Governor Andrew Cuomo, channeling the presidential campaign positions of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, has proposed eliminating college tuition for all families with income below $125,000. I was a tenured SUNY college professor in a former life—shouldn’t I be cheering Governor Cuomo’s call for free tuition for the children of nearly three-quarters of New York’s families?
But I’m not. Let me try to explain. Read more »
Mario Cuomo noted that “we campaign in poetry but govern in prose.” Trump’s campaign was hardly poetry—it was more like a sensationalist novel, with racy sex, clichéd dialogue and improbable plot twists. Now Trump & Co. are writing the screenplay for a movie and doing casting. And we wonder—some with hope and some with fear—whether the movie will be true to the book.
With Congress firmly in Republican hands, the policies reflected by Trump’s cabinet choices are steeped in Republican orthodoxy. While Trump may love a brawl, he can’t make America great again without winning votes in Congress. Read more »
“Charles, why are there a dozen bowls of water in the backyard?” she asked. “The dogs are thirsty,” Dad explained. He always was a soft touch—dogs could always hustle the last bite of cookie. Now he was seeing friendly dogs everywhere. As he sank further into Parkinson’s dementia, however, the hallucinations turned to bouts of paranoia. Mom hid both kitchen knives and new door locks to prevent his wandering. As his problems with eating, sleeping, toileting, and medications worsened, her health began to decline. She couldn’t continue.
At a friend’s suggestion, she called someone who connected weary caregivers to willing “live-ins.” Lesya, a Ukrainian who’d left her young daughter in the care of others to make a better life in America, moved in the next day. Mom didn’t ask many questions. She didn’t check for Lesya’s green card. She paid in cash. A year later, pneumonia sent Dad to the hospital and he died soon after. Read more »
Arthur Gardner was an electrician. Born in 1883, one year after Thomas Edison turned on the lights for 59 customers in Lower Manhattan, my grandfather was part of a new and rapidly growing occupation. He spent his workdays running wire through the homes of Chicago’s wealthy South Shore neighborhood. Electricity displaced the use of coal gas, which, in its turn, had displaced oil lamps and candles. Just as gas lighting propelled an expansion of industrial production and improved literacy, electricity—good for so much more than lighting—made vast new industries possible.
Arthur raised a family of gearheads—amateur engineers who tinkered with every kind of technology. My father began a career in computers in 1960, taking night classes in computer programming languages throughout my childhood. Coding books—FORTAN, COBOL, RPG—littered our basement. When our car needed winter “ballast” for snowy streets, we threw in 8 or 10 boxes of IBM cards. I still have a few. Read more »
Oscar Wilde’s quip, “the truth is never pure and rarely simple,” is flagrantly ignored by the “Best Places/Top Cities” industry. Yes, these “top XX” lists have been around since Athens v. Sparta. We’ve had decades with the “Best Places to Live” lists; U.S. News & World Report turned rankings into a market segment. For WalletHub, with revenue driven by the “eyes” attracted to its website, it’s the whole business model. And now that we’re awash in data, it is ever cheaper to capture someone’s attention with a new ranking. Should we be paying attention? Read more »
As one of Rochester’s resident data geeks, I often find myself explaining why we don’t know what we don’t know. At the “micro” level—e.g. an individual firm—we have become accustomed to knowing more and more about our customers and what they buy, where they buy it and when they buy it. A sophisticated food retailer like Wegmans, for example, can tell you how many gallons of milk were sold yesterday at each of its 89 stores. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they could tell us how many gallons of 2% were sold in Pennsylvania last Tuesday between 10 and 11 am! High volume, low margin retailers depend on this information to keep the shelves filled, satisfy customers, and improve their bottom line.
Aggregate information about our communities—milk consumption is one thing but what about more consequential information about employment, income and educational attainment—is far more difficult to obtain. We rely on the same sources of information we’ve used for decades. Data on employment and earnings still depend on twice a year reporting from firms covered by federal unemployment insurance. The state and federal labor departments supplement with monthly sampling that give us a snapshot of trends that have yet to be reported under the unemployment insurance program. Just in the last decade we’ve had access to labor data that matches reporting by firms to income tax records, although this takes time and is only available after a couple of years have passed. Read more »
Governor Cuomo has been widely criticized for the modest achievements of the “Start-Up NY” economic development program. In a report released on Friday of the July 4 weekend (timing that raised eyebrows), the state attributed only 332 jobs to the program during 2015, thus a total of 408 jobs since the program’s inception.
If you’re not familiar with the program, here’s a quick summary: Firms can qualify for an exemption from most taxation—sales, property, even personal income taxes owed by individuals hired to work in the venture. And the benefits last up to 10 years. It’s a sweet deal if you qualify. Read more »
Britain America First! ??? When does patriotism evolve into hate and bigotry? America First! New York First! Rochester First! Family First! Me First! Where does it stop? Cheering for our favorite team or expressing pride in our nation must stop short of hating the other team or endorsing formal discrimination in favor of what is deemed “ours.” Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration would soon morph into a ban on American-born Muslims, to a ban on Islam itself. Is that not a small step away from a descent into warring tribes, each convinced that they alone deserve special treatment?
Next Thursday the Brits will decide whether or not they should remain in the European Union. Dubbed “Brexit,” the referendum puts the United Kingdom’s European identity to the test. The Economist/YouGov poll scores the contest at a dead heat—42% or 44% on either side with 10% on the fence. My forecast—the status quo wins when the poll is even. Brexit is dead. I think.
The poll reveals some big divisions: the young want to stay while the old want to leave; the rich want to stay while the poor want to leave; Scotland wants to stay while Wales wants to leave. Liberal Labor wants to stay while Conservative Tories want to leave. Read more »
Q: How do you eat an elephant? A: One bite at a time . . .
Let’s apply this perspective to apply to the problem of poverty. The persistent, concentrated poverty we confront here in Monroe County is an elephant of a problem—let me suggest a few “bites” we might be able to chew. Read more »
Got a connecting flight? As long as you’re continuing with the same airline, the gate can’t be THAT far away, right?
Not anymore. If you’ve flown through Detroit lately, you’re familiar with Delta’s McNamara Terminal. With 121 gates, the terminal boasts of 1.5 miles of moving walkway. That’s the good news. The bad news is that your connecting gate may be 1.5 miles away. Since merging with Northwest, Delta dominates flights through Detroit. Or how about Atlanta? Delta flies out of every one of Atlanta’s seven terminals, spread over nearly seven million square feet—60% larger than the Mall of America
Delta, now the oldest American airline (1924), was built from parts of Chicago and Southern, Northeast, Northwest, Republic, Hughes Airwest, Bonanza, Pacific, West Coast, North Central, American Overseas, National, Western and Standard airlines plus Southern, Pan American World, and Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean airways. Ranked by total passengers, Delta was the largest airline in the world in 2014. Read more »
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