Well, 50 actually (not including subparts). With a bunch of "why?" and "why nots?" Taboo breakers, too. Don't worry, though: I've thrown in some easy ones!
“Romanticizing and idealizing (go-to indulgences on the left) and grievance and demonization (animating principles on the right) are no small part of the problem.”
How hard should it be to get broad agreement on “unless and until you get the rules changed, follow them”? Not very. But achieving that consensus sometimes seems an impossible dream in New York City, a place where you’re generally not doing your rule-breaking in splendid isolation but rather in ways that have real impacts on others.
Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw, writing in The New York Times, wants you to believe that a worker's acceptance of a job for no more than minimum wage and a person's acceptance of a pre-ACA, bare bones insurance policy reflect voluntary arrangements. Even a moment's consideration shows there is nothing genuinely voluntary about either of these arrangements.
American Farm Bureau Federation study confirms agricultural sector's deep reliance on wildly underpaid workers. It warns that shrinking labor supply would spark "large-scale restructuring" of farm sector. But don't we need that if current system only survives by relying so heavily on unfree labor?
Yes, he’s a thug. Yes, he’s trying to change the subject. But isn’t there a lot more to report on about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie? Like the fact that he’s been guilty of wildly irresponsible and sometimes lawless behavior before. Two prime examples: In 2010, he killed the long-planned construction of a new Hudson River transit tunnel, and he's spent years sabotaging New Jersey's Council on Affordable Housing.
Deep residential segregation underlies every major social inequity we have in New York City. The de Blasio administration promises a new era of activism and community participation, but will the energy generated ultimately reduce or perpetuate segregation? A great deal hinges on the nature of the community organizing that is encouraged.
In the Barack Obama and Bill Clinton version of the Democratic Party, the goal is to have “conversations about race.” Or, at least, these two presidents have wanted to have intermittent conversations to the extent convenient. Once upon a time, those in favor of civil rights (as Obama and Clinton surely are) were more direct: they demanded action, not talk.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was ecstatic last week, announcing that the city’s population had swollen to an all-time high. Unfortunately, the mayor remains completely dissociated from the many negative consequences already arising from the city’s population “boom.”
In an address that otherwise reprised many of the noblest principles from this country's history, President Obama's remarks on education offered only a bleak vision of schools as training grounds for employers. Neither the principle that a good education is an essential requisite for developing active citizens nor the idea that education has intrinsic value independent of its utility in the job market made it into the speech.
A few questions I'd love the NYC mayoral candidates to answer
Even the easy stuff isn't so easy
Speaker Adams opposing effective fair housing enforcement?
Equally free to sleep under the bridge
Economic disaster for agriculture or proof of brutality of current system?
Christie's bigger sins
Getting community organizing right
Let’s not have a conversation about race
Bloomberg trumpets “bigger is better” but ignores quality of city life
Inaugural flunks education history, limits aspirations