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If there was a catwalk for political institutions, mixed electoral systems would be the newest fashion trend. They are incredibly popular among politicians, pressure groups, and academics all around the world. Mixed electoral systems combine proportional representation with local representation … Continue reading →

Introduction In May 2023, a parliamentary election was held in Greece, at the end of the term of the New Democracy (ND) government, in office since July 2019. The election was the first since 1989 to be held with a proportional representation (PR) electoral system. ND won the election, as expected by the opinion polls. … Continued

The climate protection ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe of 2021 is a historic decision. It is on a par with the Court's major landmark decisions such as Lüth, Elfes, or Brokdorf. It updates the fundamental value of equal freedom: Freedom includes future freedom and, as a right to intertemporal freedom, can demand a proportional distribution of freedom opportunities over time.

Rechtsextremistisches Handeln hat viele Facetten. Die Wahl oder Kandidatur für eine rechtsextremistische Partei, die Mitgliedschaft in einer Organisation, die Beteiligung an Demonstrationen, aber auch das gewaltbereite Auftreten gegenüber Minderheiten gehören dazu. Der Shortfilm "Mit Hass und Gewalt – Angriff auf die Demokratie" aus dem Jahr 2017 zeigt, wie Politiker:innen, Mandatsträger:innen und Geflüchtete, insbesondere in Flüchtlingsunterkünften, von Rechtsextremisten bedroht und angegriffen werden. Beispiele, die im Film genannt werden, sind Schmierereien an der Hauswand, Drohbriefe, Attacken mit Buttersäure, Einbrüche, sehr private Angriffe und Brandstiftungen.Der Kurzfilm befasst sich auf der einen Seite mit den Gefühlen und Emotionen der Rechtsextremisten, wie Hass und Wut, die die Bereitschaft zur Ausführung von Gewalt und Straftaten zur Folge haben können. Auf der anderen Seite zeigt der Film, wie sich diese Emotionen auf ihre Sprache und Wortwahl auswirken. Die Verwendung von Euphemismen (beschönigende Umschreibungen eines negativ konnotierten Begriffs), die Enthumanisierung durch Naturkatastrophen und das Framing in der Sprache sind verschiedene Strategien, um Emotionen und Gefühle, wie Angst und Furcht, auszulösen. Bezogen auf die Migrationsbewegungen seit 2015 werden verschiedene Vergleiche zwischen Naturkatastrophen und Geflüchteten gezogen.Das Wort "Flüchtlingswelle" ist beispielsweise kein neutrales, sondern ein geframtes Wort, das zwei assoziative Ebenen hat. Zum einen beschreibt es ein Auftürmen und Anstauen proportional zur Größe des Hindernisses. Das heißt, dass die "Flüchtlingswelle" als sehr große, chaotische und ungeordnete Menschenmasse verstanden wird. Zum anderen ist eine Welle ist eine sehr mächtige Naturgewalt, die Städte wegspülen kann. Rechtspopulisten- und Extremisten sehen ihre Aufgabe darin, besonders hohe und starke Schutzwälle zu bauen, um die angebliche Zerstörung der Gesellschaft zu verhindern.Der Film zeigt, dass Hass, Angst und Feindbilder der Rechtsextremisten zu gewalttätigen Straftaten führen können und erlaubt gleichzeitig die dabei genutzte Sprache zu analysieren.Ein Fund von Berfin Kocabas

While much of the obvious has been covered in how
the ascension of Republican Speaker Mike Johnson to that post will
affect Louisiana politics, one under-the-radar aspect is how it can strengthen
the state's hand in the current legal tussle over congressional reapportionment.

Last
year, Louisiana, which has a black voting age population of just under a
third, enacted a plan that created one majority-minority district out of six.
Special interests sued, claiming that the Voting Rights Act, despite its explicit
statement that population proportions didn't have to be translated into proportions
of districts, required the state to have two M/M districts.

In a related Alabama case, the U.S. Supreme Court
elevated racial proportion to a preferred status among reapportionment criteria,
which include such things incumbent protection, continuity of representation, and
keeping communities of interest together. Using that as a precedent, an Eastern
District of Louisiana judge firstly threw out the enacted maps and secondly ordered
new ones be drawn.

The decisions were appealed to the Fifth Circuit,
which hasn't ruled on the former but placed a stay on the latter, saying the
former needed resolution first. The Supreme
Court this month backed the stay, using the Louisiana case as a potential vehicle
that gives the Court a chance to set parameters to its Alabama ruling.
Practically speaking, if the former ruling stands, then the Legislature could
deal with the latter next year during the regular session or in a special session
preceding it without judicial involvement.

Assuming the legal wrangling ends in time for the
change to occur next year, whatever the state's majoritarian branches do can
set an important precedent. The Alabama ruling instructed that preference
should be given to proportional use of race to ensure that roughly as many districts
proportional to a discrete minority group's proportion in the population should
exist to give that group a opportunity to elect a chosen candidate, but didn't
mandate that the proportional output should be constructed utilizing only M/M districts.

Thus, it left the door open for "opportunity
districts," or those where the minority population is sufficiently proportionally
large enough to elect a chosen candidate without being a majority, to be utilized
in this kind of mapping, subject to other reapportionment criteria. A subsequent
Alabama attempt that created one M/M and one district with about 40 percent black
population was found inadequate to meet the new criterion.

Louisiana might have the chance to define this
further, if it must come to that. In contrast to the Alabama case, creating two
rather than one M/M district does much greater violence to other
reapportionment criteria, so there would be more leeway to creating an opportunity
district instead. In fact, one bill offered during the 2022 First Extraordinary
Session of the Legislature, called for reapportionment purposes, SB 22 by Democrat
state Sen. Greg Tarver, did
precisely this in making the Fifth District – which in two M/M plans was made
narrowly the second M/M district – a bare majority white district with 43
percent black population.

