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The Prospect's politics blog

Can the President Create a "Culture"?

Paul WaldmanMay 22, 2013
Margaret Mead, who would not have bothered to study the administration's culture. (Photo by Edward Lynch, Library of Congress/Wikimedia)

As you may have noticed, the biggest problem with the IRS scandal (from the perspective of Republicans) is that it remains stubbornly removed from the President himself. It's all well and good to get a couple of scalps from mid-level managers, but for it to be a real presidential scandal you need to implicate the guy in the Oval Office in the wrongdoing. Confronted with Obama's non-involvement, conservatives have turned to vague and airy accusations about the "culture" Obama has created.

Three Questions Obama Needs to Answer in Tomorrow's Speech

Scott LemieuxMay 22, 2013
WikiMedia Commons

 

On Thursday, President Obama will be giving a major address on counterterrorism policy. Here are three major questions Obama needs to adequately address:

Bin Laden Photos to Stay Hidden

Paul WaldmanMay 22, 2013
This will remain Bin Laden's enduring image.

Remember the Bin Laden photos? When the al Qaeda leader was killed two years ago, people immediately began asking whether the world would ever get to see an image of his body. At first, then-CIA director Leon Panetta said photos would be released, but President Obama overruled him. Yesterday, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in a lawsuit brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch that the government may continue to keep the photos hidden from public view.

At the time, I argued that a photo should be released—not every photo that everyone took of the body, but perhaps one shot of it being lowered into the ocean in a respectful ceremony. I went on NPR's On the Media and debated the question with The New Yorker's Philip Gourevitch, who treated me like I was some kind of contemptible ghoul for suggesting such a thing, but I made what I thought was a perfectly reasonable argument. Here's an excerpt of the columnI wrote:

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Policy Shop

Policy as if people mattered

Confirm Cordray Already!

Amy TraubMay 21, 2013
NCRC

The Senate confirmation vote on Richard Cordray this week won’t have much to do with Richard Cordray.

As I wrote when the Senate Banking Committee considered the Cordray nomination back in March, nobody disputes the idea that the former Ohio Attorney General, who has led the CFPB since January 2012, is highly competent and supremely qualified to continue in his position. Nor is the impact of the agency itself in doubt: in 2012 alone, 6 million U.S. consumers received refunds from financial services companies as a result of CFPB enforcement actions, according to Americans for Financial Reform, and the agency has handled more than 130,000 consumer complaints since it opened its doors less than two years ago.

Whether it’s protecting consumers from the type of reckless and deceptive mortgage lending that sparked the economic downturn or beginning to oversee the massive credit reporting companies that shape the financial lives of American consumers, the CFPB has proven itself to be a critical consumer watchdog.

The Shadow Derivatives Market Lives On

Wallace TurbevilleMay 16, 2013
Flickr/Leader Pelosi

Tomorrow, the public interest will take a loss and the largest banks will chalk up a win.

The Most Viable Way to Give a Boost to Low-Income Workers

Matt BruenigMay 10, 2013
Flickr/Erin Johnson

In 2011, Jacob Hacker wrote a ground-breaking paper in which he coined the phrase predistribution. Under Hacker's definition, predistribution refers to measures governments take to reduce or eliminate inequality in market incomes. This differs from redistribution, which Hacker uses to mean measures states take to reduce or eliminate inequality after market incomes have been distributed, for instance through taxes and government benefit programs.

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