Click a Day:
Mon, September 9 | Tues, September 10 | Wed, September 11 | Thurs, September 12 | Fri, September 13 | Sat, September 14 | Sun, September 15
* For more info on Tapped, our permanent link, our archives, or to e-mail us, click here.
* To see a list of Tapped-approved links to other destinations in the blogosphere, click here.
Friday, September 13
In 1995, the Cato Institute -- of which the President's Commission to Strengthen Social
Security is a wholly owned subsidiary -- launched something
called the "Project on Social Security Privatization." But recently, owing to the spectacular failure of privatization as a political gambit, Cato is trying a new tack. As Campaign For America's Future uberwonk Hans Riemer informs us, Cato recently changed the name to the "Project on Social Security Choice." Only they still claim the thing was
founded in 1995. If their purpose was anything other than deception, the site would presumably mention the name change. Luckily, if you run a seach of the site for "privatization," the result that comes up first is "Social Security Privatization and Reform, a Cato Institute Project." Oh, and did we mention that when you go to the page, the top bar of our Internet Explorer browser reads "Social Security Privatization and Reform, a Cato Institute Project"? Enuff said. [posted 5:45 pm]
[Link]
JUST POSTED. Check out our three latest pieces at TAP Online. First, a fun piece by Prospect intern Corey Pein, in which he tries to set up a tax haven in the Bahamas and learns a thing or two in the process. In a column for the upcoming magazine, Robert Kuttner notes that plenty of elites -- such as James Baker and Paul Volcker -- are questioning the Bush administration's policies, but that popular protest has been muted at best. And Paul Starr says that while Saddam Hussein is a menace, war isn't our only -- or best -- option for dealing with him. [posted 3:50 pm]
[Link]
AGAINST PRE-EMPTIVE WAR. Prospect editor-at-large Harold Meyerson argues in the LA Weekly that the doctrine of pre-emptive war is the most dangerous innovation of the Bush presidency. [posted 1:50 pm]
[Link]
BAD MOVE. Uh-oh. Janet Reno apparently does not read Tapped. The former attorney general will not concede in her race against Bill McBride. Of course, we can understand her anger. Florida had two years to figure this ballot booth stuff out. It's not rocket science. Still... [posted 1:10 pm]
[Link]
THE POLITICS OF EVASION. Whatever you think of The New Republic's editorial stance on Iraq -- and it's clear that, at the very least, senior editor Lawrence Kaplan has a serious obsession with Colin Powell -- it's hard to argue with their basic complaint against the Democrats on the issue. The complaint is this: the party is obviously avoiding a showdown on Iraq. The party doesn't know what it thinks. This is a longstanding problem with Democrats; the Clinton years got them used to focusing exclusively on domestic policy, and very few of today's congressional leaders have really developed their thinking on foreign affairs. Which is too bad. Tapped is of the opinion that the Clinton administration had, by the end, arrived at the approximation of a strong, principled Democratic foriegn policy. But it was never formalized into a doctrine. And Democrats just aren't very good at playing this game.
We've got one fairly significant quibble with TNR, though. The editors assault the Democrats for complaining that Bush is scheduling the Iraq vote for maximal political gain. They see the Dems as the real cynics because they've refused to take a strong stand before the voters on Iraq -- the issue that TNR feels is the most important of the day but which most voters do not. This is kind of cheap.
For one thing, of course Bush is scheduling the vote for maximal political affect. And you can argue that Iraq is an issue of some urgency. But since the White House was happy to wait until the fall of 2002 for Bush to deliver his big policy speeches on Iraq, the question can't be much more urgent today than it was in April 2001 or whenever. Regardless, in any election, both parties will try to pivot the fall campaign around those issues congenial to them. Democrats feel that they have an advantage on prescription drugs, Republicans on Iraq. But just because TNR supports invading Iraq, and wants the Democrats to get squeezed a little -- maybe a few will come around under pressure -- doesn't mean the Democrats are displaying an unusual degree of cowardice by trying to duck the question until December. [posted 12:55 pm]
[Link]
THE FALLACY OF MEDIA BIAS. The latest example -- out of many showing that the right's claims of media bias are either vastly overblown or just plain wrong -- is the media's reaction to the ongoing Social Security debate.
