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48,802 | In the "Fall of Rio" short documentary about the drug-related violence in Rio de Janeiro, one of the interviewed drug traffickers said he does what he does because due to the terrible government (unclear if he referred to Brazil's, or Rio's local government), the minimum wage is only 25% higher than rent. A friend of mine suggested a solution to this problem: Brazil/Rio's authorities realizing they've lost control of the situation and "importing" a large set of government officials from a better-run locality, to deal with it. This would be similar to an extent to companies on the brink of bankruptcy hiring external contractors with a fresh perspective to dig them our of the situation. The difference is that the government replacement would be far more extensive than hiring a few technocrats. Of course, there are a myriad other factors involved here besides the government officials, but I'm curious if this sort of political experiment has ever been tried (voluntarily or not), what the results were, and what was the largest scale at which it has been tried. | The pattern you describe is called colonization . Think of it. A place that is viewed as being "without proper government." Europeans come in, bring their laws and administration, in the hope that the locals will be happier than with their previous rulers. What makes you think that Sweden would want to do it? They seem to be a fan of democracy, all things considered. What makes you think that Sweden could pay for a sufficient number of civil servants, unless they tax the colony to pay for it? Look at the relative size. Then you would have taxation without representation, of course. Even in cases where it went relatively well, and where European nations still have colonies, this is seen as problematic. In those cases the colonies tend to be so massively subsidized that the independence movements don't get traction. As noted in the comments, there is also the option of government outsourcing to (foreign) consultants. This is actually quite common, but it usually involves commercial consultancy firms. | {
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48,845 | Among the achievements of President Trump quoted by supporters and the White House itself is a drive to appoint federal judges. His recent letter to the Speaker of the House gives the number of 170 new judges, out of a total of about 870 , not quite three years into his presidency. If I understand correctly, federal judges have tenure, that is, their office ends by voluntary retirement or death, except for rare impeachments. (Although apparently an increasing number of judges retire from their office early in order to pursue or continue a career in the private sector, because the judges' salary is comparatively low.) I thus assume that any president, including Trump, simply replaces retiring judges. For a back-of-the-envelope-calculation let's assume an average age of 45 for new appointees and an average retirement age of 65. We would then expect 1/20th of them to resign every year, which amounts to 870/20 ≈ 43. This would lead to a a number of around 120 judges to have retired during Trump's term so far. If the discrepancy is irregular, what's the reason? If it is, instead, within the ballpark of other presidents' terms, e.g. because an additional 50 judges retired early or because my calculation is wrong, is there a specific additional reason why it is considered noteworthy by the administration and its supporters? | The other answers indicate that Trump has appointed an unusually large number of judges, but they don't quite get to how Trump was able to nominate so many more judges than previous presidents. Vox: What Trump has done to the courts, explained One reason is that the Senate under the final two years of Obama's term was controlled by Republicans, and under their majority, they worked to keep federal judicial vacancies open for as long as possible. The first reason is the effective blockade Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell imposed on appellate court confirmations the moment Republicans took over the Senate. McConnell’s effort to block Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is well-known. Less well-known are the many lower court nominees who received similar treatment. Under Trump, McConnell’s turned the Senate into a machine that churns out judicial confirmations and does little else — he’s ignored literally hundreds of bills passed by the House. Under Obama, by contrast, McConnell’s Senate was the place where judicial nominations went to die. The numbers here speak for themselves. In the final two years of the Obama presidency, when Republicans controlled the Senate, Obama successfully appointed only two federal appellate judges — and one of those judges, Kara Farnandez Stoll, was confirmed to a highly specialized court that primarily deals with patent law. By contrast, 10 such judges were confirmed during the same period in the George W. Bush presidency — a period when Democrats controlled the Senate. This was compounded by the prior Democratic majority's attempt at maintaining a degree of bipartisanship in the Senate. Senator Leahy did not want to take away the power of minority Senators, and in doing so, he allowed them to hold some judgeships open for almost the entirety of Obama's term in office. The second reason for Trump’s outsized impact on the judiciary is that, when Democrats last controlled the Senate, one especially important Democrat — Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (VT) — took an unusually expansive view of the rights of the minority party. An informal tradition known as the “blue slip” sometimes gives home-state senators an exaggerated influence over who gets confirmed to federal judgeships within their states (the tradition gets its name from blue pieces of paper that home-state senators use to indicate whether they approve of a particular nominee). Traditionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee showed some level of deference to senators who disapprove of their home-state nominees, although the level of deference given to these senators varied wildly depending on who chaired the committee and whether that committee chair was politically aligned with the incumbent president. Leahy, who chaired the Committee for most of the Obama presidency, gave home-state senators a simply extraordinary power to block judicial nominees. Under Leahy, a single senator of either party could veto any nominee to a federal judgeship in their state (although federal appeals courts typically oversee multiple states, each individual seat on these courts is traditionally assigned to a particular state). New York Times: (Opinion) The Left Shouldn’t Freak Out About Trump’s Judges (Yet) This opinion piece in the New York Times supports the same conclusion. Why is President Trump filling so many vacancies? Because Republicans stalled Obama nominees and then abandoned the custom of deferring to the wishes of home state senators, which would have blocked or modified Trump nominees in blue states . The Fifth Circuit is a prime example. That court, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, has leaned right for three decades largely because Texas’ Republican senators blocked all but one actual or potential Democratic appointees from that state since 1995, and Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama let them get away with it. Unlike Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, was too wedded to Senate tradition to challenge the traditional veto enjoyed by home state senators, and the seats remained empty until 2017. | {
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48,872 | Trump impeachment vote is underway. Every representative is making their case for or against the articles of impeachment. Every one of them is addressing the "Madam Speaker". But what I see is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not sitting on the chair -- instead someone else. Why is that?
Or is this a different speaker for this purpose? If so, who is she? | "Madam Speaker" is not Rep. Pelosi , but Rep. Diana DeGette , a Democrat from Colorado, who is serving as speaker pro tempore and presiding over the US House of Representatives for the debate on the impeachment of President Trump. https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/12/18/diana-degette-impeachment-debate-preside-donald-trump-house-representatives-colorado/ | {
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48,888 | It appears that recently, Trump's approval rating has been rising despite impeachment, and the accusations and evidence against him. How can this be explained? Has there been anything published about why the public continue to support him, and indeed seem to be becoming more likely to do so? | From the very same article you cited about the very same poll that showed that Trump’s approval is up by about 6 percentage points: Support for impeaching and removing the president has dipped slightly among independents, Gallup found, from 55 percent and 53 percent in two October polls to 48 percent in the latest survey. If you split the difference between 55 and 53, you get 54, which is 6 points greater than 48. Given that the drop in support for impeachment is exactly proportional to the increase in support for the President, and that there’s very little else in political news being reported at the moment, the simplest explanation is that independent voters are not being persuaded by the impeachment case that the Democrats in Congress have put forward. | {
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48,937 | I was just reading the editorial Trump Should Be Removed from Office in Christianity Today, and I was struck by this quote (emphasis mine): Let’s grant this to the president: The Democrats have had it out for him from day one, and therefore nearly everything they do is under a cloud of partisan suspicion. This has led many to suspect not only motives but facts in these recent impeachment hearings. And, no, Mr. Trump did not have a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story in the House hearings on impeachment. However, my reading of the situation was that the Trump White House stonewalled the impeachment proceedings, for example, this New York Times article, Trump's Lawyers Won't Participate in Impeachment Hearing : Lawyers for President Trump said on Sunday that they would not participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s first public impeachment hearing on Wednesday, airing a long list of complaints that they said prevented “any semblance of a fair process.” What is the justification for the claim that Trump didn't have an opportunity to offer his side of the story when he ordered aides to defy subpoenas and didn't have his lawyers participate when invited? | Absolutely Not – the White House had ample opportunities to present a defense The House Judiciary Committee gave The White House the opportunity to present a public defense from either Trump or his lawyers: The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee asked President Trump on Friday whether he intends to mount a defense during the committee’s consideration of impeachment articles, setting a deadline of next Friday for Mr. Trump and his lawyers to decide if they will present evidence or call witnesses. In a letter to the president, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the committee chairman, said Mr. Trump has the right to review the evidence against him, ask questions of his accusers during public hearings that begin next week and present evidence and request witness testimony. “Please provide the committee with notice of whether your counsel intends to participate, specifying which of the privileges your counsel seeks to exercise,” Mr. Nadler wrote. House Judiciary Panel Asks Trump if He Will Present Impeachment Defense However, Trump turned them down, calling the whole process "unfair": Calling the impeachment proceedings “completely baseless”, the White House on Friday dismissed a Democratic invitation for Donald Trump to participate in hearings in the House of Representatives, which the president has framed as a partisan escapade. In a letter addressed to the House judiciary committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, gave no indication that Trump planned to send a lawyer to represent him or attempt to call witnesses. Trump’s non-participation is unprecedented. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, the two presidents to face impeachment proceedings in the 20th century, both deployed lawyers and submitted testimony and documents in their defense. White House dismisses invitation to take part in key impeachment hearing The White House also took pains to block testimony by the people who had the most information about his alleged crimes. Central to Trump's defense is the claim that the evidence against him is "second-hand" or "hearsay", yet the White House officials who could have pointed out errors in this evidence were blocked from testifying by the White House: The former national security adviser [John Bolton] refused to appear for his scheduled deposition Thursday morning, a House Intelligence Committee official said, and his lawyer informed the panel that Bolton would take the House to court if he is subpoenaed. ... “We regret Mr. Bolton’s decision not to appear voluntarily, but we have no interest in allowing the administration to play rope-a-dope with us in the courts for months,” the official said. “Rather, the White House instruction that he not appear will add to the evidence of the president’s obstruction of Congress.” ... The White House has claimed that current and former top presidential advisers, like McGahn and Kupperman, are “absolutely immune” from congressional testimony, and White House lawyers have stepped in to prevent senior officials from complying with requests and subpoenas seeking their testimony. Several of those current and former officials have defied those orders and testified anyway. Bolton is not alone in abiding by the White House’s directives. Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, will also not appear for his scheduled deposition on Friday, according to an administration official. ... Impeachment investigators pressing forward without John Bolton Bolton, Mulvaney, and other officials who were blocked from testifying by the White House were intimately involved in these events, and would have been ideal witnesses in Trump's defense if they had any information that could exonerate him: Bolton and Mulvaney have intimate knowledge of efforts by Trump and his associates to pressure Ukraine to launch public investigations into the president’s political rivals, as well as the decision to withhold critical military aid to Ukraine. Impeachment investigators are examining whether the hold on military aid — in addition to refusing to arrange a White House meeting between Trump and Ukraine’s president — were tied to the investigations sought by Trump. Already, several witnesses have testified that they believed the issues were linked. Impeachment investigators pressing forward without John Bolton | {
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48,964 | I am new to American politics, so this question maybe very fundamental. I understand that impeachment is a legislative process akin to criminal indictment, and the House and the Senate compose the legislative bodies of the United States. But the recent impeachment trial of Donald Trump has turned out to be more about partisan politics where each party is hellbent on whether to impeach or whether not to impeach the president, the outcome of which is likely to be determined by which party controls the House/Senate rather than having a fair trial. Questions: Since the public decide whom to elect as a president, why can't they vote on impeaching the president? What are the possible consequences/issues if the public is allowed to vote on impeaching a president? | Since the public decide whom to elect as a president, why can't they
vote on impeaching the president? The public doesn't (directly) decide whom to elect. The president is elected by the Electoral College, whose vote is generally determined by the popular vote. As for "why can't they vote on impeaching the president," the process of impeachment is outlined in the Constitution. The founders modeled this process after the British process of impeachment, as outlined in Federalist No. 65 . While giving impeachment power to the judicial branch of government was considered, giving this power to the general population was not. What are the possible consequences/issues if the public is allowed to
vote on impeaching a president? There are many possible issues with a direct popular impeachment process, far more than can be covered here. For a comprehensive list, search for arguments for and against the Electoral College. To name a few specifically with regard to impeachment: The general public doesn't have the time or patience to listen to the facts of an investigation and will likely not take them into consideration. The general public will likely receive any facts uncovered in an impeachment investigation through biased media sources, either via news outlets or social media. As such, the companies running these outlets would be able to exercise a large amount of control over the impeachment process. All of the arguments about voter suppression and illegal voting that we hear about general elections would be argued against a popular impeachment vote. Individual members of the public would not feel personally accountable for their votes, and would likely not think twice about impeaching a president because they dislike his policies, even if they do take the time to research the facts revealed in an impeachment investigation. While members of Congress in both parties have demonstrated unwillingness to listen to the facts of the investigation, they are at least not subject to the last three points. There is no reasonable argument that members of Congress are voting twice or have their votes suppressed, and several Democrats have "defected," either voting against or abstaining from voting on the articles of impeachment, arguably because they are beholden to the people in their district whom they represent if they would like to be reelected. | {
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49,032 | Historians say the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 was the first time a nation's ruling faction willingly ceded authority to their opposition, simply because they agreed to do so, rather than due to threat or usage of violence. Is that true? Was there no precedent for voluntary cooperation between political opponents? Was there anything close to it? Were the Federalists really unthreatened? Is there any evidence that they considered retaining power, but felt afraid to try? | This is trivially untrue. I haven't researched the earliest peaceful transfer of power, but here's the wikipedia article for the UK general election of 1708. That was the first UK election following the union of England and Scotland and So not even the first peaceful transition of power in England. Which is almost 100 years earlier. I feel confident you could find examples from the Roman period as well. | {
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49,117 | On 2019-12-27, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution strongly condemning human rights abuses against Myanmar 's Rohingya ,
134-9 with 28 abstentions. I can't find which countries opposed or abstained in online news articles or on the UN website. | The voting record for the resolution is as follows: The countries voting against are Belarus, Cambodia, China, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Philippines, Russian Federation, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe . The text of the resolution can be found here . | {
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49,151 | How could these regimes send both a message of terror, and, one of "we are the best government on Earth"? A totalitarians regime like USSR or Nazi Germany would push hard for not letting criticism against them spread, neither in the mainstream nor through any communication channels, including informal conversations. However, at the same time, they would pass the message that messing with the government is not very wise, unless you are suicidal. You better do exactly as you're told. | Enemies These governments designate or invent internal enemies, not just external ones, to justify repressive measures and to rally the rest of the population around the regime. An external enemy can do some of that, but it does not fully explain the Gestapo or NKVD . Actions of the enemy can be used to explain internal economic failures. The enemy justifies surveillance and terror against the own population because he might be hiding somewhere. | {
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49,155 | New Jersey Representative Jeff Van Drew has switched parties from Democrat to Republican over the House of Representatives' vote to impeach President Trump, citing its partisan nature and the political pressure he had received to vote along the party line. Has this happened before, that a standing Member of Congress switched parties directly from one major party to the other?
If so, when? | Has this ever happened before, that a standing Member of Congress switched parties directly from one major party to the other? If so, when? The number of party switchers is too numerous to list here. The names and dates are provided in the links. List of United States Representatives who switched parties , includes the reference to Jeff Van Drew. List of United States senators who switched parties . Party switching in the United States , includes a paragraph on Jeff Van Drew under Notable party switchers . Democrat congressman Jefferson H. Van Drew left the Democratic Party arguing that it was swinging too far toward a radical progressive political agenda that, in his view, did not reflect the will of most people of the United States, and that Trump and what Republican Party had accomplished during the Trump presidency better reflected their will. In commenting on his party switching and reflecting on the shifting political direction of the Democratic Party, Van Drew quoted former President Ronald Reagan as having once said "I didn't leave my party, my party left me." Van Drew, who voted against the Democratic Party line in voting against impeaching Trump, claims that part of his decision to walk away from the Democrats was the alleged behaviour of at least one unnamed Democratic Party powerbroker who - in the days leading up to the House impeachment vote - had allegedly issued political threats towards him, threats that were alleged to be acted upon if he voted against impeachment, with following words to the effect "You will not get the line. You will not get the county. I will do everything to prevent that from happening and everything to destroy you." These words were disputed as "hyperbole" by a person, Mike Suleiman, interviewed by NBC10 who was thought by NBC10 to be the unnamed figure who allegedly issued the alleged political threats to Van Drew. Motivations , from the above link. Politicians may switch parties if they believe their views are no longer aligned with those of their current party. Richard Shelby of Alabama left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party, arguing that the former party had shifted more towards liberalism. A disaffected incumbent who might not hold a leadership position or feels ignored or mistreated by the majority party might join the minority party with the expectation of holding a leadership position in the minority party and if currently elected, having the complete support of the minority party for re-election, who would certainly want to have more elected officials in their ranks. Some politicians have also switched parties to improve their chances for reelection. Arlen Specter, a former US Senator of Pennsylvania, cited his uncertainty of winning a Republican primary as one reason for his move to the Democratic Party. | {
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49,173 | In many modern political debates democracy is often considered an unalloyed virtue: things are good because they are democratic. Things the people have voted for are good because they represent the "will of the people" and that has to be good. Politicians often try to crush arguments that something is bad by throwing in the idea that–even if they seem bad–they can't be challenged because they are "democratic" (in the UK even many opponents of Brexit argued we had to go through with it because the people had voted for it). But it should be obvious that democracy is not, by itself, a virtue (if a small majority voted to reinstate slavery of some minority, that might be democratic but very few would defend such a decision as morally good.) There is also the problem that "what the people want" is not always in their own interests. Big long term social problems may be poorly understood by the people but better understood by experts. In such circumstances, just responding to the immediate concerns of the people may be very bad for the long term good of the people. Some theorists have argued that democracy is not a good in itself but a bulwark against worse form of government. Karl Popper, for example, made the argument that the main point of democracy was to prevent tyranny; by, for example, providing a peaceful way to oust incompetent or evil governments and preventing the accumulation of too much power in any single group. So what, in modern political thinking, is the purpose of democracy? Is it about giving the majority of people the things they want right now? Or is the far narrower goal of enabling the people to throw out bad governments? Or something else? Is democracy a virtue or is it a bulwark against evil? | What is the purpose of democracy? It's more a philosophical question than a political question but let me try a brief answer: First, it's a reasoning bias to imagine that things always exist for a specific "purpose". Things exist for various reasons (historical, cultural, ...) which are not always optimal or even logical, let alone "virtuous". Whether something is good or bad is a very contextual question. Reasoning in absolute terms about good and evil is more likely to generate fights than to reach a higher level of mutual understanding. Of course political discourses are full of this kind of argument (not only in favor of democracy by the way), but that's not necessarily a sign of rational thinking (quite the opposite, one might say). Based on the previous remarks we could re-frame the question a bit as: if democracy is "the best political system", what is it better than? I think that phrasing the question this way points to the answer: in the current context, democracy (as we know it) is just the "least bad" known political system. Sure it's full of imperfections, but any other known system would be even worse, so in this sense its "purpose" is just to be comparatively better than any alternative. It's also important to emphasize that democracy is an evolving concept. For instance the original US constitution is considered a democratic landmark, even though it allowed slavery and that would be unthinkable for a democracy nowadays. To some extent, democracy can be thought as a political system meant to deal with human imperfections, for example: Separate the executive, legislative and judiciary powers in order to prevent concentration of power Use regular elections to avoid rulers hanging onto power Establish institutions which monitor whether power is applied in a fair and constitutional way, with an intricate system to avoid any imbalance of power. Any known alternative to democracy relies on the assumption that a particular person (or group of persons) is somehow the "perfect ruler". In this perspective, democracy is arguably superior because it acknowledges that humans are imperfect and corruptible, and tries to structurally mitigate the issues. | {
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49,219 | Earlier this week, Qasem Soleimani was killed by the US . The news media is brimming to capacity with news stories about this. However, not one - that I've seen at least - mentions why Qasem Soleimani was in Iraq or in Baghdad. Is there any well sourced information describing why he was there? Edit: Please, in addition to the long term, strategic reasons he was there, I am interested in the immediate, day-of reasons. | According to this BBC article Soleimani was in Iraq to meet the Iraqi Prime Minister: The Iraqi prime minister revealed he had been due to meet Soleimani on Friday, the day he was killed along with six others when their vehicles were hit by missiles as they were leaving Baghdad airport. [...] "I was scheduled to meet martyr Soleimani at 08:30 in the morning," the prime minister said on Sunday. "He was killed because he was set to deliver a response from Iranians to a Saudi message, which we delivered to the Iranians to reach an important breakthrough in the situation in Iraq and the region." | {
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49,241 | The US army absolutely dwarfs the Iranian army in terms of military might. Realistically, Iran cannot attack mainland US, whereas the US could nuke Iran into oblivion at a moment's notice. They seem to be David and Goliath except Goliath has the sling. Does Iran actually have any ability to attack mainland US? | They don't need to be able to strike the US mainland directly. All they need to do is go to war with allies of the US in the region, and they have ample allies to hide behind Iran says it is not behind Saturday's attacks on oil plants in Saudi Arabia, denying accusations from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Tehran was responsible for "an unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply." Or they could tie oil lanes up in the Strait of Hormuz Tehran has promised to retaliate, and one place is particularly vulnerable: the Strait of Hormuz, off Iran's southern coast.
The channel, which is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, is the only way to move oil from the Persian Gulf to the world's oceans.
