Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, has announced that he’s challenging Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. So it’s time to return to the Candidate Evaluations series, where we examine a candidate’s background, policy history, and explicit statements in an attempt to figure out whether the candidate would actually be any good at being president. Too often, no one bothers to ask these questions, focusing instead on electability or likability. Previously, I’ve covered Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Hillary Clinton, and Marco Rubio. None of them looked especially promising. Can Sanders do better?
Category: Politics
Concerning the nature of man and the state, and how best the latter can be structured to augment the former.
3 More Ways Inequality Poisons Societies
Before I started writing this blog, I read an interesting book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson. It occurred to me the other day, when I found myself making use of some of the book’s statistics in an argument, that I have not yet shared its findings with blog readers. This struck me as something of a massive oversight–the book establishes statistical relationships linking numerous social pathologies to income inequality, and it even shows that inequality has a much stronger influence on these pathologies than raw wealth in absolute terms.
Hate the Rioting, but Love the Rioters
Riots have erupted in Baltimore, Maryland after Freddie Gray, a 25-year old arrested for possession of a switchblade, died in custody after his neck was nearly severed. According to Baltimore’s deputy police commissioner, Jerry Rodriguez, when Gray was arrested and placed in the police van, he could talk, but when he emerged from the van, he could not breathe. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake concedes that “it’s clear what happened inside the van”. So let’s talk about this.
Candidate Evaluations: Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio has declared his intent to run for president, so it’s time for another entry in the 2016 Candidate Evaluations series, where we examine a candidate’s background, policy history, and explicit statements in an attempt to figure out whether the candidate would actually be any good at being president. Too often, no one bothers to ask these question, focusing instead on electability or likability. Previous entries have included Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Hillary Clinton, none of which were able to earn even a tentative endorsement. Will Rubio do better?
Candidate Evaluations: Hillary Clinton
The inevitable has happened–Hillary Clinton has announced that she’s running for president. And so it’s once again time to continue my Candidate Evaluations series, where we examine a candidate’s background, policy history, and explicit statements in an attempt to figure out whether the candidate would actually be any good at being president. Too often, no one bothers to ask these question, focusing instead on electability or likability. So far, we’ve covered Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, neither of which did especially well. Will Hillary Clinton fare any better?
