The American Prospect articles from June 2003

The American Prospect archives from June 2003

The Bush bankruptcy plan.
June 1, 2003... We are used to politicians moderating their programs once in office. But George W. Bush has done the opposite, ratcheting up his plans to the applause of conservatives while much of the public still doesn't grasp the radical implications of...

Savings incentives for the poor. (Correspondence).(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2003... JARED BERNSTEIN OFFERS a very useful perspective on savings and asset-building efforts thus far ["Savings Incentives for the Poor," May 2003], and I agree with him and Robert Kuttner ["Sharing America's Wealth"] that our largest challenges...

Beyond left and right. (Correspondence).(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2003... ROBERT KUTTNER'S ARTICLE "Beyond Left and Right" [April], which raised issues about some of Demos' work and that of the New America Foundation, was thoughtful and well argued. We agree that work in the public arena that is not anchored in a...

Jacobins of the GOP. (Devil in the Details).
June 1, 2003... IT'S A MOMENT THAT ALL successful revolutions face: Your enemies have all been dispatched, so you proceed to turn on your own people. The pattern was set in revolutionary France, where, once the monarchy was beheaded, the aristocracy exiled and...

Neo for hire. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... SPEAKING OF THE DEFENSE Policy Board, its former chairman, Richard Perle, just can't seem to stay out of the news. In March, Perle was compelled to step down from the chairmanship (though not the board) after reports he'd lobbied for Global...

Bringing food and shelters. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... MEANWHILE, THE BUSH folks have dramatic plans to rebuild the Iraqi economy in their own image: privatized, with an electronic-trading stock market and, for all we know, no taxes on dividends. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, USAID is...

Perpetual politics in California ... (Devil in details).
June 1, 2003... TO EVERYTHING THERE is--or at least there should be--a season, but for the Republican right, election season never ends. The movement to place a recall of California Gov. Gray Davis on the ballot later this year is on simmer but could soon be...

While you were sleeping. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... You've heard of Miguel Estrada, Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen. But compared with Bush's recent nominee for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr., they're moderates, if not downright...

Brave new words. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... MAN ON DOG Journalists are always after "man bites dog" or "wag the dog" stories, but rarely do they get the chance to use this phrase. Now, thanks to Sen. Rick Santorum, they've had to. Santorum, as he recently made clear, finds homosexuality...

... And in Texas. (Devil in the Details).
June 1, 2003... LIKE RUST, TOM DELAY never sleeps. The bug exterminator's latest stunt is to reopen the decennial reapportionment process in states where legislatures became more Republican in the last election, so that congressional district lines can be...

Vast right-wing conspiracy. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... Franklin Graham, put a sock in it! The good reverend may think there's an unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Islam, but the Bush administration is plainly eager to construct a Fundamentalist International where part of its base--the...

Heroes & zeroes. (Devil in the Details).
June 1, 2003... SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY Pledges to cap Bush tax cut at $350 billion REP. DICK GEPHARDT Universal health-care plan is first big idea of 2004 campaign GUERILLA LEGISLATORS Texas Democrats hide in the hills to block GOP power...

Candidates' scorecard: taxes. (Devil in the Details).
June 1, 2003... BUSH'S 2001 TAX CUT COST $1.35 trillion. The tax cut failed to create jobs. Its main purpose seems to be relief for the rich and wreckage of public outlay. When Bush proposed his big cut in 2001, some Democrats were afraid to resist it...

Off the Wall Street Journal. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2003... The misnamed Club for Growth (nee the tax-club lobby) has been working hand in glove with the Bush White House to put pressure on anti-deficit Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich, who've said they'll vote for "only" $350 billion...

Kant and Mill in Baghdad. (Below The Beltway).
June 1, 2003... In justifying their war against Iraq, the Bush administration and its supporters based their case primarily on the threat to the United States posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties with al-Qaeda. But to date, American and British...

Bush's Poodle? The plight of Tony Blair--and American Democrats. (Dispatches).
June 1, 2003... TONY BLAIR'S FACE SAYS IT ALL. IT IS etched with ruts and gullies where once there were laughter lines and humane creases. His cheeks have fallen in. The mental, political and emotional traumas of the last six months have left their indelible...

Our sitting president: Bush's lack of foreign travel undermines American diplomacy. (Dispatches).
June 1, 2003... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S INABILITY to garner broad international support for its Iraq plans may go down in history as the result of the biggest diplomatic miscalculation since British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed "peace in our...

Rock and a hard place: how moderate Republicans are getting strong-armed by Bush. (Dispatches).
June 1, 2003... DON'T ENVY OLYMPIA SNOWE. IN THE last two months, the Republican senator from Maine has been called to the White House for personal lobbying by the president and vice president, cornered by the House Ways and Means Committee chairman on the...

