Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
There’s a much better name for the day, one that captures the true spirit of today’s America October 11 was Indigenous Peoples Day. It used to be called Columbus Day before it became woke. Unlike some of my fellow Italians, I don’t have heartburn over the demise of Columbus Day. However, the silly wokeness behind […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
That’s especially so on immigration, Amazon, and the minimum wage. The Tucson establishment often misses the bigger picture in the pursuit of transitory feel-good measures. Take the subjects of immigration, Amazon, and the minimum wage—subjects that I don’t have ideological or partisan heartburn over but do care that Tucson is consigning itself to permanent also-ran […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Musings and questions from a left-wing socialist who is also a right-wing supremacist. Americans are so divided on immigration and other issues that one risks being typecast as either a left-wing socialist or a right-wing supremacist for daring to send something around that one side or the other dislikes. Given that I believe that both political […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
A review and overview of The Cult of Smart, by Fredrik deBoer, All Points Books, 276 pages. Fredrik deBoer is the author of The Cult of Smart, a book that unwittingly explains the sharp left turn of the Democrat Party and a growing number of young Americans. It also shows why the widening chasm between […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
What history tells us about today’s identity politics. It’s an article of faith that diversity is a strength, a faith that appeals to me, given that I spent a career at the leading edge of equal opportunity, affirmative action (i.e., outreach), and, before it was hijacked by radicals and anti-intellectuals, the diversity movement. Even […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The Rip Van Winkle media just woke up to realize that the U.S. is diverse. Like a well-rehearsed church choir singing from the same hymnal, the American media recently sang in perfect harmony about the latest U.S. Census showing that America is now so diverse that whites are in the minority. Not one media outlet […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Certainly not large numbers of greens, politicians, climate bureaucrats, economists, elites in business and Hollywood, and left/right reporters and commentators. A few decades ago, I headed an influential environmental group in the competitive media centers of New York City and northern New Jersey. To establish trust with the press, the public, and politicians, my four […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
And why Pawan Dhingra has it wrong about extracurricular learning. Starting in elementary school and continuing through high school, aspiring athletes are encouraged by parents, coaches, and society at large to spend considerable hours training and practicing outside of the school day and off-campus, oftentimes at the additional cost of private leagues and coaches. And […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
The city gets fifteen-dollar jobs from Amazon while other cities get the company’s six-figure jobs. Local news outlets were all aflutter about Amazon recently announcing that it would be hiring hundreds of workers at $15.50 per hour for its sortation center near the Tucson airport. That’s actually bad news. What could possibly be bad news […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
The left accuses the right of fascism, the right accuses the left of socialism, and both engage in corporatism. Corporatism is the organization of the body politic and the economy by interest groups, such as farmers, corporations, banks, media, labor unions, educators, government agencies, and professional guilds. It’s difficult to find a more sobering example […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
But Trump was vilified and persecuted for unproven allegations of collusion. I’m far from being a Trump groupie or apologist but do love to read history, especially when it reveals that a beloved figure from the past had been guilty of the same accusations leveled today against a presently maligned figure, whatever the party affiliation […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
The forces that almost brought General Motors to its knees are even more powerful and ferocious today. Water buffaloes in Africa can be driven to madness and to their knees by swarms of flies. The flies came to mind as a perfect metaphor when reading “The Sack of Detroit,” the fascinating and balanced book authored […]
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
Editors’ note: A great holiday read and a superb dose of reality!! How scholarship has given way to polemics that divide the nation Scene: A Barnes & Noble bookstore in Tucson, Arizona. Just inside the door are display tables of featured books and best-sellers. They reveal how scholarship has given way to polemics that divide […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Years ago it was popular for companies to sponsor a day for employees to take their kids to the office to see where mom or dad worked. My wife got stuck with organizing one of the days for her employer. In an introductory exercise, she had the kids sit around a conference table and take […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
How the pendulum of race has swung from one extreme to another. The month of May was “Asian and Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month.” Although that jumble of words was repeated for thirty-one days, l still don’t know what the words mean. I could ask an in-law who was born and raised in the Catholic […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Mentioning the complexities and nuances of environmentalism in today’s partisan divide is a surefire way of being called names. If you want to start a fight and be typecast as either an ignorant left-winger or a reactionary right-winger, mention that some hot-button issue held dearly by one side or the other is more complex and […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
What comes to mind when you think of Baltimore? What comes to my mind is high crime, high poverty, widespread blight, a corrupt one-party government, and the TV series “The Wire,” which is set in Baltimore. What comes to mind when you think of my adopted hometown of Tucson? What comes to my mind is […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
