May 2008

  • Diverse Workplaces Work, Why Not Neighborhoods?

    To continue the collective efficacy discussion, I want to throw the work of Professor Scott Page, author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies, into the mix. While Robert Putnam’s more recent…

  • N.Y. Legislators: Don’t Sleep on Foreclosure Prevention

    It seems surreal, or like a nasty joke. How can Americans be so far into the foreclosure crisis and still not see any significant foreclosure prevention legislation from their lawmakers? As The New York Times commented last week: In responding…

  • A Good-News Economic Story for the Disabilities Community

    Lost in the endless political campaign and Iraq news is an emerging success story. The Real Economic Impact Tour conceived and sponsored by the National Disability Institute has seen a 10-fold increase in the past three years in assisting people…

  • You’ve Seen One Hussein, You’ve Seen ‘Em All

    I’ve been thinking about democracy a lot lately. It happens every time there’s an election. Every time I start getting bombarded by mailers for candidates and propositions. Every time I realize how susceptible people are to propaganda. Week before last,…

  • Leadership Afraid to Cling to Immigration

    While lots of us fired up the grill over the Memorial Day weekend, a story came out Saturday in The New York Times about the previous week’s prosecution of 270 undocumented workers, arrested May 12 at an Iowa meat-packing plant.…

  • Golf Course Wars in Benton Harbor

    Golf courses have been lightning rods and symbols for class struggle around the world, as in Morelos, Mexico, where a golf course sucking up the town of Tepoztlan as water led to deadly violent clashes in 1996. Golf courses are…

  • Summertime, and the Budget’s Sleazy

    Is it ever an inappropriate time to reflect on the idealistic 1960s? Energy was cheap, America’s role as a global hegemon was secure, Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater left conservatism seemingly dead in the water (does anyone else see…

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    Do New Yorkers Need an Emerald City?

    The Christian Science Monitor reported a few days ago on the Bloomberg administration’s plans to redevelop the Willets Point industrial area of Queens (just east of Shea Stadium) as a mixed-income development with 5,500 units of housing and a new…

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    “Let’s Refuel America”

    According to a report in The New York Times Monday, auto sales are down by more than a million compared to 2007’s 16.2 million cars sold. Auto lenders are less likely to lend to customers with less-than-stellar credit, and home…

  • “Nation’s Poorest 1% Now Controls …..

    Two-Thirds Of U.S. Soda Can Wealth, so reads a headline from the latest issue of The Onion, my favorite source of political commentary. The article goes on to talk about the growing and possibly unbridgeable gap between the rich and…