I’m thinking about why I focus so much on Europe, since there are so many other parts of the world to explore, but I always come back to reading about the politics of Europe. But why? Why not Africa? Why not South America? Let’s explore the world by looking at regions. I will use the …
Monthly Archives: May 2025
A trillion dollar budget cut
Congressional Republicans are saying they want to extend the Trump tax cuts at the cost of $5 trillion over 4 years or $1.25 trillion per year. How can they offset these tax cuts with spending cuts? They also want to increase military expenditure. Using the Fiscal Year 2024 as our baseline… how could they cut …
Portland – Vancouver transit
People have debated spending a billion dollars on extending Max to Vancouver, Washington, for decades. The problem is that the existing buses from Portland to Vancouver are faster than Max will be, because it is a streetcar. It doesn’t make sense to spend a billion dollars on a slower mode of transport when you could …
Defenses of democracy
I’m listing all the mechanisms and policies that can defend democracy. I want to analyze how well they work, how they work, and how hard it would be to eradicate them. Here are the policies I can come up with: Voting in free and fair elections Separation of powers Independent Legislature Independent court system Jury …