It's been more than a week now since Congress put on the brakes and officially ended the bad being done by the shutdown. Unfortunately, the bad lingers on and the worst may be ahead. That's because the shutdown was a symbolic manifestation of a much bigger ongoing problem that has had and will have significant economic, psychological and behavioral consequences. During the shutdown, Rana Foroohar wrote an article for Time titled, "Congress is Bad for the Economy." How "bad" is it? Let's … [Read more...]
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Frank blogs regularly for the Huffington Post and writes occasional columns and articles for publications such as the International Business Times and The Economic Times of India.
Frank writes on a wide variety of topics that are critical to shaping the future of America and the American dream and to making the United States and the world a better place. These include: Business; education; poverty and inequality; politics and public policy; immigration; manufacturing; innovation; leadership; citizenship; and social commentary.
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Education: All in the Family
This is the final in a series of four blogs that we have posted during Connected Educator Month. In our first blog, titled "Education: Making the Connections," we introduced the concept of a triangle with the student at the center and with the family at the top and the school and the community at either tip. We see the tips of the triangle as the pivotal points at which we need to make the proper connections in order to improve the quality of education. In our next two blogs, we focused … [Read more...]
Education: It Takes a Community
This is the third in a series of four blogs that we will post during Connected Educator Month. In our first blog, titled "Education: Making the Connections," we introduced the concept of a triangle with the student at the center and with the family at the top and the school and the community at either tip. We see the tips of the triangle as the pivotal points at which we need to make the proper connections in order to improve the quality of education. In the second blog, we focused on … [Read more...]
Charter Schools: Cure or Curse?
This is the second in the series of four blogs that we will post during Connected Educator Month. In our last blog titled "Education: Making the Connections," we introduced the concept of a triangle with the student at the center and with the family at the top and the school and the community at either tip. We see the tips of the triangle as the pivotal points at which we need to make the proper connections in order to improve the quality of education. In this blog, we focus on schools and … [Read more...]
Education: Making the Connections
This is Connected Educator's Month (CEM) -- a month in which thousands of educators in on-line communities and learning networks across the country participate in a myriad of events to share knowledge and to learn from each other. As a result, we decided to devote some posts in October, as we did last year during "Connected" month, to share some of our thoughts on education. We must confess we come at this from the outside in rather than from the inside out. We are business people and … [Read more...]
Manmohan Singh’s recent trip to US failed to generate any of enthusiasm
What a difference four years can make! When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in the US capital in 2009, he had received a rock star reception. As the first head of state to be invited for a White House dinner by President Obama, the visit was a real Washington event. The who's who of Indian Americans flew into the city for the dinner and the three days he spent in this city were a celebration of India-US ties, whose heady days—the signing of the civil nuclear deal— were still in the rearview … [Read more...]
Stand Your Grounds! Let Them Eat Crumbs! Stick ‘Em Up!
Last week was just another week that wasn't in terms of a kinder and gentler America. On Tuesday, September 17, Starbucks chairman, president and CEO Howard Schultz appealed to patrons not to carry firearms into his coffee houses. On Thursday, September 19, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would reduce funding for food stamps over the next decade. On Friday, September 20, the House passed a bill that would keep the government running and avoid a shut down but only if … [Read more...]
Time to Make Job Creation a Team Sport
The American jobs machine is broken. To fix this, we need to bring more cooperation to capitalism and make it a team sport. In our previous two blogs we looked at the condition of labor and workers in the United States and recommended worker cooperatives as a means to address that condition. In our final blog in this series, we explore why this is an essential action at this point in time and what cooperatives of all types can bring to the table. America has always prided itself on rugged … [Read more...]
A Formula for Reawakening Labor: Capitalism, Communities and Cooperatives
Based upon the rhetoric at the quadrennial labor convention held in Los Angeles this week, it appears that the labor movement will be trying new things and working diligently to break out of the daze we described in our most recent blog. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, in his keynote address at the convention declared, "We must begin, here and now, today, the great work of reawakening a movement of working people -- all working people, not just the people in this hall, not just the … [Read more...]
PM’s greatest legacy: Initiative on education launched with Barack Obama
PM Manmohan Singh, who, later this month, is scheduled to make what may be his final official visit to Washington, is one of the architects of the much-trumpeted India-US civil nuclear deal, signed in October 2008. But Singh's greatest contribution to the India-US relationship might not be the nuclear deal that his government painstakingly negotiated with the administration of President George W Bush. In fact, his greatest legacy in bilateral relations may be the education initiative he … [Read more...]