Sharing America’s Wealth
The Bush administration settled the argument about whether inspections could ever contain Saddam Hussein by making the issue moot. But the next phase of a broader debate continues. The Iraq War is the first step in a new and alarming policy, which we might call the Wolfowitz Doctrine. On the issue of unilateralism, the doctrine…
The Indentured Generation
Milton Himmelfarb once famously quipped that “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” These days Republicans are trying to win the hearts and ballots of both Jewish and Hispanic voters. They may have more luck with the Jews. Republican strategists have been boasting since at least 1999 of a coming political realignment in…
Tax Wealth to Broaden Wealth
I recently spoke at a veterans’ club in suburban Boston about the dangers of America’s growing wealth gap and its possible solutions. I informally polled the assembled group of 150 men, all white and over the age of 60. How many had received a low-interest home mortgage from the Federal Housing Administration, the Veterans Administration…
How Wealth Defines Power
Of all the great deceptions that come to surround a gathering stock-market boom — from blather about the obsolescence of the business cycle to editorial claptrap about the United States turning into a republic of shareholders — one of the most pernicious has been the failure to recognize the character of the money culture it…
The Myth of the Investor Class
Although the ownership of stocks and bonds is more highly concentrated than ever, we’ve been hearing a great deal lately about the rise of an “investor class.” This concept, used with much abandon by free-market theorists and political operatives, holds that the simple act of participating in the stock market, even if indirectly and in…
Savings Incentives for the Poor
The problem of poverty in America looms large even in the best of times. The most recent economic boom got the share of those officially deemed poor down to 11.7 percent, or about 33 million persons, but poverty rates are much higher for economically vulnerable groups such as single mothers, African Americans and Hispanics. Advocates…
The Risky Business of Retirement
It’s not your imagination: Americans are facing a lot more risk these days. Gone are the sense of national invulnerability and the notion that we are widely beloved because of our prosperity, our movies, our Bill of Rights, even our McDonald’s. We find ourselves more alone than we have been, perhaps ever, with an unfamiliar…
Giving the Poor Some Credit
Microcredit for the poor is one of those ideas that attracts both liberals and conservatives. In principle, even the world’s poorest people can acquire habits of savings and investment — if they have access to capital. The strategy is both redistributive (liberal) and entrepreneurial (conservative). Why is it necessary? Conventional banking institutions usually write off…
Sharing America’s Wealth
The necessary role of government in broadening the middle class.
This Pill Makes You Honest
Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation By Philip J. Hilts, Alfred A. Knopf, 352 pages, $26.95 In the 1990s, attorney Daniel Troy made a name for himself defending pharmaceutical manufacturers and tobacco companies in their frequent fights with the Food and Drug Administration. But in 2001, Troy got an…
The Parenting Trap
Raising America: Experts, Parents and a Century of Advice About Children By Ann Hulbert, Alfred A. Knopf, 384 pages, $27.50 We live in an age of experts. Our newspapers and magazines are filled with advice columns, our best-seller lists with diet manuals and self-help books. We rely on experts to manage our births, plan our…
The War About War
The War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny and America’s Mission By Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol, Encounter Books, 153 pages, $25.95 The confrontation with Iraq is a war in service of an idea. The idea is what has come to be known as preemption — President Bush’s frequently expressed belief that after the September 11…
Filmic Face-lift
fracas n a noisy, disorderly fight or quarrel; a brawl The white guy had no idea he was about to do filmmaker Justin Lin a huge favor. After watching Lin’s tale of Asian American high-school overachievers gone bad, the journalist didn’t stand up to applaud the young director. He got up because he was furious.…
No News Is Good News
In mid-March, Washington Post reporter Jonathan Weisman made a startling confession on media columnist Jim Romenesko’s Web site. Weisman acknowledged that he changed a quote in a story about R. Glenn Hubbard, President Bush’s departing economic adviser, after receiving pressure from the White House. He admitted that the switch violated journalistic ethics, but he also…
