CHOOSE YOUR SELLOUTS. I always think articles about Harold Ford are interesting, because he's an interesting guy, and yesterday's piece in The New York Times was no exception. But they never seem to get at what is, to me, the essential oddness of Ford's political persona. The basic Ford narrative is that he's an ambitious and promising African-American politician who, through being decidedly more moderate than your average black Democrat, can maybe capture the hearts of white voters in a southern state. This all seems to make good sense.
AN OFF-BEAT ARGUMENT FOR D.C. STATEHOOD. File this one under more evidence of the Bush administration's cynical politicization of what should be apolitical national security issues. Whenever public pressure to actually protect the homeland wanes, the administration seems to find out a way to subvert security. Today, for instance, The Washington Post reports:
One of the disadvantages of having a public Social Security system is that people are free to make all sorts of untrue statements about it without facing any consequences. For example, an oped in the Washington Post this morning described the Social Security trust fund as "largely an accounting fiction." This statement is of course absurd. The trust fund consists of U.S. government bonds, which the government is obligated to repay under the law. There is no sense whatsoever in which it can accurately be described as fictional.
Gretchen Morgenson had a good piece in the Times documenting some of the ways in which corporate boards manage to dish out bonuses to CEOs even when they miss performance targets. With all the scandals in CEO pay over the last decade, it is remarkable that this sort of nonsense persists unchecked. Clearly there is a structural imbalance, with top executives being able to pilfer corporate coffers to enrich themselves at the expense of shareholders.
WHO WOULD JESUS WHACK? Occasionally you hear about all those broadly supportable progressive issues on which rapprochement with the Christian right will be had. This worldview presupposes that the evangelical movement's partisan identification is the result of the right convincing them that they hold more areas of policy agreement. Which may, in part, be true. Of course, there's also the Mafioso-style intimidation tactics that are deployed against heretics...
THE END OF SUPPLY-SIDEISM. Chris Suellentropnotes that Republicans are beginning to abandon supply-side economics, one of the most overdue exoduses in economic history. Evidence comes from Bush's former chief economic adviser Greg Mankiw, who writes that "some supply-siders like to claim that the distortionary effect of taxes is so large that increasing tax rates reduces tax revenue. Like most economists, I don't find that conclusion credible for most tax hikes, and I doubt Mr.
TAPPED BOUND. Many TAPPED readers, I�m sure, will be happy to learn that Linda Hirshman will be guest-blogging with us for two weeks starting next Monday. Hirshman�s outstanding critique of �choice feminism,� which appeared in the Prospect�s December issue, helped spark a very heated debate about women, work, and the domestic glass ceiling. Hirshman has since extended her work for that piece into a book, Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, which will be released on June 8.
SOME PAULSON SKEPTICISM. Reaction to Henry Paulson's appointment as Treasury Secretary has, thus far, been boringly positive. Fortunately, Max Sawickyrides to the rescue with a strident critique.
MORE ON IRAN. In addition to Garance and Laura Rozen's comments, it's worth heeding cautionary notes from both Kevin Drum and Ivo Daalder that Condoleezza Rice may be (whether in deliberate bad faith or not) putting too many demands for Iranian concessions on the table as preconditions for negotiation.
