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McCutcheon’s Silver Lining: How It Could Undermine Super PACs
By Steven Hill, The Atlantic, April 3, 2014
The Supreme Court’s ruling puts more money into politics, but it could help parties and candidates wrest back some control.
Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling in McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission is the latest in a long parade of horribles, as many commentators have pointed about.…
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Santa Clarita goes beyond politics as usual: bold new path to a more diverse City Council
By Steven Hill, Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2014
The city charts a bold new path to a more diverse City Council
Earlier this month, Santa Clarita settled a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit, and in doing so became the first city in California to embrace innovative election rules that could point the way to a more representative politics.…
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Why Does the US Still Have So Few Women in Office?
By Steven Hill, The Nation, March 7, 2014
At the current rate of progress, it will take nearly 500 years for U.S. women to reach fair representation in government
With Hillary Clinton the early front-runner in the 2016 Democratic primary, the United States may join the UK, Germany, Brazil and Argentina as democracies that have had a woman as their top leader.…
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Divided we stand: The Polarizing of American Politics
by Steven Hill, National Civic Review, Winter 2005
Editor’s note: this article was first published in January 2006, but it’s sharp and incisive analysis of what is causing political polarization in Congress and in the US is more relevant than ever. In fact, it’s as if nothing has changed over the last eight years.…
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China’s investments in the US are growing. Should we be concerned?
By Steven Hill, The Guardian, January 24, 2014
A majority of Americans believe China poses the greatest threat to the US economy. Such fears are unwarranted
Leaked documents this week revealed what many already knew: Chinese investors are storing their money – and investing – more and more overseas. China’s rich and powerful seem to prefer the British Virgin Islands for their offshore transactions, but the US and Europe remain top destinations for their actual investments.…
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Chinese Investors Making Inroads in the US
By Steven Hill, China-US Focus, January 13, 2014
Over the holidays, I was in New York City and walked past One World Trade Center – the site of the 9/11 tragedy and now the location of a new soaring skyscraper that has been deemed the tallest building in the United States.…
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Elections experts worry that Egypt’s new elections will make the same mistake as last time
By Steven Hill, Daily News Egypt, December 18, 2013
Defective election method probably elected wrong candidate, Mohamed Morsi
Egypt is about to enter another period in which it will attempt to push past its political crisis through democratic elections. A 50 member committee recently drafted a new constitution, and a referendum will be held on January 14-15 as a first step toward holding new presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014.…
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A New Growth Bloc Against Germany’s Flawed Leadership
By Steven Hill, Social Europe Journal, December 17, 2013
What does the German Grand Coalition have to offer Europe? Not much.
I have been carefully reading and weighing all the commentary regarding Germany’s Große Koalition (or GroKo) agreement, and it’s clear that the coalition agreement can be read as a testament to the current state of German political and economic philosophy.…
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Sandy Hook, One Year Later: No Gun Control in Sight
By Steven Hill, In These Times, December 13, 2103
The NRA has taken keen advantage of our political system.
How quickly a year passes. One year ago, on Friday, December 14, Americans were jolted by yet another episode of gun-crazed carnage, at yet another school, this one in Newtown, Conn.…
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Did China’s Third Plenum Duck and Hide From Reality?
By Steven Hill, China-US Focus, November 29, 2013
Reviews of China’s Third Plenum continue to roll in, with some analysts saying that President Xi Jinping and his co-leaders have unwrapped China’s boldest set of economic and social reforms in nearly three decades, while others calling it a non-event that offered only vague promises of reform.…
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Now Abolish the Filibuster for Legislation, Too
By Steven Hill, The Atlantic, November 26, 2013
The nuclear option for nominees is a good start, but the damage done by blocked bills has been even worse.
Much of the commentary on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rolling back the filibuster for most presidential appointees has been celebratory, even euphoric.…
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President Obama: Incompetent or Liar?
By Steven Hill, In These Times, November 4, 2013
Without Snowden leaks, the president wouldn’t even know that the NSA spies on world leaders.
“What did he know, and when did he know it?” A firestorm is gathering under the Obama presidency that imperils its future. First there was the fiasco over his HealthCare.gov…
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Governing mag: Can Adopting Ranked-Choice Voting Make Politics Civil?
Governing, November 4, 2013
“One of the biggest is that it saves a ton of money,” said Steven Hill, the former director of the political reform program at the New America Foundation and a leader in the bid to expand ranked-choice voting to San Francisco in 2002. Cost, he said, can be especially problematic in cities that end up having to hold runoffs in both a primary and in a general election.…
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Obama Shouldn’t Lecture Xi About Surveillance
By Steven Hill, China-US Focus, November 1, 2013
President Barack Obama has been a vocal critic of China’s hacking into U.S. government and corporate computer systems, accusing the Chinese government of Orwellian tactics. But now President Obama is having to defend similar activity by his own government.