A shameful story that begins at an exclusive country club I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was the epitome of white privilege as a kid, a privilege that carried over to adulthood. When I was fifteen and sixteen, for example, summer days were spent at an exclusive country club in a leafy suburb of […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
A wedding reveals the real America, not the America of the so-called wokes. TUCSON – The scene: a wedding and reception at a rustic adobe chapel surrounded by several acres of natural desert in the middle of metro Tucson. The historic locale had been the center of a Mexican immigrant community 120 years ago. The […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Pick the points that support your ideology and ignore the rest, as is done by the left/right media and most Americans. Below are points about the African-American experience, especially the experience with shootings by cops. In totality, the points show that this issue, like most issues, is complex, nuanced and not black-and-white. But if confirmation […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A fantasy about hundreds of minority groups demanding recognition after being excluded from diversity and inclusion initiatives. TUCSON – Hundreds of minority groups excluded from diversity and inclusion initiatives can now join the Federation of Real Minorities, or FORM. Membership is open to anyone from an ethnocultural group that comprises less than three percent of […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
From new reports that people sent me: In the name of equity (i.e., equal outcomes by race), the Virginia Department of Education is moving to eliminate all accelerated math options prior to 11th grade, effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would. Because news coverage on the left and right is so pitifully biased, […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Their coverage of the former chancellor of New York schools was different, but their use of contrived racial conventions is the same. TUCSON – On February 26, Richard Carranza resigned as the chancellor of New York City schools. His resignation was covered quite differently by two ideologically opposed publications. The main daily newspaper in Tucson, […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
TUCSON – A recent story in the Arizona Daily Star mentioned Tucson’s best export. No, the story wasn’t about the talented young people who leave Tucson for better opportunities elsewhere, due to a dearth of opportunities in their hometown— which in turn is due to decades of Tucson chasing industry away. Talented young people are […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
TUCSON – San Francisco and the larger Bay Area, including Silicon Valley, are collectively known as the nation’s center of progressivism, or left-liberalism. But metro Tucson deserves that reputation much more than the Bay Area. Both Tucson and San Francisco have been controlled for decades by one party, the Democrat Party. Both have establishment leaders who follow […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Will Tucsonans finally be shaken out of their apathy? TUCSON – With its new policing policy, the City of Tucson might become the dystopia that New York City was in the 1980s. As background, I moved from Phoenix to metro New York in 1981, when the Big Apple was rotting. Back then, New York was […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
TUCSON – News stories in the local Tucson media put a positive spin on Amazon’s announcement that it is building a 270,000 square foot “sortation” center near the Tucson airport, which will create hundreds of jobs paying a starting wage of $15 per hour. Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry said, “Amazon’s newest location, adjacent to […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Judging by what they say and write, reporters, commentators, academics, and directors of diversity and inclusion see themselves as experts on race and diversity. Many of them see racism and inequalities everywhere, based on the official but contrived racial categories of African American, Hispanic, White, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American. The following test will […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Tucson can’t win. Although the city is 43% Latino, it isn’t diverse enough to attract big, rich companies. It will have to accept its fate of having a poverty rate twice the national average, along with a corresponding high crime rate, substandard K-12 schools, and college graduates who leave for more prosperous cities with better opportunities—in spite […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
A Neanderthal asks what would happen if the government were to stop tracking everyone’s race. America’s longtime obsession with race seems to be turning into a collective psychosis—one that has also infected me. Americans are bombarded daily with news stories and commentaries, some accurate and some wildly false, about racial disparities, injustices and prejudices. Employees […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Every year, an oddball reads the General Accounting Office’s audit of the financial statements of the U.S. government and writes about the alarming findings, although no one else seems to care about the issue, especially the two guilty parties, the Democrat Party and the Republican Party. Because both parties are guilty of cooking the nation’s […]
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
The racial diversity movement began with R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., with his 1990 Harvard Business Review article, “From Affirmative Action to Affirming Diversity.” His thesis was that with the growth of racial minorities in the nation, it would behoove companies to have more diversity in their ranks if they wanted to understand their customers, in […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
That’s what Coca-Cola wants me to do. A diversity training program at Coca-Cola gives pointers on how to be less white. I’m going to take it to heart and try to be more Asian, in ways that I’ll describe momentarily. First, as background, the program said that the way to be less white is to: be […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
