New Keynesian economics

New Keynesian economics is a school of macroeconomics that strives to provide microeconomic foundations for Keynesian economics. It developed partly as a response to criticisms of Keynesian macroeconomics by adherents of new classical macroeconomics.
Two main assumptions define the New Keynesian approach to macroeconomics. Like the New Classical approach, New Keynesian macroeconomic analysis usually assumes that households and firms have rational expectations. However, the two schools differ in that New Keynesian analysis usually assumes a variety of market failures. In particular, New Keynesians assume that there is imperfect competition in price and wage setting to help explain why prices and wages can become "sticky", which means they do not adjust instantaneously to changes in economic conditions.
Wage and price stickiness, and the other market failures present in New Keynesian models, imply that the economy may fail to attain full employment. Therefore, New Keynesians argue that macroeconomic stabilization by the government (using fiscal policy) and the central bank (using monetary policy) can lead to a more efficient macroeconomic outcome than a "laissez faire" policy would.
New Keynesianism became a part of the new neoclassical synthesis, which incorporated parts of both it and new classical macroeconomics and forms the theoretical basis of much of mainstream economics today.
Development of Keynesian economics.
1970s.
The first wave of New Keynesian economics developed in the late 1970s. The first model of "Sticky information" was developed by Stanley Fischer in his 1977 article, "Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule". He adopted a "staggered" or "overlapping" contract model. Suppose that there are two unions in the economy, who take turns to choose wages. When it is a union's turn, it chooses the wages it will set for the next two periods. This contrasts with John B. Taylor's model where the nominal wage is constant over the contract life, as was subsequently developed in his two articles, one in 1979 "Staggered wage setting in a macro model'. and one in 1980 "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts". Both Taylor and Fischer contracts share the feature that only the unions setting the wage in the current period are using the latest information: wages in half of the economy still reflect old information. The Taylor model had sticky nominal wages in addition to the sticky information: nominal wages had to be constant over the length of the contract (two periods). These early new Keynesian theories were based on the basic idea that, given fixed nominal wages, a monetary authority (central bank) can control the employment rate. Since wages are fixed at a nominal rate, the monetary authority can control the real wage (wage values adjusted for inflation) by changing the money supply and thus affect the employment rate.
1980s.
Menu costs and Imperfect Competition.
In the 1980s the key concept of using menu costs in a framework of imperfect competition to explain price stickiness was developed. The concept of a lump-sum cost (menu cost) to changing the price was originally introduced by Sheshinski and Weiss (1977) in their paper looking at the effect of inflation on the frequency of price-changes. The idea of applying it as a general theory of Nominal Price Rigidity was simultaneously put forward by several economists in 1985–6. George Akerlof and Janet Yellen put forward the idea that due to bounded rationality firms will not want to change their price unless the benefit is more than a small amount. This bounded rationality leads to inertia in nominal prices and wages which can lead to output fluctuating at constant nominal prices and wages. Gregory Mankiw took the menu-cost idea and focused on the welfare effects of changes in output resulting from sticky prices. Michael Parkin also put forward the idea. Although the approach initially focused mainly on the rigidity of nominal prices, it was extended to wages and prices by Olivier Blanchard and Nobuhiro Kiyotaki in their influential article "Monopolistic Competition and the Effects of Aggregate Demand" . Huw Dixon and Claus Hansen showed that even if menu costs applied to a small sector of the economy, this would influence the rest of the economy and lead to prices in the rest of the economy becoming less responsive to changes in demand.
While some studies suggested that menu costs are too small to have much of an aggregate impact, Laurence Ball and David Romer showed in 1990 that real rigidities could interact with nominal rigidities to create significant disequilibrium. Real rigidities occur whenever a firm is slow to adjust its real prices in response to a changing economic environment. For example, a firm can face real rigidities if it has market power or if its costs for inputs and wages are locked-in by a contract. Ball and Romer argued that real rigidities in the labor market keep a firm's costs high, which makes firms hesitant to cut prices and lose revenue. The expense created by real rigidities combined with the menu cost of changing prices makes it less likely that firm will cut prices to a market clearing level.
Even if prices are perfectly flexible, imperfect competition can affect the influence of fiscal policy in terms of the multiplier. Huw Dixon and Gregory Mankiw developed independently simple general equilibrium models showing that the fiscal multiplier could be increasing with the degree of imperfect competition in the output market. The reason for this is that imperfect competition in the output market tends to reduce the real wage, leading to the household substituting away from consumption towards leisure. When government spending is increased, the corresponding increase in lump-sum taxation causes both leisure and consumption to decrease (assuming that they are both a normal good). The greater the degree of imperfect competition in the output market, the lower the real wage and hence the more the reduction falls on leisure (i.e. households work more) and less on consumption. Hence the fiscal multiplier is less than one, but increasing in the degree of imperfect competition in the output market.
The Calvo staggered contracts model.
In 1983 Guillermo Calvo wrote "Staggered Prices in a Utility-Maximizing Framework". The original article was written in a continuous time mathematical framework, but nowadays is mostly used in its discrete time version. The Calvo model has become the most common way to model nominal rigidity in new Keynesian models. There is a probability that the firm can reset its price in any one period h (the hazard rate), or equivalently the probability (1-h) that the price will remain unchanged in that period (the survival rate). The probability h is sometimes called the "Calvo probability" in this context. In the Calvo model the crucial feature is that the price-setter does not know how long the nominal price will remain in place, in contrast to the Taylor model where the length of contract is known ex ante.
Coordination failure.
Coordination failure was another important new Keynesian concept developed as another potential explanation for recessions and unemployment. In recessions a factory can go idle even though there are people willing to work in it, and people willing to buy its production if they had jobs. In such a scenario, economic downturns appear to be the result of coordination failure: The invisible hand fails to coordinate the usual, optimal, flow of production and consumption. Russell Cooper and Andrew John's 1988 paper "Coordinating Coordination Failures in Keynesian Models" expressed a general form of coordination as models with multiple equilibria where agents could coordinate to improve (or at least not harm) each of their respective situations. Cooper and John based their work on earlier models including Peter Diamond's 1982 coconut model, which demonstrated a case of coordination failure involving search and matching theory. In Diamond's model producers are more likely to produce if they see others producing. The increase in possible trading partners increases the likelihood of a given producer finding someone to trade with. As in other cases of coordination failure, Diamond's model has multiple equilibria, and the welfare of one agent is dependent on the decisions of others. Diamond's model is an example of a "thick-market externality" that causes markets to function better when more people and firms participate in them. Other potential sources of coordination failure include self-fulfilling prophecies. If a firm anticipates a fall in demand, they might cut back on hiring. A lack of job vacancies might worry workers who then cut back on their consumption. This fall in demand meets the firm's expectations, but it is entirely due to the firm's own actions.
Labor market failures: Efficiency wages.
New Keynesians offered explanations for the failure of the labor market to clear. In a Walrasian market, unemployed workers bid down wages until the demand for workers meets the supply. If markets are Walrasian, the ranks of the unemployed would be limited to workers transitioning between jobs and workers who choose not to work because wages are too low to attract them. They developed several theories explaining why markets might leave willing workers unemployed. The most important of these theories, new Keynesians was the efficiency wage theory used to explain long-term effects of previous unemployment, where short-term increases in unemployment become permanent and lead to higher levels of unemployment in the long-run.
In efficiency wage models, workers are paid at levels that maximize productivity instead of clearing the market. For example, in developing countries, firms might pay more than a market rate to ensure their workers can afford enough nutrition to be productive. Firms might also pay higher wages to increase loyalty and morale, possibly leading to better productivity. Firms can also pay higher than market wages to forestall shirking. Shirking models were particularly influential.Carl Shapiro and Joseph Stiglitz's 1984 paper "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device" created a model where employees tend to avoid work unless firms can monitor worker effort and threaten slacking employees with unemployment. If the economy is at full employment, a fired shirker simply moves to a new job. Individual firms pay their workers a premium over the market rate to ensure their workers would rather work and keep their current job instead of shirking and risk having to move to a new job. Since each firm pays more than market clearing wages, the aggregated labor market fails to clear. This creates a pool of unemployed laborers and adds to the expense of getting fired. Workers not only risk a lower wage, they risk being stuck in the pool of unemployed. Keeping wages above market clearing levels creates a serious disincentive to shirk that makes workers more efficient even though it leaves some willing workers unemployed.
1990s.
The new neoclassical synthesis.
In the early 1990s, economists began to combine the elements of new Keynesian economics developed in the 1980s and earlier with Real Business Cycle Theory. RBC models were dynamic but assumed perfect competition; new Keynesian models were primarily static but based on imperfect competition. The New neoclassical synthesis essentially combined the dynamic aspects of RBC with imperfect competition and nominal rigidities of new Keynesian models. Tack Yun was one of the first to do this, in a model that used the Calvo pricing model. Goodfriend and King proposed a list of four elements that are central to the new synthesis: intertemporal optimization, rational expectations, imperfect competition, and costly price adjustment (menu costs). Goodfriend and King also find that the consensus models produce certain policy implications: whilst monetary policy can affect real output in the short-run, but there is no long-run trade-off: money is not neutral in the short-run but it is in the long-run. Inflation has negative welfare effects. It is important for central banks to maintain credibility through rules based policy like inflation targeting.
Taylor Rule.
In 1993, John B Taylor formulated the idea of a Taylor rule, which is a reduced form approximation of the responsiveness of the nominal interest rate, as set by the central bank, to changes in inflation, output, or other economic conditions. In particular, the rule describes how, for each one-percent increase in inflation, the central bank tends raise the nominal interest rate by more than one percentage point. This aspect of the rule is often called the Taylor principle. Although such rules provide concise, descriptive proxies for central bank policy, they are not, in practice, explicitly proscriptively considered by central banks when setting nominal rates.