Small-town blues: building prisons is good business--just not for citizens. (Dispatches).
June 1, 2003... ON APRIL 17, ABOUT 50 RESIDENTS OF Encinal, Texas, drove across the railway tracks to the Veterans' Hall community center to debate whether the impoverished town should add a large, privately run U.S. Marshals Service prison to its meager list...

Parents fight back. (Comment).
June 1, 2003... Ms. S. is a young, attractive single mother who used to work full-time for a marketing company in New York City. She was named employee of the month several times, and when the company decided to do some television promotion, she was asked to...

Another corporate tax cut? (The Taxonomist).
June 1, 2003... As I write this, the House has just passed its version of the Third Annual Bush Tax Cut and the Senate is about to debate its bill. Both measures are irresponsible, gimmick-ridden, economically wrongheaded and heavily tilted toward the rich....

Get happy! (Comment).
June 1, 2003... Not many commentators have been as insistent as I have that the Democrats stop letting themselves get kicked around and learn to play hardball the way the right plays it, an argument I've made in this magazine [see "Dems' Fightin' Words," TAP,...

Squandering prosperity: George W. Bush has the worst economic record of any president since Herbert Hoover. But can the Democrats exploit that at all?
June 1, 2003... ECONOMISTS ARE ADMITTING TO CONFUSION, ALWAYS A bad sign. The American economy has entered "a baffling twilight zone," writes Robert J. Samuelson. "People yearn for clarity and confidence, while the new stagnation provides mainly uncertainty...

America's global role: why the fight for a worldwide open society begins at home.
June 1, 2003... ON MAY 27, 1999, AT THE INVITATION OF THEN-DEAN PAUL Wolfowitz, I delivered a commencement address at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. I spoke about my vision for a global open society and Wolfowitz, now...

W.'s Christian nation: how Bush promotes religion and erodes the separation of church and state.
June 1, 2003... IN NOVEMBER OF 1992, SHORTLY AFTER BILL CLINTON WAS elected president, a telling controversy arose at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association. When a reporter asked the governors how their party could both satisfy the demands of...

American bioscience meets the American Dream: here and abroad, the road to self-fulfillment is lined with drugs and surgery.
June 1, 2003... "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." When Jacques Barzun made this famous diagnosis of American life in 1954, Wallace Laboratories was preparing to introduce the nation to a new drug called Miltown....

Embed or in bed? The war, the media and the truth. (Media).
June 1, 2003... IN A STANDARD SUPPLEMENT TO THEIR regular war package, mainstream media now occasionally feature--what else?--mainstream media criticism. This time around, the two prime subjects were (1) embedded reporters and (2) bombastic cable networks....

Will and testament: what Iranian filmmakers are showing the wider world. (Film).
June 1, 2003... ABBAS KIAROSTAMI WAS PHILOSOPHICAL about the whole mess. U.S. officials had just denied the world-renowned filmmaker--and "axis of evil" Iranian citizen--a visa to attend last fall's New York Film Festival. "I certainly do not deserve an entry...

The great crash, Part II.(5 books on corporate corruption)(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... IN THE COMPANY OF OWNERS: THE TRUTH ABOUT STOCK OPTIONS (AND WHY EVERY EMPLOYEE SHOULD HAVE THEM) BY JOSEPH BLASI, DOUGLAS KRUSE AND AARON BERNSTEIN * BASIC BOOKS * $27.50 * 344 PAGES PIPE DREAMS: GREED, EGO, AND THE DEATH OF ENRON BY...

Gentle Europe, tough America.(HARSH JUSTICE: CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT AND THE WIDENING DIVIDE BETWEEN AMERICA AND EUROPE)(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... HARSH JUSTICE: CRIMINAL PUNISHMENT AND THE WIDENING DIVIDE BETWEEN AMERICA AND EUROPE BY JAMES Q. WHITMAN * OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS * 311 PAGES * $35.00 THIS PAST MARCH, A SHARPLY DIVIDED Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of...

Must democracy wait?(THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM: ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY AT HOME AND ABROAD)(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM: ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY AT HOME AND ABROAD BY FAREED ZAKARIA * W.W. NORTON * 286 PAGES * $24.95 FAREED ZAKARIA'S WIDE-RANGING examination of the difficulties and downsides of democracy makes gripping reading today,...

Shop 'til you drop.(A CONSUMERS' REPUBLIC: THE POLITICS OF MASS CONSUMPTION IN POSTWAR AMERICA )(Book Review)
June 1, 2003... A CONSUMERS' REPUBLIC: THE POLITICS OF MASS CONSUMPTION IN POSTWAR AMERICA BY LIZABETH COHEN * NEW YORK * ALFRED A. KNOPF * 567 PAGES * $35.00 IN MANY A FAMILY MEMORY, THE 25 years between the end of World War II and the economic crisis of...

Democratic economics. (The last word).
June 1, 2003... George W. Bush's sales plan for his tax cut is much the same as the one for his war on Iraq. * Use whatever the public is concerned about, even though the solution has almost nothing to do with that concern. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld...