Gerald D. Skoning
No doubt, Champagne corks were popping on the Champs Elysées this week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Paris from the prolonged four-year German occupation in World War II. Despite repeated orders from Hitler that the French…
August 15 marks the 70th anniversary of the Allies’ amphibious invasion of Marseilles and southern France in 1944. Though it stands as a historical footnote to the acclaimed D-Day invasion of Normandy, it played a vital role in the liberation…
Describing his approach to dealings with the Soviet Union near the end of the Cold War, President Reagan famously warned, “Trust, but verify.” A version of that wise caution should be used in dealing with the increasing efforts by the…
Our armed forces have been stretched to the breaking point with the continuing commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Troops have experienced three and four combat tours and repeated extensions of their tours in country beyond what was predicted. Reenlistments are…
The venerable king of board games, Monopoly, needs a total makeover. Since 1935, the iconic parlor game has celebrated the excesses of capitalism, allowing players to parlay meager bank accounts and paltry $200 payouts for Passing Go, into massive fortunes in…
We recently had dinner with another couple at a very fine restaurant. My friend’s wife, whom I’ll call Alice, is a delightful and very intelligent woman, but also an uncompromising health fanatic, a virtual nutrition Nazi. As a result, placing…
It is graduation season. The time of year for caps and gowns, for cheers and tears, for joyous celebrations, for poignant class reunions… and, of course, for the awarding of hundreds of honorary degrees. A friend is planning to be in…
Faced with the dire prospect of a rapidly shrinking fleet of 280 ships, the Navy’s top brass are simply reclassifying a couple hospital ships and its small patrol craft deployed overseas to inflate the numbers. It’s an accounting sleight-of-hand that…
Labor unions in this country are struggling. Union membership as a percentage of the overall workforce remains flat and the prospects for growth of their ranks remain bleak. Unions are sorely in need of new untapped markets from which to…
The president once again is calling for a massive investment in infrastructure projects. In his State of the Union address, he argued that money saved by simplifying the tax code could then be invested in repairing and building bridges, roads,…
