National Journal articles from September 1999

National Journal archives from September 1999

A VOTE FOR CHOICE--AND FOR DIVERSITY.(school vouchers)
September 4, 1999... No, this isn't about abortion. Or affirmative action. It's about saving some poor inner-city kids from their dreadful public schools by using tax dollars to give them the option of escaping to better private schools, including religious ones....

A SUMMER SERENADE.(appreciation of the American dream)
September 4, 1999... Not long after the end of the Second World War, a young man named Shiu-kee gathered up a few things and set out to walk from a small village in the Guangdong province of southeastern China. The young man possessed almost nothing in the world,...

Searching for New Labor.(labor movement in the high-technology age)
September 4, 1999... AFTER 20 YEARS OF PROFOUND TECHNOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE, LABOR IS STILL STRUGGLING TO ADJUST. In December 1932 George E. Barnett, an eminent labor economist at Johns Hopkins University, delivered an unsentimental eulogy for organized...

Labor's Political Muscle.(2000 presidential election)
September 4, 1999... IN THE PAST TWO ELECTIONS, LABOR REGAINED ITS STATUS AS A POLITICAL POWERHOUSE. BUT WILL THE UNIONS REMAIN UNITED FOR 2000? When Vice President Al Gore met with labor leaders for a dinner at the White House in late July, he was expecting a...

Labor Pains Abroad.(includes related article on unionization)
September 4, 1999... AMERICA'S EFFORTS TO IMPROVE WORKING CONDITIONS WORLDWIDE CLASH WITH DIFFERING VIEWS OF LABOR IN SOCIETY. In June, President Clinton took his campaign for improving conditions in the sweltering factories of the Third World to the orderly...

A Slave to Stalemate.(labor law)
September 4, 1999... LABOR AND MANAGEMENT BOTH WOULD LIKE TO SEE CHANGE. BUT LABOR LAW HASN'T BEEN REFORMED IN 50 YEARS, AND THE IMPASSE WILL NOT END SOON. The nation's labor law is an arcane thicket that has not been mowed, trimmed, or even weed-whacked much...

Labor on Patrol.
September 4, 1999... HISTORICALLY CORRUPT UNIONS NOW WANT TO POLICE THEMSELVES. BUT WILL THEY BE GOOD COPS OR BAD COPS? Before Edwin H. Stier arrived, Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, NJ., was unquestionably the country's most corrupt labor union. Its...

Class Struggle in Silicon Valley.
September 4, 1999... IF THE FUTURE ECONOMY IS LIKE THIS, ORGANIZED LABOR MAY HAVE TOUGH SLEDDING IN THE 21ST CENTURY. As you drive north on the Great America Parkway in the San Jose district of Silicon Valley, a right-hand turn on Tasman Avenue would take you...

FALLING LEAVES, FALLING EXPECTATIONS.(includes related articles)
September 4, 1999... September and October are supposed to be pleasant months. The weather gets cooler. The leaves change color. Kids go back to school. But on Capitol Hill, one word is being used to describe the next two months: ugly. In fact, although the...

MEDICAID'S PROBLEM WITH CHILDREN.(Statistical Data Included)
September 4, 1999... President Clinton generated headlines--and a little bit of head-scratching--a few weeks ago when he went to the annual meeting of the National Governors' Association in St. Louis and chided governors for not being aggressive enough in...

People.
September 4, 1999... Consulting Game After his boss bolted the Republican Party, Rick Valentine bolted his boss. Valentine, formerly the legislative director and general counsel to Sen. Bob Smith, I-N.H., has joined the Washington office of the Seattle-based...

WACO RETURNS.
September 4, 1999... PRESS Somehow it's fitting that a summer full of drought, earthquake, and millennial fever should end with a news story that feels like a recurring pestilence. Waco is back. It was always a deeply depressing story, a terrible saga of a...

FARMERS STILL WAITING FOR RELIEF.
September 4, 1999... AGRICULTURE George Naylor, a corn and soybean farmer in Churdan, Iowa, walked into his bank last month to ask for a $5,000 operating loan so he can feed and clothe his family through October. But he may be able to pay off the entire loan...

