Commentary

A handful of food-service workers walked off their jobs in the food court of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Tuesday morning as part of a day-long protest of low wages paid to federal contract employees.

The series of protests, dubbed “Good Jobs Nation,” was in support of the contract workers who clean the offices, serve the food and take care of the museums and landmarks in the federal city, some of whom said they make less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. [...]

No student should have to incur debt in order to attend college. Instead, students could incur a moderate and progressively levied surcharge on their income tax, which could be phased out for people serving the public interest in one of several professions. This provision was included on a pilot basis in the 2010 reform, and could be extended to all college borrowers.

It is said that the Chinese word for crisis consists of two characters — one for danger, one for opportunity. From this we could learn something about New York's ethics crisis.

It gives us an opportunity to reform institutions, to rid ourselves of specific people who violate the public trust and to improve outcomes that affect citizens. It's a danger if it turns into a power struggle that permanently alters the balance of power in our democracy.

Kathleen Knauth has had a rough school year. The principal of Hillview Elementary, near Buffalo, New York, has spent so much time typing teacher evaluations, entering data, and preparing for standardized testing, she barely had a minute to do what she used to do in her first 12 years of being a principal—drop in on classes, address parents’ concerns, or get to know students. When a school social worker stopped by her office a few months back to get Knauth’s take on which children might need her help, she realized she had hit a new low.