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Common Cause is a self-described nonpartisan, nonprofit lobby and advocacy organization.^[1] It was founded in 1970 by John W. Gardner, a Republican former cabinet secretary under Lyndon Johnson, as a "citizens' lobby" with a mission focused on making U.S. political institutions more open and accountable.^[2]

Common Cause's current president and chief executive officer is Robert W. Edgar,^[3][4] a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania. Its chairman is former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich.^[5] It has offices in 36 states, and is funded by dues and contributions from its nearly 400,000 members and supporters.^[6]

Mission and political leanings[link]

The organization's mission statement says they are a "nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to restoring the core values of American democracy, reinventing an open, honest and accountable government that serves the public interest, and empowering ordinary people to make their voices heard in the political process.”.^[7]

It is described as liberal by such news organizations as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, TIME, and USA Today.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} Common Cause regularly participates in the National Conference for Media Reform^[13]

Common Cause focuses on five broad issues: campaign finance reform, election reform, ethics in government, government accountability, and the media. It also weighs in on health care, environmental, and defense topics.

Issues[link]

Campaign finance reform[link]

Common Cause’s is most notable for its activism for campaign finance reform. In 1974 Common Cause led the effort to pass the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), creating the current system of public financing in presidential campaigns.^[14]

At the state level, Common Cause has led successful efforts to pass campaign finance reforms, including the first disclosure laws, contribution limits and public financing in states such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Jersey, Michigan, Kentucky, Connecticut, and Florida.^{[citation needed]}

Common Cause is currently working on legislation for voluntary public financing in Maryland, New Mexico, and other states.^{[citation needed]}

Election reform[link]

Common Cause advocates a voter-verified paper audit trail for election machines in all states. In January 2008, Common Cause and the Verified Voting Foundation released a report entitled “Voting at Risk 2008” highlighting the problems with electronic voting machines. The report listed 17 states as “High-Risk”.^[15][16]

Common Cause is in favor of establishing a national popular vote for presidential elections to replace the current electoral college system. Since 2005 Common Cause has advocated giving the District of Columbia voting rights in Congress.^[17]

Media[link]

Common Cause's Media and Democracy department focuses on media ownership, network neutrality and community broadband.^{[citation needed]}

Ethics[link]

Common Cause was instrumental^{[citation needed]} in passage of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, which was enacted on September 14, 2007. The bill strengthens public disclosure requirements concerning lobbying activity and funding, places more restrictions on gifts for members of Congress and their staff, and provides for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills.^[18]

Government accountability[link]

In 1972, Common Cause sued President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), under the Federal Corrupt Practices Act for failure to report campaign contributions. This high-profile case forced Nixon to expose his secret list of donors and aided in his ultimate downfall two years later.^[19]

National Governing Board[link]

Since September 2010, the Chair of Common Cause's National Governing Board has been Robert Reich, who replaced Archibald Cox in that role.^[20] As of 2012, the board includes Vice Chair Martha Tierney, CEO Robert W. Edgar, and the following members:^[20]

Activism[link]

In January 2011, Common Cause filed a petition with the Justice Department, seeking an investigation about whether United States Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case.^[21] Common Cause then investigated the financial filings of Thomas, saying that Thomas did not include his wife's income in his filings.^[22] Bob Edgar, Common Cause president, called Thomas' explanation of his omissions "implausible."

Funding[link]

Common Cause receives funding from, among other groups, liberal George Soros' Open Society Institute.^[5]

Common Cause Magazine[link]

From 1980 through 1996, Common Cause published Common Cause Magazine.^[23] The magazine, once termed "the little magazine that could,"^[24] and described by the Washington Post as "a deeply researched, finger-in-your-eye sort of periodical",^[25] paralleled the work of Common Cause and focused on issues such as campaign finance and government accountability.

