Gallup reports that 16 percent of respondents mentioned some aspect of government as the U.S.'s most dire problem. This includes President Barack Obama, Congress, partisanship, or other political disputes. Thirteen percent named some aspect of the economy, which is down 4 percentage points from the previous year.

In the past two years, no issue has risen above a yearly average of 20 percent. The highest monthly average for government during 2015 was 19 percent, while the lowest was 13 percent.

One can ask what most accurately describes the essence of intelligent, objective, public service-oriented politics. Is it primarily an honest competition among the dominant ideologies of our times, a self-interested quest for influence and power or a combination of the two? Does it boil down to understanding the biological functioning of the human mind and how it sees and thinks about the world? Or, or is it something else entirely?

In a country with almost 320 million citizens, the secret ballot in elections almost ensures one simple fact--that voting fraud will exist, either from voters or the structure itself.

The secret ballot isn't a truly time honored institution in America -- only universally applied for a little over 100 years. In fact, Grover Cleveland was the first U.S. president elected exclusively by the secret ballot.

While everyone was toasting in the new year, few likely saw the major election news that broke on December 31. The Baltimore Sun reports that Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley failed to qualify for the Democratic presidential primary in Ohio, another major blow to a struggling campaign.

As around a dozen armed protesters gathered at the unoccupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon, angry over the federal government’s resentencing of local ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, in an arson case related to locally-controversial Bureau of Land Management regulations on land use, the mainstream media cast aside its journalistic responsibility and instead took on the more profitable role of a fight promoter.

Reinvention is the key and peacemaking is the heart of today’s revolution.

Building peace requires fixing government. Only 19% of Americans trust our government to do the right thing and 75% of Americans believe corruption in government is widespread. We have to restore trust at the same time we make decisions as one nation about what kind of America we want to be and what our role is to be on our shared planet in the 21st century.

The discussion of Social Security is normally a shouting match. One of the most divisive aspects of the discussion is the system’s trust fund.

At this point, the discussion of the Trust Fund is little more than a competition of dueling hyperboles. On one side, the Trust Fund is the more space efficient version of Fort Knox. On the other, it is an accounting gimmick that funnels cash to the general fund to be spent on other programs.