Note: The inter-linked Web pages available from www.nicholasjohnson.org and here provide links, ultimately, to thousands of pages created by Nicholas Johnson, including entire books. There are also links to even more material created by others. This page is intended to help you find some of what you may be looking for.
 

Of course, there are excellent search engines available, links to some of which are available below.

Much of Nicholas Johnson's life has involved politics in one way or another. So it's only natural that much of the material you'll find here involves politics.

The crucial role of campaign finance reform only intensifies with every passing year. It was the top issue for Common Cause during the time of Johnson's two terms on the Common Cause national board. In 1996 he did a study revealing that major donors receive at least a 1000-to-one return on their "investments," "Campaigns: You Pay $4 or $4000," Des Moines Register, July 21, 1996. Ten years later he returned to the theme by way of a response to a Des Moines Register editorial. His column is "Line Blurs Between Campaign Contributions, Bribes," Des Moines Register, July 5, 2006.

For information about publicly funded campaigns see Public Campaign/Clean Elections, http://www.publicampaign.org. In Iowa, Iowa Citizen Action Network, http://www.iowacan.org; Voter-Owned Iowa, http://www.voterownediowa.org.

Here's an introduction of one of the Democratic candidates in the 2006 Iowa governor's primary, Ed Fallon: "Standing With Ed Fallon," The Mill, Iowa City, May 2, 2006, a comment during a "Talk of Iowa" program about Fallon, Nicholas Johnson, "Voters Should Boycott Moneyed Candidates," WOI-AM 640, May 30, 2006, Marc Hansen, "Old-School Democrats' Views Often Align with Fallon's," Des Moines Register, June 1, 2006, and David and Sherry Borzo, "Fallon is Still a Winner," Des Moines Register, June 11, 2006.

The day after the 2004 presidential election results were in Johnson offered his fellow Democrats this reaction and set of suggestions: "Democrats' Recovery Begins by Looking in the Mirror" (an [Eastern Iowa] Gazette op ed). Before the results were in he engaged in some bi-partisan reflection on how the candidates had done in conducting our every-four-year citizens' civics seminar. It was published as a Des Moines Register op ed on November 6th under the title "Election As a Civics Class".

A couple of early op eds, equally applicable to every presidential election season, are "Campaigns: You Pay $4 or $4000" (a Des Moines Register op ed), and "Questions They Never Get Asked" (a Washington Post op ed). You might also want to look at his Earlham College lecture, "Media as Politics: What's a Voter to Do?" and his take on the potential political consequences of the technology used in President Bush's domestic spying operation, "The Politics of Domestic Spying" (Daily Iowan, January 19, 2006).
 
 

Because Johnson lives in Iowa, the state where the first presidential precinct caucuses were held January 19, 2004, there were a lot of candidates coming through his state. Having met most of them, Johnson settled on Congressman Dennis Kucinich as the most progressive -- in both proposed programs and rhetoric. You will find a number of items in the "Recent Publications" page that involve the 2004 election in general and Dennis Kucinich in particular, including Johnson's Web site, "Another Iowan for Kucinich" -- from which a number of these pieces are linked.

As the primaries ran their course in early 2004, and Senator John Kerry became the almost certain Democratic Party presidential nominee, and yet seemed to lack either theme or distance from Bush on major issues, Johnson attempted to "reverse engineer" just what Kerry's campaign strategy might actually be in Nicholas Johnson, "What's Kerry Thinking?" (with subsequent support for Johnson's thesis from columnist Richard Reeves, cartoonist Steve Sack, the multi-million-member moveon.org organization -- and, alas, the ultimate election outcome). Some of Johnson's reactions to that outcome are contained in "Democrats' Recovery Begins by Looking in the Mirror" (an [Eastern Iowa] Gazette op ed).

* Public Health

Nicholas Johnson served as Co-Director of the University of Iowa's Institute for Health, Behavior and Environmental Policy, 1990-1993. He has written on a number of public health and related issues.

"Retroactive Ethical Judgments and Human Subjects Research: The 1939 Tudor Study in Context," Chapter 9, Robert Goldfarb, editor, Ethics: A Case Study From Fluency (Oxford and San Diego: Plural Publishing, 2005).

"Why Iowa Needs to Raise Its Cigarette Tax," The Gazette, March 11, 2005.

"Market Competition Alone Won't Curb High [Pharmaceutical] Drug Costs," Quad-City Times, July 24, 2002.

"Why Aren't We Doing More to Curb Binge Drinking?" Iowa City Gazette, April 16, 2002.

"Focus Wrong to Attack Alcohol Problem," Iowa City Press-Citizen, May 5, 1998.

"A Public Health Response to Handgun Injuries:  Prescription -- Communications and Education," American Journal of Preventive Medicine, May/June 1993 (Supplement).

Michael Jacobson, George Hacker, and Robert Atkins, The Booze Merchants: The Inebriating of America (Washington: Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1983), Forward by Nicholas Johnson. (No text currently available for link; book review at http://www.unhooked.com/booktalk/booze_merchants.htm.)

“Dear Vice President Agnew,” New York Times, October. 11, 1970.

* Terrorism and the War in Iraq
Like many others, Nicholas Johnson had misgivings about the Bush Administration's response to terrorism in general, and the Iraq War in particular, from the very beginning. They, and he, managed to predict most of the disasters that have subsequently come to pass. You'll find in "Recent Publications" a number of speeches and articles on aspects of those subjects, starting in March 2002. They include, in reverse chronological order:

"General Semantics, Terrorism and War" (text of keynote address to the 60th Anniversary celebration of the publication of Wendell Johnson, People in Quandaries, and founding of the New York Society for General Semantics, Fordham University, New York City, September 8, 2006)

"Perspective on Military Murder and the Mission at Hand," (Iowa City Press-Citizen, July 2, 2006)

"The Politics of Domestic Spying," (Guest Opinion, Daily Iowan, January 19, 2006)

"Lessons from Abu Ghraib" (Guest Opinion, Daily Iowan, May 11, 2004)

"War in Iraq: The Military Objections" (advanced text for presentation at the University of Iowa College of Law's "International Law Talks: War with Iraq," February 27, 2003)

"Ten Questions for Bush Before War" (Guest Opinion, Daily Iowan, February 4, 2003)

"Capitalists Can Help U.S. Avert War with Iraq" (op ed, Iowa City Press-Citizen, Sunday Insight, October 6, 2002)

"Tell the Rest of the Story" (op ed, Iowa City Gazette, October 2, 2002)

"Between Iraq and a Hard Place" (op ed, Omaha World-Herald, August 13, 2002)

"Search for Better Response Than War: Don't Reward the Terrorists, But Understand Their Interests" (op ed, Des Moines Sunday Register, June 30, 2002)

"Rethinking Terrorism"  (text of presentation at National Lawyers Guild Conference, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa March 2, 2002)

Contacts for   Nicholas Johnson

Voice: USA + 319-337-5555 E-mail:

Fax: USA + 319-335-9019 Postal: Box 1876, Iowa City IA 52244-1876, US

Parcels: Nicholas Johnson, UI College of Law, Melrose and Byington, Iowa City IA 52242-1113, USA