[Baltimore Sun] Manafort indictment shows company Trump keeps

President Donald Trump is right: Most of the accusations against Paul Manafort in the indictment that Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought Monday morning relate to activities from long before he became the Trump campaign manager in the spring of 2016. The word “Trump” doesn’t appear anywhere in the 31-page document, and the only Russian influence it mentions relates to politics in Ukraine, not the United States.Still, the public won’t be so quick to dismiss this development as “fake news” and

Nov. 1, 2017

[Leon Willems] Publicizing the plight of journalists

Every five days, on average, somewhere in the world, a journalist is murdered for being a journalist. Nine out of 10 times, no one is prosecuted, creating an atmosphere of impunity that extends beyond death threats or violence. Imprisonment of journalists is at an all-time high, and members of the press routinely suffer harassment and intimidation while on assignment. Today, journalism is one of the most dangerous professions anywhere.One way to address this state of affairs is by talking about

Nov. 1, 2017

[Leonid Bershidsky] Most dictators self destruct. Why?

With authoritarian rulers ascendant in many parts of the world, one wonders what must happen for their countries to liberalize. The likes of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey or Xi Jinping in China are entrenched, experienced and not unpopular -- so should their opponents simply resign themselves to an open-ended period of illiberal rule?　According to Daniel Treisman, a UCLA political scientist, that’s not necessarily the case. For a recent paper, he analyzed 218 episodes

Oct. 31, 2017

[Steven Bucci] US in Niger -- and dozens of other countries -- for good reason

Of all the questions that linger over the loss of four US special operations soldiers in Niger, perhaps the most persistent is: Why are we there?We’re used to having US troops in Asia and the Middle East, but Niger? Is our national security enhanced by what they were trying to do there?The short answer is yes. To understand why, take a closer look at what our troops were doing — and why.The mission in Niger, which began in 2013, was a classic special operations operation more specifically known

Oct. 31, 2017

[Carl P. Leubsdorf] If Trump would stand up to the right wing he could notch some political success

With rare exceptions, Donald Trump has refused to reach out to opposition lawmakers and voters to build a governing coalition that would bolster his prospects for passing his prime proposals.He has paid a political price, exacerbating the existing partisan atmosphere, diminishing his own standing and forcing his congressional Republican allies to rely totally on their own, sometimes divided troops in a way that has proved challenging.Though partisan tension continues to be high, as evidenced by

Oct. 31, 2017

[Noah Smith] Rise of creative class worked little too well

It’s the rare public intellectual who admits to making big mistakes. Usually, the rule is to defend everything you’ve ever said, in an attempt to maintain a reputation for wisdom. Richard Florida, the noted urbanist and professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is among the select few to go back and reevaluate his big ideas.　In his 2002 book, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Florida both anticipated and helped promote the trends that would come to define the US

Oct. 30, 2017

[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette] Boost to Brexit? Possible Russian role should be checked out

The British are now looking into whether President Vladimir Putin’s Russia intervened in the United Kingdom’s June 2016 referendum on continued membership in the European Union. “Brexit” won with about 52 percent, but it’s unclear whether Russian interference in the affair, through social media buys or other means, made a difference. Many people in Britain long have had reservations about integration and complaints about the EU, so the outcome did not come as a shot from the dark.At the same tim

Oct. 30, 2017

[Doyle McManus] If Trump tax plan passes, don’t count on raise

President Donald Trump and his Republican allies face a basic problem as they try to build public support for a cut in corporate taxes: Most Americans think big businesses pay too little in taxes, not too much. So the president and his staff decided to rebrand the proposal. Don’t think of it as a tax cut for corporations, they argue; think of it as a pay increase for ordinary workers.“The average American family would get a $4,000 raise under the President’s tax cut plan,” Trump’s spokeswoman, S

Oct. 30, 2017

[Christopher Balding] Can China inflate its debt away?

China is witnessing something most of the world’s major economies haven’t seen in quite some time: rising prices. With growth strong but debt at perhaps 300 percent of gross domestic product, that’s a welcome sign. The danger is that China’s government now hopes inflation will solve its other problems.From 2013 until this year, the GDP deflator, a broad measure of prices, never rose by more than 2.3 percent. Most of the time, it hovered just above zero. This pushed up the real cost of China’s de

Oct. 30, 2017

[Edward Niedermeyer] Silicon Valley learns to play nice with Detroit

Ever since Silicon Valley’s autonomous cars and mobility apps captured the public imagination, so too has the prospect of an epic battle -- between the forces of high industry and high technology. Nurtured in part by recent history and in part by the part of our brains that loves to watch a good fight, the expectation of an auto-versus-tech throwdown has already become nearly inescapable.　And yet, after the first exchange of rhetorical salvos and billion-dollar investments, there are already sig

Oct. 30, 2017

[Christine M. Flowers] Is #Metoo a modern version of the Salem witch trials?

It’s been a little over a week since the #Metoo campaign found its mojo, prompting social media to erupt in a “girl power” storm of women who decided that enough was enough. I wrote about it in my last column and really had no intention of returning to the same trough so soon.But I simply can’t ignore what is happening with this sexual assault business, and at the risk of getting more hate mail (and a few timid “attagirls!”) this week’s column is going to be #Metoo 2.1.Or, as I prefer to call it

Oct. 30, 2017