GETTING A SECOND OPINION ON MEDICARE.
September 4, 1999... A coalition of hospital trade associations anticipates spending approximately $7 million during the next several months in an effort to persuade Congress to restore billions of dollars in Medicare cuts. The hospital groups, as well as nursing...

FROM THE K STREET CORRIDOR.
September 4, 1999... Banking on Bankruptcy A group of credit card companies, retailers, and other businesses are mounting a late-summer push for Senate passage of bankruptcy reform legislation. The Coalition for Responsible Bankruptcy Laws. whose members...

MCCAIN'S MEN, DOLE'S WOMEN.
September 4, 1999... SENECA, S.C.--So why would John McCain make a good President? "He's got the guts to stand up for what he believes in," says Edwin F. Rumsey, a 67-year-old private investigator and former Air Force colonel who's trying to round up support for...

DON'T BUY WHAT THE PUNDITS SAY ABOUT GORE.
September 4, 1999... DES MOINES, Iowa--Watching Vice President Gore on the stump, and seeing his campaign operation in action, makes you wonder about the conventional wisdom in Washington that he's an ineffectual candidate with a disorganized campaign. During a...

Hotline Extra.
September 4, 1999... Mayorly We Roll Along Can't wait until next year for actual voting in an election? You're in luck: Baltimore and San Francisco both have hot mayor's races this fall. And the national media are starting to focus on them, quirks and all. ...

AN INDEPENDENT THE GOP WOULD FEAR.(Pat Buchanan)
September 4, 1999... John McCain landed in a little hot water the other day by appearing ambivalent about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. Like his principal rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, the Arizona Senator understands that reversing the...

MORAL AUTHORITY? NOT FROM POLS.
September 4, 1999... What are Americans going to want after President Clinton? They've got peace. They've got prosperity. They've got a declining crime rate. It's pretty clear they're looking for something different. Otherwise, why is Al Gore, Clinton's faithful...

CORRECTION.(to 'Poll Readings' in the August 21, 1999 issue)(Correction Notice)
September 11, 1999... In a recent Poll Readings (8/21/99, p. 2449), polling figures for a question asked by Opinion Dynamics Corp. for Fox News Channel were inadvertently transposed. Asked for whom they would vote if the 2000 presidential candidates were Al Gore and...

HOW CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM COULD HAPPEN. REALLY.
September 11, 1999... With campaign finance reform headed for the House floor in the next few days--and the Senate floor next month--the likeliest outcome is another dreary partisan stalemate. One obstacle is the overblown claim by conservative Republicans (and...

ONE YEAR ON, WALL STREET LOOKS SCARIER.
September 11, 1999... A little more than a year ago, I argued in this column that Wall Street looked overvalued and wondered what would happen if the market dropped. If you recall--and it pains me to remind you--those were the days of the 9,000 Dow. Now here we are...

Mountain of Trouble.(nuclear waste disposal)(Statistical Data Included)
September 11, 1999... RED WING, Minn.--On a grassy peninsula on the Mississippi River stands a cluster of 17-foot-tall metal cylinders, locked inside a high-security area of the Prairie Island nuclear power plant. The metal monoliths contain radioactive waste--spent...

Command and Control The Messenger.(media coverage of 1999 war in Kosovo, Yugoslavia)
September 11, 1999... THE MEDIA FEELS USED AND ABUSED AFTER PENTAGON MANIPULATIONS OF INFORMATION DURING THE KOSOVO WAR. Despite a round-the-clock barrage of media coverage of NATO's attacks on Serbia and its forces in Kosovo earlier this year, America went to...

No Place to Learn.(school infrastructure crisis)(Statistical Data Included)
September 11, 1999... Have you heard about the teacher who wondered what caused the creaking sound in the classroom ceiling? Eventually she found out. The ceiling, waterlogged from a leaking roof, fell down on her desk. The teacher's experience--and that of her...

NOT AN EASY PRESCRIPTION TO FILL.(prescription drug prescription drug coverage for senior citizens)
September 11, 1999... For months, politicians in both parties have been talking up the need to boost prescription drug coverage for senior citizens. The National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare first drew attention to the long-standing problem last...

