It’s only Monday, yet I (perhaps foolishly) am taking the risk of predicting that by the time you read this on Friday, Kevin Kavanaugh will be consigned to the wastebasket of history. My prediction is reinforced by the very quiet, almost hush-hush news that the Current Occupant signed a major part of the 2019 budget last weekend – sans his threatened October shutdown and sans his cherished Mexican Wall. Someone in the White House seems to be forcing him to see that his party is going down in a landslide waterfall this fall, and they are trying to cut their losses. Read More
Doris writes a weekly column for LaGaceta, the nation's only trilingual newspaper, which has pages in English, Spanish, and Italian. Begun in 1922 for Tampa's immigrant community, it continues to thrive more than a century later. Her column is titled "In Context," as it aims to put contemporary issues in the context of the past.
I Should Have Majored in Economics
September 17, 2018
I had the highest grade in a class of 55, with 50 young men and five young women. Instead, when the professor pointed this out to the inferior fifty guys, I was very embarrassed. I never even considered the field as a career. I’m still glad of that in a way, given the daily struggle with discrimination it would have been. There’s enough of that among historians; it would have been overwhelming with economists. I also remember my second full-time job, which was as a researcher and writer at an investment firm. When I left for teaching, I was asked to train my replacement, an inexperienced guy who started at a pay level higher than mine. Read More
The Times, They Are A’Changin’
September 10, 2018
There’s been no White House acknowledgment that its policy of separating children from their parents smacks of Nazi concentration camps, but others seem to be catching on. Nor are they all bleeding-heart liberals, but instead business minds who are seeing that the administration’s anti-immigrant bias is having unintended consequences. This is particularly true in terms of labor shortages for menial jobs that Americans (most of them Trumpers) refuse to do, but also in new unforeseen ways. Read More
Meathead Won
September 3, 2018
I had an e-mail from Norman Lear a few days before the Florida primary and was surprised to realize that he still is alive. At 96, the creator of “All in the Family” justly deserves the reward of seeing this year’s amazing elections that, at least on the Democratic side of the ledger, are being won by through-going liberals. You know that Archie Bunker would be horrified by the nomination of Andrew Gillum, while Gloria and Mike would be dancing across the living room. Read More