The American Prospect articles from April 2006

The American Prospect archives from April 2006

Failures of politics.(PROSPECTS)(USA economy)
April 1, 2006... WHEN HISTORIANS REVIEW THIS ERA, THEY WILL point to the striking failure of our political system to engage, much less remedy, the most pressing national problems. Consider a few key examples" The most notable economic fact is a 25-year decline...

Abe, still honest.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2006... I AM SURPRISED THAT THE American Prospect would repeat the canard that Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus infringed on "the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution" ["Bush v. Constitution" March 2006]. That document, in fact, explicitly...

Government R us.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2006... IN HIS ARTICLE "PREscription for Leadership" [March], Robert Kuttner recommends this 2006 election-year message for Democrats: "Republicans are not serious about governing." My opinion is that he has the right idea, but makes a mistake when he...

More Ricky.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2006... THANKS TO WILL BUNCH and The American Prospect for the fascinating and ultimately not surprising article on Rick Santorum's "charity." One more question--if the charity itself is not registered, I'm wondering if their fundraiser, Maria Diesel...

Our bad.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2006... I READ WITH GREAT interest the dispatch entitled "'Duke' of Deception" by Laura Rozen in the February issue of The American Prospect. However, about two-thirds of the way through the article, Ms. Rozen is providing some background on "the...

Clarification.(Correction notice)
April 1, 2006... Clarification: Ken Calvert is a Republican congressman from California. We reset the error:

Likeminded?(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2006... I'M SORRY THAT WILLIAM Levinger would rather end his subscription than be tapped by the DNC [Correspondence, March]. I like The American Prospect, would love to continue receiving it, and rather enjoy getting mail from other progressive...

Melted Steele.(Up Front)(Michael Steele)
April 1, 2006... REPUBLICANS HAD THE HIGHEST OF HOPES FOR THE candidate they recruited to seek retiring Democratic Senator Paul Sarbanes" seat: Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele. But since entering the race in October 2005, Steele has trailed the...

The question: Nixon's approval rating hit 24 percent. How low can W's go?(Up Front)
April 1, 2006... "Keep praying, but it's unlikely. Bush's ratings among Republicans would not only have to dip below 70 percent--where they've never Id been--but below 60 percent."--Ruy Teixeira, writer/blogger "Bush's situation is more like Truman's...

Bill Bennett forecasts the new baseball season.(PARODY)
April 1, 2006... Bill (Sportin' Life) Bennett here. You know, here at the Book of Virtues Race 'n Sports Book, we don't usually give advice on any game of chance that does not involve a handle. But it's time for a new baseball season, and since baseball's mired...

Big bad John.(THE OUT YEARS)(John McCain)
April 1, 2006... LET ME BEGIN BY ADMITTING THAT IF FORTUNE decrees that the next president of the United States must be another conservative Republican, I'd certainly rather it be John McCain than George Allen, Tom Tancredo, Newt Gingrich, or most of the other...

The conscience clause.(COMMENT)(rights of pro-life pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions)
April 1, 2006... WE LIBERALS HAVE A LOT ON OUR CONSCIENCES. Who taught the right wing how to use religion for social causes during the Martin Luther King era? Who showed them that discrimination on the basis of race or sex was not something most Americans see...

The anti-Joe: Ned Lamont found just the man to take on Joe Lieberman: himself.(THE DEMOCRATS)
April 1, 2006... NED LAMONT IS AN UNLIKELY insurgent. The founder of a small cable company that specializes in telecommunications systems for college campuses, Lamont is a wealthy man who speaks with the measured cadence of one who earns his living making...

Travelin' blues: reformers, don't go overboard: many congressional junkets are good.(CAPITOL HILL)
April 1, 2006... THE REPUBLICAN TWO-STEP ON ethics reform has proven an amusing spectacle this season. First come panicked promises of reform from GOP congressional leaders; then come rank-and-file pushback and a hasty public retreat. A typical case presented...

