Fareed Zakaria: Are America's Best Days Behind Us? - "We have an Electoral College that no one understands and a Senate that doesn't work, with rules and traditions that allow a single Senator to obstruct democracy without even explaining why. We have a crazy-quilt patchwork of towns, municipalities and states with overlapping authority, bureaucracies and resulting waste. We have a political system geared toward ceaseless fundraising and pandering to the interests of the present with no ability to plan, invest or build for the future. And if one mentions any of this, why, one is being unpatriotic, because we have the perfect system of government, handed down to us by demigods who walked the earth in the late 18th century and who serve as models for us today and forever. America's founders would have been profoundly annoyed by this kind of unreflective ancestor worship." [
for/
against]
posted by kliuless
on Apr 17, 2011 -
93 comments
With all the dust
that's been*
riled up by Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor (
previously), everyone is suddenly taking an interest in
Puerto Rico. A basic question that may come up is
why we're there in the first place. Understanding that, we can see how the
complicated relationship has played out between Puerto Rico, the US, and, most recently, the United Nations. Although the UN has
urged the US to take steps towards establishing Puerto Rico's sovereignty, referendums held on the
island have overwhelmingly preferred the
status quo and the US has been indifferent at best. But independence activists, after a twenty-year decline, may be on
the rise. The island's current governor,
Luis Fortuño, is pro-statehood. But the whole issue has taken a back seat since plans have been made to
fire 30,000 government
workers,
privatize some public services, and
sell some the the government's US$3.2 billion debt.
[more inside]
posted by krikkit261
on Jun 10, 2009 -
26 comments
Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University have compared the recent US subprime mortgage crisis with five downturns in industrialized economies in the past 30 years in their brief paper,
Is the 2007 U.S. Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? (pdf). Their conclusion: “given the severity of most crisis indicators in the run-up to its 2007 financial crisis, the United States should consider itself quite fortunate if its downturn ends up being a relatively short and mild one.” Summarized, with some data and charts,
here.
Via.
posted by ibmcginty
on Feb 9, 2008 -
19 comments
