Hell was a place called Auschwitz

January 27, 2020

This week marks 75 years since Soviet troops stormed the gates of hell. Hell was near a Polish town called Oswiecim. Hell was a place called Auschwitz. That murder factory has all but passed from memory now, been swallowed by history. So perhaps it feels distant to you, far removed in space and time. In 2005, the year of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I went to Poland with a Holocaust remembrance group led by a man named Joe Engel. We toured Majdanek, Belzec, Treblinka and the two main camps of the Auschwitz complex, from which Engel escaped in January 1945. With ...

Do human rights still matter?

January 24, 2020

By many counts, the trade deal President Trump signed on Jan. 15 with China lacks heft. It doesn’t remove all the tariffs, it doesn’t impose any major penalties on intellectual property theft, and it punts completely on issues including China’s state subsidies to prop up its own companies in international markets. Yet on one matter, the agreement could dramatically alter the U.S.-China relationship and the future of global democracy. At the signing, Trump trumpeted a future of “harmony, prosperity and, really, commerce — commerce and — far beyond commerce, between the ...

Pennsylvania House races serve as 2020 harbinger

January 23, 2020

Eugene DePasquale and Sean Parnell couldn’t be more different politically. DePasquale is a seasoned statewide-elected official and Democrat from York County, Pennsylvania, while Parnell is a western Pennsylvania Republican newcomer who has never run for office. Yet they share one very important thing this year: They are both challenging incumbent members of Congress in districts President Trump won in 2016. Both of their races tell the story of not just how uncertain the Keystone State is politically but also how completely divided it is. They also show us how hard it is to ...

Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ is not fair to Medicare

January 22, 2020

It needs pointing out that Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan bears little resemblance to Medicare. The Vermont senator undoubtedly exploits the word “Medicare” to obscure the radicalness of his single-payer proposal. Medicare, after all, is very popular. Those who admire single-payer systems — which do have their virtues — should own up to it and not hide their plans under misleading labels. Medicare isn’t single-payer. Even Canada’s single-payer system doesn’t offer the range of free services Sanders proposes. For example, it doesn’t cover vision and dental. ...

Show trial begins on same day as China trade deal

January 21, 2020

The contrast could not have been starker. One picture showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi smiling as she signed (with numerous pens) two articles of impeachment against President Trump. She passed out the pens like souvenirs to fellow Democrats. They were embossed in gold with her signature and rested on silver trays. The other picture was of President Trump signing phase one of a new trade deal with China. Which picture depicted events of greater long-term benefit to Americans? Unless you are a rank partisan out to remove President Trump from office by whatever means, the obvious answer ...

She’s becoming her grandma

January 21, 2020

As I stood at the stove last Sunday afternoon, cooking sausage, I realized I was: 1) wearing an old robe 2) with an apron over it and 3) had on a sweater over the whole thing. I am my own grandma. The only thing missing was a tissue tucked into my sleeve. It was not a casual omission. Unlike everybody else’s ethnic grandmother — “ethnic” here meaning grandmas who did not read Emily Post or dine off the fine china they inherited, or who were rarely glimpsed chewing on a toothpick secured right behind their bridgework — my Sicilian grandmother never had a Kleenex tucked into ...