Mar 30
Watching the President of the United States stroll through Old Havana almost like a regular tourist with his family the other day brought back vivid memories of my well-spent youth. I was in college when the word went out from the US State Department that United States citizens were verboten to travel to Cuba. This …
Mar 11
My practical education in national electoral politics came in 1964, when I voted for Lyndon Johnson because he was (he said) the Peace Candidate. No sooner in office than he turned around and escalated the Vietnam war beyond all bounds. Aha, I said to myself, that’s the name of this game. Every four years thereafter …
Nov 16
In the turmoil of the moment, French President Francois Hollande probably should be forgiven for calling the terrorist attacks of last Friday in Paris “an act of war.” It’s the kind of grandiose nonsense politicians say. Really, calling these massacres “war” is like referring to shooting fish in a barrel as “sport.” Is he a “warrior” …
Nov 10
Major banks are so glutted with cash that some of them are now charging corporate depositors fees to park their money. So says the Wall Street Journal in an article titled “Big Banks to America’s Firms: We Don’t Want Your Cash.” For example, State Street Bank in Boston, which specializes in large institutional investors, has been …
Nov 03
Update: Author Norman La Force Receives Environmental Stewardship Award. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it took several villages and more to create this park — the Eastshore State Park. Now the park stretches along the east side of San Francisco Bay from Richmond to Emeryville. Thirty years ago it …
Nov 03
Addiction and its consequences have driven up the death rate among middle aged working-class white people to unprecedented levels, a study published yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences reported. While death rates among nonwhites and among all other age brackets have been falling, mortality among whites in the 45 to 54 year age group …
Aug 13
From Bloomberg Aug. 13 2015. Americans living in rentals spent almost a third of their incomes on housing in the second quarter, the highest share in recent history. Rental affordability has steadily worsened, according to a new report from Zillow, which tracked data going back to 1979. A renter making the median income in the U.S. spent 30.2 percent …
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