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What will health reform mean for reproductive rights?

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Dana Goldstein - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - As the House and Senate produce and mark-up various health reform plans, reproductive health care is emerging -- surprise, surprise -- as a political football. Both the House bill and the Senate HELP committee proposal mention "family planning," but contrary to yesterday's scare-mongering Washington Times op-ed by the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, "family planning," under federal law, has never included abortion services. Indeed, health reform will do nothing to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the federal government from directly funding abortions.

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The Other Black President

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Adam Serwer - Feb. 23 (Special Report) - Jealous is part community organizer, part savvy financial operator, and part tech geek. In less than a year as president, he has made converts out of his critics both within the NAACP and outside it, and he has modernized the organization by drawing young, gifted and black talent. In advance of the presidential election, Jealous developed a new online system to help the NAACP register thousands of voters. And he has used his fundraising connections to resolve the fiscal crisis left by his predecessor. "He knows just about everyone," says Tammy Tanner, an administrative assistant at the Rosenberg Foundation, the philanthropic organization Jealous ran before leaving for the NAACP. "He says, let's have wine and sit down and talk, and people are writing $10,000 checks for him." When several donors pulled out of an NAACP fundraiser in San Francisco over the chapter president's opposition to the Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban, Jealous jumped on a plane to California and raised $19,000 to fill the gap.

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Getting Real on Climate Change

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Ted Nordhaus, Michael Schellenberger - Dec. 01 (Special Report) - Obama faces the deepest recession the United States has seen in decades, a failing health system, and a crumbling infrastructure. His top priority will be to get the U.S. economy back on its feet. Yet there is little evidence that greens have come to terms with this reality. Like conservatives who see tax cuts as the solution to all problems, greens are now offering carbon auctions and energy taxes as the answer to the economic crisis. "Capping global warming pollution and auctioning off the pollution rights will inject $150 billion into the economy each year," Krupp of EDF told his members in an Oct. 24 e-mail.

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The Coming Conservative Crack-up

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Paul Waldman - Oct. 01 (Opinion) - Bumping abortion and other social issues to the top of the Republican agenda isn't how things are supposed to work -- those issues are supposed to be the opiate for the Republican masses, doled out generously at campaign time with the understanding that they'll have little importance once power is obtained. Palin, in fact, is the first Republican vice-presidential nominee drawn from that wing of the party obsessed with what other people are doing with their dirty parts. Look at the GOP running mates since Watergate: Dick Cheney, Jack Kemp, Dan Quayle, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole. All may have had the appropriately conservative positions on social issues, but each was far more concerned with economics and foreign policy.

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Rachel Maddow: Political Game Changer

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Sam Boyd - Sep. 24 (News Analysis) - Maddow has broken the broadcasting mold. She has succeeded as an avowed liberal on television precisely because she is not a liberal version of conservatives like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Unlike so many progressive media figures who sought to replicate the on-air habits of the aggressive shock jocks of the right, she stumbled upon a workable style for the left.

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The Demise of the Washington News Bureau

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By John McQuaid - Sep. 22 (News Analysis) - The most valuable traditional D.C. journalism is the daily and weekly coverage of Congress by reporters who know individual members and their staffs, go to hearings, and develop detailed knowledge of their issue terrains. This is an instrument of accountability and understanding. And it can't really be done remotely, without prowling the hallways of Capitol Hill, chatting people up in elevators -- though papers that shutter their bureaus usually say they're going to try. Without coverage of individual members and local issues, the federal government seems -- is -- more distant and abstract. And when nobody's watching, members of Congress and bureaucrats get away with more questionable stuff.

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The Conservative Case for Urbanism

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Dana Goldstein - Sep. 05 (News Report) - Policies in favor of dense development shouldn't be viewed on a left-right spectrum and certainly needn't be filtered through culture-war rhetoric, the panelists said. In fact, one doesn't have to be concerned about climate change at all in order to support such policies; values of fiscal conservatism and localism, both key to Republican ideology, can be better realized through population-dense development than through sprawl.

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John Kerry, Foreign Policy Warrior

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Matthew Yglesias - Aug. 29 (Opinion) - It sounds like a strange thing to say about a political attack speech, but last night Kerry showed the moral courage that made him famous in the first place. Freed from the curse of his own predestination for the White House, one of the politicians most-loathed by the press assailed the media's favorite son.

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McCain: Noun, Verb, Terrorism

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Paul Waldman - Jul. 03 (Editorial) - McCain continues to embody Bush's worst impulses on terrorism, not least his stubborn refusal to grasp even the most basic facts about terrorist organizations. So let's ask: What would al-Qaeda like America to do in the next few years? What would serve its goals? A few things are obvious. It would like us to stay in Iraq, both because it offers its members a place to practice planning and carrying out terrorist acts, and because it sustains anti-American feeling in the Muslim world. Al-Qaeda would also like the American government to maintain as bellicose a posture as possible, rattling its sword and threatening further military actions against Muslim countries.

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Can Identity Politics Save the Right?

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Mark Schmitt - May. 27 (Special Report) - The recent resurgence of the British Conservative Party is a reminder that even after a decade of futility, a new leader, a vision, and impatience with the incumbent party can turn things around quickly. But for now, with Republican state parties in shambles, with no chance of reclaiming a congressional majority any time soon, and suffering, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned, "a catastrophic collapse of trust," the GOP could be hitting that bottom, and grabbing desperately onto a frayed lifeline--the identity politics of American-ness--in a last bid for survival.

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Losing Lebanon

Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Gershom Gorenberg - May. 14 (News Analysis) - The Bush administration's Middle East policy of confrontation, of trying to isolate opponents, is in tatters. In particular, the administration's resistance to peace talks between Israel and Syria has only served to strengthen Iran. And time is working in Teheran's favor.

