Detroit’s Pensions
Having gorged unsustainably on the public sector of Michigan’s largest city for decades, having left empty schools, libraries, and office buildings like gnawed bones scattered about a massacre, having...
View ArticleHysteria, Madness & The Forgotten War
Sixty years ago this week the “forgotten war” came to an inconclusive end. The Korean war was perfectly mistimed for me. On 25 June 1950, the day I graduated from the University of California, Los...
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Chester On The Edge
Photo by Linh Dinh. Traveling by train to Philadelphia, going North, you will pass by Chester, Pennsylvania, a city that has been in decline for more than half a century. Founded in 1682, the same year...
View ArticleWomen Singers Through A White Male Lens
Aside from its winning title, the best material offered up by the documentary film Twenty Feet from Stardom are the musical performances, seen and — more important — heard both in footage of concerts...
View ArticleSanjay Gupta’s Mea Culpa
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, neurosurgeon and medical advisor to the masses, doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of history. On August 11 Gupta narrated a “Special Report” on CNN that provided dramatic examples...
View ArticleLabor’s Day — And Yours
Labor Day. Time again for politicians and union adherents to praise organized labor. Time again for others to pontificate about the supposed decline and growing irrelevance of unions as they continue...
View ArticleCedar Walton’s Eastern Rebellion
The great American pianist Cedar Walton died last week at the age of 79 at his home in Brooklyn after a short illness. Like almost all jazz musicians, Walton made his living largely on the road, which...
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Wake Up, Burners!
A view from Burning Man. Courtesy DVS Ross via Flickr. Wake up! The world is on fire! — Lawrence Ferlinghetti The giant Burning Man structure went up in flames on Labor Day weekend as usual, and I...
View ArticleSome Call It Legalization
Attorney General Eric Holder phoned the governors of Colorado and Washington August 29 to advise that the U.S. Department of Justice will allow implementation of the marijuana-law reforms enacted by...
View ArticleHuffman Hawks Obama’s Healthcare Ponzi
No one said that it was going to be easy to reform healthcare in America. An array of roadblocks has frustrated every attempt to even debate healthcare reform. It was always understood that insurance...
View ArticleNationalism
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” — George Bernard Shaw Let me get this straight. The United States government blithely oversees the...
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The Wall
Courtesy enviziondotnet. “The Wall” in Washington, DC. is a sacred place to Vietnam veterans. Built with private funds and spearheaded by ex-enlisted man Jan Scruggs, it represents all that has come to...
View ArticleSenate Debates Marijuana Prohibition
This week’s US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Conflicts between State and Federal Marijuana Laws” will get infinitely more media attention than the July 12, 1937 hearing at which a subcommittee...
View ArticleThe Hardest Working Man In Show Bidness
Next to Ali, I’d be willing to bet that James Brown is the most widely known Afro-American in the world. There are probably teenage Japanese girls who know more about him than I do. And I can...
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Speech Made Us Human
Recently, we explored a bit of the explosion in commercial businesses offering genetic testing, with the conclusion, “let the buyer beware.” Here, we hear from some famed figures with a similar...
View ArticleAirstrikes & Organs
When I hear talk of air strikes I think of Dresden, and not just because, like so many American school kids I had to read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. I first visited the city in 1989 just a...
View ArticleSingle-Payer Works
Obamacare, ACA, health exchanges, bronze silver gold and platinum levels. Oy! It’s complicated! Does it have to be? “Do you really want the state to be your doctor?” the British Medical Association of...
View ArticleBorder Crossing
Crossed into Canada and back last week, which required that I go through the checkpoints at the border, a process that undoes me every time. When I encounter people who have absolute power over the...
View ArticlePlay Ball!
Every time Alex Rodriquez, the scandal and injury prone New York Yankees third baseman, dragged his wooden club to home plate last year, he was paid about $50,000 to do so. Every time a pitcher threw...
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Liberace’s Prison
Liberace on October 12, 1983. Photo by Alan Light via Flickr. Last weekend Michael Douglas took home an Emmy for his performance as Liberace in the HBO bio-pic Behind the Candelabra; this accolade...
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