The American Prospect articles from July 2002

The American Prospect archives from July 2002

Republicans' favorite Democrats. (Comment).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP Council (DLC) was organized by southern governors, business Democrats, defense hawks, and social conservatives to push the party to the center. The theory was that this repositioning would win presidential elections...

Greens to liberals: drop dead! (Comment).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... ASK ANY LIBERAL TO IDENTIFY the force in American politics most intent on destroying progressive prospects and causes and you're sure to hear that it's the Bush administration or the Republican right or some such reactionary power. Let me...

Pictorial.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Ok, We've re-arranged the deck chairs... What do we do if this doesn't work? Throw the captain overboard...

The Home Front. (Correspondence).
July 1, 2002... I WRITE TO CORRECT THE record about the views of Deputy Secretary, of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, which were misrepresented in Robert Dreyfuss's "The Home Front" [November 5, 2001]. In his article, which warned that planning for domestic...

Marijuana, Heroin, and Cocaine. (Correspondence).
July 1, 2002... I APPRECIATED ROBERT MacCoun and Peter Reuter's call to find a middle ground between the current, indefensible war on drugs and total legalization "Marijuana, Heroin, and Cocaine" [June 3, 2002]. I found one point rather curious and perhaps...

The Politics of Dog. (Correspondence).
July 1, 2002... IN JOHN FEFFER'S ARTICLE "The Politics of Dog" [June 3], Feffer correctly argues that in the context of globalization and transnational immigration, practices that are normalized in one region, such as dog eating, can become controversial in...

Correction.
July 1, 2002... Nicholas Confessore's "George Bush's Texas Trouble" [June 3] incorrectly stated that David Dewhurst is Texas's lieutenant governor. Dewhurst is running for that position, but he is currently Texas's land commissioner.

Watch those drapes. (Devil In The Details).(secret codes)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... OF ALL THE FEARS THAT have beset us since 9-11--the real ones and the ones the administration has manufactured--one that's hard to classify is the fear of codes. It is the basis of the Bush administration's refusal to let Yasser Esam Hamdi, a...

Global warming: sleep it off. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... IT'S NO GREAT FEAT TO come up with a list of previous presidents after whom the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue models himself: Poppy, certainly; the Gipper, absolutely; TR, but in foreign affairs only; Coolidge, very discreetly....

New politics, Hoffa-style. (Devil In The Details).(Teamsters)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Teamster President James R Hoffa Jr. has had a rocky couple of weeks. First, one of his key supporters, Chicago Teamster leader Bill Hogan, was bounced from the union by its Independent Review Board (IRB).The board's findings showed that Hogan,...

Saving the safety net. (Networks).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... THE WHITE HOUSE PROPOSAL to tighten work requirements for welfare recipients has passed the House and made tracks for the Senate, leaving welfare-rights advocates determined to extend the debate past Capitol Hill. At issue is Temporary...

The equal empire. (Networks).(campaign finance reform)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... YET ANOTHER CONTROVERSY, ALBEIT A strange one, has erupted on the campaign-finance reform front. The National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI) (www.nvri.org) of Boston, representing the interests of minority and poor voters, charges in a lawsuit...

Amnesty mobilized the vote. (Networks).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... IN OUR LAST ISSUE WE DESCRIBED Amnesty International's effort to get shareholders at the annual ExxonMobil meeting to pass a resolution calling on the energy giant to "adopt a comprehensive, transparent, and verifiable human-rights policy." We...

Porn again. (On The Contrary).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... FREE-SPEECH ADVOCATES WHO CHEERED THE recent Supreme Court decision striking down portions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) should not have been surprised when Attorney General John Ashcroft and members of Congress quickly...

Is the Third Way finished? In Europe, at least, it's down but not out. (Beyond The Beltway).
July 1, 2002... IN THE LAST TWO YEARS OF HIS administration, Bill Clinton hosted three conferences on the "Third Way" that included British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, French Prime Minister...