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Israel at 60

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Daniel Levy - May. 09 (Opinion) - Not 20 kilometers from liberal Tel Aviv is a reality that is unforgiveably ignored. In the West Bank, Israel imposes one of the longest, last remaining and most dehumanizing of occupations in the world on Palestinian population. Worse, the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel are not part of this nation-building exercise, subjected to ongoing and structurally-embedded discrimination.

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The Meltdown Lowdown

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Dean Baker - May. 02 (News Analysis) - Now that takes real courage -- he's telling tens of millions of Americans with serious medical problems to vote for him so that he can dismantle the health-insurance system and then to trust him to put something workable in its place. Maybe he should rename his campaign bus the Crazy Talk Express.

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Knockin' You Out Like Rocky Balboa

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Ezra Klein - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - Obama has failed to land the knockout blow. He has not overwhelmed her in any of the psychologically critical battleground states -- not in Pennsylvania, not in Ohio, and not in Texas. Insofar as Clinton's argument is that Obama is weak among the white ethnics who populate the critical Midwestern swing states, he has not proven capable of delivering the decisive electoral rejoinder that would transform her losing but close candidacy into a mere vanity project that the superdelegates would have every right and reason to abandon. Viewed one way, Rocky made it 15 rounds because he was determined. Viewed another, he got there because Creed never laid him out.

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There's Nothing Funny About Prison Rape

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Ezra Klein - Mar. 31 (Special Report) - Prison rape occupies a fairly odd space in our culture. It is, all at once, a cherished source of humor, a tacitly accepted form of punishment and a broadly understood human rights abuse. We pass legislation called the Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time that we produce films meant to explore the funny side of inmate sexual brutality.

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Health Care's Odd Couple

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Ezra Klein - Feb. 15 (Special Report) - Rather than patching up the employer-based system and offering alternatives that individuals would maybe migrate toward, as both Clinton's and Obama's plans do, Wyden-Bennett end the employer-based system. They force employers to account for every dime and dollar they spend on employee health care and, the year after the bill's passage, redirect that cash into employee paychecks. So if your employer is spending $7,000 a year for your health insurance, your paycheck gets a $7,000 boost as soon as their bill passes. You have the money they spent on your health care, but you are no longer dependent on them for that health care.

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The FundamentaList

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Sarah Posner - Feb. 06 (News Analysis) - It will be interesting to watch and see, in the coming weeks, whether the religious right leaders start to coalesce around Huckabee, something many of them have resisted for months, in order to put pressure on McCain, who many of them still view with suspicion. Surely any rallying around McCain would be accompanied by pressure on him to pledge fealty to their core issues, especially a federal gay marriage amendment and judicial nominations. If McCain makes amends with the old guard -- people like James Dobson and the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land -- and they also see Huckabee as a viable running mate, McCain could draw together different strands of the Republican-leaning evangelical vote.

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Financing the Common Good

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Robert B. Reich - Feb. 05 (Opinion) - A new Democratic president will face many of the same challenges Bill Clinton faced at the start of his administration -- but all made worse by George W. Bush.

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The Economic State of the Union

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Jared Bernstein - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - The fact is, Bushonomics -- which I'd characterize as large supply-side tax cuts, deregulation, with no regard to fiscal constraints -- has failed...

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What to Really Do About Immigration

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Jeff Faux - Jan. 22 (Editorial) - But the news from south of the border is not good. The number of Mexican workers continues to grow faster than the number of Mexican jobs that pay enough to earn a living. And there is no end to this problem in sight.

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Today's Go-to Villains.

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:35:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Matthew Duss - Jan. 15 (Opinion) - Among the many offensive images and representations in the program, the clip from Back to the Future is particularly ridiculous. The year was 1985, Muammar Khaddafi was being sold to us as the new Hitler, (this was several new Hitlers ago; since then we've had Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein again, with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad acting as the current new Hitler) and thus "Libyans" was offered as perfunctory shorthand for "villains."

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Hard-Liners for Jesus

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Harold Meyerson - Dec. 24 (Opinion) - But it's on their policies concerning immigrants where Republicans -- candidates and voters alike -- really run afoul of biblical writ. Not on immigration as such but on the treatment of immigrants who are already here. Consider: Christmas, after all, celebrates not just Jesus's birth but his family's flight from Herod's wrath into Egypt, a journey obviously undertaken without benefit of legal documentation. The Bible isn't big on immigrant documentation. "Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him," Exodus says the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai, "for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

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An Outside-In Strategy for Health-Care Reform

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

American Prospect - By Ezra Klein - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - I am not a big believer in universal health reform at the state level. For reasons I've outlined at length elsewhere, states tend to be too fiscally unstable to make such plans work. Even so, the proposal currently snaking its way through the California legislative process is an impressive feat of policy construction and political compromise -- and it may point toward the sort of coalition that can eventually be created for national reform.

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Back Field in Motion: John Edwards Makes a Move

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:06:20 -0800

American Prospect - By Terence Samuel - Dec. 10 (Special Report) - The question now before Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire, and beyond, is whether to support Mrs. Establishment, support Mr. Excitement, or split the difference with a John Edwards. It's a complicated political calculation, but ti's all that Edwards can audaciously hope for.

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Time for Meaningful Justice at Guantanamo

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:34:49 -0800

American Prospect - By Jonathan Hafetz - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - Habeas corpus has been one of America's strongest and proudest traditions for more than two centuries. If habeas corpus means anything, it means that individuals detained by the state must be given a fair shot to show their imprisonment is unlawful. There are some traditions no president or Congress should be ever be allowed to break.

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