The Ripon Society...The Home of Ideas

Editor's Note: In This Edition By Lou Zickar One of our goals for each edition of The Ripon Forum is to focus on a particular issue or theme. This current edition is no different. But as we began work on it, we began to wonder whether we had failed to accomplish this goal. This edition does, after all, feature.......MORE	No Reform...Without Responsibility By John Barrasso One of the most significant statistics in the debate on health care reform is this: half of the money we spend on health care is spent on just five percent of the people. Basically, these are people who eat too much, exercise too little, and smoke. They develop expensive.........MORE
Existing Consensus, Obstacles to Reform By Gail Wilensky Once again, the nation is in the throes of debating health care reform. Although a perennial topic during Presidential elections, it has been a decade and a half since the country has been consumed by health care reform as a major issue — perhaps the major issue — of..........MORE	Census and Sensibility By Darrell Issa In the face of the growing challenges, Congress must scrupulously guard its Constitutional responsibility to ensure a fair, accurate and trustworthy count for the 2010 Census. Since antiquity, nation-states have needed a reliable headcount of the population to know what size of army..........MORE
The CFO Act 20 Years Later By Max Stier Congress passed the Chief Financial Officers Act 20 years ago, hoping to create new systems of accounting and fiscal management that would provide federal agencies with timely, consistent and reliable financial information and assure wise use of public resources...........MORE	The Invisible Battleground By Bruce Schneier Security is one of the fundamental building blocks of the Internet. Everything we do on the Internet, from casual conversations to business transactions to our critical infrastructure, requires some level of security. And because we want to do everything on the Internet....MORE
Unbridled Growth Of Federal Power By Michael O. Leavitt Health care reforms being considered by Congress constitute another massive expansion of federal power. Washington has become a runaway train. The legislation perpetuates and accelerates a century-long emaciation of state governments. The legislation also expands...............MORE	Right-Sizing Government By Donald Carcieri I have been Governor of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations for just over six and a half years. We are a small state, with a population of just over one million, but during these difficult economic times our fiscal challenges rival those of much larger...........MORE
A Radical Solution for California's Woes By Steven Hill “Are you ready to put on your white wigs?” That is a question I have been posing lately to many everyday Californians, as the Golden State considers if a constitutional convention composed of regular folks might hold the solution to California’s ongoing political............MORE	A GOP Resurgence in the Northeast By Charles F. Bass Leading up to the 2008 general election, the conventional wisdom in America was that the Republican Party was dying in the American Northeast. After the results came in, and the GOP was left without a single seat in New England, the conventional wisdom was................MORE
Of Memoirs and Malcontents By Joel Sawyer Sex, lies and an ethics investigation. With all the ingredients present for a political tell-all novel about my time as Governor Mark Sanford’s communications director, I’ve had a number of people ask when the book is hitting the shelves. Most are a little surprised when...........MORE	The Rise of Value Voters By Lou Zickar This past September, the Family Research Council held a "Values Voters Summit" for conservatives in Washington, DC. It was the fourth year the group had held such an event. As in years past, a host of Republican leaders appeared. Also as in years past, some...........MORE
The Ripon Profile: Congressman Jason Chaffetz Utah's Third District

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