Sunday, April 26, 2009

The story behind Carlos Santiago's decision

The Miami Herald's coverage of UWM's Carlos Santiago's unsuccessful candidacy for the presidency of Florida International University (FIU) could not have been more different than the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's.

When Santiago pulled his candidacy at the last minute, the Journal Sentinel breathed a sigh of relief, quoting local opinion makers as being "shocked" and "thrilled" that Santiago would not be leaving UWM.

Milwaukee's Mayor Tom Barrett even suggested that Santiago's commitment to Milwaukee was the determining factor: "At the end of the day, it wasn't a situation where I thought he wanted to leave."

The Journal Sentinel ends its coverage with a transparent call to sweeten Santiago's $300,000 contract by Jean Dowdall, vice president with the executive search firm Witt/Kiefer that had recruited Santiago for FIU.

The Miami Herald had a very different take on Santiago's candidacy reporting that: "FIU failed to attract truly powerhouse candidates," and that Santiago's abrupt withdrawal had less to do with a commitment to Milwaukee and UWM and everything to do with the fact that:
"He had his name removed from consideration ...after it became evident that he did not have enough votes to get the job."

Friday, April 24, 2009

Krugman on torture, accountability & morality

Paul Krugman writes:

...officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

It’s hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn’t, now declare that we should forget the whole era — for the sake of the country, of course.

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.

Read the entire column.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Building a sustainable economic recovery

On Sunday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a piece that I coauthored with Drs. Levine (UWM) and Maranto (Marquette) on how the Employee Free Choice Act will help build a sustainable recovery. It begins:

Judging from the recent competing editorials in The Wall Street Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other leading newspapers, and from the escalating rhetoric of business and labor, the nation is about to be put through another destructive, ideologically based battle over a labor law reform bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act. The Chamber of Commerce describes the coming battle as "Armageddon." This couldn't come at a worse time for the country. The deepening economic crisis needs business and labor working together with the new administration to build a sustainable economic recovery.

The rest of the piece is linked here.