Outing ALEC; the most powerful lobby you've never heard of. (Gazette).
July 1, 2002... EARTH DAY, CONSERVATIVES have been known to complain, always brings out the weirdos. This year s celebration was no exception. "Absent from the debate [on global warming] is the discussion of human ingenuity and our ability to adapt to our...

Seeking a higher intelligence; will Congress push for real reform in the CIA and FBI? (Gazette).
July 1, 2002... WHEN NEWS BROKE about the infamous FBI "Phoenix" memo, which warned headquarters of possible terrorist activity in U.S. aviation schools last July, members of Congress could be heard fulminating across the land. "How in the world could somebody...

Who vouches for vouchers? An African-American group takes fire for its position. (Gazette).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... IF YOU HAPPENED UPON THE newspaper, radio, and television ads last year, you might have assumed they were the work of a conservative organization. After all, they spotlighted black students and their parents touting an idea close to the hearts...

Hire the clueless: Bush's pick for EPA enforcer has no relevant background. (Gazette).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... SOME SAY JOHN PETER SUAREZ is a well-regarded career public servant, a "fair and balanced prosecutor" who has gained a reputation as a "very thorough" attorney while assembling the resume of a government lawyer on the rise. He therefore may...

Bush's most-favored taxpayers: the top 1 percent will gain the most from the coming tax cuts. (The Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... AS FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICITS HEAD BACK INTO THE stratosphere, most congressional Democrats remain petrified about frontally attacking the Bush tax cuts that are the central cause of the problem. Perhaps if they understood that most of us already...

Back to brinksmanship: how India and Pakistan arrived at a nuclear standoff.(conflict over Kashmir)
July 1, 2002... INDIA AND PAKISTAN STAND ONCE AGAIN ON THE BRINK of war. The moment is a precarious one and the stakes are high, not just for the region but potentially for the world. The United States has burgeoning interests in the subcontinent since the war...

The kill-floor rebellion: an alliance of a union and a community group may have found the way to reorganize the meatpacking industry--and the Latino immigrant workers in small-town America.
July 1, 2002... ST. AGNES CHURCH AND ITS SISTER PARISH, OUR Lady of Guadalupe, are the heart of south Omaha, Nebraska. Every Sunday, hundreds of packinghouse workers--Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans--dress up in their best clothes and stream through St....

Despots R Us: meet the folks at Jefferson Waterman, Washington's favorite lobby shop for foreign thugs.
July 1, 2002... IN 1934 THE GERMAN DYE TRUST RETAINED PUBLIC-RELATIONS pioneer Ivy Lee for $25,000 a year, ostensibly to promote the company's image in the United States. Lee's true client, though, was Adolf Hitler's regime, and his aim was to favorably...

Easy on the adrenals: too easy, in Enigma's case; Harvard Man is more stimulating.(motion picture 'Enigma')(Column)
July 1, 2002... I COULD HAVE WALKED OUT OF Enigma. Not in anger--not in that state of congested indignation that sometimes forces cinemagoers to their feet, huffing and puffing and clawing for their coats in the darkness--but through simple lack of concern....

The Gods of shopping: a pair of parodists take aim at the hijacking of religion. (Performance Art).
July 1, 2002... IT IS NO SECRET THAT SHOPPING and religion are close relatives in America--money is God, God is heavily marketed, and then there's "Christian rock"--but it sure does help to be reminded sometimes. Not surprisingly, neither advertiser-driven...

Creating a lie; Sylvia Ann Hewlett and the myth of the baby bust. (State of the Debate).
July 1, 2002... TO JUDGE BY THE PUBLIC reception of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's much-hyped Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, you might think it was the first time American women had been admonished not to pursue high-powered careers when...

Democracy-proof.
July 1, 2002... How Democratic Is the American Constitution? By Robert Dahl. Yale University Press, 198 pages, $19.95 IN THE FROZEN REPUBLIC: HOW THE Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (1996), Daniel Lazare points out that the U.S. Constitution was...