The democracy lab: next fall's swiftboat-style attacks have been debuted in Minnesota.(CAMPAIGN '06)
April 1, 2006... IF THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL RACE taught Democrats any lesson, it's that all the policy pronouncements in the world, even if delivered by a decorated veteran, are no match for a relentless barrage of early negative ads that poison the well of...

Not your father's Detroit: the motor city virtually created the old era of shared prosperity. Today, the middle has fallen out of the economy. What can we do to get it back?(REPORT)
April 1, 2006... IN THE MID-1950S, THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY DECIDED that its most profitable car needed a new home. Up until then, Ford had been making Lincoln Continentals in Highland Park, the industrial enclave near the center of Detroit, where the company had...

The new new Gore: Five years ago, Al Gore was the much-mocked pol who blew a gimme with his stiff demeanor and know-it-all style. Today? C'mon, admit it: You like him again. Now his own man rather than the media's robotic creation, he's emerged a bold truth-teller-and many who wrote him off have noticed.(APPRAISAL)
April 1, 2006... THE MOST IMPORTANT SPEECH OF AL GORE'S post-non-presidency was neither well-covered nor particularly dramatic. He delivered it against a plain blue curtain, and when he finished, the applause rippled but never roared. None in attendance,...

The once and future carbohydrate economy.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... HIGH OIL PRICES, ENERGY SECURITY CONCERNS, AND A GROWING awareness of climate change have put the prospect of a carbohydrate economy back on the public agenda. The successful substitution of living plants for fossilized plants would profoundly...

A new prairie populism: as clean energy begins to transform economies in America's heartland, it creates fertile ground for a new progressive politics.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... BRIAN SCHWEITZER IS AN AGRICULTURAL SCIENTIST, a gun owner, and a third-generation Montana farmer. He is also a popular Democratic governor of a usually conservative "red" state. Schweitzer likes to joke that he has a rule for himself: If he...

Fueling the future.(biomass energy)
April 1, 2006... "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust-almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's...

Good genes gone bad: the new public health reflects our understanding of how environmental contaminants damage genes. New genetic science offers new hope.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... SCARCELY A WEEK GOES BY WITHOUT COVERAGE OF a new discovery by scientists revealing that yet another disease is linked to one or another gene. The range of health conditions now known to be gene related is astonishing. Some are just what you...

Follow the farmers.(GREEN ECONOMY)(alternative biofuels)
April 1, 2006... TWENTY YEARS AGO, ON A FARM OUTSIDE MY HOME-town of Aberdeen, South Dakota, I stood with a few dozen local corn growers in a machine shack, huddled around a still. We were trying to show the farmers that their crops could be turned into what we...

Building green.(GREEN ECONOMY)(Interview)
April 1, 2006... Jonathan Rose Companies LLC is one of America's largest green developers of affordable housing and other ventures, with more than one billion dollars worth of projects under management. Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner spoke with CEO Jonathan...

Can government go green? The opportunity is there, but market forces alone won't realize it.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... IF THE "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" photo-op was the defining moment of the Bush administration's foreign policy, the president's recent visit to the National Renewal Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, defined its energy policy. One week after he...

The challenge of peak oil: the longer we delay adapting to the inevitable depletion of worldwide oil reserves, the more painful the coming economic transition will be.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... THE SUPPLY OF EXTRACTABLE OIL is subject to geological limits. At some point those limits will overcome our ability to produce oil at the ever-expanding rates that growing economies demand. The global peak is likely to occur well before...

The right chemistry: green chemistry offers industry a way to reduce regulatory and clean-up costs with the proverbial ounce of prevention.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... WHEN THE 2005 NOBEL PRIZE in chemistry was announced last October in Stockholm, the new laureates--Yves Chauvin of the Institute Francais du Petrole, Robert Grubbs of Caltech, and Richard Schrock of MIT--won recognition for creating "fantastic...

