“Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do so.” — Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador THE MAYOR OF MY CITY, a Biden man, has made clear in the past that he welcomes the world’s immigrants — all of them, seemingly, even in numbers…

by Mark Franke “You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” Yogi Berra was, to my way of thinking, one of the two most significant philosophers of the 20th century. He had a simple, direct way of looking at life and summing up its highest order principles in his own elegant way. He was extraordinarily deft at applying the famed razor of William of Ockham. To someone like me who…

by Leo Morris You probably know what you think about murder, rape, arson and all sorts of other abhorrent crimes. But how do you feel about jaywalking and littering? It’s not as trivial a question as it might seem. Laws against jaywalking save lives. It is true that most car-pedestrian collisions happen at intersections, but more pedestrians are killed when they are hit while jaywalking. Since pedestrian deaths now account for a higher proportion of…

EVERYONE IS EXCITED. Your city is getting a new mixed-use hotel, dining and entertainment district where once only dilapidated buildings stood. Adjacent will be a new baseball park and maybe down the road a basketball arena or soccer stadium and luxury condominiums. The mayor put together a public-private partnership with a big-time out-of-state developer. There will be plenty of money to realize his vision of the most up-to-date city for the most discerning citizenry. He can be proud once again to…

by Mark Franke The pandemic has disrupted much of our daily lives, sometimes out of necessity or too often due to governmental overreach. Be that as it may, COVID has certainly opened fault lines in our society that were already there but hidden. One such fault line is at the education of our children. There was a time when our schools reflected a civil consensus of what being an American meant. Back in the golden…

by Leo Morris One day a colleague, whose intellect I had admired up to that point, confessed that she had some conservative instincts when it came to politics. “But I just can’t go there, considering the people that would associate me with,” she said, referring to some of the rogues in the Republican Party who offended her delicate sensibilities. So, I thought but did not say, there being no point, “You’re OK with the thieves,…

A FRIEND pulled out an apt George Orwell quote for the week’s events: ‘We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” Yes, Oprah’s interview with the Duchess came to mind but we were challenged to apply it to local public policy, particularly economic development and race relations. Herding a group of cronies into a regional authority and then allowing self-interested schemers to manipulate government funding does not result in general prosperity. Nor is…

by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. “I am a freeman, an American, a United States Senator, and a Democrat, in that order,” said Lyndon B. Johnson Not everyone identifies as closely with a political party as did President Johnson. We experience conflict between positions taken by parties, be it either Democrat or Republican. In fact, we may ask, “Why do we even need political parties? Aren’t we divided enough?”  In his book “Edmund Burke: The First…

by Mark Franke“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” This iconic line from the movie “Network” has been repeated so often that it no longer has any effect. However, I can positively assert that this is the first time I’ve used it. In fact I had to do a Google search to learn where it came from as I don’t watch movies, not wishing to be mind-numbed by the tripe…

by Leo Morris We’re about to have our first weekly bridge game after a year-long hiatus, and I admit to some trepidation. We’re old geezers, so we will gather with COVID-vaccination protection, but our pandemic overlords have insisted that we stay masked and do social distancing until the Earth’s core cools or the Sun explodes, whichever comes first. So, we might be a little nervous at first as we imagine the possibility of getting raided.…