The American way of death.
July 1, 2002... The Death Penalty: An American History By Stuart Banner. Harvard University Press, 385 pages, $29.95 WARNING: THIS BOOK is not for the squeamish. With graphic accounts of snapped necks and roasted flesh and rabidlike reactions to lethal...

Plan to lose money.
July 1, 2002... The Great 401(k) Hoax: Why Your Family's Financial Security Is at Risk, and What You Can Do About It By William Wolman and Anne Colamosca. Perseus Publishing, 246 pages, $26.00 SINCE THE ENRON CORPORATION imploded, Americans have gotten...

Philanthropy and movements. (Common Wealth).
July 15, 2002... RECENTLY I WAS INVITED TO be the token liberal at a major national conference of conservative foundations. The invitation was to debate Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard editor, TV pundit, and conservative grand strategist, as the after-dinner...

Control Freaks. (Correspondence).
July 15, 2002... THE PROSPECT IS KNOWN for high-quality journalism. So it's a shame that before letting loose with falsehoods and half-truths about Americans for Gun Safety (AGS), Nicholas Confessore didn't check with us ["Control Freaks," April 8, 2002]. Our...

Is the Third Way Finished? (Correspondence).
July 15, 2002... TWO POINTS IN JOHN JUDIS'S "Is the Third Way Finished?" [July 1] demand further comment. First, defending Social Security was not a part of Clinton's third-way agenda. As former Clinton administration officials have said publicly, he was...

Missiles of mystery. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... IT'S TAKEN US A WHILE, but the Prospect has finally figured out the logic of the Bush administration's antimissile system. To the lay eye, there was always something a little off-kilter about the system. Perhaps it was the way the Air Force...

The beltway rises. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... WHILE SWEPT UP IN WORLD Cup mania (that's soccer, for those of you who, like our executive editor, turned away from sports when and because the spitball was outlawed), the Prospect was recently online perusing the latest FIFA/Coca-Cola World...

What islands? (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... IF YOU WERE MYSTIFIED BY FIFA's reference to the Turks and Caicos Islands in that last item (as we were), here is that nation's self-description from its very own Web site: "The Turks and Caicos Islands is an archipelago country of eight major...

Fork over that vote. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... IN A RITE AS REGULAR AND unchanging as the swallows' return to Capistrano, House Republicans have yet again announced they will assemble a grass-roots army to turn out the GOP base this November. Not much ever comes of these announcements, but...

We're not talkin' chicken feed. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... The Republicans' recent effort to permanently repeal the estate tax went strictly by the playbook: Call it a "death tax," and say it imperils the family farm. Of course, the Reeps were really pushing what they always push for: the upward...

Big (dirty) air. (Networks).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... THE WHITE HOUSE'S DEEP loyalty to its energy-industry funders was (yet again) prancing in the spotlight when the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled its long-foreshadowed changes to the New Source Review (NSR), a provision of the Clean Air...

A Big Apple for the mayor. (Networks).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 15, 2002... HERE'S A MOTLEY CREW THAT HELPED bring an urgent issue to a boiling point: Russell Simmons of Def Jam Records, the Hip-Hop Action Network, the Alliance for Quality Education, the United Federation of Teachers, L.L. Cool J, Chuck D., and Alicia...

Ashcroft's lies. (On The Contrary).(Attorney General John Ashcroft)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... CONSERVATIVES ARE SUPPOSED TO STAND FOR personal accountability. But at the FBI, under the ultraconservative stewardship of a Republican president and attorney general, no bad deed goes unrewarded. Recent revelations that agents in Washington...

The future is later: the cloning fight comes down to abortion--and down to earth. (Below The Beltway).
July 15, 2002... IN HIS RECENT BOOK OUR POST-HUMAN Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, Francis Fukuyama writes, "Cloning is the opening wedge for a series of new technologies that will ultimately lead to designer babies.... If we get used to...