The magazine won more than two dozen journalism awards, including five from Investigative Reporters and Editors, as well as a National Magazine Award for General Excellence.^[25]

According to a Washington Post article, Common Cause was considering acquiring the Washington Monthly magazine.^[25] However, the National Governing Board voted against the Washington Monthly acquisition at its spring 2008 meeting.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Common Cause website
• Common Cause Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University

Robert Bernard Reich ( /ˈraɪʃ/;^[2] born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Reich is currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government^[3] and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Reich is a political commentator on programs including Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC's Kudlow & Company, and APM's Marketplace. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century,^[4] and The Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the "Most Influential Business Thinkers".^[5] He was appointed a member of President-elect Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.^[6]

He has published 14 books, including the best-sellers, The Work of Nations, Reason, Supercapitalism, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, and a best-selling e-book, "Beyond Outrage". He is also chairman of Common Cause and writes his own blog about the political economy at robertreich.org.

Early life and career[link]

Reich was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and attended John Jay High School in Cross River, New York. He attended Dartmouth College, graduating with an A.B. summa cum laude in 1968 and winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University.^[7] Reich subsequently earned a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. At Yale, he was classmates with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Richard Blumenthal. He first met Bill Clinton when they both were Rhodes Scholars at Oxford.^[8] Before Hillary and Bill met each other, he allegedly went on a date with Hillary Clinton.^[9]

From 1973 to 1974 he served as law clerk to Judge Frank M. Coffin, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and from 1974 to 1976 was Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, Robert Bork. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed him Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Federal Trade Commission.

From 1980 until 1992, Reich taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he wrote a series of influential books and articles, including The Next American Frontier and The Work of Nations. In The Next American Frontier he blamed the nation's lagging economic growth on "paper entrepreneurialism" -- financial and legal gamesmanship that drained the economy of resources needed for better products and services.

In The Work of Nations he argued that a nation's competitiveness depends on the education and skills of its people and on the infrastructure connecting them with one another, rather than on the profitability of companies headquartered within it. Private capital, he said, was increasingly global and footloose, while a nation's people—its human capital—constituted the one resource on which the future standard of living of a nation uniquely depended. He urged policy makers to make such public investments the cornerstone of economic policy.

Bill Clinton incorporated Reich's thinking into his 1992 campaign platform, "Putting People First," and after being elected invited Reich to head his economic transition team. Reich later joined the administration as Secretary of Labor. During his tenure, he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), successfully promoted increasing the minimum wage, successfully lobbied to pass the School-to-Work Jobs Act, and launched a number of job training programs.

In addition, Reich used the office as a platform for focusing the nation's attention on the need for American workers to adapt to the new economy. He advocated that the country provide more opportunities for workers to learn more technology.

Reich was born with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, also known as Fairbanks disease, and as a result is 4 feet 10.5 inches (148.6 cm) tall. He has at times frankly discussed this fact about himself, often with a twist of humor. He once appeared with the 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) Conan O'Brien in a sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.^[10][11] In the early days of the Clinton Administration, Reich confirmed to reporters that he was on Clinton's 'short list' for a cabinet appointment.

After the Clinton administration[link]

In 1996, between Clinton's re-election and second inauguration, Reich decided to leave the department to spend more time with his sons, then in their teen years. He published his experiences working for the Clinton administration in Locked in the Cabinet. After publication of the book, Reich received criticism for embellishing events with invented dialogue. The paperback release of the memoir revised or omitted the inventions.^[12]

Reich became a professor at Brandeis University, teaching courses for undergraduates as well as in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. In 2003, he was elected the Professor of the Year by the undergraduate student body.

In 2002, he ran for Governor of Massachusetts. He also published an associated campaign book, I'll Be Short. Reich was the first Democratic candidate for a major political office to support same-sex marriage. He also pledged support for abortion rights and strongly condemned capital punishment. His campaign staff was largely made up of his Brandeis students. Although his campaign had little funding, he surprised many and came in a close second out of six candidates in the Democratic primary with 25% of the vote.