The case for accepting this arrangement became
stronger with Johnson's ascending to the speakership, referring particularly to
incumbency protection. With Johnson now the most powerful and important official
in the House, it becomes more imperative to maintain a district in which he can
get elected.

Almost every
of over a dozen bills filed in sessions in 2022 to create two M/M districts made
for convoluted plans with these districts at 53 and 52 or 52 and 51 percent
black population and, as compared to the enacted plan
which largely mirrored existing boundaries, considerably altered Johnson's District
4 by chopping off its four southern-most parishes and instead pushing it to gobble
up six parishes to the east and part of Ouachita now in District 5. Tarver's
plan did worse, removing more southern parishes and spreading further east,
circling around Ouachita. Even so, Johnson's district is nearly a third populated
with blacks.

If the GOP legislative majority could swap some
things around with CD 5 – for example, some of St. Landry parish for all of
Grant – and work on CD 5's borders with other districts, this could push CD 5
above 40 percent black while adhering more closely to CD 4's pre-2022
boundaries and better protect Johnson. This would give the judiciary an interesting
test case as to just how much preference to give race when other traditional
factors loom large.

It may not come to this, but if it does, Johnson's
unexpected promotion may cause equally unanticipated permutations to Louisiana's
congressional maps.

Gerardo L. Munck. University of Southern California (USC)@GerardoMunckSocial scientists have not discovered laws similar to those in the physical sciences. But they undersell what their disciplines have accomplished. That is why I like Josep Colomer's claim that 30 important propositions in political science should be treated as "things we know."  Nov 25, 2022252. Retweets.       16. Quote Tweets.      1,043. LikesTo convey a sense of Colomer's claim, I copy verbatim the 30 propositions. Sources: Josep Colomer, The Science of Politics: An Introduction (2011), Oxford University Press, pp. xxi -xxv.  - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259760896_The_Science_of_Politics_An_IntroductionCiencia de la politica (2010, 2017), Editorial Ariel.  - https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Josep-Maria-Colomer/dp/8434425289?asin=B06WD4Z1N7&revisionId=d87f6ef8&format=1&depth=1·1.PUBLIC GOODS. In contrast to private goods, public goods are indivisible & cannot be satisfactorily provided by the market or other private initiatives. The provision of public goods requires cooperation or coercion, whether by means of collective action or effective government2. GOVERNMENT SIZE. The demand for public goods and the relative levels of public expenditure by governments tend to increase with economic prosperity, institutional stability, and democracy.3. COLLECTIVE ACTION. Members of small, concentrated, and homogeneous communities or interest groups have more incentives to cooperate and participate in collective action than members of large, dispersed, and heterogeneous groups. /13. COLLECTIVE ACTION. In the public arena, small groups tend to have relatively more access to public resources at the expense of large groups. /24. VOICE VERSUS EXIT. Collective action for the advancement of collective interests, or "voice," weakens and may fail if the rival action of "exit," in search for an alternative provider, is less costly and more likely to give access to public goods.5. PRISONER'S DILEMMA. The "Prisoner's Dilemma," which is the most famous model in game theory, can represent the basic structure of collective action problems for the provision of public goods. /15. PRISONER'S DILEMMA. In this game, each actor has incentives not to cooperate, which may lead to an inefficient outcome in which all the participants are worse off than if all cooperated. /26. SUSTAINED COOPERATION. In interactions of the Prisoner's Dilemma type, sustained cooperation can emerge if actors apply the strategy of cooperating and doing unto others as they do unto yourself—also called "Tit for Tat." /16. SUSTAINED COOPERATION. Mutual cooperation is more likely the greater the uncertainty as to the length of the collective relationship and the higher the number of interactions you may be involved in. /27. LEADERSHIP. Collective action of communities and interest groups can develop thanks to leadership. Leaders distribute the costs of action among group members to provide public and private goods, /17. LEADERSHIP. while, in exchange, followers give the leaders votes or support and allow them to enjoy the benefits of power, fame, income, and a political career. /28. SMALL IS DEMOCRATIC. Small communities, which tend to be relatively harmonious in economic and ethnic terms, are comparatively advantageous for soft, democratic forms of government. /18. SMALL IS DEMOCRATIC. In recent times, small independent countries and self-governed communities have proliferated, thus making the average country size decrease. /29. MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE. Multiple levels of government, including local, state, and global, are necessary for an efficient provision of public goods at diverse territorial scales.10. FEDERATION NEEDS MANY UNITS. Local democratic self-government and large-scale provision of public goods can be compatible by means of federalism. Many-unit federations, in which no unit is sufficiently large to dominate, tend to survive and endure. /110. FEDERATION NEEDS MANY UNITS. In contrast, two-unit-only federations tend to fail, leading to either absorption of the smaller unit by the larger one or secession of the small, likely dominated unit. /211. DICTATORSHIPS FAIL AND FALL. Dictatorships have self-appointed rulers holding on to power by coercive and violent means. They can survive on the basis of repression and their "substantive" performance, whether economic or other. /111. DICTATORSHIPS FAIL AND FALL. But they also tend to fall as a consequence of their failures, including military defeats, economic crises, or the dictator's death. /212. DEVELOPMENT FAVORS DEMOCRACY. Democracy is based on freedom and regular elections of rulers. Economic development favors the viability of democratic regimes because it tends to reduce income and social polarization and lower the intensity of redistributive conflicts.13. DEMOCRACY FAVORS DEVELOPMENT. Democracy can favor economic development because it is strongly associated with the rule of law and is more competent in the provision of public goods.14. DEMOCRATIC PEACE. Democratic states are less likely to fight one another and engage in wars than dictatorships.15. PARTY OLIGARCHY. Political parties are organizations that present policy proposals and compete for political power. A political organization tends to become an "oligarchy," ie, it tends to be dominated by political leaders or professional politicians seeking votes & offices.16. EXTREME ACTIVISTS. Voluntary political activists hold more "extreme" policy or ideological positions than party voters and even party leadership.17.MEDIAN VOTER. In elections in which only 2 major parties compete, they may have incentives to approach each other and converge in their policy positions. Once they converge around the median voter's preference, neither party has electoral incentives to move away from the other party18. INCUMBENT ADVANTAGE. Electoral competition is asymmetric between the government and the opposition. The incumbent party in government can gain advantage in electoral competition by providing or hiding information on its record to obtain credibility.19. ISSUE OWNERSHIP. In spite of parties' convergence in their policy positions on some issues, a party can keep advantage and "own" an issue if its past record in government has given it credit for policy making on that issue.20. NON-DEBATE CAMPAIGNS. In electoral campaigns, rival parties and candidates tend to choose or emphasize different policy issues according to different issue ownership and the parties' or candidates' expected relative advantage.21. POLICY CONSENSUS. In the long term, broad policy consensus can be accumulated on an increasing number of issues. But in the short term, mediocre policies and incumbent parties with no good performance in government may survive for lack of a sufficiently popular alternative.22. CONSENSUAL PLURALISM. There is an inverse correlation between the number of political parties in a system and the degree of party polarization in electoral competition. /122. CONSENSUAL PLURALISM. High fragmentation of the party system is associated with a high number of issues on the policy agenda, which generates low polarization of political competition and more opportunities for consensus. /2123. MAJORITY BIPARTISM. Presidential and other one-office elections by plurality rule tend to be associated with single-party dominance or a balance between two parties.24. MORE SEATS, MORE PARTIES. In assembly and parliamentary elections, large size of the assembly and a high number of seats in each district and proportional representation are associated with a high number of political parties.25. MICRO-MEGA RULE. When choosing electoral rules, large parties prefer small assemblies and small districts by plurality rule, while small parties prefer large assemblies and large districts with proportional representation.26. SMALL ASSEMBLIES, LARGE DISTRICTS. The development of multiple parties favors the adoption of large multi-seat districts with proportional representation rules. In the long term, proportional representation rules have been increasingly adopted. /126. SMALL ASSEMBLIES, LARGE DISTRICTS. But in very large countries, a large federal assembly can be elected with different electoral rules, including small single-seat districts. /227.INSTITUTIONAL "DEADLOCK." Single-party government promotes a high concentration of power, which may foster effectiveness in decision-making. In contrast, separate elections for different offices & divisions of power may produce divided government, "deadlock," & policy stability.28.MINIMUMCOALITIONS.Parties in parliament tend to form minimum-size winning coalitions & prefer partners located in contiguous policy & ideology positions. The distribution of cabinet portfolios among coalition parties tends to be proportional to the N of seats controlled by each party.29. CABINET DURATION. Single-party majority cabinets tend to last longer than multiparty coalition or minority cabinets.30. TWO-PARTY STALEMATE. In a system with separation of powers between the presidency and the congress, policy change is relatively more viable if there are multiple parties or individual members of congress are not strongly tied to party votes.30. TWO-PARTY STALEMATE. In contrast, a two-party system with strong party discipline may prop up confrontation and inter-institutional stalemate. /2

