Latest news with #WhyNothingWorks'
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Newsmakers 3/7/2025: ‘Why Nothing Works'; political roundtable
EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — This week on Newsmakers: Marc Dunkelman, a fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute, discusses his new book 'Why Nothing Works' and what Democrats need to do to run government more effectively; plus, Tim White and Ted Nesi are joined by 12 News political analyst Joe Fleming to break down Gov. Dan McKee's campaign launch video. Prefer your Newsmakers on the go?Subscribe to our podcast!Apple | Spotify Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
America used to be able to do big things. Why is it struggling now, R.I. author asks.
Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up Q: It seems like you have pretty good timing with this book. Tell us how to apply it to the moment we're seeing in Washington right now. Advertisement Dunkelman: Right now many Democrats feel lost. We've spent the last several years trying to convince the country that Trump was bad – and all that effort seems for naught. I'm arguing in 'Why Nothing Works' that, to restore our political fortunes, we need to grapple with a contradiction within our governing agenda – a contradiction that has made it hard for government to make decisions and drive progress. We're the party of government, and government doesn't work. If we want to win, we need to have a plan to fix that. Q: In the synopsis on the back of the book, you write: 'there's nothing wrong with progressivism that can't be fixed by progressives.' Expand on that for a second. What's a tangible example you would use? Dunkelman: Progressives want two contradictory things – and those things need to be kept in balance. We want to empower public authority to solve big problems like climate change – to have some big bureaucracy tell polluters to curtail their carbon emissions. At the same time we're pretty skeptical of big government institutions; we certainly don't want them telling women what to do with their bodies. My argument is that we've become so focused on the latter of these impulses – the desire to protect individuals from coercive government power – that we're rendered government impotent in the places where it needs to work well. We need to rebalance our two impulses. Advertisement Q: It seems like we have a trust crisis when it comes to our institutions right now. Is there a specific institution or two that you are especially concerned about? Dunkelman: You're right. Trust in institutions of all sorts has fallen through the decades – and not just government. That was actually the focus more of my first book, Q: I feel like the country is divided on whether emerging technologies like AI are going to fix a lot of problems or make things worse. Where do you fall on that debate? Dunkelman: Brother, I thought Tim Scott was going to be a viable candidate for the GOP nomination last year, and I was pretty sure Scott Walker was going to be strong in 2016. So don't trust my powers of prediction. But I'm generally optimistic about technological change, and my hope is that AI allows those doing work they don't like to have opportunities to find more meaningful and satisfying ways to earn a living. Advertisement Q: What's next for you? Do you have another book project in mind? Dunkelman: I have lots of projects 'in mind,' but I'm not entirely sure what's next. For more than a decade I've been perplexed about why it is that train service between Rhode Island and Boston is so slow, when for a pretty miserly amount of public investment, all those biotech jobs in the Seaport could be easily commutable from places like Warwick and Seekonk. If I can find a way, I'd like to figure out why we're not making infrastructure investments in the projects that could have more impact, while simultaneously investing in many projects that don't have a lot of upside. This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you'd like to receive it via email Monday through Friday, . Dan McGowan can be reached at
Politico
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Politico
5 questions for Jennifer Pahlka
Presented by Hello, and welcome to this week's installment of the Future in Five Questions. This week DFD interviewed Jennifer Pahlka, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center and an Obama-era deputy chief technology officer who helped co-found the U.S. Digital Service — now known as the U.S. DOGE Service. Pahlka, the author of Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, discussed why (and how) government needs to become more responsive to feedback, why she thinks Marc Dunkelman's ballyhooed new book 'Why Nothing Works' points a way forward through 'vetocracy,' and what it would really take to integrate artificial intelligence in the government. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What's one underrated big idea? Feedback loops. They're so simple, and yet we have such trouble employing them in government. Our elected leaders are meant to get feedback, often in the form of election results, from the public, but that's a very long loop and it's very indirect. In between, we need feedback about whether policies or programs are working as intended, but the linear processes we employ don't allow for the kind of mid-stream feedback that's needed to adjust appropriately. So lawmakers might pass a law, and it gets handed down to agencies to implement, and as it descends through this complex hierarchy, a sort of game of telephone occurs, and things morph. So often, our laws and policies just don't have the intended effect. Both policy making and policy implementation need to be renovated, and connected to each other to allow for far more frequent looping back to check that we're doing what we originally wanted. That means a lot of different feedback loops. Agencies trying things out with the people they serve, like beta versions of websites, or early tests of rules and guidance, and then adjusting based on whether the public understood and used it. They will learn from those tests, and agency implementers will also have to loop back to regulators and lawmakers for adjustments. In this model, lawmakers can exercise a very different kind of oversight — not just outrage when things don't work, but helping implementation stay on track while it's happening. What's a technology that you think is overhyped? I've really never understood crypto. Maybe I'll get it someday. What book most shaped your conception of the future? I finally read 'The Power Broker' by Robert Caro just a year or two ago, and it really helped me understand how we got so stuck in our ability to do things and build things. Robert Moses got a lot built, but he did it at too great a cost, and ruined things for future builders for a long time. It's a book about the past, but it helps you see the cycle we're in, which points at the future. Marc Dunkelman's new book 'Why Nothing Works' picks up from there really well. We've got to dismantle the vetocracy we've created so we can do stuff again. There's so much that needs doing. We can learn the right lessons from the past and stop overcorrecting. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn't? Government needs far more basic technology competence. We have to have this competence inside government. We can't just outsource everything, including our own understanding of what's possible and what we need. Of course, we'll still use contractors, but we'd use them a lot better if we had the right internal capacity. It's interesting to me that many voices for this path now come from the right, in part because they see how government is going to need to adapt to and adopt AI. You can't just let vendors tell you how to apply AI. You have to understand your own operations to know where it can help. One of the things that competence could do is put us in a position to use AI to move faster by tackling regulatory and procedural bloat. It's exhausting trying to understand what's actually required by law and what's someone's arbitrary idea of how to comply with that law that could be made far less burdensome. Getting back to the need to build and get stuff done, AI could really help us cut through these vague notions of red tape. What has surprised you the most this year? The L.A. fires really took me by surprise. They took a lot of people by surprise! I live part of the year in a high fire-risk area, but it's rural, very remote and very overgrown after centuries of fire suppression. I've pretty much been expecting our area would burn for some time. I had no idea we would see that kind of devastation in an urban area. It's been so shocking. Two branches of our family, and a dear friend, all lost everything. I only hope that L.A. can rebuild more sustainably this time. Events like these really make you consider the depth and breadth of what we need to rethink. doge at cfpb DOGE is now spreading its gospel of efficiency at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. POLITICO's Holly Otterbein and Katy O'Donnell reported for Pro subscribers today that Elon Musk's team is now embedded at the bureau, which Republicans have not been shy about wanting to eliminate. The CFPB's employees union, National Treasury Employees' Union 335, said in a statement, 'CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators. While Acting Director Bessent allows Musk's operatives to bypass cybersecurity policies and wreak havoc with their amateur code skills inside CFPB's once-secure systems, CFPB Union members fight to protect our jobs so we can continue protecting Americans from scammers with conflicts of interest like Musk.' Neither the CFPB nor DOGE immediately responded to POLITICO's request for comment. In a November post on X, Musk wrote: 'Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.' post OF THE DAY The Future in 5 links Stay in touch with the whole team: Derek Robertson (drobertson@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@ and Christine Mui (cmui@
