Archive for the ‘American current affairs’ Category
American political institutions (1): the mid-term elections
November 6th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
This autumn, I am doing a six week (five session) evening class at London’s City Lit on the subject of “American Political Institutions”. The lecturer is Malcolm Malcolmson who is also the Principal of the City Lit (good to see someone leading from the front) and I have heard him lecture before (see this posting). […]
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How big is the American national debt?
November 4th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
The short answer is approximately $18 trillion. But most people have no idea what a trillion is. In most English-speaking countries (usage varies around thew world!), a trillion is 1,000 billion and a billion is 1,000 million, so a trillion is 1,000,000,000,000. Therefore $18 trillion is a LARGE number. But it still means little unless […]
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How well do people know the basic facts on immigration?
October 31st, 2014 by Roger Darlington
A new survey by Ipsos MORI has checked public understanding of the numbers behind some key news stories in 14 countries. Let’s just look at two issues in two countries. When asked: out of 100 people, how many do you think are immigrants in this country? In the UK, the average guess was 24%, but […]
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How democratic is the United States when a tide of dark money is swamping the electoral process?
October 14th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
“More than half of the general election advertising aired by outside groups in the battle for control of Congress has come from organizations that disclose little or nothing about their donors, a flood of secret money that is now at the center of a debate over the line between free speech and corruption. The advertising, […]
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How secure is the White House?
October 1st, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Not very if you read this story. Any US President – but especially the first black one and a man I admire so much – needs much better protection than this at the building that is his home and office. It makes a couple of recent Hollywood action movies look a little less unlikely than […]
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If you thought Obamacare had failed, think again
September 8th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
The official name for Barack Obama’s reform of the American healthcare system is the Affordable Care Act but it has been dubbed – usually by his opponents – as Obamacare. Reports on the implementation of the legislation have concentrated – at least outside the US – on the initial IT problems and on continued legal […]
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Some black and white facts about the American town of Ferguson
August 23rd, 2014 by Roger Darlington
Most people had never heard of the town of Ferguson in Missouri, USA until the the police killing of black youngster Michael Brown and the resultant rioting by the local African-American community. Ferguson is a town which has gone from 75% white to 67% black over the past 25 years. Yet, although two-thirds of residents […]
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Is the United States really a democratic nation?
August 21st, 2014 by Roger Darlington
I missed this at the time, but I have just come across an academic study published in April 2014. It is written by two academics from Princeton University and Northwestern University and looks at who most influences the making of policy in the American political system. You can access the full study here. It’s a […]
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“Hard Choices” (4): my review of the memoir
August 10th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
I have now finished reading the 600-page memoir by Hillary Clinton of her four years as America’s Secretary of State. You can read it here.
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We should all vote – but you have to be registered first
July 14th, 2014 by Roger Darlington
In my essay “How To Critique A Political System”, I state: “To assess the democratic nature of a political system, one needs a set of tests that are ‘real world’ as opposed to theoretical. Such a set of tests would revolve around the following key questions about the political system itself: How easy is it […]
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