Nothing surprising in a recent NY Times article that says, "At private nonprofit colleges and universities, tuition rose 4.5 percent to an average of $27,293, or $36,993 with room and board."  Costs rising 300% or more faster than inflation results largely from the fact that government unquesti… Read full post »

I have just read a long list of angry comments on President Obama's Friday night talk to the Congressional Black Caucus.  Prominent among them--charges that he is racist. 

To appear before a group that is all of one color, religion, or ethnic background and appeal for support is not racist… Read full post »

Tonight I received an e mail from a very bright friend who emigrated from Russia in the 90s. He was forwarding versions of texts from the Koran with a brief opening claim--thus:

THIS IS STRAIGHT OUTA THE MUSLIMS TEACHINGS
> “Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked… Read full post »

               News about a new law in Arizona that allows police to determine if a suspected criminal is a citizen, is being attacked by a legion of highly educated critics who have not bothered to educate themselves by reading th… Read full post »

The wise people who appoint themselves the guardians of the American soul have been telling us since the publication of Walden by Thoreau over 150 years ago, that materialism and mass production have doomed us.  Like Thoreau they bring us the antidote of the spiritual Asian--Thoreau's Hindu me… Read full post »

Our government at work. 

Under Eric Holder no holds barred in hiring for the Justice Department. 

“The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division is seeking up to 10 experienced attorneys for the position of Trial Attorney in the Voting Section in Washington, D.C.”

&… Read full post »

The blogosphere is awash with comments on President Obama's unprecedented scolding of the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address.  Also about Justice Alito's unprecedented, even if silent, reaction--shaking his head in dismay.  And suddenly half the television audience became lip… Read full post »

When Barack Obama was neck-in-neck with Hillary Clinton racing for the Democratic nomination for president, one of his earliest supporters, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada said in a private conversation that Obama could win the presidency. One of his reasons was that Obama was “light skinned&rdquo… Read full post »

Periodically we need to field test durable but competing visions of how the world works.

New Years Eve I saw the very learned and witty novelist Gore Vidal express the conventional wisdom that we need intelligent people as political leaders. By intelligent he meant “intellectual” as in pe… Read full post »

When a friend ended her holiday greeting with "and a prosperous new year--I hope," I was about to respond with an economic opinion. Opinions, however, abound so I thought the President and his numbers can speak for themselves. Here they are:

 His vision.  "I won't stand here and pretend tha… Read full post »

What was President Obama’s response to the revelation that many climate scientists whose reports shape world climate policy have been cooking their information, trying to suppress contrary opinion and data and embracing censorship of critics?

Read the President’s words:

MEMOR… Read full post »

A good friend and former member of the Special Forces during the Vietnam era wrote me to say that he’s glad the president may be reconsidering what to do in Afghanistan and that we don’t really need to be there.  Both conservatives and liberals have compared Afghanistan to Vietnam (o… Read full post »

Occasionally when I leave my mountainside retreat I encounter a dose of reality.  A few days ago I took my dose only a half mile down at the mailbox where I met a neighbor talking to a state forester.  The forester said they were talking about a… Read full post »

Many decades ago I was a lonely freshman in a university hundreds of miles from home, the first person in any branch of my family ever to go to college from high school. I had a scholarship, but I still have the ledger in which I recorded my expenses of 5… Read full post »

I once mediated a dispute in which the owner of a wrecked old car happily pocketed $4,400 from an insurance company for a car he had futilely advertised to sell for $3,500.   Silly insurance company.  Not to be outdone, President Obama is demanding Congress accelerate a program that… Read full post »

What would my Uncle Buster say about turning over health care to the federal government? He was no Joe the Plumber. In fact, in 1918 he was a 17 year old high school drop out who had run away from home and found work as a “pearl diver” in… Read full post »

I agree with the reader who said my blogs often focus on the negative. I love upbeat stories and my eyes tear up at underdogs triumphing by perseverance and talent. So I am not happy about writing a second blog in several days that reflects badly on President Obama. I often… Read full post »

Maybe, as a friend recently e mailed me, the public dissent of mullah’s in the holy city of Qom is “the most meaningful news thus far out of Iran.” All news from Iran should be measured against this central fact: we do not know who won the election and with how… Read full post »

 I very seldom engage in the kind of nostalgia and bashing of all things contemporary that lead people to say we've become dull and degenerate.  However, this week's upcoming annual dinner for alumni of Oxford and Cambridge who live in Oregon or nearby Washington moves me to note that in ti… Read full post »

This idea that empathy is a vital ingredient for public officials is not new. After my former 6th grade teacher became a doctor of psychology and political activist he wrote to me in 1962: "I am doing some research on empathy and its development and feel this to be the most… Read full post »

Two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union I went to live in the new republic of Kazakhstan as the resident adviser on housing and land reform. My primary partner in the new government was the first deputy minister of Housing and Territorial Development, a very bright, imaginative,… Read full post »

In the 18 years since I began my still tortured efforts to speak the vast and subtle Russian language I have never found a good translation for the English word neighborhood. When I went to live in the former Soviet Union for the first time 16 years ago I needed… Read full post »

With our ever expanding social networking and instant communication I wonder if we have outgrown a central fact of generations past or dangerously forgotten it.

In the instant societies we create by computer and the way the cell phone keeps every friend and acquaintance and even emergency help no fa… Read full post »