Abstract

In Fact…

Presents news briefs and obituaries for Marxist economist Paul Sweezy and sociologist Marc Miringoff. Bush/Cheney '04, the President's election campaign, is supposed to be the smartest, smoothest political operation since Reagan/Bush in 1984. But the campaign stumbled when it aired television ads that featured images of the dead being removed from Ground Zero. The Bush team knew it would take hits for branding the President as the 9/11 candidate but planned to dismiss the criticism as partisan carping. When House majority leader Tom DeLay gerrymandered Texas Congressional district lines, he had two goals: tip the partisan balance toward Republicans and get rid of Representative Lloyd Doggett. After mapmakers sliced Doggett's Austin district into three parts, he didn't quit or switch parties. He leaped into a new district that snakes 350 miles south from central Texas to the Mexican border. Paul Sweezy, who died recently at 93, was this country's best-known Marxist economist. The author and co-author of more than twenty books and 100 articles, he was the founder, with Leo Huberman, of Monthly Review, America's longest-running socialist publication. When Marc Miringoff died recently at 58, we lost a practical idealist whose work is only beginning to find the audience it deserves. Miringoff's Big Idea was to measure society according to the well-being of its citizens. His critique of the Index of Economic Indicators led to his Index of Social Health Indicators, which looked at issues ranging from children living in poverty to drunk driving.