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Created
Fri, 01/12/2023 - 00:00

Dear Pam,

Thank you for thinking of me and my son for the past eleven years as you and the rest of your firm’s staff gather around to add your signatures and nothing else to the non-denominational Costco holiday cards you send out every December.

The jolly gender-neutral snowperson last year? Classic yet updated for this LGBTQ-inclusive era. The bluebird perched on an icy pinecone the year before? Timeless. The masked gingerbread people in various colors holding hands around the earth on 2020’s greeting? A subtle yet vital nod to the social unrest of that tough pandemic year.

Truly, it means so much that you haven’t forgotten us after the ten months and $62,302 worth of your expertise and advocacy that resulted in a Parenting Plan that requires me to deliver my only child once a week to a man who once drank a bottle of Wild Turkey and then broke into my public school classroom at nine-thirty in the morning while I was teaching a lesson on To Kill a Mockingbird to eighth graders.

Created
Thu, 30/11/2023 - 20:45

Henry Kissinger is dead. The media mill is already churning out fiery denouncements and warm remembrances in equal measure. Perhaps no other figure in twentieth-century American history is so polarising, as vehemently reviled by some as he is revered by others. Still, there’s one point on which we can all agree: Kissinger did not leave […]

Created
Thu, 30/11/2023 - 20:00
Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Richard Harrison and Rana Sajedi Recent increases in interest rates around the world, following a multi-decade decline, have intensified the debate on their long-run prospects. Are previous trends reversing or will rates revert to low values as current shocks subside? Answering this question requires assessing the underlying forces driving secular interest-rate trends. In … Continue reading Global R*
Created
Thu, 30/11/2023 - 11:30
Another Trump innovation Trump’s abuse of the pardon power is well known. But this analysis by Protect Democracy pinpoints three specific abuses that are unprecedented and provide a major threat in a Trump second term: During the Trump presidency, we saw three types of henchmen pardons: Self-protective pardons: Trump dangled pardons for associates implicated in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, notably former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, providing an incentive for them not to cooperate with the Mueller investigation into Trump and his 2016 campaign. Both were indicted, in Manafort’s case sentenced to years in jail, and later pardoned. Pardons to reward illegal political activity that accrued to his benefit: Trump pardoned 2000 Mules filmmaker and vocal ally Dinesh D’Souza, who pled guilty to using straw donors to make illegal campaign donations to a Republican Senate candidate.