Last year, attacks on two ships — one carrying oil and the other transporting a cargo of chemicals — in the nearby Gulf of Oman caused a temporary surge in oil prices. Remember, also, that the US has troops in Iraq, Qatar and Afghanistan. The Iranian Quds force has been effective in killing troops (via things like EFP IEDs) in such locations before. Terrorism could be how they hit the US back. | {
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49,272 | After the recent strike targeting Qassem Soleimani I am wondering why does US performs these attacks so bluntly while nowadays it is quite fashionable to deny involvement . I assume that in order to able to deny they should rely on less sophisticated strikes which do not immediately connects the attack type to US military technology, but this should reduce the side effects . Question: Why does US confirm conducting strikes such as the one that targeted Qassem Soleimani? Why not deny it? | The point of publicizing the action is to make it act as a deterrent for others. The modern version of gunboat diplomacy : The results indicate that the most effective gunboat diplomacy involves a definitive, deterrent display of force undertaken by an assailant who has engaged in war in the victim's region and who is militarily prepared and politically stable compared to the victim. Statements like the one from the Department of Defence ending with This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. make that pretty obvious. There's also the home US audience to be provided with clear victories/actions in response to the Iranian ones, presented as justice. Trump called Suleimani "the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world", other Republicans called him an "evil bastard who murdered Americans". The US public very much believes in retributive justice and this seems to extend to an international context. | {
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49,295 | Grid parity happens when the renewable energy source is competitive with fossil fuels without government subsidies. It has apparently already been reached by wind and solar power, at least in some parts of the world, in 2014. However, it seems that ditching fossil fuels for renewable energy still costs trillions upon trillions of dollars . Why? Presumably if grid parity was reached by some countries in 2014, then wind and solar power has actually become cheaper than fossil fuels in these places by today (2020), which would give a powerful economic incentive to switch - but they apparently aren't willing to. Only thing I can think of is the up-front costs required to build the wind & solar farms, but this seems weird, because solar panels are apparently heavily oversupplied ( 2012 source , 2018 source ). | You need to consider short term intermittency (the wind not always blowing and the sun being down 50% of the time). That needs to be covered by some form of short term storage, most of which are expensive at scale. Or long distance grid interconnects. But worse than that, you have, at least in some areas, massive seasonal variations. I've looked at, but can't find it right now, a document by California's Energy Commission where they claim a factor of 5 difference between peak solar and wind production at high vs low times of the year. That seemed high, for California's weather, but higher latitude zones have massive summer/winter solar variations (German winter sun? hah!). That's something that no storage is going to help with, you'll need to either source elsewhere or get around by overcapacity. These factors don't show up that much when renewables are a small proportion, but they become more important as fossils are retired entirely (which they should). The bottom line is that, right now, seasonal variations and day-to-day intermittency is going to make a full-renewable system difficult to pull off. Let's not forget that Germany's energy wende swallowed 130B$ and then still increased emissions, because their baseline backup went to coal, some of it lignite. NY Times - 2017 DW - 2017 Forbes - 2019 At this point, in 2019, Germany is operating around 30% solar + wind, so those problems are manifesting at what's nowhere full near "full renewables" . While I am at it, why does Energiewende Wikipedia refer to CO2 reductions since 1990, as its policies only started in 2000? A look at this World Bank graph gives a clue - it allows to claim a hand in emissions reductions that happened before the Wende. Now, plug in some other Euro countries and see how they compare minus the Wende . I am all for taking global warming seriously, but let's not repeat the silliness of the ethanol subsidies for dubious gains once the full cycle of production is accounted for. Every dollar badly spent is a dollar not available for better solutions. We can't afford to do that very often. Even replacing older coal plants with natural gas is risky if it locks us into natural gas for the next 50 years - natural gas is not carbon neutral by any means. In a perfect world, we'd gradually increase carbon taxes and fund better systems from revenue. In a less perfect world, we'd do revenue-neutral carbon pricing + dividends. In our current world, we don't price carbon, but subsidize various technologies, not all of which are grid scale ready and not all of which actually reduce emissions much . We really need to get it right, because the CO2 numbers of the chosen solution mix make sense, not just because it feels right. And even the $ numbers need watching, because the wrong tech will not scale outside rich countries. Also, as has been discussed above, it pays to understand what "parity" means. It refers to averaged construction + operation costs per kwh. So, it really says new coal capacity vs new solar capacity ? Switching means taking out existing fossil. | {
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49,308 | In response to the United States' killing of an important Iranian military commander on Iraqi soil on 3 January 2020, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US troops from the country. According to various news sources (such as Al Jazeera ), this decision is non-binding as it took the form of a parliamentary resolution rather than a legislative act. Why did the Iraqi parliament choose to respond using what looks like a consultative or advisory proclamation rather than a binding decision with the force of law? Is this because they wanted to issue a forceful-sounding message of displeasure without actually wishing the US military to leave? Or is it because the procedure for passing binding legislation rather than a parliamentary resolution is much more difficult and perhaps less likely to be successful? (For example, are there more stringent quorum or majority-voting requirements for legislation?) If the latter, are Iraqi legislators now preparing or debating legislation that will formally effect the expulsion? | I'm not sure there is a clear answer to this. US forces currently in Iraq aren't there as part of a formal agreement of any sort. They are there 'informally' at the invitation of the Iraqi government. Most commentators suggest that the Iraqi parliament has no capability to legally demand the removal of US troops - it would require the government to make the demand, and the parliament has no real route to force the government to make that demand. If that sounds slightly screwy, it's because it is. Deliberately so. The system is designed to put all the meaningful power in the hands of the president and the executive. The legislative branch - the parliament - mostly gets to elect the new president, remove a president from office, and confirm the actions of the executive. Like many constitutions in the region, it isn't designed to give democratic accountability, but rather to give ethnic and factional stability, with a veneer of democratic institutions where they aren't too inconvenient. (And in Iraq's case in 2005, arguably a stable government that can effectively do the US's bidding without being overruled by popular opinion). So as I understand it, for the Iraqi parliament to force compel the removal of US troops from Iraq, it has to force the government to take that action, which it can do by the threat of removing the president from office, or actually removing him from office and electing a new president who will do what they want. Which is probably a bigger step than they are willing to take at the moment. | {
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49,326 | From NBC news : McConnell says he has enough Republican votes to begin Trump's trial without witnesses The process cannot get started until Pelosi sends the House-passed articles charging the president to the Senate. From the BBC : John Bolton ready to testify in Trump impeachment trial So: the Senate Republicans don't want any witnesses the House Democrats have not yet passed over the articles of impeachment Could the House Democrats still subpoena Bolton, in order to get his testimony into the record that it handed to the Senate? I imagine that if they did, they would have to re-vote on new articles of impeachment. Is that legal, possible, probable? Is there any other way to get Bolton's testimony heard, if the Senate Republicans won't introduce him as a witness? | I'm not sure there is a clear answer to this. US forces currently in Iraq aren't there as part of a formal agreement of any sort. They are there 'informally' at the invitation of the Iraqi government. Most commentators suggest that the Iraqi parliament has no capability to legally demand the removal of US troops - it would require the government to make the demand, and the parliament has no real route to force the government to make that demand. If that sounds slightly screwy, it's because it is. Deliberately so. The system is designed to put all the meaningful power in the hands of the president and the executive. The legislative branch - the parliament - mostly gets to elect the new president, remove a president from office, and confirm the actions of the executive. Like many constitutions in the region, it isn't designed to give democratic accountability, but rather to give ethnic and factional stability, with a veneer of democratic institutions where they aren't too inconvenient. (And in Iraq's case in 2005, arguably a stable government that can effectively do the US's bidding without being overruled by popular opinion). So as I understand it, for the Iraqi parliament to force compel the removal of US troops from Iraq, it has to force the government to take that action, which it can do by the threat of removing the president from office, or actually removing him from office and electing a new president who will do what they want. Which is probably a bigger step than they are willing to take at the moment. | {
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49,425 | On this site the author writes: Two more Facebook moderation stories. On one hand, they're moving to block 'deep fake' manipulated video, but on the other, they're holding firm on not fact-checking ads placed by political candidates (note that US broadcast media is mostly banned from fact-checking political ads), instead focusing on vetting who places the ads and on providing transparency on what ads have been run. This seems to go against journalistic principles . (Not that a broadcaster is entirely about journalism.) My question is about where truth and integrity play into the decision-making process in an organisation that is making money. My question is: Why is the US broadcast media mostly banned from fact-checking political advertising? | Nothing prevents or bans the broadcast media from Fact Checking political advertising. But broadcasts are prevented from censoring political campaigns. The issue has recently been investigated by PolitiFact in the context of statements by Elizabeth Warren who stated that broadcast media was more robust on political advertising than Facebook. PolitiFact found they were not, and broadcasters would run a candidate's ad even if it contained false statements, based on federal law preventing censorship. Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 states: "If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station: Provided, That such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast under the provision of this section." Broadcasters are bound by that act and therefore can’t reject a presidential candidate’s ad, even if contains false information. (The candidates do have to abide by disclosure rules to make it clear who paid for the ad.) Facebook's position as described by Mark Zuckerberg under House questioning, essentially expands this to all political advertising. This doesn't mean that broadcasters can't fact check the ads run on their own or other networks. It is just that fact checking organisations are mostly digitally focused. But there are organisations trying to change this. To reach a wider audience, expand fact-checking to broadcast news . Fact-checkers just need to collaborate with broadcast organizations for a few minutes each week to reach more people. As part of my fellowship I set up a partnership between the News & Observer and two National Public Radio affiliates in North Carolina. ... As it is now, fact-checking reaches a small audience of well-informed people. To fight the growing problem of misinformation, fact-checkers must evolve their content by collaborating with broadcast media to reach a wider audience and continue to build trust among diverse audiences. | {
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49,428 | According to what I've read: the House has the ability to impeach a President, however this doesn't mean the President has to leave office. He only has to leave office if the Senate finds him guilty. Thus, impeachment is just a formal accusation or charge, and the Senate is the judge/jury in which the President is either found guilty or not-guilty. A positive or negative result in the Senate doesn't change the fact that the President was impeached. The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other
Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. (1) Removal from office if convicted, is separate from the act of
impeachment itself. (2) If a simple majority of the those present and voting in the House
approve an article of impeachment, then the president is impeached. (3) Is this the correct way of thinking? Because lately, in the news, and conversationally people seem to think that he isn't impeached until after the Senate renders their verdict, and some argue that the President isn't impeached until the articles are sent to the Senate (answered here ). The entire system is even called the "impeachment process" which seems to indicate multiple "steps" are required for impeachment (rather than just the House vote). Sources: US Constitution: Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_States https://www.ajc.com/news/national/how-does-impeachment-work-here-the-step-step-process/5wUTeEdEgheqohUL1WA0IJ/ | Impeachment is used to describe two different but related events: Formally, impeachment happens when the House passes the vote to do so. This is how it is defined in the Constitution, and how lawyers will use the term. Most of the public uses the phrase that "the President has been impeached" only after he has been impeached and convicted. Similar to that everyone is considered innocent until convicted. This different usage is causing confusion. On Politics.SE usually the formal definition is used. On the internet, you have to rely on the context to determine which of the two meanings is used. | {
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49,492 | There have been a number of headlines about the Russian government resignation. This American ABC News article is one example. The reason I ask is that, I don't know the mechanism of the Russian political processes, and what government means in this case. I'd like to understand what it means and a little of what it does not mean. For example, does it mean a re-election somewhere?, which is what it could mean in other countries? | The processes regarding the Russian government are described in Chapter 6 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation . The articles which are most relevant to this question are 111 (appointment of the government) and 117 (resignation of the government). In Russia, the government consists of the Prime Minister and the ministers. The ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister (who was Dmitry Medvedev until his resignation) and the Prime Minister is appointed by the President (currently Vladimir Putin) and confirmed by the Duma (the elected parliament). When the government resigns, then the President will nominate a new Prime Minister. The Duma will vote on that nomination. When the Duma confirms the appointment, the Prime Minister will then appoint a new cabinet of ministers. The only way how this could lead to a new election in Russia would be if the Duma rejects the candidates nominated by the President three times. In that case the Duma would get dissolved and a general election for a new one would take place. But this is unlikely to happen this time. Putin already did nominate a new Prime Minister. The new Prime Minister of Russia will be Mikhail Mishustin (former head of the federal tax service). The Duma has not yet confirmed the appointment, but is expected to do so today (January 16th 2020) because the party United Russia which controls 341 of 450 seats in the Duma has already signaled their support for Mishustin. | {
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49,517 | So, in American politics, there is the tradition of the filibuster, where a legislator prevents a legislative activity from moving ahead by standing up and continuing to talk indefinitely, which has, over the course of time, evolved to a point where a legislator can simply stand up, declare they're filibustering, and prevent further discussion on a given topic without needing to actually talk. Is there anything preventing a Senator from doing so during an impeachment trial, if they disagree with holding one? | Is there anything stopping an impeachment trial from being filibustered? Yes, there is a specific rule limiting debate time; and, unlike bills, amendments and resolutions, no procedure for amendments or amendments to amendments, and thus no need for a cloture vote to end the debate. It is the cloture vote requiring three-fifths of the Senators to agree that allows for a filibuster. See Rules of the Senate , XXII 2, "'Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?' And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators ...". II. Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials [p. 5] XXI. All preliminary or interlocutory questions, and all motions, shall be argued for not exceeding one hour (unless the Senate otherwise orders) on each side. | {
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49,535 | There is a new proposal in the Harvard Law Review titled: "Pack the Union: A Proposal to Admit New States for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution to Ensure Equal Representation" . Lamenting the results of the last election, the article suggests subdividing the 91% Democrat leaning District of Columbia into 127 new states will give them the power to amend the Constitution at will without worrying about the opinions of the rest of the country: To create a system where every vote counts equally, the Constitution must be amended. To do this, Congress should pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.C., to an area encompassing only a few core federal buildings and then admit the rest of the District’s 127 neighborhoods as states. These states — which could be added with a simple congressional majority — would add enough votes in Congress to ratify four amendments: (1) a transfer of the Senate’s power to a body that represents citizens equally; (2) an expansion of the House so that all citizens are represented in equal-sized districts; (3) a replacement of the Electoral College with a popular vote; and (4) a modification of the Constitution’s amendment process that would ensure future amendments are ratified by states representing most Americans. From my research, new states can be admitted with a simple majority vote of congress. They can't be carved out of existing states, but D.C. is not an existing state. Therefore my question is: Would it be Constitutional for the party in power to add as many states as they wish (D.C or otherwise)? Are they any limitations on this? Would the other states be able to stop this? | It looks to me as if the Harvard Law Review is engaging in a rather laboured joke , in the spirit of Swift's A Modest Proposal . To be more precise, it seems to be a satire on the temptation to change the rules when one is losing the game. The problem with that in any vaguely democratic system is assembling the votes to make the change. This proposal increases the temptation to do that by ensuring that one side will win all the votes after the change, which helps the reader ignore the impracticality of making the change at present (the same party would have to control both houses of Congress and the Presidency), and its flagrantly abusive nature. States have been sub-divided in the past (West Virginia split from Virginia, and Maine from Massachusetts, to name two of the most recent examples), and there has been a movement to turn the District of Columbia into a US State since 1980. So mechanisms that could accomplish the job exist. A law journal would not publish such a satire unless it was technically legally possible. Without that, the satire would have no impact. A political satire would be pointless if it announced itself as such, so it doesn't. | {
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49,598 | This questions deals with the age of presidential candidates in US. The most upvoted answer argues that: The main reason is simply that president of the US is the very top
position that can be achieved for a (US) politician This article shows a trend for electing young leaders (presidents, chancellors) in Europe: Across Europe, stodgy career bureaucrats have been pushed aside in
favor of a new guard of young, fresh-faced politicians. In the last year alone, France, Ireland, Estonia — and now Austria,
where the 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz is poised to take power — have
elected leaders under the age of 40. Meanwhile, Belgium, Greece, Malta
and Luxembourg have in the last four years elected heads under the age
of 45 However, being a president or chancellor in an European country is also a top position, so I expect a similar argument to also apply here. So, clearly there is another discriminant that leads to such a big age difference (>= 70 vs. < 40). Question: Why does US tend to have rather old leaders (> 60) while more and more European countries have young ones (<40)? | I'm not terribly sure that leaving outliers aside (both Trump and Macron are such) there's that much of a difference, historically, between the major European countries and the US. The Economist ran a short article on this in 2017, the best part of which is this graph: They observe than in all four countries the gap (between the median population age and that of the leader) has been narrowing over time, but also The average age at which a French president is elected is almost 60, the oldest of the four countries. Britain, where the average stands at 56, has not elected anyone over the age 60 since the 1970s. As with so much else, Donald Trump is an outlier: at the age of 70 he is the oldest person to be elected president in American history. So it matters a fair bit what the time frame is. Also, it's hard to draw conclusions from small samples, so the shorter the time frame... One interesting related observation is that in parliaments elected by proportional representation there are more younger deputies. This might explain why PMs are more likely to be younger than presidents, but I don't have hard data on the latter issue. One theory is that PR systems encourage greater voter participation in general, so that could translate into more younger voters voting (the youth typically participate less than older voters) so that might translate in more votes for younger leaders, which the younger voters prefer at least in some contexts . But there are a lot of factors potentially damping this effect and I'm not aware of studies proving this kind of "transference" is happening for positions like presidency (when directly elected). | {
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49,626 | I read polls suggesting that 70% of Russians today support Joseph Stalin's actions when he was in charge of the Soviet Union as its Premier . Why is his approval rating so high in Russia despite of all the atrocities he completed when he was leader of the USSR? | I'm not sure there's anything more than expert opinion as an answer: Levada sociologist Karina Pipiya told BBC Russian: "There is growing nostalgia for the Soviet period and Stalin as a leader. Stalin is seen as the main figure who defeated fascism, who gets the honours for victory in the Great Patriotic War. And that war victory is a symbol of national pride for all Russians, even for those born in the post-Soviet period." That positive opinion is boosted by current frustration over social policy and economic hardship, she said. Reform of the pension system ran into much opposition and "many felt the state was neglecting its social responsibilities". The sharpest rise in support for Stalin is among the youngest group - those aged 18-30, she noted. "Their perception of Stalin is based on myth, fed by older generations," she said. The fact that Russia has been increasingly confronting the West, annexation of Crimea etc., is probably correlated with that as is state propaganda and the "rally around the flag" effect. Both men promised to bring stability after a period of war and social chaos. They both promoted the same historical narrative: Russia requires a “strong hand” to prevent internal disorder and protect against external aggression. This narrative enabled both men to forge political systems that allowed for no challenge to their personal authority. Both leaders saw the outside world as a hostile and threatening place — while much of the outside world in turn saw Russia as a source of instability and a threat to its neighbors. The core principle underlying both men’s ruling philosophy was patriotism, meaning protecting the long-term security of the Russian/Soviet state above all else. That meant valuing collective duties above individual rights. It also meant using military force to expand the reach of the Russian state [...] Protecting the popularity of his authoritarian brand is what drives Putin to work to safeguard Stalin's reputation. Putin seems to perceive attacks on Stalin as threats to his own legitimacy. [...] Putin’s most direct discussion of Stalin came in a 2017 interview with filmmaker Oliver Stone. Putin compared Stalin to Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte, saying that “Stalin was a product of his time,” which can be understood as excusing his flaws. Putin complained that “excessively demonizing Stalin is a means to attack Soviet Union and Russia” — though he did go on to say “that does not mean that we should forget the horrors of Stalinism.” This answer illuminates how Putin aims to position himself: as Stalin-lite, with all of the virtues and none of the vices. The patriotism and strong leadership without the paranoia. It is the Russian version of MAGA, if you like ... when Russians think of Stalin, more and more of them are nostalgic for the days when Russia was “great,” in the sense of big and strong and able to dominate others. Part of Putin’s popularity (to the degree that it can be honestly measured in the current Russia) is similar. Our own dear nation is currently presided over by a politician who was able to capture a feeling, hard perhaps to justify logically, that something great about a former version of America had been lost and that he, without being coherent about how, knew how to get it back. Somewhere on the more factual side : ratings for Stalin have been rising across the board, and they have directly correlated with rising approval ratings for Putin. [...] Why do so many people continue to admire a tyrant who stood above the law and literally slaughtered thousands of their own relatives? Perhaps Russians refuse to believe in the repressions? A closer look denies us that caveat: the number of Russians who know about Stalin’s repressions has remained steady at a little over 50 percent and the number of Russians who believe the repressions to be a crime has gone down from 51 percent in 2012 to 39 percent in 2017. But here is another interesting nugget - the same poll found that 49 percent of respondents said they believed that nothing justified the human sacrifices made during the Stalin era. The data is alarming and, above all, contradictory and confusing. But so is the collective id, and not just for Russians. Warm sentiments towards Stalin are primarily about power [...] We can blame these numbers on some nebulous idea of the masochistic Russian soul, or we can look at the conundrum presented by World War II from the Russian perspective to try to find actual reasons why so many people feel this way. Stalin (and Stalinism by extension) repressed its own population, but in the popular imagination it also defeated pure evil. It would be demanding a lot of the popular imagination to accept that, in the case of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, pure evil was defeated, to a great degree, by pure evil, even if that is, to an extent, exactly what happened. One important factor motivating this sentiment is top-down validation of pro-Stalin sentiment that would otherwise have largely remained latent. During his third presidential term, Vladimir Putin has overseen a campaign to whitewash Soviet history and promote a positive view of Russia’s past – all of which has spread to education and propaganda. Concrete government-sponsored efforts to rehabilitate Stalin have become the norm today. Lawyer Henri Reznik has just resigned his position in protest over a plaque commemorating Stalin in the central Hall of the Moscow State Judicial Academy. [...] But sentiment about Stalin in the populace is also genuine, and, latent or not, exists for a number of complex reasons. For instance, a great deal of Russians wish to let sleeping dogs lie (50 percent believe those who took part in repressions should be left alone, and 47 percent of people believe that repressions shouldn’t be discussed so much), but 52 percent of respondents also remain in favour of keeping archives open. See also some related questions here What is the current official policy towards Lenin and Stalin in Russia today? Why does Russia bother to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? | {
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49,638 | Congress is proposing rules that would severely limit press coverage of the impeachment of Donald Trump, restricting where reporters may locate themselves and dramatically restructuring the way that reporters may speak with Senators and other representatives relative to the previously enjoyed status quo. It is also imposing stringent new security checks that will make it more difficult for reporters to get news coverage out in a timely manner. Journalists have long been barred from entering the Senate chamber, relegated to an overhead view from the press gallery above. Now, to enter the upstairs gallery, they will need to queue up for a magnetometer meant to sniff out illicit electronics, raising concerns about their ability to quickly relay to the public what is happening inside. I've seen no outcry that this is a violation of the first amendment, so I assume that I have a fundamental misunderstanding somewhere. But to my eye, this appears to be a clear abridgement of the freedom of the press, preventing them from gaining access that can be, should be, and must be in the public record for everyone to see and review. Why is this not seen as a violation of the freedom of the press? | Freedom of the press means that anyone can publish anything they know without having to obey government gag orders. The government is not required to keep journalists informed. Freedom of the press is not violated if the government tries hard to not leak anything to the press. That's why the Freedom of Information Act exists. It grants journalists access to certain government information. Freedom of information is entirely different from (and unrelated to) freedom of the press. The constitution is definitely not violated here, but the Freedom of Information Act might be. | {
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49,645 | I have read about how VPNs are a big industry in Iran with the Iran Communication State mentioning it as a lucrative industry. However, the state is also big on internet censorship and it seems strange that such a government would be ok with proxy servers and VPNs. So how are these services still available in a country so intent on controlling internet access among its people? | Freedom of the press means that anyone can publish anything they know without having to obey government gag orders. The government is not required to keep journalists informed. Freedom of the press is not violated if the government tries hard to not leak anything to the press. That's why the Freedom of Information Act exists. It grants journalists access to certain government information. Freedom of information is entirely different from (and unrelated to) freedom of the press. The constitution is definitely not violated here, but the Freedom of Information Act might be. | {
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49,648 | When we talk about overhang seats , we tend to think of countries like Germany which uses MPP (Mixed-Member Proportional Representation) and levelling seats. But I want to focus on countries that use pure proportional representation (open party-list PR system) in conjunction with levelling seats - such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Is it still possible for these countries to produce overhang seats? More importantly, how do they deal with it if it happens? | Freedom of the press means that anyone can publish anything they know without having to obey government gag orders. The government is not required to keep journalists informed. Freedom of the press is not violated if the government tries hard to not leak anything to the press. That's why the Freedom of Information Act exists. It grants journalists access to certain government information. Freedom of information is entirely different from (and unrelated to) freedom of the press. The constitution is definitely not violated here, but the Freedom of Information Act might be. | {
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49,654 | In my country, libertarianism is associated with a pure right political ideology. They held more right wing positions than those who are elected and refered to as "right", or even "far right". For what I see in my feeds in internet, in United States it seems to be similar, or at least they are identified as right wing. But according to Libertarianism - Wikipedia Libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics and there is Left-libertarian ideologies which include anarchist schools of
thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist, New Left schools of
thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as
geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism
and the Steiner–Vallentyne school. and In the mid-20th century, right-libertarian ideologies such as
anarcho-capitalism and minarchism co-opted the term libertarian . The
latter is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States Is this so? Are there "left wing" and "right wing" libertarians today and libertarianismm originated as a left wing ideology, or are all libertarians are right wing? | The first important thing to notice is that political labels mean different things in different parts of the world and in different points of time. In contemporary US politics libertarian is usually used to describe a set of political values that advocate liberal social policies with conservative economic policies. This means they don't fit neatly on a left/right spectrum because they (mostly) align with Democrats on social issues and Republicans on economic issues. | {
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49,666 | Many took breaks from listening to the hours-long presentations by house managers to stretch. But only hours into the presentations, several senators were spotted nodding off, including Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. Sen. Joni Ernst was spotted sipping a Monster energy drink as she walked through the halls of the Capitol in the morning. Source It's well-known that humans attention span doesn't last for an hour, let alone for hours. Why, then, would the Senate adopt such a masochistic schedule? Assuming the Senate wants to do a good job, it sounds nonsensical not to provide their members with the environment necessary to do a good job. Edit : headline today, How long can the U.S. Senate sit still? Twenty minutes . The headline just about says it all - if the senators can only pay attention for 20 minutes it sounds nonsensical to have sessions that last for hours until after midnight. Logically it shouldn't matter where the senators stood on impeachment, they would oppose this timetable for their own sanity (especially those senators who are 70+ years old). | Because Senate leadership [which largely shapes these rules] sees the trial's outcome as a forgone conclusion “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters last month. The accelerated schedule (towards that foregone conclusion) goes hand in hand with not calling any [new] witnesses or subpoenaing any [new] documents etc. As for why not make the trial a lot shorter then... The GOP leadership also said there are not enough votes to dismiss the trial. A one hour trial would basically look like equivalent to a dismissal. The Senate also had to vote on the [present] rules, so they are a compromise inside the GOP. Some GOP Senators also wanted to use the proceedings to give Trump a chance to present a more detailed defense. A few GOP senators even said they would only decide whether to hear additional witnesses after hearing the initial arguments (based on prior testimony). So these were the additional constraints that led to the present format. | {
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49,797 | I'm wondering if there is any study or other serious attempt which compares Fox News to MSNBC to see which one was more 'biased' towards their respective sides of the political spectrum. I am not looking for opinion here, I'm looking for serious analysis that presents a criteria that can be (at least reasonably) objectively measured, has measured the two respective media outlets, and have presented results as to which outlet best met or failed those criteria. I'm open to any criteria that can be used to measure bias, from number of factual inaccuracies in reporting, to how often they call the other side immoral and evil, to any other criteria that could be imagined as being a measure of, or result of, bias for their preferred political view and/or a sign of lack of trustworthiness in their reporting due to such a bias. All I really care is that it can be objectively measured and concrete results presented. | I'd say anyone who tells you they have "scientific" information on media bias isn't being objective. But it is entirely possible to present a "systematic" information on media bias, and at least one online source with that goal is https://mediabiasfactcheck.com . They have an explicit methodology, which says: When determining bias, there isn’t any true scientific formula that is 100% objective. There are objective measures that can be calculated, but ultimately there will be some degree of subjective judgement to determine these. On each page we have put up a scale with a yellow dot that shows the degree of bias for each source. Each page also has a “detailed report” section that gives some details about the source and an explanation of their bias. When calculating bias we are not just looking at political bias, but also how factual the information is and if they provide links to credible, verifiable sources. Therefore, the yellow dot may indicate political bias or how factual a source is, or in many cases, both. Mediabiasfactcheck has a high level summary graphic which may be helpful: For example, MSNBC looks like this: Fox News looks like this: But mediabiasfactcheck.com goes into detail as well, and includes a systematic categorization of different kinds of journalistic bias. If what you are looking for is unbiased news, recognize that's not the goal of either organization. Some news sources actually make reduction of bias and emotionally loaded reporting a policy goal. Take for example: Reuters News looks like this: Note well : its impossible to to express an opinion on news source bias without having some bias, and getting accused of being biased. Mediabiasfactcheck.com is no exception: some other organizations rate mediabiasfactcheck.com as biased. Oh well... | {
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49,855 | Israel has endorsed Trump's map which gives the entire Jordan River valley to Israel - presumably to not have any landmass connecting Jordan and Palestine. Why is this so important for Israel? For feeling safer? | The idea of Israel controlling the Jordan River valley as part of a long term peace agreement goes back to 1967, just about after the six days war. It was central part of the Allon Plan that was presented to the Israeli government only weeks after the war ended. The goal of the plan was to accommodate for Israeli security by keeping the Judea and Samaria mountains top under Israeli control, while giving away as much of the remaining occupied land back to the Palestinians to allow for self rule. At that time, the area of the west bank of the Jordan River was sparsely populated. The 1967 Eshkol-led government accepted the plan and it formed the settling strategy in the following decade (until Likud rose to power). Following the plan, the government approved Israeli settlement in the area and indeed the first Israeli settlements in the west bank were founded on that land. Accordingly, the population in these settlements differs from later Likud-era settlements. The population of the Jordan River valley settlements is mostly secular and center-left wing oriented. To this day, the area is mostly populated by Israeli settlements. The security considerations that led to the design of the plan were accepted by following governments with little questioning. The same considerations guided the Israeli delegation during Oslo peace talks. Today, more than half a century after its devise, the design of the plan is regard as an axiom by Israeli military leadership. | {
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49,876 | During President Trump's impeachment trial the White House counsel have sought bringing Hunter Biden in several times for testimony. How is Hunter Biden's testimony relevant, opposed to that of John Bolton and others witnesses? | Four reasons: Whataboutism . It's easy to make potshots at vague 'questionable' behavior without actually trying to get to the bottom of it and punish those responsible. Add to that a refusal to defend one's own actions, and people quickly come to believe that 'all politicians do (X bad behavior)'. This has worked amazingly well for Trump against Hillary Clinton, and is working just as well for Biden. Normalizing corruption . If they can prove that Hunter Biden did anything wrong at Burisma and then prove that Joe Biden did anything wrong by pressuring Ukraine to get rid of the guy who wasn't punishing Burisma fast enough, then both parties are bad, and people need to re-calibrate their expectations of how politicians should act. Making vigilantism sexy . Once they've muddied the waters and made people believe that all politicians are the same, they can work on portraying Trump not as a law-breaker or someone trying to enrich himself at the taxpayer's expense, but as a vigilante, someone who doesn't follow the rules but gets the job done; an unorthodox but effective swamp-drainer. Turnabout is fair play. The Republicans haven't gotten much traction out of investigating the parties involved in the Mueller investigation, probably because Mueller's team was insanely professional and voters see these investigations as partisan. However, if Joe Biden is guilty of something, then they can comb through his (prodigious) background and cast aspersions on his patriotism via endless corruption hearings, and thus take back the narrative from the Democrats. | {