Business, as usual? Ethanol could be a huge boost to small farmers and the rural economy. But unless we are vigilant, the big winners could be the usual suspects.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH SUDDENLY embraced wood chips and biofuels on national television, renewable energy producers received a prime-time injection of hope. Ethanol backers forecast a boon for farmers and the environment. Yet serious questions...

European shades of green: in addition to our trade imbalance, America has a huge deficit of smart environmental policies. Here's where more imports makes sense.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... "OH, AND ONE MORE THING," SAID Sebastian Paauw, organizer of a recent trip I took to the Netherlands, "we're not going to rent you a car, but we'll give you a bike." True to his word, he promptly provided me with a bicycle. And while the...

A renewable economy as a global ethic: it's a win-win equation for the planet--and one that will advance the goals of sustainable agriculture, clean energy, and human health.(GREEN ECONOMY)
April 1, 2006... IN A SONG DEDICATED TO MARTIN Luther King Jr., James Taylor sings: We are bound together By our desire to see the world become A place where our children can grow up free and strong. For more than three decades, the world...

Arguing the world: Bernard-Henri Levy and Anatol Lieven spar on Iraq, Iran, Bush, the neoconservatives, the Cold War, Hamas, Napoleon, Robespierre ...(DEBATE)
April 1, 2006... JUST BEFORE THE HOLIDAYS, BERNARD-HENRI LEVY, FRANCE'S MOST influential intellectual, contacted the Prospect offering to write an essay on the future of neoconservatism. Aware that his views on the matter were not wholly consonant with ours, he...

The harder he blows: it may sound strange to ask" what's happened to Chris Matthews. But in recent months, he's been even worse than usual. No. We're serious.(MEDIA)
April 1, 2006... CHRIS MATTHEWS BLOWS HARD. This may sound less like a news flash than a crashing redundancy. And it's true that yelling is nothing new for the omnipresent MSNBC/CNBC barking head, for whom picking up the pace and pumping up the volume almost...

Elephant in the voting booth.(Building Confidence in US Elections)(Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence)(The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement)(Book review)
April 1, 2006... BUILDING CONFIDENCE IN U.S. ELECTIONS BY THE COMMISSION ON FEDERAL ELECTION REFORM (CARTER-BAKER COMMISSION)113 pages, free at american.edu/ia/cfer/report/full_report.pdf THREE'S A CROWD: THE DYNAMIC OF THIRD PARTIES, ROSS PEROT, AND...

Die-hards.(Taking Care: Ethical Caregiving in Our Aging Society)(Book review)
April 1, 2006... TAKING CARE: ETHICAL CAREGIVING IN OUR AGING SOCIETY BY PRESIDENT'S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS 309 pages, free at www.bioethics.gov WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH appointed the President's Council on Bioethics in 2001, he stacked it with conservatives who...

Right to nowhere.(Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy)(Book review)
April 1, 2006... IMPOSTOR: HOW GEORGE W. BUSH BANKRUPTED AMERICA AND BETRAYED THE REAGAN LEGACY BY BRUCE BARTLETT Doubleday, 310 pages, $26.00 EVEN BEFORE IT WAS PUBLISHED, Bruce Bartlett's Impostor had a dramatic effect: It cost Bartlett his job as a...

Rich world, poor world.(Book review)
April 1, 2006... THE END OF POVERTY: ECONOMIC POSSIBILITIES FOR OUR TIME BY JEFFREY D. SACHS, FOREWORD BY BONO Penguin Books, 416 pages, $27.95 THE GLOBAL CLASS WAR: HOW AMERICA'S BIPARTISAN ELITE LOST OUR FUTURE--AND WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO WIN IT BACK BY...

Bush's skunktails.(THE LAST WORD)
April 1, 2006... IN CONTRAST TO A PRESIDENT'S COATTAILS THAT sweep his party to congressional victories, skunktails have the reverse effect. Bush's skunktails consist of abuses of power, corruption, and incompetence now so widely recognized that, according to...