It is helpful to know the incidence of different taxes. We should identify the wallet or purse that it comes from because very often this is not the one that people think it is, or the one that the legislators intended it to fall upon.For example, since corporations are not people, they don't pay Corporation Tax. Its incidence is on the workers, who do not receive pay increases when the money goes in tax, on the shareholders, whose shares lower in value because the tax reduces profits, and on the customers, who pay higher prices as the firm increases them to make up for the money taken by the taxman. Numerous studies have shown that the biggest losers are the employees, with estimates showing that 60 percent of Corporation Tax is paid by them.Most people think that they pay National Insurance and that there is an employer contribution. In reality the so-called employer contribution is a wage cost, and comes out of the wage pool that would otherwise be available for wage increases. Its incidence is on the employees.Some people argue for business rates to be frozen or lowered, thinking this will help businesses, but in fact landlords are the beneficiaries when this is done because it allows them to put up the rents. Rents and business rates are inversely proportional. Rising rates make for lower or frozen rents, and rate decreases enable landlords to increase rents. Knowing the incidence of the tax leads to a policy initiative that could direct help to businesses rather than landlords. Business rates could be frozen or reduced for 3 years, but only for businesses whose landlords agree to a rent freeze for 3 years. The rates would not be frozen or cut unless landlords signed up for this. The effect would be to direct the benefit to the businesses, and help them as they struggle with increased costs elsewhere.At a time when the UK needs to boost growth by having its businesses prosper, this is a policy that could help them to do that.

There's much less to the eye regarding the ultimate
impact of the decision
recently rendered in Nairne
v. Landry than the possibility this case eventually could upend reapportionment
jurisprudence very much in the opposite direction of the ruling.

The case involves reapportionment of Louisiana's
legislative districts after the 2020 census, involving plaintiffs similar to
those in the winding-down case regarding reapportionment
of its congressional districts. In that other case, the same Middle
District of Louisiana Judge Shelly Dick ruled an expansive reading of Title 2
of the Voting Rights Act that gives race (given certain circumstances) preference
over other traditional principles of reapportionment (absent compelling
circumstances), essentially sidestepping the text of the law that says it does
not normally confer proportional representation of racial minorities in a state.

In ruling that the state had to draw a map with
two of six black majority-minority districts because about a third of the
population identified as black, which impelled the Legislature to do precisely
that although its product almost certainly is constitutionally defective because
in order to do that race took on a dominant role in making the map, Dick
applied the same rubric to legislative districts. The legal backing for this
she derived from a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that affirmed custom
over the past six decades and an expanded view of the VRA language as developed
through past court cases allowed for elevating the place of race.

