Joe Manchin torpedoed his party’s key bill for the same reason Italy protected the sparkling wine – the local growth model

As 2020 comes to an end, the Lively panel gives their thoughts on the year's top local story, top national story, biggest winners and losers, plus predictions for 2021. Jim Hummel is joined by Brown professor Wendy Schiller, URI professor Maureen Moakley, corporate communications consultant Dave Layman, and Ian Donnis of the Public's Radio.

New Research Alert from Reid Pauly, Erik Lin-Greenberg, and Jacquelyn G. Schneider

Prerna Singh talks to Veja.com

Wendy Schiller: "I expect her nomination, if it is cleared through committee and reported out without any incident, should be taken up by the Senate late this week, sometime next week."

Richard Arenberg speaks to Times Union

Writer Salman Rushdie on locating himself through his novels, Pakistan’s strategic importance to the Taliban and why the religious imagination is unappealing to him

Richard Arenberg: "The minority has a pretty strong tool with which they can negotiate the power-sharing agreement."

Narco-terrorists fight for control of the cocaine trade, narco-insurgents like the Taliban fund their wars with heroin – and entire narco states are built around the drug trade.

Wendy Schiller: "It doesn't make any sense to change the way a vacancy is filled for lieutenant governor unless you change the way lieutenant governors are elected. They ought to be elected hand in hand as a partner with the governor."

Congress can affirm what “except in cases of impeachment” means.

Richard Arenberg: Some areas that are likely sources of bipartisan agreement are further COVID-19 relief, an infrastructure package and possibly some climate reforms.

Wendy Schiller: "What and how much he has to do will depend in large part on exactly when Raimondo gets confirmed."

The William R. Rhodes Center is keen to bring its insights and programming to as wide an audience as possible. We have our own podcast series, The Rhodes Center Podcast, which is focused on interviews with our fellows and visitors.

Ashutosh Varshney writes: The politics of Hindu nationalists is threatening to create a Jim Crow India in BJP-ruled territories. What race was to the American South, ethnicised religion is to Hindu nationalists

How do we understand experiences of loss politically? And what role have accounts of loss played historically, from slavery through the Movement for Black Lives and the pandemic? Meeting Street host Amanda Anderson speaks with political scientist Juliet Hooker and historian Emily Owens about their teaching project across the humanities and social sciences. We discuss quantitative vs. qualitative frameworks; the significance of public feelings of grief, rage, and exhaustion; and the powerful role that both numbers and art can play in political movements.

From the warped housing market to the ‘knowledge economy’, the system increasingly works only for the uber-wealthy

Ashutosh Varshney writes: Democracy and human rights will continue to be key drivers, but economic tools and diplomacy will be the main methods for achieving these goals, not military power.

Last week’s recommendation by two California parole officials that the man who murdered Robert F. Kennedy should be released from prison was quirky, even by California standards.

As the IPCC report makes clear, there are now only unknown and unfamiliar alternative futures that we can choose from.

Wendy Schiller: “The only way to produce legislation in this kind of environment is from the top, with party leader coordination."

Powerful states compete and cooperate to shape the rules and institutions of international order. How will the growing effects of climate change affect that behavior?

Conservative rhetoric warning of wage-price spirals is disingenuous.

A recent analysis of the 2020 election by three Democratic groups contained some serious warnings for Democrats.

Research has shown that constituent do not evaluate legislators more favorably for claiming credit for delivering large grants than for delivering tiny ones.

Richard Arenberg: “While some of the rhetoric by Democrats may be a little overheated, the proliferation of outrageous voter suppression laws in red states around the country make a federal response critical."

Ashutosh Varshney: "A very large part of the base is hugely disenchanted because they've lost their loved ones. They've lost their siblings, their parents, their children."

Finance ministers finally seem willing to crack down on avoidance. But the rich may just slip through the loopholes.

Jeff Robbins writes about Liz Cheney for Creators.com

Tyler Jost: "States like to make themselves seem open to negotiation, and it is the other side that is being unreasonable."

An early take on the Biden administration’s climate diplomacy from Jeff D. Colgan, with Thomas N. Hale and Scott M. Moore

Jeffrey Robbins writes about Hamas for Creators.com

Richard Arenberg: If the filibuster is dead, the Senate becomes like the House.

Ashutosh Varshney: “Modi’s image will depend on how the mass suffering is interpreted, and whether he can successfully deploy his skills at narrative shifting, but I think he will have to pay a price."

Foxman, who just turned 81, is being honored in Washington, D.C., this month as part of American Jewish History Month, established by Congress and a presidential proclamation in 2006.

Mao was unmoved by the mass suffering caused by The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution because, for him, it was superseded by national glory. Something similar is playing out in India.

Prerna Singh: “What Modi is doing is anti-democratic."

President Joe Biden's address to Congress last week wasn't merely a sobering recitation of the nation's most profound wounds and weaknesses, and it wasn't only a summary of the specific proposals he has made in his first 100 days to confront them. It was an old-fashioned call for bipartisanship by one who came of age in a different, better time.

Prerna Singh: "It’s part of the authoritarian playbook. It’s another egregious instance of the BJP regime systematically showing callousness and hubris."

Prerna Singh: India is exporting vaccines to other countries, all of which is amazing and laudable and necessary, but there was no consistent vaccine drive in India.

King's independent, cerebral approach lends him outsized credibility in the Senate, and he rejects the conventional wisdom that bipartisanship in the world's supposedly most deliberative body is dead.

Wendy Schiller: "I think either Cicilline or Langevin would be most likely offered a position in the Biden administration if they were asked to step aside or they did step aside to make room for the other. I think there would be some landing pad for them."

Hot tempers at last week's House hearing on the battle against COVID-19 highlighted again the hatred that America's hard right continues to harbor for Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Jeffrey Robbins writes about the GOP for Creators.com

Wendy Schiller: “When you’re losing those kinds of senators in the Republican Party, you’re faced with primaries that will be extremely contentious and very conservative."

Wendy Schiller: “Every president has wanted his children or grandchildren to run for office for a long time. Trump is no different."

Joe Biden has tasked the vice president with looking into the root causes of the migrant surge, but many on the Left and Right want immediate action on the current crisis.

Richard Arenberg: “It seems unlikely that Republicans in Congress will support the Biden plan as described because of the size of the price tag and the suggestion that corporate taxes be increased."

Richard Arenberg with Carl Levin: Abolition would be shortsighted, but current rules allow obstructionists too much leeway.