April 30, 2007
THEY'LL KNOW FUNKYTOWN BETTER THAN THE NATIONAL ANTHEM (via The Mother Judd):
P.E. Classes Turn to Video Game That Works Legs (SETH SCHIESEL, 4/30/07, NY Times)
Children don’t often yell in excitement when they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks.In they rushed, past the Ping-Pong table, past the balance beams and the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of Gym Class Past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats on the floor. In less than a minute a dozen seventh graders were dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song called “Speed Over Beethoven.”
Bill Hines, a physical education teacher at the school for 27 years, shook his head a little, smiled and said, “I’ll tell you one thing: they don’t run in here like that for basketball.”
It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity. While traditional video games are often criticized for contributing to the expanding waistlines of the nation’s children, at least several hundred schools in at least 10 states are now using Dance Dance Revolution, or D.D.R., as a regular part of their physical education curriculum.
Based on current plans, more than 1,500 schools are expected to be using the game by the end of the decade.
It would be even better if they played Dodge Dance Revolution.
HOW DO YOU TELL A JUDICIAL EXTREMIST?:
High court: police can use violent means to end high-speed chases: The Supreme Court's 8-to-1 decision involved a Georgia teenager, who sued a police deputy who rammed the teen's speeding car, causing serious physical damage. (Warren Richey, 5/01/07, The Christian Science Monitor)
In an important ruling defining Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in the context of high-speed police chases, the US Supreme Court on Monday gave a green light to law enforcement to use violent force to stop fleeing suspects who pose a substantial and immediate risk of serious physical injury to others. [...]Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a lone dissent.
Presumably when Justice Stevens retires we'll be treated to a host of articles about how out of touch he was with the legal views of his peers and the American people, right?
DEMOCRATS ARE SO REACTIONARY THESE DAYS...
Supreme Court declines to enter fray on detainee trials: Monday's action helps to clear the way for the next military trials against terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay. (Warren Richey, 5/01/07, The Christian Science Monitor)
The US Supreme Court has helped clear the way for the next round of special trials by military commissions at the terror detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.On Monday, the court declined to take up a joint appeal filed by former Osama bin Laden driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen and Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, who faces murder charges for allegedly throwing a hand grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan. Mr. Khadr was 15 years old at the time.
...that this represents a defeat for the Left.
LIFE JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER:
How pistachios help the heart (FIONA MACRAE, 30th April 2007, Daily Mail)
A handful or two of pistachio nuts a day could keep heart disease at bay, research suggests.They appear to lower cholesterol and keep arteries healthy.
Just three ounces of pistachios a day is enough to significantly lower the risk of heart disease.
First beer, then chocolate, now pistachios...what next? Bacon cheesburgers?
THE TALIBAN'S BRILLIANT NEW STRATEGY...:
Allies 'kill 145 Taliban' in Operation Achilles (Kim Sengupta, 01 May 2007, Independent)
British, Nato and Afghan forces have launched offensives in the west and south of the country, with reports that "scores" of Taliban rebels have been killed during heavy fighting.The battles took place in Shindbad, 80 miles south of Herat, and the Sangin Valley in Helmand, with about 4,500 Western and Afghan troops involved. The US military claimed 145 Taliban fighters had been killed in the west during fighting that claimed one American life.
The figures, if accurate, would mean the worst loss for the Islamist forces this year.
,,,die in such massive numbers that we'll be embarrassed when we run out of body bags.
THE WEST NEVER TIRES OF BEING YELLOW SCARED:
The Empire of Lies: The twenty-first century will not belong to China. (Guy Sormanm, Spring 2007, City Journal)
The Western press is full of stories these days on China’s arrival as a superpower, some even heralding, or warning, that the future may belong to her. Western political and business delegations stream into Beijing, confident of China’s economy, which continues to grow rapidly. Investment pours in. Crowning China’s new status, Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics.But China’s success is, at least in part, a mirage. True, 200 million of her subjects, fortunate to be working for an expanding global market, increasingly enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. China’s economic “miracle” is rotting from within.