BALLISTIC OVER BLASTOFFS.(selling Russian space technology to Iran)
September 11, 1999... For more than a decade, the United States has been intimately committed to Russian space programs. NASA and several private American aerospace companies pay Russia billions of dollars for its work on the International Space Station, and for...

GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN IF HE CAN HELP IT.(former House Speaker Newt Gingrich)
September 11, 1999... Throughout his turbulent four-year tenure as House Speaker, Newt Gingrich's inability to keep his mouth shut was infamous. His Republican colleagues would occasionally try to muffle him after one of his embarrassing or ill-advised outbursts in...

WHEN MOOCHING BECOMES A HABIT.(Pres. Bill Clinton's recreational travel)
September 11, 1999... The tipoff that Bill Clinton had a relaxed view on the issue of presidential freeloading came early on. In fact, it came before he was even inaugurated, when after his grueling 1992 campaign, Clinton took his wife and daughter to Southern...

PAYBACK TIME FOR HIGH-FEE LENDERS.(Statistical Data Included)
September 11, 1999... A new and hugely popular method of providing short-term, high-interest loans to cash-strapped Americans has spawned an intense lobbying battle both in Washington and in numerous state capitals. Despite a robust economy, payday-advance...

From the K Street Corridor.
September 11, 1999... More Ammo for Gun Group The National Shooting Sports Foundation--a trade group of some 1,600 firearms manufacturers, distributors, and retailers plus publishers of gun magazines--intends to beef up its Washington presence. The foundation,...

THE BOTTOM LINE FOR BUSINESS.
September 11, 1999... Last year, gloom and doom followed Corporate America on Capitol Hill. Among the Republican leadership, business was often upstaged--and upbraided--by social conservatives. "The intensely ideological Republican Party," BusinessWeek concluded in...

CHINA TRADE DEAL: NO FORTUNE INSIDE.
September 11, 1999... As President Clinton closes in on a long-sought deal to admit China to the World Trade Organization, a new government report on the impact of that agreement could cloud its reception in Congress. Economics has always been at the heart of...

HERE'S FOOD FOR THOUGHT.(global food supply)(Statistical Data Included)
September 11, 1999... Twenty-five years ago, at harvest time, the world seemed to be facing a Malthusian nightmare. With famine looming in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Indian subcontinent, and with a global population of 4 billion that (experts said) might...

FIRST, KILL ALL THE POLLSTERS.(Lamar Alexander and public opinion polls)
September 11, 1999... Lamar Alexander has heard enough about public opinion polls over these past few months, thank you very much. The former Governor of Tennessee has been heating about them mostly in telephone conversations with potential contributors, during...

PEOPLE.
September 11, 1999... Media People "No one can replace Meg Greenfield. You'd be foolish to try," says Fred Hiatt, a Washington Post editorial writer--but, foolish or not, that is what Hiatt will be doing later this year, when he becomes the newspaper's...

BEHIND THE BEATTY BOOMLET.(possible presidential campaign by Warren Beatty)
September 11, 1999... It was another warm Southern California night. At about 11 p.m., Warren Beatty, actor, roue-turned -family-man, and longtime liberal, knocked on the door of newspaper columnist Arianna Huffington's elegant home in Bel Air. Beatty was there to...

WHAT BUCHANAN HAS GOING FOR HIM.(Pat Buchanan)
September 11, 1999... Eclipsed by his fellow conservative contenders for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, two-time presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan may be looking for a marriage of convenience with the Reform Party. As its candidate, the conservative...

PARTY TIME? NOT IN NEBRASKA.
September 11, 1999... LINCOLN, Neb.--Ask former Nebraska Gov. E. Benjamin Nelson about his state's unicameral, nonpartisan Legislature and he will sooner or later repeat an old wisecrack. "Every morning during the legislative session," Nelson deadpans, "49 senators...

WHITMAN HAS ALTERED THE GOP LANDSCAPE.(Gov. Christine Todd Whitman)
September 11, 1999... GOP Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's announcement this week that she will not run for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey has provided Senate and House Democrats with one of their biggest breaks of the...

