Month: January 2014

  • President Johnson and Thurgood Marshall: The Art of Persuasion

    President Johnson and Thurgood Marshall: The Art of Persuasion

    The following is the transcribed conversation of President Johnson asking Thurgood Marshall to become the first African-American Solicitor General of the United States.  The Solicitor General is essentially America’s lawyer, representing the Federal Government at the Supreme Court. It’s a remarkable display of persuasion. President Johnson: I have a rather big problem that I wanted to talk […]

  • Obama, Thurgood Marshall and the Importance of a Long Term Vision

    Today marks the 21st anniversary of the death of Thurgood Marshall.  He was a complicated man and perhaps the person most responsible for ending segregation in America; first as Chief Counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and then as a Supreme Court Justice. Marshall had immeasurable courage, once saving an innocent plaintiff from certain […]

  • Average is Over and Obama’s New Manufacturing Initiative

    Average is Over and Obama’s New Manufacturing Initiative

    [drop_caps]L[/drop_caps]ast week President Obama announced plans to build a high tech industrial institute in Raleigh, North Carolina. The public/academic/private partnership will produce next-generation semiconductors, and is the first of 3 planned manufacturing projects by the Administration. “We’re not going to turn things around overnight,” President Obama told the crowd, but “we are going to start […]

  • Charlie LeBuff, Detroit: An American Autopsy, and a New Business Model

    Detroit by Charlie LeDuff is an incredibly well written and heart felt exploration into the decline of one of America’s greatest cities.