As a classical liberal, or, in today’s parlance, a libertarian, I wasn’t in sync with Rush Limbaugh’s brand of conservatism but admired his intelligence, courage, wit, and good nature. I also didn’t see him a right-winger, unlike America’s conservative newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ labeled Limbaugh as a right-winger in the headline of […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Lincoln blamed his loss to Douglas on immigrants, vote tampering, and flexible voter registration laws. I’m not an election denier who believes that Biden stole the election, but am enough of a history buff to know that voter fraud has been commonplace throughout American history. To that point, halfway down this page is a fascinating […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
According to the Bible, the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. Likewise, homeowners on a suburban street in Pima County, in metro Tucson, have been wandering in the desert for 40 years why their street hasn’t been repaved. To the last point, below is a complaint sent by an unidentified citizen to Pima […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
After saving us in the Revolutionary War, will it save us from wokeness? France deserves our gratitude, at least from those of us who believe that America is worth saving in spite of its imperfections. First, France helped us in winning the Revolutionary War. That would be the war that is claimed by today’s poorly […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Below are ubiquitous words parroted by the media, academia, industry, and government that doesn’t mean what you might think they mean. Following each word is its true meaning. Race: A social construct that has no basis in genetics but has been used historically to divide people for political purposes and is used today for the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Whether they were atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, or anything else, one of the most moving experiences of humanity was the message of the Apollo 8 astronauts on Christmas Eve, 1968, as they left lunar orbit and headed for the blue and white planet of Earth, which stood out in the blackness of space. […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
It’s hard to believe, but they even surpass Republicrats and Republicrites in phoniness and laughing at the hoi polloi. The Wall Street journal recently ran a 2,420 word essay that details the sordid international dealings of Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s brother, James Biden. Unfortunately, the article is 2,420 words too long for the tweet […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right in 1965 about the black underclass but continues to be ignored or maligned. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was “woke” about the injustices suffered by African Americans before most of today’s “wokes” were born. He was also right about the root cause of the permanency of the black underclass. Strangely, however, instead […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Nasdaq recently announced that it was going to require companies listed on its stock exchange to have a set number of racial minorities, women, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transsexuals on their boards of directors. Parroting the official government lingua on race, Nasdaq’s quotas for minorities were in reference to African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
TUCSON – As part of a nationwide federal sting operation named “Bring Social Justice”, deans and top administrators from the Tucson-based University of Arizona were arrested at their homes last night and taken away in handcuffs by FBI agents and U.S. Marshals for what could be the biggest fraud in U.S. history. The operation also […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
TUCSON – As the nation has divided into red and blue (Republican and Democrat), purple people like myself no longer have a political party. Most of us are classical liberals or distant cousins to today’s libertarians. Purple had become our color because we had preferred a blend of red and blue policies at the national […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Starbucks recently announced that it is tying pay to the accomplishment of diversity goals. Specifically, its goals are to have at least 30% of its U.S. corporate employees and 40% of its U.S. retail and manufacturing employees to be people of color defined as black people, other people of color and indigenous people. It will track them […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The diversity movement has broken free of all earthly bounds It was recently announced that 40% of management positions on Mars will be filled by minorities. No, not the red planet, but my former employer, the privately-held Mars, Inc., a conglomerate with an estimated $37 billion in revenue and 130,000 employees. The announcement is an […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
A nation that somehow survived the chaos of the 1876 election can survive the expected chaos of the 2020 election. You’re no doubt aware of the predictions of chaos if the presidential election is close, due to several states changing the deadlines for mail-in ballots. If the predictions come true, the nation will survive the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
With 1.05 million people, metro Tucson is Arizona’s second-largest metropolis. About 56% of that population is in the City of Tucson, about 36% is in unincorporated Pima County, and the remaining 8% is in the relatively nice suburbs of Oro Valley and Marana. Once the territorial capital of Arizona, Tucson has a milder climate than […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Decades ago, multiculturalism sounded like a good idea. Its premise was that the arts, literature, history, culture and education in general were too Euro-centric and white and should be broadened to include other races, peoples and cultures. This good idea has morphed into the exceedingly bad and divisive practice of pointing out all of the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Scene 1: A café patronized by college professors and other left-liberals in a neighborhood next to the University of Arizona in left-leaning Tucson, where my wife and I live. The media of choice among the patrons are the New York Times, PBS, and CNN. Scene 2: A café patronized by the working class and other […]