I've been told that by the end of this year the total number of American military veterans of the Iraq war will exceed 1.5 million. I haven't been able to confirm this number. If it is true, then no wonder the President's popularity has dropped below 30% -- that's just too many people reporting on the truth about this conflict.
After reading that the governors are thinking a bit more innovatively about education (see my last post), I decided now is as good a time as any to review some of the recent education reform proposals that have been developed in recent months. I’ll be spending my next few posts on this endeavor. But before getting to the proposals, I wanted to consider some criteria for evaluation – so I picked up a copy of John Dewey’s classic, Democracy and Education, and found his thoughts on the “Aims in Education.”
I just acquired an interesting letter sent to a number of military officials and academics around the country by Air Force Col. Edward Westermann who has been working in Afghanistan and who now teaches at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Westermann is a serious and well-respected intellectual who has authored numerous books on military strategy and history.
Strangely enough, I also happened to go to high school with him in Japan -- at least until the 11th grade when his parents were moved elsewhere. Until his departure, he was the only person at Yokota High School who was simultaneously a friend and true intellectual rival. I joined track because he was on the wrestling team and knew our ferocity in the academic arena would get too intense if we took each other on in sports; besides I know he would have wiped the floor with me.
This Westermann letter addresses troubling realities of nepotism, racism and corruption that make doing the right thing and building professionally run institutions in Afghanistan (and other nations for which America has responsibility) more exception than rule.
This story ends well. The right guy got selected for a position running a training curriculum at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan, but the selection process that he describes reveals much.
Westermann's words don't need moderation by this writer, but it does say something when an active duty officer in the U.S. military refers to "the ill-named Global War on Terrorism." From my vantage point, it seems like this kind of commendable independent thinking is regrettably a diminishing resource in the military ranks.
Westermann writes:
OK Mark, back to substance.
Good deals are better than no deals. No deals are better than bad deals.
So if the choice is to keep reproducing trade agreements that undercut workers bargaining power across borders and no more agreements, I’m for no more agreements. But the choices should be – and could have been – better than that.
I appreciate Jeff's response to my first question, on the actual relevance of trade deals.
On the second, I suppose I should just apologize, because I did not intend to challenge his integrity or the integrity of his argument, and I don't think I did, but perhaps my way of phrasing the question -- in the middle of a debate that has had mostly rhetorical questions -- sounded like I did.
According to a recent NY Times poll, the American people are in a very different place on healthcare than the current administration. 64% of Americans believe the government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans (against only 27% who say it should not), and it doesn't stop there...
Because if it is, I vote for DeLong as opposed to the Fauvian vision of an international conspiracy of capital. The world is growing richer at a faster rate than ever before, because of capitalism's post-Soviet dominion over the world coupled with the ever-increasing availability of technology. It is the externalities that should give us pause, not the alleged power of government or money centers: I mean particularly the unsolved problems of wealth allocation (as opposed to creation) and the environmental impact of production.
Mark, you raise two questions. One is about the effectiveness of a moratorium on trade agreements. The other is about the integrity of my arguments. I’ll start with the first.
Yes, the point of the moratorium is to force Davos to the bargaining table. It’s the same logic that a city council might use in having a moratorium on development in order to come up with a land-use plan that would moderate the consequences of unconstrained real estate market.
There are a few things I don't yet understand about the Faux-DeLong debate, and I am not nearly knowledgeable enough about these issues, so my questions are not rhetorical:
Jeff, you seem to be describing a process in which, in response to the political power of the Party of Davos, the U.S. government affirmatively acts to encourage outsourcing and related bad things, through trade agreements. So your first step is a moratorium on new trade agreements, which presumably would then be the leverage to force Davos Man to cut the deal on a global social contract.
My first question is, How much difference do trade agreements, especially future trade agreements, make in the grand scheme of things?
In late January, Senator Chris Dodd held hearings on credit card practices, sternly warning credit card companies to clean up their practices or face new legal restrictions. Nearly every senator on the banking committee chimed in with the same message. Today, Citigroup dropped two of the most criticized features: universal default and anytime interest rate changes. No new legislation, but millions of customers will get a better deal.