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49,925 | It is likely that the majority of the U.S. Senate will reject the impeachment charge against President Trump. While new facets of the Ukraine affair continue to surface, the main outline appears undisputed: Military aid was withheld in order to initiate a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens. Apart from Dershowitz' rather extreme view that any official has wide latitude in pursuing his or her reelection, which does not seem to be mainstream: What is the majority's rationale for viewing this not as an impeachable offense? Which additional element would make this asking for foreign interference into an election, utilizing public funds and the authority of the office, impeachable, if any? What's missing according to the senators who have given public reasons why they plan to acquit? | The only "element" missing is a sufficient number of Senators who would vote on the basis of the evidence rather than politics. | {
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50,015 | Given congress's recent decision to bar witnesses and evidence from being presented as part of President Trump's impeachment trial, are members of the Senate compelled to acquit based on lack of evidence? It seems akin to a prosecutor being prohibited from bringing evidence against an accused criminal. In such a case, the only evidence available to the jury would be the fact that the prosecutor thinks the criminal is guilty, which is clearly insufficient evidence for a conviction. | Impeachment is a political act. There is no crime so heinous for which members of either house could be found criminally or civilly liable for voting no on impeachment. There is also nothing so pure and beneficial which they are forbidden from using as justification for impeachment. The President could be impeached by the House on the grounds the President was a dead dog, and that judgment could be confirmed by the Senate, with a judgment to either censure or remove the President from office. An Impeachable Offense is what 1/2 (+1) of the House says it is. To successfully Impeach the President you also need 2/3rds of the Senate to agree. There are no other requirements or limitations. Trump will be acquitted not because of lack of witnesses or lack of actual criminal actions, but for the exact same reason that he was Impeached, because the people that hold office in the part of the Congress where that decision is made, thought it made political sense or moral sense to do so. None of them are compelled by anything other than their conscience and their ambition. | {
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50,066 | The COVID-19 outbreak has been dominating the news recently, with loads of headlines and efforts being made to stop it from spreading. Why this disease? It's not one of the most lethal ones, or one of the deadliest. Compare: COVID-19 - infected 24,478; deaths 492 Malaria - infected 228 million; deaths 405,000 (2018 data) Tuberculosis - infected 25% of world population, i.e. ~2 billion; deaths 1.6 million (2017 data) HIV/AIDS - infected 37.9 million; 1.7 million new cases a year; deaths 770,000 (2018 data) Compared to malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, the COVID-19 outbreak is pretty much a rounding error. In terms of lethality , COVID-19 has a case fatality rate of 1.4-6.5%. This is still well below the lethality of tuberculosis (43%) and HIV/AIDS (80-90% after 5 years if untreated), although it is more lethal than malaria (~0.3%) It seems like, objectively, COVID-19 is a very small fish in the pond of infectious diseases. It's not like the three diseases above are unique either; there're lots more diseases that affect & kill more people than nCoV (e.g. measles, leishmaniosis). Yet, right now, when people die of COVID-19 they make the news, while thousands of people die of the other three diseases every day without getting a mention. Further, COVID-19 is apparently attracting lots of research efforts to treat it. Why is it being prioritized over other infectious diseases? I'm looking for objective answers as to why COVID-19 matters so much. | The short answer to this question is that 2019-nCoV is new . All the other diseases you mentioned are known quantities: epidemiologists have a good idea how they behave, how they spread, what is likely to happen in a variety of different scenarios, etc. But this disease represents a new mutation that behaves differently from other coronaviruses. It's far more transmissible than other coronaviruses, and worse, seems to be transmissible through casual contact: not intimate contact, blood or fluid exposure, not through an intermediary vector like a tick or flea. Currently the death toll is low, but researchers simply do not have enough data to know whether that trend will continue. Remember, the death rate of influenza is lower than that of this coronavirus. The 1958 and 1967 influenza pandemics had death rates of about 0.1%, and the 1918 pandemic had a death rate of about 2.5% * . But those pandemics killed millions because they were so transmissible they infected hundreds of millions. If the coronavirus follows that pattern and turns pandemic, we might expect to see any city of a million or so people suffer 20,000 to 30,000 deaths over the course of a couple of months (say 400-500 per day), which is a huge number of people dying by any calculus. Discretion is definitely the better part of valor, here. | {
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50,142 | According to Presidential eligibility conditions, a President can serve if they are at least 35 years old : be a natural-born U.S. citizen of the United States; be at least 35 years old; be a resident in the United States for at least 14 years The second condition seems to have been a great trouble for some candidates : Many youth rights groups view current age of candidacy requirements as
unjustified age discrimination. In 1972, Linda Jenness ran as the SWP presidential candidate, although
she was 31 at the time. Since the U.S. Constitution requires that the
President and Vice President be at least 35 years old, Jenness was not
able to receive ballot access in several states in which she otherwise
qualified Also, quite a few Western / developed states have age requirement as low as 18 years old: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France. Why not lower this threshold? It seems that in US it is quite hard to become a young president anyway. | The reason for the founding fathers to do this was in part because they viewed the President as supposed to be an elder statesman who had shown through his career to be reliable in his values and not prone to the changing whims of the public, as well as effectively lead the nation and represent a generally unifying acceptance of a large majority of people over a wide majority of states as the job would largely be the guy who has to represent the nation to the rest of the world. Of all the age restrictions in the Constitution, it is the oldest with Representatives needing to be 25 years old and Senators needing to be 30 years old. It should also be noted that the youngest person elected to President was Kennedy at age 43, and the youngest President ever was Teddy Roosevelt, who ascended from Vice President, following McKinley's assassination, at age 42. Most Presidents were in their 60s, with Donald Trump (70 at inauguration and 69 at election) edging out Reagan (69 at Inauguration, and when asked during a debate in 1984 if the age of the candidate should be a deciding factor, famously quipped that he "would not exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." His opponent, Walter Mondale, responded by visibly laughing on screen.) | {
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50,216 | Quoting https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/11/politics/iowa-new-hampshire-primary-monopoly/index.html : The vote-counting meltdown in Iowa's antiquated and haphazard caucus system -- a process used partly to circumvent New Hampshire's law requiring it to hold the nation's first primary -- has further underlined the flaws in the existing order. The idea that a state can make a law that it has to hold the nation's first primary seems absurd. What if every other state passed the same law? Would it go to the Supreme Court or something? | For the purposes of this answer I’ll only look at the rules for the democratic party (mostly because they were easier to find). In short, the DNC will not recognize any primary or caucus held before the first Tuesday in March, with exceptions carved out for Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. So if any states tried to leap-frog New Hampshire the DNC would not recognize the primary as valid (although they could still hold one). Primaries are a weird system of national parties, state parties and state governments interacting. National parties hold a convention and sets out some rules for how those delegates are chosen by the state parties. But most state governments hold a primary which the state parties can opt-in to if they so choose. This is also different in each state so I don’t know the details perfectly. This has some weird side-effects. In 2008 for instance the Florida and Michigan governments choose to move their state’s primaries to dates not allowed by the DNC and that caused some controversy (presumably the democratic parties in Florida and Michigan could’ve hold caucuses or party-run primaries on acceptable dates, but that would’ve been difficult and expensive to actually do). And this year 5 states simply have no Republican primary. Edit (per request): The Florida and Michigan delegates (and interestingly also their superdelegates) were given half weight at the convention. Though that was an ad-hoc decision by the DNC who had originally decided that those delegates should have no vote at all. What would happen if such a thing occurred again is ultimately unknown. Also even if we assume that several states, let's say NH and CO, both had laws stating that their primary had to go first and that the DNC and RNC didn't try to restrict it (or the states didn't care), then they would still have to organise the actual primary. NH could announce a date and CO could then either try to hold their primary before that or realise that they wouldn't have enough time to hold it. Essentially it would be a weird standoff that would come down to logistics because planning and executing an election isn't easy. | {
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50,255 | I have read about how China is trying to claim Socotra Rock (a submerged rock 4.6 meters below sea level) . However, this is not recognized by international law since the rock is 12 nautical miles from China's territory and is also claimed by South Korea, leading to tension . This tension might make sense if there was strategic value for China to own the rock, but there seems to be no obvious political or economic advantage to owning the island. South Korea only uses the rock for an ocean research station and other than the fact that the rock is tied to an ancient Korean myth, it doesn't give much benefit to South Korea. Why does China want to own this submerged rock so much? | The Chinese government has spent the last decade and more very actively pursuing the extension of their territorial waters into what is commonly accepted to be international waters, or even the territorial waters of other sovereign nations. Mostly within the South China Sea. They do this by arbitrarily claiming islands, or by creating artificial islands when there are no islands to claim . The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) then use their economic influence in the region to attempt to pressure smaller or weaker nations into recognizing their claims. This is an issue they take very seriously. Going as far as to require the printing of the " nine-dash line " (China's unrecognized territorial claim), on all maps printed in China. Companies that operate or do business in China are actively pursued, bullied, or tricked by the CCP into using their maps (which also claim that Taiwan is part of their territory). While there may be military and political motivations as well, at least one of the primary motivations behind these territorial claims is likely Chinese overfishing . There are huge numbers of Chinese fishing ships regularly aggressively trespassing on the territorial waters of their neighbors . There are similar issues in the north, with Chinese fishing ships regularly intruding off the coasts of South Korea . So the Chinese claim to a larger section of the waters between China and South Korea follows the same pattern as their claims in the South China Sea. They want more. If they did hypothetically manage to establish a claim to Socotra Rock, it might allow them to construct another artificial military island to further extend their influence. | {
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50,280 | ABC interview speaks for itself: video , transcript , commentary . No doubt that Trump has a right to express his opinion (as do you or I), but what I don't understand is how that makes it impossible for the DOJ to act independently from the White House. Addendum: the answers offered thus far seem to go off on a tangent, so let me try to restate the focus of the question: In what way does Trump's public statements prevent or inhibit Barr from conducting the DOJ with honor and integrity? | The difficulty here is that Trump refuses to make a distinction between when he is expressing his opinion as a private citizen and when he is expressing his opinion as the highest public official . Private citizens are free to believe and say anything they like, because there is no immediate avenue for the expression of a private citizen to be turned into policy or practice, For instance, if any one of us were to tweet out (for some weird reason) "I think someone ought to nuke the holy hell of of Uzbekistan" no one would pay it much mind. But if the President of the United States were to tweet out the same message it would cause heightened tensions (if not complete panic) world-wide, because the office of the presidency carries with it the power to make that statement a reality . Many presidents have used the power of the 'bully pulpit': standing up as president to make direct social or political commentary and try to encourage specific actions. But past presidents have always been explicit about making such statements as president, and have consequently avoided doing things that would jeopardize their credibility as president, impugn the office, or create conflicts of interest, threats or extortions, or quid-pro-quo conditions. Trump consistently presents his commentary as though it were just the private musings of a private citizen, but has demonstrated his willingness to to use the Office of the President to punish those who do not follow his ostensibly private musings. This creates an unconscionable tension in many areas of policy. For instance, the reason all those prosecutors in the Roger Stone case quit the case is that they felt the president's tweets were a direct threat to their careers: either they comply with the President's 'private' musings on twitter or risk being fired or demoted if the President does not get what exactly he wants. This kind of pressure destroys the independence of the Justice department, and makes fair and impartial administration of cases nearly impossible. It's ironic that Barr made this complaint, since Barr has (from the moment he took his position) gone out of his way to enforce the President's mercurial demands. I suspect Barr is concerned more about the appearance of impartial justice than about the fact of it; he would rather back-channel decisions like this so they are out of the public eye — as he has in other cases, such as his dismissal of the Mueller report — then risk looking like a toady because the President keeps pushing his whims out to the public on twitter. But that is the bed he has made for himself... | {
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50,313 | The US government has a defined order of succession should a catastrophic event take out many senior officials, but the British parliamentary system does not seem to have one. If the current Prime Minister were to be unable to fulfil his or her duties, the deputy PM will step in until the majority party can decide on a replacement from the available MPs or Lords of its party. However, should an event render all members of Parliament, both Commons and Lords, unable to serve in any position, who takes over the running of the United Kingdom? Day to day events can be carried on by civil servants, who generally run the departments under the advice of MPs in office as a Secretary of State or other position, so the day to day running of the country would probably continue unabated, but when it comes to actual policy and the formation of a new government, where does that responsibility lie? | There is no line of succession. Indeed there has been no deputy Prime Minister since 2015. The appointment of a Prime Minister is done by The Crown (ie the government, perhaps the outgoing government) and, by convention. the Prime Minister is the most senior member of the majority party (or coalition) in the house of commons. The person of the Monarch has a limited and ceremonial role in the appointment. Your hypothesis of a situation in which there is no member of parliament (nor even a lord) able to fulfil the role would place parliament well outside the normal convention. There is no constitutional plan for such extreme conditions. So the solution would be extra-constitutional: Conditions that result in both houses of parliament being incapacitated would probably also result in martial law. The Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Nick Carter, is the professional head of the armed forces, and may be the de facto ruler, simply by having all the troops under his command. There would be no "day-to-day business", the focus would be on dealing with whatever kind of catastrophe has wiped out Parliament. The re-establishment of democracy would come when those with the guns allowed it. Of course, none of this is legal. This is completely outside the normal, which means that it is not covered by the constitution (neither the written, not the conventional) What surely does exist (though none of us are privy to it) are contingencies. The army (and other branches of the state, such as the police and fire service) will have contingency plans on how to respond to (for example) a nuclear attack on London. But most such contingencies will require a military response, and in the absence of a legitimate government some kind of martial law. After the emergency there is then the process of a return to democracy, with elections organised whatever elements of the civil and military government exist, and a re-establishment of a Parliament, from which a new civilian government could be taken. The most recent analogy could be the defeat of the Nazis in Germany in 1945. Here the entire regime was removed from government, a temporary military government put in place (Germany divided between the allied armies) and later, after the emergency was dealt with, a return to democracy, with the new Bundestag being formed under military rules. (At least in the West, the DDR was different) | {
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50,322 | The US House of Representatives consists of 435 members; the UK parliament has 650 members; the Bangladesh Jatiya Sangsad has 300 members, etc. Why so many people? Anyone who's, e.g., tried to arrange a place & time for a gathering knows that the more people there are involved, the harder it is to make a decision. It's not just harder to get people to agree, it's also more time-consuming. Further, with 300+ members of parliament, if every one of them were given a chance to speak, even if they only spoke for five minutes, it would still take >1500 minutes (= 25 hours!) to complete. It seems much more logical to have, say, 10 people in parliament. Why do most countries have so many MPs? Hundreds seems to be the norm. Are there any examples of countries that used to have hundreds of MPs, but have drastically reduced the number of MPs to the tens? | The intention behind any parliamentary structure is to provide accurate representation of the citizenry as a whole. The general (historical) implementation is to divide the nation up into districts, wards, parishes, or the like, and allow each district to have a voice in the parliament. It is assumed that districts — if they are well-designed, and sufficiently small — will accurately reflect local concerns and interests, so that these local concerns and interests will be heard in parliament through the representative. There is a playoff between the efficacy of representation and the efficacy of parliament as a whole: the smaller the number of constituents in a district, the better the representation, but the greater the number of members of parliament (with all the problems that entails). But however one balances that, nations with large populations are forced to have large parliamentary bodies to have any hope of proper representation at all. Of course, there are other considerations. For instance, the US Senate is a parliamentary body, but it is meant to represent the interest of US States , opposed to the interests of US citizens , and so has a smaller number of representatives. Political tactics like gerrymandering and voter suppression can can expand the influence of some groups while diminishing the power of others, destroying the representativeness of the parliamentary body. Some systems try to balance out inequities and unfairnesses by adding extra members to represent minority parties or positions (e.g., proportional representation). There are a lot of different tricks and nuances in systems around the world, but as a general rule any effort to make a system more representative of the citizenry is going to increase the number of members of parliament. It's an old saw in political science that if one wants a just society one has to surrender to having an inefficient society. Autocrats and dictators are efficient, but that's not always a compliment; Hitler made the trains run on time, but then he used those trains to commit world war and genocide. Representative democracy is slow, contentious, and aggravating — a constant "two steps forward and one step back" affair — but in the long run it grinds its way through to reasonable, moral outcomes. Ten people might be an efficient -sized group to rule a nation, but it is pragmatically and statistically impossible to select a group of ten people who are representative of the nation's population as a whole, so their decisions will not reflect the interests of their populace. | {
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50,359 | Both ideologies seem to have a dictatorship-like system of governance, no tolerance of dissenting opinions, and an executive which holds absolute power. What is the difference between these two ideologies? Is one a subset or precondition of the other; that is to say, is it possible for a government to be totalitarian without being authoritarian, or vice-versa? | From a very abstract point of view, the difference is that totalitarianism desires to completely (totally) influence the thoughts and actions of its citizens, even into the private sphere, while authoritarianism is primarily concerned with keeping public life ‘in order’ and will allow for private affairs to remain private decisions. Examples (albeit exaggerated) might show this better. A totalitarian system such as state socialism/communism/whatever you want to call it as it was practiced in Eastern Europe intended to totally transform the citizens into communist supporters. The entire system relied on everybody following suit everywhere. Children selling leaves for pebbles would already be suspect to dangerous to this system where monetary gains and capitalism were to be eliminated. Thus, emphasis was based on the proper education (and if necessary re-education) to make sure the ideological background remained intact. The key thing that keeps the ruling dictators in power is the belief that this is the ‘best’ system. Authoritarianism needs none of this control. In authoritarianism, the key thing that keeps the powerful in power is, well, power. Essentially, the powerful don’t care what you do as long as that specific thing you’re doing isn’t eroding their power. There is often (but not necessarily) no ideology behind the rulers, they were just there when opportunity arose. Thus, they don’t have an ideology that everybody needs to follow. People are often somewhat free to follow their own affairs and beliefs as long as the system as a whole is not questioned too strongly and no revolutionary cells are created. On the other hand, there is often a lot of emphasis on police, secret services and law enforcement to make sure that any rebellion is squashed before it occurs. Of course, in real systems the distinction is not always clear cut, systems can move from either side of the foggy divide to the other and back. In fact, if you analyse the history of various states of the Communist Bloc you are most likely to find periods in which a state is more likely to be described as authoritarian and others where it is more likely to be described as totalitarian – these two might even apply to different states at the same time. This answer purposely only takes past regimes as examples. Concerning the present, draw whichever parallels you want. | {
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50,371 | With six (technically eight including Tulsi Gabbard & Tom Steyer) candidates currently still in the field for the Democratic presidential candidate nomination, it seems increasingly likely that no one candidate will command an absolute majority of delegates at the 2020 Democratic National Convention - this is known as a brokered or contested convention. In the news and within circles of supporters of Bernie Sanders' campaign , there seems to be certain amount of anticipation or trepidation, depending on the source, that a contested convention could be used to deprive Sanders - or any other candidate - the nomination; assuming the candidate has achieved a plurality but not a majority of delegates. What happens if no candidate controls a majority of delegates at the first round of voting? Are there any rules as to how the Democratic candidate is selected in further rounds? Are the fears of campaign supporters justified? | First things first. In the U.S., each party writes its own rules for nominating candidates (and each state writes its own rules for how it's elections are run). This makes for a bizarre primary system where different states have different voting rules. Those rules may further differ based on which party you're voting for. For example, both the Republicans and Democrats use caucus in Iowa, but the Republican Caucus rules are simpler so the results are determined rather quickly for them and they all go home. Meanwhile, the complex Democrat system means its great for prime time viewing as numbers trickle in. Democrats also have "Super-Delegates" while Republicans do not. Super-Delegates are appointed by the party to vote for what they believe is the party's best interest rather than by the will of the party's members. This was adopted after Carter lost to Reagan in 1980 as Carter was popular with the more hard line wings of the party, but moderates didn't like him (and in general elections, moderates matter more than party hardliners.). This helps the party pick a candidate who appeals both to the hard liners and the general voters, and avoids alienating one or the other. Republicans allocate all their delegates based on the proportional winners in each state (which is how the normal delegates in the Democratic Party are allocated too). 2020 has new rules for how Super-Delegates are used. Previously, at convention, Super-Delegate votes were included as part of the delegation of votes in each state (so if candidate A has 9 delegates and 3 Super and B has 3 delegates and 10 Super, it's reported that A has 12 delegates and B has 13 meaning B takes the state, despite A being three times more popular). This is the reason many Sanders voters felt cheated in 2016: Hilary and Bernie were rather close by ordinary delegates while Hilary was leading by miles with Super-Delegates. The new rules were implemented to "fix" this (both sides of the 2016 fiasco would agree fix is an appropriate word, but would differ on the definition). The new rules now bar Super-Delegates from being allocated in the first round. If a clear winner emerges, then the Super-delegates are never used. If the convention is brokered, however, Super-Delegates are in play in round two. In effect, this rule delays the counting of Super-Delegates in a way that would let a less popularly favored candidate B winning over less party favored candidate A (I'll need to recheck the numbers, but I believe it would have still resulted in Clinton winning in 2016. It didn't help that the 2016 convention started on the bombshell that party leadership had been placing their thumbs on the scale for Hilary when they should have been impartial). Bernie supporters are suggesting this is an attempt to fix the vote for a more moderate candidate because the delegate spread is too wide to win a clear victory, thus going to round two which is suspected to not go in his favor (Bernie's independence and anti-party leadership stances will not play well with the delegates that are selected by the party leaders to protect the party from a hard liner who might cost their nomination the general election when a moderate would not.). Just for the sake of comparison: Republican brokered conventions typically open up the floor to delegates switching their required vote for candidate to a preferred vote, essentially making all ordinary delegates into Super-Delegates. Though it also has the benefit of allowing delegates who's candidates dropped out to go to more viable candidates. It's a lot more chaotic at this point, but since the super-delegates don't exist to begin with, it's a lot easier to meet the threshold for a clear win. In 2016, the strategy of the last two primary hold outs was to try and deny Trump enough delegates required to vote for him to enter the brokered rules and let the winner of that chaos take the nomination. Ultimately this did not pan out and Trump was nominated on the round one voting. | {
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50,419 | While the UK seems to pushing for an FTA with the EU similar to the one between the EU and Canada (or Japan or South Korea), the EU seems to have said no to this immediately on the grounds of geography, that is, the UK is too geographically close to the EU to get such a deal. Could this be elaborated on? Moreover, I understand the EU-Canada deal does not cover services. Given the size and importance of the UK financial industry, why should the UK be so seemingly relaxed on this front? | There's not really a lot to elaborate on, the UK's location is the key reason why the EU is not willing to grant a Canada style deal. Elaborated here , as a low number of tariffs, and high quotas. There's more in this article on BBC . Almost all trade agreements include them to some degree, but the EU is demanding particularly strict rules because the UK is a major economy right on its doorstep - therefore a bigger potential competitor than a country like Canada. Being right on the doorstep makes it cheap to ship products. Anything produced in Canada comes with extra shipping costs and time to get to the EU, therefore the EU can be more generous in its terms because local products will be cheaper and available more readily based on "just in time" manufacturing chains to its consumers. Conversely Britain is closer to large parts of Western Europe than countries on the Eastern borders. Ireland in particular is practically divided from Europe in terms of transportation mechanisms by the UK. A second point that doesn't seem to get mentioned much is market saturation. This FT article talks about the growth in EU exports to Canada since the trade deal. Even with the geographical difficulties exports are up 11%. Overall EU exports to Canada rose 11 per cent in 2018 from a year earlier, while imports from Canada rose 7 per cent. Canadian agricultural exports to the EU, however, fell 15 per cent. The imbalance stems partly from stringent European standards banning antibiotics and growth enhancement technology, Canadian meat industry bodies and farmers told the Financial Times. Farmers must have their methods endorsed by EU-certified veterinarians, who are in short supply in the Canadian west. There is no such market for growth in relation to the UK. Anyone intending to export to the UK is already doing so, and the dangers in diverging standards is that the UK lowers its standards meaning it will be able to import from wider areas, or produce local goods at a cheaper price. This doesn't factor in any increase in costs based on new tariffs or non-tariff barriers, even simply completing a bucket load of paperwork and queuing to get it checked at the UK border can trim margins that exporters rely on. I can't really address your final point on Services. Indeed from everything I've read the UK Government seem shockingly complacent over the issue, assuming that London will remain the home of finance across the EU indefinitely no matter what deal is eventually struck. But here's the institute for government's outlook. It notes the lack of a solid position from the British executive. What is the government’s position on financial services?
The government’s written ministerial statement, published on the 3 March 2019, outlines that the government wants a free trade agreement with the EU. As part of that the deal, the statement suggests that there should be “enhanced provision” for equivalence findings. These are unlikely to cover the full spectrum of financial services activity | {
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50,434 | From Pew surveys, Trump seems quite unpopular in (continental) Europe; in 2019 he seems to poll lowest in Germany even among that group: Also, a more recent (dpa) poll focused on Germans' opinions: Germans were asked who was more dangerous: North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Russian President Vladimir Putin or US President Donald Trump. Some 41% of Germans said they thought Trump was the most dangerous out of the five world leaders. In second place was Kim with 17%, followed by Putin and Khamenei with 8%. Coming in last was China's Xi with 7%. A similar YouGov poll was carried out in July last year, in which 48% of Germans surveyed said Trump was more dangerous than Kim and Putin. That poll, however, did not include the leaders of Iran or China. Clearly Trump has threatened Germans with slapping tariffs on their cars (when imported to the US) and Trump has supported Brexit, but that seems a bit of a simplistic explanation... Are there some polls asking why Germans dislike Trump so much (and/or consider him so dangerous)? (Regarding close votes: I'm not asking for SE user's opinions . Asking for poll data is quite accepted here.) | It's hard to provide an objective answer since this is a question mostly about emotions and everyone has his anecdotes. Since pretty much all answers here do not have any citations or references, it's likely that they are all colored by subjective perception. I'll try to provide some objective data, though it will undoubtedly still be colored by my personal opinion: According to one poll from cicero questioning 2088 people: Bei den Wählern der AfD sind die Zustimmungswerte für Trump mit 52,9 Prozent mit deutlichem Abstand am höchsten, am niedrigsten sind sie bei den Wählern von Bündnis90/Die Grünen (2,9 Prozent). 81 Prozent der befragten CDU/CSU-Wähler lehnen Trump ausdrücklich ab, ebenso wie 84,6 Prozent der befragten SPD-Wähler und 78,3 Prozent der FDP-Wähler. Bei den Wählern der Linkspartei sprachen sich hingegen lediglich 72,5 Prozent der Befragten ausdrücklich gegen Trump aus. ... Demnach sehen 36,7 Prozent der Muslime den neuen US-Präsidenten positiv, bei den Katholiken hingegen nur 9,9 % und bei den Protestanten 11,3 Prozent. Weniger als die Hälfte der befragten Muslime (47,7 Prozent) lehnt Trump ausdrücklich ab; bei den Katholiken liegt dieser Wert bei 71,4 Prozent und bei den Protestanten bei 73,6 Prozent. My translation, annotations about the parties in brackets are mine. Seats in the "Bundestag" (Parliament) from Wikipedia : Of the voters, the approval rating among the AfD [far right party, 89 seats (12.6%)] voters are by far the highest with 52.9 percent. The lowest approval rating is among the voters of Bündnis90/Die Grünen [green party, 67 seats (9.4%)] (2.9 percent). 81 percent of the CDU/CSU [christian democrats, center right, 246 seats (34.7%)] explicitly refuse Trump, just like 84.6 percent of the SPD [social democrats, center left party, 152 seats (21.4%)] voters and 78.3 percent of the FDP [economic liberal party, 80 seats (11.3%)] voters. Among the voters of the Linkspartei [left party, 69 seats (9.7%)] only 72.5 percent refused Trump. ... 36.7 percent of the muslims view the US president positively, among the catholics only 9.9 percent and the protestants 11.3 percent. Less than 47.7 percent of the muslims explicitly reject Trump; among the catholics it's 71.4 percent and for the protestants 73.6 percent. So in summary: The greens really dislike Trump Centrist parties, both left and right, are numerically his biggest opponents The isolationist, anti-EU AfD has the highest approval rating for Trump, but almost half of them still dislike him So correlating from that data: Trump is disliked for his ecologic policies, mostly likely for rejecting the Paris accord and his stance on climate change Anti-refugee parties (AfD) approve of him more than pro-refugee parties (Everyone else, to some degree), so his stance on refugees and immigration is probably a factor Parties favoring stability (centrists) disagree more with him than parties that favor change, so his unusual behavior appears to be a point of contention among Germans, who tend to vote for centrist parties I have difficulty figuring out reasons for the religious approval rating since his anti-muslim stance should lead to higher disapproval among muslims, but the opposite is the case. It should be noted however that religion in Germany plays a very minor role among Christians, especially outside of the state of Bavaria. Taking another poll from YouGov for the DPA (Deutsche Presse Agentur/German Press Agency) : US-Präsident Donald Trump wird in Deutschland als größere Gefahr für den Weltfrieden wahrgenommen als Russlands Staatschef Wladimir Putin oder der nordkoreanische Machthaber Kim Jong Un. Nach einer Umfrage des Meinungsforschungsinstituts YouGov im Auftrag der Deutschen Presse-Agentur (DPA) wird Trump auch für gefährlicher gehalten als das politische und religiöse Oberhaupt des Irans, Ajatollah Ali Chamenei, und Chinas Präsident Xi Jinping. 41 Prozent der Befragten sagten, Trump sei von diesen fünf Persönlichkeiten die größte Gefahr für den Weltfrieden. 17 Prozent entschieden sich für Kim, jeweils 8 Prozent für Putin und Chamenei sowie 7 Prozent für Xi Translation again mine US president Donald Trump is viewed in Germany as a bigger danger for world peace than Russian president Vladimir Putin or the Northkorean Leader Kim Jong Un. In a Poll from YouGov for the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) Trump is viewed as more dangerous than the political and religios leader of Iran, Ajatolla Ali Chamenei, and Chinas president Xi jinping. 41 percent of the respondents answered that Trump was the biggest danger for world peace among those five leaders. 17 percent decided for Kim, 8 percent each for Putin and Chamenei and 7 percent for Xi This leads me to the conclusion that his erratic behavior, combined with his power to actually mess up the world peace as the leader of the country with the biggest military, is viewed as very dangerous by Germans. Justifying the poll results from my personal view: Germany has been dealing closely with Vladimir Putin for years and we have good trade relations with China, so both are known factors and chances are that the future with them will be business as usual. Putin is a known evil, we don't trust him but we also know that he's as rational as it gets. Xi is interested in economic power and war is bad for trade, so while the human rights violations and the Taiwan situation are bad, he wont endanger world peace. Kim Jong Un has been blustering for a long time, but, while he could kill a lot of people, he's more interested in staying in power than starting a war, so he's unlikely to mess up world peace. Iran was under very close observation where nuclear technology was concerned, so, while they do plenty of unsavory stuff, they don't have the power to actually disrupt world peace. They cause regional instability, but that's pretty much all they can do. So while those four are bad and/or evil, they aren't world peace shattering bad. With Trump, he has the power to really, really mess up world peace. His behavior is unpredictable, so we can't rely on him to not mess it up at some point. There is a lot of uncertainty in dealing with Trump, which makes Germans anxious. | {
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50,465 | This EuroNews article tells us about the Berlin freezing of rent prices: Berlin is freezing the rents of 1.5 million apartments for the next
five years starting this Sunday in a controversial move to control the
exploding costs that have forced many to move outside Germany's
capital city. This seems to be a rather strange decision in a free market. While the article does not specify the underlying cause of the rising prices, I expect to be related to: more and more high-income people come to work in Berlin new residential building are too few compared to the number of persons who want to live in Berlin Clearly capping the rent prices does not seem to tackle the causes above and I am wondering what the authorities hope to achieve with this. Question: Why did Berlin freeze the rent prices as opposed to letting the market set the price? | Rent for new buildings isn't capped (at least not by this new law), so the cap shouldn't interfere with new buildings. Rent may also be increased up to a point when a building is modernized. The cap was implemented because the market didn't work for a lot of people who needed to spend more and more of their income on rent or be driven out of Berlin. The market also failed to build an adequate amount of new housing before the cap (fewer housing than needed for new residents were build, and the city actually build 25% of new housing itself). Experience has also shown that the market reacts to new buildings not with lower, but with increased rent. And despite the high need for affordable apartments, there was a high amount of vacancy. Because of this, the cap was very popular among voters (over 70% approval). | {