A firestorm is gathering under the Obama presidency over the latest revelation that the National Security Agency has been spying on the telephones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and 34 other world leaders. …
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Irony of the NSA debacle — did Obama need Snowden to tell him that U.S. spies are bugging world’s top leaders?
By Steven Hill, ORF (Austrian public broadcasting), October 30, 2013
Political analyst Steven Hill gives his views to Austrian public radio (ORF) on the the implications of an out-of-control intelligence agency (NSA) apparently working outside government oversight, and the irony that it may have been Edward Snowden’s revelations that alerted President Obama to what his own agencies are up to (scroll down on the page to “The irony of the NSA debacle”)…
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To Hell and Back: Spain’s Grotesque Recession and Its Surprising New Economy
By Steven Hill, The Atlantic, October 18, 2013
A not-so-short history of the Spanish economy: The half-century housing bubble, the excruciating recession, the grisly unemployment, and, finally, a glimmer of hope.
MADRID – It’s been more than a rocky few years for Spain. It’s been a rocky half-century.
Run by a military dictator until the 1970s, Spain emerged in the early 2000s as a model of social democracy and the poster child for the European Union.…
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US govt shutdown and possible default: Steven Hill comments on Austrian radio
By Steven Hill, ORF (Austrian public broadcasting), October 9, 2013
My comments on Austrian public radio (ORF) re: the ongoing US government shutdown, with a possible default on the national debt only 8 days away. Will it send shock waves through the global economy? Ongoing surreal days of a flailing superpower http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1726334/… -
NY Times: New York City considers instant runoff voting
New York Times, September 29, 2013
Steven Hill, an author who is considered the architect of San Francisco’s instant runoff voting law, said that minority candidates had fared better in instant runoff elections. When the city held separate runoff elections — which took place in December because there are no party primaries for local offices — the voters who turned out tended to be white, and wealthier and older than those who voted in November, Mr.…
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Obama’s flip flop and Kerry’s lip slip over Syria
By Steven Hill, ORF (Austrian public broadcasting), September 11, 2013
My comments on Austrian public radio (ORF) re Syria: Obama’s flip flop and Kerry’s lip slip — surreal days of a flailing superpower http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1724633/.The moment feels similar to me as December 20, 1989 — I woke up, five days before Christmas, with pretty snowflakes falling lightly to the ground, only to discover that we were at war.…
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What Did Bo’s Trial Tell Us About China?
By Steven Hill, China-US Focus, September 3, 2013
Bo Xilai on trial in China Following an economic crisis that began in 2008, the world is now passing through a political crisis that is just as profound as the economic one. The Arab Spring is on one knee in Egypt and elsewhere, gasping for breath; the Germany-led European “Union” is walking a tightrope, bedeviled by an inability to decide how united it really wants to be; and revelations of a massive espionage operation by the US government directed at its own domestic population as well as foreign governments, the United Nations, the European Union and the G-20 has prompted former president Jimmy Carter to say “America has no functioning democracy at this moment.”…
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A New Structure for Political Europe
By Steven Hill, IP Journal (Berlin), July 29, 2013
It is time for Europe to move beyond hypotheticals and start discussing concrete measures promoting further steps in European integration. Author Steven Hill proposes a reorganization.
Much vigorous debate, as well as some initial steps in response to the eurozone crisis, have established groundwork for a more integrated economic and monetary union.…
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Democrats should enact automatic voter registration
By Steven Hill, Sacramento Bee, July 14, 2013
The recent Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder has severely crippled the Voting Rights Act. It flies in the face of a mountain of evidence of ongoing disenfranchisement – from voter ID laws to intimidation and long lines at the polls – and the fact that Republican legislators continue to push laws designed to disenfranchise targeted communities.…
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So the Voting Rights Act Is Gutted—What Can Protect Minority Voters Now?
By Steven Hill, The Atlantic, June 26, 2013
The Supreme Court’s decision may have been misguided, but automatic voter registration would be majorly mitigating. Why aren’t Democrats pushing it?
Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder effectively cripples the Voting Rights Act. It flies in the face of a mountain of evidence of ongoing disenfranchisement — from voter-ID laws to intimidation and long lines at the polls – and the fact that Republican legislators continue to push laws designed to disenfranchise targeted communities.…
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G-8 round up: EU-US trade deal doesn’t address economic ills
By Steven Hill, Guardian, June 19, 2013
(scroll down the Guardian website page)
The excitement over a new EU-US trade deal is understandable: some of the numbers being thrown around about the potential impacts are fairly significant (i.e. boosting the EU and US economies by 119 and 95 billion euros a year respectively).…
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Political Europe: A Blueprint to Close the “Democracy Gap”
By Steven Hill, Centre for European Studies/Thinking Europe blog, June 19, 2013
Much vigorous debate, as well as some initial steps in response to the eurozone crisis, have established some groundwork for a more integrated economic and monetary union. But much less discussion has been devoted to how to redesign European-level political institutions, despite widespread recognition that a political reset is the other side of the coin.…