Wow, leave it to a leftwinger like Alperovitz to come up with a scheme to devolve power to the local level without even nodding to federalism. Why do these people insist on coming up with new and radical ideas rather simply re-visit old, and good ones? It must be so exhausting. One answer is that it is the left which is almost solely responsible (at least in the 20th century) for the consolidation of power in Washington and Alperovitz needs to invent something new in order to avoid dealing with that fact. What a strange, strange piece.