Taylor's original version of the rule describes how the nominal interest rate responds to
divergences of actual inflation rates from "target" inflation rates and of actual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from "potential" GDP:
In this equation, formula_2 is the target short-term nominal interest rate (e.g. the federal funds rate in the US, the Bank of England base rate in the UK), formula_3 is the rate of inflation as measured by the GDP deflator, formula_4 is the desired rate of inflation, formula_5 is the assumed equilibrium real interest rate, formula_6 is the logarithm of real GDP, and formula_7 is the logarithm of potential output, as determined by a linear trend.
The New Keynesian Phillips curve.
The New Keynesian Phillips curve was originally derived by Roberts in 1995, and has since been used in most state-of-the-art New Keynesian DSGE models. The new Keynesian Phillips curve says that this period's inflation depends on current output and the expectations of next period's inflation. The curve is derived from the dynamic Calvo model of pricing and in mathematical terms is:
The current period t expectations of next period's inflation are incorporated as formula_9, where formula_10 is the discount factor. The constant formula_11 captures the response of inflation to output, and is largely determined by the probability of changing price in any period, which is formula_12:
The less rigid nominal prices are (the higher is formula_12), the greater the effect of output on current inflation.
The Science of Monetary Policy.
The ideas developed in the 1990s were put together to develop the new Keynesian Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium used to analyze monetary policy. This culminated in the three equation new Keynesian model found in the survey by Richard Clarida, Jordi Gali, and Mark Gertler in the Journal of Economic Literature. It combines the two equations of the new Keynesian Phillips curve and the Taylor rule with the "dynamic IS curve" derived from the optimal dynamic consumption equation (household's Euler equation).
These three equations formed a relatively simple model which could be used for the theoretical analysis of policy issues. However, the model was oversimplified in some respects (for example, there is no capital or investment). Also, it does not perform well empirically.
2000s.
In the new millennium there have been several advances in new Keynesian economics.
The introduction of imperfectly competitive labor markets.
Whilst the models of the 1990s focused on sticky prices in the output market, in 2000 Christopher Erceg, Dale Henderson and Andrew Levin adopted the Blanchard and Kiyotaki model of unionized labor markets by combining it with the Calvo pricing approach and introduced it into a new Keynesian DSGE model.
The development of complex DSGE models..
In order to have models that worked well with the data and could be used for policy simulations, quite complicated new Keynesian models were developed with several features. Seminal papers were published by Frank Smets and Rafael Wouters and also Lawrence J. Christiano, Martin Eichenbaum and Charles Evans The common features of these models included:
Sticky information.
The idea of Sticky information found in Fischer's model was later developed by Gregory Mankiw and Ricardo Reis. This added a new feature to Fischer's model: there is a fixed probability that you can replan your wages or prices each period. Using quarterly data, they assumed a value of 25%: that is, each quarter 25% of randomly chosen firms/unions can plan a trajectory of current and future prices based on current information. Thus if we consider the current period: 25% of prices will be based on the latest information available; the rest on information that was available when they last were able to replan their price trajectory. Mankiw and Reis found that the model of sticky information provided a good way of explaining inflation persistence.
Sticky information models do not have nominal rigidity: firms or unions are free to choose different prices or wages for each period. It is the information that is sticky, not the prices. Thus when a firm gets lucky and can re-plan its current and future prices, it will choose a trajectory of what it believes will be the optimal prices now and in the future. In general, this will involve setting a different price every period covered by the plan. This is at odds with the empirical evidence on prices. There are now many studies of price rigidity in different countries: the United States, the Eurozone, the United Kingdom and others. These studies all show that whilst there are some sectors where prices change frequently, there are also other sectors where prices remain fixed over time. The lack of sticky prices in the sticky information model is inconsistent with the behavior of prices in most of the economy. This has led to attempts to formulate a "dual stickiness" model that combines sticky information with sticky prices.
2010s.
The 2010s saw the development of models incorporating household heterogeneity into the standard New Keynesian framework, commonly referred as `HANK' models (Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian). In addition to sticky prices, a typical HANK model features uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk which gives rise to a non-degenerate wealth distribution. The earliest models with these two features include Oh and Reis (2012), McKay and Reis (2016) and Guerrieri and Lorenzoni (2017).
The name "HANK model" was coined by Greg Kaplan, Benjamin Moll and Gianluca Violante in a 2018 paper that additionally models households as accumulating two types of assets, one liquid the other illiquid. This translates into rich heterogeneity in portfolio composition across households. In particular, the model fits empirical evidence by featuring a large share of households holding little liquid wealth: the ’hand-to-mouth’ households. Consistent with empirical evidence, about two-thirds of these households hold non-trivial amounts of illiquid wealth, despite holding little liquid wealth. These households are known as wealthy hand-to-mouth households, a term introduced in a 2014 study of fiscal stimulus policies by Kaplan and Violante.
The existence of wealthy hand-to-mouth households in New Keynesian models matters for the effects of monetary policy, because the consumption behavior of those households is strongly sensitive to changes in disposable income, rather than variations in the interest rate (i.e. the price of future consumption relative to current consumption). The direct corollary is that monetary policy is mostly transmitted via general equilibrium effects that work through the household labor income, rather than through intertemporal substitution, which is the main transmission channel in Representative Agent New Keynesian (RANK) models.
There are two main implications for monetary policy. First, monetary policy interacts strongly with fiscal policy, because of the failure of Ricardian Equivalence due to the presence of hand-to-mouth households. In particular, changes in the interest rate shift the Government’s budget constraint, and the fiscal response to this shift affects households’ disposable income. Second, aggregate monetary shocks are not distributional neutral since they affect the return on capital, which affects households with different levels of wealth and assets differently.
Policy implications.
New Keynesian economists agree with New Classical economists that in the long run, the classical dichotomy holds: changes in the money supply are neutral. However, because prices are sticky in the New Keynesian model, an increase in the money supply (or equivalently, a decrease in the interest rate) does increase output and lower unemployment in the short run. Furthermore, some New Keynesian models confirm the non-neutrality of money under several conditions.
Nonetheless, New Keynesian economists do not advocate using expansive monetary policy for short run gains in output and employment, as it would raise inflationary expectations and thus store up problems for the future. Instead, they advocate using monetary policy for stabilization. That is, suddenly increasing the money supply just to produce a temporary economic boom is not recommended as eliminating the increased inflationary expectations will be impossible without producing a recession.
However, when the economy is hit by some unexpected external shock, it may be a good idea to offset the macroeconomic effects of the shock with monetary policy. This is especially true if the unexpected shock is one (like a fall in consumer confidence) which tends to lower both output and inflation; in that case, expanding the money supply (lowering interest rates) helps by increasing output while stabilizing inflation and inflationary expectations.
Studies of optimal monetary policy in New Keynesian DSGE models have focused on interest rate rules (especially 'Taylor rules'), specifying how the central bank should adjust the nominal interest rate in response to changes in inflation and output. (More precisely, optimal rules usually react to changes in the output gap, rather than changes in output "per se".) In some simple New Keynesian DSGE models, it turns out that stabilizing inflation suffices, because maintaining perfectly stable inflation also stabilizes output and employment to the maximum degree desirable. Blanchard and Galí have called this property the ‘divine coincidence’.
However, they also show that in models with more than one market imperfection (for example, frictions in adjusting the employment level, as well as sticky prices), there is no longer a 'divine coincidence', and instead there is a tradeoff between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing employment. Further, while some macroeconomists believe that New Keynesian models are on the verge of being useful for quarter-to-quarter quantitative policy advice, disagreement exists.
Recently, it was shown that the divine coincidence does not necessarily hold in the non-linear form of the standard New-Keynesian model. This property would only hold if the monetary authority is set to keep the inflation rate at exactly 0%. At any other desired target for the inflation rate, there is an endogenous trade-off, even under the absence real imperfections such as sticky wages, and the divine coincidence no longer holds.
Relation to other macroeconomic schools.
Over the years, a sequence of 'new' macroeconomic theories related to or opposed to Keynesianism have been influential. After World War II, Paul Samuelson used the term "neoclassical synthesis" to refer to the integration of Keynesian economics with neoclassical economics. The idea was that the government and the central bank would maintain rough full employment, so that neoclassical notions—centered on the axiom of the universality of scarcity—would apply. John Hicks' IS/LM model was central to the neoclassical synthesis.
Later work by economists such as James Tobin and Franco Modigliani involving more emphasis on the microfoundations of consumption and investment was sometimes called neo-Keynesianism. It is often contrasted with the post-Keynesianism of Paul Davidson, which emphasizes the role of fundamental uncertainty in economic life, especially concerning issues of private fixed investment.
New Keynesianism was a response to Robert Lucas and the new classical school. That school criticized the inconsistencies of Keynesianism in the light of the concept of "rational expectations". The new classicals combined a unique market-clearing equilibrium (at full employment) with rational expectations. The New Keynesians used "microfoundations" to demonstrate that price stickiness hinders markets from clearing. Thus, the rational expectations-based equilibrium need not be unique.
Whereas the neoclassical synthesis hoped that fiscal and monetary policy would maintain full employment, the new classicals assumed that price and wage adjustment would automatically attain this situation in the short run. The new Keynesians, on the other hand, saw full employment as being automatically achieved only in the long run, since prices are "sticky" in the short run. Government and central-bank policies are needed because the "long run" may be very long.
Ultimately, the differences between new classical macroeconomics and New Keynesian economics were resolved in the new neoclassical synthesis of the 1990s, which forms the basis of mainstream economics today, and the Keynesian stress on the importance of centralized coordination of macroeconomic policies (e.g., monetary and fiscal stimulus), international economic institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and of the maintenance of a controlled trading system was highlighted during the 2008 global financial and economic crisis. This has been reflected in the work of IMF economists and of Donald Markwell.


