For years now, Illinoisans dismayed by their elected officials’ failure to clean up the messes they made on the voters’ behalf could console themselves with the thought, “Well, it could be worse.” And it was, in California. Its state government confirms the truth of the old saying that California is just like the rest of […]
James Krohe Jr.
Posted inOpinion
Watching out for fools
Oklahoma’s governor said what they always say. “We will rebuild.” Sigh. Again? There? That way? Really? Tornadoes, we have all been reminded yet again, are nature’s most violent storms. (Not the most destructive; earthquakes and hurricanes, which affect vastly more area, wreak the widest devastation.) The Moore twister was one of the worst of the […]
Posted inOpinion
Seeing is believing
In “Happier endings,” I pointed out that a lot of people make decisions about end-of-life care that are not fully informed. Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at The Atlantic and at the National Journal, gave us a fascinating report in the former magazine on work going on at Harvard University Medical School that tries to […]
Posted inOpinion
Community schools: For extra credit
Recently I banged the drum on behalf of so-called community or full-service schools as a way to provide learners with a wider array of help and to provide taxpayers with a better return on their investment in school buildings that sit idle two-thirds of the time. Want to learn more? I found Joy Dryfoos’s 2002 […]
Posted inOpinion
Near collapse
Steve Benen commented on the May 23 collapse of that interstate highway in Washington state so I wouldn’t have to again. (See my Daring to imagine the future from 2010.) Benen was reacting to a post at Business Insider by Joel Weisenthal pointing out that public construction spending in the U.S. has reached a 20-year […]
Posted inOpinion
When corner stores aren’t on the corner
There’s more that might said about the design of the new Country Market supermarket at 2nd and Carpenter – isn’t there always? Steve Patterson, a St. Louis architect and author of the blog, UrbanDesignSTL, criticized it for its failure to provide safe pathways across its park lot to the front door for people approaching the store […]
Posted inOpinion
Happier endings
You’re in your doctor’s office. You’ve just been told that you have cancer – one of the bad ones, like those that attack the pancreas or the liver or the lungs or the ovaries – and that it has spread. The doctor will then tell you what he or she intends to do to help […]
Posted inOpinion
We don’t need no steenking regulations!
The press is filled with pension talk, but other recent news reminds us that cutting a too-generous COL adjustment is not the worst way that governments can screw workers. Turns out that the plant manufacturing highly explosive anhydrous ammonia which blew up in west Texas, killing 14 and injuring more than 200, was equipped with […]
Posted inOpinion
A little knowledge…..No. 1 of a series
Back on April 30, the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is one of the most reliable and most interesting of the organizations tracking public thinking on health care, issued a new poll result. Fewer than six in 10 of the American adults asked knew that “Obamacare” – the Affordable Care Act signed into law on March […]
Posted inOpinion
Getting soaked
I paid a visit to one my old haunts the other day, thanks to the internet. I learned that two blocks in the heart of the business district of Multnomah Village, in Portland, Oregon’s southwest side, is getting spruced up. In addition to the usual street furniture and wider sidewalks, Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services […]
Posted inOpinion
The neighborhood school, redefined
Schools, conventionally, seek to train the minds of their young charges. The problem is that it is not only their minds that show up every day in the classroom. Their bodies, their attitudes, their expectations of themselves and school, their social skills – they all show up too. A hungry kid isn’t going to learn. […]
Posted inOpinion
Down the rabbit hole with the feds
A while back I griped about the failure of federal prosecutors to seek criminal charges against bankers and others who perpetrate financial crimes. The Economist of May 4 reminds us that in Britain not one senior banker has faced criminal charges relating to the failure of his institution. In this country the Federal Deposit Insurance […]