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50,489 | This article from the BBC describes appalling violence in the Indian capital, which has led to a death toll of 27 at the time of writing. The article mentions that the spark that ignited the riots was a controversial citizenship law , protests against which have devolved into clashes between opposing sides, and further into crudely armed mobs of Hindus & Muslims facing off. My question, therefore, is what is the root cause of the riots? Why is the aforementioned citizenship bill so controversial and why has this led to increased tensions between Hindus and Muslims? | A bit of background is necessary. Recently India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) . It allows only non-Muslim illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan to get citizenship on the grounds of religious persecution. The CAA itself is controversial because they exclude Muslims. Also, to understand the full power of CAA, you need to combine it with another act, the National Register of Citizens (NRC) . NRC was implemented in the state of Assam (which is bordered with Bangladesh) at first. To prove that you are a citizen, you need to prove that you or your ancestors were Indian before March 24, 1971 . Now, here is the problem. To prove that your ancestors were Indian 50 years ago is no easy task. Many people don't have 50-year-old passports or ration cards. Many of the genuine citizens had no lands so land documents are not available. The area is prone to floods. Record keeping is tough in a backward place like Assam. So, when the NRC was implemented in Assam, it caused some problems. Even some people who fought in the Indian army were ineligible . Not only Muslims; Hindus were also affected by this . Not to mention there were complaints of tampering which are common in India. To summarize, it is very much possible that, even if you or your ancestors lived in India for more than 50 years, there is still a chance to exclude you because you don't have 50-year-old documents. But the thing is, according to CAA, a non-Muslim can claim that he is persecuted in Bangladesh or Pakistan to get citizenship. But what can a Muslim Indian do? Nothing except to leave India. This is why when you combine NRC and CAA the result is devastating for Indian Muslims. Now, another part of the picture. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The current prime minister of India, Narendra Modi is a member of both organizations. They promote Hindutva , an extreme brand of Hindu nationalism. In 2002, there was a Gujarat pogrom which saw the deaths of thousands of people, most of them were Muslims. Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state back then. USA , UK , EU denied visas for Modi for his role in the violence. These were lifted a year or two before he became the prime minister. This is why there is violence going on in Delhi right now. They are making sure of various ways to make Muslims leave India or be submissive to "Hindutva". | {
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50,550 | The 2020 Military Strength Rankings list Russia's military as #2 in strength: United States Russia China However, their defense budget rankings show that Russia's only #8 in spending: United States (~750 billion USD) China (~237 billion USD) [... Saudi Arabia, India, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan ...] Russia (~48 billion USD) How is Russia able to maintain such a powerful military despite relatively low defence spending compared to other similarly ranked countries? | First, who is #2 is highly subjective, if you discount nuclear arsenals. Second, this question is like asking Compared to a Ferrari a Mustang outruns tons of Priuses, Civics and SUVs. And it costs a lot less. Does that mean a Mustang is anywhere close to a Ferrari in speed? The US is, by virtue of its spending, #1, no question. It deliberately has put itself in a similar position as the Royal Navy's old bigger-than-the-next-two-navies-combined doctrine. It could spend a lot less, it would still be #1. Maybe with a lot smaller margin, but it could trim its spending. A better question might be: why does the US electorate put up with this level of spending , with the USSR gone? The US even had a 2 wars at once doctrine : This doctrine remained in place until 1989–90, when President George H.W. Bush ordered the "Base Force" study which forecast a substantial cut in the military budget, an end to the Soviet Union's global threat, and the possible beginning of new regional threats. In 1993, President Bill Clinton ordered a "Bottom-Up Review," based on which a strategy called "win-hold-win" was declared—enough forces to win one war while holding off the enemy in another conflict, then moving on to win it after the first war is over. The final draft was changed to read that the United States must be able to win two "major regional conflicts" simultaneously. So, the US is #1. Who is #2? If you count in nukes, yes, that's Russia. Without them? Not so sure. Their actual operations aren't always amazing. For example, their aircraft carrier had to be towed around in the recent Syria engagement and and caught fire later . Yes, they decisively beat Georgia in 08, but... Georgia? And even then, not everything was rosy - there was significant criticism, external and internal of their performance, which may have been corrected . In Chechnya, they massively goofed up in the first Grozny battle because of untrained troops and horrible tactics. Cost structure They, to answer your question, get a lot of theoretical bang for the bucks by using cheap conscripts. Would they be up to snuff in real combat - (check that Grozny link)? After while, sure. At the start? In terms of budget, a lot of their equipment is, like the US's B52s, Cold War era, so needs no procurement. And they may have better control over costs than the Americans with their F35s, though they also wasted untold amounts of money through corruption in the 2014 games. Some of their new gear really does look pretty good however, but they may not always be able to buy enough for that to matter. Fighting in Europe, they would trounce the European forces (minus the US). For a while. But then they just lack the industrial infrastructure to keep it up if they don't win right away. They might still win, but more to European military weakness than due to their own merits. China And now you have China. Do you want to bet they could beat China in conventional war? I wouldn't, but that's exactly what your article claims. Not that they aren't nice to China, giving it one aircraft carrier, and not picking up on the fact that it's largely a training carrier, to get Chinese naval airpower doctrine figured out - the real PLA carriers are yet to come. Does that mean China can beat them? Not sure, now. As time goes on, yes, China will be gaining. Weakness in article Wars are, to a degree often underestimated by people, determined by the training, morale and quality of the weapons, not just sheer numbers, which seems to be all the linked article cares about. Look the UK's #8 position, well behind Japan (which, I was intrigued to hear, has 4 aircraft carriers). Yup, makes a lot sense. Look at Israel, not just now, but 40-50 years ago. The numbers looked one way, the actual wars went entirely another way. In 2003, the Iraqi army was 4th in the world. I bet that NK is very impressive, in sheer numbers. To conclude: Russia may or may not be #2 US spends so much that whoever is #2 is nowhere close to it so this question isn't as meaningful as it might seem. This Business Insider article reminds me strongly of those Top 10 This-or-That videos on YouTube. edit: globalfirepower.com, the primary "source" With its numerous consumer ads, pompous domain name, Lego-styled design and PwrIndx (™) , these guys look they publish cat videos for armchair generals. Saudi Arabia #17, Israel #18. The Houthis must be quaking in their boots. US: 0.0606, Russia: 0.0681, China: 0.0691. What, next, Death Star: 0.001? What, and this relates directly to the title of the question, does the difference between 0.0606 and 0.0681 even try to convey, besides implying a near-match? | {
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50,580 | Bloomberg ran as a Republican for mayor of New York City. His declared goal is to throw Trump out of office . If this is his primary goal wouldn't it have been better to try to run against him in the Republican primary? If Bloomberg won against Trump, a reelection would not even be an option. If Bloomberg did not win, he still would have been able to spend all his anti-Trump ads and make the path to the presidency easier for the Democratic nominee. So wouldn't it have been smarter for Bloomberg to run as a Republican? | So wouldn't it be smarter for Bloomberg to run as a Republican? No, for the simple reason that Donald Trump is incredibly popular with both the Republican Party and its voters. As of September 2019 , Trump's approval rating among Republicans is 84%, and in the five Republican primaries run so far, he has earned 91.2% of the overall vote and all but one delegate. Furthermore, several states including Nevada, South Carolina, and Kansas have actually cancelled their primaries entirely and are just going to pledge their delegates to Trump without holding a vote at all (the linked article claims this is "not unusual" for an incumbent seeking a second term). A few others, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts , have changed (or planned to change) to a "winner-takes-all" system whereby a candidate who earns more than 50% of the vote gains all the state's delegates, instead of the delegates being shared proportionately among the candidates. All this would make it next to impossible for anyone to unseat Trump during the Republican primaries. Winning the Democratic nomination and going head-to-head against Trump in the main election is by far his best chance. | {
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50,581 | Over the past few days, Turkey has reportedly relaxed restrictions on the movement of migrants travelling through the country into the European Union via the Greek border, allowing the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers currently within the country to decamp. Riot police have been deployed along the Greek land border, although many migrants have also reportedly travelled by sea to the Aegean Islands. Despite the countermeasures taken by the Greeks, President Erdogan said on Saturday that 18,000 migrants had already crossed into the EU. What motivated Turkey to stop these migrants from travelling into the EU in the first place, and why has Turkey suddenly relaxed these border controls in the last few days? | It's probably part of the pressure/negotiation tactics of Ankara, as they have a long history of threatening Europe with this: Turkish government representatives, and even President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself, have regularly threatened to withdraw from the deal and "open the gates" over the past several years. In fact, Erdogan began making such threats even before the deal was signed in March 2016. When Turkey hosted the G20 summit in Antalya in November 2015, Erdogan hinted he would simply open his country's borders with the EU if Brussels didn't want to pay for Ankara's help. At issue was an extra €3 billion ($3.3 billion) payment, one he was ultimately given. It was at that point that EU diplomats began grumbling that the bloc had opened itself to blackmail. [...] The Turkish government has long complained that the EU has not paid out the €6 billion sum in full, and that the EU is dragging its feet on the accession negotiations and other agreements. The European Commission has begged to differ, claiming the money has been paid out in full — albeit to refugee aid organizations and not directly to the Turkish state. On the other hand, insofar it's less clear what motivated the most recent "surge". Ankara claims : Turkey is "no longer able to hold refugees" following a Syrian attack that killed 33 troops in Idlib, Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AKP party, said on Friday. [...] "As a result of the attack, the (refugees) in Turkey are heading towards Europe, and those on Syrian territory are heading towards Turkey," Celik told CNN Türk shortly after midnight Friday morning. "Our refugee policy is the same as before, but we are now in a situation where we can no longer hold them." As you can see, Turkey blames it on the recent events in Idlib... YMMV how credible that is. Actually, Erdogan has been more explicit a day later : "What did we do yesterday? We opened the doors," Erdogan told the Turkish Parliament on Saturday, in his first comments since 33 Turkish troops were killed in northern Syria on Thursday. "We will not close those doors ... Why? Because the European Union should keep its promises." Perhaps proving Erdogan's point that he is in control of the events, the Turkish-Bulgarian border has been quiet , despite the flare-up on Greek-Turkish border. Bulgaria has been a strong advocate for Turkey's position in the EU and NATO in the past few years. Unlike Bulgaria, Greece has recently derailed a NATO statement in support of Turkey: According to diplomatic sources quoted by Greek journal To Vima , a discussion in NATO at the level of permanent representatives held in Brussels last night did not reach a consensus to support NATO member Turkey following the attack in Idlib. Athens asked to include a reference to respect for the EU-Turkey Statement on migration, an addition which the US, the UK, France and Germany strongly opposed. Turkey has called for stronger NATO support, mainly at the intelligence level, and for the imposition of a no-fly zone in Idlib. The situation on the Bulgarian border remains quiet, although migrants have the choice to cross over the land border into either Bulgaria or Greece. TV footage showed refugees saying that they had been told going to Bulgaria was “forbidden” and that they were told to go to Greece instead. So it seems the refugee surge is not only a general pressure tactic against the EU, but also more specifically directed against specific EU (and NATO) members. Update (March 2) After Turkey opened its doors for migrants to leave its territory for Europe last week, “hundreds of thousands have crossed, soon we will it will reach millions,” Erdogan claimed in a televised speech, although reports from the Greek border suggest the numbers are currently far smaller. “After we opened the doors, there were multiple calls saying ‘close the doors’,” he said. “I told them ‘it’s done. It’s finished. The doors are now open. Now, you will have to take your share of the burden’.” He also said , in justifying the move that “The period of single-sided sacrifice has come to an end.” I guess time will tell exactly what form that burden-sharing will take... For now, the rhetoric on both sides is surely going up : German Chancellor Angela Merkel described Turkey's move as "unacceptable", while EU migration commissioner Margaritis Schinas said "no one can blackmail or intimidate the EU". | {
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50,587 | It seems to be just another political euphemism, in line with politicians not being terribly willing to admit when they are wrong, but is there anything more than that to their use of "suspend" when they exit a primary race? Has there been any primaries candidate that has "unsuspended", i.e. resumed the race after previously announcing a suspension? | There are a couple of reasons why candidates do this. Firstly, because the Federal Election Commission only considers a campaign as "closed down" for good after a winding down process is complete; including the sale of campaign assets and the handling of debts. Not shutting down the campaign for good also allows campaigns to continue accepting money from donors to fund this winding down process and to help pay off debts. Additionally, suspending a campaign allows it to be "unsuspended"; notably in September 2008, John McCain suspended his campaign for two days in order to focus on the financial crisis. He continued to accept donations throughout this suspension, and resumed it in order to participate in a debate. Going back another few years, Ross Perot suspended his campaign for three months in 1992, resuming it ostensibly due to motivation from grass-roots supporters. The same article also details the dramatic suspension of Adlai Stevenson's campaign in 1952, a week before election day, in order to respond to a prison riot. Stevenson would go on to lose the election to Eisenhower. | {
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50,596 | This is a yes or no question. If the answer is yes, please explain why. If the answer is no, please explain how come. Note that I'm not asking whether it would be wise, immoral, stupid or "virtually guaranteeing Trump a victory" only if he has the option (so please leave opinion out). | Unfortunately, the answer is probably yes and no. Every state & territory has different rules & procedures governing who can appear on a ballot and how they qualify to be there. Some, if not most, states have "sore loser" laws that prevent a candidate who lost in a primary election from appearing on the ballot as an independent (or presumably the candidate of a third party). With respect to third parties specifically, states may require them to be organized and/or declare candidates at the time of the primary, even if they don't actually have a primary election for the party. So the answer is yes, Sanders might be able to be a third party or independent candidate in some states, and no, he couldn't be one in other states. | {
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50,636 | On a number of occasions in the House of Commons I have noticed MPs, usually Conservatives, referring to the Scottish National Party (SNP) as "the Scottish Nationalist Party", or just "the Scottish Nationalists", usually to angry remarks from said party. The usage of the term certainly seems to be done to be purposefully antagonistic. The most recent example I can find of this is on Feb 27th ; while responding to a question from SNP MP Steven Bonnar, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove used the phrase and was subsequently rebuked by the contingent of SNP members present. Michael Gove It is the case that the Scottish nationalist party—[Hon. Members:
“National!”] I am sorry, but as Robert Burns said, “facts are chiels that winna ding”. I am afraid that the representatives on that Bench are nationalists.
They put separation—the smashing up of the United Kingdom—ahead of
anything else. Some of them are decent and kind people, but they are
nationalists. The reason they object so much is that when the mask
comes off and we recognise the ideological heart of the SNP, they
dinnae like it up ’em. Hansard - 27th February 2020 Why do the SNP object to the usage of the term? Surely their fight for independence can be defined as nationalism? | Nationalism today is mostly associated with ethnic nationalism, which the SNP as a center-left party does not wish to be associated with. Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the SNP, has expressed displeasure with the name because of this: Nicola Sturgeon has admitted she wishes she could change her party’s name because of the “hugely, hugely problematic” connotations of the word nationalism around the world. [...] Ms Sturgeon, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted that her form of "civic nationalism" is in start contrast to the ethnic nationalism of the BNP and white nationalism in the US. [...] Defending the Scottish independence movement, Ms Sturgeon told her book festival audience it did not matter to the SNP where you come from, adding: “If Scotland is your home, and you live here and you feel you have a stake in the country, you are Scottish and you have as much say over the future of the country as I do. | {
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50,640 | In the last couple of days, in the wake of the South Carolina primary, first Pete Buttigieg & now Amy Klobuchar have "suspended" their campaigns. This has come notably just before Super Tuesday, where about a third of all delegates are allocated. What could the benefit possibly be to these now ex-candidates of pulling out of the race just days before this key event? Surely it would make more sense to wait and see if a change in their fortunes on Tuesday, however unlikely, could re-energise their campaigns? | At least in the case of Pete Buttigieg, his recent statements seem to make pretty clear that he's stopped to provide room for Biden to overtake Sanders. CNN coverage "When I ran for president we made it clear that the whole idea was about rallying the country together to defeat Donald Trump and to win the era for the values that we share," Buttigieg said at a campaign stop. "And that was always a goal that was much bigger than me becoming president and it is in the name of that very same goal that I am delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for President." The endorsement is a boon for the former vice president, and comes at the same time that Amy Klobuchar is ending her campaign and backing Biden. The Minnesota senator will officially make her endorsement on Monday night in Dallas, too, a campaign aide told CNN. The endorsements represent a coalescing of the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party around Biden and a rejection of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who -- after strong showings in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada -- represents the most significant challenge for Biden. There have been numerous articles about the concerns of Democratic Party leaders about Sanders' ability to beat Trump, and what that could mean longer term. The NYTimes has an article that shows Sanders will not get an automatic nod if he arrives at the party conference with a plurality rather than a majority of delegates. In terms of how this then plays back to the wider public it is obviously better if Sanders' is only narrowly ahead rather than way out in front of a divided "moderate" vote. And fairly obviously Buttigieg is quite young. Dropping out before things get too heated gains him support within the party and positions him for the future. While Buttigieg may have failed to win outright in 2020, the fact that he made it as far as he did is a remarkable success. He went from being a nobody nationally to a household name among Democratic primary voters — a result that bodes well for the 38-year-old’s likely long future in Democratic politics. As the comments have noted, both Klobuchar and Bloomberg (who dropped out immediately after Super Tuesday) have explicitly endorsed Biden. Bloomberg's quote seems the most direct "I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden," Bloomberg said in a statement. | {
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50,698 | In Oklahoma, for example, the results of the 2016 primary gave Sanders a 10% lead over Clinton, while in Minnesota, the gap was even larger at 23%. In his home state of Vermont, Sanders won by over 70%. This election cycle, however, Sanders has only just scraped a majority of the votes in Vermont, while outright losing Oklahoma & Minnesota by 13% and 9% respectively. ( source ) Can this disparity be explained using polling data or other analysis? | The simple answer is there was more competition. In 2016, it was mostly Sanders vs Clinton for the Democratic Primary. She had several potential scandals brewing (her private email server, questions about the Clinton Global Initiative, etc) and Sanders was the only outlet for people who did not want to see Clinton win. Sanders had plenty of healthy competition this time Elizabeth Warren - She overlapped Sanders on a number of issues , and may have been a spoiler for him Liberal candidates, such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, have embraced ambitious spending programmes to provide universal health care, increase access to higher education and deal with America’s worsening housing crisis. Joe Biden - The former Obama VP, he has been the "please not Bernie" moderate option If Sanders were to win the nomination, his proud connection to socialism and his 50-year record of extremism would be enough to doom his chances. Add to that his unpopular campaign proposals to double the size of the government, sharply raise middle-class taxes, and take private health insurance from 180 million Americans, and you hand the GOP a deadly arsenal of material to use against both Sanders and other Democrats on the ballot. But the political winds may have shifted. On Saturday, roughly half of South Carolina Democrats voted for Biden, with Sanders almost 30 points behind. That matters, because it will dampen Sanders’ momentum heading into the massive Super Tuesday primary. And it might get voters in those states to do what the moderate candidates refuse to do: settle on one to carry the banner forward. Michael Bloomberg - Probably more of a spoiler to Biden than Sanders, he, too, was an "anyone but Bernie" candidate who spent over $500M in Super Tuesday Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's more than $550 million in campaign advertising and exclusive focus on Super Tuesday states were supposed to give him a big night Tuesday night, making him the default candidate for establishment Democrats to rally around to stop Bernie Sanders. Instead, he had just 44 delegates as of Wednesday morning, landing him in a very distant fourth place. | {
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50,712 | In the US, a common argument I've seen against a universal healthcare system is that removing the ability of private health insurance companies to compete will give rise to a natural monopoly in the industry, leading to an overall increased cost to the taxpayer. This argument seems to assume that competition between health insurance providers is currently benefiting consumers by lowering the price of premiums & deductibles, however this study by the KFF found that the average annual premiums for employer sponsored health insurance rose by 4-5% in 2019, more than both wages (3.4%) (based on the change in total average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees) and inflation (2%). Why isn't competition between health insurance providers lowering the cost of premiums? Are there other factors at play? How do existing nationalized healthcare systems seek to mitigate this issue? | How free is the US health care market really? The reason that free competition has not made health care in the US cheaper is that free competition has in fact been severely restricted for decades. As described in this article , regulation of the health care industry has been continuously expanded (decreasing the supply of drugs, doctors, etc.), while subsidies have been raised (increasing demand). The article provides the following list of legislation historically passed by both parties that has interfered with the competitive landscape: In 1910, the physician oligopoly was started during the Republican administration of William Taft after the American Medical Association lobbied the states to strengthen the regulation of medical licensure and allow their state AMA offices to oversee the closure or merger of nearly half of medical schools and also the reduction of class sizes. The states have been subsidizing the education of the number of doctors recommended by the AMA. In 1925, prescription drug monopolies begun after the federal government led by Republican President Calvin Coolidge started allowing the patenting of drugs. (Drug monopolies have also been promoted by government research and development subsidies targeted to favored pharmaceutical companies.) In 1945, buyer monopolization begun after the McCarran-Ferguson Act led by the Roosevelt Administration exempted the business of medical insurance from most federal regulation, including antitrust laws. (States have also more recently contributed to the monopolization by requiring health care plans to meet standards for coverage.) In 1946, institutional provider monopolization begun after favored hospitals received federal subsidies (matching grants and loans) provided under the Hospital Survey and Construction Act passed during the Truman Administration. (States have also been exempting non-profit hospitals from antitrust laws.) In 1951, employers started to become the dominant third-party insurance buyer during the Truman Administration after the Internal Revenue Service declared group premiums tax-deductible. In 1965, nationalization was started with a government buyer monopoly after the Johnson Administration led passage of Medicare and Medicaid which provided health insurance for the elderly and poor, respectively. In 1972, institutional provider monopolization was strengthened after the Nixon Administration started restricting the supply of hospitals by requiring federal certificate-of-need for the construction of medical facilities. In 1974, buyer monopolization was strengthened during the Nixon Administration after the Employee Retirement Income Security Act exempted employee health benefit plans offered by large employers (e.g., HMOs) from state regulations and lawsuits (e.g., brought by people denied coverage). In 1984, prescription drug monopolies were strengthened during the Reagan Administration after the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act permitted the extension of patents beyond 20 years. (The government has also allowed pharmaceuticals companies to bribe physicians to prescribe more expensive drugs.) In 2003, prescription drug monopolies were strengthened during the Bush Administration after the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act provided subsidies to the elderly for drugs. In 2014, nationalization will be strengthened after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“Obamacare”) provided mandates, subsidies and insurance exchanges, and the expansion of Medicaid. In dollars and cents, the US public sector has for decades spent several 100 billions of tax dollar every year on providing health care. Any claim made about competition and the US health care system must be seen in light of this fact ( image source on Wikipedia ). Moreover, unlike medical procedures supplied by the politically controlled and subsidized system, the cost of laser eye-surgery and cosmetic surgeries (both of which are not subject to the same regulatory burdens) has steadily been declining while the quality has increased ( source ). A real world example of a health care system run under something closer to free market conditions is Switzerland's. Insurance is practically completely privatized (though purchasing one is mandated by law), and recipients of tax-funded public health support are expected to pay back the funds later. As a result, costs are relatively low, while quality and accessibility is high ( source ). On a related note, it is common for people (particularly in the case of Europeans) to overestimate how laissez-faire the US really is. Anyone who compares their level of public spending to GDP ( +30% the past 50 years ) or anyone who has tried to read the byzantine federal tax code can confirm that its economy is less free than public discourse might lead one to believe. | {
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50,727 | In coverage of primaries and elections I often hear it stated that candidates are expected to win their home states, or that it is embarrassing not to. I've seen this assertion here, such as in Has a presidential candidate ever lost his home state and went on to win the presidential election? , and from the data I can find it does appear that candidates regularly do far better in their home state than in others. The only explanation I've heard for this effect is that home state voters are 'the people that know the candidate best'. This explanation doesn't sit right with me. I have a few friends who are very seriously into politics. These friends read political news and do political research daily. They know all of the candidates and their policies and their histories intimately, and have no better understanding of candidates hailing from their own states. I don't see a reason why these people would be more likely to vote for someone just because that someone was geographically close to them. I polled a few of them on their historical votes and they did not seem any more likely to vote for a home state candidate. I did a little informal poll myself over the past few days, talking to neighbors and cashiers while out. It's not a statistically valid sample size, and it was certainly biased sampling, but only 6 out of 11 knew who our governor was (it's Tom Wolf). Only 1 out of 11 could name a single thing Tom Wolf has done or said in the past 12 months. I personally haven't so much as overheard his name in months*. So it seems like 10 of 11 of my random pollees would have no reason to vote for their governor over another candidate were he running for office. So what does actually drive the increased performance of a candidate in their own state. Is it simple name recognition? Do candidates simply tend to spend far more time and money advertising and rallying in their home states? Are those I've spoken to an anomaly, and most people are familiar with their home state politicians? Or is there some psychology that I'm not seeing that's at play? To be clear, I'm not saying that he hasn't done anything of consequence; just that it seems outside the scope of the average person's knowledge. | In their article, Localism in Presidential Elections: The Home State Advantage [1] published in the American Journal of Political Science, Lewis-Beck & Rice (1983) investigate the home state advantage using quantitative evidence, and try to explain the phenomenon. They discuss the fact that of all the public offices, the presidency is by far the office with the most public exposure. This is even truer currently, with the vast prevalence of TV & online advertising. They go on to discuss why this makes a difference: Each of us learns the home states of presidential candidates, and we
are particularly aware of the fact if the state is ours. This piece of
candidate information is repeatedly reinforced through the radio and
television network that now embraces our nation. It gives us a chance
to show "pride in our own" by voting for a native son. Such local
loyalty is not wholly unreasonable. We are offered the psychological
satisfaction of identification with a president who is more like our
"friends and neighbors." Further, we might hope that as president he
would remember "the folks back home" when distributing federal largess. They identify three variables that affect the level of the home state advantage a presidential candidate can expect, these being the population of the state as a proportion of the national population, the political party, and whether or not the candidate is the incumbent president seeking reelection, and the article even proposes a formula that can be used to determine the level of advantage numerically. Briefly, however, they expect the level of home-state advantage to decrease as state-population increases, due to the increased strength of local bonds in tighter-knit communities. They find that Democratic candidates can expect a higher degree of home-state loyalty than Republicans, due to lower primary turnout of Democrat voters, which allows a greater opportunity to motivate traditional non-voters to come out to vote for a home-candidate. Finally, due to a "ceiling effect", the incumbent President, who would already expect a high degree of support, dampens the visibility of the home-state effect. In their conclusions, they found that the home-state advantage could be relied upon to provide the candidate with an increase of the vote share of 4% compared to what they would otherwise expect to obtain, and that this level of support had not changed since 1900, despite increased nationalisation of the electoral process. While these statistics need to be qualified with the age of the article, I expect many of the same overall causes of the home-state effect are still in place today. With all this extra support, then, it seems that any serious candidate for the presidency should be expected to win their home-state, hence why losing it is so embarrassing. [1] Lewis-Beck, M. S., & Rice, T. W. (1983). Localism in Presidential
Elections: The Home State Advantage. American Journal of Political
Science, 27(3) , 548. doi:10.2307/2110984 | {
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50,814 | Has there ever been an instance when a US president didn't get a second term because they failed to get his party's nomination? From the looks of it, there's nothing that could prevent a sitting US president from getting re-elected other than losing or voluntarily not participating in a general election (typically, due to an unsatisfactory economy). Still, the party that holds the White House, as I understand it, always carries out primary elections across the country. Do I understand correctly that a sitting president has never been denied renomination and that the process is merely, in practice, a formality? | In terms of not achieving the nomination of their party due to losing the primary contests directly, no. However, there have been times when the incumbent president seeking re-election has pulled out of the contest early, for example in 1968 when Lyndon B. Johnson pulled out of the race after winning the first primary in New Hampshire by only 7 percent - thereby technically not losing - or when the incumbent came very close to losing in the primary contests overall. As the modern primary system in the US presidential race has only been in place since the 1970s, an innovation in part due to the aforementioned 1968 contest, I'll only consider cases since then. The most notable in my opinion took place in the 1976 Republican primaries , when Gerald Ford was challenged for the nomination by Ronald Reagan. Ford won the nomination after a close race, by 1,121 delegates to Reagan's 1078. The incumbent president being challenged in the primary has become increasingly rare in recent decades; the current challenger to Trump for the nomination, Bill Weld, is the first serious challenger since Patrick Buchanan challenged Bush in 1992. This is partly because conventional wisdom dictates that a strong challenger in the primaries is correlated with the President losing the re-election campaign. It is questionable whether Bill Weld meets the definition of a strong challenger. | {
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50,839 | Public Law: Text, Cases, and Materials (2019, 4 th edition) , page 316: Moreover, since Wade says that prerogative decisions must affect rights, he argues that a decision by the UK government to commit the United Kingdom to an international treaty would not be an exercise of prerogative power: entry into treaties cannot, by itself, alter rights in domestic UK law. Similarly, according to Wade, the granting of passports is not a prerogative power, because ‘[a] passport has no status or legal effect at common law whatever’ . 28 Footnote 28 refers to page 58 in Sir William Wade 's Constitutional Fundamentals , revised edition (1989, London: Stevens and Sons). The University of Toronto has just one copy , but I don't live near it and it charges $20 for interlibrary loans. | Wade writes that a passport is simply an administrative document. On its face it is an imperious
request from the Foreign Secretary that all whom it may concern shall
allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and shall
afford him assistance and protection. In reality it is an
international identity card, certifying that a traveller is accepted
by this country as one of its nationals. A United Kingdom national's
passport does not have the slightest effect upon his legal rights,
whatever they may be, to go abroad and return. Those rights are a
matter of common and statute law, which the Crown has no power to
alter. Basically, Wade's argument is that all citizens of the kingdom have the right at common law to leave the kingdom and return to it freely. Since the issuance of a passport does therefore not affect the citizen's rights (as they already have that right), it does not count as an exercise of legal power, and cannot, therefore, be an exercise of prerogative power. | {
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50,846 | As far as I can tell, a candidate has only announced their running mate before achieving the nomination twice since the modern system of primaries came into use in the 1970s. These occasions were in the extremely close nomination race between Reagan & Ford in 1976, when Reagan announced Senator Richard Schweiker as his candidate for Vice-President, and more recently in 2016, when Ted Cruz chose Carly Fiorina as his running mate. Notably, both candidates were ultimately unsuccessful in achieving the nomination. Clearly it is permissible to do so, so why don't candidates generally do this? I would have thought that choosing a running mate from a target state would afford a significant advantage in the primaries, given the home-state advantage . | It's an interesting question you're raising. In many cases, the V.P. candidate gets chosen from among the other competitors for the party's nomination of a candidate for President who most helped the ultimate nominee to win the nomination (or at least caused him or her the least amount of damage). We saw the beginnings of this just after the South Carolina Democratic primary this year when Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar both dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden, as well as a couple days later after Super Tuesday when both Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the race. Clearly, all might be interested in considering a Vice-Presidential nomination at this point. However, it's one thing to voice your support for another candidate in order to gain a leg up for the V.P. nomination. It's another thing entirely to actively support the candidate. I suspect in most cases that the nominee wants to actually see what the V.P. candidate brings to the table in terms of on-the-ground support, and they can only see that after watching how they perform in the rest of the primaries up until the convention. Regarding picking candidates with home state advantage ... sure, home state advantage can be very helpful, but just because someone is from a particular state doesn't necessarily mean they'll bring that state's voters with them. For instance, Warren is from Massachusetts, yet she finished third in the Massachusetts primary on Super Tuesday this year behind both Biden and Sanders. In order to have a home state advantage, you also have to be able to bring victory in your home state. Also, having a home state advantage isn't equally important in all states. For example, Bernie Sanders has a home state advantage in Vermont, but it's very unlikely that Vermont with its 3 electoral votes will be the difference maker in November. So if Biden wins the nomination, putting Sanders on the ticket due to his home state advantage in Vermont wouldn't be a good idea from the perspective of his home state advantage. He might or might not bring other benefits to the table, but home state advantage isn't one of them. On the other hand, if the candidate in question were from a state likely to be a toss-up in the general election, such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Michigan, and that candidate had a good likelihood of being able to help deliver that state if named the V.P. candidate, then the home state advantage would definitely come into play. Since this is more of a rarity than a commonplace event, home state advantage is usually not much of an advantage. | {
