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Showing posts from April, 2020

Editorial: Is the Coin Shop a Model for Reopening?

Most people in the United States are under coronavirus-induced lockdown orders. The retail economy is at a standstill. Grocery stores, hardware stores, and "essential" businesses of the like remain open, but practically every other enterprise from New York to Los Angeles is shuttered. Some states and municipalities have even cordoned off the areas of essential stores that are deemed inessential. The objective of these lockdowns, which was originally to reduce peak medical demand, has morphed into something more expansive: If a population stays inside long enough that there is no transmission and no new infections, eventually the virus will stop circulating within that given geographic area. Once the area reopens, there will be few to no carriers of the virus and, consequentially, little risk of a coronavirus surge. This thinking can be extended to the nation at large: If the entire country remains locked down and there are no entrants, eventually cases will peter out. Th...

Endorsement: Michelle Caruso-Cabrera for U.S. Congress

We are proud to endorse Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, who is running to represent New York's 14th district in the United States House of Representatives. Caruso-Cabrera is challenging incumbent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist , for the Democratic Party's nomination. Given the stark contrast between Caruso-Cabrera and the left-wing ideologue she plans to dispatch, there is no candidate more deserving of our first endorsement of the 2020 election season. Michelle Caruso-Cabrera In considering which candidate to endorse, FDL Review considered our principles (as enumerated by  the page of the same name ). The essence of our principles is that each and every individual possesses natural rights (life, liberty, and property). Government exists solely to protect those natural rights from threats foreign and domestic. Caruso-Cabrera is a defender of these values; Ocasio-Cortez is their greatest foe in mainstream American politics. According to a  Busine...

Analysis: President Trump's 2020 Position

Selzer & Company, a gold-standard pollster that is rated "A+" by statistics aggregator FiveThirtyEight, released their latest poll at 5am on Wednesday. Because of Selzer's sterling reputation, I am inclined to accept their results at face value. However, this survey particularly shows the importance of looking beyond the headline numbers and digging into the data. Trump & Biden (Reuters) In the poll, former Vice President Joe Biden nominally beats President Donald Trump by 47-43% in the national popular vote. However, only 55% of Biden voters say their minds are made up, compared to 82% of Trump voters. Framed in different terms, 43% of declared Biden voters say they "could be persuaded"; only 17% of declared Trump voters say the same. Let us do some math. For the sake of simplicity, we will ignore the voters who are "not sure" on the question of persuadability. We can multiply Biden's total proportion, 0.47, by 0.43 (the propo...