Market extremists amok: and how best to dethrone them. (Gazette).
July 15, 2002... MARKET EXTREMISM doesn't wear hoods, white sheets, or armbands. Skinheads in its ranks are few. Suicide bombers in its cause are even fewer. But the essence of extremism, as opposed to other specific "isms," is to extend--harshly, rigidly,...

Dollars don't do it: throwing money at the FBI only deepens the problem. (Gazette).
July 15, 2002... THE FBI HAS HAD A ROUGH couple of months with the public, in the press, and on the Hill. Senators are even entertaining the notion of splitting the bureau in half. But if Director Robert Mueller is seriously concerned about the FBI's future,...

The going rate on shrinks: Big Pharma and the buying of psychiatry. (Gazette).
July 15, 2002... IT WAS LAST SUMMER IN BERLIN when I first encountered pharmaceutical funhouses. I was one of 4,000 attendees at the 7th World Congress of Biological Psychiatry. Until about a decade ago, pharmaceutical companies passed out pens or notepads with...

Alaska's infinite regress: where regressive taxation isn't an option--it's a forgone conclusion. (The Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... RECOGNIZING THAT AN INFORMED PUBLIC GENERALLY likes progressive taxes, Republicans prefer to lie about the impact of their tax ideas. Take, for example, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who recently claimed that the federal estate tax on the largest 2...

This is your party on drugs: can the Democrats win on prescription-drug prices?
July 15, 2002... ABOUT THREE YEARS AGO, POLLSTER CELINDA Lake sat down with then-Representative Debbie Stabenow--a Michigan Democrat preparing to run for the Senate--to put together a campaign proposal for prescription drugs. Stabenow had already made headlines...

The darkest horse: Vermont Governor Howard Dean is a fiscal conservative who's for gay civil unions, against the Bush tax cuts, and running for president as the health-care candidate.
July 15, 2002... IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE A PLACE SEEMING FARTHER FROM the White House than State Street in Montpelier, Vermont. A bucolic hamlet nestled alongside the Winooski River, Montpelier, a town of 8,000, must be the only state capital without a McDonald's....

How not to overthrow Saddam; the Bush plan and the alternatives.(Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, US President George W. Bush)
July 15, 2002... FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS, SENIOR BUSH ADMINISTRATION and military officials have been debating whether and when to launch a military invasion of Iraq. Had they attended, and actually listened to, a late May conference at American University in...

A film divided: Henry Bean's The Believer tells the tale of a neo-Nazi--a skinhead who can't quite cast off his own Jewishness. (The Critics Film).
July 15, 2002... HOLLYWOOD MADE SOME healthy contributions to the "rogue cop" genre in the 1990s. One was Internal Affairs, in which Richard Gere, as a cop gone bad, was corrupt, porkily sexual, running rackets, and siring children like a Greek god. Gere's...

The historical present: what has superseded the academic culture wars of the 1990s? It's not what you think. (State Of The Debate).(Column)
July 15, 2002... THE PHONE CALL MADE ME nervous. I'd never been offered an all-expense-paid press junket before. Wasn't this the sort of thing you'd expect from a petroleum conglomerate, sponsoring a conference on debunking global warming? Instead, a humble...

Getting welfare right.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... IN 1996, PRESIDENT CLINTON KEPT HIS CAMPAIGN pledge to end welfare as we know it. By the time the bill finally passed, Republicans controlled Congress and the reform seemed draconian. Three senior sub-cabinet officials resigned in protest. The...

Bush's blunder: welfare reform has been a success in many respects. But if the White House prevails, that's about to change for the worse. (The Politics).(George W. Bush)
July 15, 2002... IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS, THE WELFARE-REFORM debate has been transformed in ways few people envisioned even recently. The change hasn't been for the better. Early this year, many people believed that reauthorization of the Personal...

