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Right Pejoratives, Wrong Targets
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Representative Peter King – and now President Bush – are demonizing the New York Times and threatening to prosecute the paper for its story on a secret money monitoring program. This attack is part of a broader, undeclared war on the media intended to intimidate journalists from doing their jobs.
As I wrote earlier this month, even the former chief spokesman for Attorney General John Ashcroft characterized the actions of Alberto Gonzales in threatening reporters as "…the most reckless abuse of power I have seen in years."
This very abuse demonstrates that the need for an independent media is greater now than ever before. Sure, there is a balance to be struck between security and liberty. But that balance is gone – thanks to a Bush administration that has displayed reckless contempt for the media, for the Constitution, and for our Bill of Rights.
(281) CommentsJune 27, 2006
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Rumsfeld Must Go
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Amid the Generals Revolt against Rumsfeld; union officials representing 200,000 civilian defense workers calling for his resignation; and scores of Democrats as well as a good number of Republicans demanding his ouster…Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's role in a $30 billion Pentagon procurement scandal --"The largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades," according to the Washington Post--nearly slipped through the cracks.
As the Post reports, it seems the Pentagon nearly squandered "$30 billion leasing several hundred new tanker aircraft that its own experts had decided were not needed." The purchase was stopped in 2004 by a Senate investigation that revealed it was "viewed inside the Pentagon as a politically tinged bailout for Boeing."
Although procurement makes up one-fifth of the Defense Department's $410 billion budget (not including Iraq and Afghanistan); and the $30 billion tanker deal was rife with "widespread violations of Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules"…. Rumsfeld told investigators, "I don't remember approving it. But I certainly don't remember not approving it, if you will."
(130) CommentsJune 25, 2006
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Sweet Victory: Waging War on Emissions
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Co-written by Sam Graham-Felsen.
If trends continue, 2006 may be remembered as the year the world woke up to the global climate crisis. And Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth--which recently opened nationwide at over 400 theaters--may be credited with the wake-up call. The film continues to soar at the box office, and is projected to eclipse Bowling for Columbine as the third highest grossing documentary of all time (excluding IMAX and concert docs). The tremendous buzz caused by the film has jolted the public consciousness, propelling concerned citizens and Congress into concrete action.
Last week, Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) introduced the Safe Climate Act, a landmark environmental bill that would dramatically reduce heat-trapping emissions directly responsible for global warming. HR 5642 would freeze emissions in 2010 at the 2009 levels and then cut emissions by 2 percent each year beginning in 2011. By 2020, emissions would be lowered by 5 percent per year, making emissions 80 percent lower than 1990 levels by the year 2050. Senators James Jefforts (I-Vt.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are expected to introduce a similar bill in the Senate in coming weeks.
(393) CommentsJune 22, 2006
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How Congress Is Shafting the Middle Class
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
In 2005, Congress failed the middle class.
This is the blunt assessment of the nonpartisan Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (DMI), which today released its third annual scorecard, Congress at the Midterm: Their 2005 Middle-Class Record. Aimed at assessing Congress's voting records on issues of concern to the nation's middle class and "those who aspire to a middle-class standard of living"--surely the vast majority of Americans--Congress at the Midterm is a forceful indictment of Congress's performance and the party in power.
"In vote after vote," the scorecard notes, "Congress disdained the concerns of middle-class Americans and opted instead to favor the already wealthy and powerful: a surefire recipe for a shrinking middle class." From the passage of a bankruptcy bill that benefited credit card companies but squeezed middle-class families already overwhelmed by debt, to the failure of legislation to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade, to the House's vote to repeal the estate tax on the nation's most privileged heirs, the scorecard paints a grim, but devastatingly accurate, picture of what our elected representatives have been up to under the Capitol Dome.
(336) CommentsJune 20, 2006
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The Peace Race
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
The peace majority is real.
A CBS poll finds that 80 percent of Democrats believe the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, and more than 60 percent want US troops home as soon as possible. A Washington Post/ABC poll finds that 70 percent of Independents feel the war was not worth it, and 33 percent of Republicans agree. Even 72 percent of our troops believe US forces should leave Iraq in the next year.
So what are so many Democratic politicians so afraid of? And how do we translate this majority into a politics of change for the 2006 elections and beyond? How do we send a message from the grassroots – the people outside of the beltway – that ending this war matters, and that the time to show moxie and conviction is right now?
(180) CommentsJune 15, 2006
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Peter Beinart and the Beltway Crusaders
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
As Robert Borosage, co-Director of the Campaign for America's Future, argues in The Nation's current issue, "the current rage in center-right Democratic circles is to resuscitate Harry Truman, substitute bin Laden for Stalin and jihadism for Communism, and summon America to a new global struggle."
Peter Beinart, for example, who was a supporter of the Iraq disaster (and has joined New Dems like Al From in urging Democrats to prove their resolve by purging the left from the Democratic party) is a leading proponent of the misleading and wrong analogy between Soviet totalitarianism and Islamic fundamentalism. For this stance, Beinart has been celebrated by leading members of the commentariat axis --Tom Friedman, Joe Klein and David Brooks among others. More are sure to follow.
But Beinart and his inside-the-beltway crusaders are out of touch with an America that seeks a principled foreign policy that will make them secure--not a messianic crusade that will deplete the nation's blood and treasure. His fighting faith pledge to "rally the American people" to sustain an "extended and robust" occupation in Iraq, his calls for America to intervene aggressively in the Middle East with a "sweeping program of economic, political and social reform" are more likely to create chaos and, perhaps, breed more terrorism than advance the cause of democracy. It is important to remember that this kind of "fighting faith" has more in common with the least successful periods of US foreign policy--the crusade that led us into Vietnam, our support for the Afghan Muhajedin and Bush's disastrous war in Iraq. It would be difficult to find a security consensus that is more wrongheaded for the challenges the United States now faces, or more at odds with the best traditions of the Democratic Party.
(71) CommentsJune 11, 2006
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Sweet Victory: Bold Ballot Initiatives
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Co-written by Sam Graham-Felsen.
In the 1990s conservative strategists began to reshape the political landscape with an onslaught of ballot initiatives. State by state, Republicans employed this tactic to slash social programs and roll back rights--most notoriously, with the anti-gay marriage initiatives of 2004--while progressives remained largely on the defensive.
Now, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, progressive organizations are learning how to use ballot propositions to promote bold, innovative policy around the country. Launched five years ago, BISC provides state and national advocacy groups with key research and training in effective referendum strategies.
(22) CommentsJune 8, 2006
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Thoughts on politics, current affairs, riffs and reflections on what’s in the news and what’s not--but should be.
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