According to the polls, Dr. Ben Carson is one of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination for President. His primary qualifications for that position appear to be his outsider status (he has never run for nor held a political office); his calm demeanor and soothing voice; and, his propensity for making outlandish and/or uninformed statements. These statements have been far-ranging but tend to be concentrated around guns and other matters that have appeal to the hard-core … [Read more...]

The guarantee of religious freedom was one of the fundamental precepts upon which the American democracy was founded. In the 21st century, we need to add a new precept to the list. That precept is the guarantee of freedom from religious interference in the core processes of our democracy. Over the past several years, members of various religious groups have tried to move the construct of religion front and center in the design and administration of various governmental rules and regulations. … [Read more...]

These are two tales about capitalism at its best and at its worst. These are true stories because even Hollywood at its brashest could not write fictional scripts better than these to depict the duality of capitalism. On Monday, September 21, The New York Time's ran two contrasting articles on the front page of its business section. An above-the fold article was titled "Once a Neglected Treatment, Now Expensive Specialty Drug." A below-the-fold article was titled "Kickstarter Focuses Its … [Read more...]

As the summer of 2015 begins to wind down, from the media standpoint, it can be said unequivocally that it has been Trump Time. The attention given to and appeal of Donald Trump says something about who we are as Americans. We say more about that at the end of this blog. For now, as the time remaining for summer reading slips away, we'd like to turn our attention to and concentrate on three books -- two of which have just been discovered and one of which has been rediscovered -- that also … [Read more...]

In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously disappeared somewhere -- it is believed -- in the Indian Ocean. There was a broad-based search for the plane but to date, the airliner has not been discovered and no generally accepted reason has been proposed for its disappearance. In the United States, over the past decade or so, planes have been disappearing too -- as routes and flights have been eliminated or cutback. The apparent reason for this is due to a lack of competition. The … [Read more...]

Squeeze the yahoos. Squeeze them till it hurts. That appears to be the current airline business model for customer pricing, seating, luggage storage, amenities, service, and communication management. While the model might be very unpalatable for the majority of us "yahoos" who have to fly today's unfriendly skies, it has been wildly profitable for the airlines. We wish that we could take credit for the "squeezing the yahoo" phraseology. To our knowledge, however, that phrase was first used … [Read more...]

In September of 2010, in one of our first Huffington Post blogs, we called for establishing Interdependence Day as a new national holiday "to celebrate the 'Us' in USA." We reiterated that proposal in our 2013 book, Working the Pivot Points: To Make America Work Again. Given three watershed events of the past two weeks, we think it is appropriate to revisit that proposal and to advance it once again. Those events were: The tragic shootings of eight African Americans at the Emanuel African … [Read more...]