Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Editors’ Note: We agree with the author that even determining who is “Hispanic” can be difficult. Moreover, it does not sound very inclusive. Are we at the point where Irish, German, and Jewish students are made to feel “marginalized” by such designations? Do they feel welcome and safe at the U of A? How much […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A professor of creative writing follows the shopworn script on race but believes he’s hip and erudite. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a feature titled, “What I Learned on My Summer Vacation.” Five different writers described their memorable vacations. I thought that the essays would be uplifting and lighthearted, but they were the opposite. […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Warnings about public education have also been clear. In 1983, the first page of “A Nation at Risk” said, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” Just eleven years earlier, in 1972, President Richard Nixon made his famous trip to China, to open up trade and diplomatic relations with the Chinese Communists, as part of a Cold War strategy to isolate the Soviet Union. At the time, China was an impoverished and poorly educated country. Today, by some measures, it now ranks near the top in student achievement.
Keep in mind that “A Nation at Risk” was written years in advance of the deleterious effects on education of smartphones, social media, on-line gaming, a constant barrage of targeted ads encouraging immediate gratification, and social-media influencers who model harmful behavior.
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The illogic, inconsistent, and condescension of capitalizing the word “Black” but not the word “white.” Erik Larson is a smart guy and a good author. His latest book, The Demon of Unrest, reads like a novel. It is a fascinating account of what led to the shelling of Fort Sumter and the start of the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A new study claims that increased state funding will increase college enrollment, which will in turn bring billions in economic gains to the state. A group named Education Forward Arizona says that if enrollment at Arizona’s three public universities is increased by 20 percent through increased state funding, $5 billion in economic gains will accrue […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Are you qualified to be a DEI administrator in government, media, industry, or a college admissions office? To find out, take the following test of your knowledge of diversity, equity and inclusion. Test Five people are described below. Read the descriptions for each and decide which of the five are eligible to be included in […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
American and European media are alarmed about right-wing extremists but not left-wing ones. Chickens sold at the supermarket come with both right and left wings. Passenger jets also come with right and left wings. But judging by the way that news is covered in America and Europe, there are mostly right wings in politics but […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
If buzzwords were effective at urban renewal, Tucson would be the most prosperous city in the nation. A recent news story from 13 News was about the widening of Grant Rd. between Tucson Blvd. and Alvernon Way. It quoted some local residents on what they would like to see along the stretch. The comments included […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A rotten stench wafts from the muck surrounding the University of Arizona’s acquisition of Ashford University. A rotten stench wafts from the muck surrounding the University of Arizona’s acquisition of Ashford University. I need a shower. Maybe that will remove the stench from digging in the muck surrounding the University of Arizona’s acquisition in 2020 […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Editors’ Note: The author is spot on about the genocide in Darfur and selection bias in the outrage of campus leftists. We could also add the Islamic slaughter of their own as in Syria, the oppression by Hamas of all opposition in Gaza, and the killing of Black Christians throughout sub-Saharan Africa. If it does […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
As the University of Arizona goes, so goes Tucson, the city where the university is located. As Tucson goes, so goes the University of Arizona (UA). Things haven’t been going very well for either of them. Both have been operating well below their potential for a long time, and both are suffering from problems that […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
A recent Wall Street Journal column on the scam of the federal student-loan program brought to mind the financial, governance, and ethical mess at the University of Arizona (UA). The Arizona Daily Star’s coverage of the UA mess has been commendable, thanks to reporter Ellie Wolfe. A Pulitzer Prize awaits her if she ties UA’s […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
In advance of an upcoming elective surgery, I have been on the phone with personnel from a local Tucson hospital to provide my medical history, insurance coverage, and other required information. The hospital does a great job and its employees are personable, professional, and thorough. A charming woman asked me on one of the calls […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
It’s almost a certainty that he wasn’t asked penetrating questions when he spoke the party line about diversity. Two news stories on March 27 exposed what is wrong at the University of Arizona (UA), and, by extension, the Tucson metropolis. The first was a story in the Arizona Daily Star about a presentation by Fouad […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
The human capacity for inconsistency, contradiction, hypocrisy, double standards, and cognitive dissonance fascinates me—especially my own large capacity for such intellectual somersaults. Somersaults were on display in a recent news story in the Arizona Daily Star. The story was about “Sonoran hot dog king” Daniel Contreras being in intensive care in a Tucson hospital. (“Family […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
As non-Whites rise to positions of power, they can be just as corrupt and self-dealing as Whites who abuse their power. Contrary to what is conveyed by critical race theory and other intellectual hogwash, all humans are inherently the same when pickled in similar circumstances and cultures, regardless of race, ethnicity, or skin color. The […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
