The American Prospect articles from June 2002

The American Prospect archives from June 2002

The Democrats and the Euro-Left. (Comment).(crisis of the left)
June 3, 2002... IN EUROPE, THE YEAR 1968 HAS always meant only half of what it's meant here in the United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, 1968 was the year of the great youth uprising and the emergence of a distinct New Left. The protesters who took to...

Sins of Petition. (Correspondence).(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
June 3, 2002... CHRIS MOONEY'S "SINS OF Petition" [May 6, 2002] contains some sins of omission that should be clarified. First, many still view embryo cloning as synonymous with embryonic-stem-cell research. The media has fostered this perception, and my...

Control Freaks. (Correspondence).(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
June 3, 2002... NICHOLAS CONFESSORE'S "Control Freaks" [April 8] purports to deplore divisiveness within the gun-violence-prevention movement, but in the process actually foments it. Confessore is aware that the 29 state-based gun-violence-prevention...

Harry and Louise amok. (Devil In The Details).(political advertising on stem-cell research)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... EVERY SO OFTEN, THE night-and-day difference between the world according to Washingtonians and the world according to everyone else strikes us with renewed force. How else to explain the growing Beltway cult of Harry and Louise? Yes, the...

Bush's levelers. (Devil In The Details).(rules on mountaintop mining)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... THE ADMINISTRATION IS finally heeding the biblical commandment to raise the low places. Brushing aside the opposition from dozens of congressmen of both parties, the Environmental Protection Agency recently unveiled new rules permitting...

Swedes, strapped. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... THIS JUST IN FROM SOMETHING called the Swedish Research Institute of Trade (HUI): Your typical Swede is less well-off than all but the poorest Americans. Measured by after-tax income and adjusted for purchasing power, the authors of this study...

America: the short course. (Devil In The Details).(income inequality)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES corrections, April 25: "A headline yesterday about a study of income inequality misstated the number of states in which the gap between rich and poor has widened over the last two decades. It is 44 states, not 5."

Dick Armey, thinker. (Devil In The Details).(solution for Middle East conflict)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... On May 1, House Majority Leader Dick Armey appeared on CNBC's Hardball and, with a little help from host Chris Matthews, thought through his ideas on a solution for the turmoil in the Middle East. Here are some excerpts. ARMEY: I'm...

Voluntary disasters. (Networks).(Texas environmental policies under Bush)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... CATCH THIS: INDUSTRY executives and top government officials secretly meet to draft regulatory legislation, are caught by watchdog groups, and then refuse to release documents from the meetings. Sound like President Bush's energy commission?...

No sweat. (Networks).(socially responsible clothing factory SweatX)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... TALK ABOUT BUCKING A TREND: IMAGINE opening a socially responsible garment operation in Los Angeles. That's exactly what ice cream guru Ben Cohen and student and labor activists did when they launched SweatX, an employee-owned clothing...

If Congress won't ... (Networks).(California proposal to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from cars)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... THE CALIFORNIA SENATE has completed action on legislation that could cap levels of carbon-dioxide emissions from cars. That means the second of four steps has been taken in the proposal's journey to become the first U.S. law directly addressing...

Drugs, terror, and evictions. (In The Contrary).(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... THANKS PARTLY TO ITS ASSOCIATION WITH 1960s counterculture, marijuana use has long been considered vaguely un-American. Never mind that millions of Americans have indulged in it. The pot-smoking pinkos of yesterday are--according to the Bush...

Hidden injuries of class: undermining OSHA by a thousand cuts. (Below The Beltway).
June 3, 2002... TAKE A GOOD DOSE OF FREE-MARKET ideology, mix in political debts to your business backers and an overriding concern with re-election, and voila: You have the recipe for George W. Bush's domestic policies. The imperative of re-election has...