Hotline Extra.(Democratic Party presidential candidates)(Polling Data)
September 11, 1999... While the media obsessed about what Texas Gov. George Bush did or did not do as a youth, a real contest quietly emerged in Campaign 2000--on the Democratic side. New polls showed former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey surging in New...

CANDIDATE BEATTY? NOT A SHOCKING NOTION.(actor Warren Beatty)
September 11, 1999... Actor Warren Beatty is not the first American to talk of perhaps running for the presidency mainly as a way of giving heightened exposure to important, often-ignored issues. His expressed concerns about the sorry state of campaign finance laws...

VIEWS ON THE AMERICAN SCENCE.(Polling Data)(Statistical Data Included)
September 11, 1999... VIEWS ON THE AMERICAN SCENE How's It Going? Considering how things are today, would you say that the United States is generally headed in the right direction, or is it off on the wrong track? (margin of error [+ or -] 3 percentage...

BUCHANAN vs. BEATTY? IT COULD HAPPEN.(Pat Buchanan, Warren Beatty)
September 11, 1999... They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but this is ridiculous. Warren Beatty and Pat Buchanan may end up competing for the same party's presidential nomination. Have two figures ever been such polar opposites? Beatty and Buchanan are at...

BLAMING JANET RENO, FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS.
September 18, 1999... Janet Reno has not been a good Attorney General, in my view. But congressional Republicans keep attacking her so indiscriminately--and for the wrong reasons--that their demands for her head have a suspiciously partisan smell. The current...

GORE IN THE BALANCE.(Vice Pres. Al Gore)
September 18, 1999... Every politician--at least every politician worth voting for--harbors something embarrassing in his past, something that raises questions about his suitability for the presidency. For Texas Gov. George W. Bush, that something is the suspected,...

Desegregation Is Dead.
September 18, 1999... BUSING IS OVER. SCHOOLS ARE AGAIN BECOMING MORE RACIALLY DIVIDED. IS THIS GOOD OR BAD? Theoretically, the Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is Education. What he must remember is that there is no...

Cuba Countdown.
September 18, 1999... IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THE UNITED STATES EASES RELATIONS WITH CUBA, BUT THAT TIME IS NOT NECESSARILY AT HAND. JUST ASK GORE, BUSH, AND OTHER 2000 HOPEFULS. Charles M. Custin, the president of Tech Products Inc., a Miami building...

Furnace of Change.
September 18, 1999... SHAKING OFF ITS BLUE-COLLAR PAST, PITTSBURGH SEEKS TO FORGE A HIGH-TECH FUTURE. BUT THE CHALLENGE IS FORMIDABLE. PITTSBURGH--From atop Mount Washington, overlooking the confluence of the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers, many of the...

HAZARDS FOR ENVIRONMENTALISTS.
September 18, 1999... As Congress works through a crush of fiscal 2000 appropriations bills, conservative lawmakers are continuing their four-year-old tradition of tacking on riders that would reverse the Clinton Administration's environmental policies. In the...

HUNKERING DOWN FOR THE NEXT REFORM STORM.
September 18, 1999... A campaign finance reform measure to curb the political influence of big-money interests roared through the House this week like Hurricane Floyd. But Senate opponents are stockpiling sandbags against it. In a replay of last year's...

WHAT IS HATCH THINKING?(Statistical Data Included)
September 18, 1999... Unexpected? Yes. Audacious, potentially embarrassing, and downright bewildering? Yes, yes, and, well, yes. How else to describe Orrin G. Hatch's decision earlier this summer to jump into the race for the Republican presidential nomination? The...

ARE THERE LESSONS FROM EAST TIMOR?
September 18, 1999... As U.N. peacekeepers prepare to confront the wreckage of what used to be the bustling capital of East Timor, the Clinton Administration is picking through some debris of its own: A foreign policy toward Indonesia and other emerging nations...