The Legislature was given no deadline to swap in a
new map, where it is implied that at least two more Senate and six more House
seats became M/M. (Keep in mind, however, that no case ever has been decided on
the merits validating the proportional argument, much less ended up being
applied by a government by court order.) Practically speaking, this doesn't become
an issue until at latest the start of 2027 for fall elections that year.

While some observers without a comprehensive
understanding of the issues blithely assume the
Legislature will do this, chance are much greater it never will come that.
(Actually, given the greater tolerances courts permit for malapportionment and
for adhering to other principles of reapportionment when it comes to offices
other than Congress, the partisan balance would change little as both chambers
could draw new maps that essentially swap out elected white Democrats with
black Democrats.) That's because the case has at least one time bomb included
that could blow up the current interpretation of the VRA Section 2 and
guarantees when plaintiffs plea for a remedy (at
present, special elections with a new map later this year) the state will appeal
and many motions later serve it up to the Court. Nothing politically will
happen for some time to come.

There's actually another aspect that could cause
this: a split between federal appellate court circuits on whether private
parties can bring suits under that law, which guarantees eventual Supreme Court
intervention. However, existing
jurisprudence suggests that the Court will reject the argument no private
right of action exists, which for Nairne is irrelevant anyway because
the Fifth Circuit holds that view.

The state as defendant articulated that defense,
but Dick rejected it precisely because the Circuit had done so. But while the main
land mine of questioning over the current interpretation of the VRA Section 2 she
could dodge for now, ultimately she can't make go away.

That results from the Assoc. Justice Brett Kavanaugh
concurrence
in the case that granted race its new privileged place. In it, he questioned
whether that privileging had become timebound, as the nature of society about
race has changed substantially in the decades since, but didn't adjudicate that
because that other case didn't bring it up.

But Louisiana unambiguously did forward that
argument in a filing in Nairne. Dick addressed the issue in her ruling
as minimally as she dared in dismissing it, which isn't unusual (as well allows
her decision to reflect her own political preferences). Lower court judges are
extremely reluctant to base rulings on any Court opinions not the majority,
leaving that up to the Court itself.

However, that avoidance doesn't make the issue go
away. Undoubtedly the state will appeal and it's inconceivable that the Court at
some point wouldn't take up the case on those constitutional grounds (as well
as perhaps others dealing with the statute) – unless another case elsewhere (for
example) gets there first. And the tone from the previous case suggests the
Court would strike down the expansive reading of Section 2 as timebound.

Chances are excellent even with the inevitable string
of appeals this reversal will happen before 2027. In the final analysis, the Nairne
ruling changes little, and expect Louisiana to do little in response to it
except continue to fight the case up to the Supreme Court.

In 'The Means and the Good' (Analysis, forthcoming) Matthew Oliver argues that pluralist consequentialists can accommodate intuitions against using others as a means, on the model of how they can accommodate intuitions about desert:Just as it is bad for Emily to benefit from a stolen manuscript, it is bad for anyone to benefit from the use of another's body or resources as a means. We can call this impersonal badness an impersonal-use-cost. As with a stolen manuscript, good results that are produced by using another person's body or resources are heavily offset by an accompanying impersonal-use-cost.By, in effect, discounting illicit benefits, we get the result that killing one to save five does more harm than good.  But we also get the result that killing one to prevent five others from each killing one to save five likewise does more harm than good.  (I think the most natural way to understand this is not to regard the second-order killing as in itself extra bad; the killing is just as intrinsically bad as any other death, the problem is instead that any good that would follow from it -- including the prevention of other wrongful killings -- gets massively discounted.)It's a clever and interesting view!  But it seems really vulnerable to my argument against constraints, namely, that it unacceptably devalues the lives of the innocent victims who might be rescued.  Once an innocent person has been killed in an (even wrongful) attempt to save five, it really matters whether those five are ultimately saved or not!  So we shouldn't discount the value of their lives, no matter the illicit nature of the agent's act (however bad it may have been, that harm has already been done).  Otherwise, we would violate the moral datum that One Killing to Prevent Five >> Six Killings (Failed Prevention).My reframing of the view in terms of "discounting illicit benefits" brings out the problem most starkly.  But I think it's just a verbal difference, and Oliver's original formulation in terms of an offsetting "use cost" (proportional to the illicit benefits) has the same implications.  Does that sound right?  Do correct me if I'm wrong...

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IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse gas fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems (IPCC)Climate Change and Land (IPCC)Klimawandel (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Habeck gegen höhere Mehrwertsteuer auf Fleisch (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Kubicki-Gastbeitrag: Fleischsteuer wäre falsch (FDP)Climate Change Threatens the World's Food Supply, United Nations Warns (The New York Times)Weltklimarat mahnt zur Kehrtwende beim Fleischkonsum (Spiegel online)Another exceptional month for global average temperatures (Climate Change Service) Weltklimarat: Temperaturplus über Land schon über 1,5 Grad (Heise online)CO2-Steuer könnte verfassungswidrig sein (FAZ)Das verflixte System Erde (Süddeutsche Zeitung)Weltklimarat fordert Agrarwende (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Ein bisschen Verzicht reicht nicht (Süddeutsche Zeitung) EU will Nachbesserung der Düngeverordnung (ntv)We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN (The Guardian)



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Ökologisch desaströs (taz) Bislang geheime KBA-Papiere liefern Dieselklägern neue Argumente (Handelsblatt) Keine echte Verkehrswende: Studie entblättert den "Carsharing-Mythos" (heise online)



Hongkong (Interview Katharin Tai)



Ein Generalstreik legt die Stadt lahm (Süddeutsche Zeitung) "Hongkong geht unter" (Spiegel online) What's Going On in Hongkong? A Guide to the Protests (The New York Times) "Halte durch, Hongkong!" (Spiegel online)Podcast Fernostwärts (Fernostwärts)Fernostwärts (Newsletter)'Please Stop Beating Us': Where Were Hong Kong's Police? (The New York Times)In Hong Kong protests, did police use excessive force or issue a proportional response? (South China Morning Post)Katharin Tai (Twitter)