In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 Prize, by the former Czech president, for his writings in economics and politics.^[13]

In 2004, he published Reason, a book on how liberals can forcefully argue for their position in a country increasingly dominated by what he calls "radcons", or radical conservatives.

In addition to his professorial role, he is a weekly contributor to the American Public Media public radio program Marketplace, and a regular columnist for the American Prospect, which he co-founded in 1990.^[14] He is also a frequent contributor to CNBC's Kudlow & Company and On the Money.

In early 2005, there was speculation that Reich would once again seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of Massachusetts. He instead endorsed the then-little-known candidacy of Deval Patrick, who had previously served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton Administration. Patrick won the party's endorsement, a three-way primary with nearly 50% of the vote, and the general election in November 2006.

In September 2005 Reich testified against John Roberts at his confirmation hearings for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

On January 1, 2006 Reich joined the faculty of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Policy. Since then, he has taught a popular course called Wealth and Poverty.^[15] In addition to his professorship, Reich is also a Member of the Board of Trustees for the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley.^[16] The Center is focused on finding solutions to address the crisis of extreme poverty and disease in the developing world.^[17]

Two years later his book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life was published. In it he argued turbo-charged corporate competition, fueled by consumers and investors seeking the best possible deals from anywhere in the world, was generating severe social problems. But governments were failing to address them because big corporations and Wall Street firms were also seeking competitive advantage over one another through politics, thereby drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. The answer was to keep corporations focused on making better products and services and keep them out of politics. "Corporate Social Responsibility" is essentially forbearance from activities that undermine democracy.

During the 2008 primaries, Reich published an article that was extremely critical of the Clintons, referring to Bill Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama as "ill-tempered and ill-founded," and accusing the Clintons of waging "a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics."^[18]

On April 18, 2008 Reich endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States.^[19]

On April 3, 2009, Reich commented that published U6 employment figures indicate that the United States is in a depression.^[20]

In September, 2010, his book "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future" was published. In it, Reich explained how America's widening inequality had contributed to the great recession and made it difficult for the economy to recover, by undermining the purchasing power of the middle class relative to the nation's productive capacity. In April, 2012, his book "Beyond Outrage" was published as an e-book. In "Beyond Outrage" Reich focused on why an increasing portion of the public felt the game was rigged in favor of those with wealth and power, why the "regressive right" was nonetheless able to persuade many that taxes should be lowered even further on corporations and the wealthy while many public services should be cut, and what average people could do to take back the economy and reclaim democracy.

Social media[link]

Reich has been an active user of social media. He has personally maintained a presence on Tumblr and Blogspot. In September 2011 he created an account on the internet forum reddit and opened an 'ask me anything' thread.^[21]

Political and philosophical stances[link]

Official Department of Labor portrait of Robert Reich

In an interview with The New York Times, he explained that "I don't believe in redistribution of wealth for the sake of redistributing wealth. But I am concerned about how we can afford to pay for what we as a nation need to do."^[22]

In response to a question as to what to recommend to the incoming president regarding a fair and sustainable income and wealth distribution, Reich said, "Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage supplement for lower-income people, and finance it with a higher marginal income tax on the top five percent. For the longer term, invest in education for lower income communities, starting with early-childhood education and extending all the way up to better access to post-secondary education."^[22]

Reich is pro-union, saying "Unionization is not just good for workers in unions, unionization is very, very important for the economy overall, and would create broad benefits for the United States."^[23][24]

Books[link]