THE SPOOK SPAT: PARANOID SUSPICIONS?(electronic intelligence)
September 18, 1999... During the Cold War, hardly anyone would have made a fuss about the National Security Agency's eavesdropping on phone conversations and electronic communications around the world. But how times have changed. Now, a loose network of U.S....

THE TWO SIDES OF BILL CLINTON.
September 18, 1999... Once there was an American President so obsessed with minutiae that he controlled who could play on the White House tennis courts--and when. This President, a good and decent man in other respects, was the kind of chief executive who insisted...

A RUCKUS OVER PATENT REFORM.
September 18, 1999... In recent years, few policy disputes have turned as nasty as the battle to overhaul U.S. patent law. Former Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Bruce A. Lehman once became so enraged with inventors' groups opposed to any changes in patent...

FROM THE K STREET CORRIDOR.
September 18, 1999... Rinsing Rubles As the House Banking and Financial Services Committee prepares to investigate the Russian money-laundering scandal, several companies and individuals implicated in the controversy have turned to Washington law and lobbying...

POOR HOUSE.(Bill and Hillary Clinton)
September 18, 1999... Imagine that news stories are like stocks and you could bet on their chances of succeeding--winning an audience, having an impact--in the journalistic marketplace. Surely the story of the Clintons' new house seemed to be one of the most...

IN KOSOVO, CULTURE WARS AND THE KLA.(Kosovo Liberation Army)
September 18, 1999... PRIZREN, Kosovo--An uneasy relationship exists here between those Kosovars who took up arms against the Serbs and those who did not. The fear some people have of getting on the bad side of the often-undisciplined Kosovo Liberation Army is...

FICKLE FIBER OPTICS.(Statistical Data Included)
September 18, 1999... In a bid to attract high-tech businesses to a town dominated by tourism, the city-owned utility in Anaheim, Calif., two years ago plunged into the fast-changing telecommunications industry. Its goal: to wire every home and business in Anaheim...

MEMO TO WORLD BANK AND IMF: WAKE UP!(International Monetary Fund)
September 18, 1999... Travel Advisory: Traffic gridlock expected in the streets around Washington 's Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Sept. 28-30. Look r significant delays as the limos of finance ministers from around the world choke the streets during the annual...

People.
September 18, 1999... Media People The score in the latest tug-of-war between media outlets for the political intelligentsia is: The American Prospect 1, Salon O. As part of an image overhaul, the Cambridge, Mass.-based Prospect last week established a...

IS THERE A SILVER LINING FOR GORE?(Al Gore)(Statistical Data Included)
September 18, 1999... It has been a lousy year for Vice President Al Gore. Even though his boss escaped being thrown out of office and the economy has been humming along, Gore has seen his political stock fall. Poll after poll has shown the Vice President trailing...

Campaign Circuit.
September 18, 1999... Recruiting the Buchanan Brigades With two-time Republican White House hopeful Pat Buchanan preparing to take a run at the Reform Party presidential nomination m 2000, the leading conservatives left in the GOP race are hoping for a windfall....

THE GOP, BUCHANAN, AND RISKY BUSINESS.(Patrick Buchanan)
September 18, 1999... The traditional recipe for Republican presidential candidates is to run hard to the right during primary season, then head toward the middle once the nomination is at hand and try to win over the moderates, independents, and swing Democrats...

Hotline Extra.
September 18, 1999... Soul Sisters, Staying Home Hillary Clinton's possible run for the seat being vacated by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., continues to dominate the news. But there are plenty of other Senate seats that have captured the attention of...

BUCHANAN'S LUST FOR ATTENTION.(Patrick Buchanan)
September 18, 1999... The public soul-searching by news commentator Pat Buchanan about leaving the Republican Party and joining the Reform Party assumes that the Reform Party's presidential nomination would be his for the asking. But that may not be the case. ...

VIEWS ON PRESIDENTIAL PERFORMANCE.(Statistical Data Included)
September 18, 1999... Rating the Prez Please tell me whether you have a generally favorable or unfavorable opinion of Bill Clinton. (margin of error [+ or - 3] percentage points; Opinion Dynamics Corp. for Fox News Channel) ...

