What is happening politically inside the United States and beyond leaves little space for thinking about Cuba. But more than half a century’s worth of morally reprehensible measures taken against a tiny island reflects a mindset that the United States will police the world and that civilian deaths and war-zone chaos are acceptable. The U.S. […]
Op-Eds
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Sometimes making people uncomfortable is the point
It “makes some people uncomfortable.” That was the explanation Kenny Holloway, a school board official in Biloxi, Mississippi, gave the Sun Herald newspaper last week, for the board’s decision to remove from its eighth-grade curriculum a Pulitzer Prize-winning American classic, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” “There is some language in the book that makes […]
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Bernanke worried about U.S. economy
WASHINGTON — Ben Bernanke is worried — and perhaps we should be, too. As chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, it was Bernanke who, along with others, prevented the worst recession since World War II from becoming the Great Depression 2.0. Now he fears that, should another sharp recession occur, the Fed […]
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Trump, followers, win game with NFL
Donald Trump isn’t exactly on a winning streak, but he is beating the NFL in a rout. The league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell, signaled the beginning of a messy, divisive retreat with a memo stating, “Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem.” Now he tells us. The climbdown […]
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Three dots a column makes
Some topics beckon a writer but don’t justify a full column. The late Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle bundled these items, as does Mark Laflamme of the Sun Journal, and called them “three-dot columns.” Here, in the spirit of and in homage to Caen and to Mark, is a three-dots column . . […]
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What happens in Vegas …
The National Rifle Association never tires of lambasting proposed legislation to regulate firearms as a nefarious conspiracy to keep guns out of the hands of “law-abiding citizens” while stoutly maintaining that only unfettered access to such weapons can make the country safer from gun violence. Hence the NRA bumper-sticker slogan, “Guns don’t kill people. People […]
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Where are we on ending homelessness?
As a master’s degree student, I was directed to look at one of social work’s grand challenges, research it and explore resolutions. The challenge I chose was ending homelessness. There are as many reasons these individuals become homeless as there are homeless individuals — low income/high rents, mental illness, substance abuse, inadequate housing are just […]
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Democrats need to move left
I’ve been struggling with this question for a month. It’s been that long since a Democratic state legislator rose during the Q&A after a speech and asked me a deceptively simple thing: What should Democrats do now? What should their message be? I had no idea how to answer that, nor even any confidence that […]
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Censorship in Seattle
If it were a plague, the government would rush to quarantine the infected, as occurred during Europe’s Black Death in the 14th century. An immigration debate at Seattle University School of Law is a plague of a different sort, but deadly in a different way. The victim here is the right to free speech. The […]
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U.S. or China: Two climate strategies
WASHINGTON — This past week, The New York Times front page described the Trump administration’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s attempt to slash carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. “The war on coal is over,” declared EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Right under that article was a story from halfway around the […]