The American Prospect articles from September 2002

The American Prospect archives from September 2002

Useless airways. (Comment).(impact of deregulation on airline industry)(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... THE LATEST CORPORATION TO file for bankruptcy is not another fraudulent telecom, but US Airways. The airlines were among the sectors hardest hit by September 11. And with its concentration in the Northeast, US Airways was among the hardest hit...

The democrats and Iraq. (Comment).(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... AS WAR WITH IRAQ LOOMS bewilderingly larger this summer, it would be an overstatement to say that there s now a Peace Camp (or more precisely, an Anti-Invasion-Now Camp) in Washington. There sure as hell is a Privately Held Doubts Camp,...

No war for oil. (Correspondence).
September 9, 2002... I THINK OLD KEN SILVERstein has been selective in his use of sources in "No War for Oil!" [August 12, 2002]. I agree that conspiracy theories run rampant in some publications and on Web sites, but the nonconspirators far outweigh the...

The road to nowhere. (Correspondence).
September 9, 2002... PASSAGE OF THE McCAIN-Feingold law was the most significant victory in a generation over the influence of money in politics. In "The Road to Nowhere" [August 12], Ellen S. Miller and Nick Penniman call it "an archival retrieval" because it...

Can liberals save capitalism (again)? (Correspondence).
September 9, 2002... IN "CAN LIBERALS SAVE Capitalism (Again)?" [August 12], Robert Kuttner does an excellent job of debunking Bush's "few bad apples" excuse and argues effectively that capitalism tends toward abuse when government regulation is sidestepped. ...

Dems' fightin' words. (Correspondence).
September 9, 2002... THANKS TO MICHAEL TOMasky for mentioning Adolf Berle's book on the modern corporation in "Dems' Fightin' Words" [August 26]. I think he errs, however, in identifying Berle as a partisan Democrat. Berle was in the State Department during FDR's...

Greens to liberals: drop dead! (Correspondence).
September 9, 2002... SINCE 2000, AMERICANS for Democratic Action has warned of the danger posed by Ralph Nader and the Green Party. Yet in your August 12 issue, one letter took a posture that is at once intellectually dishonest and dangerously naive. It's true that...

Axis of scofflaws. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... SAY YOU'RE THE SECRETARY of state in an administration that, in a mere 18 months, has managed to alienate every other nation on the planet (except maybe Russia, where Vladimir Putin has been very sporting about our shredding that old missile...

Helpful tips from friends. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, August 12, 2002: "He opens his mouth, and the market goes down." --Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a right-wing political action committee, on George W. Bush "He obviously has not been very...

The tricky life of gay republicans. (Devil in the Details).(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... IT WAS HARD TO COMPLAIN when a group of important GOP activists and elder statesmen decided last year to launch the Republican Unity Coalition--a new pro-gay Republican group that seeks to supplant the ineffective Log Cabin Republicans. True,...

Party in hiding. (Devil in the Details).(Bill Simon)(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... If anyone needs a snapshot of the Republicans' dilemma in this surprising election year, we'd suggest one of Vice President Dick Cheney alongside businessman Bill Simon Jr., the Republican candidate for governor of California, when they met at...

Warming warriors adapt plans. (Networks).(environmentalism)(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... PRESIDENT BUSH'S DISMAL environmental record and the White House's hard-line stance against the Kyoto Protocol have sent American environmental groups scrambling for new ways to approach the issue of climate change. The United States is the...

Blocking bankruptcy. (Networks).(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... YOU'D THINK THAT THE RECESSION--combined with Congress' big talk about corporate accountability--would cripple legislation that protects credit-card companies at the expense of the poor and unemployed. You'd be wrong. The very day after...

Gender bender. (On the Contrary).(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... WOMEN ARE HARDWIRED TO EXPERIENCE and recall emotions more readily than men, according to a study announced last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as on CNN's morning show. "The wiring of emotional experience...

The West's Griles virus: industry's man in interior. (Below the Beltway).(J. Steven Griles appointed to the Department of the Interior)
September 9, 2002... "THIS HOPEFULLY WILL BE A breath of fresh air," exclaimed National Mining Association spokesman John Grasser, with no intended irony, after he learned that J. Steven Griles had been nominated as the Department of the Interior's deputy...

Artificial intelligence? We've been collecting information at Guantanamo for the past seven months. But is it any good? (Gazette).(military intelligence)
September 9, 2002... WHEN THE FIRST PRISoners from the war on terrorism arrived at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, their rights and treatment became the subject of heated international debate. Should those incarcerated be considered prisoners of war? Could they be brought...

