There is a busy schedule waiting for Congress when they get back from summer vacation. Some in the GOP still want to do something on health care, but in the short term they have to raise the debt ceiling, they have to pass a budget or a continuing resolution and they want to do tax…
Fox News should seize this moment to reinvent themselves
Fox News is rapidly becoming the network of racists and sexual predators. Every day new allegations of harassment, intimidation and abuse are coming to light. These are periodically followed by multi-million dollar court settlements and occasionally someone else gets fired. The supposedly ‘fair and balanced’ Fox rose to prominence during the Rush Limbaugh right wing…
Before we can have better government, we’re going to need better voters
Photo credit: eldeeem via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA One of the primary roles of any government, under any political system, is to allocate resources. Government regulates industry, controls public lands and sets tax rates to determine how big the “pie” is going to be and then decides how much of the pie various individuals and…
How Trump’s moves against Syria may benefit Vladamir Putin
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via VisualHunt / CC BY-SA The US attack on air bases in Syria last Thursday obviously help Donald Trump domestically. They came just as Congress took it’s scheduled Easter recess. With Congress not in session, changes are that there will be no significant developments in the multiple ongoing investigations into the…
Roundup: What people are saying about Trump’s executive order on climate
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order that rolls back many of Barack Obama’s climate policies, including those aimed at meeting the targets of the Paris climate agreement. The full text of the order is available at PBS, the full text annotated by an expert in environmental law is available at Vox.…
Roundup: The fallout from the failure to repeal Obamacare
Pretty much everyone is painting the defeat of the Republican bill as a major defeat for Trump and the Republican congress including ABC News, the New York Times, Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, the Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and BBC. Despite Republican control of both the House…
The rise of protectionist populism in the US will speed up the robotics revolution.
Photo credit: Merrill College of Journalism Press Releases via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC For years people have been predicting that robotics and automation will start taking middle class and working class jobs at an alarming rate. So far, those predictions been quietly coming true and it is probably going to get much worse in…
If the left wants to win the big fights, we need to step up our game
Photo credit: gabrielsaldana via VisualHunt / CC BY-SA As a dual citizen of the United States and Canada I’ve had the opportunity to participate in and observe both political systems. One of the things that I’ve found as a constant in both countries, and in the UK as well from what I’ve observed, is that…
Want to stop Trump? Join the Democratic party and work hard
Photo credit: DonkeyHotey via Visual Hunt / CC BY Revolutions almost never actually happens. The things that people call revolutions are usually the crescendo of a movement which has worked hard and systematically for decades to create change. For example, the arrival of marriage equality in the US in 2015 was the high point of…
No, you can’t support Donald Trump without being a bigot
Photo credit: DonkeyHotey via VisualHunt / CC BY-SA If you lived in Germany in 1932 and voted for Hitler, you were anti-semitic. It doesn’t matter how you felt about Jewish people, you were empowering a regime built on hate, one that courted and counted on the support of bigots in their quest for power. I…