The American Prospect articles from June 2006

The American Prospect archives from June 2006

The real tax test.(PROSPECTS)
June 1, 2006... IRAQ IN CONTINUING MELTDOWN. OIL PRICES AT record highs. Forty-five million uninsured. A still-large budget deficit and an ever-increasing debt. How to respond? Hey, let's cut taxes! That was the congressional rejoinder to our nation's several...

Labor in pain.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... AMERICAN UNIONS ARE sinking slowly toward extinction in no small part because their parochial, self-serving leadership refuses to take even the slightest responsibility for a decline unprecedented in the advanced industrialized world: 50 years...

Bravo, Tomasky.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... FROM MICHAEL TOMASKY ["Party in Search of a Notion," May] we at last have recognition of what we've been missing! His article has the makings of a political philosophy for Democrats--exactly the right one, just when we need it most, starting at...

Wrong, Tomasky.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... I THINK THERE ARE SOME serious problems with Michael Tomasky's article. His recent intellectual history of the Democratic Party is highly misleading. Interest-group liberalism was not something foisted on the Democrats by Students for a...

For the record.(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2006... I'D LIKE TO BRING TO YOUR readers' attention an editing error in my Prospect article, "The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy [April]." My original piece estimated that 25 percent of our transportation fuels could be displaced by plant...

"W" as in wonk.(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... IN MAY, THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED THE SEMI-SURREAL news that George W. Bush, mulling his legacy, is hatching plans to "create a public policy center with his presidential library after he leaves office in 2009." No other presidential library...

Spying lying.(Up Front)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... In April 2004, Bush discussed ongoing efforts to track down terrorists: "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires--a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way."...

Hard out here for a pimp.(Kyle "Dusty" Foggo )(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Only in America could it make sense for former CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo to concede through a spokesperson that he had, indeed, been present at poker parties thrown by Brent Wilkes, a lobbyist accused of bribing public officials...

Bush lied, fish died?(Up Front)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... In a German tabloid in May, the President was asked what his finest moment in office had been and reportedly responded, "When I caught a 7-and-a-half-pound perch on my lake." (The worst moment, the angler in chief reported, was 9-11.)...

"Speaking of tomatoes ...".(postwar reconstruction)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Agriculture Department employees recently received a startling e-mail memo informing them that the "President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror into speeches,...

Goo-goo Mike.(Up Front)(Jack Abramoff)(Michael Scanlon)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... Months ago, Up Front noted how disgraced (and now imprisoned) ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff sounded like a congressional ethics czar in interview comments he made arguing that his own activities revealed the need for systemic reform. Turns out he...

Which is dumber?(Up Front)(Alphonso Jackson of Department of Housing and Urban Development's denial of contract)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... In late April, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson boasted to a Dallas audience that political loyalty rather than quality of proposal determines who can win a lucrative HUB contract. Jackson discussed...

The question: if the fish thing's no. 1, what's the Bush presidency's second best moment?(Up Front)(Brief article)
June 1, 2006... "Bush's Ground Zero bullhorn moment, one of the best presidential images ever. He's since only looked Ahab-ish attempting to recapture it." --Chuck Todd, editor in chief of The Hotline "Having Jackson Square to himself a week after...

Parliament lament.(THE OUT YEARS)
June 1, 2006... SUPPOSE THAT YOU WANTED TO FIND A LIST OF THE 30 or 40 Republican members of Congress most vulnerable to defeat this fall (and assume that you couldn't afford the Cook Political Report). Here's an easy trick: Take a particularly egregious piece...

Courting an advantage.(judicial nominations)
June 1, 2006... THE TEMPORARY LULL IN JUDICIAL CONFIRMATION battles has come to an end. Hoping to ramp up its base in time for the midterm elections, the White House recently promised supporters that it will flood the Senate with more right-wing appeals court...

Blood not-so-simple: should unconsenting civilians be used in tests for a blood substitute?(SCIENCE)
June 1, 2006... A "NO-CONSENT" MEDICAL STUDY of an experimental blood substitute is creating an uproar among researchers and bioethicists. Controversy over the study, which is under way at 31 hospitals across the nation, is pulling back the curtain on similar...

Credit hog: Mitt Romney got more props than he deserved for health-care reform.(POLITICS)
June 1, 2006... THE BILL CLINTON OF THE 2008 election is not, in fact, likely to share his surname. Hillary will probably run, to be sure. But the part Clinton played in 1992--that of an attractive, technocratic, successful governor from a state normally...

Woman at point zero: Egypt's most famous feminist seeks reform the second time around.(EGYPT)(Nawal el Saadawi)
June 1, 2006... CAIRO, EGYPT -- THE VIEW FROM THE 26TH FLOOR of Nawal el Saadawi's apartment in Shoubra Gardens, a working-class neighborhood in east Cairo, may once have been spectacular. But as I sit in a rattan chair in Saadawi's sunroom, enjoying a...