The Pentagon talks Turkey: a fine romance this is, but where are the ki$$e$? (Gazette).(US-Turkish relations)
September 9, 2002... THE UNITED STATES AND Turkey have been locked in a strange mating ritual since September 11. The Pentagon plays the ardent suitor--making offers that meet with skepticism, admiring Turkey's democratic trappings and secular state--to Turkey's...

Game over: with the collapse of the new economy complete, yesterday's dot-commers are only now beginning to understand the odds. (Gazette).
September 9, 2002... "HOW COULD WE HAVE BEEN so stupid?" In the old new economy, the woman who asked this question was a heroine of sorts, one of those feisty young dot-commers with stock options, mobility and sought-after skills. But the "new" is over now, those...

Gunfight, Utah-style: and why some there are calling for a farewell to arms. (Gazette).
September 9, 2002... BY MANY INDICATIONS, THE gun-control cause would seem dead in America. Democrats, traditional champions of the cause, have been shrinking from the issue for fear that an anti-gun image would do them more harm than good at the polls. The gun...

Jim McGreevey, working-class hero: New Jersey's governor stands alone in the corporate-tax-reform hall of fame. (Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
September 9, 2002... SUPPOSE YOU'RE A GOVERNOR AND YOUR STAFF HAS JUST informed you that most of the biggest corporations doing business in your state have cooked their books so severely that they pay virtually nothing in state income taxes. Do you holler,...

The great telecom implosion: it's not just individual companies that are going bankrupt. The industry as a whole has gone from market reform to market ruin.
September 9, 2002... THE DIMENSIONS OF THE COLLAPSE IN THE TELE-communications industry during the past two years have been staggering. Half a million people have lost their jobs. In that time, the Dow Jones communication technology index has dropped 86 percent;...

Why democrats must be populists: and what populist-phobes don't understand about America.
September 9, 2002... THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL (DLC) can take credit for many of the Democratic Party's successes in the 1990s. It was instrumental in deflecting Republican charges that Democrats condoned crime, favored welfare over work, and backed higher...

Park wars: it's the snowmobilers (and the recreation industry) against the high-country hikers (and the environmentalists) in the battle for the future of America's parkland.
September 9, 2002... IT'S A HIGH-ENERGY SCENE IN THE INTERIOR DEPARTment's John Muir Room on the second Wednesday in June. Rangers from the National Park Service dispense information while their bosses dispense Bluebonnet ice cream. Guests from the Forest Service...

No surer signs: clunkily earnest, it must be M. Night Shyamalan's latest. (The Critics Film).(Signs)
September 9, 2002... ONE APPROACHES THE FILMS of M. Night Shyamalan with the slightly hysterical goodwill of a parent attending a school play. Senses gaping, disbelief suspended a mile high, one so wants the evening to go well. And if clumsiness and mawkishness...

Closed society, open source: China's unexpected enthusiasm for Linux. (Technology and Culture).
September 9, 2002... IN SOME WAYS IT'S HARD TO THINK of anything more American than Linux. A Finnish computer programmer named Linus Torvalds created the operating system, but Thomas Jefferson would have loved it. When Torvalds finished, he simply posted the code...

The politics of Suburbia.
September 9, 2002... American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality By Myron Orfield. The Brookings Institution Press, 210 pages, $29.95 Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century By Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom. University...

Drawing board.
September 9, 2002... IF THE PRESIDENT WANTS TO DECLARE AMERICAN CITIZENS "ENEMY COMBATANTS" AND STRIP THEM OF THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS-- [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] --IT'S FINE WITH ME! PEOPLE LIKE JOSE PADILLA DON'T DESERVE CIVIL LIBERTIES! EXCUSE...

9-11, one year later. (Comment).(Editorial)(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... SEPTEMBER 11 WILL BE COMmemorated this year as a day of national and private grief, but it is also a political anniversary. One year ago, the post-Cold War era came to an end and a new phase in our country's history began. What this new phase...

Democracy and dread. (Comment).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... MARKING THE FIRST anniversary of the September 11 attacks, America finds itself in an interwar funk. We go about our business as in peacetime, even as we seem to be drifting, inexorably, toward a new and more perilous Mideast conflict. While a...

