedding light on the link between the courts, public policy, and the political environment, Judicial Process in America offers you a clear but comprehensive overview of today’s American judiciary. Considering the courts from every level, the authors thoroughly cover judges, lawyers, litigants, and the variables at play in judicial decision-making. The highly anticipated Eleventh Edition offers updated coverage of recent Supreme Court rulings, including same-sex marriage and health care subsidies; the effect of three women justices on the Court's patterns of decision; and the policy-making role of state tribunals as they consider an increasing number of state programs and policies.

World Class Learners

World Class Learners PDF Author: Yong Zhao
Publisher: Corwin Press
ISBN: 1544302916
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Prepare your students for the globalized world! To succeed in the global economy, students need to function as entrepreneurs: resourceful, flexible and creative. Researcher and Professor Yong Zhao unlocks the secrets to cultivating independent thinkers who are willing and able to create jobs and contribute positively to the globalized society. This book shows how teachers, administrators and even parents can: Understand the entrepreneurial spirit and harness it Foster student autonomy and leadership Champion inventive learners with necessary resources Develop global partners and resources

Law and Society

Law and Society PDF Author: Steven Vago
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131734684X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 849

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Book Description
For one-semester undergraduate courses in Law and Society, Sociology of Law, Introduction to Law, and a variety of criminal justice courses offered in departments of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Political Science. Examines the interplay between law and society. Law and Society, 10e provides an informative, balanced and comprehensive analysis of the interplay between law and society. This text presents an overview of the most advanced interdisciplinary and international research, theoretical advances, ongoing debates and controversies. It raises new levels of awareness on the structure and functions of law and legal systems and the principal players in the legal arena and their impact on our lives. In addition, it looks at the legal system in the context of race, class, and gender and considers multicultural and cross-cultural issues in a contemporary and interdisciplinary context.

Everyday Freedom

Everyday Freedom PDF Author: Philip K. Howard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1957588209
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
There’s a glaring vacuum in the 2024 political debate—No party or candidate offers a governing vision that deals with the root causes of alienation and failure. Something basic is missing in our culture. Americans know it. Nothing much works as it should. Simple daily choices seem impossible, or fraught with peril. In the workplace, we walk on eggshells. Big projects—say, modernizing infrastructure—get stalled in years of review. Endemic social problems such as homelessness become, well, more endemic. Everyday Freedom pinpoints the source of powerlessness that is fraying American culture and causing public failure, and offers a bold vision of simpler governing frameworks to re-empower Americans in their daily choices. “Everyday Freedom shows us how to break out of the spiral of decreasing trust, confidence, and capability,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt concludes, “and re-invigorate our institutions, our governments, and ourselves.” Everyday Freedom diagnoses our collective futility as resulting from a deliberate change in governing philosophy: The assault on authority after the 1960s, aimed at enhancing freedom, instead created a plague of powerlessness. The teacher in the classroom, the principal in a school, the nurse in the hospital, the official in Washington, the parent on a field trip, the head of a local charity or church…all have their hands tied. Things don’t work, and Americans have lost the freedom to be themselves. That’s the main reason America is in a downward spiral of alienation and extremism. Who has a vision to revive hope and action? Not political leaders, who are picking the scab of resentment. Social media gets rich selling distrust. Stop the Steal! Defund the Police! Everyday Freedom, in the tradition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, offers a radical vision for change: Re-empower Americans in their everyday choices. The massive legal structures erected since the 1960s were based on flawed notions that human judgment could be replaced by elaborate dictates. Area by area, these failed structures must be replaced with simpler frameworks activated by human responsibility and accountability. Nothing will work sensibly until Americans are free to draw on their skills, intuitions and values when confronting daily challenges. This is the only cure to alienation. This is also the only way to deliver good government. Philip Howard’s understanding of the essential role of human agency has been embraced by some of America’s leading economists, jurists, social psychologists and philosophers.

Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left

Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left PDF Author: Philip K. Howard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324001771
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Award-winning author Philip K. Howard lays out the blueprint for a new American society. In this brief and powerful book, Philip K. Howard attacks the failed ideologies of both parties and proposes a radical simplification of government to re-empower Americans in their daily choices. Nothing will make sense until people are free to roll up their sleeves and make things work. The first steps are to abandon the philosophy of correctness and our devotion to mindless compliance. Americans are a practical people. They want government to be practical. Washington can’t do anything practically. Worse, its bureaucracy prevents Americans from doing what’s sensible. Conservative bluster won’t fix this problem. Liberal hand-wringing won’t work either. Frustrated voters reach for extremist leaders, but they too get bogged down in the bureaucracy that has accumulated over the past century. Howard shows how America can push the reset button and create simpler frameworks focused on public goals where officials—prepare for the shock—are actually accountable for getting the job done.

No Child Left Alone

No Child Left Alone PDF Author: Abby W. Schachter
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594038627
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Uncle Sam is the worst helicopter parent in America. Children are taken from their parents because they are obese. Parents are arrested for letting their children play outside alone. Sledding and swaddling are banned. From games to school to breast-feeding to daycare, the overbearing bureaucratic state keeps getting between kids and their parents. The state’s safety, hygiene, and health regulations rule, and the government’s judgment may not coincide with yours. Which foods and drinks to send to school, what toys to buy, whether to breast- or bottle-feed babies are all choices that used to be left to you and me. Not anymore. As a mom to four kids, I should be used to it, but I’m not. All the government-mandated parenting gets under my skin. And I’m not alone. No Child Left Alone explores the growing problem of an intrusive, interfering government and highlights those parents—all the Captain Mommies and Captain Daddies across America—fighting to take back control over their families.

The Case against Democracy

The Case against Democracy PDF Author: Steven Michels
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
The case for democracy is an intrinsic part of our political culture. This non-partisan book provides the other side of the story via well-researched history and current events that illuminate the theory and practice of democracy. Are the politics of the United States to blame for its current unsteady footing in the 21st century? This book aims to answer this uncomfortable but relevant question by examining the strengths and weaknesses of democracy, addressing complex topics such as the history of liberalism, the relationship between democracy and capitalism, the nature of representation, and the difference between government and politics. Each of the book's chapters focuses on a recognized shortcoming of popular government, such as inefficiency, self-interestedness, and non-participation. Each section begins by focusing on current events and tracing issues back through history—through to the American founding, and in many instances, to antiquity. In the conclusion, the author proposes a series of thought-provoking fixes.