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Code Red

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Phillip Longman - Sep. 02 (Special Report) - Almost all experts agree that in order to begin to deal with these problems, the health care industry must step into the twenty-first century and become computerized. Astonishingly, twenty years after the digital revolution, only 1.5 percent of hospitals have integrated IT systems today—and half of those are government hospitals. Digitizing the nation’s medical system would not only improve patient safety through better-coordinated care, but would also allow health professionals to practice more scientifically driven medicine, as researchers acquire the ability to mine data from millions of computerized records about what actually works.

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A Shot in the Arm

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Jonathan Gruber - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Universal health insurance, far from suppressing entrepreneurship, could be a boon to it. The main reason for this is a phenomenon known as "job lock," a term coined during the last round of debate over universal health coverage in the early 1990s. Job lock refers to the fact that workers are often unwilling to leave a current job that provides health insurance for another position that might not, even if they would be more productive in that other position. This is because employer-provided insurance is traditionally the only reliable form of fairly priced private insurance coverage available in the U.S. The alternative is to purchase insurance in the nongroup market, where insurance prices and availability are typically not regulated, so insurance companies can drop individuals when they become ill or charge them exorbitant prices. As a result, individuals feel "locked" into less productive jobs.

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Tipping Back the Scales

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Rachel Morris - Mar. 26 (Special Report) - Since Barack Obama won the election, many have wondered what he will do to repair the damage that Schlozman and his allies inflicted on the DOJ’s integrity. But there is another important question to be asked. Meese’s inventive use of the Justice Department ultimately set American jurisprudence on a rightward course. Could Obama use his Justice Department to turn it back?

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What Obama Should Read

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - Jan. 19 (Opinion) - A president who is a serious reader is of course likely to be shaped by what he reads, and we know a bit about what has been on Obama’s list so far. From interviews, we know that Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls made an impression on him as a young man. His campaign reading list—or at least the books he chose to be seen with on the trail—included Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment, Larry Bartels’s Unequal Democracy, Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. And we know that, at least in the case of the latter book, Obama’s choice of reading has already had some impact on his governing choices (or at least on how pundits frame them on the Sunday-morning talk shows). So in the hope that he’s willing to take a few more reading assignments, we asked a few of our favorite writers and thinkers to offer their suggestions on what the new president should have by his bedside.

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Back on Tracks

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Phillip Longman - Jan. 14 (Special Report) - By all rights, America’s dilapidated rail lines ought to be a prime candidate for some of that spending. All over the country there are opportunities like the I-81/Crescent Corridor deal, in which relatively modest amounts of capital could unclog massive traffic bottlenecks, revving up the economy while saving energy and lives. Many of these projects have already begun, like Virginia’s, or are sitting on planners’ shelves and could be up and running quickly. And if we’re willing to think bigger and more long term—and we should be—the potential of a twenty-first-century rail system is truly astonishing. In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 85 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation’s highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emission by 38 percent and oil consumption by 22 percent. By moderating the growing cost of logistics, it would also leave the nation’s economy 13 percent larger by 2030 than it would otherwise be.

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Last Secrets of the Bush Administration

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

Washington Monthly - By Charles Homans - Dec. 01 (Opinion) - when Bush hands over the keys to the White House in January, he will leave behind more unanswered questions of sweeping national importance than any modern president. ... the things we know we don’t know—there are also what Donald Rumsfeld might call the unknown unknowns.A few key actions will take us much of the distance between what we know and what we need to know.

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Has Newsweek Gone Mad? New Article Gives Voice to Antichrist Whack Jobs

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Steve Benen - Nov. 19 (News Analysis) - When bizarre, fringe publications speculate openly about who may or may not be the Antichrist, it's easy to dismiss. When Newsweek publishes a 600-word piece on those who wonder about Obama being the Antichrist, one really has to wonder what on earth the editors were thinking.

