The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House has generated a vast enthusiasm among Democrats to “reform the system” with various proposals vying for attention of the incoming Administration. Tax reform, climate change, student debt, infrastructure, civil-police relations: there is a laundry list of progressive proposals that merit the limited scope for action[i] that Joe Biden will enjoy when he is inaugurated. There are few actions that provoke as much fervor as the suggestion that Biden expand the Supreme Court and add more progressive justices to the current bench.
When Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Majority leader, refused to hold hearings for the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, he argued that no nomination should move forward during an election year[i]. He was echoed by the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley (R-IO), who stated: “It isn’t about the person, it’s about the process, it’s about the principle.”[ii] Garland, a 63-year old DC Appeals Court judge, was nominated in March 2016 after the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia. Eight months were to pass before the November election date.
President Trump recently tweeted out his pleasure with the “great financial numbers” that were being announced “almost daily”. In usual fashion, he went on to boast that the numbers weren’t just great, they were the best ever: the economy has “never been better” and jobs were “at the best point in history”.
Just how strong is the US economy? The old electoral adage “it’s the economy stupid” remains true, so leaving aside the President’s well-established penchant for wild hyperbole, the perceived performance of the economy should have an impact on both the 2018 and 2020 elections. …
This analysis and my own thinking on the correlation between demographics, technology, prices and their manifestation in human societies owes an inestimable debt to the work of David Hackett Fischer and his outstanding work in “The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History” (Oxford University Press, 11 November 1999). Most of the first section on the Crisis of the 14th Century is based on his book.
Sometime in the Fourteenth Century, the medieval world ended. It did not give way quietly to the beauty of the Renaissance, to Michelangelo and Botticelli. It was not an evolutionary transition: it…
It has been ten days since the Spanish Government imposed an Article 155 sanctioned take-over of Catalonia, provoking a defiant Catalan Parliament to sign a declaration of independence. Subsequent events have been somewhat anti-climactic, even mundane: Carles Puigdemont, desposed President of the Catalan Autonomous Region and unrecognized President of the unrecognized Catalan Republic, promptly disappeared from his new birthed nation to suddenly reappear with eight of his senior officials in Brussels, seeking to internationalize the dispute with Spain. He left behind his Vice President, Oriol Junqueras, who was soon swept up by Spanish police along with eight other members of…
On the 9th of May, 1950 the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed “to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.” His plan was to create a common market of natural resources and production between France and Germany, along with the supranational institutions to administer it. Mr. Schuman hoped that the intense economic rivalry which had characterized much of Great Power relations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries would give way to cooperation and joint planning; and as these rivalries diminished, so too would the jealous nationalism that had led to the most catastrophic war in human…
I wrote last year about one of the most flagrant yet unremarked “fixes” in our political system in the aftermath of the first Presidential debate on 28 September. This was the most watched debate in history, with more than 84 million American viewers on TV and an uncounted number more watching in online to see Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spar over 90 minutes. There was some policy discussion, though not much: there was precious little policy in evidence in the election, with then candidate Trump’s eccentricities taking up all the media oxygen. Afterwards, it was intensely scrutinized, generating a…
The suspended declaration of Catalan independence on 10 October was followed by a week of uncertainty and allegations, with both Spanish and Catalan leaders engaging in a tit-for-tat series of accusations more reminiscent of a schoolyard than of two national leaders. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy insisted that Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont give a clear answer as to whether independence had been declared or not; for his part, Mr. Puigdemont insisted that Mr. Rajoy agree to dialogue without answering the question. The Spanish Prime Minister’s request for clarification wasn’t just a polite nicety, it was a fundamental first step required…
Outside the Box is a series of articles that proposes unconventional solutions to controversial topics. Their purpose is to attempt to reframe debates that have fallen into ideological ruts and dogmas.
Author’s note: I’m a gun owner, a hunter, and a firm supporter of the Second Amendment. I am also a human being, who deplores the needless death and suffering of children and their families. These should not be mutually incompatible positions.
Another article in the wake of another mass shooting: I feel like the Onion, publishing the same headline time after time and to no effect. But the Las…
Spain now has political prisoners for the first time since the dictatorship of the fascist, Francisco Franco. Last night, a Spanish judge ordered the preventive arrest of two of Catalonia’s most outspoken supporters of independence, Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart. Another man, Josep Lluís Trapero, was sent home but obliged to turn in his passport.
These men are not ETA terrorists. They have not planted bombs or murdered anyone. The two Jordi’s are leaders of Catalan civic organizations, the Assemblea Nacional Catalana and Omnium, respectively. Mr. …
