Via Meadia has talked about Illinois Governor Pat Quinn before as one of the blue-state democrats forced by fiscal reality to take on blue orthodoxy. Last month, Quinn announced new proposals that would increase state employee contributions to benefit plans, lower increases in pension payouts, and raise the age at which workers become eligible for […]

Pundits across the political spectrum are gradually coming around to an argument that Via Meadia has been making for some time: The United States is not in decline. Over at Foreign Policy, two scholars from the Brookings Institution coin a new term, the GUTS, for four states that, contrary to public perception, are actually increasing […]

It is fashionable in some circles to deny that Iran harbors any ill will toward the Jewish state that might manifest in irrational outbursts of genocidal violence. Such sophisticates challenge the official state translation of Ahmadinejad’s promise to “wipe Israel off the map” and studiously ignore pretty much everything else top Iranian officials have been […]

“What ails India?” So asked the FT‘s Mumbai bureau chief of a Western investor recently. The answer? Everything. “On every indicator we look at, there is a red flag,” the investor said. “This country is close to becoming the Greece of Asia.” Growth has stalled. Inflation, thought to be under control, jumped up again on Monday. […]

Congressional delegations to foreign countries—”codels” as the poor State Department officers tasked with escorting the solons and their posses around various foreign sites call them—are the bane of a diplomat’s life, and newspapers love to trash them as wasteful boondoggles taken on the public dime. Take this snarky Washington Post “In The Loop” piece on […]

Geopolitics has so far been absent from the eurozone crisis. But is that about to change? As banks, businesses and Brussels begin accepting the possibility that Greece may indeed exit the euro—until recently an inconceivable proposition—the political ramifications could be just as profound as the economic consequences.Europe has been so consumed with putting out the fiscal […]

For the second time in two weeks, Chen Guangcheng phoned into a congressional hearing. The Washington Post recounts that while Chen said his immediate family was doing well, others close to him have suffered retribution after he sought sanctuary in the U.S. embassy in Beijing: He expressed particular concern for his nephew, Chen Kegui, who has […]

Even after the financial crisis, Wall Street is still the dominant economic force in New York, accounting for 20 percent of the state’s tax revenue prior to the recession—and this is not even counting the multitude of businesses that have sprung up to support the financial sector and its employees.Yet in the wake of  JP […]

The Arab League tried to gather the various councils and organizations claiming to represent the “Syrian opposition” in Cairo this week. Only a few people showed up: the international envoy groups, none of which were Syrian. The effort to unite Syria’s dissidents and opposition groups in a united front has since been postponed.Syria’s opposition groups […]

Via Meadia has steered clear of the various ephemera dominating news coverage of the campaign season (such as the current hubbub over Ann Romney’s alleged Hitlerian overtones on motherhood). Over at BuzzFeed, Rebecca Elliot, writing about Americans Elect, reminds us why we feel so comfortable ignoring the punditocracy.Americans Elect bills itself as a grass-roots organization that […]