The Party’s primary concern is not improving the lives of the downtrodden; it seeks power more than it seeks social development. It expends extraordinary energy in suppressing Chinese freedoms—the media operate under suffocating censorship, and political opposition can result in expulsion or prison—even as it tries to seduce the West, which has conferred greater legitimacy on it than do the Chinese themselves.
The West’s tendency to misread China dates back to the seventeenth century, when French and Italian Jesuit travelers formed stereotypes that clutter our minds even today. We learned then—or thought we learned—that the Chinese were not like us. They had no religion, and the notion of freedom was alien to them. They naturally gravitated toward enlightened despotism, as embodied by the philosopher-emperor. Such misconceptions link up across time: Voltaire sang the praises of the Mandarins, wishing a similar elite class could rule Europe; leftist intellectuals in the sixties and seventies celebrated the heroism of Mao Zedong; and today’s business elites happily go along with the Communist propaganda that democracy and free speech are contrary to the Chinese ethos.
Yet with enough patience and will, one can plunge into the real China. Since 1967, I have visited the country regularly, and I spent all of 2005 and part of 2006 traveling through her teeming cities as well as her innermost recesses, where few Westerners go. I make no claim to know China fully, an impossibly ambitious task. I merely want to record the words and impressions of some exceptional Chinese men and women, who mostly suffer in silence, raising when they can the demand for a free nation—a “normal” nation.
It would seem an opportune moment to revive the Dr. Fu Manchu franchise.
NOT TO MENTION ALL THE SWEET PRISON CONSTRUCTION JOBS FOR IMMIGRANTS:
Broken Windows Turns 25: And it has worked wonders on both coasts. (Charles Upton Sahm, Spring 2007, City Journal)
Twenty-five years ago, social scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist (and Manhattan Institute senior fellow) George Kelling first introduced the phrase “Broken Windows” into the public policy lexicon. In a pathbreaking Atlantic Monthly article, Wilson and Kelling pointed out that people were likelier to vandalize a building with one broken window than a building with none, since a broken window sends the message that nobody cares, encouraging vandals to act on their destructive impulses. Similarly, they suggested, if a community tolerates quality-of-life offenses, such as drug use and prostitution, it signals to all potential lawbreakers that it doesn’t care what happens to it; more serious crime will soon result.In the early nineties, the chief of New York City’s transit police, William Bratton, put the Broken Windows theory into practice. With Kelling as consultant, Bratton began to go after the fare evaders, aggressive panhandlers, pickpockets, and other petty (and not so petty) criminals who had turned the subway system into what he called “the transit equivalent of Dante’s Inferno.” Bratton also had cops enforce anti-loitering laws to steer the homeless away from the subways and toward social services. Homeless advocates and civil libertarians fought him every step of the way, but Bratton prevailed, bringing order to the chaotic system. Sure enough, not only did minor crime plummet; serious crime did, too, and ridership soared. In nabbing low-level offenders, Bratton also discovered that many of them were wanted for much more serious crimes.
A few years later, Mayor Rudy Giuliani chose Bratton as his top cop and charged him with leading a similar revolution above ground. The rest, as they say, is history. With Broken Windows as a key part of a broader reform of policing (including the introduction of new accountability measures and computer analysis of crime patterns), the Giuliani era saw serious crime fall 65 percent in Gotham, sparking a citywide revitalization. Bratton’s successors—Howard Safir and Bernard Kerik under Giuliani, and now Ray Kelly under Mayor Mike Bloomberg—have kept the policing innovations in place.
Bratton is now the chief of police in Los Angeles, where he has successfully employed many of the tactics that worked in New York.
Our Taliban is good.
