As America celebrates the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the threat to the survival of our long-running democratic republic from political and religious extremism is palpable. Former Senator Gary Hart offers a timely reflection on the enduring principles ingrained in the charter of the new nation.   Many people of a certain age […]

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As we head into the pithy core of the 2024 election season, institutionalists are alarmed, and with good reason. Our highest court just ruled (SEC vs. Jarkesy; overturning Chevron doctrine) that all federal agencies are effectively unconstitutional, and may imminently rule that former president Trump is immune from prosecution. The first presidential debate of 2024 […]

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It is hard to overstate what rests on the outcome of the 2024 election. Democracy probably; reproductive rights certainly. Also at stake is the well-being of the US economy, especially whether Americans can retire or must work until they drop. Before Social Security, seniors depended on their families and their savings. Those lacking adequate support […]

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The American Republic is ripe for a hostile takeover. In the go-go 1990s — when “the end of history,” the primacy of market economics and galloping globalization were dominant metaphors for elite commentators — a joke circulated around the Goldman Sachs trading floor that it was high time to take the United States of America […]

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Not two months ago, in a brief history of how congestion pricing triumphed in New York, I canonized New York Governor Kathy Hochul, placing her alongside transportation legends Bill Vickrey (Nobel-winning traffic theorist), Ted Kheel (transit-finance savant), and the upstart Riders Alliance that in 2019 achieved what previous campaigners could not: legislation mandating a revolutionary […]

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