Francine Hardaway

On my Facebook wall, an argument is taking place, largely among men, about whether the government should support the cost of birth control for women who can't afford it. The most vociferous arguers say that "handouts" cause the "welfare mentality" and that we women ought not to be spoiled children...

After watching the (predictable) results of the New Hampshire Primary, I can only conclude that Americans are sheep, or that things in the country at large are not as bad as the loudmouths have been saying.

The Tea Party has largely vanished as an articulate force, having blended into the...

My family doctor, Dr. Kramer, emigrated to the U.S. from Canada years ago. He has just installed an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and qualified easily for meaningful use stimulus funds because he takes Medicaid patients. To qualify for meaningful use -- which means using the technology in ways...

Every time I walk into a yoga class, I realize I'm the oldest person in the room. By a lot. And even when I walk into a business meeting, it's not unusual for me to be the oldest person in the room. Among my geek friends, also by a lot.

Although I live in Arizona, I was in New York this weekend and I went to show my support for OccupyWallStreet. It was one of the most exciting things I have seen in my life, for as I suspected, this movement is...

The highest and best uses of social media are not for business. The are intensely personal. This is never more clear than during moments of tragedy.

A few days ago, I awoke from a nap to find a breaking news banner across the lower third of my TV screen, and...

The largest entitlement program we have in America today is not Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. It's jobs. On both sides of the political fence, loud voices are screaming for the creation of jobs. And as Jeff Jarvis points out so eloquently in his own blog, that is...

It appears that at the last moment, and only after we have made ourselves look like idiots on the world stage, we will have a deal to raise the debt ceiling. Somebody finally remembered that we have a social contract, with both each other and with the rest of the...

I am in the European Union for the first time in five years, on a combination vacation and business trip. I mention this because the vacation part attunes me to more than just my customary meetings with geeks and entrepreneurs. And I've come to a controversial conclusion: we are facing...

I had the good fortune to flip the radio dial to C-SPAN this morning and hear Dr. Donald Berwick talk about his job as director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Berwick probably won't be confirmed by a Republican Congress, but he is working day...

On a Chilean freeway, being transported by bus from Santiago to Santa Cruz,  a group of traveling technology entrepreneurs and investors hears startup pitches from companies being accelerated by Endeavor, a global nonprofit accelerator for entrepreneurs with a social purpose. These entrepreneurs are trying to turn Chile solar;...

Before we start taking proposals like Paul Ryan's radical plan to cut the deficit by cutting spending seriously, shouldn't we start with considering how accurate the deficit numbers really are? Pundits and Congressional aides throw around numbers like $14 trillion in debt and $38 billion in cuts, but...

A friend of mine, far from indigent, had her teeth cleaned three weeks ago. She was the picture of health when she went in to the dentist, and today she is dead, a victim of everything that is wrong with our system, although not of any malpractice. She is the...

Perhaps fortuitously, Japan's earthquake took place on the opening day of the biggest conference of content creators in the world, Austin's South by Southwest Media Festival (SXSW).

From the website, sxsw4japan.org:

At SXSW this year, there's a lot of discussion and debate about influence. Now it's time...

Unemployment this morning has come in at 8.9%, the best number we've seen in years. Unfortunately, this number -- like almost every other number -- has no bearing on reality. It's a completely irrelevant number to everyone but, perhaps, political candidates and the Federal Reserve.

Pundits and economists...

If you don't already know the history of this incident, spend a few minutes following the links here. You need to know about this.

Words do have power. In the 1960s, I was a graduate student in English at Columbia University, and friends with Christopher Trumbo. Chris was...

Who are you pro-life people kidding? Do you even know what happens in the lives of children whose parents should never have been parents? Do you think every kid that isn't aborted lives with two preferably Christian parents in a little house on the prairie? How naive and self-centered you...

Dear Janet Napolitano,

I'm from the entrepreneurship community and I am here to help. We entrepreneurs are trained to see problems as opportunities, and to think of ways we can make money by solving them, often with the help of technology.

You have a problem with airport security. I know...

Whom do we think we are here in America? If I were a young Egyptian, I'd be furious at us. We export all our propaganda, our consumerism, our culture, and our heightened expectations for democracy in the rest of the world. But when they act on our words and take...

Health care and real estate, two important areas of interest to me and to the US economy, are due for some changes in 2011. I have no better crystal ball than anyone else, but here are some of the things I expect:

Health care reform will have to be re-reformed....