HOW MITT COULD BEST SERVE HIS PARTY AND COUNTRY:
John Kerry's neverland (Joan Vennochi, April 29, 2007, Boston Globe)
Like it or not, Kerry could end up a US senator for life, even though his popularity is down since his glory days as a presidential nominee.A December 2006 Survey USA poll put Kerry's approval rating in Massachusetts at 43 percent, with 53 percent disapproving. A more recent poll conducted by Suffolk University and 7News suggests that Bay State voters are, fittingly, for and against their junior senator. When 400 registered voters were asked whether Kerry should run for another six-year term, 56 percent of them said that it is time to give someone else a chance.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE AMERICAN LEFT...:
Germany Rediscovers the US as a Partner (Der Spiegel, 4/30/07)
For Merkel...the closeness with the US is much more than mere symbolism. She sees America as "a force that has brought freedom to the peoples of the world." She now plans to make the most of that freedom by further strengthening the two countries' economic ties. In the storm of globalization, the United States and Europe plan to expand their cooperation to benefit both countries.It is virtually unprecedented in German history for a chancellor to be so unreservedly aligned with the US. Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, saw America as a guarantor of freedom, but also perceived it as an occupation force. Helmut Schmidt and Willy Brandt, both Social Democratic (SPD) chancellors, were pro-American but innately skeptical.
Merkel, on the contrary, wants to expand Germany's close ties with the United States and is on the verge of making a pact with America the cornerstone of her foreign policy. Indeed, the resoluteness with which she has pursued this goal stands in conspicuous contrast with her government's lack of political progress back home in Germany.
A new beginning in trans-Atlantic relations? Out of consideration for her SPD coalition partners, Merkel has elected not to shine the spotlight too brightly on recent improvements in US-German relations -- indeed, her political modesty is one condition for the policy's success. Should she toot her own horn, she would likely alienate the SPD, her party's partner in Berlin's governing coalition.
Still, the contrast between Merkel and SPD-man Schröder, who courted Russian President Vladimir Putin and cultivated anti-American sentiment, couldn't be greater. Today's SPD, led by Kurt Beck, a skeptic on the subject of the United States, and represented in the cabinet by Foreign Minister and Schröder friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier, prefers a clearly distanced approach. Even in his inaugural speech, Steinmeier stressed his intent to be "when necessary (America's) constructively critical partner."
Merkel thinks differently. She is dedicated to the trans-Atlantic relationship and bases it on a fundamental political calculation. She is convinced that there can be no progress anywhere in opposition to the United States -- not in Europe and not in the Middle East. Even Europe's relationship with Asia requires coordination with Merkel's friends in the White House.
...is that they demanded that George W. Bush alter our national security policy to bring it into line with the pro-Saddamists -- Jacques Chretien, Jean-Claude Chirac, Kofi Annan, and Gerhard Schroeder -- all of whom were subsequently repudiated even in their own bailiwicks, never mind by the rest of the world and by history.
FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN...:
Reality Show: Sen. McCain Injects Some Useful Truths Into The Presidential Campaign (The Washington Post, April 29, 2007)
[M]r. McCain's remarks upon his formal entry into the 2008 presidential campaign offered a reminder of the appealing qualities that attracted so many voters eight years ago -- and that make him a formidable contender still. [...]Whatever your position on the war, then or now, Mr. McCain deserves credit for foresight and consistency about how the war should have been waged.
The senator spent the bulk of his speech outlining other priorities, including reforming a wasteful and needlessly complex tax code, reducing dependence on foreign oil, maintaining free trade while finding more effective ways to help workers hurt by globalization, and helping the uninsured "without bankrupting the country."
His discussion of the looming problem of runaway entitlement spending was forthright As with the other areas he discussed, the senator didn't spell out what tough choices he would endorse, but at least he addressed the issue, neither discounting the magnitude of the problem nor promising a painless solution. This is why the 2008 race is better for having Mr. McCain in it.
Mr. McCain bebnefits greatly from the fact that none of his opponents can say what they actually believe because the other Republicans are too liberal for the party, the Democrats for the country. Only Fred Thompson can really challenge him at this point and is too much the neophyte to win in the GOP, despite his myriad strengths.
