How the “First State” has enabled international crime, sheltered tax dodgers, and diverted hard-earned dollars from the rest of us The legal home to over a million companies, Delaware has more registered businesses than residents. Why do virtually all of the biggest corporations in the United States register there? Why do so many small companies choose to set up in Delaware rather than their home states? Why do wealthy individuals form multiple layers of private companies in the state? This book reveals how a systematic enterprise lies behind the business-friendly corporate veneer, one that has kept the state afloat financially by diverting public funds away from some of the poorest people in the United States and supporting dictators and criminals across the world. Hal Weitzman shows how the de facto capital of corporate America has provided safe haven to money launderers, kleptocratic foreign rulers, and human traffickers, and facilitated tax dodging and money laundering by multinational companies and international gangsters. Revenues from Delaware's business-formation industry, known as the Franchise, account for two-fifths of the state’s budget and have helped to keep the tax burden on its residents among the lowest in the United States. Delaware derives enormous political clout from the Franchise, effectively writing the corporate code for the entire country—and because of its outsized influence on corporate America, the second smallest state in the United States also writes the rules for much of the world. What's the Matter with Delaware? shows how, in Joe Biden’s home state, the corporate laws get written behind closed doors, enabling the rich and powerful to do business in the shadows.

"The art of Paul Wayland Bartlett (1865-1925) and turn-of-the-century sculpture in general have been attracting increasing attention. A leading American sculptor of international reputation, Bartlett was one of the best-known artists in the United States." "Bartlett's sculptural decoration for the House pediment at the U.S. Capitol Building was his most prestigious public monument and one of the most historically important federal commissions to be awarded in the United States during the early twentieth century. Its installation in the long-vacant House pediment finally brought to completion a project of Capitol expansion that had begun more than a half-century earlier. As such, it provides a valuable opportunity for exploring the early development of government-sponsored public sculpture in the United States. Unveiled just eight months prior to U.S. entry into World war I, the pediment also represents one of the most visible public expressions of the ideals of the late American Renaissance (1876-1917)."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In 1631, when the Dutch tried to develop plantation agriculture in the Delaware Valley, the Lenape Indians destroyed the colony of Swanendael and killed its residents. The Natives and Dutch quickly negotiated peace, avoiding an extended war through diplomacy and trade. The Lenapes preserved their political sovereignty for the next fifty years as Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and English colonists settled the Delaware Valley. The European outposts did not approach the size and strength of those in Virginia, New England, and New Netherland. Even after thousands of Quakers arrived in West New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the late 1670s and '80s, the region successfully avoided war for another seventy-five years. Lenape Country is a sweeping narrative history of the multiethnic society of the Delaware Valley in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. After Swanendael, the Natives, Swedes, and Finns avoided war by focusing on trade and forging strategic alliances in such events as the Dutch conquest, the Mercurius affair, the Long Swede conspiracy, and English attempts to seize land. Drawing on a wide range of sources, author Jean R. Soderlund demonstrates that the hallmarks of Delaware Valley society—commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty, peaceful resolution of conflict, and opposition to hierarchical government—began in the Delaware Valley not with Quaker ideals or the leadership of William Penn but with the Lenape Indians, whose culture played a key role in shaping Delaware Valley society. The first comprehensive account of the Lenape Indians and their encounters with European settlers before Pennsylvania's founding, Lenape Country places Native culture at the center of this part of North America.

This volume includes 22 new pieces by leading political philosophers, on traditional issues (such as authority and equality) and emerging issues (such as race, and money in politics). The pieces are clear and accessible will interest both students and scholars working in philosophy, political science, law, economics, and more.