Hancock and Manulife

Published: Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Their own Medicine

 Page A22
Cambridge, Mass. -- As a Canadian living across the river from Boston, I have experienced just a little schadenfreude in the reaction of the local press to the Manulife Financial takeover of John Hancock Financial (Manulife's Big Deal Sets Stage For Something Even Bigger -- Oct. 2).
The litany will sound familiar to any Canadian: Oh dear, we are becoming a branch-plant city. When they have to make job cuts, they won't be making the cuts in Canada. The charitable donations will go to Canadian charities, local (Boston) charities will lose out. Thank goodness, they'll continue to support the Boston Marathon.
This is one time that globalization may benefit Canada rather than the United States. And maybe we could move the marathon north: Avenue Road between Bloor and St. Clair would be a good stand-in for Heartbreak Hill.
Here is the URL

Leo Straus quotation

Published: New York Times

A May 4 Week in Review article quotes the philosopher Leo Strauss as saying, "One must make the whole globe democratic, each country in itself as well as the society of nations."
It is a pity that the neocon disciples of Strauss haven't pushed for the second half of that agenda. With few exceptions, the Bush policy has been to undermine international agreements. Stronger support of the United Nations, as the closest institution we have to a democratic community of nations, would be welcome.

Homeland Security

Published: New York Times, page A32

The special interest business provisions added to the Homeland Security Bill by the Republicans (front page, Nov 20) are an insult to the men and women who died in the September 11 attacks.
The legislators who proposed and approved these provisions should be ashamed

Women Leaders

Submitted to Boston Globe but not published

Women Leaders

I saw a bumper sticker today that read, "Republican women make great leaders." Mitt Romney obviously doesn't agree: Lieutenant, yes; leader, no!

Robert Reich Won Too

Published: Boston Globe, page A18

Robert Reich won, too! He won because he gave us a vision of what the Democratic Party of Massachusetts might be. He won because he presented a vision of a Commonwealth transformed by his insistence on social justice. He won because he brought back into the political process voters who had felt disenfranchised by business as usual
I urge all of those who worked for Reich to continue their struggle within the Democratic Party. Continue to volunteer and above all continue to articulate the values that Reich expressed and embodied. Only if they stay the course can they bring about the transformation of state politics that he has begun.

Cloning Ted Williams

Published: Boston Globe, page A18

Surely the pitchers' union will be filing an injunction to prevent Ted Williams from being cloned
Griffith Evans,

Romney Works for a Day

Submitted to Boston Globe but not published.

The day at work program being undertaken by Mitt Romney provides great photo opportunities. But Mitt Romney would learn a lot more about the problems facing low paid workers from reading Nickel and Dimed (Barbara Ehrenreich) or When Work Disappears (W. J. Wilson). In these books the complete set of difficulties of a low paid person’s life are laid out in detail. The lack of jobs in the inner city; the difficulty of getting transportation to a distant job in time for the start of a shift; the theft of one’s time through unpaid overtime;  the difficulty of finding affordable accommodation (and that insurmountable barrier of accumulating two month’s rent in advance). It is this context of life’s difficulties that is so debilitating before one even does a hard day’s work.
Of course, one day on the job does not give time for the meaninglessness of much of that work to sink in – one is still in a learning mode.  I only lasted a week on a donut assembly line: I could not get to sleep until I started up the line in my dreams. That is the reality of many assembly line jobs.
So, let’s have fewer photo opportunities and more discussion of meaningful policies for the social safety net.