KILLER CLOWNS:
Why you pretend to like modern art (Spengler, 5/01/07, Asia Times)
After I wrote Admit it - you really hate modern art (January 30), many readers assured me that I was quite mistaken about them. Especially among the educated elites there are many who will go to their graves proclaiming their love for modern art, and I owe them an explanation of sorts. At the cost of most of few remaining friends, I will provide it.You pretend to like modern art because you want to be creative. In fact, you are not creative, not in the least. In all of human history we know of only a few hundred truly creative men and women. It saddens me to break the news, but you aren't one of them. By insisting that you are not creative, you think I am saying that you are not important. I do not mean that, but will have to return to the topic later.
You have your heart set on being creative because you want to worship yourself, your children, or some pretentious impostor, rather than the god of the Bible. Absence of faith has not made you more rational. On the contrary, it has made you ridiculous in your adoration of clownish little deities, of whom the silliest is yourself.
One of the things that makes Rationalists so precious is that their refusal to believe that they are comical.
INSUFFICIENTLY THATCHERITE:
Blair's regrets over three wasted years: Reforms were too slow, says Falconer (Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour, April 30, 2007, The Guardian)
Tony Blair will mark his decade in office this week with "big regrets" at his inability to move more quickly to reform Britain's public services, one of his closest cabinet allies has claimed.As the prime minister puts the finishing touches to his resignation statement, in which he will declare that Labour has transformed schools and hospitals, Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, told the Guardian that up to three years were lost after the 1997 election victory. "One of Tony's big regrets, I think, would be that we didn't realise quick enough that if you genuinely wanted to change the way the public service delivered for the public you needed to embark upon a process of cultural change," he said in an interview to mark Mr Blair's 10 years in Downing Street.
"I think it is 99-2000 that he begins to realise that something more profound is required."
Lord Falconer, who has played a key role as Mr Blair's "fixer", said the initial period after Labour's landslide general election victory became an immense struggle, like "pushing water up hills".
The assessment of the pace of reform in key areas of domestic policy, such as health, education and welfare, comes as Mr Blair moves to underline the significance of his legacy.
On the other hand, Bill Clinton wasted the opportunity of his later years, when he could have worked with the GOP to radically reform the welfare state along Pinochetist lines.
WHICH IS WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE:
The real winner of an SNP victory in Scotland this week would be English nationalism (Melanie Phillips, 30th April 2007, Daily Mail)
[Alex Salmond] has even suggested that an independent Scotland would remain a loyal subject of the English Crown. Some might find such touching effusions simply incredible; but the fact remains that Mr Salmond has skilfully transformed his image from Braveheart warrior to emollient statesman. [...][T]he potential implications for British politics are seismic.
Labour will lose not just Scottish Executive seats but its national power base. For its strength as a national political party derives from its representation in Scotland, where the vast majority of MPs are Labour.
Gordon Brown, meanwhile, will have lost the country which has been regarded as his personal fiefdom and where so many of his own placemen have been put into positions of power. If he can't even win in his own 'backyard, his party will be asking, how is he going to win in the rest of the nation? At the very moment he finally comes into his longed-for inheritance at Westminster, he will lose the basis of his political power.
Indeed, the fact that he is so determined above all else to become Prime Minister in the English Parliament has confirmed many Scots in their opinion that he has betrayed his origins.
The best solution for the colonies was, likewise, independence from the English Parliament but fealty to the Crown.
