The American Prospect articles from April 2009

The American Prospect archives from April 2009

Slouching towards solvency.(PROSPECTS)(mortgage-relief plan)
April 1, 2009... President Obama has worked wonders with the budgetary part of the recovery program. But if he doesn't solve the banking and housing crises, the economy will continue collapsing. The latest programs from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are...

Generation Gap.(NOTED)(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In response to ADAM SERWER'S article on the challenges facing the NAACP, blogger PROMETHEUS 6 writes that the NAACP "is so hooked into the political infrastructure, it would be foolish to ignore its connections or...

Eat it.(NOTED)(Alice Waters on food policy)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... TOM LASKAWY, a blogger for the environmental news Web site GRIST, is a bit more critical of ALICE WATERS than EZRA KLEIN was in last month's Up Front feature, "Foodie Politics." Laskawy writes, "I'm hesitant to step in the middle of any debate...

Twitterpated.(NOTED)(Darcy Burner)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... After reading ELI SANDERS' feature, "Anatomy of a Netroots Failure," the subject of the piece, DARCY BURNER, chose an appropriately newmedia forum to respond. Burner posts on her Twitter feed: "I think the people who accused Eli Sanders of...

The alter-Limbaugh.(NOTED)(Rush Limbaugh on David Cameron)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... British and U.S. conservatives alike take note of "Britain's Great Right Hope," JAMES CRABTREE's feature on the Tories' comeback. Crabtree "outlin[es] what he thinks U.S. Republicans can learn from DAVID CAMERON's leadership of the...

New help, new hope.(NOTED)(Student National Medical Association)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... COURTNEY SCRUBBS, community service co-chair of the STUDENT NATIONAL MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (SN1VIA), reached out to TAP after reading CHANDRA THOMAS' piece in our March special report, "After Katrina," on housing struggles in New Orleans. In her...

From the executive editor.(NOTED)(Editorial)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... IN FEBRUARY, THIS MAGAZINE CO-HOSTED A conference called "Thinking Big, Thinking Forward," which drew almost a thousand people to hear Paul Krugman, Alan Brinldey, Theda Skocpol, Deepak Bhargava, and others speak about the kind of...

Breakfast at Hugo's: our correspondent learns too much about the Bolivarian revolution.(Up Front)(President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela)
April 1, 2009... SOMETIMES, AN INSULT can get you free breakfast. After rashly calling President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela a dictator on our blog, TAPPED, I received an invitation from Chavez's embassy: Come to breakfast, and well tell you why he isn't an...

Missed connections.(WAYS AND MEANS)(government spending and taxation)
April 1, 2009... ONE OF THE TRICKS THAT CONSERVATIVES USED TO maintain control during the Bush era was to always vote on tax cuts in isolation, keeping choices about taxes completely separate from questions of spending and government services. Otherwise people...

All work, no pay.(COMMENT)(Michelle Obama)(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2009... WHEN BARACK AND MICHELLE OBAMA VISITED A Washington, D.C., public charter school on Feb. 3, they asked a class of second-graders what they wanted to be when they grew up. "First lady!" exclaimed one girl. Michelle Obama smiled. "It doesn't pay...

Post-consumer prosperity: finding new opportunities amid the economic wreckage.(Cover story)
April 1, 2009... The economic bonfire fueled mostly by consumption in recent years has ended. As we have watched the familiar statistics plummet, with credit cards maxed out and home-equity loans a thing of the past, the reality has slowly become clear: We...

A politics of national sacrifice: thirty years after Carter's "malaise speech," the language of humility and civic obligation resonates more powerfully than ever.(President Jimmy Carter)
April 1, 2009... On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave the riskiest speech of his presidency. In what became known as the "malaise speech"--though the word "malaise" never appeared in it--the president riveted the nation. He delivered the speech amid...

The education wars: teachers 'unions and reform advocates are locked in aright over the future of schools. Now the battle lines have started to blur.
April 1, 2009... Like any successful negotiator, Randi Weingarten can sense when the time for compromise is nigh. On Nov. 17, after the Election Day dust had cleared, Weingarten, the president of both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its NewYork...

The green challenge.(clean-energy economy)
April 1, 2009... The green economy will get an $80 billion boost from President Barack Obama's recovery package in the form of direct spending, loan guarantees, and tax incentives. A clean-energy economy offers not just savings in imported oil and reductions in...

Cities on the front lines: conversion to solar and wind energy is an environmental necessity and an industrial opportunity. Success will require a concerted national policy.(THE GREEN CHALLENGE)
April 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the Obama era, the federal government will play a much more active role promoting green economic development. In the meantime, cities and states have been the front lines of innovation. However, even the most...

Where the jobs are: compared to spending on the military or oil industry, green investment can improve both job quantity and quality. But it will take a massive shift in resources.(THE GREEN CHALLENGE)
April 1, 2009... President Barack Obama's economic-stimulus program that passed Congress in February, despite being too small and too loaded with tax breaks for corporations, is among the most progressive pieces of economic legislation since the 1960s. The...

