What if Lincoln twittered?
Category Archives: politics
How Does Puget Sound? What Does Salish Sea?
- 01
- Jun
Retired Western Washington University professor Bert Webber has initiated an effort to rename the Puget Sound, Strait of Georgia and Strait of Juan de Fuca under one name – the Salish Sea.
Notes from Cascadia Workshop
- 10
- Apr
Meeting organized by Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, Local Governance Institute. University of Victoria, April 10 2009.
The Premier doth protest too much
- 20
- Jan
The British Columbia Climate Action Secretariat has been moved from the Premier’s Office to the Ministry of Environment. In fact, the Minister of Environment is also identified as the Minister Responsible for Climate Action. Reminds me of June 2005 when the Minister was also responsible for Sustainable Communities and Water Stewardship. Didn’t take long for [...]
Globe & Mail and The Dominion Institute : Policy Wiki
- 17
- Jan
The Globe’s Policy Wiki is a nice experiment with a lot of thoughtful features (that trump the Obama “Citizen’s Briefing Book”). Let’s see if we can keep up the civil Canadian tone and also avoid juvenile commentary. Blogged with the Flock Browser
Crowdsourcing Policy Analysis
- 16
- Jan
Change.gov has ramped up the crowdsourcing idea a bit more by soliciting policy proposals from the masses to build a “Citizen’s Briefing Book“. This is similar to the Open Questions app the site was running late last year. Once you log in, you can submit your brilliant policy idea and vote up or down on [...]
Why Briefing Notes Are Important
- 26
- Dec
Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy. Charles Peters. How Washington Really Works. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1983.
The Other Peters Principle
- 26
- Dec
“The Peters Principle-take care to distinguish it from the less persuasive Peter Principle -provides that organizations cease to function effectively when employees spend more than 15.8 percent of their time attending meetings or writing memoranda.” Tilting at windmills – meeting mania…review thine enemy…buppie taste…and other odds and ends Washington Monthly, Feb, 1986, by Charles Peters.
Life Imitates Art
- 04
- Dec
Stephen Harper’s broadcast to the nation bears an uncanny resemblance to The Ministerial Broadcast (see about 1:30 to the end), At least Harper studied something. Stephane Dion’s response was beyond pathetic