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Tom Brokaw is perplexed by the absence of the war in Afghanistan as a campaign issue in 2010 US elections. Especially because the war is in its 9th year, has caused 5000 dead, 30,000 wounded, and cost over $1 trillion dollars. He reasons that this is because the vast majority of Americans can opt out of fighting the war on the ground. The all volunteer service draws from 1% of the population, with the majority from working class or middle class backgrounds. This has an unintended effect in making the costs of the war less visible, when actually it is taking a toll in other ways. The US is short of funds to build much needed infrastructure or update infrastructure. States and local governments are laying off teachers because of budget shortfalls, and the national budget deficit makes less money available for solving pressing problems in carbon emissions, energy, and infrastructure. Only recently New Jersey Governor Christie put on hold a new tunnel into New York City because of a lack funds. Pressing infrastructure issues elsewhere will be postponed in this manner. And the outlook for the next 20 years, according to Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, is not going to be better with slower growth at an average of 1.5%, leaving less money for the kinds of projects that defined America from the Erie canal to interstate highways. Brokaw says, the country would benefit from an effort to discuss what happens next, in the continued expenditure of blood and treasure. A discussion of what happens next in this effort to deal with Islamic rage....

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The Liberal Democrats lost badly in the May 2011 local elections in Britain. Voters also overwhelmingly rejected the alternative voting system that the Liberal Democrats supported. The vote on an alternative voting system was one of the key conditions put up by the Liberals when they joined the Conservatives in a coalition government. About 69% voted to keep the current voting system supported by the Conservative party. In local races Labor and the Scottish National Party made gains at the expense of the Liberals. The Liberals lost 695 of their 1,751 seats in local councils, 12 of 17 seats in the Scottish parliament, and one of six seats in the Welsh assembly. Tory support remained steady, but voters turned away from the Liberals to show they do not support the austerity cuts of the Cameron led government. This will pose problems for Liberal leader Nick Clegg's continued participation in the coalition.

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Ted Cruz is seen as the most pro-Israel of the Republican candidates for president. Pro-Israel groups are joining to fund his campaign for president after his win in the Wisconsin primary. Sheldon Adelson is one of the donors sought by the Cruz campaign. Paul Singer and the Ricketts family have funded super PACs that have financed the anti-Trump movement's advertising efforts, but not directly supported Cruz. Cruz is trying to change this following the win in the Wisconsin primary seen as the turning point in the election campaign. Cruz added to the bit of humor about the Cruz campaign on the late night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live," with this exchange: Kimmel saying that Cruz simply held out till these donors found someone they liked less than Cruz. "There you go. its a powerful strategy," said Cruz. Even backers trying to recruit new donors are aware of Cruz's ideologue reputation, saying he is still the "good designated driver" after the party. Cruz has put forward the economic message of Jobs, Growth and Opportunity, as he broadens his appeal outside the conservative values base following the Wisconsin primary....

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Michael McConnell, was Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981-1983. He is now a professor of constitutional law at Stanford University. Here he tries to throw light on how the budgetary process that is required by law, and which makes the formal budget proposed by the president available for public scrutiny, was circumvented through a sequence of events starting in February 2011. The Budget Act of 1974 sets specific deadlines and a process for generating revenue, setting spending priorities, and setting the debt limit. The President first submits his administration's budget by the first Monday in February. The Congressional Budget Office has until Feb. 15 to score the budget using identical metrics for all proposals for a consistent scoring. The budget President Obama put forward in February did not take into account the growing deficit and was rejected by the Senate 97-0. The President proposed a new plan in April 2011, but the proposed budget was so vague that CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said he could not score it. The subsequent efforts in June and July 2011 were carried out in closed door negotiations between senior Republican leaders and the Obama White House. This subverts the original intention of the law. The Budget Act says that both the House and Senate hold hearings on the proposal, with testimony from the administration, "national organizations" and the "general public." Transparency, openness and accountabilility are key aspects of a proper process that is democratic and prevents the parties from engaging in blame and competing claims. The closed door negotiating sessions and the lack of a concrete written budget proposal from the President has turned the current budget process into an effort by each side to see how it can best position itself for the 2012 presidential election. ...

