GOP Should Embrace Obamacare
March 18 2014 • published in the Denver Post
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has a lot for conservatives to applaud:
1) It is market driven by private insurance companies. (A "public option" that the GOP discarded would have made it even more competitive.)
2) It advocates personal responsibility (to assure individuals are covered and don't pass medical costs on the others).
3) It sets standards for all insurers to meet. (No more "junk plans" with huge deductibles and exclusion clauses.)
4) It encourages entrepreneurship. (Individuals can start enterprises and attain their own insurance.
And, of course, the ACA is the Republicans alternatives to "single-payer" universal coverage developed by the Heritage Foundation two decades ago.
Make College Football Bowl Season Great Again or at Least Not So Long
January 1 2018 • published in the Denver Post
Once upon time, the New Year’s Day Bowl games respected tradition and showcased excellence. But, no longer.
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The Rose Bowl, “granddaddy of all” dates to 1902, highlighted by a classic Rose parade. During the 1930s, four more joined: Orange, Sugar, Sun, and Cotton with the Citrus or Tangerine Bowl added in 1946. All were played in balmy weather to full houses.
Then television took command, and the numbers metastasized like cancer. This bowl season kicked off 41 games on December 16
Living in a democracy invites immense challenges and requires everyone to act in rational, reflective ways. Essential living in a democracy is to confront pairs of value tensions and reconcile them.
Freedom vs equality requires seeing the value in both and balancing them for the public good. We continually struggle with this tension and haven’t fared well tolerating excessive income inequality.
Private wealth vs common wealth is another tension that we find illusive. Our public infrastructure suffers from under-investment though we are a wealthy nation.
Diversity vs unity entails citizens to recognize the value of being multi-ethnic while maintaining stories that bind us as Americans. After fits and starts, we eventually reconcile both values and are better people for it.
Law vs ethics is a perennial challenge that requires following the rule of law while assuring that it is carried out in a just fashion.
Today, we face a new democratic value tension: liberty vs security. This also is not an either-or situation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will not be resolved with combatants seeing it “my way or the highway.”
As with the other value tensions, this requires understanding all sides of the debate. The opportunity now is to rethink our life styles, live more simply, and treat others and our habitat with respect and restraint.
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Pandemic Opportunity
June 1 2020 • published in the Denver Post
ending January 8, over 23 days, some in lousy weather, many before embarrassingly small crowds, and most with corporate names.
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The taint of commercialism superseded the sweetness of fruit and flowers.
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It’s time to dial back, reduce the field, and focus on quality. An arrangement with class and integrity might be: 12 games with two teams from each of the Power 5 conferences and 14 other teams among the best remaining.
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All the games would be played on three days surrounding the new year. This could provide some intense TV viewing lest we remember Erma Bombeck’s message, “If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”
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Misunderstanding on "Liberal Thought Police" and "Campus Free Speech"
May 2017 • published in the Denver Post
Steve Sack’s (Minneapolis Star-Tribune cartoonist) statement on university dogmatism and obstruction begs for clarification. His depiction of “liberal thought police” violating “campus free speech” represents a common misunderstanding.
Sack’s desire, in effect, to perch combatants on a “conservative — liberal” political continuum is flawed. How can repressive behavior be considered liberal, when liberalism in any social, political, or economic context refers to freedom, liberty and openness? The campus obstructionists, Sack depicts, are being dictatorial, suppressive, and tyrannical, or the anthesis of liberalism.
The continuum Sacks ought to appeal to is “authoritarian — democratic” not conservative versus liberal. True, closedminded, authoritarian behavior is historically more prevalent on the political “right” than “left.” Yet, it exists in both camps and is an affront to democratic values wherever it appears.
A Lost Republic
November 2016 • published in the Denver Post
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Should we be aghast with this Presidential campaign given a society drenched in entertainment, awash in superficiality, and overwhelmed with triviality? Where a shallow con man could be elected.
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We have a democracy only in name, and not just because of the inordinate influence of the money class wielded through simplistic, bogus, and, frankly, insulting advertising. Nor is our decline due primarily to ignorance revealed in tests of civic and economic knowledge.
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No, our republic has lost its way with the closing of the democratic mind. Ask and you’ll likely hear democracy is some version of “doing your own thing” or “having what you want.” Instead, democratic thinking requires simultaneously holding opposing ideas or conflicting values and critically judging their merits based on fact, evidence, and verification. This takes rigorous intellectual work.
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Our environment dominated by social media and talk radio has become the pathway to narrow minds and group think that is the antithesis of the democratic way.
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Multiple Elements Play Role in Education of Youth
July 2016 • reprinted in the Longmont TImes-Call
Why George Will wants to remind us of James Coleman’s study on “Equality of Educational Opportunity” 50 years after its publication is not clear except to skewer familiar “straw men.”
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Will would like us to believe that Coleman’s finding, like Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s a year earlier (1965), contradict liberal orthodoxy, because they have been ignored by “education bureaucrats and unions.” This is hardly my impression, as social science findings continue to inform public and intellectual policy.
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Just because Coleman found the best predictors of school achievement to be children’s families, as well as the habits, mores, and educational ambitions of peers, is no reason why we should not adequately fund school buildings, curricula material, and teacher compensation. Coleman said, “best predictor” not the only one, and numerous factors are significant in a society that respects learning.
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Cultural observers have long appreciated that multiple elements play a role in the education of our young. As media critic Neil Postman remarked some 30 years ago, “Television has become the First Curriculum, and schools the Second Curriculum.” Nowadays, it appears schooling has slipped into third place, with the Internet, and all its distractions, the primary curriculum.
President Obama and Religion
December 2015 • published in the Denver Post
So, almost one-third of Americans (29 percent) believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, and nearly 45 percent of Republicans claim such — contrary to all objective evidence.
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The deeper concern for a nation founded on religious freedom is that such should matter, particularly for a President. We Americans are people whose identity is grounded in a Constitution that states “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” (Article VI).
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Little room for misunderstanding here; yet, no Jewish U.S. President and only JFK has broken the Catholic barrier.
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Those who founded this nation, in the wake of theocratic overreach, understood that unless faith remains personal, it risks being misused and abused. We’ll have arrived when an atheist ascends to the White House.