The Citigroup shift is an important reminder of the power of the Congressional hearing. So long as the folks in charge of Congress didn't want to upset the credit card companies, the companies kept on adding new tricks and traps. But now direction has changed.
Brad DeLong is right that he and I live – or at least think we live -- in two different worlds. The question is: which is closer to reality?
Brad says that Jeff Faux lives in a world in which transnational corporations partner with third world elites to keep wages low in both developed and underdeveloped countries, where corporate lobbyists dominate US trade and other economic policies, where the careers of Washington policymakers go through the business/government revolving door.
“I don’t think we live in that world,” he says. I think we do. And so apparently do the corporate CEOs who have been describing this world for years.
In the Faux-DeLong debate, I end up on the side of Faux. The work that Jeff has produced through the years has been a critical counter-voice to the prevailing liberal economic wisdom--and without the Economic Policy Institute, our democratic--and Democratic--economic thought would be more tunnel vision and Republican lite than expansive thought that might actually solve the daily problems of working Americans.
It's pretty interesting, indeed, how much the trade debate still raises the temperature among progressives, liberals, left-liberals-who, otherwise, agree on a whole lot. At a salon of lefty journalists and thinkers (not to imply that journalists aren't thinkers...) that I ran in NYC for several years, this debate divided the room in ways I never envisioned. The only thing that split in more ways (and led to some splits in the group itself) was the war in Iraq.
But I'd like to suggest that with all our differences in the Democratic camp on economics, and especially on trade policy, there is an important bit of agreement that didn't exist when this whole trade debate fueled earlier presidential seasons--that's a near uniformity in support of unions, unionization, the need for stronger unions, in order to build and rebuild America's middle class.
Jeff Faux writes:
Dodging the Question | TPMCafe: Brad DeLong brings us the startling news that there are a lot of poor people in China, that the Chinese rich are not as wealthy as Bill Gates, and that incomes are up since the cultural revolution. Wow! Stop the presses!
What does this have to do with my proposition that we need social protections in the rules of globalization? Nothing. It is a red herring to divert discussion away from the ways in which the globalizing economy creates an upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power--and to stop the conversation about how to change that...
Jeff and I are clearly talking past each other. I think we live in a world in which the tremendous wave of globalization over the past two decades has produced enormous benefits for those members of China's urban working class lucky enough to get jobs in export-oriented industry and for those ex-peasants who have managed to move to China's coastal cities.
Update: EFCA just passed the House!
Look over to the right at the corporate-financed "Save the Secret Ballot" attacking the Employee Free Choice Act. Now you can read all the horror stories about how employers have abused workers during union elections to understand why alternative "card check" systems are being promoted in this bill.
But even the principle behind the argument is a fraud. The obvious point is that companies don't allow secret ballots for electing managers. But the real fraud is that union workers have plenty of secret ballots under the Employee Free Choice Act:
But without a union in the first place, most workers never see any ballot at all on their work conditions:
It's been another very Rudy week in the blogosphere. A few weeks ago, liberal writers were worried that voters would forget that when Giuliani was Mayor of New York he was a crazy, mean, dangerous authoritarian. This week the concern is that the conservative base may nominate him for exactly that reason.
Responding to Josh's point that Giuliani's social liberalism is probably a deal-breaker, Matt Stoller argues that issues don't really matter to the Right. Giuliani, according to this theory, is popular because he demonstrates a "tribal authoritarianism":
What they are looking for is an authoritarian to look like he's taking charge, and the way an authoritarian takes charge is to attack liberals and stomp on people who aren't like them. Giuliani did this in New York, so he's a rock star in Alabama.
John Derbyshire half agrees, also citing Rudy's "tribal" appeal: his "Gestalt" "screams ANTI-LIBERAL! Rudy is the anti-Kerry—the very opposite of a mincing, apologetic, guilt-addled elite liberal." Matt Yglesias agrees that it's tribal as opposed to authoritarian, deeming it the "politics of resentment":
Brad DeLong brings us the startling news that there are a lot of poor people in China, that the Chinese rich are not as wealthy as Bill Gates, and that incomes are up since the cultural revolution. Wow! Stop the presses!