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50,851 | On Friday, Russia declined to participate in a plan devised by the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut oil production levels, in order to keep oil prices steady in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The article describes this refusal as the cause of the 10% oil price crash on Friday alone, which was exacerbated by a further 30% crash on Monday. What reasons has Russia given for their refusal to participate in the OPEC group's plan? | Disclaimer: I'm no expert, this answer is based on my modest understanding of the situation at play. The OPEC decision to cut oil production was meant to keep prices high: if every OPEC country were selling all the oil they could, it would drive prices down since there would be more supply than demand. So if every OPEC country agrees to sell only a limited amount of oil, the global supply matches the global demand and prices stay high. Naturally this works only if all the big oil producing countries play the game: it's tempting for a country to sell more than its agreed quota, especially if the price is high. Russia is not an official member of OPEC , only an observer. As such, it is free to follow OPEC policies or not, depending on its own interests and strategy. I'm not aware of any official reason why Russia refused to follow this particular recent decision, but it looks like a rational economic decision: if many oil producers (competitors) reduce their supply and the prices are high, why would Russia limit their own supply if they have no obligation to? "This refusal is cited as the cause of the 10% oil price crash on Friday alone, which was exacerbated by a further 30% crash on Monday." This is not the full explanation: the Russian refusal led Saudi Arabia to cancel the original plan to reduce production (Guardian) , and instead to flood the market with their own oil. This is what drove prices down sharply, especially in the current context of low demand due to the corona virus. The Saudi surprise strategy could arguably be interpreted as a kind of tactical response against Russia's refusal to play according to OPEC rules: since Russia apparently wants to reap the benefits of high prices without sacrificing their own production, Saudi Arabia is telling them that "two can play this game". The effect is that all the oil producing countries are going to suffer from low prices, but some more than others : The new strategy adopted by Riyadh appears to target Russia and US shale oil firms, many of which are known to have high production costs and lose money when crude prices fall below $50 a barrel for more than a few months. Saudi Arabia can produce oil at a lower cost than Russia and US shale oil industry, so they are probably trying to use the opportunity of the Russian refusal to get rid of some competitors: Saudi Arabia can afford to take a temporary economic hit, whereas many shale oil companies may go bankrupt quickly. Strategically, their initiative is certainly also meant to assert their dominance on the oil market. [Added: a similar analysis by Kevin Drum , found just after posting my answer] The nickel version of this story is that oil prices started declining in February due to fears of lower demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. OPEC tried to cut a deal with Russia to reduce output all around, but Russia balked. Saudi Arabia then decided to bring out its big guns, lowering prices immediately by about $7 per barrel and announcing that it would increase output in order to take share away from Russia. At that point the decline turned into a rout, with the price of WTI crude collapsing to $28 as I write this. | {
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50,916 | On March 3rd, the UK government released a publication detailing its Coronavirus action plan, which contains the four-stage plan that will be implemented throughout the country, in all four devolved nations, as the impact of the disease continues to worsen. Below is a brief summary of each stage: Contain - identify cases as soon as possible, and attempt to prevent wider community spread of the virus. Powers have been given to enforce quarantines and extra funding granted to healthcare centres. The goal is to stop the virus from taking hold in the country. Delay - if containment does not work, measures such as closing schools, banning large gatherings, and incentivising working from home will be introduced. The goal is to delay the inevitable spread of the virus for as long as possible. Research - if measures taken to delay the virus prove ineffective, focus efforts on researching how to best fight the virus; working out how it spreads, and the best treatment methods. This includes research into vaccine development and deployment. Mitigate - the last resort scenario, at this point the government will focus on keeping essential services such as police/fire/ambulance functional, as well as bringing retired and newly graduated doctors to the frontlines. At the moment, the UK Government insists that the country is still in the containment phase, despite the country's Chief Medical Officer and the government's chief medical advisor, Prof. Chris Whitty telling MPs as early as March 5th that the UK "was now "mainly" in the delay phase". At first glance the government's refusal to move to the delay phase, despite 460 total cases , and confirmed community spread , seems stubborn and almost deluded, however, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, Jeane Freeman told MSPs after attending a COBRA meeting on the 10th that The timing of moving into the ‘delay’ phase, and what measures are
judged to be the most effective in that phase, must be and are driven
very firmly by scientific and clinical advice. Understandably people
will be looking to the situation in other countries and questioning
why some of the moves they are taking are not being made here yet in
Scotland and in the UK. [...] Timing is critical. If we take those measures too soon, we will not
have the impact we need. If we take them too late, we will not reduce
demand [on the NHS] to the level we need What is the risk behind taking these measures - i.e. moving into the delay phase - too soon? I note that Poland, for example, which has a fraction of the cases of the UK, will close all museums, cinemas, & schools from Monday. Why might this be a mistake? Is there any research that has evaluated this? (Note that although the example I have given is UK-based, I am also interested in answers that refer to the general postponement of more extreme countermeasures internationally) | Specifically with reference to the UK, an article in the Guardian reports that Experts have warned about the risk that if tough measures are taken too soon, “fatigue” may set in, prompting the public to disregard the advice just as the virus reaches its peak. Effectively the argument is that, absent some sort of enforcement squad if people are told to stay in lockdown for a significant period, without a significant scare factor to justify it, then people will assume the risk is actually overblown and start mingling again, just at the moment that many of them are at their most contagious, starting a whole new outbreak in the herd of uninfected. | {
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50,959 | In America, there has been more acceptance of liberal leaning issues, such as marijuana legalization and gay marriage. Though democrats have been found to be more accepting of these issues, the surveys have found republicans and independents as well becoming more accepting of socially liberal issues, including those two. Is this true? | The NYT has analyzed the Republican Party and found that it has slightly moved to the right since 2000. Note that the Republican Party stood already far to the right of conservative parties in Western Europe and Canada. Pew Research observed a move to the right from 1994 to 2014 among Republican voters as well. FiveThirtyEight has also noticed a rightwards shift among Republican voters as well as Republican congressmen from 1976 to 2012. The move can be seen in the rise of the Tea Party , Donald Trump and his association with the far right, a rise in support of antisemitic conspiracy theories , etc. As you specifically mention gay marriage, the GOP remains strongly against it. | {
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50,983 | According to the Pew Research Center , around 88% of Americans had at least some belief in a God, with around 63% being "absolutely certain" of this. This is in stark contrast to other comparable countries, such as the UK, where a 2011 YouGov poll found that only 34% of respondents reported belief in a God. A 2017 study of 15 Western European countries , again conducted by the Pew Research Center, found that the median percentage of respondents reporting belief in a higher power across the nations was 65%, which is still a good deal less than the US. This is emulated in the nation's politics, with a 2018 poll finding that only 60% of Americans would entertain voting for an atheist, and only one member of Congress identifying as "religiously unaffiliated". This is a vast difference to attitudes in the UK, where a 2015 YouGov poll found that the announcement by two of the main candidates for the General Election that they were atheist made only 6% of voters view them more negatively, while the announcement that the remaining main candidate was a member of the Church of England made 7% of voters view him more negatively. What are the factors that have led to religion being so important in the US, relative to other Western countries? | While the United States doesn't have a national religion, the US has fairly deep religious liberty roots, and it has lead to a few twists and turns in the religious sentiment Religious Refugees Every year, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving (a major US holiday), and most children could tell you some version of the story of the Pilgrims and Native Americans. The truth is, it was a religious holiday long before Abraham Lincoln formalized it Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a well-recorded 1619 event in Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group's charter from the London Company, which specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned ... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest, which the Pilgrims celebrated with Native Americans, who helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity. Then there were the religious immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries. Jews, for instance, migrated from an openly hostile Russia (a story popularized in a 1986 children's movie ). There are many Christian immigrants with similar stories. People still immigrate to the US for religious reasons (Christian or not) to this day. The 1950's "War" with Communism After World War II, the Cold War brought proxy wars between the US and Soviet Russia. One point of tension was that the United States was seen as a "Christian nation", while the Soviets were staunch Atheists. It was well known there was active hostility of the Soviets against religion Orthodox churches were stripped of their valuables in 1922 at the instigation of Lenin and Trotsky. In subsequent years, including both the Stalin and the Khrushchev periods, tens of thousands of churches were torn down or desecrated, leaving behind a disfigured wasteland that bore no resemblance to Russia such as it had stood for centuries. Entire districts and cities of half a million inhabitants were left without a single church. Our people were condemned to live in this dark and mute wilderness for decades, groping their way to God and keeping to this course by trial and error. The grip of oppression that we have lived under, and continue to live under, has been so great that religion, instead of leading to a free blossoming of the spirit, has been manifested in asserting the faith on the brink of destruction, or else on the seductive frontiers of Marxist rhetoric, where so many souls have come to grief. This let McCarthyism (where Communists in America were hunted down by McCarthy) define atheism as de-facto Communist sentiment Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time. And, ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down—they are truly down. As such, the 1950s saw a rapid rise in religious participation Churches and schools were being greatly expanded to accommodate the growing population, and organized religion was in its heyday. On a typical Sunday morning in the period from 1955-58, almost half of all Americans were attending church – the highest percentage in U.S. history. During the 1950s, nationwide church membership grew at a faster rate than the population, from 57 percent of the U.S. population in 1950 to 63.3 percent in 1960. Much of this generation (the "baby boomers") are still alive and have passed on their faith to their children. Consider that the Democrat's "liberal lion" Ted Kennedy was responsible for pushing the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the Senate , which drew bipartisan support. The Moral Majority In 1979, Jerry Falwell Sr. founded The Moral Majority , which sought to mix Christianity with political conservatism and eventually the Republican party. It helped to elect Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and defined a period of time in America where Conservative Christianity was a political force to be reckoned with. It's shortly after this we start to see some significant generational declines in religious participation Why has America leveled off? Despite the intermingling of politics and religion, America still has a large network of churches in most communities, and these churches are not going quietly into the night. Southern Baptists ( the largest protestant denomination in America ) has a fairly robust church planting and outreach ministry . The Catholic Church runs a large network of hospitals and they also have a fairly large charitable organization . With a stable base of legacy Christians still supporting them, America's churches continue to impact their local communities, which helps drive membership. | {
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51,012 | Why do I see the term 'oligarch' almost exclusively applied to Eastern European countries? Are there oligarchs in the European Union, the United States? As I understand it, an oligarch is a wealthy businessman with significant political clout. It doesn't seem cogent to argue that there are no people in America who meet those criteria (not sure about the EU). | Technically speaking, an oligarch is a member of an oligarchy : a system in which political governance is given to a cadre of wealthy, propertied individuals in society. The archetypal example is the Republic of Venice , which lasted from the 7th century to the 18th, and was ruled by a council of businessmen and aristocrats. We could also look at Athenian democracy, which — despite its reputation as egalitarian — only allowed settled property owners to participate as citizens, excluding laborers, women, immigrants, and others. There are no true oligarchies in the modern world that I am aware of. Russia currently has a constitutional democratic republic, not too dissimilar from the US system, so there are no 'oligarchs' there in the proper sense. The term 'oligarch' is used more loosely to indicate a person who is exceedingly wealthy, and uses his wealth and influence to pressure or coerce governments into producing favorable policies or legislation. Russia is particularly prone to this, because as a nation it is new to both democratic politics and capitalistic practices. That leaves it vulnerable to corruption, crony capitalism, economic blackmail, and other conditions that give the ultra-wealthy an excessive say in government decisions. But by that definition there are 'oligarchs' practically everywhere. In the US alone we can point at Rupert Murdoch , the Koch Brothers , Dan Cathy , Warren Buffett , George Soros , Mark Zuckerberg , Mike Bloomberg , Donald Trump , most of the power-players on Wall Street and in the financial industry, and others who have used their wealth and influence to try to bend (some might say pervert) the course of US politics. In the US we hear a lot of talk about 'Russian oligarchs' because 'oligarch' is generally used as a term of derision, and it is an easy way for pundits to express their distaste with some Russian activity, and with any American opponents who might have dealt with these people. We do not often hear about 'American oligarchs' because the people we would label as such — those whose behavior is more or less equivalent to their Russian counterparts — are in positions of power in this nation that make such labels tricky. Would any of Murdoch's or Bloomberg's news media be inclined to name their corporate owners as oligarchs? Would any politician (aside, perhaps, from Bernie Sanders) be willing to paste that label on a mega-donor whose money and influence might be critical in an upcoming election? Set aside that this type of trepidation is precisely what we would expect in a system with oligarchs — that is how an oligarch of this sort throws his weight — it is unlikely that the label will come into common use for such people. | {
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51,021 | I don't understand why would federal officials or congresspersons in the US succumb to lobbyists' requests unless they have skin in the game. How do lobbyists, I mean legal ones, persuade legislators or administration officials to pursue one course of action or the other (especially since they would understand that the lobbyists are driven purely by money and not genuine concern regarding how they could perform their duties better)? What leverage do lobbyists commonly use / can use? | The mechanics of lobbying can work at several levels. "Senator, I represent the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers. Were you aware that flute and tuba manufacturers are the fifth largest employer in your state? Could I have 20 minutes of your time to present a white paper about the importance of tax policy X for the health of flute and tuba manufacturing industry?" "Senator, I represent the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers. As you are well aware, the flute and tuba manufacturers are the fifth largest employer in your state. We'd like to invite you, and several other important policy makers to a presentation about the importance of tax policy X for the health of flute and tuba manufacturing industry. The presentation will be at Country Club Z. Dinner, overnight accommodation, and transportation will be provided." "Senator, I represent the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers. As you are well aware, the flute and tuba manufacturers are the fifth largest employer in your state. Members of our association contributed over $1,000,000 to your re-election campaign. Could I have 60 minutes of your time to present a model bill implementing tax policy X, which is critical for the health of flute and tuba manufacturing industry?" Finally, if the Senator seems unsympathetic to the interests of the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers, they could form a political action committee (PAC), that can funnel money to the election campaign for the Senator's opponents, or directly into negative ads against the Senator. | {
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51,024 | I was watching President Trump's white house daily briefing for Coronavirus and I see officials standing too close to each other which is a different issue. But one thing I am wondering is everyone staring at the president nonstop without looking at the audience? Is there a specific etiquette they are following? | The mechanics of lobbying can work at several levels. "Senator, I represent the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers. Were you aware that flute and tuba manufacturers are the fifth largest employer in your state? Could I have 20 minutes of your time to present a white paper about the importance of tax policy X for the health of flute and tuba manufacturing industry?" "Senator, I represent the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers. As you are well aware, the flute and tuba manufacturers are the fifth largest employer in your state. We'd like to invite you, and several other important policy makers to a presentation about the importance of tax policy X for the health of flute and tuba manufacturing industry. The presentation will be at Country Club Z. Dinner, overnight accommodation, and transportation will be provided." "Senator, I represent the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers. As you are well aware, the flute and tuba manufacturers are the fifth largest employer in your state. Members of our association contributed over $1,000,000 to your re-election campaign. Could I have 60 minutes of your time to present a model bill implementing tax policy X, which is critical for the health of flute and tuba manufacturing industry?" Finally, if the Senator seems unsympathetic to the interests of the National Association of Flute and Tuba Manufacturers, they could form a political action committee (PAC), that can funnel money to the election campaign for the Senator's opponents, or directly into negative ads against the Senator. | {
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51,032 | On the face of it, the EARN IT Act of 2020 appears to be a bill to protect against online exploitation of children by creating a National Commission for that purpose. However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation(EFF) has called for its immediate rejection , calling it "anti-speech, anti-security, and anti-innovation". On the other hand, Stewart Baker, previously the general counsel for the National Security Agency(NSA), has written that the characterisation of the bill as "an all-out assault on end-to-end encryption" is unrealistic, and that instead of this, it is designed to "encourage companies to choose designs that minimize the harm that encryption can cause to exploited kids". Given the mixed commentary on this bill, as well as the fairly technical details within it, what are the objective implications of this act, and what are the arguments for & against? | Background The heart of the issue here is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was not part of the original Senate legislation, but was added in conference with the House, where it had been separately introduced by Representatives Christopher Cox (R-CA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) as the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act and passed by a near-unanimous vote on the floor. It added protection for online service providers and users from actions against them based on the content of third parties, stating in part that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Effectively, this section immunizes both ISPs and Internet users from liability for torts committed by others using their website or online forum, even if the provider fails to take action after receiving actual notice of the harmful or offensive content. The TL;DR here is that Stack Exchange (i.e. this website) cannot be sued for content you or I put on its platform. Stack Exchange is under no obligation to remove the content either, unless we violate someone's copyright. Arguments For Child pornography is a serious problem (one of the few truly bipartisan positions left). Current Attorney General Bill Barr believes Section 230 is helping to protect bad actors “We are concerned that internet services, under the guise of Section 230, can not only block access to law enforcement — even when officials have secured a court-authorized warrant — but also prevent victims from civil recovery,” Barr argued. “ . . . Giving broad immunity to platforms that purposefully blind themselves – and law enforcers – to illegal conduct on their services does not create incentives to make the online world safer for children. In fact, it may do just the opposite.” One central issue here has been the (now defunct) website Backpage. Backpage was a website that was well known to have had ads for sex acts, including sex trafficking of both women and children A January 2017 Senate report accused Backpage of facilitating online sex trafficking by stripping words like “lolita,” “little girl,” and “amber alert” from ads in order to hide illegal activity before publishing the ad, as well as coaching customers on how to post “clean” ads for illegal transactions. Judges in California and Massachusetts previously cited Section 230 in dismissing cases against Backpage. The law has already been altered to strip protections from Backpage by SESTA , which specifically targets sites that allowed ads like that. In that same vein, end-to-end encryption communication apps also facilitate such acts, and Barr has called for a "back door" to be inserted into encryption The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t want Facebook to encrypt messages on WhatsApp and its other messaging services, without giving law enforcement “backdoor” access to such conversations. The goal is to stop child pornographers, terrorists and foreign adversaries looking to disrupt U.S. institutions. Arguments Against The problem with EARNIT is that it would create a commission to propose policy going forward. If you didn't comply, you would no longer be protected by Section 230. Since no specific policy is being proposed by the law, it's impossible to predict what this commission will suggest. More importantly, the EFF notes If the Attorney General disagrees with the Commission’s recommendations, he can override them and write his own instead. This bill simply gives too much power to the Department of Justice, which, as a law enforcement agency, is a particularly bad choice to dictate Internet policy. EFF fears that Bill Barr may use it to enact encryption "back doors" which have a lot of problems conceptually The demand for a "golden key" for government access to encrypted data, then, isn't so much about necessity as it is expense and convenience. The problem is that no matter how clever such a skeleton key system might be, it is exceptionally fragile and bound to be misused, exploited by an adversary, or both. Reform Government Surveillance—a coalition formed by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, and other cloud platform operators—issued a statement last May warning about the consequences of such efforts: "Recent reports have described new proposals to engineer vulnerabilities into devices and services, but they appear to suffer from the same technical and design concerns that security researchers have identified for years," the alliance wrote. "Weakening the security and privacy that encryption helps provide is not the answer." It's also worth noting that while SESTA might have shut down Backpage, it really didn't have an impact on the root problem of sex trafficking [Police] generally acknowledge that commercial sex—yes, sometimes involving minors and/or victims of abuse—will go on with or without digital tools to facilitate it. Shutting down Backpage didn't even make a dent in the volume of online adult ads, according to a Washington Post analysis. It simply dispersed them through a wider range of platforms. Yet politicians insist on casting classifieds websites as the biggest cause and a main hub of forced and underage prostitution. Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) has described Backpage as the world's "top online brothel." It's fair to say that the commission might use its power for political aims rather than trying to protect children or stop sex trafficking. | {
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51,038 | So far it appears that Western countries especially in Europe (e.g. Italy, Spain, UK, France, Germany) struggle to curb the spread of COVID-19. This is in contrast to most Asian countries (China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore) which were hit by the virus earlier, but managed to reduce the contagion through drastic containment measures. While it's probably too soon to evaluate the effect of the strong measures which have been implemented in the past few days in many European countries , it looks as if Western countries have been reluctant and/or unable and/or inefficient at implementing the methods used in Asia to fight the contagion. It also looks as if Asian countries are expected to be more disciplined and/or organized than Western countries ( example ). Are there any objective reasons why Western countries are less efficient than Asian countries in the fight against COVID-19? Added: For example, are there different political choices which were made before and during the outbreak? Are there structural differences, for instance in the way governments can deploy resources in a crisis? | Part of it is going to be that the region (HK, Singapore, SK?, China) was hit much harder during the 2003 SARS epidemic so spent more time getting prepared. Also, it has long been the expectation that the next epidemic would come out of China, both due to population density and proximity to livestock/wild animals, so those countries could expect another "gift" from their Chinese neighbors. Japan? It's relatively unscathed so far, but it is an isolated island, with comparatively few foreigners which isn't on great terms with its Asian neighbors. As @bobsburner mentioned, "travel density" counts for a great deal with covid-19. For now - counting it as luck, might become skill later. Or its success might just be down to not-testing , as @steros says. Supply chains are in Asia. This is being shown as an Achilles' heel of Western service-oriented economies: if we need to ramp production of electronic testing kits or ventilators, we are cut off from a lot of the world's manufacturing capacity. Collectivism vs. individualism has a part to play in it as well: it's more difficult for a Western politician to push drastic measures like quarantine (let alone China's dictatorial system). Still, Italy was pretty quick to do so, because they had no choice. Still, the cultural traits leading to quick acceptance by the community of harsh limitations on individual liberties seems to be an Asian advantage at this point: Here's a Medical Sciences Stack Exchange answer re. isolation, testing and surveillance procedures followed in Guangdong, near HK, so not Wuhan at all. An article partly covering Wuhan itself . And we've heard of the one-week hospitals. We're just not there yet, in terms of mobilization. Or coercion. Constant deficit spending. A country like Italy is at 130%+ GDP debt. They've resisted pressure to shape up their finances, tax collection, pension payments, etc... for decades. They just don't have anything left to surge spending in emergencies. This applies to just too many European economies. It's also really too early to say much about the final outcome. Currently South Korea and China are better at getting the disease under control, but what really counts is the long run. If a few dozen people in Wuhan spread the disease rapidly in January then we need to be ready to wait this out for a while - "social distancing & quarantines" for 3 months, then relaxing will result in restarted epidemics. There's also, esp. at the start, plain luck. The 2003 SARS epidemic hit Canada's west coast less than Toronto, because a doctor got bad vibes about a patient with breathing problems and she isolated them, before any outbreak was known. In Toronto the same type of cases mingled with the general hospital staff and patients and the outbreak was much worse. In Italy 1 covid case was not identified as such and went to the hospital 4 times, interacting with everyone else. S. Korea had a massive cluster early on, but it was within a religious sect, which might interact less with others. It's hard to really assign a "good vs bad" label to early spread. Past that, the quality of political leaders and their ability to balance out economic/social reality vs medical advice (which is still operating in uncertainty - witness the UK's "herd" approach) is going to be key. This is a good time to be listening to experts, and there some of the Asian technocrats are a definite better bet than some of the West's populists. I know I wouldn't be thrilled to have Duterte in the Philippines in charge, for example, and he's Asian. Rather than competition and comparisons, it might be useful to see what has been achieved so far: to some extent S. Korea and China have shown that aggressive testing and quarantines can slow the disease, Australia was very quick to sequence the bug's genome, we got a test within weeks! and some Western countries are starting to look at and evaluate candidate vaccines. We are much better off in 2020 than if SARS had had that kind of punch in 2003. | {
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51,104 | Japan is currently the nation with the highest debt as a percentage of GDP - at the time of writing it stands at over 250% . Greece, currently the second most indebted nation, went through a decade-long debt crisis after the 2008 financial crash. It entered this crisis with debt levels of 'only' 103% of GDP, and over the entire debt crisis, this only increased to 181% of GDP. How is Japan able to withstand this level of debt without entering a debt crisis similar to Greece? Is this the right metric to look at, or are there other factors specific to either country? | Their economies are radically different otherwise. Greece has a weak economy in most fields, with the exception of tourism. Japan is a manufacturing and scientific powerhouse. Greece runs recurring high deficits and had rarely, if ever, shown inclination to stop doing so. While Japan was criticized at the start of their financial decline for insisting on balanced budgets instead of stimulating demand. Tax collection. Japan does it. Greece didn't. Japan could devaluate its currency if necessary to adjust its finances. Greece couldn't, being on the euro. Japanese government debt is, I believe, mostly owed to Japanese investors and denominated in yen, unlike Greece's. Japan has demonstrated for decades that it can pay its bills, on its own. Greece on the other hand just seemed as if the only thing that kept it up was euro membership. Greek official statistics were not, and had not for a while, been trusted. They're still prosecuting the guy who showed they were cooking the books . Until 2008, Greece was only getting charged a 0.25% point premium over German bonds based on the tacit assumption that Europe (Euro-zone) would never let Greece go broke . Investors, out of greed and risk un-awareness (or trust in European taxpayers gullibility), parked their money in Greek bonds, rather than German ones, just to get that extra 0.25% point. From https://www.bankofgreece.gr/Publications/Annrep1999.pdf (I find it hard to set hard time limits on Google to only look at stuff from before a date): Specifically, the yield differential between the Greek and the German 10-year
bond fell from roughly 270 basis points at end-1998 to about 200 basis points in March
1999 (see Chart VI.1). At the start of the general crisis, investors started wondering if trusting that Europe would always back Greek debt, even when undergoing a Europe-wide crisis , was a wise idea. Once perception soured, the game was up very quickly. Financing costs for Greek government debt went up, fast. Any refinancing happened at progressively higher rates. A debt that looked bad at the previous, lower, rate seemed like it would result in a short term default. People still loaned to Greece, but the premium to do so was massive and made this very quickly unsustainable. The plug was pulled, late high-rate private and non-European investors got a haircut. Europe's taxpayers paid up enough money for Greece to keep paying slightly lowered interests, at deferred times, to the big German and French banks so they wouldn't take too massive a loss (and so that loss of confidence wouldn't spread, as per @Machavity answer). Most Greek debt remained in place, unlike what happens in say an Argentinian default. In fact, money "helpfully" loaned to keep Greece from defaulting on interest payments just got added to the overall debt . In a way, though it fully deserved the initial mess it got, that's the tragedy of Greece. Instead of the reset that comes with a default, Greeks got this unending misery of servicing a debt which is only pretended to be fully recoverable from ( as most of my post is critical, I want to stress that, IMHO, the Greek people don't deserve to live through this for decades ). But no one is too willing to put their hands in that wolf's jaws anymore. As o.m. says, mostly perception. Until COVID-19 at least, Japan looks like it has a few good years left for investors, most of whom are Japanese and have little interest in rocking the boat. This is not to say it is financially healthy, only that it is under less external pressure. Greece relies on foreign money, didn't look good in 2008 and doesn't now. In most other conditions, big chunks of that 181% would have been written off as unrecoverable already. | {
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51,108 | In the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown, at least in France and in Italy newsagents are in the list of first-necessity stores that remain open. "To go buy a newspaper" is a legitimate reason to leave one's house. I wonder about the motivations of this decision: buying a newspaper is not essential by any definition of the term. Television, radio and internet are largely sufficient to cover the need for information of the general population. Is there a reasonable political explanation for this? At first sight, it seems that the only one is the ties and the balance of power between politicians and news outlets / medias. | At least in Italy, this appears to be in part a response to pressure from newspapers and their readers. On March 11th, the director of la Repubblica newspaper Carlo Verdelli published (in Italian) an article asking for newsagents to be included in the list of essential services, saying that "The list is missing a service that is more fundamental
now than ever before, that of information". He went on to state that "If [newsagents] were not included in the list, it would cause irreparable damage, not only for newspapers, but most importantly for the citizenry." (my translation) This is an important point, as a study undertaken by the Pew Research Center in 2017 found that while TV and online media dominate, 31% of Italians and 23% of French adults get their news from print media at least daily. This group is likely to be composed of older citizens who will be most affected if they contract the virus, and although this puts them at more risk if they leave their houses to buy a newspaper, it is of higher importance to keep at-risk groups informed. In addition, another Pew Research Center study found that newspapers were especially important for coverage of local news that would not otherwise be reported in alternative media - although the study was limited to the US, this is another potential factor that could have influenced the decision. It seems that France and Italy have decided that informing the populace is especially important in this time of crisis, and that this outweighs the threat public health and the potential spread of disease that the inclusion of newsagents as an essential service poses. | {
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51,121 | To preface this, I'm not a supporter of Trump, but I disagree with the way some major media outlets have criticized him over his nickname for COVID-19, the "Chinese virus". In addition, it is not only those outlets, but other governmental organizations like the WHO that have advised against dubbing COVID-19 in such a manner. In the past we have had cases where a widespread global epidemic has also been referred to other countries or nationalities, such as: The "Spanish Flu" , although it should be known that the Spanish flu had origins little to do with Spain itself. The "Russian Flu" or "Asiatic Flu" The Japanese Smallpox Epidemic The Asian Flu and the Hong Kong Flu The Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which has been referred to as Saudi Arabia's SARS-like virus. In any case, is the media backlash over Trump's nickname for COVID-19 justifiably warranted? Is there a problem in the way COVID-19 has been nicknamed? | Let's appreciate the learning curve. The problem with all of those historical names is that they created sharp spikes in prejudice, social ostracism, and violence against the indicated groups, and still create issues today as seen here with COVID-19 . It's true that the first identified cases of Covid-19 occurred in Wuhan China, but this does not imply that people of Chinese descent — or even people recently emigrated from China — are vectors for the disease, or in any way responsible for the problems that the disease causes. But in the minds of an unfortunate number of ignorant people, the mere association of the disease with Chinese heritage can produce verbal and physical assaults, and/or other social pressures that can prevent Chinese people in any walk of life from getting access to necessities or essential services. Trump's very public insistence on calling this the 'Chinese virus', backed by his status as president, is guaranteed to significantly increase acts of discrimination and assault on people of Asian descent (whether or not they are specifically Chinese). It guarantees this merely by giving an authoritative affirmation to the most panicked, emotional, and ignorant portion of our society that those 'Chinese' are in some way responsible for the spread of Covid-19. No doubt Trump does this intentionally. Trump thrives on the panicked, angry ignorance of others; that emotional state he knows how to manipulate to his own profit. And while he himself may not be concerned with the secondary impact of increased violence against people of Asian descent, people of Asian descent have a good deal to worry about. A president ought to have the presence of mind not to inflame racial tensions in a situation where tensions are already running exceedingly high. Even if we wanted to argue that there is nothing terribly wrong with the phrasing in and of itself — that it's just a poor choice of words by a man whom no one considers to be eloquent, perhaps — misstatements by someone who is (ostensibly) the leader of the free world have significant consequences. If even one Asian American gets attacked because of someone emboldened by Trump's poor word choice, that is blood on Trump's hands. | {
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51,146 | Whenever any topic is discussed about China, either with friends or over the internet, it always boils down to the government type in China. In fact, it always comes down to an absolutely authoritarian government or a dictatorship rule in China. I have not understood how elections are conducted in the country. Is China a Republic? If so how could it be authoritarian, or a dictatorship? | Elections in China (PRC) are hierarchical. Local districts can elect representatives, however a complex system of committees and primary elections ensures that only Communist-party backed candidates can appear in the election. Higher levels of government are chosen by local government groups, further ensuring that the Communist Party retains control. Thus the elections are not free and fair. China (PRC) is not a democracy. It is authoritarian because the election processes effectively prevent a second political group from having power. Moreover the party acts to prevent critics. It controls the press and limits access to the internet, for example. While the leader can change, the party cannot. China is a republic because leadership isn't passed from parent to child, as in a monarchy. It is not a democracy because free elections are not held to choose the leaders. | {
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51,159 | In the US Senate on Sunday, March 22nd, Democrats blocked the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in a 47-47 vote that was split along party lines. McConnell indicated that he would try to pass the bill again on Monday, ostensibly so that Senators could see how markets would react to the lack of financial measures so far: We're going to vote at 9:45 in the morning (1345 GMT) ... 15 minutes
after the markets open and see whether there's a change of heart, This timing was not agreed to, with the debate continuing later in the day than planned, seemingly with no further bilateral progress made. The first article also notes that Democrats "decried the Republican proposal as prioritising the needs of Wall Street and corporate America over those of average people.", and would "benefit corporate interests at the expense of hospitals, healthcare workers, cities and states". Senator Elizabeth Warren, until recently a 2020 presidential candidate, told reporters that "We're not here to create a slush fund for Donald Trump and his family, or a slush fund for the Treasury Department to be able to hand out to their friends". The summary of the bill , however, states that it provides funding for small businesses and individuals, which would seem to benefit the average person, and includes a raft of healthcare provisions, including "additional funding for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of COVID-19", and "limits [on] liability for volunteer health care professionals" in order to help fight the disease. Which provisions in the bill specifically are opponents of the bill objecting to? Which measures are seen as benefiting corporate America over individuals? | Democrats have been trying to make the case that the stimulus package contains within it a corporate "slush fund" controlled by the Treasury Department and headed by Steve Mnuchin, and Democrats believe there is a high risk of mismanagement or outright corruption. From NYMag : The central flash point concerns a $500 billion corporate bailout. [...]