Dayton und El Paso



"Donald Trump trägt die Verantwortung" (Spiegel online) Eklatante Lücken (Der Freitag) DNA-Phenotyping und Racial Biases (Organisationsbüro Strafverteidigervereinigung) The El Paso Shooting and the Gamification of Terror (bellingcat) Der Anschlag (Süddeutsche Zeitung) The Inconvenient Truth (Wayback Maschine) Brief an Mr. Crusius (Collin College) USA erwägen schärfere Waffengesetze (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections. (The New York Times) Attentäter von El Paso wollte gezielt Mexikaner töten (Spiegel online)El-Paso-Attentäter gesteht gezielte Jagd auf "Mexikaner" (Welt)Will Trump schärfere Waffengesetze? (FAZ)



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Spenden: BankverbindungSpenden: Banking-Program mit BezahlCode-StandardSpenden: PaypalKuechenstud.io-NewsletterKuechenstud.io Shop"Lage der Nation" bei iTunes bewerten"Lage der Nation" bei Youtube"Lage der Nation" bei Facebook"Lage der Nation" bei Instagram "Lage der Nation" bei Twitter"Lage der Nation" in der Wikipedia

Johan Norberg


UNESCO has just designated the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 a "Memory of the World." It's a well‐​deserved honor. This more than 250‐​year old document, enacted during a period of strong parliamentary power in Sweden, is the world's first freedom of the press act, signed into law ten years before the United States of America even existed.







In defense of "unrestricted mutual enlightenment," the 1766 act created a constitutional right to publish one's thoughts and ideas, abolished censorship (in everything but theological texts) and introduced the principle of public access to official records. The English parliament had let its censorship lapse as early as 1695, but it gave no legal protection to the press, so it could still be subjected to arbitrary intervention.
This is in itself enough to make Sweden's 1766 act a milestone in libertarian history, but it gets better. The law's author was the Ostrobothnian priest Anders Chydenius, one of Sweden's earliest and most principled classical liberals. Chydenius was a radical natural rights‐​thinker and a staunch defender of limited government, free markets, low taxes and open migration: "I speak only for the one small, but blessed word, freedom. I believe that nature, in this, as in so many other things, left to itself, accomplishes far more than many elaborate and ingenious plans."







Among his many short books, in 1765 — 11 years before Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations — Chydenius published the powerful pamphlet The National Gain, explaining how the price mechanism and the profit motive make markets self‐​regulating and engines of wealth creation. The great 20th century economic historian Eli Heckscher described it as "an almost classically clear and simple exposition of the basic views of economic liberalism and a contribution which might well have gained international fame, had it appeared at the time in any of the major languages."
Chydenius' campaign for free trade for Ostrobothnia's farmers made him popular and he was elected to the Swedish parliament 1765/66, where he wrote the freedom of the press act. Despite fierce opposition from the nobles, Chydenius' skills, incredible work‐​ethic and seductive rhetoric carried the day.
As present‐​day authoritarians imprison dissenters, campus leftists cancel their way to utopia and national conservatives try to silence "woke corporations," Chydenius' ideas and accomplishments remain a source of inspiration: "the liberty of a nation is always proportional to the freedom of its press, so that neither can exist without the other. Where the press is closed under some kind of authority, it is an unfailing sign of the nation's shackles."
Of course much speech is uninformed or false, accepted Chydenius, and therefore, he insisted, we need more and better speech.