A couple of weeks ago, Republicans started complaining that the press was unfairly descibing GOP policy on Social Security as "privatization." This argument was quickly turned to mincemeat, as it was so fallacious that even conservatives couldn't bring themselves to defend it. Now come the Social-Security-is-bad-for-black-people ads, which are also fallacious and dishonest and have also been shredded. (The guys at Spinsanity report that Republican campaigns in Missouri, on whose behalf the ads were apparently run, have disavowed them. Talking Points Memo has more.)
None of the debunking here, by the way, is about spin or partisanship. These arguments can be settled empirically. Republicans are on record describing their plans for Social Security as privatization. The argument that Social Security cheats blacks is utterly without foundation. And yet: The title for the New York Times article reporting on these debates is..."Parties Criticized for Ads Citing Social Security."
Now, we suppose it's too much to expect the headline to run "Republicans Engage In Historical Revisionism On Social Security." But the problem here is the journalistic cult of neutrality. If a reporter writes a story on how the sky is blue, he has to quote some nut who insists that the sky is
orange. And when a reporter writes a story on how Republicans are trying to back away from their record on Social Security, he has to give equal time to absurd, counterfactual GOP claims that it is the Democrats who are lying. [posted 12:30 pm]
[Link]
Thursday, September 12
Make sure to check out TAP Online's meditative piece about New York on September 11, 2002. From Ground Zero to the Upper West Side to Union Square to Central Park, reporter Sophia Hollander spent yesterday traversing Manhattan and talking to New Yorkers -- and wove their stories into a moving narrative about a city still looking for answers. [posted 6:30 pm]
[Link]
NOW, IS THAT REALLY NECESSARY? Quite a grovel in this Weekly Standard article by Lee Bockhorn: "In the September issue of the Atlantic, David Brooks, my infinitely wiser and more talented Weekly Standard colleague..." Sometimes it's possible to have too much humility. [posted 2:00 pm]
[Link]
A NEW LOW IN SOCIAL SECURITY SLANDER. First Republicans started accusing Democratic candidates of wanting to privatize Social Security -- a preposterous lie. Then they claimed that the media were unfairly using the word "privatize" to describe GOP "reform plans" -- another lie. But this is the worst yet: According to our friends at Campaign for America's Future, GOPAC -- Newt Gingrich's old organization, you'll remember -- has started running ads targeted to black voters in Missouri that pitch Social Security as "reverse reparations."
Unidentified Woman: You've heard about reparations, you know, where whites compensate blacks for enslaving us. Well, guess what we've got now? Reverse reparations. Under Social Security today, blacks receive twenty one thousand dollars less in retirement benefits than whites of similar income and marital status. In the U.S. of A., white men live seven years longer than black men. One third of the brothers die before retirement and receive nothing. Almost half the married sisters lose their husbands before they rank Social Security spousal benefits. President George Bush proposed reforms that help our community in three ways. First, we get a higher minimum benefit. Second, our women get their fair share in their spouses Social Security. And, third, blacks get retirement accounts with real financial assets. So the next time some Democrat says he won't touch Social Security, ask why he thinks blacks owe reparations to whites?
This is an old line of argument for privatizers -- and a bogus one. The reality, as CAF analyst Hans Riemer puts it in an email, is that "Blacks actually get a slightly better rate of return than whites do from Social Security, and blacks benefit disproportionately from disability and
survivors benefits." The reason is that Social Security socializes its benefits, which means that groups that have disproportionally less income on the average -- like African-Americans -- do better under Social Security.
Which is precisely why conservatives want to kill it. [posted 1:40 pm]
[Link]
CONCEDE, JANET. This may be difficult. But it's likely that even if there hadn't been screwups in the voting booths in Florida, you wouldn't have won. If you spend the next two weeks demanding recounts, neither you nor Bill McBride will beat Jeb Bush. Take one for the team, and get out of the race. [posted 1:05 pm]
[Link]
A BLOW TO OPENNESS. U.S. District Judge Richard Vollmer has struck down roughly three-quarters of a 2000 law requiring so-called 527s to disclose who donates their money and how they spend it. Damon Chappie, Roll Call's crack campaign finance reporter, notes that the law was enjoined in late August but that no one has paid much attention to it since. [posted 12:05 pm]
[Link]
SECURITY AT OUR NUCLEAR PLANTS. If, like Tapped, you live in the Washington, D.C. area, you may have noticed ads in The Washington Post and other newspapers extolling the virtues of nuclear plant security guards. (In the same vein, defense contractors frequently advertise for fighter aircraft and such -- "F-22: The Next Generation of Air Defense!" -- presumably in the hope of influencing members of Congress and their staffs.) "Their training is intense, exacting, and continuous," runs the ad copy. "They are expert marksmen, annually certified in an array of weaponry. In short, they're professionals! Nuclear power plant security -- we've got what it takes."