Its requirements that bailed-out firms protect their workers are too weak. (Protecting the workers is the whole rationale for bailing them out, after all — at least from the Democrats’ point of view.) More disturbing, it’s designed as a pool of money to be doled out by the Treasury secretary. That is to say, the money is, for all intents and purposes, personally controlled by Donald Trump, who selected the Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, and could replace him on a whim. [...]
One obvious outcome of this financing arrangement would be to create the all-but-certain outcome that the Treasury would select the Trump Organization as one of the worthy recipients of its largesse. Trump’s vacation properties have indeed been forced to shut down, and while an unbiased manager might not select the Trump Organization over needier coronavirus victims, Trump himself probably thinks differently. Indeed, at his press conference, the president did not even bring himself to deny that he might. “Let’s just see what happens,” he replied, as if the outcome might contain any mystery. They also make the argument that the restrictions on the bailout fund that are in place to prevent some of the excesses by executives after the bailout of 2008 are weak, as are protections for workers who become unemployed. From Politico : According to a senior Democratic aide, the party's concerns with the GOP proposal center on $500 billion for corporations; stock buyback language that can be waived by the Treasury secretary; only a two-year time frame on executive compensation limits; and no provisions to protect individuals from eviction. [...] Democrats also object to what they say is an insufficient amount of money for state and local governments and providing only three months of unemployment insurance. Democrats initially asked for $750 billion in state aid, and Republicans have countered with far less. A further complication for the bill is the behavior by many of these firms and how they chose to spend money saved by the GOP tax cut. Instead of using that money to create rainy day funds, they instead used that money to repurchase stock in order to inflate executive compensation to the detriment of their workers. | {
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51,179 | It has been claimed in a fairly upvoted answer here (which is why this not a notable-enough claim for Skeptics SE) that For a fun exercise, put a news organization into google's search along with "Wuhan Virus" and scroll through a few pages of results. You'll find things generally split into two camps: 90% of the results are for recent articles which talk about racism/non-racism/etc of the term... and 10% of the results are for articles from Jan/Feb which use "Wuhan Virus" as the term of choice to describe the virus in a straight-forward manner. [...] So now the term "Wuhan Virus", which up until a month ago was a professional term, is full-out racist. How much of the US media referred to COVID-19 as the "Wuhan virus" before it received an official WHO designation on February 11th? Basically, was this "Wuhan virus" (term) a common occurrence in the US media in Feb and Jan this year? | Max Rissuto from DFRLab has analysed this in an article published on March 17th which tests the media bias claims made by Republican politicians including GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy, who tweeted that "Democrats are trying to score political points by calling Republicans racist" and that the "media called it 'Chinese coronavirus' for weeks". While McCarthy uses the term 'Chinese coronavirus', Rissuto's analysis also includes the term 'Wuhan Virus'. It should be noted however that this analysis was performed on all English language publications, not just US-targeted media, and has only collected data up until March 10th. DFRLab conducted a series of queries using a media monitoring tool to test the claim that media organizations are acting hypocritically in this way, gathering information about how geographic adjectives were used by the media to describe the disease before the official name of "COVID-19" was applied by the WHO. This data is summarized in the chart below. (Source: @MaxBRizzuto /DFRLab) From this data, we can see that the terms 'Wuhan Virus' & 'Wuhan Coronavirus' both had widespread use in English language media from the end of January up until the WHO named the disease on February 11th. The usage was comparable to the usage of the terms 'China Virus', and less commonly, 'Chinese Coronavirus'. After this date, we see the usage fall away dramatically, albeit not entirely, up until the recent debacle surrounding the use of geographic adjectives by various US and international politicians. This could also be due to the fact that as the virus spread throughout China, publications that would have used 'Wuhan Virus' found 'China Virus' to be more accurate. In conclusion then, while a significant proportion of articles used the term 'Wuhan Virus' prior to naming conventions for the disease being established, after this point most media outlets switched to using the official terminology. The usage of the term has seen a resurgence in the media recently due in part to publications reporting on some politician's continued use of this terminology. | {
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52,275 | This question posted recently makes a lot of assumptions, including the US President is currently making a trade-off of human lives for the economy or Trump's pro-economy death-permissive stance during the COVID-19 crisis What are the facts backing this claim? | I can't speak for Rebecca's judgement in interpreting those words of Trump, but for instance a NYT article says: “Our people want to return to work,” Mr. Trump declared Tuesday on Twitter, adding, “THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM!” In essence, he was raising an issue that economists have long grappled with: How can a society assess the trade-off between economic well-being and health? [...] “ We put a lot of weight on saving lives ,” said Casey Mulligan, a University of Chicago economist who spent a year as chief economist on Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers. “ But it’s not the only consideration. That’s why we don’t shut down the economy every flu season. They’re ignoring the costs of what they’re doing. They also have very little clue how many lives they’re saving.” [...] “Making people poorer has health consequences as well,” said Kip Viscusi, an economist at Vanderbilt University who has spent his career using economic techniques to assess the costs and benefits of government regulations. Jobless people sometimes commit suicide. The poor are likelier to die if they get sick. Mr. Viscusi estimates that across the population, every loss of income of $100 million in the economy causes one additional death. Government agencies calculate these trade-offs regularly. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has established a cost of about $9.5 million per life saved as a benchmark for determining whether to clean up a toxic waste site. Other agencies use similar values to assess whether to invest in reducing accidents at an intersection or to tighten safety standards in a workplace. The Department of Agriculture has a calculator to estimate the economic costs — medical care, premature deaths, productivity loss from nonfatal cases — of food-borne disease. So, the argument [in there] is that governments always make such trade-offs/choices, whether they are incredibly open about them or less so. I should also mention (here, in case comments get purged again) that the NYT article discusses in a bit more depth the finer points of balancing the economic losses from lockdowns with those that would occur in an unchecked epidemic. This topic has been a addressed in some recent economics publications, e.g. Eichenbaum et al. discussed in the NYT article; but see also a simpler "lockdowns 101 economics" . For the broader economic aspects of the crisis see also "The Economics of Coronavirus" on Econ SE . | {
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52,318 | Today, Hungary's parliament voted by 137 to 53 to enact the new COVID-19 bill, which apparently grants Prime Minister Viktor Orbán sweeping powers, in order to allow Hungary to deal with the crisis. The move, which includes no time limit on the extraordinary powers has been criticised by the Council of Europe; the Secretary General wrote in an letter to Mr Orbán that although "drastic measures" need to be taken: An indefinite and uncontrolled state of emergency cannot guarantee
that the basic principles of democracy will be observed and that the
emergency measures restricting fundamental human rights are strictly
proportionate to the threat which they are supposed to counter. Although there has been much criticism of the bill, I have been unable to find precise details of the powers which it grants to Orbán and his government. What specific rights are being curtailed that the bill's critics find objectionable? | The implications seem to be indefinite near-dictatorship for so long as Viktor Orbán chooses. For those who are interested, an (unofficial, I believe) English translation of the bill can be found here . Under the new legislation, by-elections are suspended and Orbán can rule by decree, suspend enforcement of laws, and arrest people for years under vague charges of "publicizing distorted facts" or "violating quarantine": The Hungarian parliament on Monday voted by a two-thirds majority to allow the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to rule by decree without a set time limit. While the new legislation remains in place, no by-elections can be held and Orbán's government will be able to suspend the enforcement of certain laws. Plus, individuals who publicize what are viewed as untrue or distorted facts — and which could interfere with the protection of the public, or could alarm or agitate a large number of people — now face several years in jail. Though advertised as "emergency powers", these new powers will last indefinitely and can only be removed with the approval of the President: The new rules can only be lifted with another two-thirds vote of the parliament and a presidential signature Hungary’s Viktor Orbán wins vote to rule by decree - Politico The New York Times provides similar information: In Hungary, a new law has granted Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to sidestep Parliament and suspend existing laws. Mr. Orban, who declared a state of emergency this month, now has the sole power to end the emergency. ... The law will permanently amend two articles of the criminal code that will further limit freedom of expression and penalize people for breaching quarantine orders. It will also suspend all elections and referendums. Under one measure, anyone who disseminates information that could hinder the government’s response to the epidemic could face up to five years in prison. The legislation gives broad latitude to the public prosecutor to determine what counts as distorted or false information. For Autocrats, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power - The New York Times The Independent Hungarian newspaper Index has more detail. The government can expand emergency declarations indefinitely without Parliamentary approval: The new law allows the government to make these extensions themselves indefinitely, or at least until Parliament decides to revoke this authorisation before the state of emergency is over It gives the government vague and expansive powers to arrest people for "false or distorting" speech: The new law also introduces a vaguely worded new paragraph to the already existing offence of scaremongering in the Criminal Code, which opponents of the law say could threaten critical press: "Anyone who, under a special legal order, in public, utters or spreads statements known to be false or statements distorting true facts shall be punishable by imprisonment between 1 to 5 years if done in a manner capable of hindering or derailing the effectiveness of the response effort." And it give them the power to suspend laws and cancel elections: The Coronavirus Act also introduces a number of other changes to the constitutional order of the country: The government will be allowed to take steps beyond the extraordinary measures listed in the Disaster Relief Act and suspend the application of certain laws by decree if necessary and proportional to protect citizens' health, life, property, rights, and to secure the stability of the economy in connection with the pandemic. ... No local or national elections or referendums can be held until the end of the state of emergency, elections and referendums already scheduled will take place after the special legal order ends. Municipal councils dissolved during the state of emergency stay in place until the end of the special legal order. Hungarian Coronavirus Act passes, granting Viktor Orbán unprecedented emergency powers - Index | {
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52,338 | In this article , it's claimed that 20% of the US thinks the US is handling the COVID-19 outbreak better than South Korea, 21% think it's about the same, 26% think it's worse, and 32% aren't sure. This is something I find surprising, since for the metrics I've been looking at, South Korea is doing better in every way : It seems obvious that the 41% of people who think the US is doing as well as or better than South Korea are looking at different metrics than me, and I'd like to know what these other metrics are. NB: I'm focusing on South Korea because although the original article also says the majority of Americans polled thinks the US outperforms China/Italy, there is a metric that I'm already aware of (total deaths, and in the case of Italy, total cases/deaths per capita) for which the US is doing better than those countries at the time of the poll, so if total deaths is what matters for most Americans then it's defensible to say the US is doing better. I'm not aware of any such metric for South Korea, however, which is why I'm asking. Alternatively, what else can explain the US poll data? | The key assumption you have made is assuming people in the US act sensibly, and that they would base their answer in the poll on facts. This assumption might not be accurate. A recent (Jan 2019) study shows that facts might not be too important in this matter [1] . Inaccurate views of scientific consensus and the willful rejection of scientific consensus. In a 2014 US survey (15), two-thirds of respondents (67%) thought that scientists did “not have a clear understanding about the health effects of GM crops,” despite broad scientific consensus on the topic (16). Similarly, half of Americans (52%) thought scientists were “divided” in the belief that the universe was created in the Big Bang, and about a third each thought that scientists were divided on anthropogenic climate change (37%) and evolution (29%). Of course, these data do not make clear the cause of these inaccurate views, which, arguably, could stem from people being uninformed, intentionally misinformed, or a bit of both. Furthermore, split-ballot survey experiments have shown that even when Americans do seem to possess accurate knowledge of scientific consensus (however large or small that number may be for a given issue) there is no guarantee that they will integrate that knowledge into their attitudes or policy preferences (17). In other words, these respondents know what the scientific community has established as fact, but they nonetheless refuse to “know” it. Some have therefore argued that rejection of scientifically accurate accounts of the Big Bang or evolution by nonexpert audiences indicates neither a lack of information about scientific consensus nor the presence of misinformation, but, rather, motivated information processing (18) . (Highlight mine). Given that the current US government places little value on facts and that "Make America Great Again" was a slogan in the last election, I find it highly plausible that this is a factor here, too - that a certain amount of people simply want to believe that the US is the best in the world in everything, despite facts showing otherwise. The study also finds: When such directional goals influence reasoning processes, individuals are prone to “biased assimilation,” which is characterized by confirmation and disconfirmation bias, or the parallel tendencies to privilege information that is consistent with one’s predispositions and to discredit information that seems contradictory (51). As with selective exposure, motivated reasoning can contribute to an individual becoming misinformed, and it can occur not only in political contexts but also when individuals process information about science and emerging technologies (52–54). If you want to believe the US is #1 in everything, this seems to be a highly relevant point. Also, emotional state can be an important factor. And I think we can agree that the current crisis is a very emotional matter, and that believing the US is doing better than anyone else might be reassuring, even if it isn't based on truth. The role of emotion. This brings us to discussions of the influence of affect in motivated reasoning processes. There is some evidence that a person’s emotional state can shape the accuracy of his or her beliefs. [...] Notably, individuals’ attraction to emotionally charged content is not limited to politics, and even when it comes to scientific discoveries, individuals are more inclined to spread information that has a greater emotional impact (59). 1 : Scheufele, Dietram A, and Nicole M Krause. “Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America vol. 116,16 (2019): 7662-7669. doi:10.1073/pnas.1805871115 So I think the answer is not that there are any objective metrics that show that the US is handling the crisis better in any way. The fatality rate is magnitudes higher (although it is too early to tell what the toll will be in the end), cases per capita are higher, total cases are higher, et cetera. I don't think there are those metrics that you are looking for. I rather think think it simply shows that a large percentage of the US population is either uninformed or misinformed, for various reasons as outlined above. From the survey that was linked in the question, we can also see that the opinion on how the US is handling it relative to the rest of the world varies dramatically with the political orientation of the respondent, which would further back up that political orientation plays a significant role in how people perceive facts and responded. The poll data for the question relative to South Korea is roughly in the same boat, polarization-wise. Only about 6% of Republicans say the US is doing worse than South Korea, whereas 45% of Democrats say that: | {
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52,371 | This article describes the efforts of several European Union countries to agree to issue "corona bonds" or "Eurobonds", which are a joint EU mechanism to issue joint debt shared between different countries. This measure is being proposed in order to "mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus". It says: “We need to recognize the severity of the situation and the necessity
for further action to buttress our economies today,” the heads of
state of Italy, France, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland,
Slovenia and Luxembourg said Wednesday in a joint letter seen by CNBC. [...] “We need to work on a common debt instrument issued by a European
institution to raise funds on the market on the same basis and to the
benefits of all Member States,” the nine heads of state said. Given that there doesn't seem to be any restriction on European Union countries issuing their own government bonds, what are the benefits of these new proposed instruments over this conventional measure? | Expanding on the answer by Tin Nguyen, the Euro is a a common currency for nations with separate economic policies and separate national debts. Being a member of the Eurozone stops nations from devaluating their currency to compensate for changing economic fundamentals. Before and during the 2007 financial crisis bonds from e.g. Greece or Italy had a risk premium compared to German bonds despite the fact that both were government bonds in the same currency. There were even signs that futures traders were driving this premium up by betting against certain governments, or on nations leaving the Eurozone. The famous "whatever it takes" speech by Draghi calmed that. The financial consequences of the Corona pandemic are not yet known, but it is clear that Italy and Spain will be hit hard. That will increase the risk on a default on national debt which increases the interest which investors demand. Of course that further hinders economic recovery. If the Eurozone members jointly guarantee bonds, that lowers the interest payments for the less stable economies and possibly increases the interest for the more stable ones. This might or might not be to the benefit of the EU as a whole and the stronger members individually (since they all benefit from a strong Eurozone), but the more or less clearly voiced suspicion is that Corona is used as an excuse to enact a permanent transfer mechanism. | {
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52,393 | According to statistics published by the FBI , March 2020 saw the highest ever number of NICS firearms background checks performed, at 3,740,688, an increase of 33% from February. The FBI itself notes that this does not equate to a one-to-one correlation to the number of gun sales that have taken place, but it is at least a rough indicator that the number of gun sales has also seen a large increase. This trend held true in practically every state of the US , with the exception of Kentucky. What are the political factors which have led to such a large increase? Clearly, as the main news story currently is the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems likely that this has had an effect, but it's unclear to me why this would lead to such a higher rate of gun background checks/purchases, especially as lockdowns start to reduce footfall at non-private sales locations. | There's a lot of panicked buying going on in general It's become a joke how much people are hoarding toilet paper (in the US, in particular, it wasn't hard to find before this). But hoarding things is part of a broader issue (emphasis mine) Australia has also suffered from panic buying of toilet paper despite plentiful domestic supply. A risk expert in the country explained it this way: "Stocking up on toilet paper is … a relatively cheap action, and people like to think that they are 'doing something' when they feel at risk." This is an example of "zero risk bias," in which people prefer to try to eliminate one type of possibly superficial risk entirely rather than do something that would reduce their total risk by a greater amount. Hoarding also makes people feel secure. This is especially relevant when the world is faced with a novel disease over which all of us have little or no control. However, we can control things like having enough toilet paper in case we are quarantined. Guns still mean security to a lot of people Guns are still a powerful way to protect oneself, and more than a few people fear social breakdown, despite the fact that no place in the US has suspended their police force due to the pandemic, nor are there widespread shortages of police. As such, people want weapons to stop intruders Hyatt said that the type of guns being bought was reflective of the fear prevalent among customers. There was almost no interest in hunting rifles. Instead, people were opting for target guns and there was big demand for AR-15 semi-automatic assault-style rifles. Asked why he thought the spike was happening, Hyatt replied: "Financial meltdown, pandemic, crime, politics … you throw it all into the pot, and you have one hell of a mess." | {
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52,419 | Currently farmers in Western countries are warning governments that without foreign workers their fields will be impossible to harvest : “We are in need of a lot of foreign workers,” Eystein Ruud, a greenhouse farm owner and chairman of the Norwegian Horticultural Association, told The Globe and Mail. “If we cannot get these workers in the coming weeks, our farmers won’t risk putting a lot of plants in the soil. That may affect the food supply.” At the same time Western nations are about to face unprecedented levels of unemployment due to the COVID-related shutdowns. On the face of it, this seems like a perfect match - people who lost their jobs could now work their local fields, earning a salary and supplying much needed food for the nation. So why is this considered a problem, rather than a blessing in disguise? Shouldn't governments be happy they have job openings for the unemployed? I do understand that working the fields is difficult and only young people could do it, but currently a lot of young people lack a job too, so that looks like a manageable problem. | I think these countries are in fact approaching this as a problem that has an obvious solution, as you suggest. The issue lies, however, with convincing their populace to work these seasonal jobs, and the inherent nature of seasonal agricultural work. Firstly, the levels of unemployment are not necessarily going to be as bad as you might think, at least in some countries. Many western countries, including Norway, which you mention, and later, the UK , have implemented schemes which will allow companies to keep employees who have been furloughed due to the crisis on the payroll by covering a large portion of their wages. These schemes don't stop claimants from taking another job, at least in the UK's case , but potentially reduce the need for them to do so. Secondly, the nature of this work means that for this to be a long-term job choice, workers need to be flexible and able to travel around the country. The BBC points out that One reason overseas workers are recruited for these picking roles is
that farmers require temporary, flexible workers who will move around
the country following the crops.
