Articles by Hedrick Smith

WASHINGTON – If like most Americans you’re angry that our democracy feels broken, that elections are being corrupted by billionaire and corporate money, and that politicians are rigging elections through gerrymandering, we’ve got good news for you. Grassroots America is staging a political comeback. Citizen rebellions against the politicians and the power brokers are in full swing – from the student March for Our Lives to the spreading teacher strikes from Kentucky to Oklahoma and Arizona to t...

© 2017 by reclaimtheamericandream.org. The article was written by Hedrick Smith, executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. Washington –  Okay, let’s keep score. He’s thrown down the gauntlet. After taking the oath of office, President Trump used his Inaugural address to tar his presidential predecessors and most of Congress, whose members sat around him, as failures – “politicians who are all talk and no action.” So that’s Trump’s standard – action, not talk. What his predecessors had b...

© 2016 by reclaimtheamericandream.org. The article was written by Hedrick Smith, executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. Washington –  Super PACs are once again breaking records  – topping $1.1 billion – but there’s a new wrinkle. Instead of aiming their main financial artillery at the presidential race, Super PACs, political parties and outside donors have committed more than half a billion dollars to the battle for control of the Senate – more money than they’re spending on the race ...

© 2016 by reclaimtheamericandream.org. The article was written by Hedrick Smith, executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. Washington – What got lost in the mudslinging of the second presidential debate and the political uproar over Donald Trump’s bragging about predatory sexism was an important watershed in U.S. political history  – the political reforms that a majority of Americans back in opinion polls gained a first tier advocate moving closer to the White House. Virtually unreporte...

© 2016 by reclaimtheamericandream.org. The article was written by Hedrick Smith, executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. Olga, WA – If you’re baffled by the latest good news/bad news for the American middle class – word that in 2015 typical family income got its best boost in five decades, but families are still worse off than in 2007, just think about trickle-down economics and how it works. During an economic recovery, the modern U.S. business model of trickle-down capitalism focuse...

© 2016 by Hedrick Smith. Republished with permission from the author. Smith is the executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. WASHINGTON — In this tumultuous election year, little attention has focused on the groundswell of support for political reform across grass-roots America. Beyond Bernie Sanders’s call for a political revolution, a broad array of state-level citizen movements are pressing for reforms against Citizens United, gerrymandering and campaign megadonors to give average vot...

© 2016 by reclaimtheamericandream.org. The article was written by Hedrick Smith, executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. Gerrymandering Undermines Our Democracy In a prophetic column in early 2010, Republican strategist and political guru Karl Rove asserted: “He who controls redistricting can control Congress,” and that is just what Rove had his eye on doing for the GOP. The cunning manipulation of political district lines by Democrats or Republicans to guarantee their own election ...