The beginning of the expansion of the Russian Empire began when Moscow conquered Novgorod in 1478, leading to 500 years of uncontrolled expansion across northern Eurasia. World War I is when the story becomes quite interesting. Germany conquered Poland from the Russian Empire in 1917, and at the end of the war instead of giving …
Yearly Archives: 2025
The time has come for OASI
Back in college when I studied Social Security, my teachers were stating how the program was likely to run a deficit soon, and eventually run out of money. Net income for OASI peaked in 2006, and hit a deficit in 2021. The deficit in 2024 was over $100 billion from reserves of $2.5 trillion. If …
How a centrist can win reelection
Over the last century, we have had 8 Democratic presidents, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson were the New Deal/Great Society/progressive coalition. This coalition dominated a Democratic party which was divided between the north and the south. The only one who did not win reelection was Kennedy …
Crisis of trust
The United States is in a severe crisis of trust. Trust in government has collapsed since George W. Bush has come into office, and it has only gotten worse the more time Trump has been in office. https://www.edelman.com/trust/data-dashboard We see a clear uptick in distrust when Trump entered office in 2017 and then it stabilized …
A better passport index
The Henley Passport Index is a good index, ranking the power of each passport in the world based on whether you need to go to the embassy for a visa before travel or not. I like it, but it has a few problems: We have seen a rise in corruption over the last 20 years …
How Ukraine can achieve peace
First of all, nobody except the Russian government wants Ukraine to be at war. However, we must carefully consider how to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine. The most crucial aspect is Ukraine’s need for security guarantees from NATO and the European Union. This is non-negotiable. Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be respected. Crimea, Donbass, Luhansk, …
The War to End All Wars
After Ukraine defeats Russia, which seems imminent at this point… I’m getting ahead of myself here. Ukraine has been doing multiple targeted strikes every day on critical military and infrastructure targets inside Russia for months now. Like we saw in Syria, this will eventually reach a tipping point where the Russian supply line collapses, and …
Elected leaders who overthrew democracy
A lot of people are telling me democracy is over, and we won’t have elections next year. Here are historical examples of wealthy democracies that became undemocratic through elections since 1945. I’m not including leaders who initially came to power through coups. I’m not including failed attempts. The leader must have come to power in …
Split state governments
I’m going to analyze states that have split state governments and explore why they are split. Alaska Alaska is listed as a trifecta, but Republicans have a majority in both houses of the state legislature. It is not technically a trifecta because of the status of the coalition. Arizona Arizona‘s state legislature has been held …
Corruption, democracy, wealth, freedom
There is a clear correlation between these four factors, but I want to tear apart the issues. When dividing countries up into true or false based on World Governance Indicators, we find that the largest group of countries are corrupt, undemocratic, poor, have a restrictive visa policy (fewer than 100 nationalities can arrive fully visa-free), …
