Harold Pollack

David Brooks has just published a column modestly titled “where wisdom lives,” which evenhandedly considers both parties’ approaches to health reform. In his usual lighthearted fashion, Brooks ultimately concludes that Republicans are basically right about the big stuff, and that Democrats are overly wedded to technocratic, big-government solutions. Read the column. Then read Jonathan’s Cohn’s […]

Over at the Incidental Economist, Don Taylor has two terrific posts (here and here) on the personal and social costs of tobacco use. Much of these posts come from a book Don helped to write called The Price of Smoking. This is an essential reference for anyone interested in tobacco control or the social costs […]

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal includes the headline “Netanyahu delivers rare public rebuke to U.S. President.” The papers report that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the concept of 1967 borders as non-negotiable. Israeli aides were quoted to say that “Obama apparently does not understand the reality in the Mideast.” Netanyahu will address a joint […]

Ezra Klein notes that one can’t save Medicare through revenue alone. Although I support selected tax increases to address Medicare costs, we must actually confront the program’s unsustainable cost growth in the coming decades. That won’t be easy from any perspective, but it must be done. Ezra quotes me as saying: “One unintentional benefit of […]

I never know what to think about Cornel West. He shows that one can combine an astonishing range of brilliance, erudition, and humanity with an equally astonishing range of pomposity and self-involved grandstanding. Today’s headlines provide a case in point. Chris Hedges quotes Professor West below: I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a […]

I’ve been tied up with other matters. So I’ll just say “What Austin Frakt said” regarding Paul Ryan’s speech in our fair city today. Robert Costa over at National Review Online cites the following lines from Ryan’s prepared text: Our plan is to give seniors the power to deny business to inefficient providers. Their plan […]

I want to endorse the need to presume good intentions in others and to be a bit slower in taking offense. Two years ago, a brilliant philosopher wrote in this space about my own favorite example of faux outrage on the campaign trail: Readers may remember New York’s Al D’Amato, a.k.a. Senator Pothole. As the […]

I’m grateful to the men and women of our intelligence services and armed forces who tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden. Their bravery and methodical professionalism is remarkable. To tell you the truth, I’m glad we just killed him, that he did not survive the firefight with our forces. Dragging him back to Guantanamo […]

For most of my childhood, I lived in nice suburb near Rochester, NY. Our town included many Holocaust survivors and refugees from the Soviet Union. Inscribed in a notebook at our local Jewish Community Center were names of relatives lost. Our neighbor up the street survived a roundup of Jews by hiding in a wall, […]