New School Politics

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This Tuesday the New School will be hosting its biggest event ever in order to report on the Super Tuesday primary results. All of the New School’s bloggers will be present to cover the election live. Additionally, for the first time ever, we will be streaming live video coverage through Mogulus onto the website featuring a panel discussion hosted by Zach, Efty, and Ryan, along with live news, prerecorded interviews, and more. The video coverage will include footage of McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaign events that the New School has attended in the past week.

Live text and video blogging will being at 7 PM EST and continue throughout the night.

Finally, we welcome and encourage viewer participation, so if you would like to enter any video or text posts be sure to send them to us!

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Romney’s early state strategy has so far been something of a disaster. He lost Iowa and New Hampshire to both Huckabee and McCain, both of whom should be out of the race due to low funding.

Michigan is his last hope to gain momentum and try to force a rally. He currently is in a horserace for 1st amongst Republicans with Mccain and Huckabee. However, Michigan is interesting because it is an open primary, and because the Democrats have withdrawn all their delegates. In effect, Michigan is testing cross-party electibility.

There are some notable things, however, that can be quite altering.

For instance, Michigan is home to a HUGE student and Muslim population. These populations will tend to vote anti-war, such as Paul.

Michigan is also home of many large unions. Thus, the unions may support candidates that are more likely to give the aid, such as Huckabee.

Mccain has started to look bad after that South Carolina debate. However, his supporters will more likely go to Romney, but that will be very small.

All in all, if Romney cannot take Michigan, its effectively curtains for him.

Chou’s post was written prior to the Michigan primary and was not posted until afterwards.  The editors still feel as if his commentary is important, and the results of the Michigan primaries can be found online.

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It might be somewhat anti-climactic for my debut article to be about sports on the night after the New Hampshire primary, but seeing as how my background on the political landscape up until this point is somewhat lacking, whereas I have been religiously following college football, it only seems appropriate. As we complete the bowl season, we look back on the most in the history of Division I-A college football. A question that I found myself wondering week after week was how there is so much disparity this year.

South Florida was #2 in only their fifth year as a D1A team, and the top two teams in the country, Missouri and West Virginia, were knocked off in the final game of the regular season. This speaks nothing of the David/Goliath story of Appalachian State knocking off Michigan in the cream puff season opener. As all these number one seeds were getting knocked off, I was also wondering why I can’t get into college.

As top twenty teams were dropping like flies, so were the Greenwich High School applicants applying early to colleges. Correlation? I think so. With a greater number of athletes going to college, we cannot expect the national powerhouses to grab up all of the top prospects as they had been able to in the past.Less than a week ago, Kansas, dished out a lickin’ to Virginia Tech, a well established football school. A big reason for Kansas’ success has been their 5′10 quarterback Todd Reesing, a Texas quarterback who fell through the cracks of the Texas/Oklahoma recruiting sphere all the way down to Kansas. This is a perfect example of a kid who would have been picked up by the local powerhouse school going unnoticed due to the amount of players and talent in high school right now. Players grow in college, coaches find a niche at less prominent schools, and these intangibles are going to be magnified by the greater number of kids going off to college.

So, what does this mean for your betting? Basically, take every opportunity to go against the odds because in all of college athletics we will see more and more upsets. We can see it even now in basketball, with Gardner-Webb knocking off Kentucky.

As for college football next year, USC is going to be the clear favorite at the start of the season followed up by Florida with both teams sporting young talent this year that is returning. Also, look out for Georgia, West Virginia, and South Carolina, who reached a school high of sixth in the country this year. Steve Spurrier is going to have a strong recruiting year in a state where high school football is of top national caliber. Illinios is going to be a strong program under Ron Zook who has already taken a weak to a national level (even though they got raped by USC). Look for Illinois to contend for the Big Ten against an Ohio State that is going to get drilled in the Super Dome against LSU.

And most importantly: Go Vandi! (I promise, I’ll stick to politics next time.)

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Thanks to all our readers and writers for their participation in our coverage of the Iowa Caucuses on last Thursday night (and into Wednesday morning).

The feedback was very good, with our web-traffic skyrocketing more than five times above average for January 3rd and 4th.

Be sure to stick with us for the entirety of the ‘08 campaign, and more immediately, the New Hampshire primaries tomorrow night!

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Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics has said that, “History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.” However, individual and political freedoms are on the decline in Russia, even as Russia has been reaping the rewards of a capitalist market economy under the leadership of President Putin. This trend toward less political freedom in Russia, if left unchecked, may result in a return to the authoritarian rule Russia endured in the Soviet era. So, what can the United States and the international community do to stop this?

Before Putin became President, Russia had been subjected to drastic economic and political reforms under President Yeltsin. This shock therapy resulted in the Russian government defaulting on loans worth billions of dollars, the value of the ruble dropping precipitously, and unemployment becoming rampant. As a result of this turmoil, many Russians desired a stronger central government that could offer them stability. Stability was the stated goal of Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, and he achieved this through the consolidation of state power on all levels. While the internal security and stability have markedly increased during Putin’s reign, personal freedoms, including both political and economic freedom, have been declining. Economic freedom is now dismal; Russia ranks 120th out of 157 in the Index of Economic Freedom, a product of the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.

Prominent businessmen have been put in prison, journalists bullied and sometimes killed, and privately owned companies, including media outlets and energy conglomerates, are being gobbled up by the State. This lack of political freedom is directly related to Russia’s lack of economic freedom. Indeed, Milton Friedman has said, “Restrictions on economic freedom inevitably affect freedom in general, even such areas as freedom of speech and press.”

