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oddly, liberal supporters of abortion rights are allied, on this issue, with the conservative descendants of Confederate veterans. Both argue that license plates are private, not state, messages and are therefore protected.

Under constitutional doctrine, when private individuals express themselves, the government cannot discriminate based on their opinions. But when government is speaking (as in messages on public monuments, for example) it can and in fact must pick and choose. License plates are an important form of “mixed speech,” blending both government and private messages. The court must balance the private right to free speech with the government’s interest in conveying its own messages. A license plate is not a bumper sticker. Only a private person can decide to display a specialty plate — but only the state can make it available.

fighting the kind of corruption that plagues not only New York State but the whole nation isn’t just about getting cuffs on the right guy. As with the recent conviction of the former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell for receiving improper gifts and loans, a fixation on plain graft misses the more pernicious poison that has entered our system.

Corruption exists when institutions and officials charged with serving the public serve their own ends. Under current law, campaign contributions are illegal if there is an explicit quid pro quo, and legal if there isn’t. But legal campaign contributions can be as bad as bribes in creating obligations. The corruption that hides in plain sight is the real threat to our democracy.

In our private financing system, candidates are trained to respond to campaign cash and serve donors’ interests. Politicians are expected to spend half their time talking to funders and to keep them happy. Given this context, it’s not hard to see how a bribery charge can feel like a technical argument instead of a moral one.

the White House is trying to establish an alternate reality in which Trump was a competent, focused leader who saved American people from the coronavirus.

it highlights just how asleep Trump was at the switch, despite warnings from experts within his own government and from former Trump administration officials pleading with him from the outside.

Most prominent among them were former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, and Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council Dr. Luciana Borio who beginning in early January used op-eds, television appearances, social media posts, and private entreaties to try to spur the administration into action.

hough Ms. DeVos has been mostly stymied, both by Trumpism’s policy indifference and progressive opposition, her legacy will still be far-reaching and long-lasting. This is not a result of what she made, but of what she broke:

Yet Ms. DeVos has also elevated the education policy agenda of the far right, giving voice and legitimacy to a campaign to fundamentally dismantle public education. That campaign, pursued for the past few decades only in deep-red

states, and often perceived as belonging to the libertarian fringe, has become the de facto agenda of the Republican Party.

The world needs to address the root causes of vaccine hesitancy. We can’t go on believing that the issue can be solved simply by flooding skeptical communities with public service announcements or hectoring people to “believe in science.”

For the past five years, we’ve conducted surveys and focus groups abroad and interviewed residents of the Bronx to better understand vaccine avoidance.

We’ve found that people who reject vaccines are not necessarily less scientifically literate or less well-informed than those who don’t. Instead, hesitancy reflects a transformation of our core beliefs about what we owe one another.

taking on the carbon aristocracy, and their most emissions-intensive modes of travel and leisure, may be the best chance we have to boost our collective “climate morale” and increase our appetite for personal sacrifice — from individual behavior changes to sweeping policy mandates.

the diesel fuel powering Mr. Geffen’s boating habit spews an estimated 16,320 tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent gases into the atmosphere annually, almost 800 times what the average American generates in a year.

The 300 biggest boats alone emit 315,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, based on their likely usage — about as much as Burundi’s more than 10 million inhabitan

That’s not to say that Silicon Valley’s wealthy aren’t donating their money to charity. Many, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Larry Page, have signed the Giving Pledge, committing to dedicating the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. But much of that money is not making its way out into the community.

The San Francisco Bay Area has rapidly become the richest region in the country—the Census Bureau said last year that median household income was $96,777. It’s a place where $100,000 Teslas are commonplace, “raw water” goes for $37 a jug, and injecting clients with the plasma of youth —a gag on the television show Silicon Valley—is being tried by real companies for just $8,000 a pop.

There are many reasons for this, but one of them is likely the increasing popularity of a certain type of charitable account called a donor-advised fund. These funds allow donors to receive big tax breaks for giving money or stock, but have little transparency and no requirement that money put into them is actually spent.

in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play

The Story of Our Time

Let’s start with what may be the most crucial thing to understand: the economy is not like an individual family. Families earn what they can, and spend as much as they think prudent; spending and earning opportunities are two different things. In the economy as a whole, however, income and spending are interdependent: my spending is your income, and your spending is my income. If both of us slash spending at the same time, both of our incomes will fall too. And that’s what happened after the financial crisis of 2008. Many people suddenly cut spending, either because they chose to or because their creditors forced them to; meanwhile, not many people were able or willing to spend more. The result was a plunge in incomes that also caused a plunge in employment, creating the depression that persists to this day.

So what could we do to reduce unemployment? The answer is, this is a time for above-normal government spending, to sustain the economy until the private sector is willing to spend again. The crucial point is that under current conditions, the government is not, repeat not, in competition with the private sector. Government spending doesn’t divert resources away from private uses; it puts unemployed resources to work. Government borrowing doesn’t crowd out private investment; it mobilizes funds that would otherwise go unused.

why is Britain doing exactly what it shouldn’t? Unlike the governments of, say, Spain or California, the British government can borrow freely, at historically low interest rates. So why is that government sharply reducing investment and eliminating hundreds of thousands of public-sector jobs, rather than waiting until the economy is stronger

I’ve posed that question to a number of supporters of the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, sometimes in private, sometimes on TV. And all these conversations followed the same arc: They began with a bad metaphor and ended with the revelation of ulterior motives.