It is often difficult for local people to fill these roles as they are
extremely busy for a short space of time - for example, two months to
pick apples - with no work for the rest of the year. So while it might be easy to find workers in one area of the country, it is currently infeasible given the COVID-19 crisis for workers to travel around the country as previously. Therefore, a much larger number of local workers need to be found in order to meet with local demand, rather than smaller groups of seasonal workers meeting the demand nationally. Additionally, western Europeans are unused to this sort of work. According to the Independent : It's fair to say that British workers have turned their noses up at
seasonal farm work in recent years, perhaps partly due to the
availability of other, more secure jobs in more comfortable
surroundings. "It's hard work and the Eastern Europeans are experienced at what they
do," says Oliver Shooter, owner of AE Lenton, which runs a group of
farms between Skegness and Boston in Lincolnshire, the centre of
England's vegetable production. "It's not rocket science but it is quite a skilled job that these guys
do," he says. A top picker needs to know and apply supermarkets'
exacting standards for exactly how fruit and veg must look, as well as
how to cut it and pack it. For that they'll earn £12 an hour if
they're good. Many farms also provide free or subsidised
accommodation. The seasonal workers that farms usually rely on, that know their trade and are experienced are unable to be used, so farmers are again being forced to engage a larger workforce than normal, in order to achieve a similar standard of work. This will, of course, entail higher costs, a longer training period, and presumably, a lower yield as mistakes are made. Governments are trying to deal with this problem by pushing the solution you suggest - the Independent reports again: So acute is the need that the government is reportedly readying its
own "Pick for Britain" campaign taking inspiration from the Land Army
that tilled the fields during the Second World War. In Norway, the government has introduced a scheme which will encourage employees laid off by their employer to work in agricultural roles: New legislation means that if a worker is laid off and takes up an
agricultural role, he or she will be able to earn both a salary from
the farmer as well as half his or her unemployment benefit. It's not so much that the solution to the problem isn't obvious, it's that due to a combination of the nature of seasonal agricultural work, and the complications introduced by the current crisis, the problem is harder to solve than at first glance. | {
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52,456 | Hello new users from around the Stack Exchange Network We are aware that this question is about a very emotionally laden topic. So we would like to make sure you are aware of the purpose of Politics Stack Exchange . This website is for objective questions about governments, policies and political processes. It is not a place to advance opinions or debate, but rather for exchanging objective information about the policies, processes, and personalities that comprise the political arena. Therefore we would ask you to abstain from engaging in opinionated debates in the comment sections of this question and its answers. Please only use comments for the purposes explained in the help article about the commenting privilege . - Philipp , Moderator of Politics Stack Exchange In 38 states, female genital mutilation (clitoridectomies on minors for non-medical reasons is type I) is illegal . There was once a female genital mutilation act ( 18 U.S. Code § 116 ), but it has been declared unconstitutional (as far as I know). Circumcising minors is a controversial topic. In the U.S., guardians have found a host of ways to rationalise removing part of their sons’ penises, but it is not difficult to poke holes in these reasons. In fact, circumcision originally became prominent in the U.S. as a way to prevent masturbation (which obviously does not work). That leads me to my question. Female genital mutilation also is rooted in attempting to limit sexuality—yet, unlike involuntary circumcision, it is illegal in most of the United States. So why is forced circumcision of minors legal? I’m looking for an answer that can reconcile the two. Comment on accepted answer: I recognise that female genital mutilation is a barbaric practice and a major human rights epidemic. I do not mean to propagate the idea that they are of equal severity. I hope that accepting Ted Wrigley’s answer reflects that and can help spread wisdom about the problem. | Clitoridectomies are not equivalent to male circumcision. Clitoridectomies are equivalent to removal of the glans (the head of the penis, which contains most of the nerve endings that produce sexual pleasure). It is possible to do an equivalent of circumcision on a female: i.e., removing the clitoral hood which normally covers the clitoris, leaving the clitoris exposed. This is sometimes done as an elective (cosmetic) surgery, and is a cultural practice followed by the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Islam, and among certain cultural groups in Indonesia and Malaysia (around 60-70 million cases across SE Asia). But that is not a distinction made under US law, and for the remainder of this answer, I will refer to this practice as 'female circumcision,' and will use the term 'clitoridectomy' to refer to the more drastic procedures. In every US state, the full or partial excision of the penis of a male child or young adult would be punishable at the very least as assault causing great bodily harm and felony child abuse. No laws have been specifically passed against this practice, because it is not an established practice of any known group; any case in which this occurred would be treated as an idiosyncratic crime under established law. Laws have been passed against clitoridectomies because that is an established practice of certain tribal groups, and opposing a cultural tradition of that sort calls for specific legal definition and action beyond the normal sanctions for individual crimes. Male circumcision, whatever its pros and cons, does not significantly interfere with reproduction or sexual pleasure (well... there are arguments that it has some negative impacts on the latter, but they are too complex and nuanced to get into here). Arguments in favor of male circumcision generally rest on issues of cleanliness, disease prevention, or cultural heritage, and most men adapt to the procedure perfectly well. There is evidence to suggest that female circumcision (which only removes the clitoral hood) is equally innocuous. But the US discourse focuses on those cases where the clitoris or parts of the labia are removed, caustic materials are used destroy genital sensitivity, or other permanent damage is inflicted on the female genitalia. These are perceived (under the title female genital mutilation ) as acts of oppression against women, since the common perception is that the cultures that perform such acts intend to suppress female sexuality by reducing sexual pleasure. Those activities and beliefs are antithetical to the ideals and values of the US, and it is impossible to monitor individual procedures to ensure they conform to the mildest type, so the entire range of practices has been outlawed. N.B. In reference to a dispute in comments about the nature of the surgical equivalence... The clitoris, like the penis, has both a shaft and a glans, and in both cases the glans contains the vast majority of nerve endings that produce sexual pleasure. However, the male organ combines the channel for the transfer of semen (as well as for urination), while the female organ is separate from both those functions. The removal of the clitoris has no direct effect on the capacity to reproduce; the removal of the penis — though it does not make a man sterile — makes reproduction impossible without artificial insemination. Clitoridectomies remove the clitoris and the external portions of the clitoral shaft, so for the purposes of this answer we treat a clitoridectomy as equivalent to the removal of the male glans. For both men and women, removal of the glans still allows them to feel some sexual pleasure — the shaft itself is sensitive, and for women, part of the shaft is internal, and may survive excision — but such pleasure is greatly diminished. | {
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52,468 | CONTEXT While no government wants there to be a pandemic , and would certainly prefer (hope) for it to just go away, they can only downplay it for a short time before it overwhelms the population and they must address it from a significantly weaker position than if they had acted decisively at the beginning. In the smartphone era, information propagates instantly through informal networks (Facebook, WeChat, StackExchange, etc.) and is difficult to suppress. QUESTIONS After witnessing the COVID epidemic and failure to contain it in Asia, it spread to Europe and was poised to infect the west. Why did western hemisphere leaders downplay the pandemic’s threat instead of acknowledging the problem and communicating what would be done to reverse the issue? What is the political incentive for deferring acknowledgement and action? | In hindsight it's clear that many governments should have taken the risk of a Covid19 pandemic much more seriously, but it's not that easy to anticipate the reach and intensity of the epidemic before it happens. There have been other serious threats before for which the containment strategy proved sufficient, and if a government allocates resources (for instance massive purchases of masks and ventilators) which end up wasted they are going to be criticized as well. This article in the Guardian argues that most European countries were not as well prepared as some Asian countries because: There was no recent experience of a serious epidemic in the country,
causing leaders to subconsciously underestimate the seriousness of
the threat. There is a potential political cost for a government if they invest
resources by precaution and the risk doesn't materialize: "The challenge faced by government is whether and when to act on a health threat. If you act swiftly and the outbreak isn’t as bad as
feared, then government gets criticised for overreacting. If you
adopt a wait-and-see approach and move too slowly, then government
gets criticised for underreacting," says Steve Taylor, professor at
the University of British Columbia and author of The Psychology of
Pandemics. As an example, during the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic Roselyne Bachelot was Minister of Health in the French
government. She purchased 94 million vaccines, but only a small
proportion turned out to be actually used. As a result she was
widely criticized for wasting public money. I assume that there are
other examples of this kind, where a politician loses some political
points because they made a safe but costly decision. It seems that when an epidemic threat presents itself a government must make a call between: Taking the threat seriously and therefore mobilizing important resources for an overall unlikely epidemic crisis, with a high risk to appear as overreacting and wasting public money. Taking minimal conservative measures, which is unlikely to be sufficient if the crisis materializes. However this will likely appear as the "normal" choice to make, since nobody could objectively have anticipated the intensity of the crisis. Note: this answer is made of recycled material from a closed question of mine. | {
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52,470 | Over the last 2 weeks, over 10 million US workers lost their jobs. For many of them the loss of their job means the loss of their health insurance as well. More than 3 million Americans just lost their jobs in the middle of a global pandemic. For those whose jobs offered benefits, that also probably means they’re losing their health insurance, too — exposing yet another way in which the US health system is vulnerable amid a public health emergency. How do 3 million newly unemployed people get health care? - Vox - 3/27/20 This seems to me like an obscene risk accumulation to tie your job and your health insurance, especially in a country where employment at will is still widespread. Why does the US stick with this system rather than switching to a system where your health insurance is independent of the employment (no matter whether organized by private or general health insurance)? | First, let's be clear: employers do not offer benefits like health insurance naturally. If we go back to the early stages of industrialization, employers merely offered salaries (often paltry salaries, at that). Benefits — as the name implies — came into play later; they were meant as incentives to hire and retain engineers, high-level management, or highly skilled workers, all of whom were in short supply and high demand as industries expanded and diversified. Benefits only extended to low level workers as the result of union activity, either as a direct result of collective bargaining or an indirect result where employers offered benefits to keep workers from unionizing. Benefits, from the employer's perspective, are merely a cost/benefit issue: the minimum expenditure required to prevent greater losses from employee attrition or further union activity. The US has always been a capitalist, corporatist nation. US institutions are geared to preserve the health and well-being of corporations, not the health and well-being of employees, and in those contexts where it does not explicitly forbid unionization or collective action, it does not interfere with corporate efforts to minimize the impact of such activities. The reason employers prefer this 'benefits' scenario is that it keeps payouts entirely within the corporate cost-accounting system. The corporation decides how much it is going to commit to employee benefits; the corporation chooses benefits plans that best fit its own profit maximization; the corporation can (as necessary) fire employees, change benefits, alter payouts, move money around, or otherwise control the way the benefits are handled. The more that benefits are shifted off to the government — through things like minimum wage guarantees, public health options, guaranteed leaves, etc — the more that money for these benefits leaves corporate control. Public health options, for instance, mean that employers cannot minimize their costs by seeking out cheap plans, cannot preclude payments for expensive procedures of ongoing medical issues, and are ultimately responsible for the health of the entire populace, not merely the limited and controllable population of current employees. The problem isn't even necessarily that their tax burden will increase (though that is a fear); the problem is that money paid into taxes for public benefits is money they lose control of, and cannot manipulate to increase their profit margin. Of course, this leaves us in the unenviable position we are in now, in which we effectively have to bribe employers with public funds so that they don't fire employees en masse , costing people their livelihoods and health coverage in the middle of a pandemic. But that's life in a corporatist state... | {
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52,492 | So, something that seems odd to me is that while there are a number of dictatorships around the world, very few of them have the dictator deciding to crown themselves as a monarch, despite the veneer of legitimacy that doing so might grant them (e.g. divine right to rule). The Catholic Church has been crowning monarchs for literally over a thousand years, so there doesn't seem an obvious reason why right-wing South American dictators from Catholic-dominated countries couldn't get themselves crowned as king. Despite this, there doesn't seem to be any examples where a dictator has gotten themselves crowned as king. Why is this? Left-wing dictators have an obvious reason why, since communist ideology is anti-monarchist, but why don't right-wing dictators crown themselves as king? Note that I'm asking about modern dictators who don't have any previous royal lineage, rather than monarchies established by individuals from existing royal lines (e.g. Saudi Arabia). | tl;dr: Because the middle ages are over. You no longer want to be King - you want to be President Most of the world used to be ruled by kings and emperors, but today the only remaining absolute hereditary monarchies in the world are Saudi-Arabia, Brunei, Qatar, Oman and Eswatini. There are still lots of countries which are still officially hereditary monarchies (like parts of Europe or the Commonwealth realms), but the role of the monarch in these countries is mostly symbolic. The true political leader is the head of the government. So if a dictator declares themselves monarch, then they risk the same fate as monarchies all over the world. At best having their power eroded to a level where they are just a figurehead for the elected government, at worst being ousted in favor of a non-hereditary government when they become cumbersome. You don't want heredity legitimation, you want democratic legitimation In the modern world, having regular elections ( even if they aren't fair elections ) and thus upholding the appearance of a democracy beats wearing a crown. It also makes it easier for foreign politicians from democratic countries to recognize your government as legitimate. And with most of the international superpowers in the world being democratic countries, this really matters. The Catholic Church isn't what it used to be The Catholic church used to crown kings and emperors during the middle ages. But it has no longer provided that service for over 200 years now. The last political leader crowned by a pope was Napoleon in 1804 (and that was more a coronation with a pope than by a pope ). With most political power being secular in nature, the authority of the Catholic church is relegated to religious and moral matters. Further, I couldn't really imagine any of the three popes I experienced during my lifetime (John-Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis) to legitimize a dictator by crowning them king. | {
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52,537 | After last minute, party-line decisions by the US and Wisconsin Supreme Courts, Wisconsin will hold their presidential primary and a hotly-contested Supreme Court election tomorrow (April 7th) despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The state's Democratic governor has been pushing to delay the election and/or extend the window for absentee ballot collection, but the Republican controlled legislature have opposed both moves. In addition to the the potential for voters to get infected while voting, the vast majority of polling sites have been closed due to a lack of volunteers (most of whom are usually retirees) to run them: The state has faced serious questions about its ability to run an election amid the pandemic. With poll workers quitting out of fears of contracting the virus, more than 100 municipalities have said they lack enough staff to run even one polling place. Milwaukee typically has about 180 sites; this election the city plans to have five open. The head of the state elections commission raised the possibility in court testimony that some voters may have to head to a different town on Election Day because no one will be staffing the polls in their hometowns. Wisconsin Is Set to Vote on Tuesday After Court Overrules Governor’s Postponement - The New York Times Why is the state Republican party insisting on going forward with an election where most people will be unable to vote, even if they're willing to risk their lives and health to do so? Even if they don't consider the threat of COVID-19 to be significant, the closure of so many polling places guarantees that people will be denied the opportunity to vote. | Rural voters aren't afraid to go to the polls to keep a conservative state supreme court justice in power. The April 2020 ballot does include the U.S. presidential primary, but that will have little effect on state politics. After I first posted this answer, the New York Times echoed many of the points I make below, starting with: Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders are on the ballot in Wisconsin, but the main event is the State Supreme Court race between the conservative incumbent justice, Daniel Kelly, and a liberal challenger, Jill Karofsky. Wisconsin has an elected state supreme court that currently has 5 conservatives and 2 liberals. One of the conservatives (Daniel Kelly) is up for election in April 2020, and the another conservative is up in the next election after that (Pat Rogensack, 2023). If liberals win both of those seats back, they would have a 4-3 majority and could undo the laws that keep the minority Republican party in power. The election determined the size of the court's conservative majority. A win for Karofsky would have reduced the conservative majority to 4-3, meaning that the next regularly scheduled election in 2023 would decide control of the court . A Kelly win would have preserved the court's 5-2 conservative majority. Ballotpedia It's helpful to understand the political context: For decades prior to 2010, Wisconsin was a moderate state. The legislature and governorship each frequently flipped between the Democratic and Republican parties. Since 1900, Wisconsin has equally chosen Republicans and Democrats for President . Justices on the state supreme court are elected and technically nonpartisan . Nonetheless, their conservative versus liberal ideology are often clear. For decades prior to 2010, the state supreme court held a liberal majority. It's worth mentioning that long ago, Wisconsin Republicans were leaders in open elections and progressive ideas. The Republican party started in Wisconsin, as an anti-slavery party (later to be re-started in Michigan). The word "progressive" was coined by Republican Robert La Follette . Wisconsin was the first or among the first states to adopt women's suffrage, open ballots, primary elections, recall elections, referenda, outlawing child labor, worker's compensation, and income taxes; all were progressive Republican measures. Prior to the Tea Party, the state was considered one of the most bipartisan and least corrupt states. Led primarily by Tea Party candidates, in the fall 2010 election , Wisconsin Republicans won control of all three branches of government. This included the election of Scott Walker as governor, a one-seat majority in the state senate, a considerable margin in the state assembly, and a 4 to 3 majority in the state supreme court. Republicans quickly enacted a series of laws that would lock in their party's control: Using sophisticated computer models to draw election maps for the U.S. House, state senate, and state assembly to maximize Republican seats and to pack Democratic votes into few districts. The gerrymandering is so successful that in the 2018 elections, Republicans won 5 of 8 U.S. House seats with only 45.61% of votes , and 63 of 99 state assembly seats with only 44.75% of votes . Adopting a voter-ID law. Minorities and the poor -- who tend to vote for Democrats -- are less likely to have the proper types of identification. Purged 234,000 voters from voting rolls. Requiring early voting to be performed only at the municipal clerk's office, and not multiple sites. Thus the 600,000 residents of Milwaukee (a Democratic stronghold) had only one site for early voting, the same as a town of 600 people would. This law was struck down by a federal judge in 2016 . A requirement that cities can have only one place for early voting. Critics have said large cities such as Milwaukee should be able to have multiple voting sites because not everyone can get downtown easily. Limiting the days and hours for early and absentee voting. Replacing the agency which oversees elections, from the Government Accountability Board composed of judges chosen by other judges, to the Wisconsin Election Commission chosen by politicians. Moving the state supreme court elections from the fall (which have high Democratic turnout) to the spring (which have poor Democratic turnout). This has been particularly effective at increasing the conservative control of the court , from 3-4 in 2010 to 7-2 in 2020. Note how the election during the pandemic is a spring election, with a supreme court contest. Holding special elections to fill vacancies on unusual dates -- when Republicans turn out -- instead of the usual fall and spring election dates when Democrats turn out. After a series of failed recall elections for the governor and Republicans in the state senate, changes that made recalls more difficult (2015 Act 117). A series of laws (most famously 2011 Act 10 ) to cripple the power and finances of labor unions, which are the primary backers of Democratic candidates. In 2015, changing the Chief Justice position from the most senior justice (a liberal) to being chosen by a majority of the court (conservatives). In 2015, stripping the powers of the Democratic secretary of state. Increasing the powers of the Republican governor and attorney general. When Democrats won back these offices in 2018, the powers of those offices were reduced in a lame duck session. The conservatives controlling the state supreme court have upheld most of the laws described above. This includes laws that affected the justices' own re-election. In particular, the decision specifically about whether to continue the election during the pandemic went along ideological lines. Moderate Republicans were treated poorly by the dominant Tea Party faction. The previous Republican leaders of the legislature -- Dave Schultz in the assembly and Mike Ellis in the senate -- were pushed out of leadership by Tea Party leaders. Schultz would later testify in a gerrymandering case that Republicans were brought one-by-one to a law office, and were ordered to vote for the gerrymandered maps, else their own districts would be gerrymandered to make them lose. In the ensuing years, many moderate Republicans quit the party in disgust, and many moderate office-holders were voted out in primaries by Tea Party candidates. The loss of moderates had drained the support of the Republican party. Since 2010, Democrats have been gaining ground. By number of voters statewide, the Republican party is actually a minority party in Wisconsin . Wisconsin's top Republican even admitted that they aren't the majority : After the Republican Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Statehouse, said that “if you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority." However, the measures described above are so effective that the state supreme court and both houses of the state legislature still remain in Republican control. Democrats swept every statewide office in 2018 : U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer. They had more votes in the U.S. House, but because of gerrymandering, they won only 3 of 8 seats. They also had more votes in the state assembly and gained one seat, but again because of gerrymandering, they did not gain control. As has happened nationwide, the Wisconsin Republican party has aligned with rural interests and and the Democratic party with urban interests. COVID-19 is likely to keep people in high-density (i.e. Democratic) districts at home. Like other rural places in the U.S., rural Wisconsinites believe that COVID-19 is a "big city" phenomenon and are likely to show up to the polls. Per the New York Times , about one of the least populous counties: Bruce Johnson, the Democratic chairman in Pepin County, along the state’s western border with Minnesota, said he pushed for absentee balloting but people were less concerned because they rarely wait in lines to vote. Wikipedia : When the election went ahead on 7 April, access to easy in-person voting heavily depended on where voters were located. In smaller or more rural communities, which tend to be whiter and vote Republican, few issues were reported. It's therefore in the interest of Republicans to keep the election going during the pandemic. Should liberals take back the state supreme court, they can overturn the system of laws which keeps the Republican party in power. They would then be at the mercy of the voters, who have been increasingly voting Democratic. | {
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52,544 | There were some cases (and that one , for example), when US put it hands over medicine masks packages. But is it really illegal? At least, people who've done it do not rob it, they've payed with money. | Rural voters aren't afraid to go to the polls to keep a conservative state supreme court justice in power. The April 2020 ballot does include the U.S. presidential primary, but that will have little effect on state politics. After I first posted this answer, the New York Times echoed many of the points I make below, starting with: Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders are on the ballot in Wisconsin, but the main event is the State Supreme Court race between the conservative incumbent justice, Daniel Kelly, and a liberal challenger, Jill Karofsky. Wisconsin has an elected state supreme court that currently has 5 conservatives and 2 liberals. One of the conservatives (Daniel Kelly) is up for election in April 2020, and the another conservative is up in the next election after that (Pat Rogensack, 2023). If liberals win both of those seats back, they would have a 4-3 majority and could undo the laws that keep the minority Republican party in power. The election determined the size of the court's conservative majority. A win for Karofsky would have reduced the conservative majority to 4-3, meaning that the next regularly scheduled election in 2023 would decide control of the court . A Kelly win would have preserved the court's 5-2 conservative majority. Ballotpedia It's helpful to understand the political context: For decades prior to 2010, Wisconsin was a moderate state. The legislature and governorship each frequently flipped between the Democratic and Republican parties. Since 1900, Wisconsin has equally chosen Republicans and Democrats for President . Justices on the state supreme court are elected and technically nonpartisan . Nonetheless, their conservative versus liberal ideology are often clear. For decades prior to 2010, the state supreme court held a liberal majority. It's worth mentioning that long ago, Wisconsin Republicans were leaders in open elections and progressive ideas. The Republican party started in Wisconsin, as an anti-slavery party (later to be re-started in Michigan). The word "progressive" was coined by Republican Robert La Follette . Wisconsin was the first or among the first states to adopt women's suffrage, open ballots, primary elections, recall elections, referenda, outlawing child labor, worker's compensation, and income taxes; all were progressive Republican measures. Prior to the Tea Party, the state was considered one of the most bipartisan and least corrupt states. Led primarily by Tea Party candidates, in the fall 2010 election , Wisconsin Republicans won control of all three branches of government. This included the election of Scott Walker as governor, a one-seat majority in the state senate, a considerable margin in the state assembly, and a 4 to 3 majority in the state supreme court. Republicans quickly enacted a series of laws that would lock in their party's control: Using sophisticated computer models to draw election maps for the U.S. House, state senate, and state assembly to maximize Republican seats and to pack Democratic votes into few districts. The gerrymandering is so successful that in the 2018 elections, Republicans won 5 of 8 U.S. House seats with only 45.61% of votes , and 63 of 99 state assembly seats with only 44.75% of votes . Adopting a voter-ID law. Minorities and the poor -- who tend to vote for Democrats -- are less likely to have the proper types of identification. Purged 234,000 voters from voting rolls. Requiring early voting to be performed only at the municipal clerk's office, and not multiple sites. Thus the 600,000 residents of Milwaukee (a Democratic stronghold) had only one site for early voting, the same as a town of 600 people would. This law was struck down by a federal judge in 2016 . A requirement that cities can have only one place for early voting. Critics have said large cities such as Milwaukee should be able to have multiple voting sites because not everyone can get downtown easily. Limiting the days and hours for early and absentee voting. Replacing the agency which oversees elections, from the Government Accountability Board composed of judges chosen by other judges, to the Wisconsin Election Commission chosen by politicians. Moving the state supreme court elections from the fall (which have high Democratic turnout) to the spring (which have poor Democratic turnout). This has been particularly effective at increasing the conservative control of the court , from 3-4 in 2010 to 7-2 in 2020. Note how the election during the pandemic is a spring election, with a supreme court contest. Holding special elections to fill vacancies on unusual dates -- when Republicans turn out -- instead of the usual fall and spring election dates when Democrats turn out. After a series of failed recall elections for the governor and Republicans in the state senate, changes that made recalls more difficult (2015 Act 117). A series of laws (most famously 2011 Act 10 ) to cripple the power and finances of labor unions, which are the primary backers of Democratic candidates. In 2015, changing the Chief Justice position from the most senior justice (a liberal) to being chosen by a majority of the court (conservatives). In 2015, stripping the powers of the Democratic secretary of state. Increasing the powers of the Republican governor and attorney general. When Democrats won back these offices in 2018, the powers of those offices were reduced in a lame duck session. The conservatives controlling the state supreme court have upheld most of the laws described above. This includes laws that affected the justices' own re-election. In particular, the decision specifically about whether to continue the election during the pandemic went along ideological lines. Moderate Republicans were treated poorly by the dominant Tea Party faction. The previous Republican leaders of the legislature -- Dave Schultz in the assembly and Mike Ellis in the senate -- were pushed out of leadership by Tea Party leaders. Schultz would later testify in a gerrymandering case that Republicans were brought one-by-one to a law office, and were ordered to vote for the gerrymandered maps, else their own districts would be gerrymandered to make them lose. In the ensuing years, many moderate Republicans quit the party in disgust, and many moderate office-holders were voted out in primaries by Tea Party candidates. The loss of moderates had drained the support of the Republican party. Since 2010, Democrats have been gaining ground. By number of voters statewide, the Republican party is actually a minority party in Wisconsin . Wisconsin's top Republican even admitted that they aren't the majority : After the Republican Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Statehouse, said that “if you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority." However, the measures described above are so effective that the state supreme court and both houses of the state legislature still remain in Republican control. Democrats swept every statewide office in 2018 : U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer. They had more votes in the U.S. House, but because of gerrymandering, they won only 3 of 8 seats. They also had more votes in the state assembly and gained one seat, but again because of gerrymandering, they did not gain control. As has happened nationwide, the Wisconsin Republican party has aligned with rural interests and and the Democratic party with urban interests. COVID-19 is likely to keep people in high-density (i.e. Democratic) districts at home. Like other rural places in the U.S., rural Wisconsinites believe that COVID-19 is a "big city" phenomenon and are likely to show up to the polls. Per the New York Times , about one of the least populous counties: Bruce Johnson, the Democratic chairman in Pepin County, along the state’s western border with Minnesota, said he pushed for absentee balloting but people were less concerned because they rarely wait in lines to vote. Wikipedia : When the election went ahead on 7 April, access to easy in-person voting heavily depended on where voters were located. In smaller or more rural communities, which tend to be whiter and vote Republican, few issues were reported. It's therefore in the interest of Republicans to keep the election going during the pandemic. Should liberals take back the state supreme court, they can overturn the system of laws which keeps the Republican party in power. They would then be at the mercy of the voters, who have been increasingly voting Democratic. | {
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52,551 | In their paper Does Religion Matter?: Christianity and Public Support for the European Union , Nelsen et. al explore the effect of religious denomination, and the strength of that religious conviction on support for European integration, using Eurobarometer data. Although they restrict their analysis to the 'EC Ten' (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the UK, and Northern Ireland), they note that their conclusions hold up well in exploratory studies they have conducted using the full membership of the EU at the time of publication. Despite controlling for a variety of alternative explanations, they found that: Roman Catholics are warmest toward the Union, while Protestants tend
to be slightly less supportive than secular citizens are, although
their position may depend on national circumstances. Sectarian
Protestants are the least fond of the European Union, although
examination of their attitudes is limited by the Eurobarometer's
inadequate identification of religious groups. And, although religious
tradition is a powerful influence on attitudes, religious commitment
also plays a solid role. Among Catholics (and perhaps among some
Protestants), high commitment 'internationalizes', making attendees
more sympathetic to integration projects. But among sectarian
Protestants the opposite effect appears, with observing members least
pro-Union. How can the inconsistencies between the opinions of Catholics and Protestants on further European integration that the paper describes be explained? | Rural voters aren't afraid to go to the polls to keep a conservative state supreme court justice in power. The April 2020 ballot does include the U.S. presidential primary, but that will have little effect on state politics. After I first posted this answer, the New York Times echoed many of the points I make below, starting with: Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders are on the ballot in Wisconsin, but the main event is the State Supreme Court race between the conservative incumbent justice, Daniel Kelly, and a liberal challenger, Jill Karofsky. Wisconsin has an elected state supreme court that currently has 5 conservatives and 2 liberals. One of the conservatives (Daniel Kelly) is up for election in April 2020, and the another conservative is up in the next election after that (Pat Rogensack, 2023). If liberals win both of those seats back, they would have a 4-3 majority and could undo the laws that keep the minority Republican party in power. The election determined the size of the court's conservative majority. A win for Karofsky would have reduced the conservative majority to 4-3, meaning that the next regularly scheduled election in 2023 would decide control of the court . A Kelly win would have preserved the court's 5-2 conservative majority. Ballotpedia It's helpful to understand the political context: For decades prior to 2010, Wisconsin was a moderate state. The legislature and governorship each frequently flipped between the Democratic and Republican parties. Since 1900, Wisconsin has equally chosen Republicans and Democrats for President . Justices on the state supreme court are elected and technically nonpartisan . Nonetheless, their conservative versus liberal ideology are often clear. For decades prior to 2010, the state supreme court held a liberal majority. It's worth mentioning that long ago, Wisconsin Republicans were leaders in open elections and progressive ideas. The Republican party started in Wisconsin, as an anti-slavery party (later to be re-started in Michigan). The word "progressive" was coined by Republican Robert La Follette . Wisconsin was the first or among the first states to adopt women's suffrage, open ballots, primary elections, recall elections, referenda, outlawing child labor, worker's compensation, and income taxes; all were progressive Republican measures. Prior to the Tea Party, the state was considered one of the most bipartisan and least corrupt states. Led primarily by Tea Party candidates, in the fall 2010 election , Wisconsin Republicans won control of all three branches of government. This included the election of Scott Walker as governor, a one-seat majority in the state senate, a considerable margin in the state assembly, and a 4 to 3 majority in the state supreme court. Republicans quickly enacted a series of laws that would lock in their party's control: Using sophisticated computer models to draw election maps for the U.S. House, state senate, and state assembly to maximize Republican seats and to pack Democratic votes into few districts. The gerrymandering is so successful that in the 2018 elections, Republicans won 5 of 8 U.S. House seats with only 45.61% of votes , and 63 of 99 state assembly seats with only 44.75% of votes . Adopting a voter-ID law. Minorities and the poor -- who tend to vote for Democrats -- are less likely to have the proper types of identification. Purged 234,000 voters from voting rolls. Requiring early voting to be performed only at the municipal clerk's office, and not multiple sites. Thus the 600,000 residents of Milwaukee (a Democratic stronghold) had only one site for early voting, the same as a town of 600 people would. This law was struck down by a federal judge in 2016 . A requirement that cities can have only one place for early voting. Critics have said large cities such as Milwaukee should be able to have multiple voting sites because not everyone can get downtown easily. Limiting the days and hours for early and absentee voting. Replacing the agency which oversees elections, from the Government Accountability Board composed of judges chosen by other judges, to the Wisconsin Election Commission chosen by politicians. Moving the state supreme court elections from the fall (which have high Democratic turnout) to the spring (which have poor Democratic turnout). This has been particularly effective at increasing the conservative control of the court , from 3-4 in 2010 to 7-2 in 2020. Note how the election during the pandemic is a spring election, with a supreme court contest. Holding special elections to fill vacancies on unusual dates -- when Republicans turn out -- instead of the usual fall and spring election dates when Democrats turn out. After a series of failed recall elections for the governor and Republicans in the state senate, changes that made recalls more difficult (2015 Act 117). A series of laws (most famously 2011 Act 10 ) to cripple the power and finances of labor unions, which are the primary backers of Democratic candidates. In 2015, changing the Chief Justice position from the most senior justice (a liberal) to being chosen by a majority of the court (conservatives). In 2015, stripping the powers of the Democratic secretary of state. Increasing the powers of the Republican governor and attorney general. When Democrats won back these offices in 2018, the powers of those offices were reduced in a lame duck session. The conservatives controlling the state supreme court have upheld most of the laws described above. This includes laws that affected the justices' own re-election. In particular, the decision specifically about whether to continue the election during the pandemic went along ideological lines. Moderate Republicans were treated poorly by the dominant Tea Party faction. The previous Republican leaders of the legislature -- Dave Schultz in the assembly and Mike Ellis in the senate -- were pushed out of leadership by Tea Party leaders. Schultz would later testify in a gerrymandering case that Republicans were brought one-by-one to a law office, and were ordered to vote for the gerrymandered maps, else their own districts would be gerrymandered to make them lose. In the ensuing years, many moderate Republicans quit the party in disgust, and many moderate office-holders were voted out in primaries by Tea Party candidates. The loss of moderates had drained the support of the Republican party. Since 2010, Democrats have been gaining ground. By number of voters statewide, the Republican party is actually a minority party in Wisconsin . Wisconsin's top Republican even admitted that they aren't the majority : After the Republican Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Statehouse, said that “if you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority." However, the measures described above are so effective that the state supreme court and both houses of the state legislature still remain in Republican control. Democrats swept every statewide office in 2018 : U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer. They had more votes in the U.S. House, but because of gerrymandering, they won only 3 of 8 seats. They also had more votes in the state assembly and gained one seat, but again because of gerrymandering, they did not gain control. As has happened nationwide, the Wisconsin Republican party has aligned with rural interests and and the Democratic party with urban interests. COVID-19 is likely to keep people in high-density (i.e. Democratic) districts at home. Like other rural places in the U.S., rural Wisconsinites believe that COVID-19 is a "big city" phenomenon and are likely to show up to the polls. Per the New York Times , about one of the least populous counties: Bruce Johnson, the Democratic chairman in Pepin County, along the state’s western border with Minnesota, said he pushed for absentee balloting but people were less concerned because they rarely wait in lines to vote. Wikipedia : When the election went ahead on 7 April, access to easy in-person voting heavily depended on where voters were located. In smaller or more rural communities, which tend to be whiter and vote Republican, few issues were reported. It's therefore in the interest of Republicans to keep the election going during the pandemic. Should liberals take back the state supreme court, they can overturn the system of laws which keeps the Republican party in power. They would then be at the mercy of the voters, who have been increasingly voting Democratic. | {