What does this have to do with my proposition that we need social protections in the rules of globalization? Nothing. It is a red herring to divert discussion away from the ways in which the globalizing economy creates an upward redistribution of income, wealth and political power -- and to stop the conversation about how to change that.
The Wall Street Journal's "The Informed Reader" blog is doing my job for me. Their summary of our debate on globalization:
The discussion was kicked off by Jeff Faux, an economist who says globalization has pitted the world’s poor against the rich, symbolized by the accords struck between American executives and Chinese “capitalist commissars.” Mr. Faux, who founded the Economic Policy Institute, which advocates environmental and labor safeguards in trade rules, contends that the expansion of trade has put an unfair burden on American working families who “sacrifice their future in order to raise up the living standards of poor Chinese.”
The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died last night at the age of 89, wrote a piece that appeared in the Financial Times on September 29, 2005 that demonstrates how much he'll be missed:
"The president of the United States is calling," the operator said. Then, a vibrant Texas voice broke in, "Hey, Artie, how goes it?" This confirmed that the caller was indeed Mr. Bush, whom I have never met but whose predilection for nicknames—no one in 87 years has ever called me "Artie"—is well known. "I am holding conversations about the Iraq War," the president continued. "And I would like to know what you think I should be doing."
"I would seize an appropriate moment to declare victory—and cut and run, Mr. President," I replied.
Lincoln Chafee used to shoe horses -- literally.
I never knew the term, farrier, until I walked into the then Rhode Island Senator's office one day and saw a framed assortment of farrier licenses with the thin, scraggly-looking, long-haired picture of the would-be Senator Chafee on each. There must have been ten or so years of pictures of Chafee the farrier -- so he must have been very good at what he did.
Chafee, despite a distinguished political lineage to draw from, made himself a regular guy with views grounded in a blacksmith's common sense. He has been articulating an approach for US policy towards the Middle East, towards international institutions, and towards our problems in North Korea that are not convoluted or crafted 30,000 feet above normal Americans. My hunch is that Chafee probably thinks that there are a few different ways to shoe a horse -- and there ought to be more to thinking about war and peace than just going to war or staying home.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. died last night. His passing isn’t strictly relevant to Warren Reports matters, but for those of us interested in policy who conscientiously draw lessons from history and believe in the political power of big ideas, his loss is remarkable.
Throughout his career, Schlesinger reminded students of history that presidents are far more than public chief executive officers. Presidential policymaking frames whole historical eras, for good (FDR and the New Deal, in Schlesinger’s view) and for ill (Nixon and the imperial presidency). More than 600 days before America chooses its next president and, with him or her, our next set of national priorities, our collective attention has already turned to the race. The drawn-out, multi-billion-dollar nomination and election process has its drawbacks, but thanks in part to Schlesinger, we know high the stakes are.
Jeff Faux writes about the superrich of China "with [assets of] more than US$128.2 million [i.e., RMB1 billion]" of whom "90%... are the children of senior officials." How many of them are there? 200? With a total net worth less than that of Bill Gates? Divide their total incomes among the people of China, and you boost China's average income by $7 a year.
By contrast, economic growth since 1990 has nearly tripled China's average income, carrying it to $3,000 a year.
Jessica, honestly, I'm not sure I fully understand the problem. Is there someone out there giving out feminist credentials? If so, they've forgotten to hand any to me. You're a nationally known feminist and a widely recognized up-and-coming pundit. Who's dissing you, and why does it matter?
Nothing like a good fight over globalization to get the blood pumping. Well, not really. Even I think these are getting unfun, and I'm supposed to be writing a book about this stuff.
Let me, though, try to suggest an agreed-upon end-point for this debate between the Faux and DeLong camps, because, I think this would be a lot easier than trying to build a bridge to that end-point by forcing agreement at each step along the way.
We all know about the destruction that the global carbon-based economy is wreaking -- there's an Oscar-winning movie about that. The creative part is what's missing: the proliferation of hundreds and thousands of start-ups that with huge funding and explosive entrepreneurship will wean the world off carbon-emitting energy generation and distribution.
