A Debt of Gratitude to Former President Trump. Here’s why…

Mike Magee No man is above the law! That is the screaming headline behind last evening’s indictment (first of many) of former President Donald Trump. Donald Trump, for a time, sat himself in the middle of America’s triangle of power. From his seat as President, he installed himself as “a Golden Idol” and […]

“If Men Were Angels…” American Democracy Will Pass This Stress Test.

Mike Magee As we enter a new and potentially historic week, with a former President doing his best to reignite a Civil War in our nation, we do well to take a breath and reread James Madison’s words from Federalist No. 51. But first, a few words of history. When it came to checks and […]

Deregulation – The Beginning and End of Silicon Valley Bank (1983 to 2023)

Mike Magee To know Silicon Valley Bank – SVP (prior to its dramatic demise) is to understand the world of tech start-up’s – their needs, appetite for risk, human behaviors, and the rapidly changing and dramatic world of technologic breakthroughs. The bank itself was four decades old created in 1983, in Silicon Valley, for Silicon […]

AMA/PhRMA v. Federalist Society – Let The Witch Trials Begin!

Mike Magee The law is a funny thing. When British settlers first arrived on our eastern shores in 1607, their clergy-led bosses struggled to establish the rules while “clinging precariously” to life itself. Where did the rules come from in the decades that followed? Some were derived from folk law. Others were indigenous (unique to […]

Leaning In To Public Health Policy: Public Health as Nation Builder.

Mike Magee As Stanford Professor of Law, Lawrence M. Friedman, wrote in A History of American Law, “One hundred and sixty-nine years went by between Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence. The same length of time separates 1776 and the end of World War II.” During those very early years that preceded the formal declaration […]