THE CLASSIC PLIGHT OF THE NOUVEAU RICHE...:
The Pirate Pose: Twenty years after Bonfire of the Vanities, the author checks in on the new masters of the universe and finds them even coarser and ruder than their predecessors could have ever imagined being. (Tom Wolfe, May 2007, Conde Nast Portfolio)
Somehow the members of the Knickerbocker, the Brook, the Union, and the Leash, for that matter, do not seem too keen on recruiting people infinitely richer than they are who pride themselves on their aggressive nature and will happily see to it you enjoy doing things their way; even less so, the three clubs that count, socially, in Greenwich, the Round Hill Club, the Field Club, and the Greenwich Country Club. The country club is bigger and doesn’t seem as picky as the others, but it is not eager to welcome these people.So what? We will build our own clubs! Our own sports emporia! Our own resorts! We will outdo the wobbly too-tall old elite with their scrubbed-wood aesthetic left over from the early days of the 20th century. Have you -ever actually been inside that Round Hill Club they’re so proud of? The worn wood, the rickety sashes, the tired paint, the failing fabrics, the cracked leather—the place is falling apart, the way we see it. (We’re capital-M Modern.) Imagine how it would look if it were set beside Stevie Cohen’s own 32,000-square-foot clubhouse and 14 acres of grounds! Next to Stevie’s art collection—which is nothing less than a world-class museum!—Stevie’s indoor basketball court, year-round swimming pool under glass, his gym, his spa facility, his theater for movies and every other electronic medium, his hair salon, two putting greens complete with sand traps and a fairway in between, and, as the pièce de résistance, an ice rink the size of Rockefeller Center’s with a 30-by-24-foot rink house for the Zamboni! Clubhouses? We’ll show you clubhouses!
The only thing missing is an entire 18-hole golf course. There is always the Burning Tree Country Club, whose membership is largely Jewish, nearby, but who has to bother with “nearby”? When we want to play golf, we just go over to the Westchester County Airport, where our Gulfstreams, Falcons, and full crews fly us anywhere in the world to play on courses that make the Greenwich Country Club look like miniature golf. Every weekend? Anytime we want!
As for the co-op buildings in New York, their residents having felt already burned by the fabulous new money, some are now considering new screening devices. The “good buildings” have traditionally required full financial--disclosure statements, certified by C.P.A.’s, to make sure applicants have enough money. The board of a building on Park Avenue is now considering rejecting applicants who have too much money. These days, when a personal net worth punches a hole in the earth’s atmosphere, it invariably signals one of these people.In Greenwich, the two charities with old-money cachet, namely the Boys and Girls Club and Greenwich Hospital, will gladly accept these people’s money but don’t seem to have them on their boards. So these people’s money goes mainly to the Bruce Museum, which has no such scruples. The Bruce Museum’s Renaissance Ball is perhaps the most lavish party of the year in Greenwich.
In New York there are now, as there have been for 125 years, two cracks in the “walled city,” as Theodore Dreiser called it in Sister Carrie, through which new money can slip: charity and the arts.
But these people keep getting stuck halfway. On the art front, they soon realize they have a problem. New York’s great cultural repositories, the museums, libraries, and performing arts centers, have a social hierarchy. To use an N.C.A.A. analogy, there is Division I, consisting of (1) the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (2) the New York Public Library, (3) the Museum of Modern Art, and (4) the Frick Collection. From that elevation it is a terrifying plunge in status to Division III: the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, the Museum of Natural History, the Morgan Library, the Museum of the City of New York, and the New-York Historical Society. There is no Division II.
All these institutions are dying to get their hands on the stupendous palletloads of money that socially ambitious hedge fund managers have amassed. The Division III institutions can’t resist. For example, 43-year-old David Ganek of Level Global Investors is not only on the board of the Guggenheim, he is treated as a star. He is touted as having assembled a breathtaking art collection of his own, of the Richard Prince, Jeff Koons hot-now variety. He was co-chairman of the museum’s annual benefit extravaganza in November and appeared onstage with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and celebrity lure Dennis Hopper. The party brought in $4 million, which made the museum’s director ecstatic.
On the other hand, it was anemic compared with the Robin Hood Foundation’s $48 million. That may explain why another Division III board, Lincoln Center’s, has made Bruce Kovner of Caxton Associates vice chairman and featured star. Kovner has donated $20 million (as well as $25 million to Juilliard). He is also head recruiter of other hedge fund managers. Last year, he convened a breakfast meeting in his office with six of them, including Steven Mnuchin of Dune Capital and Eric Mindich of Eton Park, both of whom are also on the Division III Whitney’s board.
