UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Reform at last
Sanders' plan curbs runaway pension costs
Workers with ordinary pensions react with disbelief, and understandably so, when they learn about the lavish retirement benefits provided mostly at taxpayer expense to San Diego's 10,700 municipal employees. The standard recommended by investment experts is that a worker should have retirement income equal to 80 percent of his pre-retirement pay. Private-sector workers typically salt away contributions in their 401(k) plans for decades in order to achieve this standard.
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Pay for grades
Cash incentives work, even with students
In order to appreciate just how brilliant some ideas are, you first have to get over the “ick” factor. For instance, some might consider it unseemly to pay students to improve their grades or raise their test scores. Some might even call that a bribe. Those people are naive.
Protecting our seas
Would marine conservation meet with Teddy Roosevelt's approval?
By Stuart Sandin
The phrase “shifting baseline” was coined by Daniel Pauly, a Canadian fisheries scientist, to describe the change in perspective that human society has undergone through time, in particular with respect to the state of our oceans' health.
Political uncertainty really is a good thing
By Jonah Goldberg
The cover story of last month's Scientific American is “The Future of Physics.” It's got all sorts of stuff in there about how the guys in the white coats can measure what happens when they smash these teensy weensy thingamajigs – so tiny they make atoms look like Dom DeLuise after he let himself go – hurling around at 99.9999991 percent the speed of light.
After violence, is it time to talk with Hamas?
By Henry Siegman
Last October, a bipartisan group of eminent former senior government officials, including Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton and Paul Volcker, urged President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice not to entertain the fantasy that an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord can be negotiated with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, without the participation of Hamas.
RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR. THE UNION-TRIBUNE
Do Latinos benefit from Democrats?
Recently, I was in California doing an interview on a New York radio show talking about Texas. Also on the show was an African-American columnist from a newspaper in New York City. We were talking about the disparity in Latino support for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the reasons for it. That's when I was treated to one of the most insulting and xenophobic explanations I've ever heard.
