Order Now! That Man in the Gold Lamé Suit: Phil Ochs's Search for Self
Four Books from Across My Career
Inside Political Campaigns
Governing Middle-Sized Cities
Governing Middle-Sized Cities
Below is the Amazon link to Inside Political Campaigns:
Academics are notorious for teaching, writing, and mouthing off about things they think they know but have never experienced firsthand. Political Scientists (of which I am one) are particularly prone to this condition. Inside Political Campaigns challenges and changes this.
All of the case studies authored for this book are written "from the trenches" by political scientists (and one undergraduate political science major who was one of my students). Their stories of their actual participations in political campaigns lay out the lessons they learned along the campaign trails. While published in 2011, the lessons remain relevant today.
The story I contributed to Inside Political Campaigns is about my 2007 long-shot campaign for city council against an "incumbent" council member who had been recently appointed to the position. It is partially a story of how a challenger can lose because of running too well. A careful reading between the lines reveals that it also is a story of "fuck you" politics, in which almost every politician believes and has practiced at one time or another.
Governing Middle-Sized Cities
Governing Middle-Sized Cities
Governing Middle-Sized Cities
Below is the Amazon link to Governing Middle-Sized Cities:
Governing Middle-Sized Cities, published in 2000, grew out of my teaching and interest in urban government and politics. That interest would eventually result in me being a candidate for two different elected offices. The first was a successful city-wide campaign in 2001 for the school board in the middle-sized city in which I reside. The second was my unsuccessful primary campaign in 2007 for the Northeast City Council Seat in that same city that I chronicle in Inside Political Campaigns.
The focus in Governing Middle-Sized Cities is on what my co-editor and I refer to as the "overlooked mayors." These are mayors leading and confronting the major issues from education to race relations, police and community relationships, and economic development in all of its many forms in the middle-sized cities throughout the country, cities such as Jackson MS, Hartford CT, St. Petersburg FL, Youngstown OH, Rochester NY, Rockford IL, Providence RI, and Albuquerque NM.
Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion: Constitutional Theory and Public Policy
Regulating the Regulators: An Introduction to the Legislative Oversight of Administrative Rulemaking
Regulating the Regulators: An Introduction to the Legislative Oversight of Administrative Rulemaking
Below is the Amazon link to Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion:
So if you want to know why the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization which overturned Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided then you need to read a book I wrote nearly 30 years ago. Yes, there is a sound and correct constitutional theory for the liberty interest in procreation decisions, and it is laid out in a highly readable manner in my book Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion: Constitutional Theory and Public Policy. What I wrote back then remains remarkably relevant today, more so in light of Dobbs where a rogue Supreme Court majority completely ignored the theory of Liberty on which our Constitution was grounded and the framers intended to be followed.
But beware if you read this book. True and correct constitutional theory does not pick political sides. It only sides with Liberty, and true Liberty comes with limits. That is true in all expressions of it, whether we are talking speech or procreation decisions. Because true Liberty comes with limits on individuals and government alike, neither ideologs on the far right or the far left will like what I lay out in Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion. That's because so many of them on either ends of the political spectrum do not believe in the Constitution or the true and correct meaning of Liberty on which it is built. Instead, both the far right and far left want to use the coercive power of government to prevent and punish expressions of Liberty which they dislike and oppose. The far right and far left both reject that ours is a constitutional system built up a theory of Liberty which itself is grounded in a Classical Liberal understanding of natural law and a belief in tolerance but without indifference which is the true basis on which true Liberty rests.
Regulating the Regulators: An Introduction to the Legislative Oversight of Administrative Rulemaking
Regulating the Regulators: An Introduction to the Legislative Oversight of Administrative Rulemaking
Regulating the Regulators: An Introduction to the Legislative Oversight of Administrative Rulemaking
Regulating the Regulators was my first book. It was published in April 1990 exactly two years after I received my Ph.D. It was a slight reworking of my dissertation.
I still remember the surprise when I got the contract. Several publishers had rejected the manuscript with the standard form letter. I was in my office one morning when the faculty secretary delivered to me this large, fully stuffed envelope to me from Praeger Publishing. I assumed they were just being kind and returning the manuscript along with their rejection letter. However, when I opened the envelope, low and behold, there was a formal publishing contract with all the various supporting documents inside (and no returned manuscript).
I include it here, more for the timeline it completes. It was the classic academic publication in that it was designed mainly for library and institutional sales. Back in the day that was the norm and the target audience for many academic presses. However, I did get some small royalties from it, and a couple of speaking invitation from it.
Here is the publishing copy used to describe Regulating the Regulators:
Increasingly, state regulations are implemented and exercised by the administrative discretion of state bureaucracies. This increased rulemaking activity threatens to rival, or even replace, state legislatures as the principal source of new laws emanating from state government. To combat this, state legislatures now routinely seek to regain their preeminence as lawmakers by overseeing administrative rulemaking authority. This oversight is frequently conducted through a process known as rules review. . . . Regulating the Regulators presents an introduction to rules review. . . .The author poses three basic questions about rules review that previous works have not asked: Why is a state legislature likely to incorporate rules reviews in its oversight arsenal? What is the substance and nature of rules review likely to be? What factors are likely to contribute to agency responsiveness to rules review? These questions are examined through an in depth case study of the rules review process in the Illinois General Assembly.