During a recent town hall in Columbus, Ohio, Sen. Bernie Sanders said the unthinkable. At least, you would have thought he did, judging by the response of several Democratic operatives. Sanders was deemed “extremely disgraceful” by Donna Brazile, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and “a political calculating fraud” by Brad Woodhouse, a former DNC communications director.
What was his crime? The old-fashioned Rooseveltian New Dealer had answered a question about why he is running as a Democrat, instead of as an independent, with typical candor: “In terms of media coverage, you had to run within the Democratic Party,” he observed, adding that he couldn’t raise money outside the major two-party process.
As one of the more successful third-party presidential candidates in recent U.S. history, I know firsthand the obstacles Sanders might have faced if he had run as an independent...
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Just appearing on the ballot is a challenge for independent candidates. While any Democrat or Republican who wins their party’s nomination is guaranteed a place on general-election ballots nationwide, smaller parties must, in many states, petition election officials to be listed. And that is a delicate process, easy for the major parties to disrupt. Their operatives have a number of tools at their disposal to knock third-party candidates off the ballot, render their campaigns broke, and harass and ostracize them.
Two years ago, Georgia’s Republican governor, Nathan Deal, signed a law allowing licensed gun owners to carry their weapons into churches, schools, bars, and some government buildings. But when a bill that would allow people to pack heat on college campuses flew through the legislature and landed on his desk this month, he balked.
Disciplinary hearings, campus day-care centers, and faculty and staff offices were places that gave the governor pause, prompting him to ask lawmakers to carve out more gun-free, or at least gun-optional zones. They refused, so now he has until May 3 to sign the legislation or veto it. If he does neither, it automatically passes and Georgia will become the ninth state with a campus-carry law on the book
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In some states, the possibility of negotiation over which campus locations can exclude firearms has gun enthusiasts and skeptics sketching out complex scenarios. They involve checkpoints, lockers, and areas of potential confusion, including questions about security in buildings where some professors will be allowing armed visitors and others won’t.
But the years that followed have done little to narrow the list of likely precursors. Rather, the murky science seems to imply that nearly anyone is a potential terrorist. Some studies suggest that terrorists are likely to be educated or extroverted; others say uneducated recluses are at risk. Many studies seem to warn of the adolescent condition, singling out young, impatient men with a sense of adventure who are “struggling to achieve a sense of selfhood.”
Such generalizations are why civil libertarians see only danger in government efforts to identify people at risk of committing crimes. Researchers, too, say they have been frustrated by both the Bush and Obama administrations because of what they say is a preoccupation with research that can be distilled into simple checklists, even at the risk of casting unnecessary suspicion on innocent people.
MedStar Health was forced offline this week after hackers took over its computer systems. An unconfirmed virus reportedly strangled the network and rendered it completely useless. Because of the attack, the healthcare operator’s 30,000 staff members and 3,000 affiliated physicians can’t access online record systems, check their emails, or look up phone numbers. Patients also can’t book appointments, according to the Associated Press.
Ryan King is 33. He has been working at a Safeway in Washington for 15 years. He pays his bills on time, budgets saving and spending money every month, uses exact change for his ride to and from work each day, makes a mean shrimp scampi, and has never been charged with a crime.
Yet, in the eyes of the courts, he has fewer rights than most convicted felons. Legally, Ryan cannot decide where to live, where to work, where to spend his free time, what medicine to take or with whom to talk.
Why? He has intellectual and developmental disabilities as well as sickle cell disease. And, as with many people like him, he is trapped in a legal guardianship that he’s longed to end for nearly a decade...
Last Friday, Oregon became the first state to ban coal outright, passing a bill that will phase out any electricity generated by coal by 2035. Several days earlier, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that 80 percent of last year’s retired electricity was coal-powered. In 2016, natural gas is expected to produce 33.4 percent of electricity versus coal’s 32 percent. At a time when the coal industry is facing one setback after another, it prompts the question: Has the “war on coal” been won?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) announced today that 20 automakers have agreed to make automatic emergency braking (AEB) standard by September 1st, 2022, representing "more than 99 percent" of the US auto market.
NHTSA has long praised automatic braking systems as a safety win, but the technology has only recently started rolling out on a wide scale. Using forward-looking sensors, automatic braking can slow or stop a vehicle that senses it's at risk of colliding with a car, pedestrian, or other object ahead of it, even when the driver takes no action. Like many high-tech systems, automatic braking first started showing up on luxury vehicles over a decade ago before trickling down to the mainstream; nowadays, it isn't difficult to find a sub-$40,000 car that has it, but the agreement is intended to ensure that automakers stay on the path.
Notably, today's announcement is strictly an agreement, not a rule...
Automatic braking, like lane keeping and dynamic cruise control, is considered a precursor to fully autonomous vehicles...
The world economy is visibly sinking, and the policymakers who are supposed to be its stewards are tying themselves in knots. Or so suggest the results of the G-20 summit held in Shanghai at the end of last month.
The International Monetary Fund, having just downgraded its forecast for global growth, warned the assembled G-20 attendees that yet another downgrade was pending. Despite this, all that emerged from the meeting was an anodyne statement about pursuing structural reforms and avoiding beggar-thy-neighbor policies.
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Negative rates, moreover, have begun to impair the health of the banking system. Charging banks for the privilege of holding reserves raises their cost of doing business. Because households can resort to safe-deposit boxes, it’s hard for banks to charge depositors for safekeeping their funds.
In a weak economy, moreover, banks have little ability to pass on their costs via higher lending rates. In Europe, where experimentation with negative interest rates has gone furthest, bank distress is clearly visible.
The solution is straightforward. It is to fix the problem of deficient demand not by attempting to further loosen monetary conditions, but by boosting public spending. Governments should borrow to invest in research, education, and infrastructure. Currently, such investments cost little, given low interest rates. Productive public investment would also enhance the returns on private investment, encouraging firms to undertake additional projects.
