robertcruickshank.com
Digital Strategy for California YIMBY, Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. Personal account -- what you see here represents my own opinions, for better or worse.
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The US took the British system of the 1770s and froze it in place. But their system kept evolving into the parliamentary system of today. We need to catch up.
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I think we need to move to a Parliamentary system of government. The German model has a lot going for it that we can learn and borrow from.
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Yes. And this time we won't just threaten to pack the court, we're actually going to do it.
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Here's that study from 2016:
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That doesn’t mean all free trade deals are good. I never supported NAFTA, I was part of the effort that stopped the TPP, and have done other work in this vein. But what we’re seeing now is why FDR rejected using high tariffs to grow a manufacturing base: it literally doesn’t work.
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We limited the impact of contingent events by creating robust systems of government, of international relations, of public services, etc. For the last 30 years those have all been getting ripped up, but their existence for nearly a century made people forget contingent events have major impacts.
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Anyone who actually cares about reshoring US manufacturing should be strongly opposed to what Trump is doing and instead push for maintenance and extension of the reasonable approach taken by Biden.
Instead, we’re getting a second Great Depression.
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A small tariff that is paired with a robust industrial policy, including subsidies, as well as government support for unions (again: what Biden was doing) works. Jacking up tariffs by itself, especially to these levels, is suicide for the country and its working class.
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Same.
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The pre-gutted ESHB 1217 was good policy, a 7% annual cap on rent increases in homes more than 15 years old. This would not undermine the much needed construction of new housing, and would do some real good to protect people.
Hopefully sanity prevails among Dems in #waleg.
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Far too often, #waleg will pass legislation that has a bold title - like "statewide rent stabilization!" - but that was actually gutted so that only a few people see its benefits. Doing that here is politically reckless, since voters who won't have protections will take it out on swing seat Dems.
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This is like someone saying they moved to NYC and didn’t like it…but they’d actually moved to Fort Lee
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Yep, that is correct.
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He addressed that just now and correctly pointed out that concept has very deep roots in German history. It was there before European settlement of North America. Imperial Germany wanted to do it in World War I.
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I think that’s exactly it
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I should be clear I never finished the dissertation part. But I aced the oral exams!
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Which is not the same thing as “yay America!”
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Yes, though it was only one of several influences. More to the point: one can dislike a country as a whole while also thinking they have a few laws that could be a useful influence at home.
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He also wrote extensively in other areas about how much he disliked America’s multiracial population, its culture, and its democracy. The German historians I read all saw him as not being a fan of the US at all and exhibiting concerns that Weimar Germany was developing along American lines.
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Thus making it all the more satisfying when that country, along with the Bolsheviks he despised, the Brits who he wanted as friends, and French who he conquered, smashed Nazi Germany into bits.
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Hasegawa, Lovelett, and Trudeau.
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Washingtonians keep electing Democrats and keep getting Republican policy. It can’t keep going on like this.
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Dems think they need GOP cover to raise the gas tax. But what they don’t understand is the GOP knows Dems will get blamed for a gas tax increase even if a few Republicans vote for it too. Common sense political thinking seems rare in Olympia.
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The Democratic Party in Olympia - the House and Senate caucuses, and the governor - are hopelessly broken. Sweeping changes are needed if WA is going to make it through the present crisis.
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The caucuses just want yes men and yes women rather than people who will fight for their communities