George Bush's Texas trouble: why the Democrats may take the Lone Star State. (Gazette).
June 3, 2002... WHEN KAREN HUGHES announced her decision to leave the White House and return to Texas, the only thing Washington could agree on was that it was a loss for George W. Bush. It was Hughes who helped Bush find his voice during the 2000 elections,...

A dollar short: Bush's budget defunds Bush's education plan. (Gazette).(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... THE WEB SITE OF DEMOCRATIC Congressman George Miller of California features a touching photo of the signing of the education reform bill at an Ohio school on January 8. Flanked by beaming African-American children, Miller, Democratic Senator...

Guerrillas in our midst: is the United States harboring terrorists? (Gazette).(Southeast Asian dissident organizations in US)
June 3, 2002... THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE Government of Free Vietnam (GFVN) would fit right into the guerilla campaigns of 1930s China or modern-day Colombia. Along the building's walls, reams of photos show Free Vietnam troops training at secret Southeast Asian...

States blow off Bush. (The Taxonomist).(state response to corporate tax cuts)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... WHILE POLITICIANS IN WASHINGTON HAVE BEEN FALLING over themselves to provide huge new tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, the story in the states is quite different and quite heartening. Take, for starters, states' response to the...

The ideological impostor: run left, govern right: the fraudulence of the Bush presidency.(Cover Story)
June 3, 2002... IN THE 2000 ELECTION, THE VOTERS OF THIS COUNTRY could have been forgiven for sizing up George W. Bush as a cross between a moderate Republican and DLC Democrat. Here are some of the things he said while campaigning: In a stirring passage...

Fortress Denmark? After a fierce campaign battle over immigration, a social democratic stronghold takes a turn to the right.
June 3, 2002... JEAN-MARIE LE PEN SHOCKED THE WORLD ON APRIL 21 when he eliminated socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round of France s presidential election. But Le Pen's triumph was merely the latest in a string of right-wing electoral...

Marijuana, heroin, and cocaine: the war on drugs may be a disaster, but do we really want a legalized peace?
June 3, 2002... WHAT WOULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN IF DRUGS were legalized in America? For the last decade advocates of such a course, though politically weak, have dominated the intellectual debate for the simple reason that their criticism of existing policy holds a...

You say you want a revolution: a new film from Eric Rohmer, old man of the New Wave. (The Critics Film).(The Lady and the Duke)
June 3, 2002... ERIC ROHMER'S FILMS ARE notoriously talky. In his Six Moral Tales, Comedies and Proverbs, and Tales of the Four Seasons cycles, the restlessly sexy, searching characters spend most of their time lounging on lawn chairs and engaging one another...

The politics of dog: when globalization and culinary practice clash. (Food).(Korean dog eating)
June 3, 2002... THE LINE DIVIDING ACCEPTABLE from unacceptable meat is sometimes a fine one. While vegetarians naturally reject meat of all kinds, the rest of America maintains some form of double standard--chicken but not crow, beef but not horse, venison but...

Civilization and its discontents: a video game makes you ponder the nature of history. (Obsessions).
June 3, 2002... CULTURAL NOVELTIES ARE many, but genuinely new art forms don't come along very often. The computer game may be to our time what film was to the early twentieth century. There's a cultural divide about this--literate young people in their...

Fiddling with nature.(Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution By Francis Fukuyama)
June 3, 2002... Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution By Francis Fukuyama. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 256 pages, $25.00 AS MANY ASTUTE OBSERVERS have pointed out, controversial new ideas are assimilated in three stages. First...

The voter as legislator.(Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America By Richard J. Ellis)
June 3, 2002... Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America By Richard J. Ellis. University Press of Kansas, 264 pages, $17.95 RICHARD ELLIS ALWAYS VOTES no. Since moving to Oregon in 1990 to teach political science at Willamette University,...

Summer learning. (Where we stand: a commentary on public education and other critical issues).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... As spring turns to summer, flowers bloom, children move from schools to pools, and state governments begin to make their difficult decisions about what they will be able to allocate in the coming year for public services like education....

