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It's intriguing to see that the Kremlin still holds an insane amount of power. After disagreements between the Russian President and the Moscow Mayor, Mayor Luzhkov refused to resign. President Medvedev did what any good Russian president would do and fired him. All of Russia's most powerful regional leaders have been sacked or replaced in the last 18 months, all by the Kremlin. How can the Kremlin do this? Because in 2004 Putin "changed the law to abolish elections to these posts". Yes, that's right, the Russian people can no longer elect their own governors.

Currently, Shinzo Abe is the most popular prime minister to date and Liberal Democratic Party leads a coalition which has the majority of the Diet's lower house, but he is in talks to dissolve the lower house and have a snap election. Abe promised to end the heavy deflation that has plagued the Japanese economy since the 90's, but since he has come in, the sales tax has increased from 5%-8% and is threatening to rise to 10%, to make up for the deflation of prices. Unfortunately, right now, the way the lower house is set up, postponing this tax increase would cost Abe the support of big businesses and senior bureaucrats. The governor of the Japanese National Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, believes that raising the tax only stands to help Japan ease its national debt which currently stands at 240% of the GDP. Kuroda fears that if the tax is postponed, Abe will lose credibility with the people, since he promised he would work to fix the Japanese debt problem. Sadly, though Abe promised to bring growth to the economy and mandate his ways to serious economic structural reforms, the majority of his ideas are still sitting soundly in square 1, even with support from the leading coalition in the Japanese Parliament. The only lucky part about this for Abe is that the opposition parties are facing scandals and are not ready for a snap election, so Abe could gain the support he needs to get his ideas moving in the right direction.

The Japanese economy was stagnant from 2002 to 2012. In 2012 Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister, and Haruhiko Kuroda was appointed as the new governor of the Bank of Japan. Abe and Kuroda came in trying to increase inflation from -0.3 percent to 2.0 percent because Japan has seen slow deflation in the 10 years between 2002 and 2012. Questions about the ability of a central bank to increase inflation without increasing national debt, or will money just be pumped into the economy and push the debt crisis further along. Abe and Kuroda hope that the weakened yen will improve Japan's company competitiveness by lowering the cost structure for companies allowing them to produce cheaper products to be consumed in the market. Japan hopes that slowly the price of goods will increase at about 2% a year and hope to see the debt to GDP ratio decrease.

Putin's appointed governor for St. Petersburg is unable to come through with the new subway, evidence of the growing incompetence of Putin's cronies in Russia and the political rot in the state.

The senate race is especially important this year because, if Joe Biden wins, he and the house will be unable to pass anything with the currently Republican senate. The democrats are expected to need to flip four seats to gain a 50-50 tie (that would be decided by the VP and POTUS), and North Carolina is one of the most important of those four. It is a purple state that usually picks a democratic governor, but the Republican president. However, the Democrats have been recently enacting a successful strategy of nominating moderate, veteran candidates and did the same with Thom Tillis. He was expected to win already, when Thom was seen at the Supreme Court announcement party for Amy Barret, without a mask, the day before Trump announced that he had corona virus. Republican voters tend to be more moderate and do believe in the virus in NC, yet are often still Trump supporters. So Tillis is stuck between supporting the president and receiving backlash for Trump's more radical and irresponsible actions. All of which led analysts to believe that the race would be a democratic landslide, until news broke that dem candidate Cal Cunningham was having an affair. Now, it is a complete guess as to who will win as polls have not shown obvious fall out from either incident. (Plus it's a podcast, so it's nice to not look at a screen).

We're all still on tenterhooks for the runoff! Two Senate seats in the balance!

Laws behind recall elections in California, including signature requirements

The California recall election is coming up in 2 weeks, and it's an interesting election because in heavily democratic California, Gavin Newsom may still get recalled due to the ballot and recent issues like COVID-19.

A town in California protests the closing of their local prison, arguing that it destroy their town and economy. As inmate numbers decline, Governor Newsom announced the close of two prisons, and this town is taking it as an attack on their conservative political views.

This is so interesting! I've always wondered about this dynamic, between prison and prison town and state legislatures. I wonder if this holds true at San Quentin.

This is a great article! I sent it to my whole family to read because weirdly enough, we've been to Susanville 3 or 4 times. It's just such a difficult situation and its interesting to see the mindset of the people in the town. Although it is easier said than done, it's perplexing that the people are so devoted to preventing the closure rather than diversifying the economy or striking some kind of compromise. This article goes to show just how deeply prisons are ingrained into the structure of American society and how they function first and foremost as an industry.

President Vladimir Putin is "doubling down" the security across all of Russia, especially along the border. This is due to the counterattack from Ukraine which has taken some of Russia's own territory but also continues to attack Russian settlements along the border of the country. To carry out President Putin's decree, all regional governors have been ordered to set up "operational headquarters" which are ordered to "meet the needs of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, other troops and troop formations"