• 2012: Beyond Outrage: What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy and how to fix it
• 2010: Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future ISBN 978-0-307-59281-1
• 2007: Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life ISBN 0-307-26561-7
• 2004: Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America ISBN 1-4000-7660-9
• 2002: I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society ISBN 0-8070-4340-0
• 2000: The Future of Success: Working and Living in the New Economy ISBN 0-375-72512-1
• 1997: Locked in the Cabinet ISBN 0-375-70061-7
• 1991: The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism ISBN 0-679-73615-8
• 1990: Public Management in a Democratic Society ISBN 0-13-738881-0
• 1989: The Resurgent Liberal: And Other Unfashionable Prophecies ISBN 0-8129-1833-9
• 1988: The Power of Public Ideas (editor) ISBN 0-674-69590-9
• 1987: Tales of a New America: The Anxious Liberal's Guide to the Future ISBN 0-394-75706-8
• 1985: New Deals: The Chrysler Revival and the American System (with John Donahue) ISBN 0-14-008983-7
• 1983: The Next American Frontier ISBN 0-8129-1067-2
• 1982: Minding America's Business: The Decline and Rise of the American Economy (with Ira Magaziner) ISBN 0-394-71538-1

See also[link]

• The Trap (television documentary series), BBC documentary featuring Reich
• 2008–2009 Keynesian resurgence

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (April 2012)

External links[link]

• Official website
• The American Prospect articles by Robert Reich
• US Department of Labor biography
• UC Berkeley bio
• Robert Reich's blog posts for the Why Democracy? project

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Reich

v t e United States Secretaries of Labor Secretaries of Commerce & Labor Cortelyou Metcalf Straus Nagel Secretaries of Labor Wilson Davis Doak Perkins Schwellenbach Tobin Durkin Mitchell Goldberg Wirtz Shultz Hodgson Brennan Dunlop Usery Marshall Donovan Brock McLaughlin Dole Martin Reich Herman Chao Solis

v t e Cabinet of President Bill Clinton (1993–2001)   Cabinet Secretary of State Warren Christopher (1993 – 1997) Madeleine Albright (1997 – 2001) Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen (1993 – 1994) Robert Rubin (1995 – 1999) Lawrence Summers (1999 – 2001) Secretary of Defense Les Aspin (1993 – 1994) William Perry (1994 – 1997) William Cohen (1997 – 2001) Attorney General Janet Reno (1993 – 2001) Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt (1993 – 2001) Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy (1993 – 1994) Dan Glickman (1995 – 2001) Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown (1993 – 1996) Mickey Kantor (1996 – 1997) William Daley (1997 – 2000) Norman Mineta (2000 – 2001) Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (1993 – 1997) Alexis Herman (1997 – 2001) Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala (1993 – 2001) Secretary of Education Richard Riley (1993 – 2001) Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros (1993 – 1997) Andrew Cuomo (1997 – 2001) Secretary of Transportation Federico Peña (1993 – 1997) Rodney Slater (1997 – 2001) Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary (1993 – 1997) Federico Peña (1997 – 1998) Bill Richardson (1998 – 2001) Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown (1993 – 1997) Togo West (1998 – 2000) Hershel Gober* (2000 – 2001) acting secretary.   Cabinet-level Vice President Al Gore (1993 – 2001) White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty (1993 – 1994) Leon Panetta (1994 – 1997) Erskine Bowles (1997 – 1998) John Podesta (1998 – 2001) Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Carol Browner (1993 – 2001) Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Korbel Albright (1993 – 1997) Bill Richardson (1997 – 1998) Richard Holbrooke (1999 – 2001) Director of the Office of Management and Budget Leon Panetta (1993 – 1994) Alice Rivlin (1994 – 1996) Franklin Raines (1996 – 1998) Jacob Lew (1998 – 2001) Director of National Drug Control Policy Lee Brown (1993 – 1995) Barry McCaffrey (1996 – 2001) Trade Representative Mickey Kantor (1993 – 1997) Charlene Barshefsky (1997 – 2001) Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency James Lee Witt (1993 – 2001)* Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch (1995 – 1996) George Tenet (1997–2001) Administrator of the Small Business Administration Erskine Bowles (1993 - 1994) Philip Lader (1994 – 1997) Aída Álvarez (1997–2001) took office in 1993, raised to cabinet-rank in 1996