Dear William,

I am especially fond of the "This I Believe" series and pleased with Bob Edwards contribution to rebroadcasting archived essays. Having attempted the exercise myself it was humbling, to say the least, when I heard Wallace Stegner's. Everything Potent is Dangerous It is terribly difficult to say honestly, without posing or faking, what one truly and fundamentally believes. Reticence or an itch to make public confession may distort or dramatize what is really there to be said, and public expressions of belief are so closely associated with inspirational activity, and in fact so often stem from someone’s desire to buck up the downhearted and raise the general morale, that belief becomes an evangelical matter. In all honesty, what I believe is neither inspirational nor evangelical. Passionate faith I am suspicious of because it hangs witches and burns heretics, and generally I am more in sympathy with the witches and heretics than with the sectarians who hang and burn th...

It is the 15 th of April and if you live and work in America then you have probably been scrambling around for the last couple of months finding all the necessary bits to complete your tax return by today's deadline. Taxes are always the subject of great debate and while no one really likes to pay them they do help our society to function, an important task indeed. The real issue centers around how productively they are used and while the Tea Party movement has been traveling from town to town railing and rallying against government spending during an extended recession- a key solution to cushioning the blow for the economy in consumer spending and providing incentives for growth and job creation. I thought the most appropriate exercise for the day is to put some perspective behind the federal budget and where all those dollars go. These are where the real priorities and character of a President can be found as are the leadership necessary to pay for them. It is hard here not t...

Feeling strongly about education I have endeavored to make sense of and contribute to the debate surrounding reform and crucially increasing returns. As a developed country our future economic growth is based largely on the technological progress, ie brain power, our education system provides. Similarly, top corporations like to be close to and recruit from top universities again increasing competitiveness and growth prospects. From the bleachers it looks like the Obama administration intends to focus on decentralizing the school system allowing for a greater variety of models. The theory goes that various types of charter schools operating in any number of ways, models or theories with decentralized curriculum and experimental learning techniques will aid in settling the debate and providing for the best outcomes. In Chicago we are already familiar with this movement from Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s time as head of Chicago Public Schools . The results so far are mixed at be...

By some miracle of chance I happened across Alan Harvey and the demandside blog and podcast. As you shall see below he rails against what he calls, "the primitive orthodoxy" of market fundamentalism and "the P.T. Barnum of economics, Milton Friedman" that are most responsible for our current state of affairs. His blog, www.demandsideblog.blogspot.com, is a great resource and a shame that his and the demandside perspective have not been more readily deployed or understood as clearly our current situation necessitates. Here you go..... The recovery has been accepted by acclamation, but the vote only counts at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and they won't be announcing it until after the fact. Otherwise it depends on economic data, not popular opinion. Demand Side still sees us bouncing along the bottom. The business cycle is broken without investment, and there is only a government stimulus program substituting for investment. The bottom may be...

For me, life is good, indeed, at its best when someone you least expect comes into your life and illuminates it with important, deep and valuable conversation that leaves you thinking anew. Disclaimer: What follows is a "This I Believe" moment meant to communicate a grandiose idea that is not my own but rested from a restless soul recently departed from my daily life. Making his way in the world not yet broken in by societal norms still in hot pursuit of the dream, elusive as it were, with his own set of truths a guiding light tinged in dickesh cynicism, pure in heart or at least the truth as it were laid out by life experience, wit and wisdom. Therefore this is an acknowledgement to that affect, an attempt to communicate appreciation, love and hope for living the dream. Here I simply hope to pay homage to what has been a good thing for me. I never really thought much of Bob Dylan(a comment meant to insight anger or at least a response). But what I mean to say is that I...