The Goods

I know I'm not being original here, but the blog needs a fresh post, and here's a surprise, the Sunday New York Times remains a more reliable source of interesting information than I can currently provide. So, just as the paper eagerly waits outside of my door every Sunday, by the afternoon I've found an article I want to pass along to Tres Hombres.

The Sunday magazine (as good as any magazine on any newsstand) has a column called The Way We Live Now. The column is devoted to a salient issue of the day, and the topic is generally given a close look by an expert. Not quite editorial, not quite a reporting of pure facts. It's a rotating essay column that has an opinion, but the opinion can vary and it usually tries to be the voice of information and reason.

This week, it's scathing. It's called The Broken Contract, and it is the most powerful account of the failures post-Katrina that I've read. This article presents a deeper look...way past race, way past class...and goes to the heart of citizenship. It's a wonderful essay. It's also frightening, discouraging, enraging, and maddening. But he gets it. He totally gets it right.

(Also, it seems as though this piece is not part of the "Times Select" pay service. I think that's for the regular columnists. No more Tom Friedman links, but all NYTimes links are not dead. Thankfully, of course, for Tres Hombres.)