As we have recently commemorated the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, we have been reminded once again of the horror of that day, the lives tragically lost, and the aftermath of the attacks – psychologically, socially, politically, legally and with regard to health concerns of those who worked for months and […]
It is advisable and instructive to periodically take stock of where we as a nation stand when it comes to quality-of-life issues. We have done this off and on over the past five years. Comparing ourselves and how we are doing to our sister nations can and should prompt us to do some self-reflection, to […]
How aware are we Americans that many of our sister nations – other advanced democracies – have had the advantage of a woman leader, whether President, Prime Minister or other Head of State, while we have not? Since the 1980s, the following countries have all had female Heads of State: Iceland, Norway, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, East […]
The United States consistently ranks among the most “generous” countries in the world – we citizens routinely rank very high in the categories of helping someone we don’t know, donating money to charity, or volunteering our time to an organization. A Marketwatch article from December 2019 cites results from the World Giving Index, an instrument […]
Often when the issue of European social safety net practices is broached among Americans the argument eventually turns to the question of our racial and ethnic diversity and our large size versus other countries’ relative homogeneity and small size. The argument asserts that the US cannot (and should not) implement European social practices because our […]
Shortly after the 2016 election, we discussed voting in the US and in our sister nations around the world. We noted the many initiatives being taken in the US to improve the way we vote in this country. We pointed out that other countries have much better turnout rates, in part because they offer different ways […]
In a special issue of National Wildlife magazine (February-March 2020), the National Wildlife Federation reported on one of the success stories following the April 2010 catastrophe that was the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Along the Louisiana coastline of the Gulf of Mexico is a narrow sandy barrier called the Caminada Headland. The Headland was already losing […]
Our Head of State – our President – differs in several ways from that of many of our sister nations. Advanced democracies like the United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden and Canada have a constitutional monarchy where political power is shared between a king or queen (usually) and a parliament or similar body. In the Republic of […]
Terminology matters. As the 2020 presidential election cycle heats up, there is a great deal of banter in the air, among politicians, pundits, journalists, citizens, etc., about terms such as “socialism,” “Democratic Socialism,” “the radical left,” “welfare state,” capitalism and others. I am not an expert in economics or political science, but I offer the […]
We have commented on a number of issues in the past which we can now update. First, we noted in “Hillary and Helen: Women ‘Deleted’ by the Texas Board of Education,” posted on September 21, 2018, that the Texas Board of Education had voted preliminarily in September 2018 to delete several significant figures from the […]