Group items tagged

That’s no accident. In the three decades since the end of the Soviet Union, those men have faced industrial collapse, the disappearance of millions of jobs and declining life expectancy. The war promises to change that downward trajectory, transforming the losers of the past three decades into new heroes

For many Russian men and their families, the war may be a horror. But it’s also the last opportunity to fix their lives.

First, there’s the money. The federal base salary for a soldier is about $2,500 a month, with payment of $39,000 for wounding and up to $65,000 in the case of death. Compared with a median monthly salary of $545, this is a handsome reward — even more so for the approximately 15.3 million Russians living below the poverty line.

there’s much more on offer, too. For those coming back from the front, the state promises fast-tracked entry into civil service jobs, health insurance, free public transportation, as well as free university education and free food at school for their children. And for those who were imprisoned and joined the Wagner private military company, the state grants freedom.

Today’s soldiers live in the shadows of the generation that won the war against Nazism. In Russian public culture, no honor is higher than to be a veteran of the “Great Patriotic War,” something the regime has capitalized on by framing today’s war as a kind of historical re-enactment of World War II.

As one soldier wrote on Telegram in February, the war confers “a sense of belonging to the great male deed, the deed of defending our Motherland.”

By allowing men to escape the difficulties of everyday life — with its low pay and routine frustrations — the war offers a restoration of male self-worth. These men, at last, matter.

Feelings of inferiority, too, are swept aside in the fraternal atmosphere of the front. “It doesn’t matter who you are, how you look,” as one soldier put it. In the communal life of conflict, many of the distinctions of civilian life dissolve. War is an equalizer.

Mistrust of the rich, belief that sanctions actually strengthen the economy and disdain for émigrés all attest to a class-based experience of the conflict. By participating in the war, millions of Russians at the bottom of the social ladder can emerge as the country’s true heroes, ready for the ultimate sacrifice. The risk may be grave and the financial reward uncertain. But the chance to rise in esteem and respect makes the effort worthwhile.

The longer the war drags on, bringing more casualties, loss and broken promises, the harder it may become to sustain such levels of acceptance

it may not. Collective emotional turmoil could deepen the feeling that the war must be won, no matter what. In the absence of an alternative vision of the future, Vladimir Putin and his war will continue to hold sway.

After the 2008 financial crisis, it took 12 years for employment rates to get back to pre-crisis levels. But only three years after Covid struck, employment is fully back for almost every age and demographic group.

At this point the employed percentage of adults is at or above early 2020 levels for every age group except those 70 or older.

The overall unemployment rate is only 3.5 percent; we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969. Black unemployment is at a record low. There’s good news everywhere you look.

So whaddya know: Provide enough job opportunities, and lazy video-game-playing Americans will take those jobs and, apparently, demonstrate enough skill that employers want to keep them.

Full employment also turns out to be a powerful force for equality, on multiple dimensions. The gap between Black and white unemployment is now a fifth of what it was when Ronald Reagan proclaimed “morning in America.” A tight labor market has led to big gains for low-wage workers, sharply reducing overall wage inequality.

The big question now is whether the good news on jobs is somehow a mirage, based on an unsustainably hot labor market that will have to cool off drastically to contain inflation.

what does the current data say? To some extent the answer is, whatever you want to hear.

maybe the important point is that almost every measure of inflationary pressure I’m aware of has improved substantially over the past year, with no increase in the unemployment rate

there’s good reason to believe that we can sustain the incredibly good job market we have right now, even while getting inflation under control. And it will be a real tragedy if exaggerated fear of inflation causes the Federal Reserve to push interest rates too high for too long, leading to a gratuitous recession that throws away many of the gains we’ve made.

Republicans keep insisting President Biden’s policies have been an economic disaster, and that even the mainstream news media has tended to emphasize inflation — which has been a nasty shock, even though it may be subsiding — rather than job gains.

So it does seem worth pointing out that at this point Biden is presiding over the best job market America has seen in a generation — specifically since the boom of the late Clinton years. And that, as Biden himself might (almost) say, is a big something deal.

