World leaders, from left, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Morocco's Prince Moulay Hassan, Moroccan King Mohammed VI, U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Australian Governor-General Peter Cosgrove attend a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe as part of the commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the November 11, 1918, armistice, which ended World War I in Paris November 11, 2018.
"Our evidence suggests that a local government is more likely to engage in wasteful spending when there is no local newspaper to report on that government," said University of Illinois Chicago's Dermot Murphy, one of the study's authors. "Investors find it riskier to lend money to wasteful governments, and thus the costs of financing public infrastructure projects, such as schools, hospitals, and roadways, for a local government are higher."
That's a fundamental truth about the federal government. State and local governments provide a lot of services to people -- schools, highways, water, sanitation and the like are all state and local responsibilities. The federal government handles a few huge benefit programs, which, as we noted, are not affected. But most of what the federal government does in domestic policy -- overseeing grants and contracts and regulating businesses, for example, remains at least one step removed from everyday life.
Why, though: Trump has, Fred Kaplan writes, "committed his most irresponsible act in foreign policy to date," probably because he doesn't understand the Iran deal and just wants to reject all things Obama. That's OK: Anyone worried about the effect Eric Schneiderman's resignation might have on the investigation of the Trump administration can rest easy, Mark Joseph Stern argues. The now-erstwhile New York attorney general's political ambitions made him more of a liability than an asset. On a tear: Donald Glover's music video for "This Is America" and this season of Atlanta showcase an entertainer on fire, Aisha Harris writes. For the better: Ashton Lattimore used to spend museum tours and historic-site visits mentally correcting interpreters and docents who referred to slaves as "servants."