forum
If Economy’s Improving, Why Is Dependency Growing?
by Eric Singer, Investors Daily, February 21, 2012 – The government is at full throttle to present the economy as improving especially in light of the upcoming election. At the same time, there has been a stunning rise in dependency as most recently presented by the Heritage Foundation. Heritage defines dependency as significantly depending on [...]
Fear and Feminism
by James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal, February 16th 2012 – This column has tended to agree with the conventional wisdom that among the Republicans running for president, Mitt Romney is the safest choice, the most “electable.” See, for example, our rebuttal of Richard Miniter’s contrarian column from late last month. We still think Romney, [...]
Romney’s Big Problem
by E.J. Dionne, Washington Post Writers Group, February 16th 2012 – Mitt Romney has lost his central asset. It is no longer obvious that he is the Republican with the best chance of defeating President Obama. Romney was never fully trusted or liked by the staunchest conservatives, a rather large Republican constituency. But until now, [...]
How 3 Myths Drive Europe’s Response to Debt Crisis
by Harald Uhlig, Bloomgberg, February 16th 2012 – In many ways, things in Europe look better than they did just a month or two ago. The European Central Bank is providing banks with almost unlimited cash to buy their governments’ bonds. Yields on Italian debt have declined. This breather is a perfect opportunity to examine some [...]
Talking with the Taliban, making peace with the guilty
by Michael V. Hayden, CNN, February 16th 2012 – One of the first briefings I gave President George W. Bush as deputy director of national intelligence was on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the fiendishly brutal head of al Qaeda in Iraq. I began with Zarqawi’s upbringing: “Raised on the mean streets of Zarqa, jailed as a [...]
The Myth of Runaway Health Spending
by J.D. Kleinke, The Wall Street Journal, February 16th 2012 – New data show that health spending over the past several years has been normalizing toward the rate of general inflation, rather than growing higher and higher, as had been the case almost continuously since the 1970s. This moderation in the growth rate of spending [...]
How to find the best leader for the World Bank
by Mohamed A. El-Erian, The Washington Post, February 16th 2012 – Here we go again. Officials tend to preach the importance of following a merit-based, open and transparent process in selecting the head of an influential international organization. Until, that is, it comes to a position that has traditionally gone to their own country. Then [...]
Why the Egyptian Military Fears a Captain’s Revolt
by Patrick Galey, Foreign Policy, February 16th 2012 – CAIRO — Battered by a fractious security situation and embroiled in an escalating feud with the United States, Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has found it easier to take power than to govern. Now, according to Western diplomatic and Egyptian military sources, [...]
Egyptian Party Threatens to Review Treaty With Israel
by David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, February 16th 2012 – CAIRO — The Islamist party that leads the new Egyptian Parliament is threatening to review the 1979 peace treaty with Israel if the United States cuts off aid to the country over a crackdown on American-backed nonprofit groups here. The pact is considered [...]
Republicans Are Unprotected on Contraception
by Jonathan Alter, Bloomberg, February 16th 2012 – During the 1928 presidential campaign, nutty right-wing Protestants claimed that Al Smith, the first Catholic nominated for president by a major party, was planning to extend New York’s Holland Tunnel all the way to the Vatican. Today’s tunnel would run from the Vatican to a suburban Pentecostal [...]
Moochers Against Welfare
by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, February 16th 2012 – First, Atlas shrugged. Then he scratched his head in puzzlement. Modern Republicans are very, very conservative; you might even (if you were Mitt Romney) say, severely conservative. Political scientists who use Congressional votes to measure such things find that the current G.O.P. majority is [...]
Dept. Of Homeland Security ‘concerned’ Over Threats From Iran
By Mike Levine, Fox News, February 15th 2012 – As federal and local law enforcement plan to boost their communications with Jewish groups in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Wednesday told a House panel she is “concerned” over potential threats to the U.S. homeland from Iran or its surrogates and it’s “a situation that bears watching.” Napolitano said [...]
Romney Faces Challenges in “Home State” of Michigan
By Scott Conroy, Real Clear Politics, February 16th 2012 – Following his bruising defeats in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary four years ago, Mitt Romney’s hopes for mounting a comeback against John McCain and Mike Huckabee seemed dim when his campaign plane landed in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Jan. 9, 2008. Over the [...]
Obama Breaks His Pledge on the Budget
By Debra Sanders, SF Chronicle, February 16th 2012 – In February 2009 — having signed into law his $787 billion stimulus package — President Barack Obama made a pledge to the nation. “Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years,” the president noted, “we cannot simply spend as we please and defer [...]
U.S. autos bailout ‘was crony capitalism on a grand scale’
by Mitt Romney, The Detroit News, February 14th 2012 – I am a son of Detroit. I was born in Harper Hospital and lived in the city until my family moved to Oakland County. I grew up drinking Vernors and watching ballgames at Michigan & Trumbull. Cars got in my bones early. And not just [...]
U.S.-India Ties: Pivot Problems
by David J. Karl, The Diplomat, February 9th 2012 – There’s a conundrum at the heart of the Obama administration’s “pivot” toward Asia, at least as it relates to India. The United States is eager to extricate itself from military conflicts in the Greater Middle East (Iraq and Afghanistan) so it can focus on a [...]
Black Helicopters Hover Over Economic Reality
by Caroline Baum, Bloomberg, February 8th 2012 – Maybe it’s inevitable that politics play a role in economic policy. After all, the two disciplines were pretty much intertwined until the 20th century. Today, political economy has taken on a whole new meaning. Perhaps “politicized economy” would be a more accurate description. Some of the politicization [...]
Don’t Count on a Syria Intervention
by Scott Clement, Foreign Policy, February 8th 2012 – Syrians rebels continue to be bombarded by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. And in the wake of a failed Security Council resolution that would have pushed for a transfer of power, the embattled leader shows little sign of giving up the reins — though he faces mounting [...]
The Limits Of Monetary Policy Call For Moral, Sound Money
by James A. Dorn, Forbes, February 8th 2012 – The American public does not like the fact that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has vastly expanded the size and scope of the nation’s central bank and bailed out Wall Street while Main Street suffered. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy, [...]
It’s unfair to compare presidents’ ideologies without considering context
by Ezra Klein, The Washington Post, February 8th 2012 – In 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president, he began a minor furor by saying that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on [...]
The Gulf Is Where It’s At
by Ray Takeyh, The New York Times, February 8th 2012 – The paradox of the new Middle East is that as America’s influence declines, its ability to sustain its essential interests remains intact. Despite all the exhilarating and disturbing changes in Egypt and the Levant, the center of gravity of the region has moved to [...]
Transformers
by Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal, February 9th 2012 – Pope John Paul II, surveying from his seat in the eternal hereafter the battle between the American Catholic Church and the Obama administration over mandated contraception services, must be permitting himself a sad smile. The pope knew more than most about the innate tensions [...]
Vázquez Mota and the 2012 Mexican Election
by Shannon K. O’Neil, Foreign Affairs, February 8th 2012 – Last Sunday, Mexico’s incumbent National Action Party (PAN) chose its presidential candidate: Josefina Vázquez Mota, who won the party’s primary to become the first female presidential candidate from a major political party in Mexican history. But Vázquez Mota’s triumph was not a coup just because [...]
The political transformation of Barack Obama
by Jim VandeHei, Politico, February 9th 2012 – There are two indisputable facts about politics. The first is that every modern president in the fourth year of his presidency resorts to the cheap political stunts, broken promises and truth-fudging it takes to win reelection in what has been and will be a 50-50 nation. The [...]