Jan Frans Vonck

Johannes Franciscus Vonck, also known by the Francization Jean-François Vonck or the Netherlandization Jan-Frans Vonck, (29 November 1743 – 1 December 1792) was a lawyer and one of the leaders of the Brabant Revolution from 1789-1790. This Revolution led to the founding of the United States of Belgium in January 1790. Vonck was the leader of the radical Vonckists faction of revolutionaries which were named after him. They were inspired by the French Revolution, pleaded for the abolition of the feudal government of the state based on privileges and were in favour of a more centralised government.
Childhood.
Jan Frans Vonck was born in Baardegem, the son of a well-to-do farming couple, Jan Vonck and Elisabeth van Nuffel. He had a brother who later became priest, Benedictus Hieronymus, and three sisters: Maria Anna Josepha, Anna Margaretha and Maria Theresia. Vonck studied humanities at the Jesuit college in Brussels. Afterwards, he attended the gymnasium in Geel. From 24 January 1763 onwards, he studied law in Leuven at the college "De Valk", ("The Falcon"). After graduating, began his successful career as a lawyer.
Brabant Revolution.
During the Brabant Revolution, Vonck initially cooperated with Hendrik van der Noot and his faction of the Statists. In the course of the Revolution, Hendrik van der Noot became Voncks’ opponent as Van der Noot strived for the restoration of old privileges such as the "Joyous Entry", the "Blijde Inkomst". Vonck, influenced by developments in France on the other hand, aimed for less privileges. He pleaded for more democracy, and separation between legislative, executive and judicial powers. Vonck formulated his ideas in the "Considérations impartiales sur l'état actuel du Brabant" ("Impartial considerations on the current state of Brabant"), which appeared in January 1790. Vonck aimed to reform the existing structures rather than an "Assemblée nationale" as established by the French Revolution. Vonck wanted to extend the representation of the three social classes in the States General: clergy, nobility and the bourgeoisie. The clergy had to increase in number with secular representatives and the nobility also had to increase in number. According to Vonck, the representation of the third class, the bourgeoisie, who consisted of patricians, had to be extended to the higher middle class. Van der Noot wanted to preserve the privileges of the nobility and the Catholic church. He considered Vonck to be a danger and started to pursue him as he did with other opponents. The Vonck's house was looted and on 17 March 1790, he had to go into hiding in Brussels. Together with some comrades, Vonck had to flee to France, where he eventually arrived in Lille. Meanwhile, Vonck got a passport under the name of Van Nuffel, the name of his mother. There he translated his earlier "Considérations" into Dutch with the title "Onzeydige Aenmerkingen over den tegenwoordige ghesteltenis van Brabant" ("Impartial testament on the present situation of Brabant") and he added to it a "Kort historisch verhael tot inleyding uytgegeven door den advocaat Vonck" ("Short historical introductory story issued by the lawyer Vonck"). Shortly afterwards, he died in the city of Lille.
Vonck’s nightcap.
Vonck was buried in the village of Baardegem near Aalst where he was born. His resting place was rediscovered in 1923, when a gravedigger discovered a lead coffin. In the coffin, he found Vonck’s skeleton, his wig and a well kept nightcap. That nightcap is nowadays preserved in the municipal archives and a monument now stands on his tomb. He bequeathed to the poor of the municipality among others and gave orders for a scholarship to be founded which still exists and which is managed by the provincial administration of East Flanders. His supporter and close friend Jan Baptist Chrysostomus Verlooy (1747–97), also a Brussels lawyer, wrote an essay, "D'onacht der moederlycke tael" ("On the neglect of the native language"), in 1788 which has been described a precursor to the Flemish Movement.
Sources and external links.
This page has been translated from the Dutch article on Wikipedia.


Budgeting loan

Budgeting loans are a feature of the social security system in the United Kingdom. Budgeting Loans are interest free loans from the Social Fund that are available only to people claiming certain income-related benefits.
Although the discretionary element of the Social Fund was abolished those who have not yet been transferred over to Universal Credit can still apply. However, those in receipt of Universal Credit are ineligible for a budgeting loan and must instead apply for a Budgeting Advance instead.
The loan is meant to be used for household necessities and paying down existing consumer debt. The total sum can be up to £812, if the applicant is part of a couple with children. In 2019, the UK government has re-affirmed its commitment to the loan scheme.


Thomas Doerflinger

Thomas M. Doerflinger (1952–2015) was an American historian.
Life.
He is the son of William Main Doerflinger.
He was a MCEAS Dissertation Fellow, at Harvard University in 1978-1979.
He trained as a historian at Princeton and Harvard.
He died on August 23, 2015.


Mags Murray

Margaret Mary Murray (née O'Keeffe; 9 September 1961 – 13 June 2020) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, a councillor on Fingal County Council for the Castleknock Local Electoral Area and the mayor of Fingal County Council.
Biography.
Born in Cregane, Charleville, Co Cork, she played camogie with the local camogie team, Ballyagran. Murray won an All-Ireland Senior Club Camogie Championship with her club in 1978, playing in the position of right wing forward. Upon moving to Dublin, Mags Murray joined St Brigids GAA Club as a camogie player and also as a mentor.
Murray was first elected at the 2004 elections as a member of the Progressive Democrats. She was subsequently an unsuccessful candidate for the party in the 2007 Irish general election in Dublin West. As the Progressive Democrats became defunct she joined Fianna Fáil in February 2008. Mags Murray was elected in the local elections in 2009, and retained her seat again in the 2014 local elections.
In June 2014, Councillor Mags Murray was elected as the new Mayor of Fingal. A Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour Alliance, backed by a number of Independents, ensured the election of the Castleknock-based Councillor, who had been sitting on Fingal County Council for a decade. She defeated three other nominees, Sinn Féin's Paul Donnelly, Sandra Kavanagh from the Anti Austerity Alliance and Non-Party Councillor Lorna Nolan. Cllr Murray received 21 votes, with Cllr Donnelly getting 6, Cllr Nolan receiving 8, and Cllr Kavanagh getting 3.
County Mayor Cllr Mags Murray hosted the 2015 Annual Mayors' Conference, entitled Immigration to Integration, which focused on the positive impact of immigration and challenges of integration on both the receiving communities and the immigrants.
In February 2015, the Mayor of Fingal had described how a group of anti-water charge protesters blocked her exit from a council meeting for more than an hour, preventing her from getting to the hospital to see her sick daughter who was awaiting a liver transplant.
Mags Murray said that she had to suffer verbal abuse as well as being blocked into the council's car park late on Monday night.
Murray served as the first female president of LAMA (Local Authority Members Association) for five years, from 2014 – 2019. Noted from her LAMA colleagues “Mags was an excellent Councillor. She served on Fingal County Council for fifteen years, from 2004 – 2019. Mags lit up every room she entered. She was a hard worker, a caring politician and a loving mother.".


Peleg Arnold Tavern

The Peleg Arnold Tavern off Great Road in Union Village in North Smithfield, Rhode Island was built around 1690 and is one of the oldest homes in North Smithfield. The oldest part of house was built in the late 17th century by Richard Arnold, one of the earliest settlers in the area. His descendant, Peleg Arnold, greatly expanded the building a century later. Peleg Arnold was a justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and representative to the Continental Congress. Arnold's popular tavern served as center of American military operations in the town during the American Revolution. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.


Thomas-Simon Gueullette

Thomas-Simon Gueullette (2 June 1683 – 2 December 1766) was a French lawyer, playwright, scholar and man of letters, who also wrote fairy tales and works on the theatre itself.
Life.
A lawyer at the Châtelet de Paris, then substitute for the procureur du roi, Gueullette was a bibliophile and collector who collected several placards and journals of his time, His several works on the Théâtre-Italien, which survive in manuscript, formed the basis for the Parfaict brothers in their "Histoire de l'ancien Théâtre Italien".
Gueullette was above all known for the publication of several amusing fairy tales : "les Soirées bretonnes, nouveaux contes de fées" (Paris, 1712, in-12) ; "les Mille et un Quarts-d’heure, contes tartares" ("Ibid.", 1715, 2 vol. in-12 ; 1753, 3 vol. in-12) ; "les Aventures merveilleuses du mandarin Fum-Hoam, contes chinois" ("Ibid.", 1723, 2 vol. in-12) ; "les Sultanes de Guzarate, contes mogols" ("Ibid.", 1732, 3 vol. in-12) ; "les Mille et une Heures, contes péruviens" (Amsterdam, 1733, 2 vol. in-12).
Gueullette was the author of over 60 plays, many of which he put on at the Théâtre-Italien, where some had great success : "La vie est un songe" in 1717 (for which he was the translator), "Arlequin-Pluton" (1719) ; "le Trésor supposé", en trois actes (s. d.) ; "l’Horoscope accompli" (1727), etc.
He also worked as an editor : "Histoire du petit Jehan de Saintré" (1724, 3 vol. in-12) ; "Essays" by Montaigne (1725, 3 vol. in-4°) ; "Works" of Rabelais (1732, 6 vol. in-8°) ; "Pathelin", by Pierre Blanchet (1748, in-12), etc.
The Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal has nine volumes of manuscripts by Gueullette.


