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Welcome to WhoRulesAmerica.net, a site about how power is distributed and wielded in the United States. It both builds upon and greatly supplements the book Who Rules America?, now in its 7th edition. The book's new subtitle, "The Triumph of the Corporate Rich," reflects the success of the wealthy few in defeating all of their rivals (e.g., organized labor, liberals, environmentalists) over the course of the past 35 years. The story of how the corporate rich won all the big battles is complicated, but most of the answers are in the new Who Rules America? and/or this Web site; you can also watch some videos of Bill giving invited lectures on the topic.

Inspired by the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor, the Roosevelt Institute reimagines America as it should be: a place where hard work is rewarded, everyone participates, and everyone enjoys a fair share of our collective prosperity. We believe that when the rules work against this vision, it's our responsibility to recreate them. We bring together thousands of thinkers and doers-from a new generation of leaders in every state to Nobel laureate economists-working to redefine the rules that guide our social and economic realities. We rethink and reshape everything from local policy to federal legislation, orienting toward a new economic and political system: one built by many for the good of all.

This report, edited by Nell Abernathy, Mike Konczal, and Kathryn Milani, builds on recent analysis of economic inequality and on our 2015 report, Rewriting the Rules, in which we argued that changes to the rules of trade, corporate governance, tax policy, monetary policy, and financial regulations are key drivers of growing inequality. Where Rewriting identified the problem and began to outline a policy response, Untamed delves deeper on a specific set of solutions to curb rising economic inequality and spur productive growth. We start from the assumption that inequality is not inevitable: It is a choice, and, contrary to many opinions on both the left and the right, we can choose differently without sacrificing economic efficiency.

Volans works to catalyze breakthrough change and to redefine the market rules for business. As a certified B Corporation, we aim to be the change we want to see in the world.

What is Public Comment? Public commenting is a process that allows individuals, organizations, agencies, and businesses to provide input on proposed environmental decisions. (From the Environmental Law Institute Ocean Program) Public comments are important for a variety of reasons. When it comes to environmental decisions, a good aim is to get as many people to submit comments as possible. Often the "other side" (ie: big industries) will comment asking for rules to be more lax -- the specific ask totally depends on what the issue is. The point of getting a lot of people involved and submitting comments is to balance out the "other side" requests -- if more people ask an agency for better protections, then it gives them the support they need to make decisions that will better protect environmental resources.

Regulations.gov is your source to view and comment on Federal government regulations (a.k.a. rules) from nearly 300 agencies. To make AN OFFICIAL COMMENT ON A REGULATION please visit www.regulations.gov. Your comments do make a difference in Federal decision-making.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case called Citizens United v. FEC that corporations have a "right" to spend unlimited money influencing elections. Corporations are not people. Democracy is for people.

Common Good is a nonpartisan reform coalition that offers Americans a new way to look at law and government. We propose practical, bold ideas to restore common sense to all three branches of government--legislative, executive and judicial--based on the principles of individual freedom, responsibility and accountability. Common Good's philosophy is based on a simple but powerful idea: People, not rules, make things happen. This idea is fundamental to how we write laws and regulations, structure government agencies and resolve legal disputes. It affects all our lives, everyday.

The problem is that we use these powers in historically/culturally path dependent ways so the tensions become more acute. The rationalism of the nation-state as a system-hierarchy is good when talking to other states (treaty writing as per Kyoto or the Treaty of Rome), or when universal rules are needed (eg tax collection) but bad at the particular (eg helping troubled families). Passion-populism is critical for mobilisation but can also be corrosive as it fails to offer any real solutions (see UKIP et al). Creative-civic power is good at adapting resources, institutions, and policies to particular needs or ambitions but it is bad at universal welfare and justice. It can also be just as failure prone as passion politics and hierarchy (it's hard and complex to confront particular, local and personal challenges).

Democracy made Athens a dynamic, creative force 2500 years ago. Even then, however, democracy was fragile, sometimes stupid, and short-lived. Plato held it in low esteem and Aristotle likened it to "mob rule." Why, then, do we want to create 21st Century Agoras. What we want to create are communities energized by vibrant participative democracy. In our Information Age as old hierarchies prove dysfunctional, it is imperative that human communities have flexible ways to tap their wisdom and power. We do not believe that unstructured discussion on the Athenian model is adequate for dealing with the complexities of the Information Age. It was not adequate even for the simpler (by an order of magnitude as determined by a metric called Situational Complexity Index) situations of that bygone age. The Information Age challenges us to make participative democracy a liberating force in the world today. Research and proven methodology, aided by networked computing, has resolved at least one basic dilemma of democracy:   How can we hear perspectives of all the stakeholders, make collective sense of them, and reach decisions and act on pressing issues? The approach that overcomes this dilemma and multiple other hindrances to dialogic democracy is called the Structured Dialogic Design (SDD). The Agoras Institute convenes these dialogues as Co-Laboratories of Democracy. This process is a fusion of the theory of Generic Design Science and the consultative practice of Interactive Management, both developed over the last 30 years by Dr. John Warfield and our founder, Aleco Christakis.

The Social Innovation Labs started in 2012 in partnership with the Bush Foundation. In the past two years, more than 1,200 community change makers have participated in 11 lab events. Each lab has had a different theme, but all of them focused on the following overall goal and strategies: Our vision: All Minnesotans thrive in a socially just, ecologically sound, and economically sustainable ecosystem of social innovation. More about our vision: The fruits of the ecosystem and the cultural soil that makes it possible: visioniconStrategies to move toward this vision: 1. Learn new tools and ways of seeing things 2. Advance innovative projects 3. Connect with other change makers Simple rules for the Lab: 1. Bring an open heart, mind, and will  2. Listen to the part, whole, and greater whole 3. Attend to difference, privilege and disparity 4. Tango with different perspectives to seek unexpected sparks 5. Invite a balance of creativity and structure 6. Honor commitments

The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant societies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people. We seek to strengthen the rule of law; respect for human rights, minorities, and a diversity of opinions; democratically elected governments; and a civil society that helps keep government power in check. We help to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. We implement initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. We build alliances across borders and continents on issues such as corruption and freedom of information. Working in every part of the world, the Open Society Foundations place a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities.

The fundamental question revolves around what interest rate to use to calculate the cost in today's dollars of the government's future receipts. The government makes loans today and receives interest payments and principal repayments over a period of as much as thirty years. The only way to make a fair comparison between different loan programs, or between a grant program and a subsidized loan program, is to calculate the cost in today's dollars.