I'm working with a group of young students (ages 18-21) from Western Europe and Scandinavia, primarily children of immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia, who are here in our great city studying in a Fullbright/State Department program. They've been awarded a $200 book stipend as a part of the program (courtesy of your tax dollars), and are asking me for book recommendations. Ok, here's your chance to have direct input in how the State Department spends your money and participate in your very own hearts and minds program at the same time. What books would you like to recommend? I can think of few groups as erudite as the YPP readership, so I thought I'd get some help from ya'll in making suggestions:

Ok, I was impressed by Obama's speech to the conference of Mayors posted here recently. Not a bad speech. But, hmmmm, there have been a string of disappointments out of the Obama campaign recently. To me, the most significant was his turn around on public financing. Sorry, I get all the arguments about practicality, but taking huge money from big donors is taking huge money from donors. Period. I am also pretty concerned about the "guilt by association," "gotcha" baloney the Obama campaign has embraced with respect to the comments by McCain's campaign advisor who said that McCain's campaign would stand to benefit if there were another attack on the U.S. Would anyone here argue that Black's statement isn't at least a viable perspective, if not definitively true?

Ok, I'm supporting a candidate for president who, based on his policy platform, is fairly centrist. Now, I find myself hoping that he'll ask the former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan to be his running mate. Despite differences with Jim Webb on a number of issues, (he's a self-described "Reagan Democrat' no less), I feel that his approach is compatible with Obama's. I wouldn't have a problem with Webb: he's reasonable people, who takes reasoned approaches to examining issues,

Take a listen to this interview, and tell me whether I've completely lost it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90595861

That title sounds a bit like a "What I Did Over My Summer Vacation" essay - because this is essentially going to be a comment with a title stuck on it as opposed to a "post" (in keeping with Dan's request that we write posts).

Actually, the calculus is fairly simple:

I see little of significant difference between them policy-wise. So, as much as I dislike "identity politics," or whatever the right term is, my decision for supporting Obama is based on how I judge the campaigns they've run, and my sense of the comparison between Obama and Clinton as people.

Given that it seems to be getting increasingly likely that the PA Dem primary will have some meaning, I’m wondering whether there will be some kind of consensus among Philly “progressives” as to who is the candidate of choice; and even more than that, I’ve been wondering whether Philly “progressives” will coalesce to support any particular candidate.

So, I’m hoping that we might have a discussion at YPP. Not an argument. A discussion. Where are the YPPers? Have there been attempts to coalesce around particular candidates, or is everyone just going their own way?

Maybe, a way to get the discussion rolling is to make a few comments about the different candidates? I have nothing deep or particularly insightful to add. It’s all pretty much conventional stuff – largely reflecting the type of dialogue we are seeing in the popular press. But maybe the conventionality of what I have to say will inspire others to feel free to add their two cents.

Remember the heady days of the pre-primary run up? Dan and Sam Durso with their Battles Royale, representatives from numerous campaigns posting almost daily, updates of updates of updates of policy statements, daily policy debates about the intricacies of the BPT and stop-and-frisk and congestion taxes, insults galore and shills by the dozen, and last but not least, frequent posts from elected officials and candidates running to replace them.

Not that I'm complaining about the quality of YPP discussions since that time, but I'm wondering about the implications of the changes that have occured in the general nature of the dialogue here - and one change in particular: why has the apparent interest in YPP on the part of elected officials dropped off so significantly?

Anyone who believes in the advisability of expanding the Convention Center should take a listen to today's Radio Times show:

http://www.whyy.org/91FM/radiotimes.html

The chap from the Brookings Institute explains, among other interesting facts, that actual hotel room bookings turns out to be less than 1/2 of those projected for the last CC expansion (not an atypical error, it seems). And, the amount of hotel business generated by the CC is only about 11% of the total hotel business of the City. Not very likely that a reasonably moderate increase from 11% is going to create a windfall of tax revenue, now is it?

I read just read an interesting article over at Slate. Seems some social scientists decided to do a comprehensive meta-analysis of research on ways to lower crime and increase levels of educational attainment.