Captain Nathan Hale (statue)

Captain Nathan Hale is a bronze statue of Nathan Hale, by Bela Lyon Pratt. It is located at the south facade of the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, 10th Street and Constitution Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C.
The statue was given to the United States government in 1945 by American antiquarian George Dudley Seymour. This example was cast around 1930, and dedicated on April 18, 1948.
The original is at Yale University, and other examples are at Fort Nathan Hale, the Chicago Tribune Tower, and CIA headquarters.
The inscription reads:

(Sculpture, near figure's proper left foot:)

B.L. PRATT

(Sculpture, near figure's proper right foot:)

REPLICA OF THAT

AT YALE UNIVERSITY

(Sculpture, around bottom rim:)

I ONLY REGRET THAT I HAVE BUT ONE LIFE TO LOSE FOR MY COUNTRY

(Base, front:)

NATHAN HALE

CAPTAIN

ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES

BORN AT COVENTRY CONNECTICUT

JUNE 6, 1755

IN THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS

DUTY HE RESIGNED HIS

LIFE A SACRIFICE TO

HIS COUNTRY'S LIBERTY

AT NEW YORK

SEPTEMBER 22, 1776

signed Founder's mark appears
As part of American Revolution Statuary in Washington, D.C. the statue at the Department of Justice Building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


Laurence Brady

Laurence Brady (20 January 1892 – 14 April 1973) was an Irish politician. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Leix–Offaly constituency at the 1923 general election. He did not take his seat in the Dáil due to Sinn Féin's abstentionist policy. He did not contest the June 1927 general election. He stood as a Fianna Fáil candidate at the 1933, 1937 and 1943 general elections but was not elected.


Nancy Cartonio

Lil McGill (born Nancy Cartonio) aka Naenerys Cargaryen, Mother Of Hooligans (born February 21, 1977, Wichita, Kansas, USA) is a folk musician, songwriter, and music producer living in Portland, Maine.
History.
Cartonio has been a musician since she was a child. Cartonio's band "Dear Liza" was very popular in the Northeast United States during the 1990s. She also performed as a duo with her friend Heather Caston for many years. She is on the Board of Directors of the libertarian think tank The Council of Twelve, the Maine Music Association, and the Maine Songwriters' Association. Cartonio has been featured on 98.9 WCLZ FM in Portland, Maine and included in the Boston Phoenix newspaper. Internationally, she has charted on numerous folk internet charts and receives rotation on internet radio daily. She quietly released an E-cookbook under the name Mother Of Hooligans in 2017.


Committee of Public Safety

The Committee of Public Safety () formed the provisional government in France, led mainly by Maximilien Robespierre, during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794), a phase of the French Revolution. Supplementing the Committee of General Defence created after the execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 by the National Convention and restructured in July 1793. It was charged with protecting the new republic against its foreign and domestic enemies, fighting the First Coalition and the Vendée revolt. As a wartime measure, the committee was given broad supervisory and administrative powers over the armed forces, judiciary and legislature, as well as the executive bodies and ministers of the Convention.
As the committee raised the defense against the monarchist coalition of European nations and counter-revolutionary forces within France, it became more and more powerful. In December 1793, the Convention formally conferred executive power upon the committee. Between August 1793 and July 1794, the committee's power grew to dictatorial heights as it organised the Reign of Terror. Among the members, the radical Jacobin Maximilien Robespierre emerged as a leader. After the arrest and execution of the rival factions of Hébertists and Dantonists, sentiment in the Convention eventually turned against Robespierre, who was executed in July 1794. In the following Thermidorian Reaction, the committee's influence diminished and it was abolished in 1795.
During the American War of Independence, American Patriots formed Committees of safety. That was a recent major precedent of a Republican revolution, well-known to the French revolutionaries.
Origins and evolution.
Committee of discussion.
On 5 April 1793, the French military commander and former minister of war General Charles François Dumouriez defected to Austria following the publication of an incendiary letter in which he threatened to march his army on the city of Paris if the National Convention did not accede to his leadership. News of his defection caused alarm in Paris, where imminent defeat by the Austrians and their allies was feared. A widespread belief held that revolutionary France was in immediate peril, threatened not only by foreign armies and by recent revolts in the Vendée, but also by foreign agents who plotted the destruction of the nation from within. Dumouriez's defection lent greater credence to this belief. In light of this threat, the Girondin leader Maximin Isnard proposed the creation of a nine-member Committee of Public Safety. Isnard was supported in this effort by Georges Danton, who declared: "This Committee is precisely what we want, a hand to grasp the weapon of the Revolutionary Tribunal".
The Committee was created on 6 April 1793. Closely associated with the leadership of Danton, it was initially known as the Danton Committee. Danton steered the Committee through the 31 May and 2 June 1793 "journées" that saw the violent expulsion of the Girondins and through the intensifying war in the Vendée. When the Committee was recomposed on 10 July 1793, Danton was not included. Nevertheless, he continued to support the centralization of power by the Committee.
On 27 July 1793, Maximilien Robespierre was elected to the Committee. At this time, the Committee was entering a more powerful and active phase, which would see it become a dictatorship alongside its powerful partner, the Committee of General Security. The role of the Committee of Public Safety included the governance of the war (including the appointment of generals), the appointing of judges and juries for the Revolutionary Tribunal, the provisioning of the armies and the public, the maintenance of public order and oversight of the state bureaucracy.
The Committee was also responsible for interpreting and applying the decrees of the National Convention and thus for implementing some of the most stringent policies of the Terror — for instance, the "levée en masse" passed on 23 August 1793, the Law of Suspects passed on 17 September 1793 and the Law of the General Maximum passed on 29 September 1793. The broad and centralized powers of the Committee were codified by the Law of 14 Frimaire (also known as the Law of Revolutionary Government) on 4 December 1793.
Execution of the Hébertists and Dantonists.
On 5 December 1793, journalist Camille Desmoulins began publishing "Le Vieux Cordelier" with the approval of Robespierre and the Committee"." This newspaper was initially aimed against the ultrarevolutionary Hébertist faction, whose extremist demands, anti-religious fervor and propensity for sudden insurrections troubled the Committee. However, Desmoulins quickly turned his pen against the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, comparing their reign to that of the Roman tyrants chronicled by Tacitus and expounding the indulgent views of the Dantonist faction.
Consequently, though the Hébertists were arrested and executed in March 1794, the Committees had Desmoulins and Danton arrested as well. Hérault de Séchelles, a friend and ally of Danton, was expelled from the Committee of Public Safety, arrested and tried alongside them. On 5 April 1794, the Dantonists went to the guillotine.
Committee of rule.
The elimination of the Hébertists and the Dantonists made evident the dictatorial strength of the Committees to control and silence opposition. The creation in March 1794 of a General Police Bureau — reporting nominally to the Committee of Public Safety, but more often directly to Robespierre and his closest ally, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just — served to increase the power of the Committee of Public Safety and of Robespierre himself.
The Law of 22 Prairial, proposed by the Committee and enacted by the Convention on 10 June 1794, went further in establishing the iron control of the Revolutionary Tribunal and above it the Committees of Public Safety and General Security. The law enumerated various forms of public enemies, required their denunciation, and severely limited the legal recourse available to those accused. The punishment for all crimes under this law was death; from its inception to the fall of Robespierre on 27 July 1794, more people were condemned to death than in the entire previous history of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
However, even as the Terror reached its height and with it the Committee's political power, discord was growing within the revolutionary government. Members of the Committee of General Security resented the autocratic behavior of the Committee of Public Safety and particularly the encroachment of the General Police Bureau upon their own brief. Arguments within the Committee of Public Safety itself had grown so violent that it relocated its meetings to a more private room to preserve the illusion of agreement. Robespierre, a fervent supporter of the theistic Cult of the Supreme Being, found himself frequently in conflict with anti-religious Committee members Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne. Moreover, Robespierre's increasingly extensive absences from the Committee due to illness (he all but ceased to attend meetings in June 1794) created the impression that he was isolated and out of touch.
Fall of the Committee and aftermath.
When it became evident in mid-July 1794 that Robespierre and Saint-Just were planning to strike against their political opponents Joseph Fouché, Jean-Lambert Tallien and Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier (the latter two members of the Committee of General Security), the fragile truce within the government was dissolved. Saint-Just and his fellow Committee of Public Safety member Bertrand Barère attempted to keep the peace between the Committees of Public Safety and General Security. However, Robespierre delivered a speech to the National Convention on 26 July 1794 in which he emphasized the need to "purify" the Committees and "crush all factions". In a speech to the Jacobin Club that night, he attacked Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, who had refused to allow the printing and distribution of his speech to the Convention.
On the following day, 27 July 1794 (or 9 Thermidor according to the Revolutionary calendar), Saint-Just began to speak before the Convention, planning to denounce Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varenne and other members of the Committee of Public Safety. However, he was almost immediately interrupted by Tallien and by Billaud-Varenne, who accused him of intending to "murder the Convention". Barère, Vadier and Stanislas Fréron joined the accusations against Saint-Just and Robespierre. The Convention ordered the arrest of Robespierre, his brother Augustin, and Saint-Just, along with that of their supporters Philippe Le Bas and Georges Couthon.
A period of intense civil unrest ensued, during which the members of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security were forced to seek refuge in the Convention. The Robespierre brothers, Saint-Just, Le Bas and Couthon ensconced themselves in the Hôtel de Ville, attempting to incite an insurrection. Ultimately, faced with defeat and arrest, Le Bas committed suicide, while Saint-Just, Couthon, and Maximilien and Augustin Robespierre were arrested and guillotined on 28 July 1794.
The ensuing period of upheaval, dubbed the Thermidorian Reaction, saw the repeal of many of the Terror's most unpopular laws and the restriction of the Committees of General Security and Public Safety. The Committees ceased to exist under the Constitution of the Year III (1795), which marked the beginning of the Directory.
Use of the term during the Algerian War.
During the May 1958 crisis in France, an army junta under General Jacques Massu seized power in Algiers on the night of 13 May 1958 and General Salan assumed leadership of a body calling itself the Committee of Public Safety.


