Will We See Justice for Alton Sterling or Philando Castile?
Less than two years ago, a Ferguson grand jury decided not to return an indictment in the shooting death of Michael Brown. The grand jury announced their decision on the evening of November 24, 2014. There had been about 70 hours of testimony and over 60 witnesses. (NPR has a helpful blog covering all the action.) Remembering what happened in Ferguson may help us to understand what may not happen in Baton Rouge and St. Anthony: an indictment or conviction of the officers who killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
In line with the adage that a determined prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office was criticized for its presentation of the evidence in Darren Wilson’s case, especially given its willingness to indict Ferguson protesters. The vote of the grand jury is secret, …
Trump Campaign Strategy: Don’t Discuss Him
Why won’t they say Donald Trump’s name at the Republican National Convention?
Television journalists like Rachel Maddow have been talking about it since The Mistake on the Lake went live on Monday evening, July 18. As Frank Bruni put it in a New York Times (July 20, 2016) op-ed: By saying almost nothing about Donald Trump on Tuesday night, Paul Ryan said it all. Trump isn’t the star of his own convention. Hillary Clinton is. What really animates the Republicans gathered here is their antipathy toward her, not their embrace of him. Speaker after speaker makes the case against her, not the one for him. And a weird impression is taking hold: They’re filling the minutes and running out the clock with all the bad that they can dredge up about her because there’s not enough good to plumb in him. …
Brazil is not a Capitalist Country
The Brazilian Federal Constitution speaks of a “free market” (Art. 170) and describes the state as a “normative and regulating agent of economic activity” (Art. 174). Unfortunately, reality is completely different. We have two worlds in Brazil: the first is the naïve utopia of the legislator; the other is the crude practice of political gangsters. Life as it is differs substantially from life as it should be.
As pointed out by Professor Douglass North, economic growth is directly linked to the quality of a nation’s institutions. Prosperous countries are buttressed by strong, serious and efficient institutions; poor countries are infected by weak, dishonest and exploitative ones.
The fact is that we do not have capitalism in Brazil. Our free market is state-directed, while our “free competition” favors powerful…