Author: Marc Jampole

I have no problem with the fact that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker didn’t finish college. Having a college diploma is not an absolute requirement for serving as assemblyperson, county executive, governor or even president. Of course our only president without a college degree since the 19th century had a pretty shabby record: He helped to […]

Read More… from What did Scott Walker miss by quitting college before he earned a degree?

If and when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) loses its funding, will we, the American people, blame the Republicans as we usually do when the federal government or parts of it shut down because of a funding stand-off? Or will we blame Senate Democrats for not passing the House-approved DHS bill, which contains measures […]

Read More… from Our latest irrelevant distraction: Whose fault if Congress doesn’t fund Homeland Security?

Today’s New York Times contains four articles on Brian Williams’ propensity to lie about his personal involvement in ongoing news stories such as the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina: two in the business section, one in the science pages and an opinion column by David Brooks. The Times covers multiple aspects of the story: the […]

Read More… from Media covers up transgressions by Williams, Cosby & others, until it doesn’t

If NBC follows the Dan Rather standard, it will either force Brian Williams to resign or fire him. Williams is the NBC news anchor who for years has said he rode a helicopter that underwent enemy fire during the ill-fated and disastrous Iraqi war. He has made the claim so many times that no apology […]

Read More… from If NBC uses the Dan Rather standard, it’ll force Brian Williams to resign

Several progressive friends of mine were raving about Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, which is about three years old, so I read it. In it, Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, extends a very important theory about morality in humans that is emerging among […]

Read More… from “Liberal” cultural psychologist foregoes science to accept the premises of the right wing

The epidemic of verbal selfies used to begin feature articles continues unabated. It seems as if every other feature article begins with something about the writer—personal struggles with the problem under discussion, an anecdote from childhood, a favorite professor’s lecture on the topic years ago, how the topic reminds the writer of another subject, the […]

Read More… from New Yorker & Times writers use verbal selfies to communicate myth that science & math are hard & not fun

When the Obama Administration announced plans to begin taxing future withdrawals from 529 college savings plans, those in favor played up the fact that 70% of all tax savings benefits from 529 plans go to families with more than $200,000 a year in income. The opponents of taking away this tax benefit to pay for […]

Read More… from The American approach to helping middle class always seems to help the rich more

Conservative think tanks and business associations know that they can always plant a bogus survey or an opinion piece by a bought-and-sold expert in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. That is, as long as the study supports unregulated growth based on fossil fuels and giving the biggest rewards to large corporate and banking […]

Read More… from You can count on Wall Street Journal to deliver all the bogus facts rightwingers need to create an alternative reality

“The Rehabilitation of Paterno, Back at No. 1” read the New York Times  front page headline when the news hit of the settlement of the lawsuit brought against the NCAA for its sanctions of the Penn State football program because it turned its back while an assistant coach was sexually abusing children. This rehabilitation or […]

Read More… from Paterno case raises a broader issue of praise and blame

Barack Obama started with majorities in both the House and Senate. Six years later the opposition holds both. Why did the president wait until he was in the overwhelming minority to push for higher taxes for the wealthy and lower taxes on the middle class? True, a few years back Democrats and Republicans kind of […]

Read More… from What took Obama so long to address our unfair tax system? And why is his plan so complicated?