The bad metaphor — which you’ve surely heard many times — equates the debt problems of a national economy with the debt problems of an individual family. A family that has run up too much debt, the story goes, must tighten its belt. So if Britain, as a whole, has run up too much debt — which it has, although it’s mostly private rather than public debt — shouldn’t it do the same? What’s wrong with this comparison?

there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

"Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland."

Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.

Hillary Aides Knew of Private Email Risks

In one June 2011 email, recently-departed Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote that senior State Department officials, “routinely end up using their home email accounts” due to the antiquated nature of the State Department’s technology, and that someone inside or outside the department should issue a statement or op-ed on the “woeful state” of affairs.

On another email chain, in July 2011, Clinton joked about being hacked by the Chinese. After not being able to find the email of a State Department staffer, she wrote: “must be the Chinese!”

Their assuredness is as bold as the company behind the school: IMG, the global sports management conglomerate that has helped propel the competitive leap that high school football has made beyond the traditional community team.

convention is being challenged by a more professional model at the highest levels as top players urgently pursue college scholarships, training becomes more specialized, big business opens its wallet, school choice expands, and schools seek to market themselves through sports, some for financial survival.

Increasingly, prep football talent is being consolidated on powerful public, private, parochial, charter and magnet school teams. And recruiting to those schools is widespread in one guise or another.

what purpose do these places of camaraderie, contemplation and the continuance of manners serve in this digital, disconnected and overworked world?

For one, they’re not as expensive to join as their stately facades would suggest. According to members — the clubs don’t like to discuss prices publicly, for the most part — the annual fees generally range from several hundred dollars to nearly $10,000

“They have admissions policies, but you meet over drinks,” said a private banker not allowed by his firm to speak on the record but who is a member of the Yale Club and the Links Club. “They’re not nearly as restrictive as they were in 1960. You need a sponsor and letters because all of these clubs need to survive. They may have the characteristic in people’s minds of old, WASP elite clubs, but it’s far less true than it once was.”

Nudges, small design changes that can markedly affect individual behavior, have been catching on. These techniques rely on insights from behavioral science

when used ethically, they can be very helpful. But we need to be sure that they aren’t being employed to sway people to make bad decisions that they will later regret.

Three principles should guide the use of nudges:■ All nudging should be transparent and never misleading.■ It should be as easy as possible to opt out of the nudge, preferably with as little as one mouse click.■ There should be good reason to believe that the behavior being encouraged will improve the welfare of those being nudged.

the financial collapse of 2008. The crash demonstrated the emptiness of the claim that markets could regulate themselves. It should have led to the disgrace of neoliberalism—the belief that unregulated markets produce and distribute goods and services more efficiently than regulated ones. Instead, the old order reasserted itself, and with calamitous consequences. Gross economic imbalances of power and wealth persisted.

In the United States, the bipartisan financial elite escaped largely unscathed. Barack Obama, whose campaign benefited from the timing of the collapse, hired the architects of the Clinton-era deregulation who had created the conditions that led to the crisis. Far from breaking up the big banks or removing their executives, Obama’s team bailed them out.

criminal prosecution took a back seat to the stability of the system.

Pension funds have fantastical expectations of the market

With U.S. stocks at all-time highs, it’s more important than ever that investors be brutally realistic about future returns.

You can learn a lot from these folks — if you listen to them and then do the opposite.

Washington’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic is upending one of the most durable patterns of American politics. Throughout history, national emergencies have led to a more powerful and centralized federal government and to the transfer of federal power from Congress to the executive branch. This time, the federal response rests largely on state and local government and private enterprise, with a wave of deregulation clearing the way

It is shaping up to be another round of creative, knowledge-generating federalism.

As the prospect of reopening the economy approaches, Mr. Trump has asserted that he is the ultimate authority. Governors are making state and regional plans, and mayors are claiming to be the deciders for reopening schools.

President Donald Trump has told people around him that he's under pressure to utilize the authorities given to him under the Defense Production Act, after he spent the weekend fielding criticism over why he hasn't mandated that private companies mass produce needed medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump told aides he wanted to be at the microphone during optimal viewing hours -- and his appearance came after he spent the day paying close attention to appeals from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who called on him to use the Defense Production Act instead of having states get into "a mad bidding war" over supplies.

Trump signed the act that grants him authority to direct private companies to ramp up production of needed supplies last week, but has refused to wield his powers for now.

Republican Rep. Mo Brooks is avoiding a lawsuit from his Democratic colleague Rep. Eric Swalwell that seeks to hold him accountable for the January 6 Capitol insurrection -- so much so that Swalwell's attorneys hired a private investigator to find him.

The detail comes in a court filing Wednesday in which Swalwell's attorneys describe difficulty in serving Brooks with the lawsuit. CNN has reached out to Brooks' office for comment.

After Swalwell -- a California Democrat -- sued in March, his attorneys tried to reach the Alabama Republican through calls to the congressman's office and by sending a letter to formally provide him notice he had been sued, a necessary step in this type of court proceeding.