Europe: Over- and Under-Represented in the G7

I contend that in having both federal and state-level officials attending the G7 international meetings, Europe is over-represented even as the E.U. itself is sidelined. At least this was the case at the meeting in June, 2026 in the E.U. state of France. The staying power of the seven countries comprising the Group could be considered as antiquated, given the relevance and importance of the E.U. in international relations. The very intractability of institutional arrangements (i.e., structures) even in the face of a changing political environment can thus be viewed as problematic. By implication, the exclusion of the E.U. from the United Nations international organization can be viewed as effectively relegating the UN as a structurally-frozen “has been” by the 2020s.

The full essay is at "Europe."

As U.S. President, Was Obama Really Anti-Israel?

In a poll in 2011, only 22% of Jewish voters in the U.S. said they approved of President Obama’s handling of Israel. Dan Senor pointed to the erosion of Obama’s Jewish fund-raising as another sign that the president was losing Jewish support in the United States. A poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Obama in 2008, only 64% had already donated or planned to donate to his re-election campaign of 2012. While a politician would undoubtedly try to placate and mollify the unsatisfied electorate, a statesman acting in the American interest might conclude that those voters were wrong in their assessment that the president’s policy was “anti-Israel.”

The full essay is at "Was Obama Anti-Israel?"

On the Various Causes of the Financial Crisis of 2008: Have We Learned Anything?

In January, 2011, the Financial Crisis Commission announced its findings. The usual suspects were not much of a surprise; what is particularly notable is how little had changed on Wall Street since the crisis in September of 2008. According to The New York Times, "The report examined the risky mortgage loans that helped build the housing bubble; the packaging of those loans into exotic securities that were sold to investors; and the heedless placement of giant bets on those investments." In spite of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act of 2010 and the panel's report, The New York Times reported that "little on Wall Street has changed." One commissioner, Byron S. Georgiou, a Nevada lawyer, said the financial system was “not really very different” in 2010 from before the crisis. “In fact," he went on, "the concentration of financial assets in the largest commercial and investment banks is really significantly higher today than it was in the run-up to the crisis, as a result of the evisceration of some of the institutions, and the consolidation and merger of others into larger institutions.” Richard Baker, the president of the Managed Funds Association, told The Financial Times, "The most recent financial crisis was caused by institutions that didn't know how to adequately manage risk and were over-leveraged. And I worry that if there is another crisis, it will be because the same institutions have failed to learn from the mistakes of the past." From the testimonies of managers of some of those institutions, one might surmise that the lack of learning in the two years after the crisis was due to a refusal to admit to even a partial role in crisis.  In other words, there appears to have been a crisis of mentality, which, as it contains intractable assumptions and ideological beliefs, as well as stubborn defensiveness, is not easy to dislodge such that legislation past Dodd-Frank could ever be passed.

Lehman was a particularly inept player leading up to the crisis.     Zambio

The full essay is at "Causes of the Financial Crisis."

Physicians and Lawyers: On the Presumption of Ignorance

It would surprise virtually every American (but only a few Europeans) to know that neither the JD nor the MD degree is a doctorate.   Each one is the first degree in its school, or discipline.  Yet we presume them to evince advanced knowledge, even allowing people with two undergraduate degrees to be "professors" (really instructors) in American law and medical schools. In the school of law, the sequence of degrees is: JD (same as the LLB), LLM (hint: M...Masters), and JSD (Doctorate in Juridical Science). The JSD degree includes advance study, a comprensive exam (an academic exam graded by faculty--not a industry-qualifying exam like the bar), and a defended dissertation. A doctoral degree must be the terminal degree of a field, contain a comprehensive exam, and include significant original research in a defended dissertation. The JD misses on all three points. The title of the first degree in law, the LLB (bachalors in letters of law) was replaced with "JD" largely for marketing purposes in 1901 in the founding of the U of Chicago law school (by three Harvard professors) because prospective students were complaining about having two "B" degrees after seven years of school.  People don't like to think they have gone to school for seven or eight years for two undergraduate degrees, but this is precisely what they have done. Nevertheless, the new law school in need of students complied with the "customer" complaint with a feat of mirrored marketing that was perhaps intentionally ambiguous.  To eviscerate the ambiguity in  Juris Doctor and a doctorate, one must look beyond the mere words.

The full essay is at "Professionals Over the Top." 

Educating Kids in American Schools: Early-Morning Zombies Subject to the Status Quo

It is natural to assume that the people in the business of educating children are highly committed to the dissemination of knowledge. That many school-administrators would stand by, and even enable the continuance of practices that compromise learning is difficult to believe; that fallacious reasoning would be used could only be reckoned as highly bizarre, and oxymoronic. Yet all this applies to dragging kids to school before their bodies have woken up.

The complete essay is at “Educating Kids in American Schools.”