Russia and Ukraine: Ongoing Tensions
Jeff Berger — In August of 2017, I published an article in Wise Guys about Ukraine entitled “Understanding Ukraine: The Historical Context of Current [...]
Politics and Economics
The Politics of Identity: Insights from Francis Fukuyama
Ron Berger — In his slim but useful book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018), Francis Fukuyama offers [...]
1968: The Year That Changed U.S. Politics, and Our Lives
Ron Berger — For people of my generation, the baby boomers, Lawrence O’Donnell’s Playing With Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics [...]
The Retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy
John Kozlowicz — With the retirement of US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy there is considerable speculation about what effect this will have on future Supreme [...]
California Dreamin’: Too Many Jobs, Not Enough Houses
Jeff Berger — Why do people choose to remain in California in spite of its problems? Some people do it because they don’t want to leave their friends and family. [...]
Do Tips Belong to the Employees Who Receive Them?
Charles Cottle — It appears, thanks to a Trump administration initiative, that the lives of many tipped employees in restaurants may soon get much worse. On December 5, [...]
The Dream Deferred: The Assault on DACA
Larry Lancit — When I was in High School in the mid 1960s, I was a tenor in the A Cappella Choir. One of the most inspiring pieces of music we did was a rendition of [...]
Let’s All Move to Norway
Jeff Berger — Last January Donald Trump tweeted that immigrants to America should not be allowed to come from “shithole countries” like Haiti and nations in [...]
Trump’s Pathology Is Also His Brand
Stephen J. Ducat — Debates rage in the increasingly politicized world of mental health clinicians about how to name and understand Donald Trump’s evident [...]
Divided We Fall: The Fractured Coalition of the Democratic Party
Ron Berger — Here we are, more than a year after the November 2016 presidential election, and Democrats are still fighting the last war. In her recently published [...]
What is the Relationship between Corporate Tax Rates and Job Growth?
Charles Cottle — The central component of the tax reform plan now in the U.S. Congress is a major corporate income tax cut from 35% to 20%. Critics charge that the plan [...]
What Went Wrong: One Pollster’s View
Ron Berger — In the latest issue of The American Prospect, long-time Democratic Party pollster Stanley Greenberg weighs in on what he thinks went wrong with Hillary [...]
Canada and the American Dream
Ron Berger — During the 1950s to 1970s, social scientists were interested in the question of “national character,” that is, whether people in a nation could be [...]
Reflections on Wall Street and Donald Trump
Jeff Berger — Last month, when members of Donald Trump’s business advisory councils—the Strategy & Policy Forum and the Manufacturing Council—started [...]
Should the U.S. Constitution Be Changed? — A Wise Guys Conversation
Jeff Berger, Charles Cottle, Dave Gillespie, John Kozlowicz, and Ron Berger — During the past year contributors to Wise Guys engaged in an impromptu discussion of the [...]
Watergate: The Benchmark Political Scandal
Ron Berger — We are currently in the midst of a political scandal that has the potential to rival the infamous Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. A political [...]
Reflections on Fake News
Jeff Berger — Recently I read an article by Sharon Noguchi in my local newspaper, the San Jose Mercury, about teachers helping students to distinguish between fake news [...]
How Can We Create Jobs?
Charles Cottle — In 1992 James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, famously coined the phrase, “The Economy, Stupid.” The phrase went viral as [...]
Climate Change and Nonviolent Resistance
Ron Berger — Last November Bill McKibben, a leading environmental activist, delivered the inaugural Jonathan Schell Lecture at the New School in New York City. The [...]
