August 3, 2003. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. Now lets get this straight. After shutting down trading posts in places like London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong, the worlds fifth largest economy may soon open a commercial office in the worlds 114th largest economy.

June 29, 2003. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. California's dozen foreign trade offices were already in jeopardy this spring before press reports in late May brought the first whiff of scandal. With the budget axe slashing deeply into state spending on education, public safety, health care and a host of programs targeting the state's most vulnerable citizens, the betting around the state Capitol was that the Davis administration would be lucky to secure money for three of the overseas outposts.

May 4, 2003. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. This essay suggests it may be time for a new foreign policy paradigm that recognizes how America's increasing ethnic diversity and global trading interests are undermining the traditional Atlanticist bias in U.S. foreign policymaking.

March 23, 2003. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. A critique of an essay by Jeff Faux, co-founder of the Washington, D.C. based Economic Policy Institute, on how to "democratize" the North American Free Trade Agreement.

January 2003. California Journal . California's agriculture industry faces increasing pressure from low-cost foreign growers that could ultimately spell the demise of production agriculture in the Golden State but also a previously unimaginable water surplus in a state long noted for its disputes over water.

December 15, 2002. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. Why the Bush administration's strident brand of unilateralism poses serious problems for America's multinational corporations and for the future path of global economic integration.

October 13, 2002. Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section. Why Bush's Unilateral Foreign Policy is Bad for American Business.

August 25, 2002. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. A critical commentary on efforts of 'civic entrepreneurs' to build a stronger sense of regional identity among residents of the six-county Capitol Region centered on Sacramento, California.

August 15, 2002. Portland [Maine] Press Herald Maine Voices column. Why Maine's economy is apt to benefit more from a policy of fostering enduring cross-border businesslinks than from traditional export promotion programs.

July 7, 2002. Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section. How the dollar's continuing depreciation will likely affect California's ongoing budget woes.

February 3, 2002. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum. President Bush's ambitious plan to extend NAFTA into Central and South America faces some monumental hurdles.

November 4, 2001. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum. If the World Trade Organization summit that begins in Qatar later this week fails to yield any appreciable progress in establishing a workable negotiating framework for further trade liberalization, globalization could go the same way as the similarly ballyhooed New Economy.

November 2001, Comstock's Business magazine. It's not a reliable electricity supply that distinguishes California from a Third World country quite as much as it's our sewer system. So this article takes an up-close look at what moves beneath the streets of Sacramento.

August 19, 2001. Los Angeles Times Opinion section. Why export-import data are becoming increasingly misleading barometers of international commerce.

July 29, 2001. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. This commentary raises questions about government policies that assume agriculture will remain the dominant industry in California's Central Valley for the foreseeable future. Already imperiled by a host of domestic problems such as rising costs, lower crop prices, urban sprawl, water shortages, and resistance to pesiticide use, the region's growers are now facing more aggressive foreign competition for markets here and abroad.

May 16, 2001. San Francisco Chronicle. This op-ed argues for establishment of a broad-based business coalition to support the air transport needs of the Bay Area's economy.

May 2001 issue. Comstock's Business magazine. This article describes the growing air transport needs of the Sacramento region.

April 1, 2001. Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section. Commemorating the opening day of the 2001 major league baseball season, a memoir of the day my father took me to see my first big league game forty-one years ago as the Boston Red Sox hosted the New York Yankees in Fenway Park.

March 25, 2001. Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section. "It's a familiar sight on the front page and the evening news: Crowds of exasperated and angry passengers, stranded by flight delays or cancellations, milling around the airport. Yet, while stranded airline-ticket holders get the attention, the frustration of businesses trying to negotiate the same over-stressed air transportation system to get their goods to market is virtually ignored. That's regrettable, because deficiencies in air-freight operations hurt the economy much more than hordes of disgruntled holiday travelers."

February 2001 issue of Comstock's Business magazine. A profile of one of the world's leading figures in the field of organic food.

January 10, 2001. Co-authored with James R. King, this report was prepared for the East [San Francisco] Bay Economic Development Alliance for Business. It addresses several consequences of the jobs-affordable housing imbalance between the counties of the East Bay and the adjacent counties of the Central Valley.

