TEA LEAVES UNDER STONES

As I watched and read about, with mounting concern, the massive flare up in violence in Gaza and the West Bank the past month, some awkward, unanswered questions kept coming to mind. To be sure, the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers, followed soon after by the kidnap and burning alive of a Palestinian youth, were utterly horrific and barbaric. Continue reading →

Like me, you may be starting to take more interest in who may be voted our next U.S. President in 2016. After all, if recent history is any guide, two new flocks of candidates in the Republican and Democratic parties will be declaring their candidacies within six to nine months from now. Candidates Obama and McCain declared themselves eighteen months before the 2008 U.S. Presidential election Continue reading →

“We meet today during a period of fundamental change in our economy. Our population is growing older. The skills needed in today’s workforce are shifting. Global competition for business and investment is becoming more intense. And technological innovation is happening at a rapid speed. Our core responsibility is to make sure our economy is as vibrant and robust for our children and grandchildren as it was for previous generations.” ~ Jack Lew, June 2014 Continue reading →

I am currently in the U.K. visiting family and catching up with friends. It’s a good time to gauge the public mood and how society is faring, now that ostensibly the economy is picking up. It is particularly poignant right now following the political earthquake of last week’s European and UK elections. Continue reading →

Something has radically changed in the cost and quality of our telephone, cable TV and Internet services in recent years. It reflects a shift that has occurred gradually over a decade but with potentially devastating effect for our future prosperity and wellbeing. Prices are now significantly higher. Quality of service – notably Internet speed – in America has slipped behind that of other advanced nations. Continue reading →

Later this month, that annual rite of passage, the college commencement season, gets underway. Like me, you must already be anticipating how the many graduating young men and women we know will fare out in the “real world”. What does life hold in store for them? What kind of world will they live in decades hence? and What will their contributions to it be? Continue reading →

Earlier this month the US Supreme Court followed up on its bombshell 2010 Citizens United ruling with another landmark decision further opening the flood gates to private money increasing its influence and distorting our politics. The Citizens United decision ruled that big corporations and big unions could essentially Continue reading →

Watching recent dramatic events unfold in world politics – especially in Ukraine and in Syria but also elsewhere – like me you may have begun to have the unsettling feeling something fundamental is changing in the world in which we live. Continue reading →

In recent days, Russian actions threatening the new independent government of Ukraine and promoting the break-away of Crimea into a puppet state or part of Russia have raised fears of a resumption of a Cold War between Russia and the West. Some observers, apocalyptically, see the rise of a new aggressive expansionist authoritarian state inside Russia. Continue reading →

~ “Rapid and accelerating digitization is likely to bring economic rather than environmental disruption, stemming from the fact that as computers get more powerful, companies have less need for some kinds of workers. Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead.” ~ Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014. Continue reading →