By Bonnie James April 19, 2021–In honor of the birthday, April 27, 1822, of the renowned American Civil War hero and two-term President Ulysses S. Grant, we recall the courageous actions he took as Commander-in-Chief to defend the Constitutional rights of the formerly enslaved Americans, by enforcing the newly established […]
By Nancy Spannaus April 5, 2021—I was very happy to see the recent article by Oren Cass of the American Compass, entitled “We’re Just Speculating Here…, The Rise of Wall Street and the Fall of American Investment.” In a lengthy footnoted piece, replete with informative graphics, Cass documents the ways […]
The third article in the series Funding Infrastructure the American System Way. See articles one and two on this site. By Nancy Spannaus March 29, 2021—When Abraham Lincoln launched his first political campaign in 1832, he encapsulated his political principles in his typically folksy way: My politics are short and […]
By Nancy Spannaus March 22, 2021—Over the last two days, two prominent advocates for Alexander Hamilton have come forward to defend Hamilton’s legacy as a visionary statesman, including against the charges that he was an “enslaver.” These important initiatives came from Douglas Hamilton, Hamilton’s fifth-great-grandson, who directly took on the […]
Part 2 of Funding Infrastructure the American System Way. Part 1 can be found here . By Nancy Spannaus March 15, 2021–Anyone looking seriously at how to fund a comprehensive infrastructure plan for the United States must take an in-depth look at America’s 1820’s infrastructure boom. In the period between […]
By Jonathan Tennenbaum (March 7, 2021–The following article is reprinted from Asia Times, which published it on March 5, as part 4 in a series entitled “Watch out! Biden wants to save the planet!” I consider its approach coherent with that I put forward in my recent post on nuclear […]
Part one of a series. Parts two, three and four are now available on this site. By Nancy Spannaus March 5, 2021—If there’s one issue the “left, right, and center” of American politics agree on, it’s that our country desperately needs to repair and upgrade its infrastructure, from transportation to water, […]
By Nancy Spannaus Feb. 20, 2021—The dramatic failure of the electric grid in Texas this week, which at one point left more than 4 million of the state’s residents without electricity, should be an object lesson to the country. Texas’s deregulated energy grid is quintessential energy insanity; unfortunately, much of […]
Canada and the American Revolution By Gerald Therrien[1] February 18, 2021—Editor’s Note: While this article may appear tangential to this blog’s theme of the American System, I find it highly interesting. After all, why didn’t more of Great Britain’s many colonies – India and Canada, for instance – achieve their […]
By Nancy Spannaus June 14, 2021—One of the common questions I am asked during my classes of Alexander Hamilton’s American System is: Where did Hamilton get his ideas? In a one-and-a-half-hour presentation on June 6, I addressed that question at some length. My power point presentation was entitled “Cameralism, Leibniz, […]
By Nancy Spannaus June 10, 2021—As President Biden shifts course from negotiating with the GOP, to counting on a bipartisan “Group of 20” in the Senate to come up with an infrastructure compromise plan, the ideal solution for funding the trillions of dollars required is in plain sight. As I […]
Draft Legislation To Create a Bank of the United States for Infrastructure and Manufacturing
How FDR Built Vital Infrastructure
Part four of the series Funding Infrastructure the American System Way By Nancy Spannaus April 22, 2021—From rural electrification to roads, water mains, flood control, and national parks (just to name a few), there are few elements of our core national infrastructure today which were not built under the administration […]