Antony Fisher

Sir Antony George Anson Fisher (28 June 1915 – 8 July 1988), nicknamed AGAF, was a British businessman and think tank founder. He participated in the formation of various libertarian organisations during the second half of the twentieth century, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Atlas Network. Through Atlas, he helped establish up to 150 other institutions worldwide.
Early life.
Antony Fisher was born on 28 June 1915. He was only two years old when his father was killed by a sniper in Gaza during World War I.
He was educated at Eton College. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge with a degree in engineering. During the Second World War, he served as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force, being awarded the Air Force Cross.
Career.
After World War II, he was alarmed by the election of a Labour government, the nationalisation of industry, and the introduction of central economic planning. In 1945, Fisher had read "Road to Serfdom" by Austrian economist F. A. Hayek which influenced his thinking. Fisher sought out Hayek at the London School of Economics where he taught and talked about his plans to go into politics. Hayek, however, convinced him that think-tanks were the best medium for effecting political change.
In 1952, he undertook a study trip to the United States, where he visited the new Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). F. A. Harper of the FEE introduced Fisher to former colleagues from the Agriculture Department of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who showed him intensive chicken farming techniques. Fisher was very impressed and returned to start England's first battery cage chicken farm, Buxted Chickens, which eventually made him a millionaire.
In 1955, he used his fortune to set up the influential Institute of Economic Affairs with Ralph Harris.
Some of Fisher's other business ventures did not succeed (including a turtle-farming operation).
In 1971 Fisher founded the International Institute for Economic Research, which went to spawn both the Atlas Network in 1981 and the International Policy Network in 2001. Through these operations, Fisher provided financial and operational support for a huge number of fledgling think-tanks, most of which would not exist without his influence. It was through the Atlas Network that Fisher was able to extend his beliefs worldwide. By 1984, Fisher was watching over eighteen institutions in eleven countries. As of 2017, Atlas supports and works with nearly 500 free-market think-tanks in over 90 different countries.
In his book "Thinking the Unthinkable", Richard Cockett sketched Fisher's role in supporting other emerging think-tanks around the world. Cockett wrote, "On the strength of his reputation with the IEA, he was invited in 1975 to become co-director of the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, founded by the Canadian businessman T. Patrick Boyle in 1974. Fisher let the young director of the Fraser Institute, Dr Michael Walker, get on with the intellectual output of the Institute (just as he had given free rein to Seldon and Harris at the IEA) while he himself concentrated on the fund-raising side". Cockett explained that after his success at the Fraser Institute, Fisher went to New York where in 1977 he set up the International Center for Economic Policy Studies (ICEPS), later renamed the Manhattan Institute. "The incorporation documents for the ICEPS were signed by prominent attorney Bill Casey, later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency". Cockett comments that "under the directorship of William Hammett the Manhattan Institute became probably Fisher's greatest success after the IEA".
In 1977, Cockett wrote, Fisher moved to San Francisco "with his second wife Dorian, who he had met through the Mont Pelerin Society, and founded the Pacific Research Institute in 1979" and Fisher and Milton Friedman lived in the same apartment block in San Francisco during the 1980s. In the late 1970s, Fisher assisted Greg Lindsay in the development of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. Cockett wrote, "In 1981, to co-ordinate and establish a central focus for these institutes that Fisher found himself start up all over the world, he created the Atlas Economic Research Foundation which in 1987 joined up with the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) (founded by the Mont Pelerin member F. A. Harper in 1961) to provide a central institutional structure for what quickly became an ever-expanding number of international free-market think-tanks or research institutes". According to Cokett, "Fisher used the local and international gatherings of the Mont Pelerin Society to find personnel, fund-raisers and donors for many of the Atlas Institutes" as the international think-tanks proliferated.
He was a co-founder of the Fraser Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Pacific Research Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Centre for Independent Studies, and the Adam Smith Institute.
He was knighted four weeks before his death.
Personal life.
He was married twice. He had four children with his first wife, including Linda Whetstone, who has been involved with many of Fisher's think tanks. His granddaughter, Rachel Whetstone, serves as senior vice-president of communications and public policy for Uber.
His second wife, Dorian Fisher, was George N. Crocker's widow.
Death.
He died on 8 July 1988 in San Francisco, California.
References.
Bibliography


Antoine Le Bailly

Antoine-François Le Bailly (or Lebailly), (1 April 1756, Caen – 13 January 1832, Paris) was a French librettist and fabulist.
Antoine Le Bailly authored some operas, but is mostly known for his fables.
A first collection was published under the title "Fables nouvelles, suivies de poésies fugitives" (Paris, 1784, in-12 ; a second one under that of "Fables nouvelles" ("Ibid.", 1814, in-12). In a third edition (1823, in-8°), Le Bailly replaced the verse of the epilogue in praise of Napoléon by verse in honor of the Bourbons.
He also composed "Corisandre", comédie-opéra (Paris, 1792, in-4°) ; "Diane et Endymion", opera ("Ibid.", 1814, in-12) ; "le Procès d’Ésope avec les animaux", one-act comedy, in verse and in prose (Paris, 1812, in-12) ; "le Gouvernement des animaux", poème ésopéen ("Ibid.", 1816, in-8°) ; "Arion, ou le pouvoir de la musique" ("Ibid. ", 1817, in-8°) ; "la Chute des Titans, ou le retour d’Astrée", cantata to mark the coronation of Charles X ("Ibid.", 1825, in-8°), etc.


Liberalism and radicalism in Chile

This article gives an overview of liberal and radical parties in Chile. It is limited to liberal and radical parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ means a reference to another party in that scheme. For inclusion in this scheme, parties do not necessarily need to have labeled themselves as a liberal party.
Introduction.
Liberalism was organized as the traditional opposition to conservatism in Chile. In the 1860s radical liberals formed the radical current. Traditional liberalism disappeared in the 1960s into conservatism and radicalism developed into social democracy, leaving liberalism unrepresented. Originally the Social Democrat Radical Party ("Partido Radical Social-Democráta", member SI) was a left of center liberal party, but nowadays it is a social democratic party.


Americans for Democratic Action

Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) is a liberal American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA views itself as supporting social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research, and supporting progressive candidates.
History.
Formation.
The ADA grew out of a predecessor group, the Union for Democratic Action (UDA). The UDA was formed by former members of the Socialist Party of America and Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies as well as labor union leaders, liberal politicians, theologians, and others who were opposed to the pacifism adopted by most left-wing political organizations in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It supported a strongly interventionist, internationalist foreign policy and a pro-union, liberal domestic policy. It was strongly anti-communist as well. It undertook a major effort to support left-wing Democratic members of Congress in 1946, but this effort was an overwhelming failure.
James Isaac Loeb (later an ambassador and diplomat in the John F. Kennedy administration), the UDA's executive director, advocated disbanding the UDA and forming a new, more broadly based, mass-membership organization. The ADA was formed on January 3, 1947, and the UDA shuttered.
Among ADA's founding members were leading anti-communist liberals from academic, political, and labor circles, including theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, union leader Walter Reuther, civil rights lawyer Joseph Rauh, and Hubert Humphrey. Its founders hoped to solidify a progressive, pragmatic, noncommunist “vital center” in mainstream politics, embodying Schlesinger's concept formulated in his 1949 book "The Vital Center".
Action.
On April 3, 1948, ADA declared its decision to support a Democratic Party ticket of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Supreme Court Judge William O. Douglas over incumbent U.S. President Harry S. Truman. Leveraging Truman's lack of popular support, the ADA succeeded in pushing Truman leftward on issues such as civil rights. It also led a full-scale attack on Progressive Party candidate and former US vice president Henry A. Wallace because of his opposition to the Marshall Plan and support for appeasement of the Soviet Union. The ADA portrayed Wallace and his supporters as dupes of the Communist Party. Adolf A. Berle Jr. and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. expressed their belief that Eisenhower would accept the nomination.
After November 2, 1948, ADA supported Truman after his victory.
Though strongly anti-communist, unlike other contemporary liberal groups like the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA), which supported cooperation with the Soviet Union, the ADA was still subject to significant McCarthyist scrutiny. The plight of the ADA during that period prompted Eleanor Roosevelt to accept a position as honorary chair of the organization in 1953, and in doing so, put Senator McCarthy in a position in which he would have had to "call her a communist as well" to continue his inquiries into the activities of the group. Because of her actions, many ADA leaders credited her with "saving" the organization.
In the early 1960s, ADA's influence peaked when a number of its key members (e.g. James Loeb, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.) were picked to join the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. While active in liberal causes ranging from civil rights to Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society reforms, by the mid-1960s the ADA's influence was on the wane. It was badly split over the Vietnam War: initially supporting Johnson's war policy, the ADA had come to oppose the war by early 1968. It endorsed founder Hubert Humphrey's presidential candidacy that year, but with “barely concealed ambivalence”. After Richard Nixon's victory, the ADA was pushed to the political margins, overshadowed by more centrist groups like the Trilateral Commission and Coalition for a Democratic Majority.
Leadership.
Founders.
Founding, prominent members included:
In April 1948 at New York state convention, ADA elected the following new officers: Jonathan Bingham of Scarborough as chairman with vice chairmen Dr. William Lehman of Syracuse, Benjamin Mc:Laurin of New York City, Howard Linsay of New York City, Jack Rubenstein (Textile Workers Union, CIO), and Charles Zimmerman (International Ladies' Garment Workers Union).
Chairs and presidents.
Since 1947, ADA's organization leaders include:
Voting records.
ADA ranks legislators, identifies key policy issues, and tracks how members of Congress vote on these issues. The annual ADA Voting Record gives each member a Liberal Quotient (LQ) rating from 0, meaning complete disagreement with ADA policies, to 100, meaning complete agreement with ADA policies. A score of 0 is considered conservative and a score 100 is considered liberal. The LQ is obtained by evaluating an elected official's votes on 20 key foreign and domestic social and economic issues chosen by the ADA's Legislative Committee. Each vote given a score of either 5 or 0 points, depending on whether the individual voted with or against the ADA's position, respectively. Absent voters are also given a score of 0 for the vote.