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Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By T. A. Frank - May. 05 (Special Report) - Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have criticized trade deals such as NAFTA as unfair to American workers, and the new thinking is that trade agreements should include strict labor standards. Obama has cited a recent free trade agreement with Peru as an example of how to go forward. I hope he's right, but let's remember that NAFTA was also hailed, in its day, for including labor protections. Our solutions on paper have proved hard to enforce. Peru attempts to remedy some of the problems of NAFTA, but we're still advancing slowly in the dark.

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No Torture. No Exceptions. - Stephen N. Xenakis

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Stephen N. Xenakis - Mar. 14 (Opinion) - Doctors are different; they hold a special place in the hearts of people throughout the world because of the powers their training gives them to relieve suffering. The idea that military doctors would use those skills and techniques to inflict pain, or to aid those who cause suffering, is shocking. By putting physicians in that position, our government has sent a horrible message to the world.

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No Torture. No Exceptions. - Kenneth M. Duberstein & Richard Armitage

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kenneth M. Duberstein, Richard Armitage - Mar. 13 (Opinion) - Let there be no mistake: waterboarding is torture--and it should never be used by the United States. No less a hero than John McCain will attest to this. Every American president bears a mighty burden as commander in chief. We saw this firsthand with President Reagan. But President Reagan understood that our response to threats must neither diminish who we are nor undermine our values. It was President Reagan who said, "Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him."

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No Torture. No Exceptions. - Chuck Hagel

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Chuck Hagel - Mar. 12 (Editorial) - During World War II, U.S. Army intelligence officers at Fort Hunt, Virginia, questioned Nazi prisoners of war using ingenuity, skill, and knowledge of foreign cultures. They gleaned valuable intelligence at a time when the United States was fighting for its existence against an evil equally as menacing as that which we face today. And they acquired this information without resorting to abusive techniques, such as waterboarding, that are considered to be torture. In fact, until now, every previous U.S. administration and every civilized government in history has condemned the practice of waterboarding. After World War II, the American government convened war crimes tribunals that prosecuted and convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war. A century ago, the U.S. Army court-martialed American soldiers for using similar methods during the Philippine insurrection. The public acknowledgment on February 5 by CIA Director Michael Hayden that the U.S. government has engaged in waterboarding is a disgrace to America and the values we represent.

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No Torture. No Exceptions: Wesley K. Clark

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Wesley K. Clark - Mar. 12 (Opinion) - Today, in the struggle to finish off the extremists plotting against us, it won't be torture and fear that win the day for America. Far from it. Nations that torture end up despised and defeated. No, to win we'll have to live up to the values we profess, the belief in human rights, equal justice, fair trials, and the rule of law. These ideals are potent weapons. They will give us allies, friends, information, and security--but only if we live them.

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No Torture. No Exceptions: Bob Barr

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Bob Barr - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - Waterboarding is, in essence, a torturer's best friend--easy, quick, and nonevidentiary. It had always been considered torture by civilized governments such as ours--until, of course, this administration.

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Indemnification

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Mar. 02 (Comment) - It is my contention that the telcos have just such indemnification agreements with the Administration/government, that we do not know about because they are classified and hidden, that so protect them for any liability and losses resulting from the litigation they are faced with; thus they do not need immunity to protect them from potential liability verdicts, they are already covered..

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National Security

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Feb. 02 (News Report) - The emerging consensus about the lovefest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last night is that Clinton was better in the first half, when they discussed domestic policy, and Obama was better in the second half, when they discussed Iraq. Maybe so.

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The China Card

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

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - Americans, perhaps, just aren't open to the idea that a "focused, targeted effort" is what we need. Maybe the politics of fear works really well, and once the genie is out the bottle then you either adopt a hard-edged, interventionist rhetoric or else you sound like a wimp.