Well, maybe not. According to this article, "Guards at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants are overworked, undertrained, and outgunned, and some doubt they could repel a terrorist attack, a study by a government watchdog group said yesterday." Matt Bivens of The Nation also has the goods here. [posted 12:00 pm]
[Link]
TO INVADE, OR NOT TO INVADE? President Bush will be giving (or have given) his speech to the General Assembly by the time you read this, but the White House wasn't releasing copies of the speech beforehand. Look here about thirty minutes after the speech if you're hungry for a transcript. [posted 11:55 am]
[Link]
DOES CHATTERBOX KNOW ABOUT THIS? It looks like Timothy Noah's intense reporting has finally driven Stephen L. Carter over the edge. Tapped attended a session of today's President's Council on Bioethics meeting, where chair Leon Kass announced with regret that Carter had resigned from the body. Hmm. [posted 11:45 am]
[Link]
Wednesday, September 11
Look at TomPaine.com to read some other voices
today. There you will find, among other articles, an essay by long-time progressive activist Sam Smith on what we lost one year ago and a piece by a 16 year-old Brooklyn student writing about why he worries. [posted 3:20 pm]
[Link]
MORE READING. Also worth reading is Leon Wieseltier's moving piece in the most recent New Republic on a photo of one man falling from the World Trade Center. And if you revisit one piece published last year in the aftermath of September 11, make it Paul Berman's American Prospect essay, which articulated a particularly liberal kind of moral clarity in the war on terror. Almost a year later, his argument is still important -- and still right on target. [posted 2:20 pm]
[Link]
HOW TO REMEMBER. Today, in memory of 9/11, Tapped is going to restrict itself (with the exception of the post below) to recommended readings -- articles, essays, and reportage that help us think through the events of that terrible day. Start with President Bush's New York Times essay, an eloquent statement of our place in the world. Then read Tom Friedman on
the lessons of Noah, David Broder on whether 9/11 really lives in infamy, the Wall Street Journal on why the World Trade Center site must not become a graveyard,
Diane Pucin on the airplane she didn't board, Christopher Ketcham on the firefighter who came back alone, Larry Miller on pictures of the dead, and Michelle Cottle on the guilt of remembrance. Finally, click here to see crew members of the U.S.S. Belleau Wood showing their true colors. [posted 1:30 pm]
[Link]
DEPRESSING. Well, now we know who the first person is to undermine the gravity and sobriety of a day like today. It's Dick Cheney; see here to find out how. (Via Josh Marshall.) [posted 10:20 pm]
[Link]
Tuesday, September 10 But we looked it up, and this Associated Press story really did go out over the wire. It's a summary of changes in traditional American rights and liberties -- via the USA Patriot Act and the Bush administration -- since September 11th. It's well worth posting in its entirety here:
FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.
We're starting to regret that Bob Barr, a principled civil libertarian in spite of everything else that's wrong with the guy, will be leaving us soon.
P.S. Nicholas Kristof has more on this in his latest, and very good, column. [posted 5:45 pm]
[Link]
STILL WAITING. For someone to pick up this story about Dana Rohrabacher's freelance foreign-policy-making with . . . yep, the Taliban. So when Jesse Jackson does it, he's a meddling solipsist. But when Rohrabacher does it . . . [posted 3:00 pm]
[Link]
GOING DOWN, DOWN, DOWN. Bush's approval rating keeps dropping. Now it's at 60 percent in the Pew poll (it's in the mid-60s in several
others). Republican pollsters have been pre-empting this for months, saying they expected his numbers to drop. And, of course, they're still good. But it's interesting that they keep dropping in spite of the approach of the
September 11th anniversary. We'll see how much of a boost Bush gets from his 9/11 addresses. [posted 12:45 pm]
[Link]
THE LEFT AFTER 9/11. You can read this today, or you can read it tommorrow. But Adam Shatz's article in The Nation is well worth reading. Tapped, which resides a bit to the right of the people whom Shatz is describing and debating, found the essay to be very important as we approach the 9/11 anniversary. It's a follow-up of sorts to Michael Walzer's devastating Dissent essay, "Can There Be A Decent Left?" (which, curiously, we cannot find on their web site).
