As part of my usual exploration of towns and cities around the country I wander up and down streets taking photos. I have an inexhaustible supply of pictures of the generic American landscape. But every once in a while someone will come running out of a building demanding to know who I am and why I’m photographing their property. Bank managers are frequent objectors. read more »
Politics
The Community and Economic Development Hierarchy
I've spent many, many years of my career working to improve the economic development prospects of communities. Wanting to make a meaningful, positive contribution to the revitalization of cities is what pushed me into this career path. More to the point, I've spent a good deal of that time working in places that were facing stiff economic headwinds working against them. read more »
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The American Working Class Dilemma
For the past 125 years, Labor Day has been a time to celebrate the relevance, and political power, of the American working class. As recently as the 1990s, organized labor’s big day was an important milestone on the political calendar, particularly for Democrats. read more »
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Public Schools Should Be Places of Learning, Not Propaganda
California likes to think of itself as the brain center of the universe, but increasingly much of that intellectual content comes from somewhere else. Once a leader in educational innovation and performance, California is now toward the bottom of the pack. read more »
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Can the Working Class Trust the Democrats?
Two years ago, we compared the opioid epidemic to the mortgage crisis that nearly cratered the global economy, noting how both were caused by corporate greed. Recent reporting in the Washington Post and other media outlets reveals an important difference between the two: unlike the regulators who were blithely ignorant of what was happening in the financial markets, officials at the U.S. read more »
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Ending The War On Communities: 14 Suggestions To Protect Neighborhoods While Providing Meaningful Housing Solutions
The debate on solving California’s housing affordability crisis has reached a fever pitch, and the level of noise is drowning out solutions. We are facing a push to indiscriminately force density on neighborhoods and a war on single-family housing, which some in Sacramento paint as inherently “racist” and “immoral.” read more »
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Will The Democrats End Up Saving The California Republican Party?
Left to its own devices, California’s Republican Party would be ready to be embalmed for display at the Museum of Natural History. But there’s one last hope for the state GOP: the growing lunacy among Democrats.
Many positions now taken for granted by Democrats should threaten their hold on the bulk of California’s middle- and working-class voters. read more »
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Europe’s Fading Cosmopolitan Dream
In headier days, Europe’s leaders dreamed of a multicultural continent, its aging cities saved by millions of new migrants eager to join a stable, prosperous urbanity. This was the promise behind former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia, the multicultural fervor of Herman Lebovics’s Bringing the Empire Back Home: France in the Global Age, and the early enthusiasm that greeted Germany’s refugee influx in 2015—estimated now at 1.6 million. read more »
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Germany Went Totally Green Too Quickly
Has U.S. leadership gone awry? Senators Chris Coons and the honorable Dianne Feinstein recently announced they will introduce the Climate Action Rebate Act, which aims to generate $2.5 trillion in tax revenues over 10 years by slapping a fee on oil, natural gas and coal starting in 2020. This isn’t leadership. This is followship without the fairy tale ending. read more »
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America’s Identity Crisis
This week, the troubled state of American democracy was on display in the reactions to the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. To the establishment Left, led by the New York Times, the El Paso shooter operated as if he were a white nationalist acting on orders from Donald Trump. Some on the right, meantime, linked the Dayton shooter’s actions to Antifa. read more »
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