December 2000 issue of Comstock's Business magazine. This article examines how state officials have been gingerly responding to the scandal over the abuse of power and the misuse of funds that brought down California's elected Insurance Commissioner, Charles ("Chuck") Quackenbush last summer.

November 12, 2000. Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section. "In a move straight of out the Jerry Brown playbook, Gov. Gray Davis stunned the international business and diplomatic communities earlier this month when he abruptly canceled a Far Eastern trade mission a mere week before its scheduled departure. His excuse -- that the state's long-simmering electricity supply crisis demands he remain close to home -- persuaded no one. Whatever the real reasons for scrubbing the mission, the episode reinforces an image of an administration whose handling of state trade policy and programs has been remarkably clumsy and cavalier..."

November 2000, California Journal. Tongue firmly in cheek, this article advances the argument that the only sure way of ridding the American political system of the corrosive effects of money is to abolish elections.

October 8, 2000, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum section. Examines how increasing numbers of California farmers -- both small and large -- are turning to organic farming to capture higher prices and burgeoning export markets.

August 25, 2000, San Francisco Chronicle, Op-Ed page. Commentary on Mexican President-Elect Vicente Fox's border reform proposals and the challenges facing Mexico's economy.

August 20, 2000, Los Angeles Times, Sunday Opinion section. This commentary examines the potential for huge public pension funds -- notably, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) -- to encroach upon the federal government's constitutional monopoly over the conduct of American foreign policy by denying investment funds to nations otherwise regarded as U.S. allies.

August 13, 2000, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. This article assesses the prospects for an expanded export market in China for farmers in California's Central Valley.

August 13, 2000, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. Impressions of modern Shanghai.

June 2000 issue of Comstock's Business. What have Russian mobsters, Chinese intelligence agencies, Colombian drug lords, and the notorious international terrorist Osama Bin Laden to do with the California Public Employees Retirement System or the California Department of Transportation? Absolutely nothing, we hope. But can we be certain? Not necessarily, according to this article.

June 2000 issue of Comstock's Business. This commentary argues that the principal constituency for the State of California's export promotion programs -- especially the proliferating number of state foreign trade offices -- is to be found within the walls of the State Capitol and not in the business community.

May 28, 2000, Los Angeles Times, Sunday Opinion section. Co-authored with James R. King. A proposal for improving the manner in which California defines and prioritizes its statewide infrastructure needs.

May 14, 2000, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. California's transportation policymakers are overlooking the vital role of air cargo facilities in supporting the state's burgeoning export trade.

February 2000, Comstock's Business. A look at commercial links between the Sacramento Valley, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

January 30, 2000. Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum with James R. King. Why economic growth may prompt successful New Economy companies to look outside California to meet their expansion plans and what the state can do about it.

January 23, 2000, Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section. How state laws and international trade agreements may conflict and what California's state government is or isn't to address the issue.

January 2000, Comstock's Business . An examination of the pros and cons of adopting a strong-mayor form of municipal government in California's capital.

November 18, 1999. Salon.com. The story of how I sold Soviet propaganda posters thirty years ago to college students in Massachusetts, including an undergraduate named Clarence Thomas.

November 7, 1999. Los Angeles Times, Sunday Opinion section. The real value of gubernatorial trade missions.

August 15, 1999. Los Angeles Times, Sunday Opinion section. This article reminds us how policymaking hysteria can upset the best laid infrastructure plans.

August 15, 1999. Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. Why one of our fastest growing and internationally competitive industries generates so few exports.

June 4, 1999, San Francisco Chronicle, Op-Ed Page. How either a failure or an unwillingness to understand the limitations of the so-called "state-of-origin" export data has led to a positively absurd political controversy regarding whether California's export trade with Mexico is smaller or larger than Texas's trade south of the border.

May 30, 1999, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. Challenges the conclusion of a hasty US Air Force inquiry into the December 1952 crash of a C-124 troop transport at Moses Lake, Washington, which fixed the responsibility for the disaster in which 86 lives were lost on the pilot, Lt. William N. O'Connell. The article reveals evidence suggesting a cover-up of the role played in the crash by faulty USAF maintenance procedures and flawed aircraft design.