Generally, the energy sector's entrepreneurship is underfunded by a 10x factor relative to, for instance, the communications and technology sector.
For many years the mindset of government has been that public money should be spent to fuel the R&D of energy, and that horizontally and...
Jessica, you're not the first to point out that NOW, Feminist majority and other big feminist groups founded by 1960s activists have had trouble opening up leadership roles to young women. I'm not sure there's anything particular to women in this--ie anything that justifies your analogy to that idiotic sorority. I mean, come on -- Delta Whatsis expelled women who were insufficiently princessy, white, thin and compliant. How is that like not getting to sit on a panel at the ripe old age of 25 or so?
That said, I totally agree with you about the ingrown and resistant culture of organizational feminism, and so do lots of older feminists. Whether it's generational, or the result of being in backlash-resistance mode for so long, or something about the particular people involved or what, it's a serious issue. Fact is, a lot of organizations, from corporations to synagogues, find it hard to reframe the mission, hand over power and welcome new leaders with a different style and different allies. The ACLU is going through a huge storm at least partly over this generational/insider-outsider power shift. Institutional cultures are very resistant to change. A lot of them are like dysfunctional families. Unfortunately,that's life.
Nathan Newman’s comment gives us some traction that might move this conversation out of the tiresome rut that defines globalization as an issue of free trade vs. protectionism. The central questions are: what rules should guide the global social contract and what is the politics that could get us there?
The first question should not be in much dispute among American progressives. The integrating global market ought to have the same sort of social protections that we want in a domestic market economy. Labor rights, social safety nets, environmental standards, etc. Of course, we should distinguish between rights and standards. Every worker in every country should have the right to join an independent trade union to bargain collectively. But standards, i.e., the minimum wage, would obviously be a function of that nation’s level of development.
But it’s all pie in the sky without a political strategy.
Two new resources launched this week. Both look great.
OpenCongress is a Sunlight Foundation project that should make Congress easier to understand and follow.
Opportunity08 is a joint project of the Brookings Institution and ABC News that "aims to help presidential candidates and the public focus on the most pressing policy questions facing our next president."
I'll be keeping my eye on both.
I don't know much I but I think I do know that Michael Porter was correct in "Competitive Advantage of Nations" when he said the only suitable economic policy for a nation is to seek a high and rising standard of living for its own citizens. Americans have a high standard of living because with five percent of the world's workforce we make 20% of the world's goods and services. I can't imagine any leader of our nation -- individuals can act differently with their own time and money -- believing that their duty would be to seek a purposeful reduction of American productivity and competitiveness, which the 5:20 ratio reflects. Other nations' leaders of course can and should seek the same goal. That would be called competition among workforces, and is as good a thing globally as it is domestically.
Brad DeLong says America workers making $30,000 a year ought to be willing to cut their living standards in order to help China’s economy. He gives us two reasons.
First, DeLong guesses that there aren’t many commissars turned capitalists, anyway. I really don’t know how many there are, but according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 90 percent of Chinese citizens with more than US$128.2 million are the children of senior officials. A recent article in the Washington Post reports analyst predictions that “Within 10 years, China could be the world’s biggest luxury market.”
And how much of the sacrificing by the American working class through out-sourcing to China trickles down to the poor Chinese workers?
The University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs -- of which Philip Zelikow used to serve as Director before becoming Condi Rice's Counselor -- has announced the creation of a bipartisan commission that "will examine how the Constitution allocates the powers of beginning, conducting, and ending war."
Former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher will co-chair this enterprise.
TransUnion, one of the big three credit reporting agencies, is hawking a new service called a "mortgage simulator." If you are in the market for a new mortgage or refi, give them ten bucks and some info about the size of the loan you are aiming for, and you'll get a customized report that shows the mortgage rates that you should qualify for. Is it worth it?
Phil Weiss, the author and New York Observer writer, has a terrific piece in the American Conservative about Jimmy Carter's visit to Brandeis.
It helps explain why the Brandeis administration and donors were so unhinged by the event. The students responded to Carter with real respect and none of the hysteria of their elders.