THE CANDIDATE OF CHANGE?(Al Gore)(Statistical Data Included)
September 18, 1999... Most Americans (53 percent in a recent Washington Post survey) say they're fired of Bill Clinton. They want the Clinton era over. But they're not ready to repudiate Clinton's policies. The President's job ratings are still high. What Americans...

CORRECTION.(to article in Sep 9, 1999 issue, p. 2630)
September 25, 1999... A recent story (9/18/99, p. 2630) incorrectly described a rider Sen. Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., attached to the Senate's version of the Interior appropriations bill. The rider would prevent federal regulators from barring mining in the Ozark...

SCHOOL PRAYER: WHEN CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES CLASH.
September 25, 1999... A public school may not sponsor prayer at a graduation ceremony. But students may lead prayers at such ceremonies if done on their own initiative, not the school's. But their prayers must be "nonsectarian" and "nonproselytizing."...

THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT THE IMF.(International Monetary Fund)
September 25, 1999... In the movie Conspiracy Theory, Julia Roberts asks Mel Gibson to tell her who is really controlling the film's impressively brutal assortment of thugs and assassins. "There are many initials," he replies, "CIA, FBI, IMF...." What was...

The Art of the Deal.(President and Congress debate budget deal)
September 25, 1999... It wasn't supposed to be this way. Social Security was going to be "saved" for the baby boomers. The same went for Medicare. A huge, across-the-board tax cut was to be enacted. Spending decisions were going to be early and orderly. But none of...

MAKE-OR-BREAK ISSUES.
September 25, 1999... If this list looks familiar, it should. Many of the issues now on the table are the same ones that were there last fall, when congressional negotiators and the Clinton Administration crafted an omnibus spending bill. Here are the major points...

THE DEAL-MAKERS.(Republican and Democratic parties choose representation for budget debates)
September 25, 1999... FROM CONGRESS With a five-vote Republican majority, House Speaker J. DENNIS HASTERT, R-Ill., goes into the final spending-bill talks walking a fine line between his party's conservatives and moderates. C.W. "BILL" YOUNG, R-Fla., is...

Democrats: Divided They Stand.
September 25, 1999... Talk about not singing from the same song sheet. On Sept. 4, President Clinton had this to say about his expectations for the remainder of the congressional session: "I think that this could be one of the most productive years that we have had...

It's Campaign 2000, Stupid.
September 25, 1999... House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich--an active participant over the past decade in Washington's fiscal wars--has one message for fellow congressional Republicans this fall: Remain steadfast on budget balancing, tax cutting, and...

Crunch Time for K Street.
September 25, 1999... K Street heavyweights will go into overdrive in coming weeks to influence what Congress puts into--or leaves out of--the must-pass appropriations bills and the few other measures likely to win approval before adjournment this fall. What...

GUN MEASURES STUCK IN THE NO-WAY CORRAL.
September 25, 1999... Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the chairman of the House-Senate conference committee working on a sweeping "juvenile-justice" bill that includes controversial gun control provisions, is not shy about talking up his many years of experience in...

PIVOTAL EVENTS IN CONGRESS.
September 25, 1999... A Veto With Relief From Rhetoric The story line was no surprise--President Clinton would veto the Republicans' 10-year, $792 billion tax cut package that he had been denouncing for months--but the cast of characters was somewhat...

HOUSE-SENATE COMMITTEE ACTION.
September 25, 1999... Overview Various chairmen made last-ditch attempts to grind out pet legislation from Congress's standing committees and subcommittees this week, but the real action came at the House-Senate conference committee level. There, money...

Hill People.(Legislators.)
September 25, 1999... House The House Armed Services Committee's top in-house wonk just outsourced himself. One-time Defense News and Army Times editor Thomas Donnelly, 46, has left the committee's policy shop to join the Project for the New American...

CONSENSUS ON CLEMENCY.(President granted clemency to Puerto Rican nationalists)
September 25, 1999... Here's a news flash: Reps. Dan Burton of Indiana and Henry A. Waxman of California--the GOP chairman and the ranking Democrat, respectively, on the House Government Reform Committee--have reached common ground on the latest Washington scandal....