May 16, 1999, Los Angeles Times, Sunday Opinion. Published on the eve of President Ernesto Zedillo's official visit to California, this article examines how vital a trading partner Mexico really is.

May 9, 1999, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. Recommendations for reforming the objectives and administration of California's foreign trade offices.

March 28, 1999, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. Wry commentary on why I have all but abandoned the telephone as a civilized means of communications.

March 7, 1999, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. Why California's export trade with Mexico and Latin America is systematically under-reported and why the data we commonly use are growing more and more distorted.

January 24, 1999, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. How obsessions and manias can displace prudent business practices and government policies, distorting California's overseas trade relations in the process.

November 1, 1998, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. This article appeared alongside the economic policy statements of the Democratic and Republican candiadtes for Governor of California on the Sunday before the general election.

July 26, 1998, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. An inquiry into the catastrophic failure of economists and market analysts to foresee the economic crisis in Asia.

July 26, 1998, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. How the Golden State is beginning to feel the pinch of its over-dependence on Asian markets.

March 1, 1998, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. A critical discussion of the challenge of regional planning in the face of rapid demographic and commercial change.

October 1997 Website posting. An invitation to a dialogue aimed at enhancing California's export promotion efforts.

October 23, 1994, San Jose Mercury-News, Sunday Perspective. This article submits that the accelerating pace of mergers and acquisitions in the preceding eighteen months involving California high technology companies undermines the contentions of those analysts who argue that the state's so- called New Economy is based on a proliferating number of small, entrepreneurial enterprises.

July 3, 1994, San Jose Mercury-News, Sunday Perspective. This article maintains that neither Pete Wilson nor Kathleen Brown will, after being elected governor in November, be able to deal with the fundamental problems besetting the state's economy without first forging a new political consensus defining state government's legitimate role in economic development.

May 2, 1994, San Francisco Chronicle, Business Opinion. This article argues that the value of California's five overseas trade and investment offices has been vitiated by the lack of a coherent export development strategy and by poor administrative practices.

May 9, 1993, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. A generally caustic appraisal of state government's inability to properly diagnose, let alone remedy, California's current economic ills.

June 8, 1993, Sacramento Bee. An Op-Ed article critical of both the Wilson administration's failure to fill vacancies in key posts at four of the five California overseas trade and investment offices and its attempts to bureaucratize the functions of the California State World Trade Commission.

October 3, 1993, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. A dispassionate analysis of the disproportionate share of the national cost which California's exporters and their employees shoulder when the US Government imposes unilateral trade sanctions on other nations.

January 5, 1992, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. This feature article casts serious doubt on whether an allegedly hostile business climate is precipitating "job flight" to other states.

October 27, 1991. Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. A discussion of how various American interests are served through efforts to represent Japan as a grave threat to the United States.

May 5, 1991. Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. An analysis of the likely effects of including Mexico in a North American Free Trade Agreement; argues that most of the benefits promised by advocates of a free trade agreement between the US and Mexico can actually be achieved merely through the increased liberalization of Mexico's trade and investment policies.

February 24, 1991, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. A critical review of the state's international trade development programs.

November 4, 1990, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. An assessment of the potential for conflict between federal officials and state governments in the area of international trade policy.

June 3, 1990, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. An examination of why U.S. and Mexican officials have come to embrace a free trade agreement.

February 25, 1990, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. A discussion of how state politicians have sought to create a de facto foreign policy for California.

January 1990, The Golden State Report. A critical review of the state's international trade development programs in the Deukmejian administration.

November 26, 1989, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. An assessment of how California firms might benefit from economic and political change in Eastern Europe.

September 10, 1989, Sacramento Bee, Sunday Forum. An examination of efforts to create a loose trading bloc in the Far East.

August 2, 1989, New York Times, Op-Ed Page. A personal account of how Russian paranoia affected their analyzes of American social and political trends.

July 9, 1989, Los Angeles Times. A discussion of why foreign direct investment in the U.S. is unlikely to be either a major boon or a serious danger.

December 4, 1988, Los Angeles Times. This article raises questions about the enormous benefits often cited by proponents of unrestricted foreign investment in the United States

January 22, 1988, Oakland Tribune. This prescient essay raises questions about popular tendencies to over-emphasize the significance of California's links with Pacific Rim trading partners.