I wrote a piece for E-IR getting into heavier detail about Sanders’ and Clinton’s respective strategies on economic inequality. You can read it by clicking this link.
While I’m here, some blog news:
Continue reading “Sanders vs Clinton on Economic Inequality”
A friend of mine at Purdue University recently informed me that under the leadership of former Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN), Purdue has become the first major American university to offer Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs) to students as a new alternative to traditional student loans. ISAs are exploitative and morally disgusting. Here’s why.
Continue reading “How ISAs Allow Rich People to Exploit College Students”
Donald Trump recently claimed that abortion should be criminalized and that the women who get them should be punished:
Establishment republicans immediately pounced, claiming that only abortion doctors should be punished, not the women who seek them. Trump uncharacteristically backpedaled on the comments soon afterwards:
If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed–like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.
This whole controversy is being covered very poorly. There’s more to this than “Trump said something outrageous again”. Let me unpack it for you.
Continue reading “Trump’s Abortion Comments are Consistent with the Anti-Abortion Position”
Last week Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared on Trevor Noah’s Daily Show to explain his endorsement of Ted Cruz, a man for whom Graham has repeatedly expressed contempt:
Graham compared the choice between Trump and Cruz to being shot in the head or poisoned, but hinted that there might be an antidote:
Donald is like being shot in the head. You might find an antidote to poisoning, I don’t know, but maybe there’s time.
This got me thinking–what could the antidote be? I have a theory that it might be Hillary Clinton. Far-fetched? Perhaps, but hear me out.
Continue reading “Does the Republican Establishment Want Clinton to Win?”
President Obama decided to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Democrats and republicans are trying to turn his nomination into an argument about procedural principles that neither side is really committed to in the abstract–there have of course been previous occasions when some of the same democrats who today scold republicans for not “doing their jobs” tried to argue that nominations shouldn’t be made in election years, and there have of course been previous occasions when some of the same republicans who today scold democrats for trying to deny the people a say in the nominating process tried to argue that congress has a duty to consider the president’s nominee. We’re not fooling each other, so let’s stop fooling ourselves–we appeal to whichever procedural principles happen to advance our ideological objectives. Crying hypocrisy about procedure misses the point–both sides are consistent about which objectives they consider good, and they use whatever political means available to them to achieve those objectives. So instead of hiding behind procedure, let’s instead talk about the Garland nomination through an explicitly ideological lens.
Continue reading “The Strategy Behind the Nomination of Merrick Garland”
Benjamin Studebaker 