What does Minnesota know? No need to consult the states: the White House has welfare reform all figured out.
July 15, 2002... IN AN AGING ST. PAUL NEIGHBORHOOD KNOWN AS Frogtown, at a storefront social-services agency called Lifetrack Resources, Tina Thompson and Angela Fink are meeting one afternoon to discuss the impoverished clients they are trying to move into the...

Liberal lessons from welfare reform: why welfare-to-work turned out better than we expected. (The Politics).
July 15, 2002... WHEN CONGRESS PASSED THE PERSONAL Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996, the liberal community was almost unanimous in urging President Clinton to veto it. Even people like myself, who had supported Clinton's...

High stakes, hard choices: when school reformers demand that parents spend more time on homework and welfare reformers demand more time at work, what's supposed to give? (Children).
July 15, 2002... OVER THE LAST DECADE, TWO IMPORTANT SOCIAL policies originating on the right have been recast as centrist and adopted nationwide. One is welfare reform, which has pushed (some would say shoved) poor and low-skill parents headlong into the labor...

Welfare reform depends on good child care; isn't the whole point to rescue the next generation? (Children).
July 15, 2002... WHEN THE 1996 WELFARE-REFORM BILL WAS passed, one of its many controversial provisions was the imposition of work requirements on single mothers applying for welfare assistance, even if they had very young children. In part, these requirements...

No huddled masses need apply; social policy discriminates against immigrants, and some are fearful of pursuing even benefits they legally qualify for. (Children).
July 15, 2002... THE WALK TO THE H STREET welfare office from Washington, D.C.'s Union Station takes a good 20 minutes, longer if you've got small children in tow. You see manicured gardens give way to empty lots, bottles in brown paper bags, and a grocery...

Moral parent, moral child: family structure matters less to a child's development than the quality of the parenting. (Children).
July 15, 2002... THESE DAYS THERE IS ONCE again a great deal of hand-wringing about the sorry moral state of America's children. All the usual suspects have been rounded up: parents who lack values, schools that neglect "character" education, and--conservative...

Money also matters: children do better when parents earn decent incomes. (Children).
July 15, 2002... IF WELFARE REFORM IS ULTIMATELY to be considered a success, the new system should do a better job than the old one at enabling low-income children to grow up to become healthy, productive adults. Protecting children from destitution was, after...

Caring for children as a career; professionalizing child care would be good for kids and good for working mothers--including those who work minding other people's children. (Income).
July 15, 2002... HIGH-QUALITY CHILD CARE IS THE BIGGEST missing element in welfare-to-work efforts. Despite additional funding under welfare reform, the care available to most low-income women and their children is usually custodial and unreliable. Many former...

When low wages don't add up; income transfers can help, but nothing confers independence so much as decent earnings. (Income).
July 15, 2002... ELENA, A SINGLE MOTHER LIVING in San Diego, is well aware of the pressure to get off welfare and take whatever employment is available. "Get a job, get a job, then get a better job" was the message she got from her welfare caseworker. "I didn't...

Why not a new war on poverty? Many former welfare recipients are succeeding at work. But can we make work pay? (Income).
July 15, 2002... THE DEBATE IN WASHINGTON over welfare policy has taken an unfortunate turn: Republicans and many Democrats seem to be in a battle over who can be tougher on poor people rather than who can be tougher on poverty. It's too bad, because in the...

Welfare reform's hidden ally: part of the praise given to welfare reform properly belongs to the Earned Income Tax Credit. (Income).
July 15, 2002... THE EARNED INCOME TAX Credit (EITC) lifts more children out of poverty than any other social program in America--indeed, more than all other means-tested benefit programs combined. That's because it provides a substantial tax credit for...

Forgotten men: the continuing crisis in black male unemployment, and how to remedy it. (Income).(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... ALTHOUGH THE LAST decade has brought unprecedented prosperity to many Americans, the picture has been decidedly mixed for young black men. Their crime rates have dropped, and their school enrollments have increased, but things are not going so...