The past year has witnessed two cases of discrimination in the religious schools: ultraorthodox Jews of West European descent (Ashkenazis) discriminating against ultraorthodox Jews of darker hues. In August 2009, private religious schools in Petach Tikva refused to admit Ethiopian Jews. In response, the Education Ministry threatened to withdraw financial support for these schools and even to shut them down. In this way it compelled them to admit a hundred pupils.

The second, more recent instance occurred at the ultraorthodox West Bank settlement of Immanuel, where a Hasidic group known as the Slonim is dominant. In September 2008 the Slonim separated their daughters from the Mizrahi girls in the settlement's school. (Mizrahis, also known as Sephardim, derive from North Africa and Arab lands.) 

The Slonim built a plaster wall the length of the school and put a fence through its yard, covering it with canvas so that their daughters wouldn't see the Mizrahis. They changed the hours of the breaks and forbade association between the groups.
 

There is a story told about Vince Lombardi when he was still coaching the Green Bay Packers. During a game he sends in a rookie running back that scores a touchdown and then performs some forgettable end zone “celebration.”

Lombardi calls him over and says, “Next time, act like you’ve been there before.”

Eight words that sum up what it used to mean to be a professional. Since then football and athletic decorum has degenerated to such a degree that high school referees in Virginia are now instructed to penalize players who cavort after scoring with an unsportsmanlike conduct foul.

The National Federation of State High School Associations apt definition: “Any delayed, excessive or prolonged act by which a player attempts to focus attention upon himself."

You might say Virginia is leading the way. Last year during a game between Broad Run and Potomac Falls, a Broad Run back was hit twice with unsportsmanlike conduct penalties for excessive “celebrations.”
 

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.” That’s pretty good advice from entertainer Bill Cosby who also just happens to hold a PhD in education.

Right now, Congress is trying to please everybody and, since October of last year, has been bailing out businesses when, in fact, the public might have been better served by allowing the laws of bankruptcy to permit the changes necessary to learn from failure.

Every year thousands of new business ventures end in failure. The philosophers of capitalism call it “creative destruction” because, for every failure there is a learning curve that leads to eventual success for those willing to evaluate what went wrong, change habits of management that led to failure, and avoid the previous mistakes.

If Thomas Edison had allowed the countless failures that preceded the invention of the incandescent light bulb, millions might still be using candles. It is instructive, therefore, that Congress has banned the future sale of this great invention in favor of fluorescent bulbs. Never mind the specious reason given, why is Congress interfering in the marketplace? The answer is because it can.
 

Eight Theses on the Economic Crisis

1. The current economic crisis has to be understood in terms of the historical dynamics and contradictions of capitalist finance in the second half of the 20th century. Even though the spheres of capitalist finance and production are obviously intertwined (in significant ways today more than ever before), the origins of today's US-based financial crisis are not rooted in a profitability crisis in the sphere of production, as was the case with the crisis of the 1970s, nor in the global trade imbalances that have emerged since.

Although the growing significance of finance in the major capitalist economies was already strongly registered by the 1960s, it was the role finance played in resolving the economic crisis of the 1970s that explains the central place it came to occupy in the making of global capitalism. The inflation that was the main symptom of that crisis had a strong negative impact on those holding financial assets and destabilized the international role of the dollar. 

Under the guidance of the US Federal Reserve, financial markets used very high interest rates to drive up unemployment, defeat trade union militancy and restrict public welfare expenditures in the early 1980s - all of which had come to be seen as the source of the intractable profitability and inflation problems of the previous decade. Yet it was precisely the contradictory ways finance contributed to global capitalism's successes in the closing decades of the 20th century that laid the foundation for the massive capitalist crisis that now closes the first decade of the 21st century.

The great debate of our times can be framed by calling it global warming versus financial collapse. It is a negotiation about the future, not only of the United States, but of the entire world.

As a negotiation coach, one of the key factors that I teach is that the people on the other side of the table are negotiating for their benefit, not for yours. Thus the negotiation is about the benefits they are seeking and, if you can establish your mission and purpose as one that brings benefits to them and get them to perceive that, it’s a win-win situation. If not, both sides must walk away from the table.

This is why it is essential that both sides have a vision of what they expect as the outcome of the negotiation. No vision, no action. No vision, no decision. No vision, no agreement.

Right now, global warming advocates have a vision of the world being destroyed by rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that they attribute to human behavior as regards energy use. Those who disagree with this vision counter with scientific evidence that CO2 is a very small element of the atmosphere, only 0.038%, and there is no measurable evidence that it affects climate change.

In a negotiation, your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective. In a political debate, your job is to be both liked and respected. That changes the dynamics of negotiation as it should be practiced and the third debate between the presidential candidates was an excellent opportunity to assess their ability to negotiate.

As someone who has authored two books on negotiation and who coaches clients all over the world on how to negotiate effectively, I watched the debates from a different perspective than most viewers. I will leave the merit of their respective political positions aside and briefly discuss why the debates were critical indicators of how either man might function as President.

A President must fulfill many functions, but near the top of the list has to be as an effective negotiator among the many political, economic, military, and social interests competing for a priority. A President has to constantly demonstrate effective communication skills and leadership.

In a business negotiation, a valid mission and purpose is the key to success. One must never go into a negotiation without a clear agenda and goals. Among those goals is the need to work to manage your behavior. Topmost among negotiation skills is to avoid appearing to be needy.