Good news. (Comment).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... "TELL ME SOME GOOD NEWS," said my old friend Mike Miller, an indefatigable progressive and source of wise counsel. We were having a late afternoon coffee, talking politics and commiserating about the general state of political disengagement. It...

The new politics of diversity. (Comment).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN higher education is almost certainly on its way back to the Supreme Court in the wake of contradictory appellate decisions about racial preferences in admissions. Ten years ago it seemed that the Court might strike down...

Who is Roger Hertog? (Correspondence).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... IN MICHAEL TOMASKY'S "Who is Roger Hertog?" [May 6, 2002], New York Sun editor Seth Lipsky informs us that it was from Forward's offices that Jay Lovestone sent the newspaper's money to Irving Brown, who supported anti-Communist segments of the...

Masterful. (Correspondence).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... IN HIS REVIEW OF ROBERT Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson [May 20], Robert Mann tells us that LBJ's work on the weak Civil Rights Act of 1957 "made possible the landmark bills of the 1960s." This is preposterous: It was the civil rights...

The Tyranny of Triangulation. (Correspondence).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... NICHOLAS CONFESSORE'S "The Tyranny of Triangulation" [May 20] incorrectly suggests that Senator Joseph Lieberman was slow to lead the fight against the Bush administration's efforts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Lieberman, in...

Inventing America. (Correspondence).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... IN HIS REVIEW OF JAMES F. Simon's What Kind of Nation [May 20], Garrett Epps reports that 10 years ago he had to fight his way through weeds and brambles to visit John Marshall's grave in Richmond and that he "would not be surprised to find the...

Don't look it's a war! (Devil In The Details).(national security)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... AS DICK CHENEY SEES IT, the very idea that the public has a right to know what went wrong with our security agencies in the months before September 11 falls somewhere between treason and heresy. On the Sunday morning news shows, the Dick of...

George W., Poll Junkie. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... BACK WHEN PRESIDENT Bush was still candidate Bush, harping on the need to restore honor and integrity to the Oval Office, one of his most reliable applause lines was his pledge to govern "not by polls and focus groups, but by principle"--an...

Top secret, sometimes. (Devil In The Details).(covert intelligence spending)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... In mid-May, under a front-page headline proclaiming, "Congress Mores to Lift Intelligence Spending," The Washington Post reported that the total budget for the CIA and Pentagon spy agencies had reached almost $35 billion. Among Beltway...

Seeding victories. (Networks).(Appleseed Foundation)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... IN SEARCH OF LEAN AND competitive organizations, we recently stumbled across this medium-sized, nine-year-old dynamo: the Appleseed Foundation. From its Washington, D.C., headquarters, the foundation spends about $1 million annually, working...

Amenesty's new portfolio. (Networks).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... IN THE CURRENT AGE OF GLOBALIZATION, the social contract between business and society is being renegotiated." That, at least, is how Morton Winston describes the philosophy driving Amnesty International's (AI) entrance into the maturing field...

I snoop. (On The Contrary).(National Neighborhood Watch Program)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SPY and a snoop? It's not merely semantic. Snoops are objects of derision--nosy neighbors, Peeping Toms, or perverts. Spies are heroes, or antiheroes at least, as the resilience of James Bond fantasies attest. So...

Swinging seniors: why voters will decide 2002. (Below The Beltway).
June 17, 2002... ON ITS FACE, THE UNITED Seniors Association (USA) decision two weeks ago to launch a major advertising blitz in support of the House Republicans' prescription-drug proposal was not unusual. The pharmaceutical industry, which funds the USA, has...

Senatorial heresy: the Democrats rethink free trade. (Gazette).
June 17, 2002... FEW THINGS IN CONTEMPORARY American politics have been more certain than the Senate's support for free trade. While the critics and criticisms of global laissez-faire have been growing in number and the House's support for free trade has become...

