Archive

  • Ringside Seat: D.C. Rager

    Paul Waldman AND Jaime FullerApr 26, 2013

    So if you want to get all the scuttlebutt from the dinner, you'll have to check in with Vanity Fair or CNN. But chances are you won't miss much if you don't bother. There hasn't been an interesting Correspondents' Dinner since Stephen Colbert ridiculed the press in 2006, saying, "Here's how it works. The President makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spellcheck and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head.

  • A Lesson in Who Actually Matters to Washington

    Jamelle BouieApr 26, 2013
    Jamelle Bouie/The American Prospect

    Jamelle Bouie

  • Is Washington the Worst Place on Earth?

    Paul WaldmanApr 26, 2013
    Flickr/Skillishots

    Today we learn that New York Times Magazine reporter Mark Leibovich has penned a book called This Town: The Way It Works In Suck Up City, exposing all the awfulness of our nation's capital. As Politico reports, "Two people familiar with the book said it opens with a long, biting take on [Tim] Russert's 2008 funeral, where Washington's self-obsession – and lack of self-awareness – was on full display. The book argues that all of Washington's worst virtues were exposed, with over-the-top coverage of his death, jockeying for good seats at a funeral and Washington insiders transacting business at the event." Sounds about right.

    In the past, I've offered Washington some gentle ribbing, employing colorful phrases like "moral sewer" and "festering cauldron of corruption." In truth, D.C. is a complicated place, and like any city it has its virtues and flaws. But you don't find many other cities where the inhabitants regularly write about how despicable the place is. Obviously, there's "Washington," an actual city where people live and work, and "Washington," a rhetorical construct that embodies the things people don't like about government and politics. But is Washington really worse than anyplace else? It's a tough call, but here are some reasons I think D.C. comes in for more of this kind of criticism:

  • The Xenophobe Party

    Robert ReichApr 26, 2013
    Flickr/MikeSchinkel

    The xenophobia has already begun. Senator Rand Paul in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today urged him to reconsider immigration legislation because of the bombings in Boston. “The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system,” Paul writes. “If we don’t use this debate as an opportunity to fix flaws in our current system, flaws made even more evident last week, then we will not be doing our jobs.”

  • The Scouts Ask: Gay or Nay?

    E.J. GraffApr 26, 2013
    Flickr/theirhistory

    Last week, the Boy Scout leadership did something very smart: they released their plans on the question of whether you can be both gay and a Boy Scout—during an overwhelming news week during which almost no one would pay attention. So now let’s give the plan the ridicule it so profoundly deserves. The Scouts are going to propose to the voting members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) National Council—nearly 1,500 of them, who will meet in Texas the week of May 20—that the organization allow openly gay scouts. But that openness will last only until a Boy Scout is 21. Openly gay adults will still be banned as Scout leaders.

  • Meet the Stalkers

    Jeff SaginorApr 25, 2013
    flickr/cmm08f

    Every day, without even knowing it, you share intimate personal details about your life with people you’ve never met. The medical symptoms you search online follow you; first to the pharmacy where you pick up a prescription, then to a database of specialists looking to add you as a patient, or to an insurance company creating a risk pool. The car you’ve researched on the web has been broadcast to your local dealerships before you’ve even left the house. When you walk in the door, the salesman already knows which color you want—as well as your salary and driving history—and pulls the shiny new car of your dreams around front.

    Americans worship privacy, railing when our favorite websites alter their terms of service to collect just a bit more information about us. Yet from the moment you swipe your rewards card at CVS, to the surveys you fill out, to the websites you shop and social networks you update, there are companies you don’t even know exist—often referred to as “data brokers”—watching, taking notes, and connecting the dots between the virtual you and the real one, using sophisticated technology to create vast and detailed personal profiles of hundreds of millions of American consumers. These databases are available to law enforcement and welfare agencies, to marketers, to banks and insurance companies, to employers looking for background information on their employees, to anyone with a credit card. There is no one watching the data brokers, no one verifying the information they hold and sell is accurate. Worse, there is no way for you to know what their dossiers contain about you, and no easy way to remove yourself from the databases of the hundreds of companies regularly engaged in buying and selling your personal details.

    “We have a completely unfettered market in the sale of personal information,” says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU and an expert on data brokers. “It’s like the wild, wild West out there to buy Social Security numbers, names, my preferences, the magazines I subscribe to, the places I go to online, my tax records, the amount of money I make, my medical issues.”

  • Ringside Seat: Bush League

    Paul Waldman AND Jaime FullerApr 25, 2013

    "In the end," George W. Bush said in his speech at the opening of his presidential library today, "leaders are defined by the convictions they hold. And my deepest conviction, the guiding principle of the administration, is that the United States of America must strive to expand the reach of freedom." We don't mean to begrudge Bush his special day, but that's not just poppycock, it shows that he really has learned nothing since he left office. Unless, of course, he's happy with the conclusion of history on his presidency being, "George W. Bush: He meant well."

  • Is the U.S. Set to Intervene in Syria?

    Matthew DussApr 25, 2013
    AP Photo/Jim Watson

    The chances of U.S. intervention in Syria just got higher. This morning, the White House released identical letters it had sent to Senators Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, and John McCain. Republican of Arizona, both of whom had written to the administration in March urging “more active steps” to stop the killing in Syria, stating that, “Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale.”

  • The Unending War on Obamacare

    Paul WaldmanApr 25, 2013
    Flickr/Fibonacci Blue

    I'm not a historian, so maybe there's something I don't know, but it seems to me that there may never have been a piece of legislation that has inspired such partisan venom as the Affordable Care Act. Sure, Republicans hated Medicare. And yes, their rhetoric at the time, particularly Ronald Reagan's famous warning that if it passed, "We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free," was very similar to what they now say about Obamacare. But once it passed, their attempts to undermine it ran more to the occasional raid than the ongoing siege.

    I bring this up because Kevin Drum makes an unsettling point today about the future of Obamacare:

  • The STEM-Shortage Myth

    Matt BruenigApr 25, 2013
    Flickr/jasonandrebecca09

    The Economic Policy Institute published a report yesterday on the supposed shortage of professionals in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). You've probably heard of the crisis by now. America is not producing enough STEM degrees. This will be the death of innovation and global competitiveness. We must reorient higher education to convert more liberal arts students into STEM students. And so on.

    The problem with this alleged crisis is that it is not real. As the EPI report lays bare, the common wisdom about our STEM problem is mistaken: We are not facing a shortage of STEM-qualified workers. In fact, we appear to have a considerable STEM surplus. Only half of students graduating with a STEM degree are able to find STEM jobs. Beyond that, if there was an actual shortage of STEM workers, basic supply and demand would predict that the wages of STEM workers would be on the rise. Instead, wages in STEM fields have not budged in over a decade. Stagnant wages and low rates of STEM job placement strongly suggest we actually have an abundance of STEM-qualified workers.

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