Now a writer, consultant and public speaker who focuses on politics and government, he was formerly a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress (Office of Technology Assessment), head of an environmental consulting company, and Director of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources at the National Governors Association. His latest book is Delusional Democracy – Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government, an original analysis of the decline of American democracy coupled with a set of practical solutions for fixing it. His previous book was Sprawl Kills – How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money, a holistic evaluation of suburban sprawl, sprawl politics, and the housing and community alternatives to sprawl. He is a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention, its National Press Secretary, and writes regularly for many websites, often advocating the nation’s first Article V convention as the more practical route to restoring American democracy than regular elections controlled by the two-party plutocracy. He can be reached through www.delusionaldemocracy.com.
Review: Delusional Democracy – Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government [
4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Electoral Reform USA, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)Joel Hirschhorn (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars Needs Updating, A Fine Start, Some Serious Mis-Steps,November 25, 2011
This is an important book, one of many about the downfall of democracy in the USA with some suggestions for action that are a mix of great ideas, out of date items, and a couple, such as Instant Run-Off, that I also fell prey to and have now been corrected on by the crowd-sourcing of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 (easy to find online).
First off, the author was well-ahead of his time and this book joins four books in particular:
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Broken Branch : How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Here is what the author himself summarizes as the key changes we need to make–I agree that Electoral Reform is the ONE THING that we can all agree on, but he has not availed himself of all of the expertise possible as I have in my open call for input, so we each lose one star–I wrote a book that was not focused on solutions, and he has written a book that needs to be updated and fleshed out.
A number of electoral reforms are necessary to rescue American democracy: