Category: issues

“Over the last two decades, no other American city grew as quickly as Las Vegas. In 1980, it had 460,000 inhabitants; now it has 2 million. But now, the recession has blasted open one of its deepest craters here in this city surrounded by the Mojave Desert. Las Vegas now has the country’s highest rate of home foreclosures, and more than 70 percent of homeowners here owe more on their mortgages than their houses or condos are worth. Since 2006, the average home price has dropped by a half.”

“The distribution in the world of arts education is tremendously unjust. When arts education takes the place in our society that it deserves, we will have much less delinquency and violence, and much more motivation towards noble achievement.”

“The most deadening influence on art in our time is the belief that content matters more than style. If you look back on the artists who have won the Turner prize since the 1980s, or the artists most often mentioned in the media these days, what they have in common is a message.”

“There is such a narrow window of opportunity to ensure that the site remains viable. If we don’t take advantage of this opportunity, we believe it will be lost.”

“Longtime rivals in trade and finance, Hong Kong and Singapore are vying to become Asia’s regional arts hub, part of a strategy to be crowned Asia’s top city.”

“The share of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the United States hit an all-time high in October 2008, driven by a recession-era surge in enrollments at community colleges, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau.”

“To the consternation of some faculty members at Berkeley, the university’s sports program is running multimillion-dollar deficits — on top of the annual institutional subsidies — that are requiring the university to make short-term loans to the sports program.”

“A new, national initiative is under way to heighten Canadians’ awareness of the arts, their accessibility to art and artists, and their ‘participation in and engagement with’ the activities of the cultural sector.”

Billionaire philanthropist Peter G. Peterson says a charitable donation by Goldman Sachs would have to total “at least $1 billion” in order to “have much resonance in the public,” furious as it is over bonuses paid to employees of the taxpayer-rescued securities firm, which is “considering a new charitable program.”