Savage business: what has become of Enron's former directors? (Gazette).
June 17, 2002... FRANK SAVAGE'S RECORD IS appalling, even by the standards of Enron board members. He is a director of the investment firm Alliance Capital Management (he also chaired one of its divisions), which until recently was Enron's largest institutional...

Spontaneous fission: a dispatch from Jerusalem. (Gazette).
June 17, 2002... I NOTICED IT THE FIRST TIME ONE day when I took a cab downtown. I avoid buses; they blow up on occasion. Next to the Old City walls, the taxi turned left off King Solomon Street. And there, at the start of Jaffa Road (West Jerusalem's main...

Why warnings fell on deaf ears; for the Bush administration, the Cold War never ended--so al-Qaeda had to get in line behind more serious enemies. (Gazette).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... WHAT DID THE PRESIDENT know and when did he know it? Following revelations that the White House had reason to suspect an imminent al-Qaeda attack last year, The New York Times has noted that the perennial post-Watergate question seems entirely...

The Bush plan: tax complification; the president's cuts push us toward a flat rate and more paperwork. (The Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... DOES GEORGE BUSH HAVE A SECRET PLAN TO IMPOSE A flat tax? I can't read his mind but one thing is clear: Unless the president's tax program adopted last year is amended, by the end of this decade most of the personal income tax revenue will come...

Tax the wealthy: why America needs the estate tax. (Common Wealth).
June 17, 2002... FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, A POWERFUL GROUP OF special-interest organizations has waged a multimillion-dollar campaign to turn public opinion against a tax that falls on the wealthiest 2 percent of the population. It worked. The "death tax," many...

Who gets to retire? A Republican pension plan could mean seniors will spend their golden years working under the Golden Arches.
June 17, 2002... ON THE DAY TELEVISION BEAMED AROUND THE world images of tearful Enron employees stunned at the looting of their 401(k)s by the company's top brass, pension reform became a top congressional priority. As the scandal rippled across corporate...

Confederate flap: rebels with an old cause reclaim their town's not-so-glorious heritage with the assistance of a black mayor.
June 17, 2002... DURING THE 1920s, T.C. WILLIAMS'S FATHER purchased some lots surrounding the family's modest home in Suffolk, Virginia. The youngest of eight children, Williams, now 82, is a true Suffolkian--a term longtime residents of this city, sandwiched...

Dogtown chronicles: a superb documentary shows how 1970s skateboarders transformed ah American subculture. (The Critics Film).
June 17, 2002... THE VICIOUS DROUGHT THAT struck California in the mid-1970s killed lawns, turned golf courses to dust, and created the modern skateboarder. A team of street riders from "Dogtown"--south Santa Monica--began hitting Los Angeles's dried-out...

Kool houses, kold cities: as an architect, Rem Koolhaas is inspired. As an urban planner, he's irresponsible. (Architecture).
June 17, 2002... EVEN IF YOU DON'T LIKE TO shop, go to the intersection of Broadway and Prince streets in SoHo to witness, and become part of, the spectacle of Prada's recently opened flagship store. The design by Rem Koolhaas is architecture at its most...

Unbelievable evil.
June 17, 2002... "A Problem from Hell" America and the Age of Genocide By Samantha Power. Basic Books, 610 pages, $30.00 EARLY IN 1942 JAN KARSKI, A young Polish diplomat, smuggled himself into the Warsaw ghetto, where he witnessed Nazi atrocities in...

The ends of human rights.
June 17, 2002... Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry By Michael Ignatieff, with contributions by K. Anthony Appiah, David A. Hollinger, Thomas W. Laqueur, and Diane F. Orentlicher. Edited and introduced by Amy Gutmann. Princeton University Press, 187 pages,...

Power and plunder.
June 17, 2002... Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe By Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs, 243 pages, $26.00 BY THE TIME ROBERT MUGABE had led a guerrilla war against Ian Smith's white regime in Rhodesia and spent 11 years in prison,...