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How Stimulating

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Nov. 21 (Comment) - Republican critics of the economic recovery efforts, when they're not taking credit for the money that's benefiting their state/district, take it as a given that the stimulus "failed." For the right, it's a foregone conclusion, hardly worth discussing anymore. The New York Times reminds us today that "dispassionate analysts" agree that a fair look at the stimulus package shows that it may be "messy" but it's also "working."

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Whatever it is, they're against it

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Oct. 08 (Opinion) - In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for

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College for $99 a Month

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Carey - Oct. 05 (Special Report) - Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows.

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BAUCUS COMES UP EMPTY ON GOP VOTES

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - So, does this mean Dems will have no choice but to go it alone, probably through reconciliation? That's probably premature -- Snowe isn't going for Baucus' plan, but Baucus' plan isn't the final bill. It's about to be amended a whole lot in committee, and then has to be reconciled with the HELP bill.

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The Fabric Is Strong, but It's Not Indestructible

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Sep. 04 (Comment) - Or maybe it's not just Arkansas and there's something very wrong with our political system, put under a serious strain by the "conservative lunatic brigade," stuck in a "perverse nonsense feedback loop."

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PULLING THE 'TRIGGER'?

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Sep. 03 (Opinion) - Several months ago, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), arguably the most important lawmaker in the known universe right now, recommended the idea of a "trigger" in health care reform. As she saw it, Congress could create a public

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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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LOST CONTROL OF THE MESSAGE

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Aug. 13 (Comment) - it pays to lie, blatantly and repeatedly, when launching a campaign against a policy initiative. If proponents ignore your bogus claims, they go uncontested, making it easier to persuade uninformed voters. If proponents challenge your bogus claims, the media will say they've "lost control of the message."

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With so much on the line

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jul. 20 (Opinion) - In 1993, Bill Kristol privately advised congressional Republicans to do whatever it took to "kill" the Clinton health care reform initiative. It wasn't that the policy proposal was a bad idea; it was that passage would help the Democratic Party for years to come.

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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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This Week in God: Obama White House Meets with (Gasp!) Atheists

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steve Benen - Jun. 13 (News Report) - Last week, the Secular Coalition for America, an atheist advocacy group, held its first-ever individual face-to-face with the White House. Ron Millar, the coalition's acting director, told POLITICO that he met with Paul Montero, Obama's religious liaison in the White House Office of Public Engagement. Obama "is opening a little door to include us in, which we are very appreciative of," says Millar, who says he anticipates a number of additional such meetings with the administration.

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Obama is getting the hang of this gig

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - May. 01 (Opinion) - Perhaps the most memorable moment of last night's White House press conference was the president's last answer.

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George W. Bush Thinks the Bush-Era Torture Should Be Investigated

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steve Benen - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - "It's important for people to understand that in a democracy, there will be a full investigation. In other words, we want to know the truth. In our country, when there's an allegation of abuse ... there will be a full investigation, and justice will be delivered. ... It's very important for people and your listeners to understand that in our country, when an issue is brought to our attention on this magnitude, we act. And we act in a way in which leaders are willing to discuss it with the media. ... In other words, people want to know the truth. "That stands in contrast to dictatorships. A dictator wouldn't be answering questions about this. A dictator wouldn't be saying that the system will be investigated and the world will see the results of the investigation." You could probably guess by the frequent reference to "in other words" that this wasn't Obama, but rather, was George W. Bush, speaking to al Arabiya after the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted.

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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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Obama's Housing Plan

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - Feb. 22 (Opinion) - I've been puzzled by the response to Obama's housing plan. There seem to be a whole lot of people who think that it's mainly designed to help out people who knowingly got themselves into trouble by living beyond their means, while those of us who were financially responsible are left out in the cold. (There's a decent sample of these reactions here. Sample: "Obama has one word for those who didn't get in over their heads during the recent housing boom and have paid their mortgages on time: Suckers!") I just don't get this. Obama's plan is not primarily aimed at people who acted irresponsibly. Recall that it has three main parts (pdf):

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Economic Expertise

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Feb. 12 (Comment) - A Media Matters study of Sunday talk shows and 12 cable news programs from January 25 through February 8 found that few economists have been given time on television to talk about the economic recovery plan. During 139 1/2 hours of programming in which the economic recovery legislation was discussed, economists made 25 guest appearances out of a total of 460 -- only 5 percent.

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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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The Washington Monthly

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Aug. 11 (Editorial) - Most of the polls frame the issue as though it were a problem of "energy independence" or of dealing with the "rising cost of gasoline." But the energy problem is much more complicated. A couple of polls addressed the energy issue a bit differently, and they found a more ambivalent public. Pew Research, for example, asked which of two approaches should receive higher priority: "expanding exploration, mining and drilling and the construction of new power plants, OR, more energy conservation and regulation on energy use and prices?" Instead of overwhelming support for more oil drilling, the public was evenly divided between that approach and conservation (47 percent to 45 percent respectively).

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Bin Laden's Soft Support

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kenneth Ballen - Jul. 19 (Special Report) - There's an Indonesian custom called jagongan which holds that the most important conversations occur by talking through the night, and on that evening, we discovered the potency of jagongan firsthand. Initially, the students took up their leader's refrain.... As the night wore on, the tone began to shift.

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The Economy

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - foreigners are keeping the American economy afloat, and they'll continue to do so until they decide to stop -- which could be anytime from tomorrow morning to never. It all depends on how much faith they maintain in America as a good place to invest their money.

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History...

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:50:01 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Hilary Bok - Jun. 04 (News Report) - I didn't support Barack Obama because of his race. I didn't need to: I just thought he was the best candidate by far, mostly for wonky reasons. (I started down the road to supporting Obama when I read this sentence from a Washington Monthly article: "On the campaign trail in 2004 ...

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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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