With the U.S. National Debt closing in on the $20 trillion mark, there has been a lot of conversation in Washington about debt and its role in government. And most of that conversation right now revolves around President-elect Donald Trump.
Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has raised over $3.7 million in just over a day for a vote recount in the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Jill Stein is concerned over voting irregularities and electronic voting machines that are susceptible to hacking, which registered 25% off all votes without leaving behind a paper record. Stein says that if there ever was a time in an election for a vote recount, it would be now, with all the shenanigans and hackings that accompanied the 2016 US presidential race.
Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Far from being outdated and past their time, the ideas behind the electoral college are greatly underutilized. The electoral college is thought by many to be somehow uniquely American, but this is not the case. Similar mechanisms — sometimes called "double-majority" systems — have been used in many different times and places in political history.
The Gaza strip may become uninhabitable by 2020 if nothing is done to address the water crisis in the world’s largest open prison. 1.9 million Palestinians are trapped in a narrow strip of land, living under an illegal blockade enforced by Israel. Only 10 percent of Gazans have access to clean drinking water, the World Bank said on Tuesday, calling the situation “alarming”. Gaza’s water supply could be irreversibly ruined soon as sea water seeps into destroyed infrastructure making the Palestinian territory uninhabitable.
Donald Trump nearly sparked a diplomatic scandal earlier this week when he tweeted that Nigel Farage, the interim UKIP leader and the lead Brexit campaigner, would be great as Britain's ambassador to Washington, a suggestions which Theresa May's government quickly dismissed saying there was "no vacancy" as Kim Darroch is currently serving as ambassador to Washington, and leading to an outpouring of protests from the UK press accusing Trump of meddling in sovereign affairs.