Vive les jeunes: the French students were right to protest--and we can prove it!(FRANCE)
June 1, 2006... IN EARLY APRIL, AFTER WEEKS OF massive student demonstrations, the French government backed down and withdrew its proposed changes in national labor law. Under French law, workers are protected from arbitrary firings by a system that requires...

Ken.(John Kenneth Galbraith, American economists)(Obituary)
June 1, 2006... JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH. 1908-2006 "Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking." --JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH LOVED words. Above all, he loved words he and others wrote...

Burnt offering: how a 2003 secret overture from Tehran might have led to a deal on Iran's nuclear capacity--if the Bush administration hadn't rebuffed it.(INVESTIGATION)
June 1, 2006... IRAN'S "MAD MULLAHS" WANT NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO destroy Israel and can only be stopped by the threat or use of military force. That's what the Bush administration would have the public believe, as it pushes toward a confrontation with Iran over...

The Commissar's in Town: very little happens at State regarding the Middle East without the knowledge and approval of Cheney--not Dick, but Liz, his powerful, secretive daughter.(REPORT)(Elizabeth "Liz" Cheney appointed to Department of State)
June 1, 2006... AT THE VERY HEART OF U.S. MIDDLE EAST policy, from the war in Iraq to pressure for regime change in Iran and Syria to the spread of free-market democracy in the region, sits the 39-year-old daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney. Elizabeth...

Who's your daddy party? Fifty-plus war veterans, retired Navy men, a sheriff, a prosecutor, and a former star quarterback all running for Congress--as Democrats?!? Wasn't the GOP supposed to be the Testosterone Party? How our most macho president brought his party's hetero-hegemony to an end.(Cover story)
June 1, 2006... PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH HAS MADE THAT STATEMENT MANY TIMES. So has Vice President Dick Cheney. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Multiple principals endlessly repeating themselves--that's the mark of a premium White House talking point....

Pastor strangelove: Texan John Hagee may not have his "perfect red heifer" yet. But he does have a huge following, the ear of the White House--and a theory that an invasion of Iran was foretold (we're not making this up) in the Book of Esther.(REPORT)
June 1, 2006... ON PURIM, THE JEWISH HOLIDAY THAT CELEBRATES the day Queen Esther saved the Jews from annihilation, Trinity Broadcasting Net-work's flagship talk show, Praise the Lord, featured an appearance by Rabbi Daniel Lapin. A politically conservative...

The doable dozen: whether or not the Democrats have a Big Idea, they--and some Republicans, too!--have a slew of very good small ones. Here's an unscientific list of 12 that don't ask for the moon but deserve to see the light of day.(THE IDEA FACTORY)
June 1, 2006... NATIONAL HEALTH CARE? DEMOLITION AND RECONSTRUCTION of the tax code? A comprehensive war on poverty? Well, maybe not--yet. But if the pollsters are right and Election 2006 proves to be a dark day for the right and a bright dawn for the left,...

Accidental tourists: The Road to Guantanamo, an unflinching dramatization of the case of Britain's Tipton Three, depicts degradation just for degradation's sake.
June 1, 2006... HAD THEY BEEN BORN AND RAISED on this side of the Atlantic, they might have turned up as characters in a Bruce Springsteen ballad. They are the sort Springsteen tends to memorialize: Their roots are in a faded manufacturing neighborhood; their...

Not so fast.(The Good Fight: Why Liberals, and Only Liberals, Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... THE GOOD FIGHT: WHY LIBERALS--AND ONLY LIBERALS--CAN WIN THE WAR ON TERROR AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN BY PETER BEINART HarperCollins, 304 pages, $25.95 HAS THE TIME COME FOR LIBERALS to put Iraq behind us? The answer depends to some...

Truth in capitalism.(The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM BY JOHN C. BOGLE Yale University Press, 260 pages, $25.00 THE STOCK MARKET COLLAPSE OF 2000-2001 was the most serious since the crash of 1929. But unlike the earlier Great Crash, the recent one led...

How the war was lost.(Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq)(Book review)
June 1, 2006... COBRA II: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ BY MICHAEL GORDON AND BERNARD TRAINOR Pantheon Books, 603 Pages, $27.95 THIS VIVID BOOK WRAPS A POLITICAL bombshell inside a riveting tale. Its central chapters deliver a...

Truly locked in the cabinet.(THE LAST WORD)(John W. Snow)
June 1, 2006... SHORTLY AFTER THE SENATE CONFIRMED JOHN Snow's nomination as Treasury secretary at the end of January 2003, Snow phoned me. He wanted to thank me for the guidance I had indirectly given him for how to survive a nomination hearing in my...