In other words, Jewish kids (at a Jewish university) are not buying into the paranoia that is so common among Jews in their 50's and older.
This is terribly threatening to elements of the older generation which has convinced itself that invoking the Holocaust and anti-Semitism will keep young Jews in line when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.
The kids aren't buying it.
I had written:
Is there a way to interpret Jeff other than as a call to keep China a society of poor subsistence rice farmers as long as possible--keep them poor, barefoot, uneducated, and by no means allow them to work at any of the high-value manufacturing occupations we want to keep in the United States?
Jeff Faux writes back:
Feb | TPMCafe: Brad missed the point. There are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries. China is not just a society of poor, barefoot, uneducated peasants. At the top, China is a place of immense wealth.... Why is it that it is the responsibility of $40,000 year American working families to sacrifice their future in order to raise up the living standards of poor Chinese, when commissars turned capitalists ride around Shanghai in a different Rolls every day?...
I think it's time to put myself seriously in harm's way here...
Is the feminist sisterhood more sorority than social justice?
A sorority at DePauw University in Indiana has recently come under fire for dismissing 23 sisters for being “socially awkward.” The women evicted from the Delta Zeta house included every woman who was overweight and the only black, Korean, and Vietnamese members.
The national officers of Delta Zeta claim to have booted the “undesirable” women because of their inability to attract new recruits to the sorority. As I read the unbelievably pathetic excuses given by the sorority for their actions, it occurred to me that in the same way Delta Zeta resorted to active exclusion as a recruitment strategy, mainstream feminists rely on passive exclusionary tactics to keep the movement “pure.”
Now, I'm absolutely down with Jeff in seeing the real enemy as the Party of Davos-- and was in the streets of DC post-Seattle with the global justice movement. And contra Greg, I think we have to confront these global realities in order to deal with issues closer to home. I spend most of my time at the localistic level of state politics, but issues like Iraq and global trade play out even at that level. The Montana Senate just yesterday passed a resolution condemning Fast Track trade authority as an economic threat.
So count me as squarely on Jeff's side of the debate but let me challenge the idea that reforming NAFTA with a stronger cross-national alliance with Mexico is the place to start. Tens years ago, I would have agreed (and I did back then in this piece). But given the explosive reality of China's role in the US economy, it's too little, too late.
Brad Delong asks:
Is there a way to interpret Jeff other than as a call to keep China a society of poor subsistence rice farmers as long as possible--keep them poor, barefoot, uneducated, and by no means allow them to work at any of the high-value manufacturing occupations we want to keep in the United States?
Brad missed the point. There are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries. China is not just a society of poor, barefoot, uneducated peasants. At the top, China is a place of immense wealth. Let me ask Brad: Why is it that it is the responsibility of $40,000 year American working families to sacrifice their future in order to raise up the living standards of poor Chinese, when commissars turned capitalists ride around Shanghai in a different Rolls every day?
Yesterday, governors from both parties concluded that their “children aren't ready for the 21st century, their workers aren't trained for the new jobs created every day, and their businesses aren't competing as strongly as they must to keep ahead.” They also decided that the best way to foster an innovative American culture is to innovate and reform our educational system. As the AP reported,
The only way to thrive amid globalization is to change, and states are past due for a sweeping transformation of education, worker training and economic development . . .
OK Greg. I’m on plenty of records as a fervid supporter of universal health insurance. Let’s stipulate that it would help – although certainly not cure – eroding US competitiveness.
But as many of you got, neither competitiveness nor trade policy was my central point. It was that globalizing “American” businesses are disconnecting from the future of the US economy – defined as the people who work here. Given that big business is by far the major influence on Washington policymakers, it’s no surprise that national policies have systematically undercut the bargaining position of labor – and the social contract in general. Its also no surprise that the US Government, the world’s most influential, under Democrats as well as Republicans, has led the way in organizing the “constitution” of the global economy to protect capital and leave labor and non-market social interests to the mercies of a 19th century dog-eat-dog market system.
This may be the greatest story ever told.
