In defending his decision not to honor the FBI's request to help unlock the encrypted iPhone of the San Bernardino terrorists, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that what he was being asked to do would be "bad for America". We are not mind-readers but we think it is highly unlikely that Mr. Cook's first thought when he was notified that the FBI wanted Apple to do this was not - this would be bad for America. We believe it is more probable that he thought what would this mean or do for the Apple brand … [Read more...]
Fighting Poverty in the U.S. Today: Words But No War
Believe it or not as 2015 drew to a close and 2016 started, poverty became a hot topic again. In December, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Brookings Institution (Brookings) released a report titled: Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream. In January, many of the Republican candidates for President participated in the Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity in South Carolina (Kemp Forum). Early in the … [Read more...]
Time to Focus on Individual Economic-Well Being of/for All
In conventional thinking about the economy, standard assumptions include: Economic growth creates jobs Jobs create individual prosperity A rising tide raises all boats A new report from the Metropolitan Policy Program (MPP) of the Brookings Institution, discloses that it's time to forget those assumptions and to start looking at things in a different way - at least when it comes to examining the economic results achieved within metropolitan areas. As Amy Liu, Vice President … [Read more...]
Musings on Words of the Year for 2015
Q. When is a word not a word? A. When it is chosen to be the word of the year. Here are two cases in point. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford) selection for word of the year announced in October was a pictograph - officially called the "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji. Not to be outdone, in December Merriam Webster proclaimed that its word of the year for 2015, was the suffix - ism. Our reaction to both of these selections ran the gamut from disbelief (Say what?) to incredulity … [Read more...]
2016: Two Roads Diverge in America This Year
The race to win the nomination to be their party's candidate for President of the United States in 2016 has presented stunning contrasts in substance, style and tone. In January of 2012, we wrote a blog commenting on the nature and implications of the national conversation during that election cycle. The dialogue and exchanges during 2015 have not been an instant replay. They have "trumped" those of 2011. In spite of this, we believe our earlier blog remains relevant in 2016 -- probably … [Read more...]
Donald Trump Is Being Politically Correct
Donald Trump frequently asserts that he's not being politically correct in what he says. For example, in an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN before the final Republican debate this year he proclaimed, "I'm not looking to be politically correct. I'm doing this to do the right thing." In that statement, Trump himself revealed the paradoxical nature of Trump-speak. Trump is correct that he is not being politically correct in his pronouncements -- at least in the conventional sense of that … [Read more...]
Mr. Islam column in the Huffington Post on Revitalizing Urban Neighborhood
Neighborhoods -- stepping stones or millstones? The choice is ours. Let's make it the right one for all of our American kids. Those were the closing lines for our blog on urban education which The Huffington Post ran on June 30, 2015. In that blog, and others posted throughout this year, we have highlighted the "crisis" conditions of many of our urban neighborhoods. Numerous studies released in 2015 reveal what David Leonhardt labeled the "neighborhood gap" in an article that he wrote for … [Read more...]
Being There: Chauncey Gardiner. Being Here: Ben Carson.
In 1979, Peter Sellers played a fictional character, Chance the gardener (Chauncey Gardiner) in the best-selling movie, Being There. In 2015, Ben Carson, a brain surgeon - portraying himself - is a candidate for President of the United States of America in Being Here. Although one story is fact and the other is fiction, there are some interesting parallels in the tales being told. Sometimes art imitates life and sometimes it's the other way around. Because of its current nature and … [Read more...]
Let’s Make Black Friday Thankful Friday
Over the past several years, Black Friday has become more important for some than Thanksgiving. Commercial interests and retailers have appropriated and transformed this once sleepy day after Thanksgiving into 24 hours of shopping gone wild. Stores open early, crowds queue up in line and on-line in search of bargains, and merchants measure much of their success for the holiday season by the sales racked up in this single day. One might say that's the American way. That could be. But, we … [Read more...]
The Critical Need to Sustain Pre-K Gains by Closing the Educational Chasm
Over the past month or so, the ongoing debate about the efficacy of pre-K programming for children from low income backgrounds reared its ugly head again. The debate was precipitated by a new research study from Tennessee which showed that although youth in a statewide subsidized program had shown substantial progress while in pre-K those gains were not sustained. An earlier study in Tennessee showed that the gains had actually disappeared by the end of kindergarten. This follow-up … [Read more...]