The state of American society and culture 30 years after the publication of “Defining Deviancy Down.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” was published in the 1993-1994 Winter edition of The American Scholar. It was certainly scholarly. It was also accurate, prescient, courageous, politically incorrect, and subsequently ignored by policymakers, social justice activists, media, […]
Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
The fatuous thinking behind critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The recent Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament showed that CRT and DEI are not passing fads. The tournament was held in Torrey Pines, California, overlooking the ocean. The winner, a Frenchman, took home $1.62 million of the $9 million purse. Near the end […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Maybe not in all respects but certainly socially and culturally. Great Britain lost its empire very quickly in the twentieth century, after becoming overextended militarily and economically, especially with the cost of the two world wars of that century. It turned left after the second of those wars, largely retreated to its island home, and […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
“Don’t be cruel” was good advice that should have been heeded long ago. Elvis Presley released “Don’t Be Cruel” in 1956. Within a couple of decades, Pima County and the City of Tucson began adopting cruel political systems, economic policies, industrial policies, and social policies that set the Tucson metropolis on a course to be […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Why do White people keep falling for tropes and fallacies about diversity, equity, and inclusion? In a recent essay in City Journal about the brouhaha over the congressional testimony of Ivy League presidents, Heather Mac Donald wrote the following about Bill Ackman, a donor to Harvard and a billionaire investor: “Ackman, who has taken the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The county’s 13-point Prosperity Initiative won’t reduce the poverty that it and the City of Tucson have caused. The Pima County Board of Supervisors recently passed a 13-point Prosperity Initiative to increase prosperity and reduce poverty and its effects in metro Tucson. The initiative calls for the county to work with the City of Tucson […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A review of The Canceling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, 2023, Simon & Schuster, New York, 443 pages. The Canceling of the American Mind appears to have been written in a hurry and could’ve used some editing and wordsmithing. But it’s worth reading for its many examples of how colleges […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
“Racism” is one of the many catchall words that are bandied about without definition or much thought. Anyone with the temerity to question the meaning of “racism” or to ask for a definition of the word risks being called a racist. Well, so be it. Given that “racism” has become one of the most ubiquitous […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
A review of The Sister, by Sung-Yoon Lee, 2023, Hachette Book Group, New York, 289 pages. The Sister is a book about privilege, inequality, racism, and injustice. Sorry to disappoint American wokesters, but it’s not about the United States or White people. It’s about North Korea, a nation that, by comparison, makes America’s racial, economic, […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
At the same time, increasing numbers of Americans don’t know history or cherry-pick history for political purposes. The massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas brought me back to eighth grade in parochial school, where something happened that changed how I saw the world and human nature. What happened was that the nuns showed a shocking […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Something was seen in the city that is common in other cities but rare in Tucson. My wife and I saw a shocking sight on a recent trip to the Barnes and Noble bookstore on East Broadway Blvd. in the City of Tucson. The bookstore’s parking lot was crumbling, unkempt, and devoid of any landscaping. […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
A one-question test reveals that diversity is as much about exclusion as it is about inclusion. The purpose of this paper is to test your understanding of diversity and its related movements of equity and inclusion. We’ll begin with the five precepts of diversity and then turn to a one-question test. The precepts: The greater […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
The wrong answer has resulted in the wrong public policies. A popular narrative is that institutional racism explains why African Americans, as a group, on average, experience higher poverty rates, lower test scores, fewer advancement opportunities, worse health outcomes, higher arrest rates, longer prison sentences, fewer housing options, and higher rates of being victims […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
What’s the dividing line between fashionable and unfashionable tattoos? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is fashion. Being neither beautiful nor fashionable, I have a burning question: At what point do tattoos go from being fashionably attractive to being unfashionably ugly? I need to know in case I ever decide to […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
To make it worse, the only way out is with a Microsoft key. Despite remarkable advances in computer technology and artificial intelligence, American productivity has either flatlined or declined. No doubt, a contributing factor is that Americans are wasting too much time keeping track of their passwords, security codes, PINs, user IDs, and user […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
If climate change is an existential threat, should the government ban yachts, mansions, Disney cruises, Disney World, and green phonies? In 2021, the Disney Company issued its 183-page Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which included a section on environmental sustainability. Disney CEO Bob Iger is currently having a superyacht built for himself that is 210 feet […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The reaction of Trump and his loyalists to losing the 2020 presidential election was namby-pamby compared to how Democrats reacted to losing the 1876 election. History not only repeats itself but reveals how the Democrat and Republican parties have switched roles over time. What each one accuses the other of doing, each has done […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Tucson has a weird system of ward voting, and there is a movement in Scottsdale to adopt something similar. The City of Tucson has a weird election system in which voters in wards select candidates for the city council in a primary election, but then all voters in the city, regardless of the ward […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