Im Herbst dieses Jahres finden in Polen nach vier Jahren turnusmäßig Parlamentswahlen statt. Dabei werden sowohl sämtliche 460 Abgeordnete der unteren Kammer, des Sejm, als auch sämtliche 100 Abgeordnete der weniger bedeutsamen oberen Kammer, des Senats, für eine Amtszeit von vier Jahren neu gewählt. Es sind die nunmehr zehnten Parlamentswahlen in der seit 1989 bestehenden Dritten Republik. Zur Wahl aufgerufen sind rund 30 Millionen polnische Staatsbürger im In- und Ausland. Alle polnischen Staatsbürger genießen das aktive Wahlrecht ab 18 Jahren, das passive Wahlrecht ab 21 Jahren für den Sejm bzw. ab 30 Jahren für den Senat.Die Festlegung des endgültigen Wahltermins obliegt laut Verfassung dem Präsidenten. Der Termin muss innerhalb eines Zeitraums von 30 Tagen vor Ablauf der vierjährigen Legislaturperiode von Sejm und Senat liegen und auf einen arbeitsfreien Tag, in der Regel ein Sonntag, fallen. Dementsprechend kommen folgende Wahltermine in Frage: der 15. Oktober, der 22. Oktober, der 29. Oktober oder der 5. November. Den genauen Termin wird Staatspräsident Andrzej Duda im Sommer festlegen, spätestens jedoch am 14. August. Die Abstimmung findet am Wahltag in den Wahllokalen in der Zeit von 7 bis 21 Uhr statt.Sejm Das Copyright für die Datei 2023 Polish parliamentary election.svg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2023_Polish_parliamentary_election.svg) liegt bei 沁水湾.Bei den Wahlen zum Sejm treten die Kandidaten in insgesamt 41 Wahlkreisen auf Listen an, es gilt das Verhältniswahlrecht. Je nach Größe werden pro Wahlkreis zwischen 7 (wie im Wahlkreis Nr. 28 Częstochowa) und 20 Mandate (wie im Wahlkreis Nr. 19 Warszawa I) vergeben. Es gilt eine Sperrklausel von 5 Prozent für Parteien bzw. von 8 Prozent für Wahlbündnisse, die aus mehreren Parteien bestehen. Ausgenommen von der Sperrklausel sind die Parteien der nationalen Minderheiten, von denen allerdings nur die Partei der deutschen Minderheit regelmäßig, zuletzt mit nurmehr einem Abgeordneten, ins Parlament einzieht. Die Wähler haben jeweils eine Stimme für einen der Listenkandidaten ihres Wahlkreises. Nach der Wahl werden die Sitze proportional auf die Listen der Wahlkreise verteilt, und die Parteien mit ihren Kandidaten auf den Listen erhalten die Sitze entsprechend der Gesamtzahl der für sie auf einer bestimmten Liste abgegebenen Stimmen. Die Mandatszuteilung findet nach dem d'Hondt-Verfahren statt, das prinzipiell größere Parteien bevorzugt (siehe auch den DPI-Blogbeitrag zur Frage gemeinsamer Listen der Oppositionsparteien).Senat Das Copyright für die Datei Senat RP okręgi.svg (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Senat_RP_okr%C4%99gi.svg) liegt bei Lukasb1992.Bei den zeitgleich stattfindenden Senatswahlen gilt das relative Mehrheitswahlrecht (winner takes all-Prinzip) mit Einpersonenwahlkreisen. Dies ermöglichte es den Parteien der politischen Opposition bei den letzten Wahlen 2019, durch den sogenannten "Senatspakt" eine knappe Mehrheit in der oberen Kammer des polnischen Parlaments zu erzielen. Die insgesamt 100 Mitglieder des Senats werden in ebenfalls 100 Wahlkreisen gewählt. Der Wahlkreiskandidat mit den verhältnismäßig meisten Stimmen gewinnt den Wahlkreis und erhält das Abgeordnetenmandat.Novellierung des Wahlgesetzes 2023Am 26. Januar 2023 nahm der Sejm die Novelle des polnischen Wahlgesetzes (kodeks wyborczy) an. Der Gesetzentwurf ging dann weiter an den von der politischen Opposition dominierten Senat, der den Entwurf ablehnte. Daraufhin kehrte er zurück an den Sejm, der sich dem Entschluss des Senats jedoch nicht anschloss und dessen Entscheidung mehrheitlich überstimmte. In der Konsequenz unterzeichnete Präsident Andrzej Duda am 13. April die Gesetzesänderung, die damit in Kraft trat.Laut offiziellen Verlautbarungen der Regierung ist es Ziel der Novelle, die Wahlbeteiligung zu erhöhen. Diese lag bei den letzten Parlamentswahlen 2019 mit 61,74 Prozent jedoch bereits vergleichsweise hoch, bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen 2020 erreichte sie sogar 64,51 Prozent im ersten bzw. 68,18 Prozent im zweiten Wahlgang. Kritiker bemängeln, dass die Novelle etliche Änderungen enthalte, die vor allem der Regierungspartei Recht und Gerechtigkeit (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) zupasskommen dürften.So sieht die Gesetzesänderung die Möglichkeit zur Einrichtung neuer Stimmbezirke (obwody głosowania) vor. Konnten diese vor der Novelle 500 bis 4000 Bewohner umfassen, sieht die Gesetzesänderung vor, dass fortan bereits ab 200 Einwohnern ein neuer Stimmbezirk eingerichtet werden kann. Neu ist ebenfalls, dass die Einwohner selbst die Einrichtung eines neuen Stimmbezirks beantragen können. Hierfür müssen sich fünf Prozent der wahlberechtigten Bewohner eines Stimmbezirks an den zuständigen Wahlkommissar wenden, der die Neuaufteilung eines bestehenden Stimmbezirks und die Einrichtung eines neuen Wahllokals vornehmen kann. Diese Möglichkeit dürfte vor allem auf dem Land genutzt werden. Kritiker stimmen darin überein, dass diese Änderung die PiS begünstigt, die eine große Unterstützung innerhalb der ländlichen Bevölkerung genießt. Denn je kleiner Stimmbezirke sind, desto näher liegt das Wahllokal und desto höher dürfte die Wahlbeteiligung sein. Auch ein weiteres Element der Gesetzesnovelle dürfte tendenziell auf die potenzielle Wählerschaft der PiS abzielen. So sieht das Gesetz vor, dass die Gemeinden für Wähler mit Behinderung sowie für Wähler ab 60 Jahren einen kostenlosen Transport vom Wohnort zum Wahllokal organisieren müssen, sofern der Wähler diesen Bedarf bis 13 Tage vor dem Wahltermin mitgeteilt hat. Somit realisiert die Gesetzesänderung den Vorschlag des PiS-Vorsitzenden Jarosław Kaczyński, der Ende 2022 darüber sprach, zusätzliche Wahllokale in Ortschaften zu schaffen, in denen die Bevölkerung regelmäßig zur Kirche geht (miejscowości kościelne), also Ortschaften, die sich in der Regel auf dem Land befinden, deren Einwohnerschaft großteils bereits das Seniorenalter erreicht hat und daher, statistisch gesehen, mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit für die PiS stimmen wird.

