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BY MIKE MAGEE On September 25, 1939, Southern California woke with fear of The Lash of St. Francis or El Cordonazo on the horizon. The term refers to northwestern tracking, cyclone-laden stormsContinue reading...

An der Universität St. Gallen findet vom 19.-20. Oktober ein Workshop zum Thema "Resentment & Utopia" statt. Die Organisator:innen gehen von der These aus, dass Ressentiment und Utopie "Kollektivierungswerkzeuge" der Gegenwart sind. Während der Mechanismus des Ressentiments die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Bedeutung und Funktionalität politischer Gefühle lenkt, schafft er gleichzeitig einen negativen, restaurativen emotionalen Kontext durch […]

Other cities can avoid a similar predicament by rejecting streetcar projects altogether.

The growing awareness of educational options and the expansion of school choice have helped parents find and afford the learning environment that works best for their children, including Montessori and Catholic schools.

Nachdem das der Vorbereitung der Bachelorarbeit dienende "Rückkehrerseminar" der Studierenden der Angewandten Politikwissenschaft in den vergangenen zwei Jahren pandemiebedingt in digitaler Form stattfinden musste, erlaubte die sich entspannende Situation in diesem Jahr nun endlich eine Rückkehr zu einer bereits zur Tradition gewordenen Arbeitsstätte. Im atmosphärischen Kloster Sankt Trudpert im schönen Münstertal, stellten die Studierenden die […]

St. John the Baptist Hybrid School provides a great learning option for families who want a blend of in person and at home learning in the Catholic tradition.

A
big victory in self-governance last week might result in ancillary gains for
citizens elsewhere in Louisiana, aided
by meritorious pending legislation.

The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled
that the city of St. George can come into existence. Almost a decade ago, residents
of the southern part of East Baton Rouge Parish, disgruntled with a city-parish
government that they saw taking too many tax dollars out and providing too few
meaningful services, began efforts to incorporate. The saga
had many twists and turns: an initial petitioning effort to put the matter on
the ballot failing by fewer than six dozen signatures after some questionable
vetting by the parish registrar of voters, a second successful petition despite
annexation gamesmanship leading to an election in favor of incorporation marked
by all sorts of distortions levied by parish government officials, a legal
challenge chock full of bogus claims that required a four-year judicial journey,
and then final vindication.

City-parish officials – the parish's now five cities
operate under a consolidated form of government with parish government save for
the four constitutional parish offices – fought tooth-and nail because
separation by a municipality of its size (around 86,000) significantly diminished
their political power, principally from the loss of tax revenues that acted as
a considerable net subsidy to principally Baton Rouge's operations. The suit against
St. George rested on a state law that essentially said the new city had to have
a realistic financial chance to operate and that it didn't have an "adverse"
impact on other governments as part of a larger investigation into the "reasonableness"
of the move.

St. George opponents relied upon a shoddy
financial analysis that the Supreme Court saw through easily that dispensed
with questions about whether the city could stand on its own. As for
determining reasonableness, the Court in part drew upon its conclusions concerning
the finances question and other factors to find it fit the bill. Specifically,
it determined that the remainder of city-parish government had adequate
resources to offset the net changes induced by forming St. George. To put it
another way, there would be no adverse impact to the consolidated government as
long as it made certain policy changes, leaving unsaid that the needed alterations
in spending priorities aren't favored by the current Democrat-majority government.

In the final analysis, a series of attempts to
thwart a desire for citizen self-rule born out of frustration that elites from other
parts of the parish consistently had imposed their preferences itself was thwarted
and the excuse of bad policy-making outcomes as a mitigating factor didn't wash.
Obviously, the win matters greatly for St. George but is of limited significance
elsewhere because of the atypical circumstances: a breakup of a consolidated
government of which few exist in Louisiana.

Where it might have an impact is in establishing momentum
for breakaway school districts. In the state, 61 of 64 school districts follow parish
lines, but EBR is the most fragmented with districts around the three smaller
municipalities of Baker, Central, and Zachary with Baton Rouge and the rest of
the parish comprising the other. Now, with St. George about to come into
existence, another attempt according to its boundaries willproceed according to its
boundaries as initial impetus for St. George's formation came in order to
bridge to a breakaway school district as parents had complaints about school
governance similar to those with parish governance.

The sentiment
isn't isolated to that parish. About the same time a school district was
talked up in southeastern East Baton Rouge, and actually created but unable to
some into fruition because the necessary constitutional change wasn't included,
in southern Caddo Parish parents talked of doing the same. However, it has no
municipality to organize around – the three smaller EBR cities were created with
districts following – but the success of St. George might kickstart efforts to create
a city in that area and have it unite with other small municipalities to form
a district of all Caddo outside of Shreveport, much like the separate Ouachita Parish
and City of Monroe school districts.

Facilitating this and the birth of a St. George-area
school district is HB 6 by
Republican state Rep. Emily Chenevert
that would amend the Constitution to remove case-by-case approval of new districts
statewide and with legislative supermajorities. While its prospects for passage
and statewide voter approval are uncertain, it would fulfill better the spirit
of the Court decision that within it affirmed the Constitution has a bias in
favor of citizen self-determination. Sustenance of that attitude merits the
bill's passage and subsequent voter approval.

A view of the St. Paul skyline, where the city council passed reforms allowing multi-unit homes single-family zones

The story behind the city's ban on unlicensed drone businesses is even weirder than the ban itself.

According to a report from Good Jobs First, St. Louis' public schools took the brunt of the loss at nearly 65 percent of the total.

"Mayreau is 1.5 square miles, water scarce and generationally food insecure; food importation on the island is at an alarming 95-98 percent."

Call for Applications of St Andrews University, Scotland. Deadline: November 17, 2023

'My interest in entangled colonial and imperial histories [has] fuelled questions about how Vincentian heritages are affected by the communities' relationship to land, foreign investment/settlement, and the more-than-human world.'

The Chinese Communist Party commands a tight structure of control. What does this mean for the mechanics of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), amid claims of their infiltration?

In 2011, venture capitalist and dot.com pioneer Marc Andreessen famously declared that 'software is eating the world'. His argument was that services that had once been delivered via traditional means were rapidly being displaced by ...