While we are fussing over politics, war, peace and God knows what else, the Discovery channel is on the verge of discrediting conservative Christianity.
I watched the press conference yesterday and was strangely moved. So Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Mary Magdalene and Jesus Jr. were just regular Israelis of 2000 years ago. Jesus, of course, was more than a typical Israeli. (He may have been Divine. I rule nothing out).
Jeff Faux is... confused, to put it politely. He opens:
Confronting Davos: The Class Politics of Global Governance | TPMCafe: it’s no surprise that a cross-border class politics has developed in the wake of the globalizing economy... a one-party system. Call it the Party of Davos, after the annual elite bash in the Swiss Alps that resembles the big-donor receptions at a political convention--corporate CEOs and world class investors, the people who carry their bags, and the politicians, pundits and policy intellectuals who carry their water...
Well, as one of the policy intellectuals who carries the water for the "corporate CEOS and world-class investors... people who carry their bags, and the politicians" I guess I should respond.
Congrats to Greg Anrig for engaging an all-too-rare debate in his post on Jeff Faux's new book. But whatever the specific answer may be for health care or pensions, the right question is "What's the relationship between what we do at home and what we do abroad?"
In 2005, Congress gave the credit industry what it wanted: tighter bankruptcy laws. In 2006, the credit industry responded: It mailed out 8 billion credit card solicitations--up 30% from 2005. It looks like if Congress will make it tougher to go bankrupt, then lenders will try harder to get people to borrow.
With about 110 million households in the US, that's about 73 card offers per household. If the average card offers is about $5,000 in pre-approved credit, that's about $365,000 in offers for every American household--or about $1000 a day, every day of the year.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote an interesting article in yesterday’s Post wherein he sharply criticizes his colleagues for hyper-partisanship, urging the R’s to “focus on results,” and seek “solutions to the real problems of real people.” (Given Luntz’s record, one could be forgiven for thinking that he’s criticizing his constituents for listening to him, but that’s another matter).
He also unwittingly reveals why they won’t be able to come close to doing so, and in doing so, unknowingly points the way forward.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote an interesting article in yesterday’s Post wherein he sharply criticizes his colleagues for hyper-partisanship, urging the R’s to “focus on results,” and seek “solutions to the real problems of real people.” (Given Luntz’s record, one could be forgiven for thinking that he’s criticizing his constituents for listening to him, but that’s another matter).
Who is a bigger threat to the average American worker: the “Party of Davos” or the Republican Party? What policy changes are more likely to improve conditions and prospects for U.S. workers: domestic initiatives like universal health insurance, major new infrastructure investment, and a progressive tax overhaul, or some sort of ill-defined social contract with Canada and Mexico? No one has to tell Jeff Faux about the desirability of ousting Republicans and implementing ambitious domestic policies. But even to the extent that stagnating wages, increasingly cavernous inequalities, and rising insecurity here are attributable to globalization – which is just one very important but not dominant factor – the external policy responses Jeff focuses on seem far less likely to be effective than getting our own house in order.
Here's my most recent letter to Deborah Howell, the incompetent ombudsman:
Dear Ms. Howell:
Instead of turning to someone who actually knows the truth you prefer to bury your head in the sand of ingnorance. It is not just my word. You can ask a host of retired CIA officers who can verify that Valerie Plame was covert until her identitywas compromised in the Robert Novak article. The willful ignorance of the Post is a disgrace to journalism. The number of people who can vouch for Valerie'sidentity is significant.
I’ll start with the anecdote that inspired my book, The Global Class War. During the 1993 fight over Congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a corporate lobbyist, exasperated with my opposition to NAFTA, collared me in a corridor of the Capitol. “Don’t you understand?” she sputtered. “We have to help Salinas [Carlos Salinas, then Mexico’s president]. He’s been to Harvard. He’s one of us.”
True, I once had a fellowship to the Kennedy Institute of Politics, but I hardly considered myself a “Harvard Man”. She hadn’t gone there at all. But despite the considerable social distance between the president of Mexico and both of us, she was appealing to a sense of class solidarity among educated elites and global movers and shakers who have more in common with each other than with ordinary people who just happen to share their nationality.
