The American Prospect articles from June 2005

The American Prospect archives from June 2005

Philosophy 101.(PROSPECTS)(Democrates and Democratic Party)
June 1, 2005... HERE IN WASHINGTON, "PROGRESSIVES"--THE preferred term of art these days--have been feeling pretty good lately. George W. Bush's Social Security privatization plan is still stuck in neutral, if not reverse. Tom DeLay, perhaps this town's most...

Japan Inc.?(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... WOW! UNTIL I READ Eamonn Fingleton's article in The American Prospect ["Sun Still Rising,' May 2005], I had no idea how devious the Japanese could be. It turns out the last decade-plus of supposed economic stagnation in that country is all a...

More of the same.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... IN HIS ARTICLE "THINKING about the Government" [May], Geoffrey Nunberg cites my recent book, The Past and Future of America's Economy, dismissing its call for a "fundamentally new approach to government" as "outdated," network-society...

The '60s, again.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... KEVIN MATTSON HAS written a provocative article about the 1960s and '70s ["Goodbye to All That," April] that suggests that the real legacy of the period belongs not to the liberal left but to conservatives and their organizing and...

Food stamped.(Devil in the Details)(food stamps, Republicans plan to snatch from poor elderly)
June 1, 2005... NOT THAT THEY'VE advertised it, but Republicans are gunning for food-stamp recipients. It's all part of their low-visibility war on the poor. In early May, reports surfaced about the nasty surprise they've planned for poor seniors signing...

War requiem.(Devil in the Details)(Marla Ruzicka)(Obituary)
June 1, 2005... MARLA RUZICKA ALWAYS knew how to get people's attention, Lieutenant Lars Ewing told the hundreds of people crammed into Room 325 of the Russell Senate Office Building for her memorial service on May 14. Plainly struggling to retain his...

T-bond fake.(Devil in the Details)(treasury bonds)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... SEEKING TO REASSURE those Americans concerned that replacing Social Security benefits with stock-market investments would be just too risky, President Bush came up with a new alternative at his April 28 press conference. "I propose that one...

Dossier: black gold, Texas tea.(Devil in the Details)(petroleum)
June 1, 2005... In early May, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.18... A year ago, it was $1.89... Also in May, a barrel of light crude oil was quoted at $52... When that price increase was announced, the stock market promptly fell...

Simon does.(Devil in the Details)(Simon Rosenberg)
June 1, 2005... THE NEWEST DEMOCRATIC Party think tank won't be focusing on ideas, big or small. It will be devoted entirely to the art of politics. "My whole fear," said a trim, new-model, salad-munching Joe Trippi at the New Democratic Network's (NDN)...

Oops!(Devil in the Details)(predictions)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Punditry's not an exact science, and even the best writers make the wrong call now and again. Herewith, on our 15th anniversary, a selection of bad predictions from the Prospect archive: August 2003: "Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be the...

Perfectly legal: who paid for Tom DeLay's trips? The more interesting question is why he went to Saipan at all--and what happened after he returned.(Dispatches)
June 1, 2005... THE TROUBLES HOUSE MAJORITY Leader Tom DeLay faces for allowing a lobbyist to pay for overseas trips in violation of House rules provide a perfect example of Los Angeles Times op-ed page editor Michael Kinsley's famous dictum: The real scandal...

Bolton from the blue: Bush's UN pick may yet be headed for First Avenue, but the movement that opposed him emerges from the fight in better shape than he does.(John Bolton, George W. Bush)
June 1, 2005... ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH SENATOR Richard Lugar's droning opening statement in the May 12 confirmation hearing of John Bolton to become the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a yawn made its way around the press table. And it...

The prince and the dissident: behind an Iranian in Washington promoting democracy and nonviolence is a network that includes neocons--and the shah's son.(DISPATCHES)
June 1, 2005... AS A FORMER AIDE-DE-CAMP TO the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei and one of the founders of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Sazegara was once at the radical, sharply anti-American vanguard of that country's Islamic revolution. Operating from...

