As I drove to work last week, I enjoyed idyllic Ohio fall days–pleasant temperatures, blue skies and smiling faces upon arrival. If only I could turn off the outside pictures–the vicious attack on Israel (which includes many American hostages and deaths), the dysfunction in Washington DC, the continued market turmoil from a high interest rate […]
Archives
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In political science* and economics, one of the earlier axioms that our current moment says no longer applies is that of the median voter theorem. Roughly speaking, in a two-party system, the candidate that gets closest to the true middle views of the electorate will get all the votes to the right or left of […]
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Trump’s Historic Indictment A Legal Stretch
05 Apr 2023
On Tuesday, Donald J. Trump, the forty-fifth President of the United States, became the first of America’s former chief executives to be indicted in a criminal court. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office charged Trump with thirty four counts of falsifying business records. The allegations revolve around Trump’s payments to suppress damaging information during the 2016 […]
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Bragg Storms the Trump Tower
03 Apr 2023
Well, the Democratic District Attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, has convinced a majority of the grand jury pool he convened to bring an indictment of Donald Trump. Tomorrow Mr. Trump will be arraigned, with a spectacle that will take us to a new low in politics. You don’t need BATG to do analysis on this; […]
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“How could anyone be that irresponsible?”
12 Jan 2023
So what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Or is it? That is one of today’s questions as Mr. Biden is now found to have multiple classified documents apparently stored for years after he was no longer Vice President in a private office. After belatedly revealing that they had found one […]
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Trump Up, Trump Down
14 Apr 2022
Donald Trump continues to engage with the political process to shape things in a way supportive of his vision for himself and the Republican party. As much as I’d like to see him in the rear view mirror, he is certainly not giving up. Let’s all agree on this with Mr. Trump–he does have a […]
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In praise and condemnation of Donald Trump
09 Dec 2021
For the most partisan of Americans, Donald Trump evokes either the most visceral negative reaction, or the most adoring adulation. As I said a few weeks ago, this I still find strange. When looking back at his tenure as President, I find many things to applaud and many things to condemn. And Donald Trump and […]
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Partisan polarization feels like a fact of life. Media outlets and social media algorithms alike gravitate toward the extremes, so much of what we hear and see confirm this perception. Our political leaders, on both sides of the aisle, appeal to the most radical parts of their base to avoid primary challengers. Common ground is […]
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Trustees or Delegates? Some Debates Never Die
16 Feb 2021
“We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us.” Dave Ball, chair of the Washington County GOP, unloaded on U.S. Senator Pat Toomey’s (R-PA) vote to convict former Pres. […]
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President Trump has been impeached again, and this evening, the single article will be delivered to the Senate, where a trial is expected to begin on February 8th. The evidence of what happened is beside the point. President Trump’s speech is on the record, and members themselves donned ventilators, crouched beneath tables, and watched as […]