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52,553 | Sweden has adopted a far less radical set of policies in reaction to COVID-19 than most other European states. Many other European states are in "lock-down", with severe restrictions on people's free movement, with people being advised to only leave their homes for food/medicine. In Sweden, by contrast, people are largely carrying on with their normal lives. While every other country in Europe has been ordered into ever more stringent coronavirus lockdown, Sweden has remained the exception. Schools for pupils up to 16 years, kindergartens, bars, restaurants, ski resorts, sports clubs, hairdressers: all remain open, weeks after everything closed down in next door Denmark and Norway. As the rest of Europe lives under lockdown, Sweden keeps calm and carries on - The Guardian, March 28, 2020 What social and political factors underlie this decision, and why is it so dramatically different from the response of other European countries? | The reason for Sweden's rather hands-off approach compared to other European countries was summed up rather well by lead epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden, Anders Tegnell, who said in an interview with CNBC: My view is that basically all European countries are trying to do the
same thing — we’re trying to slow down the spread as much as possible
to keep healthcare and society working ... and we have shown some
different methods to slow down the spread, [...] Sweden has gone
mostly for voluntary measures because that’s how we’re used to
working, and we have a long tradition that it works rather well. This tradition of 'laissez-faire-ism' that Tegnell talks about was explored by Johan Norberg in his 2013 essay How Laissez-Faire Made Sweden Rich . This is quite long but well worth a read. Notably, Norberg argues that rather than Sweden's economic and social successes being a result of the SAP "managing to tax, spend, and regulate Sweden into a more equitable distribution of wealth—without hurting its productive capacity", Sweden's greatest successes both economically and socially "took place when Sweden had a laissez-faire economy". Sweden's approach to the current pandemic, then, would seem to be influenced by the political traditions of its past. I should note that although Tegnell is hopeful that the current strategy will be successful, he doesn't rule out the implementation of more stringent measures should the data suggest that the laissez-faire tactics are not working. As far as social factors that have influenced Sweden's response go, one such factor is how sparsely spread its population is. This article from Our World in Data notes how Sweden consistently ranks near the top of metrics related to single-occupant households, and the country also ranks 50th out of 54th for Population Density amongst other European countries. It is likely that another factor has been the reluctance of the government to negatively affect the economy more than is required. For example, although taking a hands-off approach with regard to restricting personal liberties, it has taken a far more active role in ensuring the continued functioning of business, and on March 27th announced that it will guarantee 70% of bank loans provided to companies that are experiencing financial difficulty as a result of the pandemic. In conclusion, Sweden's response so far seems to be a combination of the reluctance of Swedes to accept restrictions on personal liberty - note the outcry by opposition parties when a proposal to rule by decree was announced, a tradition of past laissez-faire approaches, and distinct social factors that will potentially help provide a natural defence against the virus. | {
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52,602 | A January 14 WHO tweet that has been widely re-broadcast months later by the right-wing US press (e.g. NYPost , WashExam but not exclusively by them, e.g. Bloomberg opinion piece , Politico o.p. ) said that: Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China. The WHO is lampooned for this moment by the aforementioned media pieces, but these don't really say when the WHO came to a different conclusion regarding human-to-human transmission. So when did that happen, and what information source did the WHO use for the latter determination? | The WHO was clearly wary that human-to-human transmission may be a factor at the beginning of January - although their initial Disease Outbreak News (DON) of January 5th entitled "Pneumonia of unknown cause – China" states that: According to the authorities, some patients were operating dealers or
vendors in the Huanan Seafood market. Based on the preliminary
information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of
significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker
infections have been reported. They also note that all patients are being isolated, and that close contacts of patients are being identified and monitored, which indicates that this avenue was being investigated. Further advice published on 10th January also indicated that: From the currently available information, preliminary investigation
suggests that there is no significant human-to-human transmission, and
no infections among health care workers have occurred. But again, warned that travellers should take measures such as avoiding close contact with people suffering from acute respiratory infections; frequent hand-washing, especially after direct contact with ill people or their environment; travellers with symptoms of acute respiratory infection should practice cough etiquette (maintain distance, cover coughs and sneezes
with disposable tissues or clothing, and wash hands). According to the WHO COVID-19 Timeline 's entry for January 14th: Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove noted in a press briefing there had been
limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus (in the 41
confirmed cases), mainly through family members, and that there was a
risk of a possible wider outbreak. Dr. Kerkhove noted that
human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given our
experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens. After WHO officials from its China and Western Pacific regional offices conducted a brief field visit to Wuhan from the 20th-21st of Jan, the latter office published a twitter thread on January 21st stating that as a result of the increasing number of cases of the virus; "It is now very clear [...] that there is at least some human-to-human transmission of #nCoV2019". The thread also states that "more information and analysis are needed on this new virus to understand the full extent of human-to-human transmission and other important details". Additionally, on the 21st of January, the DON for the spread of the disease in the Republic of Korea contained the phrase "the extent of human-to-human transmission", the first DON not to question the existence of human-to-human transmission, but rather its extent. A more formal announcement was made by the WHO mission to China on the 22nd of January which states that: Data collected through detailed epidemiological investigation and
through the deployment of the new test kit nationally suggests that
human-to-human transmission is taking place in Wuhan. More analysis of
the epidemiological data is needed to understand the full extent of
human-to-human transmission. WHO stands ready to provide support to
China to conduct further detailed analysis. In conclusion then, while human-to-human transmission was suspected to be present from the initial WHO DON on January 5th, this was not confirmed until after data observed in the field in Wuhan by members of the WHO China & Western Pacific regional offices was thought to show that human-to-human transmission was clearly a factor. These field investigations took place on the 20th-21st of January, and announcements acknowledging this conclusion were first made on the 21st. | {
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52,628 | This article shows us that some US institutions rely on very old systems (written decades ago, which is very long in IT time perspective): New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says that the state is looking for
volunteers with skills that can be used to help in the COVID-19
coronavirus outbreak, and one of those skills is knowing your way
around a 61-year-old programming language used on big, old, mainframe
computers. COBOL is an old computer programming language that was first developed
in the 1950′s in conjunction with the Department of Defense. Today,
most programmers prefer and use more modern languages, but there are
pockets where old software written in COBOL remains in use,
particularly financial applications and in large enterprises or
government agencies. I understand that state institutions are typically much slower than private companies when it comes to IT investments, but having such old systems seems strange. Relying on systems written so long ago can cause lots of issues which translates to wasted time and money: initial developments done way before modern software development frameworks were around it is much harder to find specialists who, not only know the language, but also are able to adapt to such an old software development style inability to act in a timely fashion when changes or maintenance must be performed (e.g. Coronavirus outbreak) It makes sense for banks to be reluctant to rewrite their systems due to the large costs and risks, since they must also make profit. But a public institution is not profit based and, in theory, it should be easier for them to invest in modernizing their software systems. Question: Why did some US institutions not migrate their very old software systems to use somewhat newer ones? Note: I am not thinking about big leaps, but why not at least to work with languages and frameworks that are at most 20 years old, not 60 years old. While the main arguments are related to software development risks, I am interested in the political aspect of the "why", since we are talking about public institutions making the decision to partially / totally rewrite some systems. Such aspects might be related to the size of projects or quality of management in the public sector. | It's not just US institutions, there are many countries, institutions - including banks - and companies running on ancient software and hardware. There are multiple reasons for that: First, from the business standpoint, replacing software costs money. Why spend money to replace something that already meets requirements? If you have software A that does what you want, already exists and is "free", since you already own it, and software B, which doesn't exist yet, costs years of development time, probably requires new hardware and has the associated costs for all of that, which would your boss or your (often very much non-technical) boss
's boss approve? What would a government employee with a tight budget approve? What would a politician calling for less government spending approve? Secondly, the exact workings of the system are often lost in time. No one actually knows what the system does exactly, but it interfaces with dozens of other systems through APIs that are equally unknown, obscure or deprecated. Creating a specification for such a system that a contractor/contracted company can work with is difficult, if not impossible. There is a huge risk that the resulting system will not replicate the behavior of the old system and stuff will stop working. It might do things like round .5 up instead of rounding to even like the old system, which could cause all the bills or transactions to suddenly be off by 1 cent compared to the previous system. In government, a broken system could mean that the unemployed might not get their benefits, the tax payers not their yearly tax payback or any number of things that will lead to an elected politician not being reelected. Politicians like being reelected, so even if they understand the technical need, which is rare anyways, they might avoid the risks for political reasons. Often there were attempts at replacing the system, which then failed and then those failures get pointed at whenever someone proposes replacing the system. Thirdly, the old systems usually have a very bad user interface. A new system will have a shiny, new interface, sometimes because creating the old interface wouldn't even be feasible in a new application. This requires training people. People that have worked in the company or institution for 40-50 years and are very set in their ways. Those people often have a lot of blocking power, which can completely halt development on the new system, because their requirements, i.e. "don't change anything," aren't met. They are usually also very hard to fire and replace, so the institution has to hire new people without firing them, which requires a bigger budget, which comes back to the first point. In summary, as technical people we might understand that those systems will someday inevitably go "poof" and everything will break down catastrophically. Other people either don't know that it can happen, or they just hope that it will happen after their time, because in the end no one wants to pay the money, take the risk and take the blame for a project that will probably fail. | {
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52,764 | I read on https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-14/trump-says-he-s-halting-payments-to-who-for-data-sharing-failure : The U.S. has contributed about $893 million to the WHO’s operations during its current two-year funding cycle, according to the organization. China has given about $86 million over the same period. Which means that the United States funds the World Health Organization 10 times more than China. https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-us-china-who-world-health-organization-china gives more details: China Contributions 2019: Assessed: $75,790,000 Voluntary: $10,189,000 Total: $85,979,000 US Contributions 2019: Assessed: $236,912,000 Voluntary: $656,092,000 Total: $890,004,000 Which means that the United States voluntarily funds the World Health Organization 60 times more than China. Why? | Partial frame challenge if you like. Fox News has chosen an interesting year to highlight. As you can see, US voluntary contributions have varied a lot; only $112 million in 2011 (and similar in 2014) for example. A portion of these are also "earmarked funds", i.e. WHO can't spend them as they please, but only as the donor specifies, so e.g. the US DoD funds the WHO only to do some stuff in… South Korea! (It's true USAID funds a few more countries.) There are probably global activities that don't show up on that map though. From a WHO budget breakdown you can see that most of the voluntary contributions are not "core" but "specified", i.e. earmarked. The better question probably is "Why is China not giving more?". But I doubt they put out a press release about that. And if we are to speculate why the US government is giving "so much", perhaps it's so they don't get bad press every year if the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were to consistently outspend them: Since it began supporting WHO a decade ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been contributing between US$ 250 million and US$ 300 million a year. In one year – 2013 – it was the largest donor bar none, overtaking total contributions from the governments of both the USA and the UK. | {
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52,823 | Each time I see a press conference where President Trump is there, the reporters ask questions and he always answers them. Is he forced to do so by any law or something, or does the President just answer because it is part of democracy? | He is not obliged to hold them at all, much less answer questions, or any specific questions. The only requirement of addressing anyone is the state of the union, and that is not required to be a speech, it could be written. He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union... Article II, Section 3, US Constitution That same section also says he has to receive ambassadors and other public ministers, but says nothing about answering questions there either. | {
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52,946 | I saw this infographic about the ballooning US Federal Debt-to-GDP ratio and how it might exceed WWII levels: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-debt-and-deficit-projections-hit-records/ But I was curious how the US managed to bring its debt ratio down from over 100% during WWII to a low of around 20% by 1980? Was it higher taxes? A fast growing economy? Or multiple factors? (Updated to clarify this is about debt-to-GDP ratio, and not gross debt.) | It didn't. This graph is misleading. The red line is actually a percentage of the GDP. The GDP grew significantly after WWII (emphasis mine): The debt-to-GDP ratio hit its all-time record of 113% by war's end. Debt was at $241.86 billion in 1946, about $2.87 trillion in current dollars. Unlike after World War I, the US never really tried to pay down much of the debt it incurred during World War II. Still the debt shrank in significance as the US economy grew . It would take the debt-to-GDP ratio until 1962 just to get back to where the US was before the war. And with some fits and starts the debt load declined until hitting its recent low in 1974 at 24%, when the debt outstanding held by the public was $343.7 billion ($1.61 trillion, in current dollars.) So the total debt didn't shrink: the debt-to-GDP ratio shrank, due to an increasing economy that grew the GDP. | {
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52,985 | I'm not interested in the official Israeli view, which is Jerusalem. Do other countries have an official stance on which city they recognize as Israel's capital? As a side question, does the Palestinian Authority recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital? | It's not at all clear that countries even have official recognition of other countries' designated capitals; all that really happens is that a place for the embassy is chosen. One of the first tools of diplomacy is not saying what you don't have to (the second being not saying much of what you do have to) so an announcement that "we're moving our embassy from DC to Pittsburgh" probably ends there, with no further mention of why. A lot of popular media will call this something like "de facto" recognition of the capital; more careful outlets will say things like "Israel controversially designates Jerusalem as its capital but most countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv". So on Wikipedia's List of diplomatic missions in Israel , only the US and Guatemala have embassies in Jerusalem. All the other 86 are listed in the greater Tel Aviv area. Paraguay announced they were moving and then backtracked. Here in Canada the current-opposition Conservatives have occasionally floated the idea of moving Canada's embassy, but they were in power for ages and didn't do it then. Basically, it's a big political hot potato. Of a number of secondary missions in Jerusalem, some of them are "accredited" for service only to the Jerusalem area, and these countries' Tel Aviv embassies seem not to serve that area. Many countries have consulates and trade missions that serve only a designated region of the host nation, or conversely include service to a neighbouring country, so it's not a definite statement that "we don't think this area is part of Israel" ... but it's not not saying that. | {
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52,992 | A study conducted by the Pew Research Center and published in February presents eight key findings on Americans’ confidence in science and their views on scientists’ role in society, drawn from a number of past surveys. Some of the findings show a clear divide in opinion between Democrats & Democrat-leaning independents and Republicans & Republican-leaning independents. In particular, the report finds a large difference in opinion on whether scientists have a role in policy-making: Democrats are more inclined than Republicans to think scientists
should have an active role in science policy matters. Indeed, most
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (73%) hold this
position, compared with 43% of Republicans and GOP leaders. Moreover, with relation to the quality of policies made by scientists: 54% of Democrats say scientists’ policy decisions are usually better
than those of other people, while two-thirds of Republicans (66%) say
that scientists’ decisions are either no different from or worse than
other people’s. The report also finds a substantial partisan divide in confidence in the scientific method to produce accurate conclusions: Democrats are more likely to express confidence in the scientific
method to produce accurate conclusions than do Republicans, on
average. Most Democrats with high levels of science knowledge (86%,
based on an 11-item index of factual knowledge questions) say the
scientific method generally produces accurate conclusions. By
comparison, 52% of Democrats with low science knowledge say this. But
science knowledge has little bearing on Republicans’ beliefs about the
scientific method. What explains the large partisan divide on this subject? | A good explanation might be confirmation bias . Confirmation bias in a nutshell is the psychological phenomenon that people generally tend to trust information which supports their views and distrusts information which contradicts their views. And this trust or distrust does of course extend to those who provide that information. And it just so happens that the advice which can be taken from scientific consensus on multiple issues which dominate the political discourse in the United States happens to align more with the Democratic party position than with the Republican party position: The biggest perhaps is Global Warming . The only conclusion which can be taken from the scientific consensus is that it can only be stopped by regulating both the industry and the personal lifestyles of people. This goes against Republican values like free market economy and personal liberty. Immigration is another issue. Most economists come to the conclusion that the net effect on the US economy from immigration is positive. But this does conflict with the anti-immigration sentiments in the Republican party. In education, there is the creationism debate and the sex education debate. The scientific perspective is of course that people should be taught what's scientifically correct: There is no evidence for intelligent design, the best way to prevent teenage pregnancies is information about contraception and LGBT people do exist. The more conservative view of many Republicans is that respect for religion and sexual morals should be taken into account when designing the school curriculum. And now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists come to the conclusion that the only way to reduce the expected number of casualties is to enforce draconian contact restrictions. This again conflicts with Republican values like the freedom to engage in economic activity, skepticism of government overreach and personal liberty. I don't want to imply that just because science says what's best from an utilitarian perspective, that it is always the only right decision to make. Science does not consider political values like ethics and morals or how people want to live their lifes. Scientists can offer data which can be used as the basis for decision making, but making the decision is the responsibility of politicians. Or in other words: "Facts don't care about your feelings", but politicians do. | {
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52,996 | When the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, alarm bells went off in the public and Trump's approval started rising. On 538's polling average, his approval rating rose from 42.5% to 45.8%. But, as of now, his approval went down to 43.5% and is continuing to fall. It is almost entirely gone after 1 to 2 months. This approval spike happened to a much greater degree for most American governors and world leaders. According to multiple sources, for example Business Insider and CNN , this is the shortest bounce ever for a president. Why did Trump's "rally 'round the flag" effect evaporate so quickly? | First, the "Rally 'round the Flag" effect is misnamed. These aren't really moments of patriotism. These are moments in which people wake up and realize they are facing a collective threat, something beyond their capacities as individuals to influence or control, and they look to leaders for both practical and moral guidance about collective action. They want someone to offer them a role — a part they can play within a larger strategy to address the crisis — because having a role to play staves off the reflexive fight/flight instinct. Frightened people tend to hoard food and supplies, buy weapons, lock their doors against their neighbors; people with a role and a purpose band together. There are a few basic things a leader needs to do to receive this bump in approval during a crisis: Face the problem squarely, openly, and with sober resolve Empathize with the fear that the public is feeling, reassuring them that their emotions are valid Provide information about the crisis, and at least the outlines of a strategic framework for coping with it Call for unity to face the crisis, and project the message that no one will be forgotten, ignored, or left behind These four points have the psychological effect of calming and refocussing the general public. To use Aristotle's 'ship' metaphor, people are reassured that someone is at the helm, guiding a course through the storm; they can look at the strategic framework and focus on what they can do within it (aside from mere self-preservation); they can follow the example of universality and unity, setting aside biases and prejudices for the duration. These basic points set a moral tone, and people respond to that moral tone proactively; the leader's approval rating goes up mainly because people start to feel better about themselves and their role in the crisis. For example, Governor Cuomo's approval rating has soared in recent weeks because his daily briefings have struck exactly this tone: everyone must work together, no one should die unnecessarily, here's what we know, here's what to do, and what we are doing... Likewise, George W. Bush's approval ratings rose after 9/11 because Bush was clear about the horror of it, empathized with the anger and fear it created, and then stood up and made it clear he was taking action. Even though Bush's actual strategy and actions were problematic in the long run (as Cuomo's actions might also be perceived in historical retrospect), the moral tone they set was exemplary. Unfortunately, Trump failed on most of these basic points: He refused (and still refuses) to face the problem squarely , dismissing the problem entirely until well into March , and consistently downplaying its significance ever since in his drive to 'open the country' . He has never said anything empathetic about people who have faced or died from the disease, even accusing states of inflating death numbers for political purposes , and has consistently balked at providing financial or material assistance to the states and counties struggling with hot spots . He's provided no actual information about the disease and quite a lot of misinformation , contradicting his own public health experts, and trying to defund the World Health Organization when it downplayed the effectiveness of the travel ban Trump imposed. He's offered no strategy of his own — his few attempts at providing strategy have actually been branding efforts, where he puts his name on strategies adopted by governors, proposed by WHO, or worked out in Congress — and generally abandoned responsibility for everything by pushing it onto states, governors , private companies , and individuals. He has not (to my knowledge) called for unity even once, expressly creating and allowing competition between states for essential resources , and engaging in vituperative disputes with anyone who questions or contradicts him . Trump has created an atmosphere in which no one knows whether anyone is at the helm, and 'all hands on deck' has turned into 'every man for himself (captain first)'. It's not an atmosphere that inspires confidence or good will, and so people have turned to other leaders who do give them what they need in this crisis, leaving Trump in the cold. Of course, none of this should surprise anyone. Trump (in all of his voluminous speeches, tweets, and public appearances) has never demonstrated anything that remotely resembles empathy, and has never once offered a plan or strategy that goes beyond vague pointing and hand-waving. The mere thought that Trump would make a protracted effort — meaning anything beyond the scope of a single news-cycle — to create unity and universality is bound to produce chuckles. Whatever one's opinion of Trump as a political leader, it should be clear that Trump has neither the temperament nor the political skills to lead in a crisis, so there's no real reason why his approval ratings should increase merely because he is caught up in a crisis with the rest of us. He is not the leader for this moment. | {
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53,073 | It is not widely known now, but, before 1939, Poland and Nazi Germany were neighbours with very good relations: Czechoslovakia was occupied by both Nazi Germany and Poland. Poland was the first European country to make a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Hitler even was at a ceremonial funeral of Piłsudski in Berlin . Poland also had an aggressive foreign policy. For example, the Polish-Ukrainian War and the Polish-Lithuanian War . Churchill described Poland as having a "hyena appetite". Did Poland ever apologize for such aggressive politics, implicitly helping Nazi Germany? | Yes, in September 2009, at an occasion to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII, then-President Lech Kaczyński gave the following speech : Two generations have passed but the Second World War still requires
reflection; Poland’s participation in the reduction of territory of
Czechoslovakia was not only a mistake – it was a sin, and Poland can
admit as much. I am as certain of this statement as I am of the fact
that the order established by the Treaty of Versailles was the first
attempt at maintaining peace both in Europe and in the world, even if
it did not last. The Treaty of Versailles, signed after the First World War confirmed
the independence of Poland and countries such as Finland, Estonia,
Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, also acknowledging the
independence of nations and the rights of minorities. The order established by the Treaty proved to be impermanent for
numerous complex reasons. The first reason was the emergence of
totalitarian political systems and, most importantly, the rise of the
Third Reich which propagated an aggressive and vengeful ideology,
opposing the achievements of European civilisation with its Nazism. Poland proposed, as early as in autumn 1933, that a preventive war be
started but this was to no avail. The situation being as it was, we
concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany and then also with the
USSR. A policy of concession eventually led to the Anschluss and then to
the Munich Agreement. Winston Churchill was right in saying that a choice was made in Munich
between war and dishonour; dishonour was chosen but there was war
anyway. A question of the role of our country appears here. We were
not present in Munich but the Agreement resulted in the violation of
the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia – and such a thing is
always evil. Totalitarianism is not the problem here – the problem lies in all
imperialistic and neo-imperialistic tendencies. We have learnt that
last year. Taking part in the partition of Czechoslovakia, in reducing its
territory, was not only a mistake – it was a sin. We, Poles, can admit
that and we seek no excuses to justify it, even if there were any such
excuses to be found. We must not yield to imperialism. As well as this, however, Kaczyński also drew attention to events such as the Katyń massacre, a series of mass executions of Poles carried out by the Soviet Union: The war which started in 1939, in his opinion, was disastrous for our
country. “Five and a half million Polish and Jewish people, even up to
5 million 800 thousand, perished in the war,” Lech Kaczyński reminded,
drawing the attention of the audience to the Holocaust. He remarked
that the citizens of Poland who perished were only a part of the 50
million victims of the war worldwide. “But,” he emphasised, “there were also ‘other crimes’ committed before
the war between Russia and Germany began. We must devote a moment’s
reflection to Katyń – not only because of the facts, with which we are
familiar today, but also because of the causes. Why did several
thousands of Polish policemen, soldiers and border guards suffer such
fate?” the President asked. In his opinion, it was because of revenge. “This was a revenge for the
year 1920, for the fact that Poland managed to repulse the aggression
then,” he said. In his opinion, it was “not communism but chauvinism,”
which, at that time, “was a characteristic feature of this political
system.” | {
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53,134 | I'm a student learning the Russian language, and I visit a popular Russian jokes website from time to time. There's a monthly rating list of new jokes on that website, and last month the top joke on that list was this: Заходит как-то Путин в бар и говорит: -- Всем пива за счет заведения! My translation of the joke into English is in the title of my question, and I'm pretty sure I got it right from the language standpoint. More literally, the joke goes: "One day Putin enters a bar and says, 'Beer to everyone at the expense of the house!'" Putin's phrase in this joke is based on the common Russian expression used to buy a round of beer for the whole bar, "Beer to everyone at my expense." There seems to be nothing I could get wrong linguistically, so there must be some political context that makes the joke funny. Given the popularity of the joke, I got very much curious about it and hope that SE users interested in politics can shed some light. | This relates to the Russian government's controversial decision to declare that the majority of workers should not go to work in April due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while also mandating that these workers should still be paid by their employers. As this Reuters article puts it: “They say ‘pay the salaries’, but no one explains where you’re
supposed to get the money from,” [the co-owner of several bars in Moscow] said. “It will kill the
(restaurant and bar) sector. Many of them won’t survive.” Small and medium-sized businesses have voiced anger and warned of mass
bankruptcies in petitions to the government, including one with more
than 250,000 signatures, illustrating the headwinds Putin faces as he
tries to counter the virus. Critics point to how other countries have offered to pay workers;
Britain, for example, pays up to 80% of wages. They also note Russia’s
huge gold and forex reserves, around $550 billion. So the relation to the joke is that Putin is declaring that the bar should give free beer to everyone at its own expense, rather than at Putin's expense, in the same way that the Russian government is declaring that wages should be paid to workers at the employer's expense, rather than at the Russian government's expense. This contrasts to government programs such as in Britain, where furloughed workers can have 80% of their wages paid by the government . | {
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53,230 | According to a March 25 NYT opinion piece : Few in the protective equipment industry are surprised by the shortages, because they’ve been predicted for years. In 2005, the George W. Bush administration called for the coordination of domestic production and stockpiling of protective gear in preparation for pandemic influenza. In 2006, Congress approved funds to add protective gear to a national strategic stockpile — among other things, the stockpile collected 52 million surgical face masks and 104 million N95 respirator masks. But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them. This month, Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, testified that there are only about 40 million masks in the stockpile — around 1 percent of the projected national need. Assuming that info is correct (if not feel free to post a frame-challenge answer), why did the US not replenish its national strategic stockpile of masks after the 2009 pandemic? (E.g., would that have required the introduction of new legislation? Was such legislation introduced but defeated? Or was it not just introduced for some stated reason(s)?) | For a detailed analysis of the dynamics in Congress see ProPublica's piece , "How Tea Party Budget Battles Left the National Emergency Medical Stockpile Unprepared for Coronavirus". Dire shortages of vital medical equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile that are now hampering the coronavirus response trace back to the budget wars of the Obama years, when congressional Republicans elected on the Tea Party wave forced the White House to accept sweeping cuts to federal spending . Among the victims of those partisan fights was the effort to keep adequate supplies of masks, ventilators, pharmaceuticals and other medical equipment on hand to respond to a public health crisis. Lawmakers in both parties raised the specter of shortchanging future disaster response even as they voted to approve the cuts. Another piece in the Atlantic also frames the issue in terms of the types of threats that were being prioritized. After 9/11, the people in charge of the stockpile were concerned about bioterrorism—threats like anthrax—and sudden, mass-casualty events like, say, a bombing at the Super Bowl. This made some sense, but in the process officials took their foot off the pandemic-preparedness gas pedal. The response to the 2009 swine-flu pandemic was seen as a success, and the stockpile-minders moved on to the next item on their disaster checklist. “I think as human beings, we sometimes, not that we get complacent, but it’s like, Oh, we’ve got this. And we did. We had it,” says Deborah Levy, who oversaw the stockpile as acting division director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2013 and 2014, while Burel was in another role. Because officials weren’t as worried about pandemic flu, they stocked fewer basic medical supplies, like masks, that would come in handy during an infectious-disease outbreak. Officials thought the stockpile should have bioweapon antidotes and other drugs that aren’t easily available on store shelves, rather than common items you can buy at CVS. “The Strategic National Stockpile was built to respond primarily to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events, whether by a terrorist, or a state actor, or something that might happen along those same lines that was accidental,” Burel told me. | {
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