Thomas A. Berry and Isaiah McKinney


Corner Post is a convenience store and truck stop in Watford City, North Dakota. Like many similar shops, its business model relies on a high volume of small‐​dollar transactions. And when customers pay for those purchases with debit cards, merchants like Corner Post pay a set fee to banks to process the transactions. Although this fee is 21 cents per transaction, the cost adds up quickly over numerous sales and is a significant operating expense for any business model that relies on small‐​dollar purchases.
The rate of 21 cents per transaction was set in 2011, when the Federal Reserve Board issued a regulation establishing that fee amount. The actual cost for banks to process each transaction ranges from 3.6 to 5 cents.
Corner Post opened for business in 2018, and a few years later it challenged this fee‐​setting regulation under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. Corner Post argued that the 21‐​cent rate set by the regulation was not "reasonable and proportional to the cost" that the banks incurred and that the regulation therefore exceeded the Board's statutory authority.
But the district court never reached the merits of Corner Post's legal argument. Instead, the court dismissed Corner Post's case as being brought too late, holding that the suit was barred by the APA's statute of limitations. The APA sets a six‐​year time limit for legal challenges to agency rules, and the court held that this time limit started running for Corner Post when the regulation was issued in 2011. The court thus held that Corner Post's time to challenge the rule expired in 2017, a year before Corner Post opened its doors for business.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's decision, and Corner Post petitioned the Supreme Court for review. The Cato Institute has now filed an amicus brief in support of Corner Post's petition (with thanks to a team of Wiley Rein attorneys who took the lead on drafting our brief: Jeremy Broggi, Michael Showalter, Boyd Garriott, and Hannah Bingham).
Our brief explains that under the text of the APA's statute of limitations, the six‐​year clock does not start until a particular plaintiff is actually injured (for Corner Post, it did not start until the business opened in 2018). For hundreds of years, the start date for statutes of limitations has traditionally been the date of a plaintiff's injury, and nothing in the APA's text contradicts that traditional understanding.
The government argues that since the APA provides for review of "final agency action," the statute of limitations implicitly begins for all plaintiffs whenever the "final agency action" occurs (in this case, when the regulation was issued in 2011). But nothing in the text of the APA requires this reading; Congress did not explicitly depart from the traditional rule that the clock starts on the date of injury. The better reading of the APA is that the clock does not start until a plaintiff is injured and the agency action is final—in other words, finality is a necessary but not sufficient requirement to start the six‐​year clock.
The government's argument would impermissibly protect agencies from lawsuits by businesses that did not even exist when a regulation was issued. Since Corner Post opened more than six years after the Board's regulation was issued, the government's approach would mean Corner Post never had a chance to challenge these burdensome regulations. The Supreme Court should take this case to correct the Eighth Circuit's erroneous decision and allow Corner Post and others to challenge unlawful regulations.

Early
voting statistics from Caddo Parish show Republican sheriff candidate former
Shreveport City Councilor John Nickelson
well may be doing what he has to in order to win this weekend's election, but
it might not be enough.

Nickelson and Democrat former city Chief
Administrative Office Henry Whitehorn have locked horns for the position now
twice, with the pair emerging from the field in the general election where
Nickleson had led Whitehorn 45 percent to 35 percent, and Republican candidates
overall receiving 53 percent. Then almost five weeks later famously they virtually
tied, with the certified total showing Whitehorn up by one vote. However, a rubber
match became necessary when courts found too many irregularities in election
conduct to make the actual result indeterminate.

Whitehorn
closed the gap because turnout differential swung in his favor, where
Republican-favoring precinct turnout fell 5.3 percent while Democrat-favoring
precinct turnout increased 1.2 percent, even as overall turnout dropped 2.4
percent. If Nickelson could mitigate each of those changes even slightly, he
would win, and increasing base turnout seemed the way to do it based upon the
trends had gone adversely for him as a result of falling turnout.

At first glance, early
voting statistics from the election trifecta could indicate that turnout
jump. In the general election, 15,300 voted early, slightly more via absentee (numbers
which also include ballots received by post a few days after the election and counted
then, but which were mailed thus filled out prior to election day) than in person,
with a white/black ratio of 1.35:1 and a Democrat/Republican ratio of 1.45:1.
In the runoff, 15,485 voted early with very slightly more absentee than in
person, with a white/black ratio of 1.19:1 and a Democrat/Republican ratio of
1.51:1.

Between these, early voting did seem to indicate on
a proportional basis that Whitehorn would run down Nickelson. The portion of the
early electorate of Democrats and blacks, who for the most part vote for
Democrats (and black Democrats like Whitehorn in particular), both increased,
and aggregate election data at the precinct level appears correlated with that.

However, the numbers also show the proportionality
effect – that early voting is a pre-echo of the election as a whole – can't account
for the raw numbers involved. Overall turnout dropped 2.4 points or in raw
numbers 6 percent, but early voting increased by 1.2 percent. This points to a
substitution effect – that early voting cannibalizes election day voting in a
way not exactly proportional to election returns as a whole, or that to some
degree it is unrepresentative of what the overall results will be.

These covary. In an election with perfect
proportionality, early voting numbers will match exactly the overall numbers in
turnout percentage, partisan ratio, and race ratio. Introduce the substitution
effect with its implicit assumption that early voters are unrepresentative of
the electorate's final composition, and you cannot have perfect
proportionality, and as the substitution effect grows, proportionality's influence
wanes as it hurtles towards greater imperfection.

One test to see whether the implicit assumption holds
is to review election day ratios. For the general election, the white/black
ratio was 1.57:1, and the Democrat/Republican ratio was 1.11:1. For the runoff,
respectively these were 1.20:1 and 1.38:1.

To summarize a comparison of early voting versus
election day voting for each contest, in the general election, blacks and
Democrats – who are often the same – were more likely to vote early. But in the
runoff, the racial ratio was practically the same for each period while fewer Democrats
proportionally voted on election day. And to summarize across election days
voting, on Nov. 18 relatively more blacks and Democrats turned out than on Oct.
14.

The raw numbers show this was a matter of GOP
voters rolling off and additional Democrats popping up. Overall Republican
voter turnout plunged 12.6 percent while Democrats saw a 3.6 percent boost. As
well, black voters swelled by 6.8 percent while whites dropped 14.2 percent.

Taking all of this into consideration, firstly it
appears white conservative Democrats disproportionately tended to pass on the
runoff, who likely would have voted for Nickelson. The small portion of white
liberal Democrats – key to an election where the electorate has a slight white plurality
over blacks and aggregate precinct results showed whites very likely to vote
for Nickelson and blacks even more likely to vote for Whitehorn – seems to have
held steady in turnout for Whitehorn.