Hyman Minsky

Hyman Philip Minsky (September 23, 1919 – October 24, 1996) was an American economist, a professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis, and a distinguished scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His research attempted to provide an understanding and explanation of the characteristics of financial crises, which he attributed to swings in a potentially fragile financial system. Minsky is sometimes described as a post-Keynesian economist because, in the Keynesian tradition, he supported some government intervention in financial markets, opposed some of the financial deregulation policies popular in the 1980s, stressed the importance of the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort and argued against the over-accumulation of private debt in the financial markets.
Minsky's economic theories were largely ignored for decades, until the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 caused a renewed interest in them.
Education.
A native of Chicago, Illinois, Minsky was born into a family of Menshevik emigrants from Belarus. His mother, Dora Zakon, was active in the nascent trade union movement. His father, Sam Minsky, was active in the Jewish section of the Socialist party of Chicago. In 1937, Minsky graduated from George Washington High School in New York City. In 1941, Minsky received his B.S. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and went on to earn an M.P.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, where he studied under Joseph Schumpeter and Wassily Leontief.
Career.
Minsky taught at Brown University from 1949 to 1958, and from 1957 to 1965 was an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1965 he became Professor of Economics of Washington University in St Louis and retired from there in 1990. At the time of his death he was a Distinguished Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. He was a consultant to the Commission on Money and Credit (1957–1961) while at Berkeley.
Financial theory.
Minsky proposed theories linking financial market fragility, in the normal life cycle of an economy, with speculative investment bubbles endogenous to financial markets. Minsky stated that in prosperous times, when corporate cash flow rises beyond what is needed to pay off debt, a speculative euphoria develops, and soon thereafter debts exceed what borrowers can pay off from their incoming revenues, which in turn produces a financial crisis. As a result of such speculative borrowing bubbles, banks and lenders tighten credit availability, even to companies that can afford loans, and the economy subsequently contracts.
This slow movement of the financial system from stability to fragility, followed by crisis, is something for which Minsky is best known, and the phrase "Minsky moment" refers to this aspect of Minsky's academic work.
"He offered very good insights in the '60s and '70s when linkages between the financial markets and the economy were not as well understood as they are now," said Henry Kaufman, a Wall Street money manager and economist. "He showed us that financial markets could move frequently to excess. And he underscored the importance of the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort."
Minsky's model of the credit system, which he dubbed the "financial instability hypothesis" (FIH), incorporated many ideas already circulated by John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, Knut Wicksell and Irving Fisher. "A fundamental characteristic of our economy," Minsky wrote in 1974, "is that the financial system swings between robustness and fragility and these swings are an integral part of the process that generates business cycles."
Disagreeing with many mainstream economists of the day, he argued that these swings, and the booms and busts that can accompany them, are inevitable in a so-called free market economy – unless government steps in to control them, through regulation, central bank action and other tools. Such mechanisms did in fact come into existence in response to crises such as the Panic of 1907 and the Great Depression. Minsky opposed the deregulation that characterized the 1980s.
It was at the University of California, Berkeley, that seminars attended by Bank of America executives helped him to develop his theories about lending and economic activity, views he laid out in two books, "John Maynard Keynes" (1975), a classic study of the economist and his contributions, and "Stabilizing an Unstable Economy" (1986), and more than a hundred professional articles.
Further developments.
Minsky's theories have enjoyed some popularity, but have had little influence in mainstream economics or in central bank policy.
Minsky stated his theories verbally, and did not build mathematical models based on them. Minsky preferred to use interlocking balance sheets rather than mathematical equations to model economies: "The alternative to beginning one's theorizing about capitalist economies by positing utility functions over the reals and production functions with something labeled K (called capital) is to begin with the interlocking balance sheets of the economy." Consequently, his theories have not been incorporated into mainstream economic models, which do not include private debt as a factor.
Minsky's theories, which emphasize the macroeconomic dangers of speculative bubbles in asset prices, have also not been incorporated into central bank policy. However, in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2010 there has been increased interest in policy implications of his theories, with some central bankers advocating that central bank policy include a Minsky factor.
Minsky's theories and the subprime mortgage crisis.
Minsky's financial instability-hypothesis.
Hyman Minsky's theories about debt accumulation received revived attention in the media during the subprime mortgage crisis of the first decade of this century. "The New Yorker" has labelled it "the Minsky Moment".
Minsky argued that a key mechanism that pushes an economy towards a crisis is the accumulation of debt by the non-government sector. He identified three types of borrowers that contribute to the accumulation of insolvent debt: hedge borrowers, speculative borrowers, and Ponzi borrowers.
The "hedge borrower" can make debt payments (covering interest and principal) from current cash flows from investments. For the "speculative borrower", the cash flow from investments can service the debt, i.e., cover the interest due, but the borrower must regularly roll over, or re-borrow, the principal. The "Ponzi borrower" (named for Charles Ponzi, see also Ponzi scheme) borrows based on the belief that the appreciation of the value of the asset will be sufficient to refinance the debt but could not make sufficient payments on interest or principal with the cash flow from investments; only the appreciating asset value can keep the Ponzi borrower afloat.
If the use of Ponzi finance is general enough in the financial system, then the inevitable disillusionment of the Ponzi borrower can cause the system to seize up: when the bubble pops, i.e., when the asset prices stop increasing, the speculative borrower can no longer refinance (roll over) the principal even if able to cover interest payments. As with a line of dominoes, collapse of the speculative borrowers can then bring down even hedge borrowers, who are unable to find loans despite the apparent soundness of the underlying investments.
Application to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Economist Paul McCulley described how Minsky's hypothesis translates to the subprime mortgage crisis. McCulley illustrated the three types of borrowing categories using an analogy from the mortgage market: a hedge borrower would have a traditional mortgage loan and is paying back both the principal and interest; the speculative borrower would have an interest-only loan, meaning they are paying back only the interest and must refinance later to pay back the principal; and the ponzi borrower would have a negative amortization loan, meaning the payments do not cover the interest amount and the principal is actually increasing. Lenders only provided funds to ponzi borrowers due to a belief that housing values would continue to increase.
McCulley writes that the progression through Minsky's three borrowing stages was evident as the credit and housing bubbles built through approximately August 2007. Demand for housing was both a cause and effect of the rapidly expanding shadow banking system, which helped fund the shift to more lending of the speculative and ponzi types, through ever-riskier mortgage loans at higher levels of leverage. This helped drive the housing bubble, as the availability of credit encouraged higher home prices. Since the bubble burst, we are seeing the progression in reverse, as businesses de-leverage, lending standards are raised and the share of borrowers in the three stages shifts back towards the hedge borrower.
McCulley also points out that human nature is inherently pro-cyclical, meaning, in Minsky's words, that "from time to time, capitalist economies exhibit inflations and debt deflations which seem to have the potential to spin out of control. In such processes, the economic system's reactions to a movement of the economy amplify the movement – inflation feeds upon inflation and debt-deflation feeds upon debt-deflation." In other words, people are momentum investors by nature, not value investors. People naturally take actions that expand the high and low points of cycles. One implication for policymakers and regulators is the implementation of counter-cyclical policies, such as contingent capital requirements for banks that increase during boom periods and are reduced during busts.
Views on John Maynard Keynes.
In his book "John Maynard Keynes" (1975), Minsky criticized the neoclassical synthesis' interpretation of "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". He also put forth his own interpretation of the "General Theory", one which emphasized aspects that were de-emphasized or ignored by the neoclassical synthesis, like Knightian uncertainty.


Rising Sun Tavern (Fredericksburg, Virginia)

The Rising Sun Tavern is a historic building in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was built in about 1760 as a home by Charles Washington, youngest brother of George Washington, and became a tavern in 1792.
History.
This house, built by the youngest brother of George Washington, was occupied by the Washington family until about 1780. The property was sold to Larkin Smith in 1791 and in 1792 was bought by Colonel Gustav Wallace who rented the building to Mr. John Frasier, who operated a tavern there. Though the tavern became known as the "Rising Sun Tavern" in the 20th Century, it was actually known as the "Golden Eagle" or the "Eagle" in the 1790s. The ordinary at the old Washington family home served travelers into the 1820s under various owners.
The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, which is now called Preservation Virginia, purchased the building in 1907 and it was given to the Fredericksburg branch of that group to operate. In 1933, the Society of Cincinnati hosted a Sesquicentennial celebration on the property and presented Preservation Virginia with a bronze medal in appreciation of their preservation efforts. The building is filled with period furnishings and stories of early life in Fredericksburg. In mid-2012, Preservation Virginia signed an agreement passing ownership to the newly created "Washington Heritage Museums" group by 2013. The site continues to be open as a museum.
It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
Originally, the large front porch was not part of the structure. It was added during the tavern phase of the property. No longer serving food and drink, guides provide visitors with a lively interpretation of eighteenth-century tavern life. The site is open daily.