The death and life of American liberalism: the right has shown that conviction beats vacillation. Can liberals acquire some spine?(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy." --Jon Lovitz playing Michael Dukakis, Saturday Night Live, October 1988 WHY ARE WE LOSING TO THESE GUYS? ON nearly every major issue, public-opinion polls show that the Bush administration and...

The liberal project now: liberals need to remember their first principles, rebuild a majority, and connect to a new generation.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... LIBERALISM IS AT GREATER RISK NOW THAN AT ANY time in recent American history. The risk is of political marginality, even irrelevance. And the reason is not just a shift in partisan control of the federal government. There has been a radical...

Little magazine, big ideas.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)(Editorial)
June 1, 2005... The American Prospect began with a small circulation and great ambitions. Our aim was to rethink ideas about public policy and politics and thereby to restore plausibility and persuasiveness to American liberalism. The first issue appeared in...

Welfare then and now: 1990.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... WELL BEFORE BILL CLINTON pledged to "end welfare as we know it, the first issue of The American Prospect included a long article by Kathryn Edin and myself [see "The Real Welfare Problem," Spring 1990] urging liberals to rethink welfare. Our...

How we found--and lost--a majority: 1991.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... Stanley B. Greenberg's Fall 1991 article, "From Crisis to Working Majority," was widely considered a key manifesto for the 1992 Clinton campaign. Bob Woodward reported that Bill Clinton said he had read it three times. ON THE EVE OF BILL...

As I predicted, only worse: 1992.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... In December 1992, according to Bob Woodward's The Agenda, President-elect Bill Clinton was about to announce Laura Tyson's appointment as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, when Tyson mentioned she and Robert Reich had debated in The...

A kinder, gentler globalization: 1992.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... IN MY DEBATE WITH ROBERT REICH, I made two main arguments. First, the competitiveness of the American economy is linked to the competitiveness of American multinational companies. Second, economic policy should focus on maintaining America's...

Staircase to nowhere: 1992.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... BACK WHEN I WROTE "THE RICH, the Right, and the Facts" for The American Prospect in September 1992, I was trying to get two ideas across: The middle-class society of the postwar era was unraveling, and the right was lying about it. It was...

Boasting on demand: 1994.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... "Are we really on a cliff by the sea, poised perilously above the waves and the rocks? Or are we in fact down by the beach, on a gentle slope of soft and agreeable sand?" "Can't We Go Faster?" TAP, September 1997 I CLAIM THE BEST...

Blacks and the Republican Party: 1995.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... In "The Future of Black Representation" in Fall 1995, Carol Swain warned that racial redistricting was helping Republicans. She's still warning Democrats. CAN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY SUCCESSFULLY attract a growing percentage of the black...

The civic enigma: 1996.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, I began to explore changes in Americans' civic engagement and social connectedness (for which I borrowed the term "social capital") and the impact of those changes on our communities and our democracy. My initial...

Demystifying terrorism: 2001.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... IN OCTOBER 2001, I WROTE A PIECE for the Prospect [see "Excusing Terror] in which I criticized "the politics of ideological apology"--the excuses that some on the left were making for terrorism. No one was justifying terrorism, but we were...

The book club: there have been lots of great progressive books in the last 15 years, so we asked lots of people we like to tell us--quickly!--their favorite one.(15 YEARS OF LIBERAL INTELLIGENCE)
June 1, 2005... TODD GITLIN Professor of journalism and sociology, Columbia University Narrowly squeaking in under the 15-year limit is Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, by Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D....

The DeLay wannabes: four U.S. representatives who deserve special mention--and, in certain instances, criminal investigation.(Tom DeLay)
June 1, 2005... AMID ALL THE TURMOIL OVER HOUSE ETHICS rules and Tom DeLay's expanding assortment of" scandals, the embattled majority" leader's Republican minions quickly resorted to the old" everybody does it" defense. "The things that Tom has been...

Labor's civil war: the Sweeney revolution is definitely over. But is the Sweeney era? Inside the tumultuous battle over labor's future.
June 1, 2005... ON TUESDAY, MAY 3, 167 OF THE AFL-CIO'S 426 employees reported to work to find that their positions had been eliminated. Whole divisions were being scrapped, publications abolished, programs terminated. Some departments w-ere being...

