The American Prospect articles from September 2003

The American Prospect archives from September 2003

Language and leadership.(Editorial)(Editorial)
September 1, 2003... Ever since George W. Bush took office, we have marveled at his ability to speak as a moderate, govern as a radical, and not be held accountable by the press or the voters. Democrats, meanwhile, have struggled to find their voice. In this issue...

Immigrants in the new economy.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... THE VARIOUS ARTICLES in your special report ["Immigrants in the New Economy," July/August 2003] appear to share a common assumption that labor as a commodity should be free to cross borders without penalty, just as any other commodity subject...

Youth hostile.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... AS A 17-YEAR-OLD LIBERAL Democrat, I found Danny Goldberg's "Youth Hostile" [July/August] article inconsistent with my experience as part of today's youth. Most of my friends--both liberal and conservative--either voted in the last election or...

The Demo Derby.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... DID RONALD REAGAN, IN 1966, call "for a Republican Eleventh Commandant: 'Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican"? ["The Demo Derby," July/August] No, he didn't. That famous proclamation was issued by California's capable Republican...

How NAFTA failed Mexico.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... THE EXCELLENT ARTICLE by Jeff Faux ["How NAFTA Failed Mexico," July/ August] brings out many points that apply equally to the United States. Mexican farmers were told that "generous financial and technical assistance would enable small...

W.'s Christian Nation.(Correspondence)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... ALTHOUGH CHRIS MOONEY ["W.'s Christian Nation," June] offers an important and timely description of President George W. Bush's role in the Christian right's effort to erode the separation between church and state, his analysis conflates the...

Recall at your peril.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2003... OF ALL THE FORMS OF Social chaos for which California is justly famed--riots, murders, gang wars--the state's most distinctive upheavals are those that bubble up from the white middle class on election day. They've included everything from term...

Shilling for Saudis.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2003... AMID THE CONTROVERSY over George W. Bush's 16 deceitful words in his State of the Union address, the larger issue--of how almost everything the administration had said about the threat that prewar Iraq posed to the United States was false--has...

While you were sleeping.(Devil in the Details)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... What with the ongoing war in Iraq and the California recall circus, you may have missed the latest round of anti-abortion politicking. George W. Bush has the authority, under a 1985 law, to block funds for any program he deems a "coercive...

Brave new words.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2003... WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Methamphetamines, according to a North Carolina county prosecutor, who is charging a man caught making the stuff with two counts of manufacturing a nuclear or chemical weapon. HATE SPEECH In Iraq's fledgling...

Lonely in Iraq.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2003... HOW MANY LIVES OF American soldiers is the administration willing to sacrifice on the altar of its unilateralism? Maybe a soldier a day is a politically acceptable rate for George W. Bush. It's not quite high enough to rise to the level of...

Wired but weird.(Devil in the Details)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... LET YOUR MIND GO BACK in time, back to the unfathomably distant past--back, say, two and a half years ago. It was a different world then, but Mark Penn, the Democratic Leadership Council's (DLC) redoubtable pollster, had it all down cold. ...

Vast right-wing conspiracy.(Devil in the Details)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... In April 2001, the Prospect reported that the DLC's magazine, Blueprint, was single-handedly financed by Loral Space & Communications Chairman and CEO Bernard L. Schwartz. "I sought them out," Schwartz told the Prospect. "I like them because...

Heroes & zeroes.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2003... THE KILLER DS Texas Democratic lawmakers head to New Mexico to stall unfair redistricting legislation--again GOV. BILL RICHARDSON Protects the Killer Ds from bounty hunters; snags chair of 2004 Dem convention DARRELL ISSA ...

From's last stand.(Devil in the Details)
September 1, 2003... AL FROM IS QUIVERING with rage. It's the end of a long day in late July at the Wyndham Philadelphia, and with a sheen of sweat coating his face, he gleams with emotion as he launches into the closing speech of the day at the DLC's annual...

Strategic disinformation.(Below The Beltway)
September 1, 2003... In February 2002, The New York Times revealed that the Pentagon was launching a new Office of Strategic Influence to "provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations." The story cause an outcry, and the Pentagon...

Nuclear Wal-Mart? Bush's foreign-policy disaster in North Korea.(Dispatches)
September 1, 2003... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAILED as a victory North Korea's announcement in late July that it would participate in six-party talks on its nuclear program. The White House had insisted for months that Pyongyang's illicit activities were a regional...

Overpaying the Pentagon: how we can meet our security needs for less than $500 billion.(Dispatches)
September 1, 2003... WHEN GEORGE BUSH SENIOR'S ADMINistration decided that the end of the Cold War made it safe to reduce the defense budget and the size of our armed forces, many neoconservatives and defense hawks, some of whom were serving in that administration,...

Remember the Maine: a small state casts fear in the heart of Big Pharma.(Dispatches)
September 1, 2003... AUGUSTA, MAINE--IN LATIN, THE word dirigo, Maine's state motto, means "I lead" or "I direct." On a sleepy summer Wednesday at the Maine State House, with the legislature out of session, this slogan at first seems out of place. Scattered...

Mothers most vulnerable.(Comment)(Editorial)
September 1, 2003... For some time I've tried to convince anyone who will listen that mothers--including those who are educated and middle class--are the most financially vulnerable people in the United States. Mothers of all races and income levels are less secure...

