I won’t be voting for Barack Obama this time. Not because I don’t think his opponent’s policies betray a reprehensible lack of compassion and a reckless disregard for reality. I believe they do. I won’t be voting for anyone, because between my county’s elections department and the United States Postal Service, my ballot disappeared. It’s […]
Max Ehrenfreund
Max Ehrenfreund is a former Monthly intern and a reporter at The Washington Post. Find him on Twitter: @MaxEhrenfreund
Posted inPolitics
The 2012 Stakes, Part I
After a football game, the winning team gets to go home and celebrate. After a presidential election, the winner gets to set national policy for four years. Today and Monday, D.K. and I are going to take a break from the odds-making that inevitably consumes the press in the last few days of a campaign […]
Posted inPolitics
Candidates Avoid Hard Argument for Democracy
During democratic revolutions, terrorists often attempt to control the political process, and disempowered elites attempting to regain their authority may try to provoke nationalist sentiment into violence. While mature democracies do not go to war with one another, new democracies are prone to civil war and international conflict, as the political scientists Edward Mansfield and […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Coursera and Minnesota: What Was All The Fuss About?
The tempest that raged last week after a few misleading headlines suggested that Coursera, an educational technology startup that provides free online courses, is illegal under Minnesota law is now passing away. In response to unrest among the citizens of the Internet, the state has agreed not to enforce the disputed law in the case […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Obama’s Record on College Education
An analysis in The New York Times yesterday summarizes a wide range of criticisms of of President Barack Obama’s higher education policies. Reading it, one might get the impression that what the president has done in post-secondary education has somehow been controversial. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. The administration’s college education […]
Posted inPolitics
In Denver Tonight, Remembering Aurora
Recent Syracuse University graduate and Fulbright recipient Stephen Barton was wounded in the massacre in Aurora, Colo. in July. This week, he’s talking about gun violence in a 30-second television advertisement. He’s deferred his fellowship to teach English in Russia, and he’s joined Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of mayors advocating for stricter controls […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
NYU Sued Over Expansion
New York University faculty joined neighborhood associations earlier this week in a lawsuit to block the school’s 1.9 million square foot expansion plan in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Artsy types around the country will be worried about that the iconic neighborhood where Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol once worked will be replaced by towers […]
Posted inPolitics
The Market Won’t Save Medicare
Despite its soporific title, the Independent Payment Advisory Board is one of the most powerful elements of the Affordable Care Act. The health care law’s writers designed the board to protect decisions about Medicare from lobbyists, who almost everyone agrees are a serious problem for the beleaguered program. That’s Daniel Kessler’s argument in the latest […]
Posted inPolitics
Is Encouraging Homeownership Misguided?
Cory Booker spoke at lunch at this year’s Assets Learning Conference, the Corporation for Enterprise Development’s biannual conference on policies to help families save money. He told the audience of researchers, government officials, and consumer advocates that they are “soldiers” and “freedom fighters” in a “movement of liberation.” He also recited a poem by Langston […]
Posted inPolitics
Net Worth Distribution: Where Did the Money Go?
Ray Boshara, a senior adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, just showed this alarming slide to a group at the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) Assets Learning Conference here in Washington, where a big group of folks has gathered to talk about policies to help people save money. Boshara called people with […]
