Urban Mechanics
Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival, by Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio. Westview Press, 285 pages, $25.00. In Comeback Cities, Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio make the case that ordinary people can “change, create, and make use of market forces to alter the fundamental economics of their neighborhoods.” They offer a…
Cyberbole
We associate manifestos with big ideas, combative theses itching tochange the world. While the roar of the manifesto has pretty much fadedfrom the culture at large, it can still be heard loud and clear in thedigital world. Digital culture continues to foster grand ambitions; itnurtures not only the ongoing quest for the killer app but…
Comment: Taxing Democracy
George W. Bush may well win a tax program that most voters rejectedin the 2000 election. His $1.6 trillion in cuts would favor the richest1 percent. Public opinion polls confirm that most Americans would rathersee the money go for social investments. Our system is ignoring what most Americans want, because of multiplepolitical failures. The most…
Reclaiming Democracy
The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it clear that we are operating a badly frayed nineteenth-century democracy in twenty-first-century America. Voter participation is shockingly low and declining each year. At best only one-half the eligible electorate actually votes in a presidential election. Turnout for Senate and House elections in nonpresidential years rarely exceeds…
The Democrats’ Pet Shop
“I wish to register a complaint about the Democratic Party: It’s dead.” “No, no, it’s resting.” “Look, I know a dead party when I see one, and I’m looking at a deadparty right now. Over the past eight years, the Democrats have lost thepresidency, both houses of Congress, almost all their majorities instate legislatures, and…
Imperfect Union
Ever since the McClellan Committee investigations of racketeering in the 1950s, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) has occupied a lurid place in the American imagination. From Jimmy Hoffa to “Tony Pro,” from “Red” Dorfman to Jackie Presser, the Teamsters have been known as the id of the labor movement–a seething hotbed of greed, violence,…
The Taxonomist
Tax-Cut Fever Alan Greenspan has blessed a tax cut, the budget surpluses are said to be bigger than ever, and Republicans control all branches of the federal government. Are we ready to rumble with George W. Bush’s gigantic tax cuts? Can we cut taxes even more? Take a deep breath. The projected surpluses.…
How Do You Spell Relief?
Big tax cuts are in the offing. The high priests of fiscaldiscipline find their flocks deserting, egged on by President George W.Bush, the GOP, and the Janus-faced Federal Reserve Board chairman. Butwho will get the benefit? Critics of Bush’s tax-cut plan in both parties appear to be atsomething of a loss to propose alternatives that…
Debt and Taxes
What’s gotten into Alan Greenspan? Until recently, hewas in clear agreement with the Democrats about how to deal with thefederal budget surplus: Oppose tax cuts and use the surplus to pay offthe national debt. But on January 25–five days after the inaugurationof George W. Bush–Greenspan abandoned that position and endorsed Bush’smammoth tax cut. The explanation…
Democrats Adrift
Since the mid-1990s, Democrats have played a deftlyexecuted but ultimately evasive game on fiscal policy. As surplusesbegan to appear on the horizon, they parried Republican calls for taxcuts with their own proposals for paying down the debt and “savingSocial Security.” This was effective–even ingenious–politics preciselybecause it ducked the root question of whether unspent revenues shouldbe…
Democracy’s Moment
If nothing else, the 2000 election mess has begun to produce real political engagement and debate about democracy. For some this debate will focus narrowly on improving election equipment and modernizing election administration. Conservatives may even try to turn the debate to one that restricts voting opportunities under the guise of efficiency, racial neutrality, and…
Punch Drunk
The Congressional Black Caucus and the AFL-CIO have both made reform of the country’s election machinery a top priority. A number of committees and commissions–such as the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford–have already formed to propose remedies for the nation’s election practices. Congress is awash in bills,…
Throwing Coolant on the Economy
For George Bush the elder, the recession of the early 1990s was adifficult subject, something best not discussed in public. As he put iton November 20, 1991, “I think more than anyone else in this country,obviously, that if the president misspeaks or sounds euphoricallyoptimistic, or overly pessimistic, you send the wrong signals to askittish market…
The Thernstroms in Black and White
That’s our dear friend Clarence, whom we adore,” Abigail Thernstrom said, proudly showing me the framed photograph of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that hangs above the fireplace in the office she shares with her husband, Harvard University historian Stephan Thernstrom. She added mischievously: “It’s there to make reporters faint.” Abigail Thernstrom, a fellow at…
What We Must Overcome
For years many of us have been calling for a national conversation about what it means to be a multiracial democracy. We have enumerated the glaring flaws inherent in our winner-take-all form of voting, which has produced a steady decline in voter participation, underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in office, lack of meaningful competition…
The Enduring Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963, David Levering Lewis. Henry Holt, 715 pages, $35.00. David Levering Lewis won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 forW.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919. The Du Bois portrayed in that volume is a brilliant youth and later a powerful idealist who wrote…
Exposing Atrocity
Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity, Priscilla B. Hayner. Routledge, 340 pages, $27.50. In South Africa under apartheid, so many whites who benefitedfrom the system did not question the human costs–the deaths indetention, the forced removals of hundreds of thousands of their fellowcitizens, and the laws that demeaned and attacked the very dignity ofthe…
Satanic Virtues
The avalanche of publicity for Hannibal has made it the most widely anticipated film of the season. Small wonder: Only the bravest of moviemakers would dare to carry on the story of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, told with such stunning effect 10 years ago in Silence of the Lambs. That these stories are meant…
Her Life an Open Book
In Charlotte Salomon’s extraordinary Life? or Theater? A Play withMusic–a kind of unbound epic, composed of more than 700 watercolor panels plus text and suggestions for accompanying music–the painted curtains rise on Berlin, 1913. A young woman, named Charlotte, is floating blue-faced in her coffin. She has drowned herself. This exhibit, which features about half…
The Art of Legislating
Experiencing Politics: A Legislator’s Stories of Government andHealth Care, by John E. McDonough. University of California Press, 342 pages, $19.95. Toward the end of this useful handbook on the politics of lawmaking,the author laments the dearth of novels and films about what really goeson inside legislatures. After all, it is through popular art that thebroad…
Absolutely Factious
Last month’s inaugural protesters, said by my sources to outnumbercelebrants, were mostly ignored by the mainstream press. The WeeklyStandard, however, did find time to make fun of them, noting that at one event–a teach-in on police brutality–the deceased victims of police were “represented in unflattering prom pictures.” You can imagine the outrage that editors at…
