Archive by Author
The Circle
Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“I am very sensitive to the fact that my New York is only one New York, and that a successful paper should reflect all the cities out there.” – Wendell Jamieson I write to praise newspapers, not to bury them. Richard Perez-Pena is already on the Death and Burial of News Organizations Great and Small […]
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Quite the Choice
Posted on 29. Nov, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“‘But I don’t want to burn my flag…’ THEN DON’T” – Bill Hicks American life involves choices. George Carlin defined these choices as paper or plastic, cash or credit, Democrat or Republican. In reality, it’s much funnier and much scarier than Carlin’s pithy summation. For example, the right to bear arms so famously guaranteed by […]
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Everyone Dies
Posted on 23. Nov, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“It’s been too hard living/but I’m afraid to die/’cause I don’t know what’s up there/beyond the sky.” – Sam Cooke, ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ Here we are. The Senate will begin to debate the overhaul of America’s health care system. There will be much discussion of cost. Moral imperatives will be invoked. The phrases […]
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'We're All Doomed' is not a good campaign slogan…
Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“Because one can almost feel it: what a bleak and merciless world this host lives in – believes, nay, knows for an absolute fact he lives in. I’ll take doubt.” – David Foster Wallace, “Host” Recently departed Nixon speechwriter and grammar police commissioner William Safire once wrote that liberals were, “nattering nabobs of negativism.” For […]
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The Philosopher King
Posted on 06. Nov, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.” – Marcus Aurelius President Obama has been variously identified as a post-partisan figure, a bi-partisan compromiser, an appeaser of the right, a dictator, a Communist in a centrist’s clothes and a silver-tongued political lightweight who’s afraid to get his hands dirty. But […]
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Unintended Legacies
Posted on 02. Nov, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“With five votes, you can do anything around here.” – William Brennan Important as it is, the Supreme Court of the United States is an odd institution. For starters, it’s an undemocratic, even unrepublican body, despite the fact that it’s the third branch of our government. Its members are appointed by a president elected by […]
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Wasteful Spending
Posted on 26. Oct, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“It’s like taking candy from a baby.” – ‘Tony,’ a con artist who defrauded Medicare of $20M This week’s 60 Minutes kicked off with a look at Medicare fraud in South Florida, where scamming the government for reimbursements of phony health provisions has supplanted peddling cocaine as the crime of choice for those not enrolled […]
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Education, Taxes and the Meaning of Prosperity
Posted on 19. Oct, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” – Garrison Keillor In his first editorial for this class, good old Michael Preston lambasted California’s Proposition 13, a 1978 ballot initiative that froze the property tax on homes in the Golden State. […]
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The Nobel Prize in Controversy
Posted on 12. Oct, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“The fame-making apparatus confers celebrity on an individual in a conflagration so intense that he or she can’t possibly survive.” – Don DeLillo John Bolton thinks that Barack Obama should decline the Nobel Peace Prize. In other news, John Bolton thinks that people care about what John Bolton thinks.
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The Metrics of Education
Posted on 08. Oct, 2009 by Robert Voris.
“Look to the left. Look to the right. Two out of every three of you will have dropped out by graduation.” – Ovidio Martinez, Vice Principal, Theodore Roosevelt High School, Fresno, CA, 1996. We showed him, though. Almost 700 of us walked in our robes out of a starting freshman class of 1500. Well above […]
