Resources
Here are some articles, books and websites by people and organizations that generally oppose the right-wing attack on government and promote a more healthy and active public sector. (If you know of any other resources that I should include in this list, please e-mail me at info@governmentisgood.com.)
ARTICLES AND REPORTS
Meg Bostrum, By, or for, the People: A Meta-Analysis of Public Opinion of Government (New York: Demos, March 1, 2005).
Adam Cohen, “What's New in the Legal World? A Growing Campaign to Undo the New Deal,” New York Times, December 14, 2004, p. A30.
William Galston, "How Big Government Got Its Groove Back," The American Prospect, June 9, 2008.
Merrill Goozner, "Can We Housebreak Capitalism?" The American Prospect, April 19, 2005.
Drew Harris, "Government Save Us," "Children's Health Care: Fear of Success," and "My beef about bad beef and weak regulations," all in the Star Ledger site, NJVoices.com, 2007.
Christopher Hayes, "In Praise of Red Tape," The Nation, July 9, 2007.
Steven Hill, "Government is Good for You," Mother Jones, 2005.
Kennedy School of Government, "Innovations in American Government Award Winners 2007."
Paul Krugman, "The Tax-Cut Con," The New York Times Magazine, September 14, 2003.
Robert Kuttner, "Ownership and Government," The American Prospect, April 19, 2005.
George Lakoff and Bruce Budner, "Progressive Taxation: Some Hidden Truths." Rockridge Institute, April 17, 2007.
Under the Radar: The New Tax and Budget Battleground is in the States, The American Prospect, April 19, 2005.
Geoffrey Nunberg, "Thinking about the Government," The American Prospect, April 19, 2005.
OMB Watch, The Bush Regulatory Record: A Pattern of Failure. (September 2004).
Sherle R. Schwenninger, "A Capital Budget for Public Investment." (New America Foundation, 2007).
Paul Starr, "The Price of a Free Society," The American Prospect, April 19, 2005.
Tomales Bay Institute, The Commons Rising, 2006.
BOOKS
David Bollier, Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth (New York: Taylor and Francis Group, 2002).
Adam Cohen, Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America (New York: Penguin, 2008).
Milton J. Esman, Government Works: Why Americans Need the Feds (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2000).
Charles Goodsell, The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2004).
John O. Fox, If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax (Boulder Colorado: Westview Press, 2001).
Stephanie Greenwood (ed.), 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Hate Taxes (New York: The New Press, 2008).
Jacob Hacker, The Great Risk Shift (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led us to Forget What Made America Prosper (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016)
Steven Hill, 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy (Sausilito, CA: PoliPoint Press, 2006).
Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunstein, The Costs of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).
William E. Hudson, The Libertarian Illusion: Ideology, Public Policy and the Assault on the Common Good (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2008).
Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol, eds., Inequality and American Democracy (New York: Russell Sage F0undation, 2005).
Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat (New York: Viking Press, 2004).
Cheryl Simrell King and Camilla Stivers, Government is Us (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998).
Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: Losing our Way in the New Century (New York: Norton, 2005).
Paul Krugman, “The Tax Cut Con,” New York Times Magazine, September 14, 2003.
Robert Kuttner, Everything for Sale (. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).
Paul C. Light's, Government's Greatest Achievements: From Civil Rights to Homeland Security (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002).
Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006).
David Moss, When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
Max Neiman, Defending Government: Why Big Government Works (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2000).
Charles Noble, The Collapse of Liberalism (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).
Mark Robert Rank, One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)
David Schuman and D.W. Sid Olufs, The War Against the Common Good (Novato, CA: Chandler Sharp, 2007).
David Sirota, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered our Government -- and How to Take it Back (New York: Crown Publishers, 2005).
Herman Schwartz, Right Wing Justice: The Conservative Campaign to Take Over the Courts (New York: Nation Books, 2004).
John E. Schwarz, America's Hidden Success (New York: Norton, 1988).
Cass R. Sunstein, Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America (NY: Basic Books, 2006).
Jacob Weisberg, In Defense of Government (New York: Scribner, 1996).
Garry Wills, A Necessary Evil (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999).
WEBSITES
Dēmos: A Network for Ideas & Action: one of the foremost organizations promoting a strong and effective public sector with the capacity to plan for the future and provide for the common good. Demos is the leading source of ideas and strategies for reviving public support for government.
Pubic Works: another leading organization that provides materials and training for those trying to make the case for government. A lot of good research on how we can counter negative stereotypes of government with more positive and accurate images. See, for example, Making the Case for Government.
National Priorities Project: a research organization that analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent. Also, facilitates dialogue and action between national social justice and security policy groups.
American Society of Civil Engineers: organization that provides frequent reports on the sorry state of infrastructure facilities in the U.S. and the need for government to invest more in these important public resources. See "Report Card for America's Infrastructure 2016"
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: conducts research to inform public debates over proposed budget and tax policies and to help ensure that the needs of low-income families are considered in these debates. Particularly good at detailing efforts to restrict budgets and cut programs.
Citizens for Sensible Safeguards: a coalition of 150 consumer, small business, labor, scientific, research, good government, faith, community, health, environmental, and public interest groups concerned with our ability to protect the public with effective regulatory policy.
Common Cause: a nonpartisan nonprofit advocacy organization that serves as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest.
FairVote -- the Center for Voting and Democracy: the leading organization promoting voting system reforms that would make government more representative of the electorate and more responsive the public. See their page on Fair Representation.
On the Commons.org. This blog is a project of the Tomales Bay Institute and is dedicated to spreading the idea that "some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good of all."
People for the American Way: an organization dedicated to battling right-wing threats to our rights and freedoms. They also chronicle some attacks on public institutions.
Public Citizen: an organization that fights for openness and democratic accountability in government. Also pushes for better consumer, energy, environmental, and drug regulations. See especially, “Not Too Costly, After All: An Examination of the Inflated Cost Estimates Of Health, Safety and Environmental Protections.”
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