Whenever I evaluate a school, my first stop is the boys' bathroom because, without an unflushed urinal of doubt, it is every school's least common denominator. Its sticky floors, calcified wads of toilet paper and juvenile-yet-timeless graffiti ("Here I sit broken hearted...") are generally not what a principal shows off. Then again, I once visited a school run by the Knowledge is Power Program — which focuses on preparing students in underserved communities for college — and found fresh cut flowers next to an automatic recycled-paper-towel dispenser. At another school, there were toilet ... Read More
May It Diminish the Court
June 15, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
The country has certainly witnessed politicized Supreme Court nominations in recent times, from Justice Samuel Alito — whom Democrats tried to brand as hyper-conservative — to Justice Clarence Thomas, who characterized his Senate confirmation hearings as "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves." At some level, every nomination to the court is politicized given the stakes involved in controlling its ideological path. President Obama's nomination of federal appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor is unlikely to be an exception to this rule. As ... Read More
Everyday Miracles
March 9, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Forty-something years ago, when I was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., I was a sickly thing. I weighed only 6 pounds. I had a strep infection and wouldn't eat. The doctors put me in an incubator and treated the infection, and within a few weeks I was well enough to go home to my family's split-level in the suburbs. A few years ago, a 9-year-old boy named Samson came down with strep. But he lived in rural Rwanda, not suburban Pittsburgh, and his family did not have the pennies needed to take him to the clinic to be treated. He developed rheumatic heart disease that damaged his heart valves, and for ... Read More
Evidence of a Need for Change
September 19, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
High cost is the high-profile villain of American health care, and fall is the season when it sashays onto center stage. It is the time of year when employers and Medicare make annual announcements of the extra bite rising health insurance premiums will take out of next year’s paycheck or retirement income, and, this fall, it is also presidential election season. That means a spotlight on the urgent need to corral high medical costs as part of national health care reform. Yet if the cost of insurance is an obvious concern, there is another fundamental problem in American medicine at least ... Read More
A Free and Fair Market
September 16, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Even President Bush now admits our economy is in trouble, but so far his administration’s response has been one hurried bailout after another in an attempt to keep our economy from crashing. Because history is a pendulum where one policy creates a problem that is “solved” by policies intended to correct the initial policy, it is important to understand why our current economic problems occurred so we can craft solutions that don’t push the pendulum too far and create new problems. Let me first admit my bias: A free market is the basis for a healthy economy, but a free market ... Read More