A tax plan for progressives: a simpler and fairer tax code--one that rewards the hard work of the American middle class--can be good policy and smart politics.(TAX POLITICS)
June 1, 2005... FOR FOUR YEARS PRESIDENT BUSH HAS TOUTED his tax cuts as an economic cure-all, but middle-income workers have instead watched helplessly as the tiny tax cut they received has gone to pay for higher property taxes, tuition increases, and...

Talking taxes: can progressives turn public ambivalence over tax policy into winning politics?(TAX POLITICS)
June 1, 2005... GEORGE W. BUSH HAS MADE TAX CUTS THE touchstone of his presidency, supporting new ones each year, with the economy in growth and in recession, with record budget surpluses and record deficits, in peace and in war. Most of his fellow Republicans...

Bush's tax-deform panel: the president's panelists are saying some of the right things, but their "reform" package is a hoax--that can be turned into an opportunity.(TAX POLITICS)
June 1, 2005... THE PRESIDENT'S ADVISORY PANEL on Federal Tax Reform is mouthing some surprisingly attractive lines about improving our tax system. A panel appointed by Mr. Big Deficits points out that "we have lost sight of the fact that the fundamental...

Back from the dead: look out, Grover! There are rifts within the repeal coalition, so the estate tax--aka the "Paris Hilton Benefit Act"--isn't dead quite yet.(TAX POLITICS)
June 1, 2005... ON APRIL 13, THE U.S. HOUSE OF Representatives undertook its annual drill of voting to permanently abolish the federal estate tax, our only tax on inherited wealth. In 2003, the House passed identical legislation. Last time, Congress' projected...

The easy money: the deficit will force politicians to look for revenues, sooner or later. They can start with the $350 billion in taxes owed to the government.(TAX POLITICS)
June 1, 2005... THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE estimates that some $350 billion in taxes owed to the federal government is evaded or otherwise unpaid every year. That sum, also known as the "tax gap," nearly equals the current federal budget deficit. Of...

Lightning, camera, action: as The Birth of a Nation turns 90, its racism is out of bounds, but its more enduring impact can be seen just by turning on the television.(FILM)
June 1, 2005... CAN PHOTOGRAPHS, MOTION PICTURES, and television create social change? Or would it be more accurate to say that these camera-based forms construct a social reality? Michael Moore notwithstanding, the ultimate test case appeared 90 years ago:...

The democracy solution.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... THE CASE FOR DEMOCRACY: THE POWER OF FREEDOM TO OVERCOME TYRANNY AND TERROR BY NATAN SHARANSKY WITH RON DERMER PublicAffairs, 336 pages, $26.95 THE DEMOCRACY ADVANTAGE: HOW DEMOCRACIES PROMOTE PROSPERITY AND PEACE BY MORTON H. HALPERIN,...

Starving for your job.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... THE WORLD IS FLAT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 496 pages, $27.50 I OPENED THOMAS FRIEDMAN'S THE World Is Flat expecting another paean to globalization, and though it surely...

Their babies are everything.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... PROMISES I CAN KEEP: WHY POOR WOMEN PUT MOTHERHOOD BEFORE MARRIAGE BY KATHRYN EDIN AND MARLA KEFALAS University of California Press, 312 pages, $24.95 IN THE AMERICAN PANTHEON OF evildoers, "welfare moms" easily outrank rotten CEOs,...

A life of one's own.(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... THE ETHICS OF IDENTITY BY KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH Princeton University Press, 384 pages, $29.95 MANY OF US, WHEN WE PAUSE to reflect on the larger questions, tend to think of our lives as vast projects that we are responsible for planning,...

Public broadcast(igation).(THE LAST WORD)
June 1, 2005... FOR MANY YEARS, CONSERVATIVES HAVE WARNED us that someday the commissars of political correctness would run amok and impose their opinions on us with our own tax dollars. What they didn't tell us is that they would become those commissars, and...