Dave Zweifel

1 month ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

The New York Times ran an op-ed by book author Dan Richards last week under the headline: "Europe Built Trains. The U.S. Built Highways."But as U.S. cities, even mid-sized ones like Madison, and the highways and interstates that connect them become more clogged with cars and speeding trucks, we're not backing down. "Rather than invest in ways to help people leave their cars at home, America’s typical response to congestion has been to build more lanes and highways.

1 month ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

Do you ever wonder if Donald Trump has a clue that millions of Americans are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, and millions more have trouble finding an affordable place to live? His comment the other day that, come next Christmas, “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally” offered some insight into who he knows.

1 month ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

The Nation magazine's publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel never misses an opportunity to champion the nation's public libraries. Want to defend democracy? she frequently asks, then start with your public library. They are vital democratic institutions that should be supported, she points out. "Public libraries provide information in an era of misinformation," she wrote back in 2018. "They offer facts and nuance. They offer the opportunity for enlightenment.

1 month ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

One of the several revelations about George Floyd in the book about his troubled life was that his great-great-grandfather in North Carolina had been able to amass 500 acres of farmland in the roughly 30 years after being freed as a slave following the Civil War. He and his large family's hard work had yielded tidy profits from their crops and they invested them in land near the few acres the government had allocated them at the end of the war.

1 month ago | captimes.com | Dave Zweifel

John Skilton, one of Madison's most celebrated attorneys, dropped me a note earlier this week to which he attached the recent ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell that declared in strong terms that Donald Trump's action targeting the Perkins Coie law firm is clearly unconstitutional. "In my opinion, this is an historic decision by a courageous United States District Court Judge," Skilton, who was a partner in Perkins Coie's Madison office until his recent retirment, said in the note.