The great economic debate of 1996 is already roiled by divergent interpretations of budget plans, but now Jack Kemp and the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Policy, which just reported, are attempting to direct top attention to the still more volatile subject of tax reform.The report arrives in a capital stalemated on economic policy. In 1992 the voters Read More ›
There is only one way to avoid future brawls over ethics in Congress like the ones going on now, and it is not–as GOP Congresswoman Sue Myrick from North Carolina has proposed–to make it a crime to “lie” in campaign ads or on the floor of Congress. When such a law is passed, Congressmen will be arresting each other literally Read More ›
In Melvindale, Michigan, a blue collar suburb of Detroit, the school board held a tumultuous public hearing this week that seems to have caught everyone by surprise. The Board chairman, John Rowe, a former science teacher who now directs nuclear medicine and radiology at an area hospital, started with what he thought was a reasonable idea: Let students know that Read More ›
The apartment on Seattle’s First Hill was nice, though modest, like its occupant, but it also had an inspiring view out over the city Joel Pritchard treasured. He said last recently, “Almost every place with the most meaning in my life is within sight,” and that surely included Queen Anne Hill and Bainbridge Island, lands laden with childhood reveries. These Read More ›
The Temptations of Evolutionary EthicsPaul Lawrence FarberBerkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994, 210 pp. The Secret Chain: Evolution and EthicsMichael BradieNew York, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994, 198 pp. The ethical implications of evolution are receiving a remarkable amount of attention today, despite the death sentence that was pronounced on it by “nurture” enthusiasts in the Read More ›
T.H. Huxley’s Ambivalence Sherrie L. Lyons, “Thomas Huxley: Fossils, Persistence, and the Argument from Design,” Journal of the History of Biology 26 (1993): pp. 545-569. Sherrie L. Lyons, “The Origins of T.H. Huxley’s Saltationism: History in Darwin’s Shadow,” Journal of the History of Biology 28 (1995): pp. 463-494. Since completing her doctorate on T.H. Huxley with historian Robert Richards at Read More ›
Just when you thought you had seen it all, so to speak, there is Seattle public access star Troy J. Williamson engaged in what appears to be an oral sex act on TV. Suddenly, the screen goes fuzzy as the police raid the program and cart him off. An historic day for common sense in public access TV, some would Read More ›
How are we going to pay for it all? Isn’t there any way to lower the costs? These are the plaintive cries of taxpayers around the country as their local and state elected officials try to cajole them into supporting a growing list of infrastructure projects. But even as the list grows, taxpayer tolerance for big ticket public works is Read More ›
It was way back in the fall of 1961, in Sever Hall, Harvard Yard, and I was taking notes in a class on urban politics taught by Professor Edward Banfield. Tall, distinguished looking, yet approachable, he resembled an academic Gregory Peck. Earlier, at the University of Chicago, the good professor had been an intimate observer of the first Mayor Richard Read More ›
In ancient China the mandarin class ruled the country in such a complicated way that ordinary people could not begin to figure things out. Eventually the rules of the imperial court grew so tangled that the mandarins themselves couldn’t figure out what was going on. It apparently had something to do with calligraphy. What mattered was how you wrote, not Read More ›