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The Unbearable Inanity of Tim Russert

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:30:06 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Matthew Yglesias - Jan. 16 (News Analysis) - Actually, the balls Russert favors may be hard, but the pitches he throws aren't curveballs, which go someplace useful. They're sillyballs, which go somewhere pointless. Russert has created a strike zone of his own where toughness meets irrelevance. John McCain entered the zone last May, when he went on the show and repeatedly asserted that the Bush tax cuts had increased the federal government's revenue. Hearing this, a tough but conscientious journalist might have pointed out that this is demonstrably false. Russert, however, reached for a trusty hardball and sent it sailing. McCain, he pointed out, was now supporting extending the very same Bush tax cuts that he had once opposed.

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The Army's Other Crisis

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:05:01 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Andrew Tilghman - Dec. 19 (Special Report) - the top uniformed and civilian leaders at the Pentagon who think hardest about the future of the military have a more fundamental fear: young officers ... are leaving the Army at nearly their highest rates in decades.

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What the Tapes Would Have Shown

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:23:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Dec. 08 (Opinion) - ... the tapes were almost certainly destroyed for fear that they'd be subpoenaed and it would become clear just how harsh our "harsh interrogation" measures really were.

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Cooking the books

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:20:03 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Sep. 10 (Opinion) - Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Republicans are making a big mistake by spending all their TV time this morning complaining about accusations that Gen. Petraeus is cooking the books in his assessment of progress in Iraq? Repeating the accusation ...

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We Should Start Over

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:18:38 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - This is becoming a comedy of the absurd. Scrap the Iraqi police force? Start over from scratch? Is this a joke? Even if we could do it, it means (a) putting 26,000 armed and pissed off Iraqis back on the street, (b) running the country without a police force until a new one is recruited and trained, and (c) spending two or three years building a replacement. And that's the good news. The bad news is that there's no reason to think the shiny new police force would be any better than the old one. It didn't improve after all our efforts in 2006, after all. The unpleasant truth is that there's a reason the police force acts essentially as an extension of the Shiite militias -- namely that that's exactly how the Shiite government wants it -- and no reason to think that's going to change anytime in the near future.

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Revolt of the CEOs

Sat, 26 May 2007 23:56:56 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Christopher Hayes - May. 26 (Opinion) - David Brooks has been urging fellow conservatives to stop looking to the idealized small-government icons of Goldwater and Reagan as a guide to the problems of the twenty-first century. "Democratic approaches are favored on almost all domestic, tax, and fiscal issues, and even on foreign affairs," Brooks wrote in an April column entitled "Grim Old Party." "The public, in short, wants change. And yet the Republicans refuse to offer that."

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Federal Loans for Coal Plants Clash With Carbon Cuts

Mon, 14 May 2007 15:06:56 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steven Mufson - May. 14 (News Report) - A Depression-era program to bring electricity to rural areas is using taxpayer money to provide billions of dollars in low-interest loans to build coal plants even as Congress seeks ways to limit greenhouse gas emissions. That government support is a major force behind the rush to coal plants, which spew carbon dioxide that scientists blame for global warming.

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Put It Out, Shweetheart - washingtonpost.com

Fri, 11 May 2007 09:50:38 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Frank Ahrens - May. 11 (News Report) - Depictions of smoking in movies will now be a factor when deciding what a film's rating will be, possibly making a PG-13 movie R-rated, the Motion Picture Association of America said yesterday. The policy affects only new movies. Along with violence, depictions of sex, adult language and other content considerations, ratings organizations will examine new releases to determine if they glamorize smoking or if it is pervasive through the films, even among adults. Underage smoking has always been considered when rating a film.

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The Man Behind the Curtain

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:09:42 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - The New York Times, in a genuine act of public service, has conducted an investigation into voter fraud. Republicans claim it's rampant, and the only way to stop it is via strict voter ID laws that -- purely by coincidence -- happen to have the effect of reducing turnout among several traditionally Democratic constituencies. So what's the score? By 2005, four years after John Ashcroft had changed Department of Justice guidelines to streamline prosecutions, how much voter fraud had DOJ dug up?

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