Robin Lindley interviews interview White House speechwriter Cody Keenan

Robin Lindley interviews interview White House speechwriter Cody Keenan on his moving and illuminating memoir Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America. Cody shares a behind-the-scenes depiction of White House operations and the pressure of working on demanding schedules with one of the most celebrated writers and orators in modern history--President Obama. 


A Universal Needs Basic Guarantee

There is growing interest in the concept of providing a basic income to all adults, unconditionally. The idea is even being tried out in various places. The goal is to provide an income floor for everyone, including especially those who are living in poverty. However, this is a costly, and poorly targeted approach to the basic problem for every human society, namely, how to ensure the satisfaction of our basic biological needs, of which there some fourteen distinct categories. Here I will propose that we concentrate on ensuring the end – meeting our biological survival and reproductive needs -- rather than promoting an insufficient means.


MEMOIR – SHOWING UP

“80 percent of success is showing up” is the famous phrase attributed to Woody Allen. Here are two of my best.


A Strategy for Not Defaulting on Federal Loans

The US budget is again teetering on running out of money because the Republicans and Democrats are playing a game of chicken on whether to raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling caps how much the US can borrow through issuing bonds. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that failure to pay US bondholders will cut revenue to foreign countries, corporations worldwide, US IRA accounts, and personal holdings, which “would undoubtedly cause a recession in the US economy.”


Book Review: Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome is a bumpy sleigh ride through the icy white world of Ethan Frome, Mattie Silver and Zeena Frome, who are all doomed to freeze eternally.


The Trust Between the Mainstream Media and the Working Class is Broken

So Not Yonkers, the third book in the Yonkers Trilogy by Patricia Vaccarino, is realistic fiction that examines a grim reality—the world is rigged against everyone who is either poor or from the working class. Although the Yonkers Trilogy covers the time from 1969 to 1973, the issues prevalent then are the same issues that we grapple with today. 


May 2023 Magazine

Our May 2023 Magazine covers "Do-Gooders" who are making our world a better place to live, work and play. 


From Serving Time to Serving Others

Men who once had been convicted of felonies are transforming into agents for positive change. If they can do that, so can the rest of us.