Commentary & Opinion

It is hard not to despair about the looming climate catastrophe caused by global warming.  The world keeps moving past warnings and climate milestones and the nation’s political processes seem incapable of taking the necessary aggressive actions.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has failed to form a government which opens the door to the opposition to take a crack at forming a government potentially ending Mr. Netanyahu’s long running stint as Prime Minister.  Three prior attempts by the opposition at forming a government, of course, have failed, and so how this turns out is truly an unknown.  Obviously, this will have great impact on Israel, but also the entire Middle East if this does result in the end of Mr. Netanyahu’s reign, and of course, could have dire consequences for him in his current court proceeding.  The Middle East never ceases to surprise.

On April 28, President Biden spoke to Congress. He presented arguments in favor of his two big infrastructure proposals: The American Jobs Act and what he referred to as the Families Plan.

One of the effects of serving abroad, call it benefit or burden, is that one sees the relics of lost pasts, civilizations that have destroyed themselves by overusing the resources available to them or by using materials that poisoned the community. It’s quaint, and interesting, but the lesson is humility – we can destroy ourselves, and may be doing it.

We’re a year into the coronavirus pandemic and things are looking up at last.

Under the U.S. Constitution, every 10 years since 1790 the nation conducts a census to determine the number of its inhabitants and then adjusts political boundaries according to demographic changes over the decade.  The state Legislature decides how to draw the maps for Congressional and state legislative districts, with the governor approving or vetoing the lines.

The US has decided to send millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses overseas in light of the crisis which has developed in India, in addition to oxygen shipments are also being readied and the US is planning to do more for developing countries to confront the pandemic.  This is certainly a new development from the US perspective, in part, I suspect because we are beginning to see resistance to 2nd shots, but also, general resistance to the vaccine.  Certainly, it is not uncommon in the US to have vaccine resistance, this is just the latest forum in that ongoing battle.

I want to live in a forgiving society. And I believe that most other Americans do, as well.

Thank heavens Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd. The jury came back relatively quickly which signaled to many of us that they had reached a guilty verdict. Hung juries take a long time. This jury was obviously convinced by the video.

To say that the past year has been tough would be an understatement. We’re weathering a once-in-a-generation pandemic that continues to stretch us all to our limits, particularly our health care workers and educators. But the state budget approved earlier this month brings hope for a brighter future for education and working families in New York state.

April 22nd was Earth Day.  For over five decades, the world has marked Earth Day as a time to reflect on the state of the environment and to debate how best to improve the only habitat we have.

The soft wood lumber dispute with Canada continues to hang around in trade corridors. The reality is that soft wood lumber is necessary to construct homes and the US produces 70% of what it needs (which may even be less if the Biden administration is successful in developing a program to build more energy efficient homes). Canada supplies the bulk of the remaining lumber, and thus, is a necessary economic partner in this process. Canadians hope that this gives them some edge in terms of reaching a resolution of this knotty issue.

On April 14, the first page of the Business Section of the New York Times announced that hundreds of executives, corporations, non-profits, educational institutions and prominent law firms had come together to, in the Times’ words “unite to oppose voting limits.”

Too many whites lack the security of a livable wage because so many resist letting African-Americans have it. Somehow whites think they’ll do better if Blacks don’t. That’s a mistake. White craftsmen and laborers became abolitionists because competing with slave labor dragged their earnings down. The American labor movement understood the importance of unity. Arthur J. Goldberg, then General Counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations or CIO, filed a brief supporting integration in Brown v. Board of Education on behalf of the union, which shortly merged to form the AFL-CIO. Full disclosure, at law school, I argued in moot court in front of then Justice Goldberg and learned at close range the power of his mind and instincts.

New York lawmakers return this week after a break following passage of the state budget in early April.  There are several big issues to tackle, all of which will be debated under the shadow cast by the Assembly’s impeachment inquiry and the Attorney General’s investigation of the governor’s actions.

Poet Amanda Gorman became a household name following her performance at President Joe Biden’s Inauguration earlier this year. Western New England University student Nicole Acevedo shares her thoughts on Gorman’s words. 

A couple of weeks ago, on Holocaust Memorial Day, I was doing a project with my middle school students for our memorial assembly.  One of them had finished his work, so I showed him a poem by the renowned Israeli Holocaust survivor and writer, Dan Pagis.  Entitled Written In Pencil In the Sealed Railway Car, this haunting poem imagines the biblical character, Eve, as a victim of Nazi brutality, quickly scribbling an unfinished note to the world as she is carried off to a concentration camp in a cattle car:

The American federalist system, an intentional and inspired design of our founding fathers, gives us fifty testing grounds for government. Over a year into the COVID pandemic, we have the benefit of being able to assess and weigh fifty experimental approaches to dealing with a viral outbreak against one another.

A friend invited me to a discussion of blasphemy in Islamic law. Watching, I realized that the issue was sparked by extremist reactions to complexity, modernity and changes that make our lives more complex, and affect all of us, all religions, races, and nationalities.

Last week, state lawmakers and Governor Cuomo finally wrapped up a budget.  As it has in the past, the agreement was days past the deadline for the beginning of the new fiscal year – April 1st – but it was approved in time to spare state workers and the public of an interruption in services or paychecks.  In terms of the timing of the agreement, this year was not exceptional.

Secretary Yellen is pushing for a global minimum tax rate for multi-national corporations.  This is all part of the discussion regarding President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure program.  Many countries, such as Ireland, have very low tax rates which obviously draw multi-national corporations to their shores to take advantage of these rates, and in particular, intellectual property can easily be parked in those jurisdictions with royalties paid by the parent entities to the Irish corporation, and thus, we see dramatically reduced overall tax bills associated with these transactions.  Taking Ireland as an example, would it agree to a minimum tax rate which was significantly higher than the one they currently utilize to attract business, seems somewhat unlikely to me unless there is another carrot out there which is being offered.  The pitch being made by Ms. Yellen is best summarized in the following quote from her subsidiary: “It is about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in the central public goods, and respond to crisis, and that all citizens fairly share the burden of financing government.”  This is certainly a lofty proposition, and it will be interesting to see how it is not only received, but acted upon, or not to.

I assume everyone reading this already knows the basis of the Republican opposition to the Infrastructure Bill proposed by President Biden. One after the other, Republicans are falling all over themselves asserting that it goes “way beyond infrastructure.” For example, let’s take South Dakota Governor, Kristi Noem who said, "I was shocked by how much doesn't go into infrastructure.