Obscene phone call.(The Taxonomist)
September 1, 2003... I got a call from MC I the other night. It came just as I was finishing up a paper attacking a multibillion-dollar tax loophole that MCI is trying to create for itself. Having already been surprised at being contacted by AT&T and Verizon on the...

Talking American: the crucial first step in taking back the White House.(Politics And Language)
September 1, 2003... NOW THAT DEMOCRATS DESPERATELY WANT A PRESIDENtial candidate who speaks passionately, speaks to the point, and speaks like a normal person and not a politician, one contender answers their prayers. Too bad his target is his own party. ...

Class and warfare: Democrats and the rhetoric of patriotism.(Politic And Languages)
September 1, 2003... NO MATTER HOW EVENTS DEVELOP IN THE COMING MONTHS, either in Iraq or in American politics, Democrats who disagree with policies of the Bush administration will still have to confront a fundamental challenge: finding a way to talk foreign...

Let them eat words: linguistic lessons from Republican master strategist Frank Luntz.(Politics And Language)
September 1, 2003... I'M ONE OF MANY DEMOCRATS WHO WATCH 1N FRUSTRAtion (mixed with a touch of awe) as Republicans win with words, even as the labels they devise for their policies distort or belie the facts. Take the repeal of the estate tax. An "estate" sounds...

Framing the dems; how conservatives control political debate and how progressives can take it back.(Politics And Language)
September 1, 2003... ON THE DAY THAT GEORGE W. BUSH TOOK OFFICE, THE words "tax relief" started appearing in White House communiques. Think for a minute about the word relief. In order for there to be relief, there has to be a blameless, afflicted person with whom...

The liberal label: the substance is alive and well, but the brand is in trouble.(Politics And Language)
September 1, 2003... "The masquerade is over; it's time to... use the dreaded 'L' word, to say the policies of our opposition... are liberal, liberal, liberal." --RONALD REAGAN, 1988 SINCE THE 1930S, THE LANDSCAPE OF AMERICAN POLITICAL discourse has...

Organize or die: three progressive union presidents--with some surprising allies--are out to transform American labor.
September 1, 2003... IT WAS ONE OF THOSE AWKWARD MEETINGS THAT NOBODY looked forward to, and it produced an outcome nobody really liked. On Tuesday, Aug. 5, the executive council of the AFL-CIO turned its attention to the vexing question of what to do with the...

Bush's secret government: using fear and national security to hide information from the public.(Special Report: Taking Liberty)
September 1, 2003... Washington has seen its share of odd sights in the last few years but few as bizarre as the one we witnessed late last month after the release of the report on the causes and consequences of the September 11 terrorist attacks. There in front of...

Strange bedfellows: conservative civil libertarians join the fight.(Special Report: Taking Liberty)
September 1, 2003... Early in the afternoon of July 25, Laura W. Murphy, the director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, was waiting for a friend at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport. They were due to head off for a...

An ounce of detention: Bush and Ashcroft's troubling "paradigm" is anything but a cure for terrorism.(Special Report: Taking Liberty)
September 1, 2003... IN STEVEN SPIELBERG'S MINORITY REPORT, SET IN THE not-all-that-distant future, police in Washington, D.C., have hit upon a way--through the enslavement of psychic visionaries to predict and prevent future crimes. Would-be criminals are...

Immaterial and unsupportable: Ashcroft and Co. are going after supposed supporters of terrorism with a blunt and unjust instrument.(Special Report: Taking Liberty)
September 1, 2003... ON MAY 19, IN ONE OF THE FIRST ANTI-TERRORISM CASES brought against U.S. citizens since September 11, Mukhtar al-Bakri, a 23-year-old Yemeni American from Lackawanna, N.Y., pleaded guilty to the charge of providing "material support" to...

Signs of a pulse: the press is starting to take on Bush--finally.(Media)
September 1, 2003... I NOTED IN THE JUNE PROSPECT THAT while the bombs were bursting over Iraq, America's TV networks were so excited about embedding with troops that they declined to subject the war's rationale to serious scrutiny. How could hype, hysteria,...

The King and Thai: a contested history gets the royal treatment.(Film)(Movie Review)
September 1, 2003... WHEN TALKING HISTORY, THAIS CAN only restrain themselves for so long be fore they trot out a much-cherished fact: Their homeland is the sole country in Southeast Asia never to have been colonized. And so it is no surprise that more...

Campaign reform boomerang.(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... SELLING OUT: HOW BIG CORPORATE MONEY BUYS ELECTIONS, RAMS THROUGH LEGISLATION AND BETRAYS OUR DEMOCRACY BY MARK GREEN * REGAN BOOKS * 352 PAGES * $24.95 CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM AND THE FUTURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BY JERROLD E. SCHNEIDER...

The other eye of the beholder.(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS BY SUSAN SONTAG * FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX * 139 PAGES * $20.00 "EVER SINCE CAMERAS WERE INVENTED in 1839, photography has kept company with death": Thirty years after the fir of the essays eventually...

The permanent election.(The Last Word)
September 1, 2003... One of the things that distinguishes advanced democracies from banana republics is that winners and losers accept the results of elections. Losing candidates and parties don't initiate coups. Winners don't kill off the losers and their...