34justice

  • Students Matter. Teachers Do, Too.

    Imagine reading the following statement on a website: We think it’s simple: reward…passionate, [successful students] and hold those accountable who are failing… [S]triking down the following laws…will create an opportunity for lawmakers, teachers, administrators and community leaders to design a system that’s good for teachers and students… [Law 1: As…

  • Jan 9-25, Monteleone Sabino at Ozu farm

    [I plan to write a different post for every farm I visit. More than going to Italy, I’m visiting small parts of people’s lives for 2-4 weeks each. Volunteering through farming is a very different way to ‘travel’ because you worry about money way less, you live with locals, you…

  • Vergara v. California: The Agendas, the Facts, and Recommendations for California Law

    Ted Boutros believes corporations that destroy lives with reckless policies should suffer minimal financial penalties in court.  Boutros’s partner, Marcellus McRae, proudly defends white-collar criminals.  Eli Broad pretended to support Proposition 30, a ballot initiative designed to prevent massive cuts to public education, while secretly funding the No on 30…

  • On Becoming a Bat

    I have volunteered in almost a dozen hospitals and clinics on both coasts, worked thousands of hours in the ER, and I’ve been exposed to the hospital setting for just over a decade. But January 24th 2014 was the first time I was there on the other side of healthcare.…

  • Starbucks’ Greed Versus San Jose’s Living Wage

    The San Jose City Council will soon decide whether to condone corporate greed and poverty-level wages for workers or apply city law to Starbucks and a large developer who want to lease property at the San Jose Convention Center.  San Jose would normally require businesses leasing the property to pay…

  • Financial Incentives and Social Good: Dan Pallotta’s Faulty Assumptions

    At the suggestion of WOVIN founder Darius Golkar, I recently watched Dan Pallotta’s TED Talk on the nonprofit sector.  Golkar recommended this video to me when I asked him why WOVIN donates only 50% of its profits to charitable causes. Golkar founded WOVIN because clothes we donate to Goodwill, The…

  • Something for Nothing

    College football bowl season is upon us once again and around this time every year there is the discussion of how screwed up the Bowl Championship Series system is (we’ll be able to argue about the playoff system next year), how corrupt and slimy the recruiting process is, and how…

  • Approaching Education Data the Nate Silver Way

    My girlfriend’s very hospitable and generous family gave me some great gifts for the holidays when I stayed with them in upstate New York.  As I rocked my new Teach For America T-shirt in the Rochester airport on Christmas Eve, my cursory overview of Nate Silver’s new book, The Signal…

  • Aphorisms and a short story

    I have a collection of aphorisms to present that I’ve been working on. The art of the maxim has gone out of style somewhat, lamentably. The less we say, the more others hear — if we say it well. It is so easy to rant on the Internet or in…

  • The Prisoner’s Dilemma

    “I used to be fast, man. I’ll race you to that gas station.” There is only one group of American citizens that are constitutionally guaranteed the right to medical services, and you may be surprised to find that it isn’t politicians, law enforcement, the elderly, or even veterans—it’s prisoners. The…