A green industrial economy: the opportunity [or good jobs is there--but unionization and government contracting standards will make a huge difference.(THE GREEN CHALLENGE)(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2009... In 2007 the central Iowa town of Newton mourned the closing of the Maytag appliance factory that had been the economic anchor of the community for more than a century. Only a month later, local officials happily announced that TPI Composites, a...

From mass transit to new manufacturing: with the right policies in place, an expansion of public transportation could help reindustrialize the United States.(THE GREEN CHALLENGE)
April 1, 2009... A new industrial-policy initiative for domestic production of mass-transit products could help the United States overcome multiple economic challenges. It could provide high-wage jobs, generate tax revenue, expand exports, and reduce trade...

Beyond sunny hopes and windy rhetoric: to realize the promise of solar and wind power, aspirations need to be matched with more effective strategies.(THE GREEN CHALLENGE)(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2009... President Barack Obama hopes that new wind and solar projects will produce many thousands of new jobs. Renewable energy, after all, is manufactured energy. If domestic producers were to provide the thousands of component parts that a major...

Fighting for green justice: in the race for green jobs, environmental-justice advocates don't want urban communities to get left behind.(THE GREEN CHALLENGE)
April 1, 2009... Since the 1980s, the environmental-justice movement has linked the pursuit of a greener economy with the needs of urban minority communities that have suffered more than their share of environmental assaults. Though the best publicized new jobs...

Lessons from Europe: funding for research into new technology is key.(THE GREEN CHALLENGE)
April 1, 2009... While the U.S. can learn much from European strategies to promote renewable energy, it must also be cautious. The International Energy Agency (IEA) review says that a major failure of the European Union's green-energy policy is a dearth of...

Our man in Kabul: Richard Holbrooke learned some hard lessons in Vietnam. Now he is applying them to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
April 1, 2009... At 5 P.M. on a weekday in Oak Grove, Kentucky, not far from Fort Campbell, a dark-haired woman is standing in front of her house on Artic Avenue. She watches her dog run through the yard. Inside, her three-year-old son waits. She tells me that...

The radical minimalist: Obama's new regulatory czar likes market incentives. Will they work?(Cass Sunstein on Barack Obama)
April 1, 2009... Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) --WALT WHITMAN, "SONG OF MYSELF" Barack Obama is best described as a "visionary minimalist," according to Cass Sunstein, the man who will...

Naughty mommies: are bloggers who proudly identify as "bad moms" challenging ideals of motherhood or reinforcing them?(MEDIA)
April 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A MOTHER TELLS HER CHILD THAT Haagen Dazs is a special medicine for mommies because she doesn't want to share. Another purposely ruins her daughter's favorite T-shirt with red nail polish. One joins Weight Watchers...

Political Islam 101.('Engaging the Muslim World', 'Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East' and 'Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East')(Book review)
April 1, 2009... ENGAGING THE MUSLIM WORLD BY JUAN COLE Palgrave MacMillan, 282 pages, $26.95 SOWING CRISIS: THE COLD WAR AND AMERICAN DOMINANCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST BY RASHID KHALIDI, Beacon Press, 308 pages, $25.95 DREAMS AND SHADOWS: THE FUTURE OF THE...

Team of rivals redux.('Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America' and 'The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience')(Book review)
April 1, 2009... NOTHING TO FEAR: FDR'S INNER CIRCLE AND THE HUNDRED DAYS THAT CREATED MODERN AMERICA BY ADAM COHEN, Penguin Press, 372 pages, $29.95 THE WOMAN BEHIND THE NEW DEAL: THE LIFE OF FRANCES PERKINS, FDR'S SECRETARY OF LABOR AND HIS MORAL...

How supreme a court?(The Supreme Court and the American Elite)(Book review)
April 1, 2009... THE SUPREME COURT AND THE AMERICAN ELITE, 1789-2008 BY LUCAS A. POWE JR., Harvard University Press, 421 pages, $29.95 FOR BOTH LIBERALS AND conservatives, whether or not Barack Obama can reshape the federal courts looms as one of the great...

Intimacy meets hard times.('The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today' and 'The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-First Century')(Book review)
April 1, 2009... THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND: THE STATE OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY IN AMERICA TODAY BY ANDREW J. CHERLIN, Knopf, 288 pages, $25.95 THE LONELY AMERICAN: DRIFTING APART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BY JACQUELINE OLDS AND RICHARD S. SCHWARTZ Beacon...

My recovery prediction.(THE LAST WORD)(economic forecast)(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2009... I'VE GOT SOMETHING OF A REPUTATION AS AN ECONOMIC soothsayer. Last March I predicted the economy would slide off a cliff in six months. Six months later, it did. How did I know? Ill get to that later. Now, I'm predicting the economy will start...