The American Prospect articles from September 2007

The American Prospect archives from September 2007

Windfall or wipeout?(PROSPECTS)
September 1, 2007... IF THE ECONOMY GOES INTO A TAILSPIN, WHICH NOW seems to be a growing possibility, how would it influence the 2008 presidential campaign? And if the Democrats should be elected, how would a severe recession affect their ability to govern? ...

Peretz: Jewish insecurity.(CORRESPONDENCE)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... IN "MY MARTY PERETZ Problem--And Ours" [July/ August 2007], Alterman presents us with a paradox. In responding to polls, large numbers of American Jews are liberal internationalists, favor negotiations with the Palestinians to end the Israeli...

Peretz: who was right, when?(CORRESPONDENCE)(Marty Peretz)
September 1, 2007... IN HIS RATHER NASTY AND despicable screed attacking The New Republic's Editor in Chief Marty Peretz, Alterman includes me on the list of "conservatives" who have written for TNR because they are closely associated with "the hawkish Peretzian...

From the executive editor.(CORRESPONDENCE)
September 1, 2007... TO IMPEACH OR NOT TO IMPEACH: THAT IS THE question that Bob Kuttner and I bat around in this issue. Bob argues that we can start with Alberto Gonzales and work our way up the executive food chain to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. I argue that...

Bullish on God.(Up Front)(news briefs)
September 1, 2007... PUT THE HEADLINE TOGETHER WITH THE SUBHEAD, and you have nothing less than the holy grail of modern conservatism. "In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead," proclaimed a headline on the front page of a softnews Saturday edition of The Wall Street Journal....

The question: whom would you like to see impeached?(Up Front)(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... "Jay Bybee, who concealed his role in approving the torture memos at his Senate confirmation hearing as a federal judge." --Bruce Ackerman, author, Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism "Chief...

Parody.(Up Front)
September 1, 2007... "I am deeply concerned with suggestions that my testimony was misleading, and am determined to address any such impression."--Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, Aug. 1, 2007 Aug. 15,...

Every fight tells a story.(THE OUT YEARS)
September 1, 2007... WHEN CONGRESS RETURNS FROM ITS AUGUST recess, it will take up the battle over a modest expansion of the program that provides health insurance for children. The Senate Finance Committee will begin its fight over changing the tax treatment of...

All trivial! All the time!(COMMENT)(criticism of presidential candidates)
September 1, 2007... "AND THEN, CLEAVAGE!" THE CNN NEWS ANCHOR couldn't have sounded more excited as a white arrow blinked on the screen, pointing down the New York senator's chest toward the point where her V-necked shirt gave way to slightly more skin--we're...

The trouble with impeachment: Bush and Cheney merit--overwhelmingly, screamingly--impeachment and conviction. But that doesn't make it a good idea.(George W. Bush, Dick Cheney)
September 1, 2007... YOU MAY RECALL THE SCENE IN CLINT EASTWOOD'S 1992 Western Unforgiven where Eastwood"s character levels his gun at Gene Hackmans" malevolent sheriff, whom he is about to dispatch to hell's lower depths. I don t deserve this, Hackman protests....

This year's charade: Mitt Romney may be campaigning as the compassionate conservative, but, as George W. Bush has shown, winning the right wing's backing guarantees a right-wing president.
September 1, 2007... MITT ROMNEY WANTS TO MAKE SOMETHING very clear. We are inside the honey-colored, wooden A-frame of the Great Hall of Simpson's College in Indianola, Iowa, on a humid July evening, where an aged audience has trickled in for an earlybird Saturday...

Tomorrow's Amazonia: as farming, ranching, and logging shrink the globe's great rainforest, the planet heats up. A Prospect special report on the assaults on, and the efforts to protect, the Amazon.(Report)
September 1, 2007... THERE'S A BRASHr RISKY NEW AMAZONIA OUT THERE. Pioneer entrepreneurs are making fortunes from activities long considered not feasible in this vast and challenging place, gouging ever deeper into the rainforest in pursuit of wealth. The deeper...

Climate change and the forest: warming breeds drought, drought breeds fires, fires release carbon, carbon breeds warming.
September 1, 2007... IN 1984, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF PAR" agominas, a bustling and violent cattle town in the eastern Amazon, I walked through a pasture, brown and dusty from drought, into a 500-acre island of virgin forest. The moist greenness of the leaf canopy that...

Biodiversity in Jeopardy: there are more life forms in Amazonia than anyplace else. But by the end of this century, there may be many fewer.
September 1, 2007... THE AMAZON BASIN IS, ABOVE ALL, our planet's greatest celebration of biodiversity, where for hun dreds of millions of years environmental conditions have favored an overall increase in the numbers of species. It is not clear why this has been...

The fractured landscape: a road here and a cattle ranch there imperil more than the immediate vicinity.
September 1, 2007... THE LANDSCAPE IN AMAZONIA IS rapidly becoming fractured, weakening the rainforest s capacity to withstand the escalation of everstronger assaults, ranging from chainsaws to climate change. The forest is not only being crisscrossed by highways,...