Pictorial.
September 23, 2002... REMEMBER! ONLY HE CAN PREVENT FORESTS FIRES! Gale Norton Loosens Logging Rules After This Summer's Fires

No War for Oil! (Correspondence).
September 23, 2002... KEN SILVERSTEIN'S INTELLIgent article "No War for Oil!" [August 12, 2002] neglected to mention one amusing point. The Rense.com Web site, which brings together all the oil conspiracy material, also specializes in content on UFOs and Lyndon...

The Road to Nowhere. (Correspondence).
September 23, 2002... AS AN ARIZONA VOTER working in the clean-money movement, I am compelled to respond to Ellen S. Miller and Nick Penniman's piece "The Road to Nowhere" [August 12]. The authors write from the perspective of those who have not left the...

Dems' Fightin' Words. (Correspondence).
September 23, 2002... I AGREE WITH MICHAEL Tomasky that while the GOP's long-term strategy has been in place since the New Deal, Ronald Reagan's election put it at the forefront of American consciousness ["Dems' Fightin' Words," August 26]. In 1980, I was a...

Eternal war declared. (Devil In The Details).
September 23, 2002... DESPITE THE RISING TIDE of Republican opposition to the administration's obsessive desire for a Lone Ranger war on Iraq, the Bush White House doesn't seem all that concerned. George W. and his hawks have convinced themselves that they already...

Let Tony talk. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... THEN AGAIN, OUR AMERICAN-centric pundits may have overlooked an entirely different way in which the administration can legitimate its sought-after war with Iraq. Remember how the White House made the case for the Afghan war? Cheney & Co. took a...

The war of the Bushes. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... With the Democrats maintaining a strategically savvy silence on Iraq--geopolitically moronic, morally bankrupt, but strategically savvy--the debate over the wisdom of Bush's Iraq policy has become an all-Republican affair. But even that...

Jailbreaking homelessness. (Networks).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... NEW YORK CITY MAYOR Michael Bloomberg's recent decision to use a vacated Bronx jail to shelter homeless families quickly turned into a front-page PR gaffe. Not only did it seem too grim to have poor people put in the slammer, but the facilities...

Blasting big money. (Networks).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... CAMPAIGN-FINANCE ACTIVISTS ARE taking their fight to the electoral trenches. As corporate scandals continue to erupt and citizens feel the ache of the economic downturn, reformers have a shot at sticking it to the big money apologists this...

Losing our religion. (The Contrary).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... IT'S A SUMMER OF STUPID LAWSUITS. FOOD "ADDICTS" are suing McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and KFC, claiming that the fast-food industry creates cravings for unhealthy food and fails to provide consumers with nutritional information. (They...

Neo-Cons vs. New York Times: Kissinger's dissent and demurral (Below The Beltway).(Iraq policy)
September 23, 2002... CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINistration's Iraq policy finally stepped forward--and they are Republicans rather than Democrats. Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel and former Secretary of State Lawrence...

Emily's List hissed: fellow Democrats criticize the women candidates' PAC. (Gazette).
September 23, 2002... IN EARLY AUGUST, A MONTHS-long whispering campaign against Emily's List hit the pages of Roll Call. In an article headlined "Making Enemies," four anonymous Democratic consultants and operatives took turns criticizing the 17-year-old political...

The crossover candidate: did the GOP take down Cynthia McKinney? (Gazette).
September 23, 2002... MINUTES BEFORE THE candidates' forum began on a sweltering day at the South DeKalb Mall, incumbent U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (DGa.) was just "Cynthia" to her beloved DeKalb County voters, kissing elderly ladies and hamming it up for the...

Stray crats: will labor learn to punish the Democratic defectors on trade? (Gazette).
September 23, 2002... ON DEC. 6, 2001, UNDER rhetorical pressure from Speaker Dennis Hastert ("Support our president, who is fighting a courageous war on terrorism.") and real pressure from the administration and corporate America, members of the House of...

Money where his mouth is: Bush talks a good game on women's rights. But talk is cheap. (Gazette).(United Nations Population Fund, UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women)
September 23, 2002... AFGHAN WOMEN ACQUIRED an unlikely ally last November, when first lady and "Comforter in Chief" Laura Bush became feminism's newest convert. In a radio address, Mrs. Bush bemoaned the plight of Afghan women and declared a U.S. commitment to...

What if we'd already privatized social security? Even some Republicans are pretending they never had this bad idea. (Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... LATE IN THE FALL OF 1999, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE George W. Bush began talking up the idea of investing the Social Security Trust Fund in the stock market. What would have happened if his wish had immediately come true? Bush's idea was--and...

