In my travels among education policy-makers I am constantly amazed at the arrogance of some public educators who, unfortunately, comprise a large portion of what passes for industry leadership. There are two recent examples among many I could cite. In one, the Austin ISD Board rejected proposals from “outside” entities to manage woefully under-performing schools. […]
Archives for 2002
Enron Follow Up
A letter from Bud Shivers in response to my January “Lessons From Enron” posed some good thoughts for follow up. There is a lot more to be learned about the true culpability as this story plays out, and much of the substance is presently being obscured by political demagoguery, but further lessons are surfacing. Enron […]
Military Tribunals
The outcry on this subject has been somewhat muted by the moderate approach used by the Bush administration in the John Walker case. (More moderation than he deserves, I might add.) As David Henninger has noted, the first thing to be said in defense of the use of military tribunals is that if nothing else […]
Immigration And Assimilation
Prior to the War on Terrorism, immigration policy was a front-burner item for the Bush administration, having been given heightened visibility by the President’s early September 2001 meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox and the floating of various amnesty and guest worker plans. Understandably, the events since 9-11 tabled these proposals temporarily, but concurrently gave […]
Growth, Taxes, And Good Intentions
Meanwhile, as we bail out anyone with a distant claim to victimhood, we’re still discussing the “cost” of reductions in marginal tax rates and tax cuts for the “wealthiest 1%”. As to the latter point, the top 1% of taxpayers, ranked by adjusted gross income, paid 36.2% of total taxes in 1999, the top 10% […]
Everybody Should Get Something – Part II
As I write, it appears Congress will give us an economic “stimulus” plan whether we need one or not, just as Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan has offered his judgment that the recession is over and expansion is well underway. Last week, President Bush significantly delayed the necessary continuing transformation of the steel industry by imposing […]
Quote
“Our society increasingly has a problem confronting evil (which, like good, is essentially a religious concept). It’s frightening to think that a sane person could ruthlessly slaughter five children, kill and cannibalize fifteen young men or murder six million strangers. It’s actually comforting to attribute such horrors to insanity. Mental illness can be treated with […]
Thoughts On The State Of The Union
If, as I believe, one of a President’s key responsibilities is to be “teacher-in-chief”, George Bush was in top form for his State of the Union message. Plainer words are rarely as well spoken by a political leader and critical passages of the speech about war and the evil we face could not have been […]
Humanity In The Balance
Consistent with the soul-searching experience and dialogue that I discussed in the January issue as a “useful by-product” of the war on terrorism will be the debate orchestrated by the President’s Council on Bioethics over the next couple of years. Leon Kass seems the ideal choice to lead this panel and, if reports of the […]
From MLK To Cornel West: Progress?
Recently I re-read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 classic “Letter From Birmingham Jail”, as powerful a testament of the American ideal as has been written this side of The Declaration of Independence. There is no better exposition on natural law as it applies to contemporary public policy issues. In reading these words, I couldn’t help […]