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Columns/Opinion

Holidays don’t start too early. You start late

It was just Halloween, the day of orange and black, ghosts and spiders, and a frightening warning that must not be ignored: You are way behind preparing for Christmas. Do not lament the glimmering first appearances of lights and trees in stores around July 4. Anyone worth their homemade caramels knows that putting on a good old-fashioned holiday celebration is a lot of labor. And it can’t be done in a panic at 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve or the first night of Hanukkah in Walgreens, though that sacred ritual has its place. No life hack will allow you to fully relish the season if you ...

Analytical software is relevant

Jo Boaler and Steven D. Levitt Los Angeles Times Thanks to the information revolution, a stunning 90% of the data created by humanity has been generated in just the past two years. Yet the math taught in U.S. schools hasn't materially changed since Sputnik was sent into orbit in the late 1950s. Our high school students are taught algebra, geometry, a second year of algebra and calculus (for the most advanced students) because Eisenhower-era policymakers believed this curriculum would produce the best rocket scientists to work on projects during the Cold War. It has been 50 years ...

Are Democrats set to miss Middle America again?

In the weeks, then months and now years after losing the presidential election in 2016, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly demonstrated in speeches and television interviews that she has no idea why she lost. She has blamed everything from racism to Russia, from the media to sexism, from deplorables to stubborn, backward-looking nostalgia. Now she’s out saying Trump’s presidency is illegitimate and that she would defeat him again. She has not visibly reflected on the effects of her position on guns, her anti-fossil fuel talk and her open embrace of globalism. She seemingly hasn’t ...

Is Klobuchar heartland moderate Democrats need?

Beats me why heartland Democrats running for president haven’t gained more traction. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan just left the race despite his success in part of the industrial Midwest that delivered the presidency to Donald Trump. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock continues to just hang on, arguing that he’s the only Democrat who won statewide office in a very red state. That leaves Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind. They remain serious contenders even though most reputable polls show them stuck in the single digits. Both are running vigorous campaigns in ...

No more billionaires? But government’s a bad charity

He was the Bernie Sanders of his day. Charlie Chaplin, the iconic actor and at the time a well-known political leftist (some said communist), delivered a speech in San Francisco in 1941 prior to America’s entry into World War II. As recounted in the biography of her parents, actress Fay Wray and screenwriter Robert Riskin, Victoria Riskin quotes from a letter her father, who heard the speech, sent to her mother: “(Chaplin) plunged into a speech extolling the Russians — their ideology (by saying that if communism produces men of such heroic stature, he’ll take communism, ...

No federal funds for charters

Elizabeth Warren’s $800 billion plan to improve public education, like many of her plans, is admirable in its ambitions but misguided in its approach. If the federal government is going to spend more money on schools, then Americans should be allowed more choice about which schools their children attend. To her credit, Warren recognizes that competition for the best public schools increases residential segregation, leading not only to greater disparities in student performance, but also to runaway housing costs in preferred districts. The ideal solution would be to sever the link ...