Congressman Rogers’ Neighborhood
Representative Hal Rogers, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee — that is, the politician who controls the purse strings — has filled his fund-raising coffers with contributions from companies that do business with the Department of Homeland Security. Through Rogers’ campaign and his leadership PAC, which can…
Up Front
Alito’s Excuses With the discovery of an entire arsenal of smoking guns documenting Judge Samuel Alito’s fervent opposition to abortion rights, the media haven’t really looked into the Supreme Court nominee’s other questionable attributes. Which means we may need to wait until his confirmation hearings in January to learn what Alito was thinking when he…
Agreeing to Disagree
RK: You have obviously had the enormous satisfaction of seeing your ideas influence a revolution, both in the thinking of economists and in the premises of politics and the role of government. Does this make you any more optimistic about the ability of the political process to work, and of government to learn over time?…
Reforming for Quality
Your Money or Your Life by David Cutler (Oxford University Press, 158 pages, $13.95) The Health Care Mess by Rashi Fein and Julius Richmond (Harvard University Press, 320 pages, $26.95) If social security is the third rail of American politics, health-care reform is the treadmill. Not quite so deadly, but far more time-consuming and exhausting.…
Realism and Reality
The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century by Michael Mandelbaum (Public Affairs, 320 pages, $26.00) Michael Mandelbaum’s latest book is a superficial symptom of a grave, even potentially deadly disease: the inability of the overwhelming majority of the U. S. establishment to contemplate a limited…
Seven Meals from Murder
The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth by Benjamin M. Friedman (Knopf, 592 pages, $35.00) Once upon a time I took an undergraduate course in the history of economic thought. The assigned text was a slim little volume whose author announced in his introduction that he intended the book for “the average man and the intelligent…
Reality Play
“We are not concerned with the very poor,” wrote E.M. Forster in a famous passage from Howards End. “They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.” As a writer’s creed, these lines…
Tax Breakup
Employers face new opposition in their efforts to rein in health-care spending, and it’s not coming from the employees whom they are forcing to foot more of the bill. Instead, employers are at odds with their allies in the conservative think-tank world, who are mounting an all-out offensive to unravel the employer-based insurance system, which…
Slightly Un-Orthodox
Tova Rosenberg (not her real name) lives in Rosh Pina, a little hippie town in the Galilee region of Israel that overlooks the Hula Valley. She is pretty in an unadorned way — her long red hair is cut in a blunt straight style, her glasses are wire and speak to function over form, and…
Property Wrongs
One of the most important Supreme Court rulings of the last few years was not about church-state issues, affirmative action, or even the war on terrorism. It was about real estate — 15 houses located in a forlorn part of southeastern Connecticut called New London. On its face, the case, Kelo v. New London, which…
Mind the Gap
It takes a unique sort of administration to decide that the reason its almost three-year-old war shows no signs of concluding successfully is that the president hasn’t given enough speeches yet. But on the morning of November 30, the commander-in-chief was trotted out to do just that before an audience of midshipmen at the U.S.…
Miller’s Tale
In a year marked by Democrats’ increasingly audacious push-back against Republicans, one move stood out for its legislative moxie and for the very public defeat it dealt the president. Nine days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf, George W. Bush suspended the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, a law Republicans have wanted to do away with for…
Calendar Whirl
They may be a bit rusty at winning presidential elections, but Democrats haven’t lost an ounce of their storied devotion to mucking with party procedures. On December 10, assorted party bigwigs assembled in a cavernous ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill for the fifth and final meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s…
The Other Bryan
Imagine the ideal democratic nominee for president. He’s twice won election in Nebraska, one of the reddest of states, and is just as popular across the South and Midwest. He’s a charismatic, energetic orator. He’s also a stalwart progressive who has taken tough stands against corporate crime, to aid labor organizers, and to raise taxes…
Cant and Recant
Milton Friedman’s latest research on the Federal Reserve challenges key assumptions of a very prominent economist: Milton Friedman.
It’s What We Do
George W. Bush, in his global war on terror, has specifically avoided the clash of civilizations hypothesis, holding that the United States is not waging a war against the religion of Islam. However, the president has backed into the hypothesis by saying that terrorists “hate us because we are free.” The president, that is, has…
Security for Sale
Amid the political and cultural upheaval that followed the September 11 terror attacks, Americans were warned repeatedly that everything would be different because a vulnerable nation could no longer afford to remain complacent, careless, and profligate. Politicians of both parties vowed discipline, self-sacrifice, and diligence. Perhaps the most ostentatious symbol of this shared national commitment…
The Arsonist
There is an excellent coffee shop in the basement of the United Nations building in New York. The espresso is served bitter and strong, Italian style. Sandwiches can be bought on hard French baguettes, and the pastries are always fresh. Whenever a meeting lets out in one of the conference rooms adjacent to the shop,…
Why WWI?
The moment it dawned on me that there might be something to this Internet fad, I remember, was on a day in 1998 when I thought to run an eBay search with the word, “Ypres.” Within seconds I was awash in artifacts — aerial photographs, vases made from artillery shells, antique Michelin guides — having…
Campaigns Are Destiny
As George W. Bush grows accustomed to job-approval ratings in the middle 30’s, the number of explanations for his travails seems to increase by the day. In this case it’s not success, but failure that has a thousand fathers: the bungling of Katrina, his drive to privatize Social Security, the mistakes in Iraq, even obstructionist…
When Liberals Must Conserve
“We need a message.” “We need a philosophy.” “We need a simple statement of what we believe, just like the right has.” No meeting of progressives lasts long before these sentiments are expressed. Sometimes a committee will be assigned to frame the new message. The result might be a crisp but banal statement of uncontested…
All the President’s Friends
“Like most people at the times,” New York Times executive editor Bill Keller told a Princeton gathering on November 14, “I am suffering from a serious case of Judy Miller fatigue.” Aren’t we all? But before we succumb, a deeper look would be timely. The Miller case turns out to be part of an epidemic…
Starting Over
In his State of the Union address in January, George W. Bush is widely expected to try to relaunch his presidency. That he needs a new start is a reflection of just how badly his second term has gone, even in the eyes of conservatives. His domestic initiatives regarding Social Security and tax reform are…
