Lives depend on sensible laws

February 21, 2020

Do you think it is permissible to yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater in order to create a panic? How about whether it is legal to speak to a crowd and tell them to go out and shoot the first police officer they see, or homeless person or teacher? If you responded no to those questions, does that make you an opponent of the First Amendment and its ban on laws that abridge the freedom of speech? The answer to that question is, of course, no. The Supreme Court has long recognized that even a right as critically essential to our democracy as our freedom of speech is not absolute, ...

The reason they support Trump isn’t about Trump

February 20, 2020

Spend any time with people who supported presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016 and you quickly find out that the reasons they voted for Trump had very little to do with him. It is likely one of the most misunderstood threads among this new conservative populist coalition. To get the real reasons for their support for Trump, you have to be where they are, have no preconceived ideas about who they are and have no prejudice for what you think their motivations are. Tom Schaub, Ralph Petersheim, Donna Leum, Kris Amundson and Ben Klinkner are all sitting around a large conference ...

The world is in a bad mood

February 20, 2020

Many a gloomy doomsayer has gone to his grave disappointed because, despite threatening signs to the contrary, the ever-resilient earth persists. The sun still comes up, the seasons change and human beings endure. Sophisticated civilizations have come and gone, but you would have gone broke betting on catastrophe on a global scale, even during the 14th Century, when many thought the plague, raging through Europe, signaled the end of humanity. They were wrong. Still, is it just me or do you, too, have the nagging feeling that the potential for global catastrophe has increased in inverse ...

Before fixing tomorrow, Democrats must fix today

February 19, 2020

Like all candidates, Democrats focus their campaigns on what they will do if elected. Progressives often accuse Joe Biden in particular of wanting to take America back to the Barack Obama years. And it’s true that Biden often portrays his candidacy as a restoration of the era in which he served as Obama’s vice president. But that’s not a bad stance for any of the Democrats to take. They and their followers must understand that to move forward, America must first move back. The next president must reverse much of the damage President Donald Trump has wrought. The work will be ...

DeVos doubles down on education reforms

February 18, 2020

I recently interviewed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos who claimed the president’s proposed $4.8 trillion budget includes “a significant step toward returning flexibility to the states through a proposal to block grant all of the elementary and secondary education funds … and let (states) prioritize where those funds are going to be best utilized.” DeVos has tried to reduce the federal footprint in public education, because the more than $1 trillion she says has been spent has not produced positive results. During his State of the Union address, President Trump ...

He talks the talk and money talks

February 18, 2020

I was struck by a Mike Bloomberg tweet responding to President Donald Trump Thursday morning. Trump tweeted: “Mini Mike is a 5’4” mass of dead energy who does not want to be on the debate stage with these professional politicians. No boxes please. He hates crazy Bernie and will, with enough money, possibly stop him. Bernie’s people will go nuts!” To which Bloomberg responded: “We know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown. They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and ...