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This R&D covers Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his campaign to win re-election. Emanuel, Chicago’s first Jewish mayor, was elected in February 2011. He served as White House Chief of Staff before assuming office. His record as mayor as been mixed as he is pushing to raise the city’s minimum wage to $13, but has angered teachers’ unions by closing schools and has had to deal with the city’s pension and violent crime problems. He will square off against nine challengers in the Chicago mayoral election on February 24. Extempers should make sure to keep follow the election, which could come up in domestic politics and/or local and state issues rounds.
For all his unpopularity, Rahm Emanuel seems destined for another term http://t.co/t5RItYUEiD
— The Economist (@EconUS) December 9, 2014
As Rahm Emanuel looks forward, Chicago Democrats look around http://t.co/ULmwIhu9QD
— Al Jazeera America (@ajam) December 9, 2014
Mayor Emanuel says Chicago can’t go back to old ways, as he kicks off re-election campaign http://t.co/gCUsGfOEaE pic.twitter.com/77rsc4uSss
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) December 7, 2014
Princeton University was one of four colleges hosting an Extemporaneous Speaking Tournament of Champions (TOC) qualifying tournament last weekend, welcoming sixty-three extempers from across the Northeast and a few additional states. Charlie Barton of Regis High School (NY) held off a fierce final round challenge from Jasper Primack of Newton South High School (MA) to win the title in the cumulative tournament, which combines extempers preliminary and outround ranks to determine a champion. Barton took fifth in the final, but his sizable lead going in helped him defeat Primack, who won the final round by four ranks.
The 2014 George C. Armstrong Heart of Illinois Invitational, contested each year on the campus of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, followed the same script as the previous edition as Lane Hedrick of Rowan County Senior High School (KY) successfully defended her extemporaneous speaking championship. Hedrick defeated twenty-one other competitors and a final round that featured extempers from four different states. In the final, Hedrick took two of the three available first place ranks to defeat Anna Riggs of Munster High School (IN) by three ranks.
After existing for twenty months Israel’s coalition government has collapsed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a press conference last week to announce the firing of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid on the grounds that they were insubordinate and plotting behind his back. Livni and Lapid were the two moderate members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet and their dismissal removes their political support for his coalition, thereby necessitating that new elections be held. Israeli voters went to the polls to create Netanyahu’s existing coalition in January 2013 and now, in the Israeli tradition, they will head back to decide whether Netanyahu deserves a fourth term, which is the one defining issue of the race thus far. The elections are tentatively scheduled for March, with March 17 looking like the probable election date.
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When he assumed office in December 2012 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged a radical course of action to deal with Japan’s economic downturn. Since 1990 the world’s third-largest economy has been plagued by deflation and sagging consumer confidence creating what Japanese policymakers call the “Lost Two Decades.” Abe’s program, dubbed “Abenomics,” called for a combination of expansionary monetary and fiscal policy and structural reform. Throughout 2013 the Japanese economy showed signs of recovery and inflation was moving upwards, but Abe’s decision to increase the country’s consumption tax from 5% to 8% in April has produced the country’s fourth recession since 2008. In response to disappointing economic numbers, Abe announced last week that he is postponing a future increase in the consumption tax until 2017 and he called for new parliamentary elections next month. He justified his call for new elections by saying that he needed a mandate from voters to continue his economic program and pledged to resign if his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition did not win. Although the LDP is expected to triumph in next month’s vote, analysts question whether Abe has the stomach to continue major economic reforms in light of Japan’s recent recession and some criticize the upcoming election as a useless exercise.
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