The American Prospect articles from June 2008

The American Prospect archives from June 2008

The trade debate we need.(PROSPECTS)
June 1, 2008... AN ANXIETY BORDERING ON PANIC IS UNNERVING America's economic elites as political support for "free trade" dwindles, along with declining earnings. While mainstream economists have long contended that trade had minimal effects on wages,...

R-e-s-p-e-c-t.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I AGREE WITH ROBERT Kuttner that human-service jobs should be "good jobs" that pay living wages with good benefits ["Good Jobs for Americans Who Help Americans," May 2008]. Unfortunately, Kuttner fails to acknowledge...

Manufacturing solutions.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
June 1, 2008... ALL THAT'S SAID IN THE articles in the May 2008 issue by Damon Silvers, Kevin Phillips, and Knttner ["Fixing the Economy" series] and Kate Sheppard ["The Green Gap"] is true but insufficient. They miss a key manifestation of the increasing...

From the executive editor.(CORRESPONDENCE)
June 1, 2008... REPUBLICANS AND CONSERVATIVES ARE, TO STEAL A 45-year-old line from Tom Lehrer, beginning to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis. A record-low percentage of Americans think well of them. Their presumptive presidential nominee has...

Does Jenna swing?(Up Front)(Jenna Bush)(Brief article)
June 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IS JENNA BUSH--THE BLOND HALF OF THE ONCE HARD-partying Bush twins--a swing voter? One of the horde of young women upon whom pollsters tell us the fate of the Democratic Party could depend this November? On Larry...

Shy McCain.(Up Front)(John McCain)(Brief article)
June 1, 2008... In a recent column, the newly punditized Karl Rove bemoaned John McCain's oh-so principled refusal to discuss his heroic war record. If only, Rove moaned, people knew just how noble and brave McCain is. Of course, back on planet Earth McCain...

Marginalia.(Up Front)(Brief article)
June 1, 2008... F. Scott Fitzgerald may have famously opined that there are no second acts in American lives, but he failed to account for the effect of third parties on second acts. Consider Alaska's Mike Gravel, who left the Democrats in March to seek the...

The question: "wine track" is passe. what food better symbolizes the elite?(Up front)(Quotation)
June 1, 2008... "The blood of the working class." --Eric Rauchway, professor, University of California, Davis "After my first game at the new Washington Nationals stadium, I have to say hot dogs." --Michael Gehrke, research director, Democratic...

Beer upscales.(Up Front)(Brief article)
June 1, 2008... Is beer a beer-track drink anymore? Start with the rerouting of corn into ethanol, add soaring fuel prices and bad weather, mix in a fire in the warehouse holding a significant chunk of America's hops stock, and voila! The price of hops, a key...

Memo.(Parody)(on John McCain)
June 1, 2008... "No fewer than four McCain staffers and advisers mentioned as a possible vice-presidential pick the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They're tempted by the idea of picking someone so young.... It might also be a way to confront...

Battle of the budget slide shows.(THE OUT YEARS)(health-care spending)
June 1, 2008... "SAVING OUR FUTURE REQUIRES TOUGH CHOICES today" may be a banal sentiment, but it's not an easy one to challenge. That is the headline on the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour," a slide show created by David M. Walker, formerly head of the Government...

Pedal pusher.(COMMENT)
June 1, 2008... THIS SPRING, AS THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES were busy arguing over the advisability of lifting the gas tax for the summer months, I bought a bike. It was something I had been meaning to do since I first moved from Rhode Island to Washington,...

Can identity politics save the right? Fresh out of other options, the Republican Party's bid to regain power is likely to come in the form of a pander to "real Americans.".
June 1, 2008... There are two points at which a political party or an ideological faction can find its voice and begin to claim power. One, of course, is when it is at the height of confidence and electoral success, like Ronald Reagan's conservatives in 1981....

Offshoring Silicon Valley: American computer software engineers go the way of factory workers.
June 1, 2008... In The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, Steven Greenhouse, the veteran New York Times labor writer, provides a panoramic picture of American workers struggling with an economic order that demands more of them while offering...

How big government got its groove back: the New Democrats' intellectual architect argues that today's economy requires an expanded role for government.
June 1, 2008... In 1996, President Bill Clinton proclaimed that the era of big government was over. It is now clear that the era of the end of big government is over. The post-World War II social contract--an expanding public safety net, provision of...

The Officers' War: The case of Iraq War opponent Lt. Ehren Watada reveals the toll the war has taken on career military personnel.
June 1, 2008... For a junior Army officer named Ehren Watada, the road to Damascus was a two-lane street called Firing Center Road, which cuts through cow pastures in Yakima County, Washington. The air is bone dry, heavy with the smell of sagebrush, and the...

