Новости за 14.02.2022

With an average of 16 feet of snowfall per year, Sapporo, Japan is one of the snowiest places on earth. But at the last Sapporo Snow Festival, for the first time in its 70 years of existence, the festival had to import truckloads of snow from even snowier regions in the mountains due to a record snow shortage. “If global warming continues as is, we won’t be able to make snow sculptures in Sapporo, it may not even be possible to hold the festival in the future,” Shinji Mae from the Sapporo Snow Festival’s executive committee told me. Читать дальше...

Economists like to criticize irrational fears in others, but state out loud the phrase “wage-price spiral,” and they’ll act as though you just drew a cartoon blaspheming the Prophet Muhammed or shouted “Fire!” in a crowded theater. 

As constant fearmongering about Cuba clearly hasn’t satiated Marco Rubio’s cynical drive to dust off passé political panics, he’s now moved on to crack, teaming up with Build Back Better–killing Democrat Joe Manchin to build back to the 1980s. After The Washington Free Beacon framed a months-old harm-reduction provision from the Cares Act as a measure to “fund crack pipe distribution,” the Florida senator swiftly introduced the Cutting Off Rapid Access to Crack Kits Act to ban federal cash from being used for the purpose. Читать дальше...

Democrats need a 2022 message and agenda. Right now, it’s missing in action.

It’s hard to write about American politics without writing about Congress’s weakness as an institution. What should be the engine of American democracy at the federal level is a sputtering mess, barely able to pass bills to keep the government open or avoid defaults on the national debt. Thanks to gerrymandered House seats and the mere threat of the Senate filibuster, it is almost impossible for major legislation from either party to become law. With lawmakers unable to actually implement the policies that they ran on... Читать дальше...

In the closing days before the November 2020 election, Amy McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot challenging the powerful Republican incumbent Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, sent a series of email blasts to her followers. The race was “tightening,” one said, and she needed more money “to hit Mitch harder than ever before.” Another urgent-sounding appeal hinted that a cash crunch might be at hand: “After tonight, we’ll have to make some big choices about the budget.” Yet another warned... Читать дальше...