When wide attention refocuses on the economy, the political importance of GDP, inflation, income stress and grievous inequality will return to the fore. It won’t be any clearer which way all the data are cutting. There’s no question that “Bidenomics” made many people better off, at least until price increases worked through the system. TheContinue reading “Come 2024, the Kitchen Table Issues Reemerge”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
A Korean-American Crossing
Nostalgia is a powerful draw in photography–witness the many Facebook and other social-media groups centered on vintage pictures of this or that place. So it is with a compact new exhibit at the Korea Society on Madison Avenue in New York. “Koreatown LA/NY,” running through Aug. 17, features work by Emanuel Hahn (from midtown LosContinue reading “A Korean-American Crossing”
Title IX’s Ticket to Training Camp
The big business of college sports in the U.S. is for the better or worse, and has many causes and consequences. One reason that the two highly commercial features of most programs–football and men’s basketball–are such big tickets is that they not only carry their own ever-heavier weight but also that of most of theContinue reading “Title IX’s Ticket to Training Camp”
40 Years Later in $alt Lake City
The snow in Park City, Utah, was the best in decades for an end-of-January ski trip that also inspires these observations: *Utah was a cheaper and sleepier alternative to Colorado mountain resorts when I started going there 40 years ago. It has ceased to be that, for the most part. And not just at luxuriousContinue reading “40 Years Later in $alt Lake City”
Hamptons Traffic and the Road Not Taken
My interest in land-use policy 50 years ago on Long Island was piqued when I learned offhand* of a state highway that was to have been built back then, not far from where our home now sits in Water Mill. How could that have been the case, over a route that today features much largerContinue reading “Hamptons Traffic and the Road Not Taken”
Big Media’s Mere Cameo in a Tale of Conservatism’s Shift
Matthew Continetti’s book, “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism,” is getting much respectful attention from mainstream media. It is deservedly praised for an encyclopedic narrative of what has evolved into a greatly populist—disparaged as Trumpian–force in American politics. My beef with the work is that it largely misses a key element inContinue reading “Big Media’s Mere Cameo in a Tale of Conservatism’s Shift”
When a Shopping Mall Came to the Hamptons
Articles appearing on the front pages of their weekly papers 50 years ago—Feb. 3, 1972—were a surprise to many who’d begun making the Hamptons a weekend or summer home. Construction was beginning on a shopping center in their idyllic midst. Plaza East would be a first…and remain to this day the only of its kind.Continue reading “When a Shopping Mall Came to the Hamptons”
Who Will Pay for European-Style Medical Coverage
Even after ObamaCare, a frequent impulse on the left and in mainstream media remains the shoring up of health-care coverage for millions of Americans by further taxing the rich, however defined. This frame for redressing inequality in the U.S. carries over to other areas of policy, but medical services are the most politically acute. TurnsContinue reading “Who Will Pay for European-Style Medical Coverage”
Vanguard’s ESG Policy Choice Is to Echo
Morehouse College President David Thomas and Airbnb executive Tara Bunch joined rareified company this past year with appointment to Vanguard Group’s board of directors. They can expect annual pay of about $300,000 to help oversee the money-management giant’s 240-some mutual funds and ETFs. Beyond that, they will be at the forefront of a battle toContinue reading “Vanguard’s ESG Policy Choice Is to Echo”
Milestone: Early Hamptons Farmland Preservation
The great story of land-preservation on the South Fork of Long Island (“the Hamptons”) is losing many of its first-hand witnesses. Another departed this life just before Christmas: John V.N. Klein, who as Suffolk County Executive launched the first major effort to sustain farmland on some of the richest (both in nutrients and dollar value)Continue reading “Milestone: Early Hamptons Farmland Preservation”
Tim W. Ferguson 