It’s hard to imagine a place seeming farther from the White House than State Street in Montpelier, Vermont. A bucolic hamlet nestled alongside the Winooski River, Montpelier, a town of 8,000, must be the only state capital without a McDonald’s. On a brisk May morning, the sun glints blindingly off the gold-domed capitol building. Shops […]
Robert Dreyfuss
Robert Dreyfuss is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He can be reached through his website.
Posted inArticle
Titanic Brother:
It’s bigger than Big Brother. Call it, well, titanic brother. Only hours before President Bush called for the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, Senator Ted Kennedy stuck one of the lone discordant notes in what was otherwise a symphony of support for the idea. “The question,” said Kennedy, “is whether shifting the deck […]
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Security in the Shadows
For Tom Ridge, President Bush’s homeland-security director, the storm clouds over his relationship with Congress began gathering almost as soon as his appointment was announced nine days after September 11. From the very beginning, a bipartisan chorus was raised about Ridge’s lack of political clout and budget authority, not to mention his utter lack of […]
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Bush’s House of Cards
On a sweltering morning in late July, 300 demonstrators, rallying to defend Social Security against President Bush’s plan to dismantle it, swarmed around the presidential limousine as it pulled up in front of the Capital Hilton. Inside the hotel, members of the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security–which is supposed to come up with a […]
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
The Biggest Deal: Lobbying to Take Social Security Private
Privatizing Social Security would create an enormous financial bonanza. So guess who’s spending millions to change public perceptions and national policy.
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Hardball
If anyone had any doubt that the former Texas Rangers official in the White House plays hardball, the newly created President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security erases it. This is the Nolan Ryan approach to political combat: Here comes my high, hard one. Hit it if you can. By shamelessly naming a team of committed […]
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Body Count
For congressional Democrats, losing the White House meant the loss of more than the president’s veto power over Republican-sponsored legislation. It also left the Democrats without a central idea factory and place to commune with the Democratic Party’s constituency groups. “The loss of the White House left us in a vacuum,” said a staffer for […]
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How the DLC Does It
Representative Gregory Meeks, an African-American lawyer and assistant district attorney elected to Congress in 1998 to represent a middle-class black neighborhood in Queens, New York, was undecided last year on the divisive issue of trade rights for China. Lobbyists for big business were battling the AFL-CIO and environmental groups on Capitol Hill for every vote, […]