P.S. This would be a good time for everyone who hasn't already to read the opening pages of Robert Caro's Lyndon B. Johnson biography. It's basically a summary of Senate history through the decades. And one thing that keeps popping up is the Senate blocking foreign policy action, even in cases -- as FDR's attempts to help the British before Pearl Harbor -- where the country is more or less behind that action. We're not saying that's what's going on today, or what will go on tommorrow. Public opinion on Iraq is still basically split. And the Democratic Senate could very well approve action. But the book will give you some insight into how the Senate works, what place the Founders intended for it in the constitutional order, and just how immune the body can be to the broader political forces swirling around it. [posted 12:40 pm]
[Link]
SHOULD DEMOCRATS FEAR A WAR? The conventional wisdom is that a debate over Iraq will hurt the Democrats' effort to win control of the House of Representatives and keep control of the Senate. Because Democrats are split over the war, the caucus will find itself mired in bitter and divisive debate over whether to support the action in Iraq. The public will be distracted from prescription drugs, Social Security, and other putative Democratic winners, focusing instead on national security threats, a definite Democratic loser. Right? Right?
Well, not necessarily. The Democrats have responded sensibly to Bush's plans. They want more discussion, they want evidence to be furnished and a public case to be made, and they want war as a last resort. Should the evidence be convincing that Saddam is indeed a real and present danger to the lives of Americans, it's hard to imagine most Democrats won't rally behind the president. And if the evidence isn't convincing and the case not made, it's hard to imagine the most Americans would rally behind the president.
Finally, it's just not true that people won't vote for the president's opposition during a war. In fact, the opposite is true. As Ruy Teixeira pointed out in this excellent piece for The Prospect after 9/11, "wartime in the twentieth century has consistently failed to produce immediate electoral benefits for the incumbent party." The opposition party almost always picks up seats during a war. In 1990, just prior to the gulf war, Republicans lost seats in both the House and Senate. And two years later, despite the elder George Bush's 90 percent approval rating when the war ended, Republicans lost both the White House and the Senate.
Here's to optimism! [posted 12:35 pm]
[Link]
QUESTIONS. Over the weekend two Washington Post pieces -- the first by Robert Kaiser and the second by Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) raised questions that everybody ought to be asking the president about Iraq. Take a look at these and send us others. We'll compile the best of them and get back to you so you can make sure to get the answers you want. [posted 12:00 pm]
[Link]
UNDER EVERY ROCK. Is it possible that there is yet another way for the rich to avoid paying taxes? Yes there is. Read the latest example. And by the way, the Bush Administration plans to do nothing about it. [posted 11:50 pm]
[Link]
READ. There is some really terrific writing on the anniversary of 9-11 and we want to make sure you see it. The New York Times is firing on all cylinders. Must reads are Susan Sontag, Paul Krugman and
the lead editorial. Also don't miss Hendrik Hertzberg and David Remnick's piece in The New Yorker. No doubt there will be more. [posted 11:40 pm]
[Link]
JUST POSTED. Today is primary day in Washington, D.C. and Maryland, and TAP Online has web-only coverage of the two most closely-watched races. Drake Bennett assesses the situation of Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, who is seeking to overcome both a collection of oddball challengers and his self-inflicted status as a write-in on today's ballot. And Alex Gourevitch ventures into Maryland, where Kennedy cousin Mark Shriver is in a competitive race for the right to challenge popular Republican congresswoman Connie Morella in what is an overwhelmingly Democratic district. [posted 11:30 pm]
[Link]
Monday, September 9
The various little gnomes that put together Tapped for your pleasure were all on tight deadlines today, and we weren't able to get any posts up. Rest assured, however, that we'll be back with a vengeance
tomorrow. [posted 5:00 pm]
[Link]
Note: This section is currently a work in progress.....
Altercation: Eric Alterman has the best-named blog we know -- and the content's great too.
Instapundit: Glenn Reynolds is blogging's 800 pound gorilla.
What is "Tapped"? Click here to find out.
Tapped Archives: Click here for all the crazy things we've said in the past.
E-mail Tapped: tapped@prospect.org
Permanent Link: www.prospect.org/current/tapped (right click to bookmark)
