On Yale’s Anti-Conservative Ideological Faculty

In 2025, “Yale professors made 1,099 donations to federal political campaigns and partisan groups . . . Not one of the recipients was Republican.”[1] Other than the 2.4% of the donations that went to independent candidates or groups, the rest—97.6%—went to Democrats. In that same year, U.S. President Trump became very publicly critical of elite private universities receiving federal research dollars while being so partisan (i.e., Democrat-leaning). Trump may have been more concerned that the universities benefit by receiving the indirect-expenses portions of federal research-grants while the professors infuse their personal ideologies, which are in conflict with conservatism, into their lectures. I took many, many courses, including at Yale, in my formal and post-doctoral education, and the infusion of a professor’s ideology—nearly always progressive—was not uncommon, especially at Yale.

The full essay is at "On Yale's Anti-Conservative Ideological Faculty."

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1. Jaeha Jang, “Yale Professors Donated Overwhelmingly to Democrats in 2025,” The Yale Daily News, January 14, 2026.

Political and Economic Elites

I submit that in virtually every political party, a distinction can be made between the “rank and file” and the political elite. Kamala Harris may have lost to Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. federal-presidential race in part because Harris had not spoken out enough on economic issues amid soaring inflation on groceries and rents to gain traction with Democratic and Independent voters who had had enough of the “woke” ideological agenda, which includes, for example, moral pressure and even demands that people announce their “pronouns” before speaking. Although President Biden had initiated some anti-trust judicial action, the industry-oligopoly of meat producers, for example, was left untouched. So too were the mega-grocery-store chains. Kroger was later found to have spiked egg and milk prices above the increased costs with impunity, yet Harris did not suggest that the Sherman or Clayton anti-trust acts should be taken out of the garage for spin on the American judicial highways that connect the rank-and-file party-members to party elites mainly in New England, New York, and California. I contend that U.S. Senator Bernie Sander’s anti-oligopoly speeches in conservative Congressional districts gained such numbers in 2025 precisely because the Democratic Party’s elite had lost touch with the party’s “rank and file” voters on economic issues.[1]

The full essay is at "Political and Economic Elites."

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1. An oligopoly is an industry in which a few companies dominate. An oligopoly is between a monopoly and a competitive market. Prices on products can be higher than necessary, the surplus revenue going to profits. Sellers are price-takers rather than price-setters in a competitive market, whereas companies in an oligopolistic industry have sufficient market-power to set prices because consumers have few choices.

An Analysis of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election: On a Party's Self-Serving Elite

The 2024 U.S. Presidential election warrants a post-partem analysis, not so much to affix blame, but primarily so the electorate might grasp the perils when the elite of a political party refuses to apply self-restraint in order to keep the party-wide platform and campaign speeches from reducing to the elite’s own favorite ideology even though it is not held by a significant number of the “rank and file” members (i.e., voters), not to mention independents. In other words, running a massive political party to serve the ideological agenda of what Bertrand Russell calls “the inner ring” can cost a party dearly on election day. I contend that this applied to the Democratic Party, which had become a center-left party still dependent on its non-college, working-class, members, whose cultural values were not necessarily progressive. To be sure, substituting managerially-oriented political calculation for visionary leadership and broad policy proposals that are based on principles rather than particular political interests can easily be perceived generally as small, especially in the context of the horrific military attacks against civilians in Ukraine and Gaza. It is paradoxical that Harris lost working-class voters who were socially conservative, and thus “anti-woke” (e.g., against men in women’s bathrooms and playing in women’s sports) even as she lost some liberals who believed that Harris, in explicitly stating on The View that she would not deviate from Biden, was too timid in standing up to Russia’s Putin (e.g., by withholding long-range missiles) and Israel’s Netanyahu rather than enabling the horrific military crimes against humanity with continued shipments of weapons as if the UN’s court were irrelevant to international law.

The full essay is at "An Analysis of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election."

Two Sizes Fit All: America’s Two-Party-System Stranglehold

A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted in early August 2011 found that “just 17% of likely U.S. voters think that the federal government . . . has the consent of the governed,” while 69% “believe that the government does not have that consent.”[1] Yet an overwhelming number of Congressional incumbents is reelected. Is it that many Americans stay away from the polls on election day, or does the two-party system essentially force a choice? Voting for a third-party candidate risks the defeat of the candidate of the major party closest to one’s views. Such a vote is typically referred to as a protest or throw-away vote. Is it worth driving to the polls to do that?

The full essay is at "A Two Party Duopoly in American Politics."

1. Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen, “Expect a Third-Party Candidate in 2012,” Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2011.

Protest Movements 101

David Johnston of Reuters opined on October 7, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street “protests show signs of sparking a major change in U.S. politics by creating common ground among people with wildly divergent views. The key to their significance will be whether they foster a wholesale change in political leadership in 2013 or whether Americans return a vast majority of incumbents in both parties at all levels of government.” But are “wildly divergent views” really represented, and did the movement translate dramatic camera-ready protest parades and sit-ins into grassroots work to get specifically anti-corporate candidates past the primaries and into office in 2012?  I contend that from the get-go, the Occupy Wall Street movement set itself on a trajectory antithetical to being able to answer both of these questions in the affirmative. In so doing, the movement’s “non-leaders” sowed the seeds of the movement’s demise—or at the very least of being relegated as partisan and thus contained as a sub-part in the system.

The full essay is at "Protest Movements 101."

A Self-Inflicted Compromise on the Debt-Ceiling in the U.S.

On August 1, 2011, the Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders and the Democratic President came to an agreement--a compromise of sorts--on raising the debt-ceiling and spending. According to the deal, cuts of roughly $920 billion over ten years would be followed either by adopting a twelve-member Congressional committee's recommendations (including possible cuts and revenue increases) or watching another round of automatic across-the-board spending cuts. Structurally, this arrangement is unbalanced with respect to the nature of compromise between the two parties. In short, it proffers a relatively easy out for the Republicans.

The full essay is at "A Self-Inflicted Compromise."