This old medium: the new museum of journalism only serves to highlight how the industry has failed to fully adapt to the digital age.(MEDIA)(Newseum)
June 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN HIS 2004 BOOK, THE VANISHING Newspaper, Philip Meyer predicts that the very last copy of the very last daily paper will be sold in the year 2043. The architects of the Newseum, D.C.'s newly reopened museum of...

Close of an era.('Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again', 'The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History', 'Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream')(Book review)
June 1, 2008... THE CONSERVATIVE ASCENDANCY: HOW THE GOP RIGHT MADE POLITICAL HISTORY BY DONALD T. CRITCHLOW, Harvard University Press, 359 pages, $27.95 COMEBACK: CONSERVATISM THAT CAN WIN AGAIN BY DAVID FRUM, Doubleday, 213 pages, $24.95 GRAND NEW...

The real third way.(Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)(Book review)
June 1, 2008... NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS BY RICHARD H. THALER AND CASS SUNSTEIN, Yale University Press, 293 pages, $26.00 ABOUT 30 YEARS AGO, MY FAMILY spent a month in London--our first visit. Soon after we arrived,...

You may say I'm a dreamer.('Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom', 'The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi')(Book review)
June 1, 2008... MAKING WAVES AND RIDING THE CURRENTS: ACTIVISM AND THE PRACTICE OF WISDOM BY CHARLES HALPERN, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 290 pages, $24.95 THE MAN WHO HATED WORK AND LOVED LABOR: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF TONY MAZZOCCHI BY LES LEOPOLD, Chelsea...

The logic of the low road.(THE LAST WORD)
June 1, 2008... I WAS ON TELEVISION RECENTLY, DEBATING A CONSERVATIVE. It's something I do fairly often. During a commercial break, the producer spoke into my earpiece. bit more energy," he said. "What do you mean?" I answered, slightly hurt. I thought...

Where has all the water gone? The world's water crisis poses grave threats to our survival. Can we change course?
June 1, 2008... THREE SCENARIOS COLLUDE TOWARD disaster. Scenario one: The world is running out of freshwater. It is not just a question of finding the money to hook up the 2 billion people living in water-stressed regions of our world. Humanity is polluting,...

Water wisdom: a conversation with water expert Peter H. Gleick on today's crisis, and a vision for tomorrow's sustainability.(Interview)
June 1, 2008... Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, where he is president and co-founder. A MacArthur Fellowship award winner for his work on water issues, Dr. Gleick has been a practitioner in the field for some 20 years....

The perils of privatization: the conflict between multinational corporations' quest for profits and the simple human right to clean, safe water.
June 1, 2008... IF ADEQUATE WATER FOR DRINKING and sanitation is essential for life, shouldn't we consider water a human right? Not everyone thinks so. In February, the United Nations Human Rights Council missed a critical opportunity to recognize a human...

Facing up to freshwater pollution: we are at a turning point as momentous as the 1970s, when the Clean Water Act was enacted.
June 1, 2008... THE STATE OF FRESHWATER IN THE United States resembles A Tale of Two Cities. It is the best of times in that, in the latter portion of the 20th century, we reversed the general disregard for water bodies. Our nation rallied in the face of...

Changing water policies in the dry southwest: smart water use and a shift in water culture form a winning strategy.
June 1, 2008... Water is taught by thirst.--EMILY DICKINSON MOST OF US IN THIS COUNTRY haven't had to think about water very much. We turn on the tap, and out it comes, clean and cheap. What more do we need to know? Or so we thought. Then last year...

Backlash against bottled water.
June 1, 2008... THE WORLDWIDE DEMAND FOR WATER is doubling every 20 years. By 2025, two-thirds of all people may be facing severe water shortages. Concurrently, the bottled-water market has been exploding in North America. Today, close to one-fifth of the...

Modern pressures on a prized ecosystem: dams and development threaten bountiful supplies of fish in Cambodia, the world's largest inland fishery.
June 1, 2008... CLAUSTROPHOBES BEWARE--EVERY October or November, millions of Cambodians jam into their capital city, Phnom Penh, for a riotous three-day water festival, clogging the riverside boulevard that runs in front of the royal palace. Although Bon Om...

The missing piece: a water ethic: we must make the protection of freshwater ecosystems a central goal in all that we do.
June 1, 2008... NOW FOR THE MILLION-DOLLAR questions: Why has so much of modern water management gone awry? Why is it that ever greater amounts of money and ever more sophisticated engineering have not solved the world's water problems? Why, in so many places...