By Paolo von Schirach February 13, 2012 WASHINGTON – The latest and quite distressing news about US public education is that Colorado legislators, on a bipartisan basis, want to pass a law whereby third graders who are below basic in reading skills would have to do the year again. Apparently, similar laws are being considered also in Iowa, [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 9, 2012 WASHINGTON – The confused and fractious Republicans appear terminally incapable of getting their act together, as the latest contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri won by comfortable margins by conservative Rick Santorum show. By now it is pretty obvious: a large chunk of the rank and file GOP activists really do not [...]
By Paolo von Schirach February 6, 2012 WASHINGTON – Remember Yale historian Paul Kennedy and his 1987 tome “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers“? At that time there was a lot of interest in, and indeed concern about his fairly comprehensive narrative focusing on how all major Western Powers, primarily because of the huge [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 31, 2012 WASHINGTON – Wolfgang Ischinger, former German Deputy Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, former Russian Foreign Minister, and San Nunn, former US Senator, and once Chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, in their current role as co-chairmen of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative voice their concern about the future [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 26, 2012 WASHINGTON – It is quite depressing to observe Washington total political paralysis, accompanied by cheap and openly divisive populism. Admittedly, it is difficult to govern when the two parties are so deeply divided. But the president has to try. This is what he was elected to do and what he gets paid [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 25, 2012 WASHINGTON – Whatever his presidential credentials, let’s agree that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is not especially diplomatic in his public statements. Sometimes he is deliberately bombastic, just for effect. And so he attacks Romney for being an investor and thus a “bad” capitalist, as opposed to the “good” capitalists [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 23, 2012 WASHINGTON – Whatever will be said and promised in this difficult and already acrimonious 2012 political campaign, America’s long term future and prosperity rests on its ability to continue producing technological innovation. But on this critical variable the signs are not as good as we would like. Aside [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 12, 2012 WASHINGTON – Alright, in case you missed it, would-be US president Mitt Romney is an unprincipled, calculating slime ball who will change opinion on key issues every hour, if that suits his political calculations. He has no soul and he does not believe in anything. Except that he [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 11, 2011 WASHINGTON – The bad news for America is that Washington is both dysfunctional and paralysed these days. Intense political animosities combined with divided government guarantee stalemate. The people’s business will not be done in the Nation’s capital. We shall have to wait until the November elections to see if, depending [...]
By Paolo von Schirach January 10, 2011 WASHINGTON – The Financial Times recently invited various luminaries to offer their thoughts on “Capitalism in Crisis“. And so, in the course of several days, many pieces containing various suggestions/pontifications about how bad things are in the US and in Europe and what should be done to remedy these [...]