The Big Lesson
Memorandum To: The President From: Karl Rove As the Iraq War winds down, I want to bring to your attention several important lessons. Election day is just 19 months away. While I have the highest respect for your dad, I think it fair to say he squandered his victory in the Gulf War. You do…
Never Again
A healthy constitutional system learns from its mistakes, and we have made a big one. Congress should never again write the president a blank check to make war. The precedent left by the first President Bush has cast a very large shadow on this present crisis. Before making his war in the Persian Gulf, Bush…
Déjà Voodoo Economics
My friend and adversary Bruce Bartlett of the rabidly anti-tax National Center for Policy Analysis was tapped by Philadelphia public radio to defend President Bush’s enacted and proposed tax cuts. Bartlett spoke glowingly about the tax cuts’ sharp tilt in favor of the wealthy, and admitted that they’re being financed entirely by borrowing. But that’s…
Bring Me Women
At least Pfc. Jessica Lynch got her wounds on the battlefront. Back on the home front, Air Force Academy women have been taking friendly fire. Rape, it seems, is the price of graduation. To many civilians, that news from the Air Force Academy sounds like déjà vu all over again. Didn’t the military — the…
A License for Power
Where’s the conservative suspicion of the media now that we really need it? The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to roll back long-established rules limiting media ownership, a move that would make the media behemoths more powerful than ever. You might think that prospect would excite an outcry from the right as well as the…
Minister Without Portfolio
During the Iran-Contra scandal, it became clear that private citizens had been playing a critical role in the Reagan administration’s foreign policy. Some of them, such as Richard Secord, had previously been government officials; others, such as Michael Ledeen, had briefly been advisers or consultants. They were not known to the public or to Congress,…
Jews in Play?
Milton Himmelfarb once famously quipped that “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” These days Republicans are trying to win the hearts and ballots of both Jewish and Hispanic voters. They may have more luck with the Jews. Republican strategists have been boasting since at least 1999 of a coming political realignment in…
Outsourcing the Dirty Work
The war in Iraq could not have taken place without a network of for-profit contractors upon which the U.S. military has come to depend. Some 20,000 employees of private military companies (PMCs) and of more traditional military contractors accompanied the U.S. forces in the buildup to war in the Middle East. They maintained computers and…
Trans-Atlantic Food Fight
At the Sunday market at the Place de la Bastille in Paris, the produce proudly announces its origins. There are bananas from Martinique, olives from Spain, artichokes from Brittany and broccoli from Saint-Malo, the place names written just above the prices. Signs tell which family dairies the cheeses come from and whether the lamb grazed…
In God’s Name
The Bush administration rushed into war talking about good and evil. “A calculated, malignant, devastating evil has arisen in our world,” proclaimed Attorney General John Ashcroft. “And we know God is not neutral,” added President Bush. While few defend Saddam Hussein, people around the world are troubled by the American crusade. The Bush administration has…
All the President’s Lies
Other presidents have had problems with truth-telling. Lyndon Johnson was said, politely, to have suffered a “credibility gap” when it came to Vietnam. Richard Nixon, during Watergate, was reduced to protesting, “I am not a crook.” Bill Clinton was relentlessly accused by both adversaries and allies of reversing solemn commitments, not to mention his sexual…
The Most Dangerous President Ever
I miss Ronald Reagan. I know, I know: Reagan was our first president to proclaim government the problem, to cut taxes massively on the rich, to deliberately create a deficit so immense that the government’s impoverishment did indeed become a problem. He waged a war of dubious merit and clear illegality in Central America; he…
Humpty Dumpty in Baghdad
The Pentagon is rumbling into Baghdad completely unprepared to fashion a viable new Iraqi government, seemingly obsessed with installing the discredited and corrupt Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), as the country’s leader. The task force assigned the job of putting Humpty Dumpty together again after the shooting stops is woefully ill-equipped…
