Connect with us

Economics

Who’s winning at the Trump trial?

Published

on

DONALD TRUMP’S criminal trial is nearing its denouement at last. The prosecutors’ star witness is due on the stand imminently, at which point their tale of the former president’s duplicity will start to cohere. In 11 days of testimony other witnesses have skewered Mr Trump, flattered him and revealed his predilections, including his habit of signing cheques in Sharpie pen. But none has yet implicated him directly in the charged crimes. That is up to Michael Cohen, his former lapdog lawyer who, after going rogue six years ago, has been busy writing books with the subtle titles “Disloyal” and “Revenge”.

Economics

How Donald Trump is shaping other countries’ politics

Published

on

He is boosting the centre and centre-left and delighting the hard right

Continue Reading

Economics

Is it ever right to pay disabled workers pennies per hour?

Published

on

IN A SMALL building on Hi Hope Lane, Jeffrey Pennington sits at a desk packing ten-piece sets of zip ties. A diagram on a piece of paper helps him count before he drops the ties into a resealable bag and begins again. Mr Pennington, who has Down’s syndrome and autism and struggles to speak, once dreamed of waiting tables at Wendy’s, a fast-food joint. Today he is one of 77 disabled people working in “the shop” at Creative Enterprises, a Georgia non-profit. Mr Pennington and his co-workers assemble allergy-test and home-repair kits for big companies. Each week Mr Pennington proudly takes home a pay cheque, but after about ten hours’ work it amounts to only about $3.00.

Continue Reading

Economics

How (and why) J.D. Vance does it

Published

on

The safe choice for vice-president was not J.D. Vance. He arrived on Donald Trump’s presidential ticket with little political experience and plenty of baggage. During his two years in the Senate some senior colleagues found the Ohio freshman’s strident opposition to Republican policy orthodoxy presumptuous. And more than a few Republican lawmakers and donors still privately acknowledge they would have preferred someone else. Yet the vice-president, the third-youngest in American history, has proved adept at a role that often ends up as a political dead end. And Mr Vance, seen by America’s allies as a divisive figure, is casting himself as a uniter of his party’s fractious factions. He argues that he was uniquely placed to bridge the gap between the “techno-optimist” and “populist right” MAGA tribes.

Continue Reading

Trending