It’s good to see that maybe there is some sanity in the political world. Although for 99% of the time Washington gives us all evidence to the contrary, the apparent failure of Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms, having been questioned or attacked by people on both sides of the aisle,…
David Heifetz
Can we put this issue to rest now? On Wednesday morning, President Obama surprised a lot of people by suddenly releasing his long-form birth certificate, which, of course, showed that he was born in Hawaii. In explaining why he had decided to release it now, Obama explained that the issue…
On Wednesday President Obama laid out in clearer terms than he ever had before his vision for fiscal policy and the role of government in society. I was impressed, for he said quite a few things that I had been waiting for him to say for a long time. His…
Anthropologists posit that the reason humankind created religion is to gain control over certain aspects of our lives and world over which we do not have agency. This idea refers not just to the organized religions of today, but also to any ritual aimed at affecting an event’s outcome through…
Earlier this week I found out that my dog, Sophie, has a brain tumor. It’s hard to articulate what her illness means to me. I grew up begging my parents for a dog and finally got Sophie in sixth grade. As a kid was teased a lot and had few…
For those holding political power, permanent rule is often the goal at the back of their minds – whether it is their rule, or their party’s. Over the past 11 years, as power has flipped multiple times, people on both sides of the aisle have predicted prolonged dominance for the…
As of the writing of this column, President Obama’s approval rating is hovering at an average of 51 percent. This, after a “shellacking” in the midterms when his ship seemed to be sinking (at which point he was around 44 percent). The two primary explanations for this resurgence have been…
Before I start with the meat of my column, I’d like to put in my two cents about the story of the week, the shootings in Tucson, Arizona. I don’t have much to say that’s very insightful that many, many others haven’t already said, so I’ll quickly sum up the…
Change is hard. Change often creates loss. It is disorienting – shattering norms and expectations. Perhaps the hardest thing about creating change is dealing with the entrenched interests who thrive because of the status quo, who derive their competitive advantage from the current system. Often, however, the system no longer…
It should be judged by what he does with it. President Obama’s State of the Union Speech Tuesday night was good, but what will matter more is how he uses it moving forward. For the first time in his presidency, he effectively started to connect the dots of his vision…