Bob Lord

Bob has mostly wound down his 39-year career as a tax and business lawyer (with a 1-year interruption to run for Congress in 2008 (CD3), when he tried to unseat John Shadegg. Bob now serves as the senior advisor on tax policy for the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who believe the light taxation of America's rich is destabilizing our democracy, and as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Bob has been writing for Blog For Arizona since late 2011, concentrating mostly on federal issues, with an occasional foray into Arizona state politics.

Book Review: Dark Money

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I recently finished Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. In a word: Stunning. If you read one book about politics this year, make it Dark Money. This book is about much, much more than campaign finance. It’s about more than the Koch brothers, although they certainly are at the epicenter of the story. What it’s really about … Read more

Black America’s Moment, A Follow-Up

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Two weeks ago, in Black America’s Moment, I made the observation that Black Democratic voters, collectively, held the balance of power in the Democratic nominating process. My concluding paragraph:

This really isn’t about Sanders vs. Clinton. The reality here is that Sanders or Clinton, if elected and if given the wiggle room, will make decisions and agree to compromises that perpetuate structural racism in America and work to the detriment of Blacks at large. There is an opportunity here for Black America to use the power it now wields to minimize that wiggle room, to put the next President in a box so that he/she must do the right thing. Are steps being taken to achieve that result? I sure hope so.

If South Carolina  is any indication, Black Americans are acting quite decisively on this front. The numbers from last night were stunning: 85% of Black South Carolina primary voters favored Clinton. Obama didn’t do that well in the 2008 primaries.

Is there a takeaway from this, in the context of my prior post?

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There Goes the Labor Vote

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I love organized labor. Always have. When I ran for Congress, I worked overtime to win labor’s support. Maybe it’s in my genes. My grandma was a labor organizer and was fired for it.

So when I saw the union endorsements piling up for Clinton, I wondered what the hell was happening. Logically, Sanders was the choice for labor. Something was wrong with this picture. Very wrong.  

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No, Dullards, The Liberal Arts Are Not Worthless

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Nick Kristof had this particularly insightful passage in his Sunday column in the NY Times:

I’ve often written about education as an antidote to extremism. But in Pakistan, it was high school that radicalized Rafi. “Education can be a problem,” Rafi says dryly.

He’s right. It’s possible to be too glib about the impact of education: Osama bin Laden was an engineer. Ayman al-Zawahri, the current leader of Al Qaeda, is a trilingual surgeon. Rafi notes that Pakistani doctors or engineers are sometimes extremists because in that country’s specialized education system they gain the confidence of a university degree without the critical thinking that (ideally) comes from an acquaintance with the liberal arts.

I’m familiar with that path. I was pre-med in college, but left medical school after two weeks. So, I loaded up on math, chemistry, physics, and biology coursework, but completely avoided history, literature, and philosophy.

If only I could have a do over.

If only I could reach all those STEM (you know, science, technology, engineering and math) students and give them some perspective.

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