This week’s antitrust lawsuit against Google poses a pertinent question at the intersection of Big Tech and free speech: from rewriting statutes to dismantling market giants such as Amazon and Facebook, what actions is the federal government willing to take to ensure the interests of Americans? Hoover Senior Fellows Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster, and John Cochrane weigh the latest salvo in the ongoing hostilities between Washington and Silicon Valley.
The coronavirus, widespread quarantines, an unprecedented self-induced recession, and unchecked rioting, looting and protesting — all in a presidential election year — are radically disrupting American habits and behavior.
Befitting a state that once sent a pair of outsiders to Washington roughly a couple of centuries ago (Andrew Jackson and Davy Crockett), and where Elvis Presley took his last breath (or so we think), Tennessee is the home to the second and final debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Whether they’re overlooking skyrocketing federal debt or unfunded state pension obligations, lawmakers continue to make short-run budget decisions that will disproportionately burden future generations. How big are these problems, and are there any good solutions?
On paper, it seems like Joe Biden would champion the cause of expanding high-quality charter schools. He’s a longtime centrist Democrat, and centrist Democrats usually love charter schools, going back to Bill Clinton. He was Barack Obama’s vice president, and Obama has long loved charter schools. Biden was brought back from political near-death thanks to the support of Black voters, and Black voters love charter schools.
The Progressive Policy Institute’s indefatigable David Osborne, a long-time student of and advocate for quality charter schools, now joined by Tressa Pankovits, has penned a valuable guide to the creation of autonomous “innovation schools” within traditional districts.
"Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers,” the historian and social theorist Lewis Mumford wrote in The Brown Decades, his 1931 book about post–Civil War America. Something similar is happening in the United States today, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A group of researchers, spearheaded by Brown University Professor Emily Oster, have created and made available the most comprehensive databaseon schools and Covid case rates for students and staff since the pandemic started. Her data—covering almost 200,000 kids across 47 states from the last two weeks of September—showed a Covid-19 case rate of 0.13% among students and 0.24% among staff.
Howard Husock talks with Shelby and Eli Steele about their new documentary, What Killed Michael Brown?, as well as Amazon’s refusal to make the film available on its Prime Video streaming platform. (Update: Amazon is now allowing the film to be streamed.)
Former Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan on Wednesday cautioned against import substitution under the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative of the government, saying the country has gone down this route earlier but could not succeed.
Two prominent China analysts debated on Tuesday whether Beijing is attempting to supplant Washington as the foremost global power. Speaking during a South China Morning Post webinar about the state of multilateralism under US President Donald Trump, Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow with Stanford University‘s Hoover Institution, countered an assertion by David Firestein that Beijing was primarily seeking “a place at the table that is commensurate with its heft”.
There are theories but no tablets of stone to guide economists as the nation struggles to emerge from the COVID-19 shutdown. Republicans urge tax cuts and limited stimulus while Democrats push for trillions in additional government spending.