Fortunately, for Putin, there have been dramatic increases in oil and natural gas prices. Russia has the most proven reserves of natural gas in the world, and this has been the main driving force of Russia’s economy. The wealth pouring into Russia’s coffers through its energy industries have made it possible for Putin to distract the Russian populace from the lack of personal freedoms. As such, political and economic freedoms have been on the decline, despite economic prosperity.

Establishing economic freedom in Russia is the key to increasing political freedom. Rather than punitive economic or diplomatic sanctions, the United States and the international community should attempt to use the forces of the market to compel economic, and thus political freedoms on Russia. Reduced energy prices would make the economic shortcomings of Russia more apparent to its own people. There are two ways to reduce oil and gas prices in a market economy: increase energy supplies globally, or reduce gas and oil demand through development of alternate energy sources or through conservation. Utilizing these market forces would be a long-term endeavor, but in a climate of lower energy prices, Russia’s economic prosperity would then more accurately reflect its lack of economic freedom. There would then be a chance for internal pressures to force Russia to make true economic reforms, and, hopefully, to create the right environment for political freedoms to take hold and flourish.

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New School Politics is excited to announce that it will bring the majority of its writers together on Thursday night to cover the Iowa Caucuses live! Expect posts from Zach, Efty, Ryan, Iacopo, Liz, and others.

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I want to extend my thanks to Gary Starikoff and Scott Walterman at XM for having me on the air this morning to discuss the election. I was interviewed on POTUS 08’s “The Morning Briefing” about my thoughts on the election and my disagreement with the findings of the American University Poll that they reported last week. I also had the chance to shamelessly promote our blog and I hope that any listeners who decided to drop by our website find our ideas valuable.

For those not familiar with the POTUS 08, it is XM’s 24 hour presidential election channel where they do everything from interview the political candidates to discuss the issues and analyze the horse race with a wide range of informed pundits and experts.

For those of us who are politically involved, POTUS 08 has by far the best political coverage of the election and alone is worth justifying the cost of XM.

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I think that it strange, cruel, and somewhat amusing that Michael Vick was running such a large dog fighting underground. The media has been running wild with the story and it certainly only reiterates Vick’s irresponsiblity and disarray (not unlike his younger brother Marcus’ [and here]). 

A particularly grotesque aspect of the operation–which those who engage in the practice of dog fighting justify by ”natural selection”–is how the dogs which underperformed in fights were punished by torture and execution. This detail leads me to wonder whether Mr. Vick believes that $100 million quarterbacks who underperform in the NFL should be punished, too?

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This is a great article with shocking insight into Putin’s new Fascist state.
Russia will be a problem for the United States in the coming years, as Europe and America seek to decrease dependency on the middle-east for oil we will find ourselves in the grip of the Russians, who have the worlds largest natural gas and oil reserves.
This article from the Daily Mail describes just how far Putin is moving Russia to the right, and how in little more than fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin wall, Russia is now closer to 1939 era Germany than at any other time in its history.
Communism may be a thing of the past for Russia, but it looks like fascism is in its future.

Here is an exerpt from the article along with a link.

“Sex for the motherland: Russian youths encouraged to procreate at camp”

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp’s mass wedding. “They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia”.

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.

But this organisation - known as “Nashi”, meaning “Ours” - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life.

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In the HBO series, Big Love (on which I posted the first portion of my thoughts yesterday), the omnipresent problem facing the Hendricksons is hiding their illegal lifestyle (polygamy) from the government, just as it would be if they were a real life family living outside of Salt Lake City today. Which raises another important question, (on a moral and political level) why should their lifestyle be considered illegal–why should polygamists be forcefully discouraged from practicing their sexual, domestic and other such preferences as they see fit?

Here is the historical background: In 1862, the Protestant dominated Republican Party–which had declared polygamy a “relic of barbarism” in their 1854 platform–passed through Congress a law signed by Lincoln making polygamy illegal across the country. Many Mormons fought against this federal policy for years, declaring it a violation of their religious rights, however they gave up this fight by 1890 in order to achieve Utah’s statehood. And while a sect of the religion still chose to practice polygamy against the law, the Mormon Church, on behalf of the vast majority of Mormons who now staunchly oppose plural marriage, wrote “The Great Accommodation” which castigated the practice. Today, the Mormon Church as well as many other Christian denominations form an inpenetrable political lobby which would block any effort to legalize the practice. 

Much of the political opposition is not surprisingly religious, and given the religious impetus of the practice as well as the opposition, one would think that polygamy should be protected by the freedom of exorcise clause of the first amendment.

Additionally, I am led to question why, if gays are legally allowed to practice homosexuality at their own will, should polygamists not be able to practice plural marriage.

Given, just as gays cannot get “married” in the same way that a single man and woman can, it would not be expected that a man could get a marriage license with all X amount of his wives. But it should be expected is that polygamists be able to relate themselves with other people and practice whatever lifestyle they desire so long as they do it on their own volition. Essentially, polygamists should not require special privileges from the government just as gays should not, but they should be able to do whatever the hell they want just as gays are able to do whatever the hell they want with out the government stopping them.

All religious, legal, and cultural mumbo-jumbo aside, the question comes down to this: should the government be able to stop people from living their lives as they wish and interacting with other people as they wish, so long as those people are not coercing others?

The way I see it, that’s what most policy issues come down to at their core; and the answer should always be NO.

In the interest of full disclosure: I am not a Mormon, and I do not plan on practicing polygamy. Call me simple but I’ll be perfectly content with marrying just one woman.

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