I should have posted this much earlier, but it just dawned on me that I should have invited all our NYC-based readers to the book launch of the US-edition of my book on Limitarianism. I guess my best and most truthful excuse is that I’ve been too busy with media requests since the Dutch version […]
Reading
Mike Johnson held a conference call yesterday and reportedly said that. Hmmm. What do you suppose he meant by that? Josh Marshall has this: Keep an eye on how the national press covers this. The White House, as you know, has been under immense pressure to offer concessions to address the continuing large number of migrants coming to the US-Mexico border. Now there’s a bipartisan compromise bill in the Senate. Last night Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that bill in DOA in the House. But Speaker Johnson said something more specific and revealing. He refused to bring up the bill and according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl said “Congress can’t solve border until Trump is elected or a republican is back in the White House.” Two things to note here. First, Johnson isn’t saying they won’t consider this bill. He’s saying they won’t consider any bill until Trump is elected. Sherman appears to have accepted the GOP wording – that “Congress can’t solve [the] border until Trump is elected.” But there’s more here. Johnson is saying openly that they won’t pass any bill until Trump is elected.
Housing affordability is a common topic of conversation across Australia. Taking the case study of Regional Victoria, Nenad takes a look at how rising housing costs impacts an area’s ability to attract and house key workers for that...
I’ve been prompted by the Netflix algorithm pretty aggressively to watch Leave the World Behind, the 2023 apocalypse film — it said I was a 98% match for the movie. I’ve taken it in over the last couple of days, and I have to grudgingly admit that the algorithm was correct; I really liked it. … Continue reading Leave the World Behind
Trump isn’t the same person he was in 2016. Or 2020. McCay Coppins makes a point that I’ve been trying desperately to make a while now: people should be exposed to Trump not protected from him. They need to see what he’s become: If Donald Trump has benefited from one underappreciated advantage this campaign season, it might be that no one seems to be listening to him very closely anymore. This is a strange development for a man whose signature political talent is attracting and holding attention. Consider Trump’s rise to power in 2016—how all-consuming his campaign was that year, how one @realDonaldTrump tweet could dominate news coverage for days, how watching his televised stump speeches in a suspended state of fascination or horror or delight became a kind of perverse national pastime. Now consider the fact that it’s been 14 months since Trump announced his entry into the 2024 presidential race. Can you quote a single thing he’s said on the campaign trail? How much of his policy agenda could you describe? Be honest: When was the last time you watched him speaking live, not just in a short, edited clip?
In a recent paper in Journal of Economic Issues, I explore a particularly interesting variant on the problem of unexplored normativity, politicisation and its ethical consequences. Put simply, standard theory of tax evasion inadvertently treats everyone as a criminal. Moreover, while recent work on theory of “tax morale” seems different it is not as different as one might think. Both contribute to a world of biddable neoliberal subjects.
The post How tax theory in economics treats us appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Has there ever been a more pathetic decline into craven servility than what he see with this guy? Marco Rubio formally endorsed Donald Trump for president in a post on X Sunday. “I support Trump because that kind of leadership is the ONLY way we will get the extraordinary actions needed to fix the disaster Biden has created,” the Florida senator and former Republican presidential candidate wrote. He previously ran against Trump in 2016, during which he called him “an embarrassment” and a “con artist” before bowing out of the primary race. Since then, he’s been a careful supporter of Trump, dodging when asked to condemn the former president’s actions over the Jan. 6 insurrection or when asked to address Trump’s repeated election lies. In his 2024 endorsement, the senator managed to toot his own horn while repeating Trump’s anti-establishment messaging. “When Trump was in WH I achieved major policies I had worked on for years,” he wrote. “It’s time to get on with the work of beating Biden & saving America!” Remember when?
They have become completely un-moored from principles and morals: More than 6-in-10 likely Republican caucusgoers — 61% — say that it doesn’t matter to their support if former President Donald Trump is convicted of a crime before the general election, according to the latest numbers from the new NBC News/Des Moines Register poll of Iowa. By comparison, 19% of likely Iowa caucusgoers say a Trump conviction would make it more likely that they’d back Trump, while 18% say it would make them less likely to support the former president in the general election. As with the other findings from the Iowa poll, the likely caucusgoers backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley — half of whom are independents and crossover Democrats — have far different perceptions about Trump and his legal challenges than other GOP caucusgoers. Among Haley’s supporters, 56% say a possible conviction of Trump doesn’t matter to their Nov. 2024 vote choice, but 41% say it would make them less likely to back Trump.
