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March 31, 2025
Tom Cotton Should Go Further: An Endowment Tax Should Not Exclude Big Foundations
Pressure in Congress is rapidly growing to respond to the Left-leaning tilt of universities by increasing the excise tax on their endowments. There’s no doubt that for legislators concerned about both the quality of education and looking for a way to raise revenue without increasing tax rates, endowments such as Harvard’s $50 billion or Yale’s $40 billion…
November 10, 2024
The Risks of Nonprofit Local Journalism
The decision of Washington Post owner/Amazon founder Jeff Bezos not to allow the paper’s editorial board to endorse a presidential candidate has stirred disappointment cum outrage among the paper’s readers — some 250,000 have gone so far as to cancel their subscriptions. Bezos, with the deepest of pockets, was once viewed as the Post’s savior — now he’s the devil in…
September 20, 2024
How Public Housing Fueled Boston’s Busing Riots
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the North’s worst episode of school desegregation–related racial violence: Boston’s busing riots. Mobs hurled rocks at buses filled with black students newly assigned to South Boston High School, set on the “heights” of that largely white neighborhood. At the time, and in retrospect, the violence was blamed on…
August 6, 2024
Trump’s Tax Law Diminished Incentives for Charitable Giving, But We Can Fix It
Debate over the potential renewal of the so-called Trump tax cuts of 2017 will be building as their expiration approaches next year. The focus will likely be on corporate and personal tax rates. But there’s a less-appreciated but consequential side effect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: its impact on charitable giving. Simply put,…
April 30, 2024
I’m a Conservative But Defunding NPR Is a Mistake. What Should Happen Instead Might Be Surprising
The liberal political and cultural bias of National Public Radio has moved center-stage, thanks to the Free Press essay by Uri Berliner, the former NPR editor who resigned earlier this month. In his essay he correctly observed that NPR news both caters to and reflect “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US…
April 21, 2024
The Real Bias at NPR: Story Selection
Concern about media bias — specifically politically liberal bias — has moved center stage thanks to the cri de coeur by National Public Radio’s Uri Berliner in the Free Press. The network’s business editor, who resigned in the aftermath of his speaking truth to power, wrote that “politics intruded” on a wide variety of coverage, from Covid to “Russiagate,”…
April 3, 2024
The Fearless Fund, DEI, and Attacks on Philanthropic Freedom
Anyone who believes foundations have the right to decide who and what they fund should be concerned about the lawsuit brought against the Fearless Fund, and its associated foundation, over a grant contest exclusively for Black women. That includes those of us who don’t support race-specific policies and programs. The organization behind the litigation currently winding its way…
March 31, 2024
Can Local Journalism Be Saved?
American local journalism is withering away. Between 2004 and 2019, reports Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, the country lost more than 2,000 newspapers, with the total number falling by about one-fourth, from 9,000 to 6,700. The decline bodes ill for democracy. Americans rely on local governments to provide basic public services, on voters to hold…
February 7, 2024
To Save Local Journalism, Update The Public Broadcasting Act
During his time as the U.S. ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if he faced a choice between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson would be disappointed with today’s trends. Increasingly, we are seeing government without newspapers, especially at the local level, where…
November 3, 2023
A Postcard from Ashkelon
Ashkelon, in the Hamas-targeted south of Israel, a few kilometers from Gaza, is the region’s largest Israeli city. It’s also the Israeli city that has been struck by more rockets than any other—more than a thousand. As I read about that, I think of my grandmother and the postcard she sent me from her trip…