Republican Society

The Republican Society (Dutch: "Republikeins Genootschap") is a Dutch republican movement, founded on 11 September 1996 in the Prinsenhof in Delft, at the initiative of Pierre Vinken. Its aim is to abolish the monarchy of the Netherlands.
Founders and goal.
According to the Republican Society's website, there are fourteen founders:
The idea was to start with fifteen members, and two absent people –Harry Mulisch and Schuitemaker– would be marked as co-founders "in absentia". However, Mulisch withdrew and thus brought the number to fourteen. These were all prominent members of Dutch society with influential positions in politics, science, business, education and journalism.
The society does not have any bylaws. Unlike the New Republican Society, the Republican Society does not undertake actions to bring the republic closer. It proceeds from the notion that the mere existence of the Republican Society will be enough to enable the restoration of the Dutch Republic in the long term. One can only become a member by co-optation.
History.
Origins, leak and controversy.
The group originated from Vinken's circle of friends "to discuss the last taboo in the Netherlands". The Republican Society's existence was kept a secret at first; a period of two hidden years was planned, and then to await a blunder on part of the monarchy. This decision was taken, because some members could get in trouble with their professional connections, and because opinion polls showed that 95% of the population favoured the monarchy. Initially, there was some confusion about how serious the fellowship actually was (amongst other things, the proposal "to proclaim the blue-gray napkin of the Prinsenkelder the official Flag of the Republic" suggested the gathering was at least partially in jest). After the first gathering was over, the founders sent letters to others, to confidentially inform them about the Society, with the question if they were interested in joining. In October 1996, Piet Grijs (Hugo Brandt Corstius) already betrayed the cause by writing in "Vrij Nederland" that, despite his fervent republicanism, he would not partake in the secrecy; however, his (limited) exposé did not cause any uproar yet. Early 1997, one of the people involved leaked the minutes of the founding meeting to "de Volkskrant", who revealed it to the public on 26 February 1997. The also leaked post-foundation correspondence, showed that several members had distanced themselves from the Society in the meantime; for example, Mulisch (absent during the foundation) criticised the exclusion of women and foreigners ("Decision 4: Members will also be selected based on physical characteristics: only native men are eligible."). Members approached by the media for comments, reacted annoyed on the leaking of, and/or their membership of, the Republican Society, refused to respond or desired to remain anonymous. In the media, especially "De Telegraaf" that ran the headline "Leave our royal house alone!", and also from politics, including prime minister Wim Kok, the reaction was generally overwhelmingly negative. However, de Young Democrats and Young Socialists enthusiastically sought to join the Society, and hold nationwide discussions on monarchy and republic; the Youth Organisation Freedom and Democracy stated they were in favour of a purely ceremonial kingship "according to the Swedish model".
Regrouping.
Knapen, who had distanced himself from the Society soon after its foundation, accused "De Telegraaf" and "de Volkskrant" of taking the Society way too seriously, and called the media controversy a "farce". Van Amerongen, however, stood up defiantly in "De Groene Amsterdammer", in which he indeed explained "Decision 4" to be a mere joke, but the republican initiative as a whole "extremely serious" and "serious in every sense", and provided more legitimacy for the cause. He primarily rebuked "De Telegraaf", accusing it of hypocrisy by first calling the emergence of the Republican Society "barely noteworthy", before filling page after page about it for an entire week, and write down reviling remarks from several famous Dutch people addressed to the republicans (singer Gerard Joling called them "traitors"). Some like historian Anton van Hooff joined the ranks of the Society, other republicans such as Socialist Party leader Jan Marijnissen did not (no 'conspiratory clubs'), but did support having a public nationwide debate on the monarchy, which in their opinion unjustly appeared to be a taboo subject. Several politicians and commentators proceeded to sweeten the issue, which, despite the serious undertone, appeared to be a partially "derailed joke", because the prankish remarks in Vinken's minutes such as "Decision 4" were unintentionally taken seriously in print. Although the existence of the Republican Society was revealed prematurely and rather clumsily, it succeeded in having the form of government debated nationally. One year later, the media no longer wrote about the royal house without criticism, and the membership of the Republican Society grew rapidly.
Growth and competition.
During its first anniversary in September 1997, the Republican Society itself sought publicity by showing a new, expanded list of members, which now included women and foreigners, such as Jeroen Brouwers, Remco Campert, Jaap van Heerden, André Haakmat, Jasperina de Jong, H.U. Jessurun d'Oliveira, Ite Rümke, André Spoor, Jan Timman, Adriaan Morrien, Theo Sontrop, Theo van Gogh and Theodor Holman. However, the Society's exclusivity by co-optation and the lack of public actions formed an obstacle to various politically active youths, who launched the New Republican Society (NRG) on 21 January 1998 in De Balie. On 28 January, the NRG jokingly proclaimed the Third Republic of the Netherlands on Dam Square, preceding queen Beatrix's 60th birthday celebrations. The two republican societies did soon decide to approach each other and possibly cooperate.
In 2005, the Republican Society and the New Republican Society co-founded the magazine "De Republikein" ("The Republican").


Liberal Reform Party (Australia)

The Liberal Reform Party was an Australian political party, active in New South Wales state politics between 1901 and 1916. It drew much of its support from Protestant and Temperance groups.
History.
The question of tariff policy which, had created and divided the Free Trade Party and Protectionist Party in New South Wales in the 1890s, became a federal issue at the time of federation. Deprived of their main ideological difference, the two parties were recreated as the Liberal Reform Party, aligned with the federal Free Trade Party, and the Progressive Party, aligned with the federal Protectionist Party. The Progressive Party's vote collapsed at the 1904 election and many of its members then joined the Liberal Reform Party. By 1907, the Liberal Reform Party was left as the main centre-right party in New South Wales.
The party's leaders were: Charles Lee from 1901 to 1902, Sir Joseph Carruthers from 1902 to 1907, and Sir Charles Wade from 1907 to 1916. Carruthers and Wade both served terms as premier.
In 1916, the Liberal Reform Party formed a coalition with the pro-conscription elements of the state Labor Party under Premier William Holman. In 1917, Liberal Reform merged with the pro-conscription elements of Labor to form the New South Wales branch of the Nationalist Party of Australia. As was the case with the federal Nationalists, the new party was dominated by former Liberal Reformers, but Holman was the merged party's leader.


Assembly of Vizille

The Assembly of Vizille or Estates General of Dauphiné was the result of a meeting of various representatives in Grenoble. Its purpose was to discuss the events of The Day of the Tiles, one of the first revolts preceding the French Revolution.
Day of the Tiles.
On 7 June 1788, riots broke out all over the town of Grenoble. Soldiers sent to quell the disturbances forced the townspeople off the streets. Some sources say that the soldiers were sent to disperse parliamentarians, who were attempting to assemble a parliament. However, the townspeople climbed onto the roofs of buildings, hurling roof-tiles at the soldiers in the streets below, hence the name. This drove royal troops out of the city in the first outbreak of political violence that became the revolution.
The Assembly.
In July, Claude Perier, inspired by all of the liberal ideas around him, assembled a meeting in the room of the "Jeu de Paume" in his Chateau de Vizille and hosted the meeting which was previously prohibited in Grenoble. Almost 500 men gathered that day at the banquet hosted by Claude. In attendance there were many "notables" including churchmen, businessmen, doctors, notaries, municipal officials, lawyers, and landed nobility of the province of Dauphiné.
Demanded at this meeting: the Convocation in Paris of an Estates-General (a form of national parliament). This meeting marked the first portion of the French Revolution. Opposition to absolutist monarchy finally came out into the open, with increasing support for its demands, culminating in the meeting of the Estates General.


Newtown Battlefield State Park

Newtown Battlefield State Park, formerly known as Newtown Battlefield Reservation, was the site of the Battle of Newtown fought in August 1779, during the American Revolutionary War. It was the only major battle of the Sullivan Expedition, an armed offensive led by General John Sullivan that was ordered by the Continental Congress to end the threat of the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War. In the battle, the Iroquois were defeated decisively. A portion of the battlefield is today managed as a state park. The entire battlefield (about ) was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
Description and history.
The Newtown Battlefield is located along the eastern bank of the Chemung River, in western New York southeast of Elmira. Its main focus is Sullivan Hill, a wooded hill that was fortified by the Iroquois in a bid to ambush Sullivan's column. The main trail followed by Sullivan's troops had to pass near the steep hillside, which was only from the river. Sullivan's advance forces discovered the Iroquois works, and Sullivan set up his artillery on a rise to the south, from which it could command not just Sullivan Hill but also another hill to the east. After cannonading the Iroquois position, Sullivan sent troops up Baldwin Creek, which skirts the hill to the east. These forces eventually formed a battle line that drove the Iroquois from the position.
The state acquired of land, covering most of Sullivan Hill, which it managed first as a state reservation, and then as a state park. A narrow column of white granite known as the Newton Battlefield Monument was erected on top of Sullivan Hill in 1912.
On January 19, 2010, New York State Governor David Paterson proposed closing the park to reduce the state's growing budget deficit. However, the park was allowed to remain open after budget adjustments were made throughout the state's park system.