Till the cows come home: once economically marginal, cattle ranching in the Amazon now yields big bucks.
September 1, 2007... MARABA, THE TRADITIONAL HUB for logging and gold-mining capital of cattle ranching in the Brazilian state of Pardi. Located in southern Pardi at the intersection of a trunk road of the Belem-Brasilia with the Trans-Amazon highways, Maraba is...

Deforestation and global markets: an Amazonian dilemma: Brazil has become a global producer, and China a global consumer.
September 1, 2007... FOREST CLEARING ON AMAZONIA'S expanding frontiers is not about desperate poor people clearing the forest to eat. It is about land sharks fighting it out over the best parts and forcing the little fish to pick over the remains. In the wake of...

The shielded Guianas: the global economy discovers the most obscure corner of the rainforest.
September 1, 2007... SK SOMEONE THE LOCATION OF Suriname and you as likely to hear 'Africa' and Asia as you are "South America." While Latin America is demographically dominated by Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Catholics, the Guianas--from west to east the...

The search for solutions: from indigenous people to carbon traders, concerned groups have stepped up the fight to save the Amazon.
September 1, 2007... BRAZIL HAS A PRODIGIOUS ABILITY to spend billions of dollars on Amazonian projects of little bene fit to Amazonian people, flora, and fauna. In 1997 the federal government launched SIVAM (System for the Vigilance of the Amazon), a $1.4 billion...

The Role of the public sector: concerted governmental policies to protect the forest have been few and far between.
September 1, 2007... IT IS ONLY WITHIN THE LAST FOUR decades that governments sharing the Amazon Basin have taken the region seriously. Ignored for centuries as a distant, exotic outpost, Amazonia is now called upon to serve a number of diverse and often...

Deforestation and poor Amazonians: Brazil's forest dwellers, often its best stewards, are trying hard to make a living from the standing forest.
September 1, 2007... THE LAST 30 YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT in the Amazon have proven an essential rule: Whenever social groups depend on forest resources--for economic and social development--they will work to protect those resources. And the opposite is also true: If...

Whither Amazonia? A new generation of forest-friendly political leaders has emerged in parts of the Amazon.
September 1, 2007... THE AMAZON IS NO LONGER THE overlooked region of its constituent countries or the remote region of the world that it once seemed. Vast as it is, it is clearly not impervious to human impact. Indeed, in this era of globalization, the Amazon is...

Young, black, and post-Civil rights: there's a new generation of African American political leaders, and they aren't confining their careers to black districts--they're calling for race-blind, not race-based, policies.
September 1, 2007... ON A BLUSTERY WINTER AFTERNOON IN JANUARY 2005, I went to see Harold Ford Jr. in his congressional office to talk about his upcoming campaign for the U.S. Senate. He guessed he would need about $12 million for the campaign. In terms of actual...

The Myth of the Balanced Court: in 1980, John Paul Stevens stood at the center of the Supreme Court. Today, he is its most left-wing member--and he hasn't changed.
September 1, 2007... IT IS HOW THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA HAVE TAUGHT THE public to think about decisions by the current Supreme Court. And it is a conceptual scheme that makes it utterly impossible to understand either the Court's current makeup or its recent history....

Share the credit: why extending income tax credits to payroll tax payers should be the next big idea in American politics.
September 1, 2007... THE DEMOCRATS ARE A POTENTIAL MAJORITY PARTY in need of a major idea with potential. The major idea that built a Republican majority starting with Ronald Reagan's election was simple: cutting income taxes, with or without cuts in spending. The...

Road pictures for our time: filmmaker Michael Winterbottom is that rare Western artist who can depict the streets of Tehran and Karachi. It's movie stars that trip him up.(MEDIA)
September 1, 2007... RIGHT NOW A POLITICAL FILMmaker of great talent is making more than one film a year--17 in the last 15 years. That's the good news. The bad news is that his work has yet to be viewed by a substantial audience. That filmmaker is Michael...

Ready to rumble.(The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... THE ARGUMENT: BILLIONERS, BLOGGERS, AND THE BATTLE TO REMAKE DEMOCRATIC POLITICS BY MATT BAI The Penguin Press, 316 pages, $25.95 NOT SINCE WATERGATE HAS THE electoral landscape appeared as favorable for Democrats as it does today. All...

Which kind of economics?(The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies; America Works: Critical Thoughts on the Exceptional U.S. Labor Market)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... THE MYTH OF THE RATIONAL VOTER: WHY DEMOCRATICS CHOOSE BAD POLICIES BY BRYAN B. FEEEMAN Russell Sage Foundation, 191 pages, $19.95 AMERICA WORKS: CRITICAL THOUGHTS ON THE EXCEPTIONAL U.S. LABOR MARKET BY RICHARD B. FREEMAN Russell Sage...

What worker rights can do.(THE CLOSER)
September 1, 2007... WHY PUT WORKER RIGHTS IN TRADE BILLS? AT FIRST glance they seem toothless. In the past, when these rights made it into trade bills, the signing countries just had to "strive to ensure" the rights. Now congressional Democrats are crafting a new,...