The simplest way of outlining the ideal university policy toward protest is to say that it should protect free speech, respect civil disobedience and uphold the rule of law

universities should protect the rights of students and faculty on a viewpoint-neutral basis, and they should endeavor to make sure that every member of the campus community has the same access to campus facilities and resources.

That also means showing no favoritism between competing ideological groups in access to classrooms, in the imposition of campus penalties and in access to educational opportunities

Indefinitely occupying a quad violates the rights of other speakers to use the same space. Relentless, loud protest violates the rights of students to sleep or study in peace. And when protests become truly threatening or intimidating, they can violate the civil rights of other students, especially if those students are targeted on the basis of their race, sex, color or national origin.

Noise limits can protect the ability of students to study and sleep. Restricting the amount of time any one group can demonstrate on the limited open spaces on campus permits other groups to use the same space.

Civil disobedience is distinct from First Amendment protected speech. It involves both breaking an unjust law and accepting the consequences.

In a 1965 appearance on “Meet the Press,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the principle perfectly: “When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly — not uncivilly — and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty.”

But what we’re seeing on a number of campuses isn’t free expression, nor is it civil disobedience. It’s outright lawlessness

reasonable time, place and manner restrictions are indispensable in this context. Time, place and manner restrictions are content-neutral legal rules that enable a diverse community to share the same space and enjoy equal rights.

Administrators and faculty members will often abandon any pretense of institutional neutralit

For many administrators, the very idea of neutrality is repugnant. It represents a form of complicity in injustice that they simply can’t and won’t stomach. So they nurture and support one side. They scorn the opposition, adopting a de facto posture that says, “To my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

In March, a small band of pro-Palestinian students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville pushed past a security guard so aggressively that they injured him, walked into a university facility that was closed to protest, and briefly occupied the building. The university had provided ample space for protest, and both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students had been speaking and protesting peacefully on campus since Oct. 7.

But these students weren’t engaged in free speech. Nor were they engaged in true civil disobedience. Civil disobedience does not include assault, and within hours the university shut them down. Three students were arrested in the assault on the security guard, and one was arrested on charges of vandalism. More than 20 students were subjected to university discipline; three were expelled; and one was suspended.

The University of Chicago has long adhered to the Kalven principles, a statement of university neutrality articulated in 1967 by a committee led by one of the most respected legal scholars of the last century, Harry Kalven Jr. At their heart, the Kalven principles articulate the view that “the instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars.”

A prosecutor may well have political motivation, but his motivation isn’t what determines a verdict; he must prove his charges in court, through an adversarial process. Despite the yelps that Trump was tried in a kangaroo court, his lawyers had every opportunity to challenge jurors, introduce evidence, question prosecution witnesses, and call their own.

Trump is also right to note that his business practices and records didn’t attract anywhere near as much attention before he was a politician. Trump was famous before he was president, but becoming the most famous person on Earth is something else entirely. With the perks of fame comes more scrutiny. (Just ask Hunter Biden.)

Supporters of the Trump prosecution should be honest about the possibility of political motive underlying the case. The danger of political bias is an inherent flaw in the system of elected district attorneys that most jurisdictions around the U.S. use.

Capone was a notorious gangster, involved in murder, bootlegging, and racketeering, so it seems ludicrous that he was nailed on something as procedural and dry and quotidian as evading taxes.

the Capone case. The mobster committed many crimes, but he did them in a way that made them hard to prosecute. Like many organized-crime bosses, he made sure to speak about things elliptically and keep his fingerprints (literal and metaphorical) off things. (Does this sound familiar?) But Capone couldn’t hide financial crimes as effectively. Prosecutors went after him for tax evasion because that’s what they could prove. It is not selective prosecution to go charge someone for a crime for which you have evidence, even if you don’t charge them for the other, more difficult-to-prove crimes. It is realism. It’s also justified and just.

Republican cries of political prosecution can also be understood in another, better way. Because Trump’s defenders are unwilling to argue that he didn’t falsify the records or that it shouldn’t be a crime, they’re actually arguing that he should get a pass on crimes they view as minor because he’s a political figure

“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” Trump said at a press conference this morning. Indeed, that’s the point of equal justice under the law.