Committee for Cultural Freedom

The Committee for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an American political organization active from 1939 to 1951 which advocated opposition to the totalitarianism of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in foreign affairs, and promoted pro-democratic reforms in public and private institutions domestically. Co-founded by influential philosopher and educator John Dewey and the anti-Soviet Marxist academic Sidney Hook, it was reorganized in January 1951 into the American Committee for Cultural Freedom.
History.
Founding.
The Committee for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was founded on May 14, 1939. The genesis of the CCF was a disagreement among communists, socialists, leftists, and centrists in the United States over the value of forming a popular front and the need for violence, revolution, and dictatorship in establishing a more just society. Many American far left-wing intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s were Trotskyists who believed in democracy and were opposed to the totalitarianism advocated by Joseph Stalin and Stalinism. The CCF was an attempt by John Dewey and other leftists to break with what they argued was the totalitarianism of the Communist Party USA and "cleanse" left-wing politics to make it more palatable to the mainstream of American voters. But the goals of the group's founders were not uniform on this. Dewey saw the CCF as an independent organization. Hook saw the CCF as a means of undermining the popular front. Dewey believed that he could persuade other left-wing organizations to give up their belief in revolution and dictatorship and join with the CCF in promoting leftist ideals. Hook secretly worked against him in these negotiations. The CCF's statement of purpose was signed by 96 intellectuals in May 1939. However, it did not hold its first meeting until October 1939.
The primary co-founders of the organization were John Dewey and Sidney Hook. Dewey served as the organization's honorary chair and Ferdinand Lundberg was its secretary, but Hook was individual who pushed for its formation. Hook played a critical role in the group. He and Frank N. Trager co-chaired the CCF's Committee on Plans and Organization, which was the backbone of the organization. The CCF produced a number of reports on politics, economics, culture, and foreign affairs during its short lifetime. Two of its earliest and most influential reports were "Stalinist Outposts in the United States" and "Nazi Outposts in the United States", which listed for the first time in American history front organizations for the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The CCF began publishing the "CCF Bulletin", a monthly newsletter, in October 1939.
The founding of the CCF was not without controversy. Many leftists, such as Dwight Macdonald, believed the CCF was not sufficiently leftist, and formed a splinter Trotskyist group with similar aims called the League for Cultural Freedom and Socialism. The CCF was criticized by mainstream liberal intellectuals and groups as well. The political magazine "The New Republic" actively campaigned in its pages against the CCF. "The New Republic" accused the CCF of actively aiding fascism and supporting a Trotskyist revolution in the U.S. Freda Kirchwey, editor of "The Nation" (a liberal political magazine), strongly criticized the CCF for equating Stalinism and fascism without recognizing the two political systems' differences. "The New Republic" and "The Nation" pressured mainstream liberals and respected leftist intellectuals to resign their membership in the CCF. Hook and Trager, through the CCF Committee on Plans and Organization, sought to counteract this pressure through anonymous and signed letters to major newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, and anonymous and on-the-record quotations supporting the CCF.
Activities.
In domestic affairs, the CCF opposed any attempt to engage in an ideological or political witch-hunt or otherwise impose restrictions on intellectual or political freedoms. For example, the CCF very early on opposed attempts by state curriculum committees to censor elementary and secondary education textbooks or investigate the political ideologies of textbook authors. The CCF also attacked the anti-communist Rapp-Coudert Committee's 1940 hearings in New York state, during which widespread abuse of the subpoena power, use of informants, reliance on hearsay and rumor, and badgering of witnesses led to an anti-communist witch-hunt against public school teachers and professors in state-run colleges and universities. Nonetheless, the CCF did oppose active communist influence within other organizations (such as unions) and the public schools. Its justification was that most communist organizations were Stalinist in outlook and opposed to democracy. In fact, one of the reason why Dewey agreed to co-found the CCF was that the Communist Party USA had taken control of the American Federation of Teachers local (Local 5) in New York City by the mid-1930s. The communists in Local 5 had diverted the union's attention away from wages, benefits, and working conditions and used obstructionist tactics to prevent the local union from functioning. Dewey, an AFT member, was determined to break the communist control of Local 5. After a lengthy series of battles, the CCF helped elect CCF member George Counts elected president of the local union, breaking the communist insurgency within the AFT.
In international affairs, the CCF condemned both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany for engaging in totalitarianism. This opposition was controversial at the time, for many Americans perceived the Soviet Union to be acting as a bulwark against Nazi Germany and the territorial ambitions of Adolf Hitler. In early August 1939, more than 400 people signed a public letter denouncing the CCF's linkage of Stalinism and Nazism, and defending the Soviet Union. Two weeks later, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, severely undermining this argument and embarrassing the signers of the letter. Dewey resigned as honorary chair after news of the pact was made public. Reinhold Niebuhr pleaded with him in 1944 to rejoin the CCF, but he refused—arguing too much of the Committee's attention was focused on opposing communism and not enough on other forms of totalitarianism.
Dissolution.
The CCF was the inspiration for several anti-communist groups like Americans for Intellectual Freedom and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom. In 1951, Hook reorganized the CCF into the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (ACCF). In August 1948, the Soviet Union sponsored the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Wroclaw, Poland, during which Western and democratic culture were widely denounced. The conference deeply unsettled American leftists and alarmed American political figures. American leftists subsequently held a conference March 25–27, 1949, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in which these criticisms were addressed. Many of the speakers, however, attacked the United States for taking an over-aggressive and militaristic stand toward the Soviet Union which had exacerbated tension between the two nations. "The Waldorf Conference", as the event came to be known, made headlines worldwide. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and American political leaders became concerned that the United States was losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Western Europeans.
In 1950, the CIA secretly organized and funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Held on June 26, 1950, the Congress for Cultural Freedom brought together leading leftist thinkers, artists, and politicians from Western Europe and the U.S. at the Titania Palace in West Berlin. While nearly all the attendees were socialists or strongly leftist, nearly all were also strongly anti-communist and vocally opposed to the Soviet Union. Using the far-left politics of the attendees as a cover, the Congress for Cultural Freedom began a worldwide effort to undermine Soviet influence in academia and the arts. It began funding and infiltrating the Europe-America Groups, small organizations of American and European writers established by left-wing American novelist Mary McCarthy in 1948 to promote European-American understanding.
The CIA also began working with Sidney Hook, whose anti-Soviet views had dramatically intensified since the 1930s. Hook initially tried to get the Europe-America Groups to fund the CCF (by then largely moribund) so that the CCF might carry out anti-Soviet activities in the U.S. When that effort failed, Hook dissolved the CCF and created the American Committee for Cultural Freedom on January 5, 1951, to secure CIA funding indirectly through the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The American Committee for Cultural Freedom name was purposefully chosen to echo the predecessor organization's name and build on its good reputation. The primary co-founders of the ACCF were Hook, George Counts, novelist James T. Farrell.


David Hume (advocate)

David Hume, Baron Hume of Ninewells FRSE (1757–1838) was a Scottish advocate, judge and legal scholar, whose work on Scots criminal law and Scots private law has had a deep and continuing influence. He is referred to as Baron Hume to distinguish him from his uncle, David Hume the philosopher.
Hume was educated at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. He became an advocate in 1779, and in 1786 was appointed Professor of Scottish Law at the University of Edinburgh, a post he retained until 1822, when he took up office as a Baron of Exchequer. In 1785 he married Jane Alder. They had three sons and three daughters.
Hume’s writings on criminal law culminated in his "Commentaries on the Law of Scotland, Respecting Trial for Crimes" (1797), a work that has continued to be cited in court into the 21st century. During his lifetime he never published his lectures on Scots private law, and indeed expressed the wish that they should not be published posthumously. But manuscript copies were widely circulated and were influential, sometimes being cited in court. Eventually they were published, in six volumes, between 1939 and 1958. The result was a revival of their influence, not least in the field of property law.
Early life and education.
David Hume was baptised 27 February 1757 at Chirnside, Berwickshire, a son of John Hume of Ninewells (1709–1786) and his wife, Agnes née Carre (1725–1785); he was a nephew of the philosopher David Hume.
From 1765 to 1767, he was enrolled as a pupil at Edinburgh high school and then studied at the University of Edinburgh where, in 1774, he studied Roman Law. He matriculated as a law student at the University of Glasgow in 1775 where he remained until 1777 and lodged with Professor John Millar, "then the most celebrated law teacher in the British Isles." In 1777 and 1778 he was a registered student of Scots law in Edinburgh.
Advocate, sheriff-depute, professor, baron.
Hume was admitted as to the Faculty of Advocates in 1779. In 1783 he was favoured with the appointment as part-time sheriff-depute of Berwickshire. In December 1786, he added to these the chair in Scots law in the University of Edinburgh.
In 1793 he left the sheriffdom of Berwickshire for that of Linlithgowshire. In 1811 he was made a principal clerk of session and resigned his post as sheriff.
In 1822 Hume became Baron David Hume on his appointment as Baron of the Exchequer. When he resigned from his professorial post, the university awarded him the degree of LLD.
Family life.
On 24 February 1785 he married Jane Alder and they had three sons and three daughters. She died in 1816 and he then married Jean Veitch Somner. On his death she remarried to Charles Maclaren.
On 27 July 1838 he died at his home, 37 Moray Place in Edinburgh and was buried in the Hume mausoleum at Calton cemetery, Edinburgh.
His three sons, John, David and Joseph, are buried with him.


Imre Hercz

Imre Hercz (10 March 1929 – 24 July 2011) was a Jewish Hungarian-Norwegian physician and public debater.
Hercz was born in Transylvania and had his childhood years in Nagyvárad, in the Hungarian part of Romania. At the age of 15, he was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in May 1944, later to Vernichtungslager Kaufbeuren and then to Dachau concentration camp, but survived. After being hospitalized in Amberg for five and a half years, he recovered and emigrated to Norway in 1952 as one of several Jewish Holocaust-survivors of lesser health accepted to Norway with substantial grants from Joint to the Norwegian government. He finished secondary education in 1955 and graduated from the University of Oslo with a cand.med. degree in 1961. He worked in Tønsberg, Vinstra and Brumunddal from 1962 to 1970, before opening a medical clinic in Høvik in 1971. He resided in Nesbru, and later moved to Høvik.
Hercz represented the Liberal Party as a deputy in Ringsaker municipal council from 1968 to 1970, and chaired the local party branch. He was a board member of the Mosaic Religious Community (Jewish Community in Oslo) from 1972 to 1991, member of the Norwegian Refugee Council from 1972 to 1991, national board member of the Norwegian Medical Association from 1981 to 1993 and national council member of "Allmennpraktiserende Legers Forening" (General Practicians Association) from 1984 to 1991.
Hercz is well known from the public debate on health policy, but even more so in the debate on defamation and anti-Semitism. He has held several public speeches, among others for school students. In February 2009 he won a ruling from Pressens Faglige Utvalg, where a comedian aired on national TV 2 was admonished for defamation and breach of the Ethical Code of Practice for the Norwegian Press. In June 2011 he was awarded the King's Medal of Merit. He received patients in his office at Høvik Legesenter even up to his death, making him, at 82 years of age, one of the oldest practicing doctor in Norway.
Hercz was married and had four children. He died in July 2011.