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  • Modern American culture in three acts

    There is a famous restaurant in Tampa, Fla. that Laura has talked about for years, lo, even for decades. She tried to get us a reservation there this past Valentine’s Day when we escaped to Florida a few days toward the end of winter. Then, she discovered that the restaurant’s reservation waiting list is 60 days long. This place is very exclusive and has been since the 1950s.
  • Elections have consequences
    Lincoln said, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” Let’s make sure that ecologically, politically and morally, we leave our children something worth having. Vote with your intellect and your heart. Leave your greed and impishness at home on election day.
  • Well, isn’t this interesting?
    What the Labor Department is going to do is drive more demand to Upwork where its gig workers are beyond the laws of the United States, causing more work to be done by those outside our country. But that’s OK as long as we capture the union dues from the 20 million inside the U.S. that are gig workers.
  • I have questions
    We won’t solve any of these questions in time for the upcoming election. However, if we think deeply about them (see last week’s column), we may start to make some wiser choices in the voting booth and move the needle a bit toward a saner future.
  • Perceptions
    Try looking at all the information assaulting you – not just that from politicians and telemarketers – on a deeper level.
  • Report from the Iberian Peninsula
    Laura and I have been in Spain and Portugal for more than a week. We will be flying home on Oct. 1. One’s perspective is a matter of location. Over here, the contemporary issues are as follows.
  • Fixing increasing disgruntlement
    Take the challenge. If enough people do, we can change the mood in this country by Thanksgiving. This is one place where I truly feel we are all in this together. Take a stand against greed. The United States of America is at stake.
  • King Charles III should abdicate
    The sovereign should live a life of a higher standard than the rest of us, and we should aspire to live by their example. There may be skeletons in William’s and Kate’s closet, but if there are, they have been hidden very well.
  • What is really behind Biden's inflammatory rhetoric?
    CBS News Senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe: “Like or loathe what he said tonight, it should be noted: The president spoke tonight on the grounds of a national park, flanked by U.S. Marines, and took direct, specific aim at his predecessor and members of the Republican Party.”
  • Using price controls effectively
    The university system in this country has become a gathering of pompous elites in many cases (there are some exceptions). They have created an aura of financial success that has motivated the young and their parents to accept penurious conditions in the hopes of bettering their future generations. This has obviously gotten out of hand which even President Biden has admitted by his actions last week.
  • Diversity and inclusion
    By Jim Thompson
    HCP columnist
  • Here we go again
    This new bill puts in place price controls for some Medicare-provided drugs. The last administration to gloriously fail at price controls was Richard Nixon’s, when he put price controls on everything, causing years of shortages and a decade of serious inflation. Politicians who think the government can fix anything, irrationally think price controls work. Price controls never work and when finally loosed, create unbelievable inflation.
  • Ukraine can’t be beat
    The leading respondent for our request for help on this current project is in Ukraine. Never mind the war, he needs to earn a living. He proposed a sample of his work for a small fee, then we could negotiate. His sample was very good, so we got down to negotiating his fee for the entire project. He was a very tough negotiator. Forget that bombs are falling all around him, he knows the value of the quality of his work, and he wouldn’t budge.
  • Reality sets in
    We are told we must get to net zero (carbon dioxide emissions) as soon as possible. OK, so what happens after that? Are all the scientists, engineers, managers and so forth that have put the effort in to getting us there going to go home? Highly doubtful.
  • We have not tamed electricity
    In the 1980s, I read of the interview of a long-lived thespian who had recently died. The interviewer asked him what the most astounding change in the theater was in his lifetime. Without missing a beat, he said, “electricity.” Now society has accused the generation of electricity for causing climate change and proposes to fix that problem with beer-can-esque generating devices covering once fertile farm fields. It never ends.
  • A cheap life
    Over the last 108 years, humankind has developed the attitude that life is very cheap. I pick 108 years, for that takes us back to the summer of 1914, when, right about now in that year, the Great War, later called World War I, was just about to start.
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