As an opinion page editor for 30 years and a policy center director for 10, I moderated in excess of 75 candidate debates for local and state offices in Manatee, Sarasota and Pinellas counties. These debates were presented on auditorium stages before large audiences, on live TV without audiences, and in informal town-hall settings with no stage.

Not once in all of those years of moderating did I allow a candidate to hijack the debate as totally as Chris Wallace did in Tuesday night’s (Sept. 29) presidential debate. READ MORE

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s like incredible.”

--Candidate Donald Trump, on the campaign trail in Iowa, Jan. 23, 2016

President Donald Trump was getting antsy, cooped up in his Trump Tower residence where he’d gone for the long holiday weekend to get away from Melania. He needed to get out, among his adoring fans, to soak up some adulation and breathe in the Manhattan air that he missed holed up so much of the time in the White House. Thankfully, she hadn’t wanted to come along.

While he paced, he noticed the handgun on the end-table next to the living room sofa.  READ MORE

By DAVID KLEMENT published in the Bradenton Herald 

The hypocrisy on both sides of the political spectrum regarding the value of human life during the Covid-19 pandemic doubtless will give ethicists and moralists fodder for debate for years.

On the left, you have people calling for the government....    READ MORE

By DAVID KLEMENT
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“Nose in a book. He’s always got his nose in a book!”

That is one of the expressions by my late mother that I vividly recall, 70-some years later. That reading – a love for reading – would be a subject of scorn speaks volumes about the life of a child growing up in a farm family.     READ MORE

By DAVID KLEMENT
Chapter One
Introduction
Conscience (noun): the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good. –Merriam-Webster

How naïve I still was as I began what would become a 32-year career at the Bradenton Herald in fall of 1975.     READ MORE

By DAVID E. KLEMENT

It was their own fault, most Americans who weren’t Trumpster zealots agreed.

If only they’d worn a mask.

But Donald Trump and Mike Pence consistently refused to don the protective face coverings that most Americans took for granted in mid-May and that even White House staff had donned when the virus began infecting those serving the president and vice president.   READ MORE

This White Paper was published on the website of The Sarasota Institute by David Klement in his role as a member of its Advisory Board.

In this extraordinary time of pandemic, The Sarasota Institute —like almost every other organization – has been forced to adjust its strategies to seek – and share – answers to the big questions facing humanity in the 21st century.    READ MORE

By DAVID E. KLEMENT
Now I know what it feels like to be a marginalized American.

I am not black, Asian, Hispanic, female, LGBTQ or physically disabled. I am in fact a white male with a post-graduate degree.

So what makes me think I can identify with those in the above racial, ethnic, gender or sociological groups to whom marginalization – or worse – is a fact of life? 

I am old.    ​READ MORE

​By DAVID KLEMENT

As I sat in the drive-up line at my local Outback Steakhouse for curbside delivery of our Easter dinner –Alice Springs Chicken, of course, my all-time favorite – I reached for my wallet and took out a $10 bill. Even though I knew my wife had put a 20 percent tip onto her credit-card order, I wanted to do something more for the harried server going car to car checking on orders and handing out bags of meals. A sudden swell of emotion passed through me as I handed him the $10 bill and said, “Thank you for being here for us.”  READ MORE

By DAVID KLEMENT
Going through a pile of unread magazines the other day while dutifully fulfilling the mandate that the Covid-19 quarantine is the time to declutter, I came across the February edition of one of Sarasota’s glossy magazines. Surprised that I had overlooked it when it arrived in late January, I leafed through it to see what I might have missed.

What followed was a jolting account of just how much I – we, all of us – have missed in less than two months since that magazine came out.   READ MORE

Drugmakers lie about toxicity
LAWSUITS ACCUSE OXYCONTIN MAKERS OF DOUBLE-DIPPING IN HUMAN MISERY
By DAVID KLEMENT
Executive Director, Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions

The family that owns Purdue Pharma, the company that made billions from the highly addictive opioid drug OxyContin, sought to profit from marketing products to overcome overdoses and treat addictions caused by their drug, even as the company was paying millions in penalties for misrepresenting the addictive qualities of it.

That is the astounding assertion of lawsuits filed by the attorneys general of   READ MORE

By DAVID KLEMENT
​​Who killed Yvonne Armelia Holmes? That was the question on the minds of many attendees at the screening of Fair Game: A 1960 Georgia Lynching, a documentary film presented by the Institute in March with partners Eckerd College, Legacy-56 Inc. and the SPC Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
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Yvonne was the 8-year-old victim of a brutal rape and murder in rural Blakely, Ga., in 1960. James Fair was the 24-year-old African American veteran who was falsely accused of the crime,   READ MORE

MORE SEX EDUCATION URGED AT METOO FORUM
By DAVID KLEMENT

Comprehensive sex education starting at an early age is one way to curtail sexual harassment for future generations. That was one of the few points of consensus that emerged from a lively discussion of the MeToo movement at the Institute’s March Dinner series program titled #MeToo and Men: The Case for Due Process.

Dr. Jill McCracken, Associate Professor at USF St. Petersburg, said MeToo will have succeeded if its momentum leads to age-appropriate sex education that prepares young people to know and respect boundaries and understand the meaning of consent.  READ MORE

“The challenges of agricultural life in Honduras have always been mighty, from poverty and a neglectful government to the swings of international commodity prices. But farmers, agricultural scientists and industry officials say a new threat has been ruining harvests, upending lives and adding to the surge of families migrating to the United States: climate change. . .    READ MORE

By David Klement, special to the Tampa Bay Times
Published Jul. 19, 2017

I tried my first opioid drugs a few weeks ago. First it was Hydrocodone. Then a few OxyContin. Then a dose of morphine.

There were no memorable highs as a result.   READ MORE