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The elections in Italy in Feb. 2013 show the centre left coalition headed by Pier Luigi Bersani with 29.6% of the votes in the lower house, the centre right coalition headed by Silvio Berlusconi with 29.2% of the votes, the Five Star Movement headed by Beppe Grillo with 25.6% of the votes, and the Civic Choice headed by Mario Monti with 10.6% of the vote. In the Senate the results show the centre left coalition with 31.6% of the vote, the centre right with 30.7%, the Five Star Movement with 23.8%, and Civic Choice with 9.1%. Election rules in Italy give the party with the highest number of votes for the lower house an automatic majority of 340 of 630 seats. The vote shows voter protest over austerity measures. This benefitted both the centre right and the Five Star Movement and hurt the Civic Choice centrist party of Mario Monti which implemented austerity measures in 2012. The centre left was affected by its role in coming to the aid of Monte de Paschi bank in Siena and failing to mount a strong campaign under Bersani. A majority in both houses is needed to provide a stable coalition government which opens the prospect of new elections. The Five Star Movement emerged as the largest single party. Its support comes from young people, internet based campaigning, and a rejection of the right and left parties from the old order in Italian politics, and offers a new dimension to Italy's political future....

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The tenacity of Democratic Party operatives such as Terry Lenzner from minorities in the U.S. marked the period of Civil Rights protests in the postwar period and the Clinton administration, leading to another generation of operatives such as Obama advisor Emmanuel from Chicago.

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After 13 years of Labor government, the new Liberal-Conservative coalition is seen as good for both the parties and good for Britain A good deal of optimism about the prospects for this government. The optimism rests on the pragmatic sensible nature of Cameron and Clegg, on the fact that the 2 parties combined have 59% of the vote in the elections for making some tough decisions- on spending cuts, a sensible fiscal program to generate $9 billion in savings through spending cuts in 2010, and generally agreement between the two parties on the significant issues of state finances. The Tories holding to their position on immigration but giving in on the idea of proportional representation. The election changes would have Parliament members in office for 5 years and the manner of election changed to remove a growing distortion of the popular vote. Labor and Conservatives share of the vote has dropped from 81% in 1979 to 65% in 2010, and still Tory and Labor MP's have 565 of the 650 seats in Parliament or 87%....

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Raghuram Rajan warns about the difficulty of central bankers worldwide to escape from the scenario of ultra low interest rates.

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The tense atmosphere in the talks between the Obama White House and Congressional leaders to achieve deficit reduction and raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a way out of the stalemate in talks between the Obama White House and Republican leaders Boehner and Cantor. McConnell's proposal designed to meet the August 2nd 2011 deadlinefor raising the U.S. debt limit is to give the President new authority to raise the federal debt limit. It would place the entire responsibility for raising the debt limit on the President. Under this proposal Republicans would not have to vote to raise the debt limit. Republicans can then shift the effort for large spending cuts to the congressional appropriations process.

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Voter fatigue with the Conservatives under prime minister Harper is showing up in the province of Ontario. The area around London, Ontario, and Toronto is critical in the 2015 general election. A large loss of manufacturing jobs has left this key manufacturing region of Canada so weakened that the recent 20% decline in the Canadian currency is not leading to a rebound in the manufacturing sector. The Liberals under Justin Trudeau have promised to run a slight deficit to invest in infrastructure that would help the manufacturing sector, while Harper's Conservatives plan to keep the status quo. The vigorous campaign run by Trudeau, the son of a former prime minister, is also helping the Liberals, who are moving ahead in the polls.

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John Carney of the WSJ looks at the financial transactions tax proposed by 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to pay for high college tution costs.

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Hauslohner describes the situation in Egypt after the ouster of president Morsi by the military in July 2013- the old order from the Mubarak regime is back. Gen. Sissi is deputy prime minister and controls the government and the military plays a critical role as before the elections.

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The president of Ohio Christian University, Mark Smith, says there are six different faith groups out there in Ohio supporting Romney, and there remains a high level of intensity driven by a desire to protect religious liberty from an enroaching expansion of the state. He says the public fight of the Obama administration with Catholic hospitals and charities was seen as a threat by evangelical Christians. The evangelical vote makes up 30% of the vote in Ohio, 31% in Iowa, and 26% in Wisconsin.

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The former CEO of GE (General Electric) says why he is skeptical about the decline in the unemployment rate to 7.8% as shown by the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He says the economy has to have grown at breakneck speed for unemployent to drop from 8.3% to 7.8% in 2 months. The dozen companies he is working with are seeing third quarter 2012 results worse than the second quarter. The labor force participation rate declined to 63.5%, the lowest since Sept 1981- fewer people looking for work accounts for the drop from 8.3% in July to 8.1% in August 2012. Other numbers that look implausible are the BLS figures of federal state and local governments adding 602,000 workers to their payrolls in Aug and Sept 2012, the largest 2 month increase in 20 years. And the BLS figure of overall 873,000 workers being added in Sept. 2012, the largest one month increase since 1983. All this he calls implausible. Part of the problem is the way the data is collected because someone who for example says he got a job baby sitting for from anywhere in the range of 1 to 34 hours is a parttime worker, so that working 1-2 hours would be counted as employed parttime in the BLS methodology....