Politics

Barely a day after Gary Cohn told an audience at the annual meeting of the American Bankers Association that Congress has a “unique opportunity” to pass tax reform by the end of the year, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin – who shares responsibility for the administration’s tax agenda alongside Cohn – acknowledged the truth about Trump’s No. 1 legislative priority: namely, that it would be “extraordinary” if the Republicans could pass tax reform by year’s end.

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

While I’ve touched on the Catalan independence movement in several recent posts, I want to make one thing clear from the start. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether or not independence is the right move for the region and its people. It would be completely inappropriate for me, a U.S. citizen living in Colorado, to lecture people 5,000 miles away on how they should organize their political lives.

Sweden's new ambassador to Iceland has sparked a major controversy after warning that Sweden is "in the process of dismantling democracy" and could be on a slippery slope towards technocracy or a dictatorship.

Håkan Juholt, a former leader of the centre-left Social Democrat party and ambassador to Iceland since September, made the comments in an interview with the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

"How old is your son? Four?" he asks the reporter.

 

Across the globe, the spread of right- and left-wing populism and authoritarian politics have shaken the very foundations of democracy.

As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, a new survey from Pew Research has found that people across the globe are generally unhappy with the functionality of their political systems, though levels of satisfaction with democracy vary hugely between countries.

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Among the many self-flattering epithets it gives itself, the US has always claimed to be the “leader of the free world”. It’s a rather patronizing notion that America views itself as a selfless protector and benefactor of its European allies and others. This fairytale depiction of the world is coming to a rude awakening as American power buffets against the reality of a multi-polar world.