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Familiarity can breed complacency in business

Have you heard that most car accidents happen close to home? It’s often because the driver’s familiarity with the roads leads to complacency.  The same happens in a community. Citizens get used to something the way it is. Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns encourages people to walk their community. When I do this, I see things that I don’t experience in a car. For example, I might see a power pole in the middle of a sidewalk that makes it very hard for a person in a wheelchair, or with any other ambulatory challenge, to travel safely (if at all). Or maybe I notice an intersection ...

Snatching defeat from jaws of victory

Democrats in the Senate managed to do the impossible, snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. Now, not all Democrats voted to advance legislation that would end the government shutdown; only eight did the deed. Their timing was outrageous when they were on the verge of forcing Republicans to at least address Democratic concerns. Despite conventional wisdom that initiating the shutdown was political suicide, Democrats succeeded in the off-year elections, strengthened their arguments, and even the most hardened GOP operatives were admitting defeat. They had nothing to fear, as it ...

Harman charter proposal

Earlier this year, I wrote a bill to help save the Harman School, and it passed. Last December, I authored a detailed article about how to save the school while simultaneously avoiding the financial problems the county is facing. This was to be accomplished through the charter school program in West Virginia. However, by the time discussions about closing the Harman School began last year, the deadline had already passed. It was a no-go. A school that seeks to become a charter school must submit its application the August before the school year begins. Recognizing the urgency of ...

The life of the party

Political prognosticators are always trying to find meaning in off-year elections. And while I think there are some indicators one can glean from Tuesday’s elections, it would be a mistake to read the tea leaves too closely. Last Tuesday saw a person with links to Democratic Socialists of America — Zohran Mamdani — win election as mayor of New York City over former Democratic New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Former Democratic congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a known moderate and former CIA case officer, won her election for governor of Virginia. There are other elections where ...

America is a vast, divergent country

The United States of America is 3.8 million square miles, filled with 340 million people, producing over $30 trillion in gross domestic product per year. We are the fourth largest country by land, third by population and first by GDP. We no longer know each other, care for each other or like each other. We are a nation of isolated people staring at screens and filled with existential terrors about the other, whoever the other might be. On Tuesday night across America, those existential terrors played out with fear of the other. Hispanic voters who voted for President Donald Trump and ...

Bill Gates sees a new reality

You’ve probably heard by now the blockbuster news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, one of the richest people to ever walk the planet, has had a change of heart on climate change. For several decades, Gates poured billions of dollars into the climate-industrial complex and was howling that the end is nigh unless we stop using fossil fuels, cars, air conditioning and general anesthesia. Now he says he rejects the “doomsday” predictions of the more extreme global warming prophets. Some conservatives have snuffed that Gates has shifted his position on climate change because he ...