Recently added articles from The American Prospect:
Revolution amid recession.(PROSPECTS)(broadband democracy)
May 01, 2009; ... UNTIL RECENTLY, THE OPTIMISTIC ASSUMPTIONS OF an era of prosperity dominated ideas about the information revolution. Although many observers recognized that new technology would bring "creative destruction"--making old industries obsolete, while opening up new ones--the emphasis has been ...
Back to square one.(NOTED)(consumer spending)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009 ... In response to ROBERT FRANK'S cover story, which argues that consuming less can make our society better, WONKETTE writes, "Maybe we won't ever have indulgent capitalist luxuries like homes or jobs anymore, like we did in 2007, but maybe that's cool now. Yeah, see, we can be happy--happier, ...
Gold stars, red pen.(NOTED)(education reform)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009 ... DANA GOLDSTEIN'S "Education Wars," about the new alliances and potential for consensus on education reform, sparked a mini-war among education bloggers. DANIEL LUZER argues in the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW online that Goldstein "does not indicate that anything is actually changing in ...
The mice in council.(NOTED)(United States policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan)(Brief article)
May 01, 2009 ... In response to TARA MCKELVEY'S article on RICHARD HOLBROOKE and the future of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, reader G.M. CHANDU warns: "The only way to confront the extremists is to impress upon them and convince them that they are not following the dictates of Islam, and ...
From the executive editor.(NOTED)
May 01, 2009; ... THE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRISES ARE CERTAIN to change our world in lasting ways. In our April issue, we looked at the possibilities--some of them healthy--for a society in which we expect and consume less. The crisis will also change fundamental assumptions: Never again will we think ...
The xxx-files: lobbying for the porn industry in a time of economic crisis.(Up Front)
May 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WE ALL KNOW home values and decimated 401(k)s are among the effects of the recession. But what about depleted sex drives? "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Hustler publisher Larry Flynt said in a January statement asking Congress for a $5 ...
The question: what else should the federal government nationalize?(Up Front)
May 01, 2009 ... "lf they want a return to the taxpayer? The marijuana trade."--Eric Rauchway, U.C. Davis [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Iceland, which will be used as refrigerated storage space and harvested for avant-garde pop ...
Tim's treasures.(PARODY)(Timothy Geithner)
May 01, 2009; ... "Our new Public-Private Investment Program will set up funds to provide a market for the legacy loans and securities that currently burden the financial system." --Timothy Geithner, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2009 NEW [begin strikethrough]TOXIC ASSETS[end ...
What are the political--and taste--implications of the food industry-created banana monoculture?(DIALOGUE: YES! WE NAVE NO BANANAS)(Discussion)
May 01, 2009 ... ANN FRIEDMAN: The banana as we know it is about to die out. All of the bananas we consume in the U.S. are the same varietal, and one disease could wipe them all out. As a lifelong banana-hater, though, I can't say I'm too upset about it. ADAM SERWER: That's pretty callous ....
Expert advice.(WAYS AND MEANS)(political vision)
May 01, 2009; ... ON JUNE 11, 1962, JOHN F. KENNEDY DELIVERED the commencement address at Yale. After some Harvard-Yale jocularity, he put forward the most memorable definition of that triumphal moment in what historians now call the era of liberal consensus: "What is at stake in our economic decisions ...
A give and take on immigration.(COMMENT)(Viewpoint essay)
May 01, 2009; ... THE DOMINANT ANTI-IMMIGRANT NARRATIVE IN THIS country--despite paeans to the mythical "melting pot" we read about in grade-school social-studies textbooks--is that immigrants take. They come here to take our jobs. They take up social services. They take formerly pristine street corners and ...
It's time to rethink the problem.(Five Ways of Looking at Risk: Everything Americans thought they knew about risk was wrong. Now what? To restore real prosperity, we'll need to get smarter about what we don't know)
May 01, 2009; ... How did it happen? How did the sub-prime mortgage crisis cascade into the Wall Street meltdown and then the worst recession since the 1930s? One answer crops up over and over: It was the math. According to Wired magazine, a single equation, the Gaussian Copula Function, brought down the ...
2 Risk is best managed from the bottom up.(Five Ways of Looking at Risk: Everything Americans thought they knew about risk was wrong. Now what? To restore real prosperity, we'll need to get smarter about what we don't know)(Viewpoint essay)
May 01, 2009; ... Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke stated the obvious during his March 10 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington: The global financial system contains too much risk and too little regulation. As the central figure in a multitrillion-dollar bailout exercise that has done ...
3 The rich and powerful can avoid risk.(Five Ways of Looking at Risk: Everything Americans thought they knew about risk was wrong. Now what? To restore real prosperity, we'll need to get smarter about what we don't know)(Viewpoint essay)
May 01, 2009; ... Recent discussions of the malfunction of Wall Street have centered on the role of statistical models that failed to accurately account for all possible outcomes. These less likely results, known as "tail risks," were underestimated by the models. Now the "quants" on Wall Street and ...
4 Housing is local, and lending should be, too.(Five Ways of Looking at Risk: Everything Americans thought they knew about risk was wrong. Now what? To restore real prosperity, we'll need to get smarter about what we don't know)
May 01, 2009; ... History will recall 2005 as the year the credit bubble grew fattest--when in much of Florida and California, real-estate prices doubled in a matter of months. But in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, it was the year that nearly 12,000 homes were abandoned to foreclosure, leaving streets littered with ...
5 A strong safety net encourages healthy risk-taking.(Five Ways of Looking at Risk: Everything Americans thought they knew about risk was wrong. Now what? To restore real prosperity, we'll need to get smarter about what we don't know)(Viewpoint essay)
May 01, 2009; ... Remember the "ownership society"? Just an election cycle ago, conservatives were urging Americans to give up their antiquated social-insurance programs--Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance--in favor of tax-subsidized individual accounts that would vest responsibility for ...
States left behind: when Obama selected his Cabinet, he caused a fair bit of upheaval in his nominees' home states.(President Barack Obama)
May 01, 2009 ... When, or if, the Republican Party and the conservative movement make their comeback, it will not be under the banner of Washington leaders such as House Minority Leader John Boehner or hapless party Chair Michael Steele. Rather, the comeback is most likely to begin in the states, where ...
The next war over the courts: conservatives are already fired up about Obama's judicial nominations. Is the White House prepared for the fight?(Barack Obama)(Report)
May 01, 2009; ... On March 17, President Barack Obama announced his first judicial nominee: David Hamilton, a 15-year veteran Indiana federal trial judge with the declared support of both Indiana senators, Republican Richard Lugar and Democrat Evan Bayh. With his selection of Hamilton for the 7th Circuit ...
Charitable relations: philanthropy adapts to the Obama era.(Barack Obama on philanthropy)
May 01, 2009; ... Last November, two weeks after Barack Obama was elected president, Gara LaMarche took to the podium at the annual meeting of Southern California Grantmakers. The president and chief executive of The Atlantic Philanthropies was in particularly good spirits. "It is nice to be able to say you ...
A tale of two exurbs: most outer-ring suburbs are being developed into unwalkable sprawl. But it doesn't have to be that way.(Leesburg and Kentlands, Virginia)(Viewpoint essay)
May 01, 2009; ... Leesburg, Virginia, is the archetypal American exurb. Named after an ancestor of Robert E. Lee, it is the seat of Loudoun County, 35 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.--the farthest true suburb west of Washington. To its west are small towns and a few remaining farms; to its east are ...