When historians review this era, they will point to the striking failure of our political system to engage, much less remedy, the most pressing national problems. Consider a few key examples: The most notable economic fact is a 25-year decline in living standards of ordinary Americans during a period of rising productivity. As Paul Krugman […]
Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America. Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter.
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Of Markets and Morals
The US political elite has finally encountered a situation where globalization isn’t an unmitigated blessing. President Bush, having used the fear factor to trump every other issue, was caught flat-footed when public opinion recoiled at a Persian Gulf company taking charge of major US ports. The Dubai case was a genuinely close question. On the […]
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Keep ’em Regulated
The purchase of KeySpan by the British energy giant National Grid PLC is only the latest in a wave of mergers and consolidations of deregulated gas and electric utilities. While the new system of free-market utilities is supposed to be good for consumers, public utility deregulation has been mainly an invitation to price-gouging and greater […]
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College Rankings or Junk Science?
It’s approaching that season when students and their parents anxiously await college admissions decisions. But increasingly, an equally feverish process is infecting the other side of the transaction and distorting the process of who gets financial aid. Colleges these days engage in an ever more frantic competition for ”rankings,” driven almost entirely by the annual […]
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The Lone Patriot
The other day, editors of the American Prospect interviewed the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid. I pressed Reid about the difficulty that Democrats were having mounting a unified opposition to President Bush, even on issues like the badly bungled Medicare prescription drug program. Reid did not respond directly on privatized Medicare drugs, where his caucus […]
Posted inDispatches
Prescription for Leadership
Seemingly, divine providence has delivered the Democrats the perfect issue for 2006 — the epic Medicare prescription-drug screwup. Far from being an abstract (if grave) public issue like nuclear non-proliferation, this one hits up close and personal. If you don’t feel the drug debacle directly, you know about it from Mom or Grandpa. With its […]
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Preserving Values
Reading about the escalating war of the cartoons and the deeper clash of faith versus reason, I recalled the wisdom of the British philosopher Edmund Burke. In March 1775, as King George grew more determined to punish uppity colonists in America. Burke gave an impassioned speech in the House of Commons, urging restraint. “The question […]
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When Democracy Strikes Back
The good news: Democracy is breaking out all over. The awkward news: The more that people freely vote, the more fervently they reject the global designs of George W. Bush and the America he projects. In the Middle East, the people have freely chosen two governments that could not be more a repudiation of Bush’s […]
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Spinning the State of the Union
How do you give an upbeat State of the Union address when your major foreign policy, Iraq, is a quagmire; your signature domestic program, Medicare drugs, is a bomb; and nearly two thirds of Americans, according to the latest Gallup Poll, think the country is worse off than five years ago? Here are a few […]
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Ingrate Judges
US District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, speaking to a Boston Bar Association dinner where he recently received an award, told of a conversation decades ago with another federal judge in Chicago who owed his appointment to then-mayor Richard J. Daley. ”What does Mayor Daley think of you as a judge?” Woodlock asked. ”He thinks […]
