Politics and markets: How governments help and hurt economies

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Lots of political rhetoric is spewed across news and the social media. Most of it is just ideology, repeated and spun by pundits or posted across the social media, appearing as Facebook facts” where propositions come to be accepted as political truths. But they reality is that so much of passes as political fact is simply ideology; untested assertions or simply statements about the world that fail to stand up to rigorous social science scrutiny. This is the case with assertions about taxes, or voter fraud, or a slew of many other propositions. Two of the most cherished theories held dear to many conservatives are that the government cannot innovate and that the pathway to economic recovery is through austerity and cuts in government spending and taxes. Both of these myths are convincingly challenged in two recent books, Mariana Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State, and Mark Blyth’s Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Continue Reading

The global assault on democracy

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A country polarized and in paralysis by its political parties. A country that spies on its citizens and where its representatives no longer seem connected or accountable to their people. A country where the standard of living of its people is eroding. Sound familiar? At one time such a description did not include the United States. It used to be them, those other countries, but not the United States. But what has become clear is how much the United States has lost its exceptionalism and become just another advanced if not aging democracy in serious need of structural reforms. Continue Reading

The case against the filibuster: Why the Democrats got it only half right

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The Senate was right to change the filibuster rule for presidential judicial nominees. Yet it was too little change, too late. What really needed to be done was to abolish the entire filibuster rule for all Senate business. Senate Democrats will soon find that unless they do that nothing will get done in the Senate and there will be more Ted Cruz’s reading Dr. Seuss. Continue Reading

Minneapolis, St. Paul: A tale of two cities in Ranked Choice Voting

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The mayoral elections in Minneapolis and St Paul could not have been any different. One was loud and unscripted the other peaceful and predictable. Both spoke to the character of the two cities and what they mean for their futures. Minneapolis’ election was a generation changer preparing the city for the future while in St Paul it was an endorsement of the status quo holding the city in the past. But in both cases, ranked choice voting (RCV) successfully did its job. Continue Reading

Obamacare: Republican tragedy, Democrat farce

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By now everyone knows that federal roll out of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) health care exchanges has been a disaster. But Obamacare is also a tragedy and a farce. A tragedy because it is a horrible policy, a farce because it is now forcing Democrats to defend what was essentially a Republican idea. Continue Reading

Campaign financing and the price of democracy

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All indications are that the Supreme Court will soon declare yet another campaign finance reform measure unconstitutional, chipping away yet another piece of the Post-Watergate reforms that sought to limit the corrupting influence of money in politics. At least this is the indication based on the oral arguments in the recently argued McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission case. The Roberts Court will do this by arguing that the First Amendment protects the right of individual donors to expend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. The basis of the reasoning will be that aggregate spending limits by individuals does not corrupt or lend to the appearance of corruption of the political process. Continue Reading

Making sense of American politics in the age of Barack Obama

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A couple of weeks ago the United States was on the edge of a crisis. Had Republicans and Democrats in Congress not come to agreement with President Obama, the United States would have run out of money and defaulted on its debts, potentially throwing the country and the world economy into a recession. This crisis would have been a result of the Congress failing give the president to raise the debt ceiling which would have authorized him to borrow money to pay America’s bills. Continue Reading