Seems that what they found was that spending on early education programs has a great return on investment. Not only do kids grow up to be better educated and less likely to end up in prison, economic inequities are reduced and society as a whole benefits from increased "productivity" (a shout out to Fran - why I bet it even increases the number of entrepreneurs).

Oddly enough, much of what they had to say was almost verbatum what Stan and Price have posted here. The social scientists could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort if they had just become YPP readers!

Think of the debates before the mayoral election as you read this excerpt from the Slate article:

http://www.slate.com/id/2166852?nav=ais

Some musings.

In case folks didn't look at Price's post of yesterday (which I hope will be promoted to the front page), I hope you do so now. The interesting stats he put up show a very disturbing trend over the past five or so decades, and lead to a disturbing conclusion as to what may happen during the next four, or eight, or sixteen years if we don't focus our energies.

In the past decades, the percentage of people living in poverty in this City has increased. Largely, (as Price's stats show), this has happened because folks with money have moved out in greater numbers than those who have less; the concentration of poverty has increased although the number of poor people has remained constant.

After more than a week of stepped up violence in Israel and Lebanon, I find it interesting that nary a word yet on this forum.

Why is that the case?

Curious that a topic of such importance is missing from these web pages - as is the case in other forums in the lefty blogosphere.

500,000 people displaced. Hundreds of civilians killed. 1/3 of Israelis living in bomb shelters. And virtually nothing out of the White House. And nothing on these pages. What is going on here?

I'm sure that the readers of this site are virtually unanimous in their disagreement with the Bush administration's foreign policies in general. Certainly disagreement about Bush's policies with respect to Iraq, an issue that clearly isn't unrelated, has been a frequent topic of discussion here.

Does the silence reflect a split among the readers? Does it reflect an unanimity on this issue - so much so that no one thinks there's any reason to discuss it? Do readers feel that since this blog is primarily focused on local issues the violence going on doesn't affect us? (Although that reason hasn't prevented the issue of Iraq from being discussed.)

I found it disturbing to see squabbles break out over who endorsed whom in the recent elections. It seems to me that rather than fighting each other over who we support, our time can be better spent holding whomever gets elected accountable -- especially when they get elected with the support of "progressives." Well, here's your chance, I'm forwarding some very disturbing info about Leanna Washington:

Friends:
If you didn't see it, please take a moment to read yesterday's Editorial from the Inquirer below. It takes PA Sen. Leanna Washington, the sponsor of the statewide One Handgun A Month bill (S-1002), to task for seeking a damaging compromise at a very early stage of the advocacy campaign.
For those of you who don't know, Washington came to the PATH (Pennsylvanians Against Trafficking Handguns) Coalition and asked to sponsor S-1002. Too soon she got skittish and then quickly fell under the sway of powerful Sen. Vince Fumo, chief water carrier for the gun lobby in Harrisburg. So, now Washington has betrayed PATH by introducing a new bill (S-1241) designed by the gun lobby for failure.

I just got a phone call to respond to a "survey" that was of a very dubious nature. Here is an example of two of the questions (not the exact wording, but pretty close): (1) Who do you think will do more to protect traditional values against the attack from radical gays and lesbians, Casey or Santorum? and (2) Have you seen the recent TV adds discussing how many days of work Casey has missed as treasurer?

Hmmm. Seemed like a campaign effort posing as a survey to me. The survey is being sponsored by the "Pennsylvania Research Institute." Does anyone know anything about this organization? And by the way, in case you're interested, here is a phone number for a "manager" named Dave at the company conducting the survey (800) 845-6448, ext. 229 - in case you'd like to ask him questions a

A number of posts on this site have made reference to educational issues. I've wanted to put up a post myself on the relationship between education and "progressive" politics, but felt overwhelmed by the task of encapsulating such a complex topic in a post of reasonable length. Well, I've been inspired to finally put something up by an article I read today in BusinessWeek, of all places (amazing what the boredom of a Stairmaster will lead to). I've given up on the goals of making the post reasonably short and sufficiently comprehensive - but here's a foray nonetheless.

A few years back, I worked as a special education teacher - primarily working with kids labeled as "behaviorally disordered" or "learning disabled." My experiences in that capacity quickly became a lesson in the politics of education.

The connection to Philly's schools and progressive politics after the break