When I was approached to write the forward to Scott Morrison’s new book, my first reaction was, who? Then after being told that he was the former Prime Minister of Australia, a Christian and a tourism ambassador for the State... Read More ›
Part 3 of a series on the Kosovo War. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. So, Adem Jashari. Very short version: he was a guerrilla leader / local strong man. He lived in a region of Kosovo that was already challenging for the Serb authorities — rural, rugged terrain, and 100% ethnic […]
We are a role model. Unfortunately. From @capitolhunters: A right-wing party loses a free & fair election, claims election fraud, and refuses to certify the results – first the US, then Brazil, today it’s Guatemala. No armed militia but still chaos at the Capitol – pushed by the same people who pushed Jan 6. Anticorruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo was fairly elected. The losers then blocked the peaceful transfer of power. The NYT shamelessly finds a new low in how to trivialize this attempted coup: “Tempers Flare as Guatemala’s Presidential Inauguration is delayed”. One difference: in Guatemala the people in the streets with flags are the winning party, those trying to preserve democracy. As on Jan 6, everyone knew what was coming and converged on the Capitol. The rise of authoritarianism is a global issue. The Biden administration has been quietly working to convince the losers in Guatemala to leave. Sen. Mike Lee (UT), who knew Jan 6 plans, is pushing for the coup – and Ric Grenell is there in person to cheer it on.
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has visited on Australia the whole spectre of terrorism, through his craven and ill-judged support of the United States and its invasion of Iraq. Now we live perpetually with the spectre of terrorism and racial strife, visited upon us by his prejudices and lack of judgment. This statement was Continue reading »
When Election Day ended in Taiwan the local and foreign media, pundits, and others almost in unison reported Vice President Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party won handily, democracy had prevailed, and China (which opposed Lai and interfered in the campaign) lost, and the scene might escalate into conflict and even war. But the Continue reading »
“I hope to get a Chinese passport and become a Chinese citizen,” a Taiwanese student of mine once told me. “Only by being Chinese can we have confidence and become the most powerful country in the world. If we remain only Taiwanese, we are but a mere vassal of the United States,” he said with Continue reading »
The foundation for effective climate change adaptation must be the preservation of ecological life support systems for humans and all other species. We must prioritise the protection and expansion of water, biodiversity and ecological services to provide food security for future generations instead of environmentally damaging industries, especially fossil fuels. The devastating consequences of increased Continue reading »
On Friday, 5 January 2024, Iraq’s Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani said he wanted all remaining US Coalition troops out of Iraq. He was speaking on the fourth anniversary of the US drone assassination of Iraqi and Iranian generals Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad Airport in January 2020. What added a determined edge Continue reading »
We can all be glad that judges constituting the ACT Court of Appeal in the Bernard Collaery case had a more liberal view of the need for open justice than the judge who had been set to hear the case. This was before the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, stepped in to drop the prosecution altogether. But Continue reading »
Yesterday, I wrote that the Jevons Paradox is a good explanation for the problems of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Today, I look at another theory – Goodhart’s Law – to explain what is wrong with Australia’s $3 Billion a year employment services sector. The recent Workforce Australia review labelled the system a failure. Continue reading »
The genocidal violence unleashed by Israel in Occupied Palestine since October 7 has produced unspeakable tragedy and suffering for the Palestinian people. Such barbaric behaviour places the State of Israel outside the bounds of a civilized world. Israel has become a pariah state, and must be treated as such by the international community. Sadly, the Continue reading »
This is an excellent explainer of Trump’s 2024 agenda and it’s on TikTok, which makes me happy to see. This stuff has to blanket every corner of social media, repeatedly, if it’s going to penetrate. This from the BBC might be more appropriate for your cynical/apathetic grown-ups: They see us… When I asked the European ambassador to talk to me about America’s deepening partisan divide, I expected a polite brushoff at best. Foreign diplomats are usually loath to discuss domestic U.S. politics. Instead, the ambassador unloaded for an hour, warning that America’s poisonous politics are hurting its security, its economy, its friends and its standing as a pillar of democracy and global stability. The U.S. is a “fat buffalo trying to take a nap” as hungry wolves approach, the envoy mused. “I can hear those Champagne bottle corks popping in Moscow — like it’s Christmas every fucking day.” As voters cast ballots in the Iowa caucuses Monday, many in the United States see this year’s presidential election as a test of American democracy.
Before WWI, strategically, machine guns were offensive weapons. They were used to expand the European empires against opponents who didn’t have them.
Come WWI, it turned out that they were defensive weapons which made offensive operations very hard if both sides had them.
Armor and air made fast offensive operations possible in WWII, and aircraft carriers made air the queen of the ocean and the king of force projection against nations without large air forces.
Over the past twenty years two major things have changed in military technology. I’ve written about both in the past.