Secondly, without Republican Gov. Jeff Landry at
the top of the ticket, Nickelson turnout struggled while Whitehorn didn't
suffer the same fallout, a reflection that Democrats largely had conceded statewide
elections and so marginal voters weren't there in the general election to roll
off in the runoff, but also give credit to Whitehorn's campaign that a few hundred
more Democrats and blacks – again, mostly the same people – turned out for the
runoff.

And perhaps related to these, thirdly, Nickelson somewhat
underperformed in rural precincts. Reviewing the runoff, of the six rural precincts
of at least 85 percent white registrants, in four there was a lower turnout than
in the parish overall of which in three he also had a lower proportion of the
vote than that of white registrants. And in the other two where that was the
reverse, one had higher turnout and one had lower. Perhaps this had to do in
part with the lingering aftermath of a controversial
proposal during his time on the Council that would have criminalized legal
gun owners for leaving firearms visible in their vehicles.

Finally, a higher turnout would appear to be in
Nickelson's favor. His voters seem to have rolled off disproportionately as turnout
declined, so logically they would be the most likely entrants by returning to
the fold as a cause of turnout going higher.

As to what the early voting numbers mean whether
turnout will change and to whose advantage, while absentee ballots remain
around the same level as in the previous two elections, in person voting
skyrocketed, adding nearly 10,000 and close to 125 percent more than in the
runoff, to total 25,075 (again, a few absentee ballots will trickle in over the
next several days to push this higher). The racial ratio was 1.07:1 and the
partisan ratio was 1.51:1. The raw numbers show an increase of whites over the
runoff of 53 percent and of blacks 71 percent, and an increase of Democrats by
56 percent and of Republicans by 62 percent.

This means a slightly higher turnout among likely
Whitehorn supporters, but if a substitution effect is particularly strong in
his favor that might be to Nickelson's advantage. There appears to be a particularly
large one this time, as absentee ballots are right around the levels of the
previous elections, indicating that a large portion of the in person gain comes
from people who would have voted this Saturday – and why not, since this is the
third go around and the candidates have been at it for months with few other
races to distract voters, who were well aware of who they wanted before the
runoff, so they might as well get it over with. While some observers dare to
suggest substantial turnout gains over the previous pair because of the huge
early voting numbers (over half of the previous pair's totals), much of that
will subside on Saturday, leaving it likely at best marginally higher than the
general election's.

That means not a lot of new voters from the runoff
who would help Nickelson. He has to hope who's showing up additionally in the
early voting disproportionately are Whitehorn supporters. But even if that's
not much the case, that he trailed by just a single runoff vote means even the
most marginal improvement pushes him across the finish line. Yet on the theory
that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, these early voting
numbers won't substitute perfectly and therefore favor Whitehorn.

I have a new article where I make the case that the U.S. financial system acts as a banker to the world: it tends to issue safer assets to foreigners while acquiring claims to riskier assets abroad. As a result, the United States' balance sheet with the rest of the world looks like a bank's balance sheet. This banker-to-the-world role has becoming even more important over the past few decades as the financial integration of the world economy has not been matched by a proportional deepening of financial markets.



This is not a novel idea. Charles Kindleberger first made this point in 1965. Subsequent work by Gorinchas and Rey (2007), Caballero et al. (2008), Caballero and Krishnamurthy (2009), Mendoza et al. (2009), Forbes (2010), He et al. (2016), Gourinchas et al. (2017), Matteo (2017), Krishnamurthy and Lustig (2019), and others all build on this point. Here is my own contribution to this debate. So while some may find this view surprising, it is actually a well established idea in the literature.



In my article I provided figures that show the asset and liability side of the U.S. balance sheet with the rest of the world. In these graphs, I highlighted in blue the more liquid and safe assets while I put in shades of pink the riskier assets. 



The figure below takes these groupings and divides them as a share of total assets on their respective sides of the balance sheet. This figure reveals the safe asset share of assets on the liability side (blue line) has come down some since the financial crisis, but still remains at about 60 percent of the financial assets we export to foreigners. The riskier share of assets the U.S. owns abroad has stayed relatively stable at about 70 percent. Again, this looks like a bank's balance sheet.










To be clear, one can quibble with what I define as a safe assets. Here I take a broad view that there is a continuum of safe assets. Specifically, I include currency, bank deposits, treasuries, GSEs, repos, commercial paper, money market mutual funds, trade receivables. corporate bonds, and derivatives. Some of these assets are clearly safer and more liquid than others, but the demand for them remains elevated indicating they are perceived as relatively safe by the rest of the world.  



One may also wonder if the demand for U.S. safe assets is declining since foreign holding of treasuries has flatlined since about 2015. The chart below, however,  shows that the export of safe and liquid assets to the rest of the world continues to grow in absolute dollar terms even if treasury holdings by the rest of the world has stalled.  










I noted in the article that this banker-to-world role comes at a cost: a tendency for the dollar to be overvalued and, as a result, cause the United States to run trade deficits. It also leads to U.S. budget deficits since that is only way to create more treasury securities. Finally, this role means that the U.S. economy will tend to be more leveraged than otherwise would be the case. It is not clear to me how to eliminate these costs without causing more harm to the global economy. Until there is another viable mass producer of safe assets, we are stuck with these costs. 



P.S. See Frances Coppola and Karl Smith who make similar arguments. 



Update: It is worth noting that the BIS reports just over $11 trillion in dollar-denominated debt is issued outside the United States. Between this $11 trillion and the just over $16 trillion noted above, there is almost $28 trillion of relatively liquid dollar assets abroad. This large amount of dollar assets abroad makes it unlikely Facebook's Libra or Mark Carney's SHC proposal will ever replace the dollar as the reserve currency.