Politics

More is more and more is also different
~Benjamin Friedman, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, 2005  read more »

Perhaps nothing so animates the progressive Left today as the notion of an increasingly race-conscious society, segregated by ethnic identity and dismissive of the traditional ideal of assimilation. If this seems ironic, it should—in the not-so-distant past, this was a position embraced by the reactionary Right, particularly in the Jim Crow South.  read more »

I knew a number of things about J. Irwin Miller, the former Cummins Engine CEO who financed Columbus, Indiana’s world-renowned collection of modernist architectural masterpieces.  But when I read Nancy’s Kriplen’s recent short biography of him, I learned a lot I’d never suspected. Clearly one of the most distinguished Hoosiers of all time, among other things, Esquire magazine put him on its cover in 1967 saying that he should be the next President of the United States.  That was a pipe dream, of course.  read more »

Is America about to suffer its Weimar moment, culminating in the collapse of its republican institutions? Our democracy may be far more rooted than that of Germany’s first republic, which fell in 1933 to Adolf Hitler, but there are disturbing similarities.  read more »

By all rights, Donald Trump should be packing his bags and headed to the golf links and his favorite fast food restaurant. Never popular, he has done little to expand his base over the past three years. Unlike previous officeholders, many from more humble beginnings, he also demonstrably has failed to grow in the job.  read more »

“We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta. California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta,” declared then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007. “Not only can we lead California into the future . . . we can show the nation and the world how to get there.” When a movie star who once played Hercules says so who’s to disagree?  read more »

Here in California we’ve just received our first rain since last winter after another brutal round of massive forest fires. Our Mediterranean style climate cycles from a long dry hot period to a few short cool wet winter months. October is our most fire prone time of year. It’s hot, the earth is bone dry, the vegetation is brittle, and windstorms stir up fires like a giant hair dryer. Cyclical burns are part of the ecosystem here and are normal and necessary.  read more »

The fate of the 2020 election, whether for Congress or the White House, will be decided in the suburbs. Neither the pro-Trump countryside nor the intensely anti-Trump urban core have enough voters to put their preferred candidates in office.

It’s the suburbs that are home to the majority of all voters and over 80 percent of residents of the major metropolitan areas.  read more »

Although Governor Gavin Newsom promised to deliver 3.5 million new housing units in eight years, California severely missed this mark: as reported by the Public Policy Institute of California, housing production actually decreased during each of the past 2 years, and in 2019 is on track to fall about 80% short of the annual mark required to build 3.5 million new homes in 8 years. At this pace, it will take 39.6 years for the Governor to achieve his 8-year goal.  read more »

Es iz schwer tzu sein a yid. It is hard to be a Jew.

~Sholem Aleichem

When Britain’s Jews go to the polls next week, they do so at an uncomfortable moment. For the first time in at least a half century, their community—roughly 330,000 citizens—has become a major, if unwelcome, political issue.  read more »