America alone in the world: more than ever, America needs allies, but the Bush administration is driving them away.
September 23, 2002... THE HORRORS OF SEPTEMBER 11 CONFRONTED THE United States with an extraordinary challenge and an extraordinary opportunity. The challenge was to increase our "homeland security" by measures that might have averted disaster, had they been...

Perils of preemptive war: why America's place in the world will shift--for the worse--if we attack Iraq.
September 23, 2002... ON JUNE 1 AT WEST POINT, PRESIDENT GEORGE W. Bush set forth a new doctrine for U.S. security policy. The successful strategies of the Cold War era, he declared, are ill suited to national defense in the 21st century. Deterrence means nothing...

Politics with people, reinvented: Paul Wellstone wants to win it clean--with zeal, volunteers and a new-model, old-fashioned campaign.
September 23, 2002... I. THE BACK OF THE BUS When Paul Wellstone decided last year that he would seek re-election to the U.S. Senate after all, much of his old operation was in mothballs. The volunteers had long since stood down. The legendary big green bus...

Dangerous medicine: So what if the speedup at the FDA is putting poisons on pharmacy shelves? Congress doesn't want to know.
September 23, 2002... THIRTEEN DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION DRUGS HAVE been withdrawn from the market in the last decade--but not before hundreds of patients died and thousands were injured. Yet no congressional committee has investigated why the U.S. Food and Drug...

Retirement at risk. (Special Section: Retirement Insecurity).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... AMERICANS ARE FACING A retirement crisis, and it comes in three parts. First, there is the Enron-style vulnerability of 401(k) plans. Unlike traditional retirement plans, the worker puts up most of the money and the worker takes most of the...

The scandal beyond Enron: pension coverage is shaky and dwindling. Will Congress act? (Special Section: Retirement Insecurity).
September 23, 2002... THE ENRON IMPLOSION BRIEFLY FOCUSED PUBLIC attention on the vulnerability of ordinary Americans' pension coverage. But the remedial legislation passed by the Republican House actually makes workers even more vulnerable. The bigger scandal is...

Forget retirement. Get to work. (Special Section: Retirement Insecurity).
September 23, 2002... A POPULAR MYTH IS THAT because we live longer, we should work longer. But while Americans indeed enjoy longer life spans, a great many are not happy to be in the paid workforce. They are working not for the social or intellectual stimulation...

Social security: The right fix. (Special Section: Retirement Insecurity).
September 23, 2002... LAST YEAR, PRESIDENT BUSH appointed a commission to design a Social Security reform that included voluntary individual accounts. Appointees chosen for the commission were all sympathetic to this partial-privatization approach. Before signing...

A party of one: it's a mad, mad, mad, Madchester world. (The Critics Film).(24 Hour Party People)
September 23, 2002... TONY WILSON, NARRATOR AND protagonist of the fictionalized documentary 24 Hour Party People, is a hard man to pin down. Club owner, record label boss, self-proclaimed "serious journalist," daring entrepreneur, terrible businessman, style guru,...

The origin of specious: and why reductionists are winning the Darwin wars. (Technology And Culture).
September 23, 2002... BY HARVEY BLUME STEPHEN JAY GOULD, WHO DIED of cancer at the age of 60 this past May, defined a place in American culture likely to remain vacant now that he is gone. He was, of course, the country's foremost opponent of creationism and...

Intolerance: the bestseller.
September 23, 2002... The Left Behind series By Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins. Tyndale House Publishing, $14.99 each NICOLAE CARPATHIA, THE man who turned the United Nations into a one-world government with himself as dictator, has just decided on genocide. In...

The "Doomsday Clock". (From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).
September 23, 2002... THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK, LIKE THE MUSHROOM CLOUD, is such a well-known icon of the nuclear age that it was not entirely surprising to see a version of it on the July 1 issue of the American Prospect, in conjunction with an article on the danger...

A different kind of atomic test: questions and answers from the pages of the Bulletin. (From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).(Brief Article)
September 23, 2002... Which of the following has the Pentagon researched as a weapon? a) road slick b) sticky foam c) stink bomb d) people zapper All of the above. The Pentagon is always interested in new and unusual ways to get people to do what it wants....

It's seven minutes to midnight. (From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).(Doomsday Clock)(nuclear warfare)
September 23, 2002... Chicago, February 27, 2002: Today, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock," the symbol of nuclear danger, from nine to seven minutes to midnight, the same setting at which...