David Brooks' column last Thursday (which requires Times Select) was a concise iteration of what he calls The Idiot's Guide to Winning the Republican Presidential Nomination. The column is largely about electoral strategy, but two passages struck me.
In the first, he proposes that Republican campaigns "create a Flourishing Families Committee. Get economists, religious activists and psychologists in one room to figure out how government can reduce stress on struggling families."
In the second, he writes:
Post-9/11, most Americans aren't anxious because their freedoms are being impinged. They're anxious because there's chaos all around: foreign policy chaos, fiscal chaos, cultural chaos. The authority structures they rely on have let them down. You need to lead the party to a new definition of Republicanism. This is a Republicanism that can provide safety, order and authority, so people can feel secure enough to pursue their dreams.
I'm glad to see a prominent conservative propose that Republican candidates prioritize economic security for struggling families. Income tax cuts that inure to the wealthiest Americans won't address those families' needs. Nor will the elimination of the estate tax. Nor, for that matter, will poorly-thought-out reductions in certain core entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare.
If Brooks is right - and I think he is - the question Republican candidates have a year or so to answer is how they can set aside the sacred Republican dogma of tax cuts for the wealthy and reductions in entitlement and still secure the nomination. I hope one of the candidates figures it out. It certainly would make for a better general election. The country will be better off for the debate.
From the news desk: "I don't know whether we'll find him," said Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. "I don't know that it's all that important, frankly."
Trying to give the general the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he meant that in some military sense finding, capturing, trying, convicting, and punishing Osama for masterminding the vicious, murderous attacks of September 11 wouldn't necessarily alter the battle of Iraq. That's probably the case, since the general isn't the only one who doubts the influence of Osama over that conflict. But I hope the President agrees and I'm sure the next President will agree that we should still attach the highest priority to bringing Osama to justice.
I would have seen all the nominees for Best Picture if they had nominated the other Iwo Jima Eastwood movie but still I'm sufficiently well versed in the selections to opine with confidence that only The Departed is a big enough movie to contend for that statuette. Has to win, given cast and scope. Marty S is the go to guy tonight except for...the really big prize and enormous standing ovation will go to Al Gore (and his producer etc.) when the abnormally non-obscure docu Oscar is awarded. (By the way, numerous Beltway types told me 'AIT' would not have impact on the culture; "oh yeah" is what I now say to them.) I expect something special in connection with this perception-altering prize. I asked the uncounted President (okay, I can't get past Bush v. Gore, the banana republic case where justice slipped on appeal) to arrange for me to work with Reese W'spoon, who according to Legally Blonde, second only to Caddyshack in the rewatchable canon IMO, is an HLS grad, on the forthcoming incandescent light bulb ban. Looking forward to that lunch.
Behind the NYT firewall, Frank Rich warns today that Osama's Al Qaeda, the real gang, is in Pakistan and is gearing up for a serious attack on the United States. Al Qaeda cannot itself change the geopolitical alignment of power and wealth -- however horrible its acts, it is still a terrorist organization and not a cultural movement -- but if the United States continues to react mistakenly to the threat of Al Qaeda there's no end of trouble that can befall us.
Our blunders are manifold.
Check out the top story on how Brandeis has (following the Carter embarrassment) now apparently decided to monitor who can and who can't talk on campus based on their Israel views.
Guess what. Extreme right wing "supporters" of Israel CAN (no matter how hateful their writings and speech) but extreme left wing critics of Israel cannot.
Both the story and the links are worth reading. Why does Brandeis seem determined to prove the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis? Is it on the two professors payroll!! :-)
Also, see this fine analysis by Richard Silverstein.
To see how out of step Brandeis is with Jewish thinking at large, take a look at this Gallup poll.
I know it is not about the Mideast in general, but anyone who believes that a community so strongly against the Iraq war believes in censoring views on Israel/Palestine does not know this community. 200 neocons and Jewish organizations whose total membership (all of them together) add up to a few hundred thousand cannot speak for the 6,000,000 American Jews sampled in this poll. Just look at those numbers.
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