Articles filed under Harrop, Froma

• Probing intentions in the cyber-fog Mar 27, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: How do we isolate criminal behavior in the babbling chaos? People offer brutal scenarios online that they would never put down on paper.
  

   

• Comforting words for young workers Mar 21, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Many speak of Gen X and Gen Y as "lost generations" destined to "not live as well" as their parents. A new Urban Institute study finds that young people up to the age of 40 haven't accumulated as much wealth as their parents did at their age. The numbers may be right, but is the worry warranted?
  

   

• The silliness of demographic panic Mar 15, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Scaremongering over demographics is a divide-and-conquer strategy: Convince younger workers that they are paying for plush programs sure to collapse by the time they get old, and they'll bring them down. Here's a counterargument: These programs reassure parents bearing the considerable expense of raising children that they won't be destitute if they can't save enough for their old age.
  

   

• Harvard profs steamed at opened emails Mar 13, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: "Harvard Search of Email Stuns Its Faculty Members," the headline says. University officials rifled through the messages of resident deans to learn who passed on a confidential communication about a student cheating scandal to the media. The profs are steamed at this alleged invasion of their privacy. Too bad, but hey
  

   

• Some taxes up, and the sky’s still there Mar 10, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: It's obvious that Obama tax increases, including a few fees on health care, are not blowing up the economy. It's amazing that guys like Jim DeMint can go on Fox year after year and make the same crashingly silly predictions
  

   

• How to live long is everybody’s guess Mar 4, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Clapping with one hand about the Mediterranean diet are skeptics like your author, who, though no medical expert, has read one too many authoritative report on how to live forever, if not longer, only to see it subsequently blasted by another authoritative report.
  

   

• Price-gouging in ‘free market’ medicine Feb 28, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: When folks pan the Affordable Care Act for being nearly 3,000 pages long, here’s a sensible response: It could have been done in a page and a half if it simply declared that Medicare would cover everyone.
  

   

• No, we don’t all sin like Mark Sanford Feb 25, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Most of us do bad things. We betray friends, make hurtful remarks, lie. Often an apology will suffice in restoring trust and respect. But some very successful people engage in patterns of nutty or nasty behavior that say more about them than the misdeeds themselves. Consider the case of disgraced former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
  

   

• Amazon rules the sales-tax jungle Feb 22, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Amazon does not burden out-of-state shoppers with sales taxes. This gives it a significant advantage over brick-and-mortar stores that must tack on such taxes. Amazon understandably likes it that way.
  

   

• Republicans plagued by good news Feb 18, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Hey, it was a tough night for Republicans. Their big voices on the radio and in motel breakfast rooms have little recourse but to raise the volume.
  

   

• Dressing to the nines really says ‘be mine’ Feb 14, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: When it comes to how we dress, there are serious gender inequities — in standards of comfort and in body exposure. Valentine's Day underscores a third that rankles just as much: inequality of effort. Go to any romantic restaurant on Valentine's Day, and observe. The girls are dressed for festivity, and the boys are dressed for walking the dog.
  

   

• Tough times for California bashers Feb 11, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: It must especially pain conservatives that sunnier economic news partly results from voters directly rejecting Republican politicians and their agenda.
  

   

• ‘Baby bust’ baloney Feb 7, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: America's alleged "baby bust" is pushing the country over "a demographic cliff." So argues Jonathan V. Last in The Wall Street Journal. Stacking one highly debatable claim on the next, Last builds a palace of hooey, in the basement of which sits a conservative agenda that's not very conservative.
  

   

• Not all smiles on immigration reform? Feb 1, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: The time has rarely been riper for comprehensive immigration reform. Obama should back off trying to rush the parade to citizenship. The election is over. In the meantime, let's fill in the blanks on those so-called labor shortages. American workers belong at the table, too.
  

   

• The thinking gets better, the second term around Jan 28, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: President Obama's vow to pursue a liberal agenda in the second term is, contrary to conventional discourse, a good way to work across the aisle. The debates over health care and raising the debt ceiling got so nasty, in part, because Obama wouldn't draw lines and defend them. Republicans couldn't tell how far he'd compromise, fueling hopes on the fringes.
  

   

• More thoughts on Aaron Swartz Jan 24, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: The infantilizing culture of academia has led some university wards to expect leniency when they misbehave. In any case, Swartz wasn't playing with databases. He was trying to strip them of their economic value.
  

   

• Aaron Swartz was accused of real crimes Jan 18, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Robin Hood or John Dillinger? He was not as virtuous as Robin and hardly as bad as John. Call the computer genius saint or sinner, few will argue with labeling his suicide at age 26 a "tragic loss."
  

   

• Can Hillary Clinton pace herself? Jan 16, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Hillary Clinton didn't have to become the spinning top that put her in a sick bed. Even there, she noted — not without pride — her difficulty in becoming a "compliant patient." If Clinton does run for president, she must show more dedication to self-preservation. Martyrs don't necessarily make great managers.
  

   

• The wrong Republicans Jan 10, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Froma Harrop: Consumer confidence has crumbled, as Republicans insist progress can't be made except when wrestling Democrats on an outcropping over an abyss. The problem isn't Republicans, exactly, but the wrong kind of Republicans — those who won't let the good kind negotiate absent a terrifying threat to everyone's well-being.
  

   

• Left should know, Obama did goodJan 7, 2013 12:00 AM
  By Froma Harrop: President Obama did cave or compromise (pick your term) on his earlier resolve to let Bush tax cuts expire for households earning over $250,000. But by putting off dramatic cuts in spending and raising taxes only on the most cushioned Americans, Obama has avoided what made the fiscal cliff so scary — the specter of draining over $500 billion from a still-weak economy.