They won’t rest until they get their fellow Heinerscheid, Donald Trump. Heinerscheids on the left and right dominate the top of government, industry and media. What is a Heinerscheid (high-nur-shide)? A Heinerscheid is an upper-caste American from the Ivy League who has been hoodwinked to believe that a degree from a top-ranked school brings […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Fixed or fluid, the argument is made more interesting because while there are very little DNA differences among racial categories, there are immense differences between the two sexes. Such differences lead among other factors to different hormones and subsequent physical and mental development. Yet these immense differences are considered fluid, while minute differences are considered […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The debt ceiling agreement brings to mind the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment in deferred gratification. In 1972, an experiment in deferred gratification was conducted at Stanford Univ. Children were given the choice of eating one marshmallow immediately or waiting a period of time for two marshmallows. When the test subjects were followed later in […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Would the discussion leader be applauded or booed for citing uncomfortable facts about DEI? TUCSON – A nonprofit foundation recently held a national conference at an expensive resort near my house. Since the foundation is headquartered on the East Coast, this means that the attendees flew across the country to attend the conference. One […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Not to brag, but Bragg has nothing on me. Circa 1985, I flew from New York to Chicago to deliver a check for $25,000, or $70,000 in today’s money. It was a payoff to keep someone silent. It was one of the scores of payoffs that I had made up to that date and would […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program is an example of the downside of race- and gender-based federal assistance. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial detailed the pervasive fraud with the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program. The DBE program is just one of the scores of programs that dole out loans, preferences, and set-asides based on […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
It has the divine power to create races but can’t fix the serious problems facing Americans. The Book of Genesis has nothing on the US government. The book tells the biblical story of how God created Adam, and, using one of his ribs, created Eve. This happened in the Garden of Eden, which was probably […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
The McCarthyism of Democrats is largely unknown, because they are much better than Republicans at scrubbing history of negatives about themselves. The odds are pretty good that you’ve heard of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts, which began in the late 1940s to uncover communists in the US government, Hollywood, and elsewhere. After […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A review of Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, by Frank Dikotter (Bloomberg Publishing, Hardback Edition, 2010; Paperback Edition, 2017, 420 pages). It is seen as gauche, hateful, and unenlightened on college campuses and like-minded places to quote Winston Churchill because he was an imperialist and colonialist. Okay, so go […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are euphemisms for discrimination, enmity, and injustice. The cycle is as old as Homo sapiens. Members of a dominant race, ethnic group, religion, ideology, nationality, social class, tribe, or clan inflict injustices on members of a different race, ethnic group, religion, ideology, nationality, social class, tribe, or clan. Driven by understandable […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
The McCarthyism of Democrats is largely unknown because they are much better than Republicans at scrubbing the history of negatives about themselves. The odds are pretty good that you’ve heard of Republican Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts, which began in the late 1940s to uncover communists in the US government, Hollywood, and elsewhere. […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
“Equity” has replaced “equality” as the latest buzzword in America’s never-ending game of Victimology, which in turn has replaced the board game of Monopoly in popularity. As Vice President Kamala Harris has said, “Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place.” In other words, equity means equal outcomes, not equality under the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
A review of The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy, by Christopher Leonard, Paperback Edition, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2023, 373 pages. Your neighbors might object to you reading The Lords of Easy Money. That’s because it’s a book that will make you want to go outside and howl at the moon, given […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
A new book questions the conventional wisdom about immigration, diversity, assimilation, and the causes of prosperity. Caution! Don’t be seen reading the following book in public. The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot like the Ones They Left, by Garett Jones, 2023, Stanford Business Books, 213 pages. There is not a […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
A review of Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, by David E. Bernstein, Bombardier Books, 2022, 186 pages. Early in my professional career a long time ago, I was tasked by my employer, an international insurance company based in Chicago, with three responsibilities in addition to other duties: one, to head the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal got me thinking about the passbook savings accounts of my long-ago youth. The article said that kids today don’t want their parents to give them cash for allowances and doing chores. They want to be paid in Robux, which is an online currency from Roblox Corp. Kids […]