Lincoln Center’s gratitude to Kovner knows no boundaries—except possibly for a single tiny leg up he accomplished in all innocence. There were old-money sorts on the board who rolled their eyes in a northerly orbit the time he sat down at a meeting and slung one leg over the arm of his chair.
Only halfway, halfway, halfway … These people have yet to actually make it into the walled city and onto the boards of the Big Four. Steve Cohen has a $3 billion fortune, according to Forbes, and a huge collection of Modern and contemporary art reportedly worth $500 million one day and $750 million the next. That may be so, and the Museum of Modern Art would no doubt like to have some of both, but Cohen has gotten no further at the museum than its paintings-and-sculpture-acquisition committee. Ganek, likewise, has made it to the Metropolitan Museum’s photography committee, and that’s it for him.
Edith Wharton’s New York new money, embodied by Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country, wanted nothing so much as to replicate the status symbols and customs of old money—the architecture, the art collections, the country estates, the dress, manners, politesse, sophistication, worldly wisdom—in order to achieve certified respectability. But we can assume no such thing about our new hedge fund money. Getting in socially in the Edith Wharton sense may be part of their ambition, but it crashes head-on into their most cherished values, their very status fixation. The animal spirits that have brought them their astounding fortunes and, equally important, honor in the eyes of one another practically guarantee that they will be shut out of places like the Knickerbocker, the Brook, the Union. For that matter, even a much younger, hipper club, such as Soho House, hasn’t welcomed them either—and these people thought they would fit right in.
So in the spring of 2005, they opened their own club, the Core Club, in midtown Manhattan, a club to beat all clubs, a billionaires club. No amenity would be regarded as too over-the-top. Every member working out in the club’s fitness center would have a butler at his elbow. To do what, was not immediately evident. Nevertheless, the prospects of the ultimate club seemed so swell, 100 people ponied up $100,000 each as “elite founding members,” reported a wide-eyed Time magazine. Each of the 400 other members—500 was the limit—agreed to pay an initiation fee of $55,000, staggeringly high for an in-town, indoor club, plus $1,000 a month in dues, meaning the club would take in $6 million a year in dues alone. The membership was a royal assortment of hedge fund managers and suchlike: David Ganek, Richard Perry, Stephen Schwarzman, Barry Rosenstein, Teddy Forstmann, Bruce Wasserstein, plus a few female celebrities such as Patty Smyth and Fergie, Duchess of York, plus—ahhhh, the poetry of status justice!—the bitterest and most poetic mocker of private clubs in our time … Daniel Loeb! Daniel Loeb … club man at last! The club remains flush with cash and Croesuses. Some have been saying, however, that there are reports that the members are not exactly wild about going to the club to beat all clubs anymore.
If so, the reason is not hard to find. At the Soho House, and wherever else the younger smart set convenes, the Core Club is now known as the “club for people who can’t get into clubs.”
...you don't belong anywhere and money doesn't buy belonging.
THE BRITS ARE JUST LUCKY IT ISN'T WINTER...:
UK troops lead anti-Taliban operation (Independent, 30 April 2007)
British troops were today leading an operation to drive the Taliban out of one of its heartlands in the south of Afghanistan.Operation Silicon, involving more than 2,000 Nato and Afghan troops, was launched before dawn in the Sangin valley area of Helmand province.
In the first hours of the operation, several Taliban compounds were seized and destroyed amid moderate resistance from the group's fighters, said a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) Regional Command South.
MAHMOUD NO LONGER MATTERS:
Iran's long road to Sharm al-Sheikh (Kaveh L Afrasiabi, 5/01/07, Asia Times)
Although Iran's delegation will be headed by Mottaki, all eyes are on Ali Larijani, the powerful head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, who made a surprise visit to Baghdad to discuss the summit, about which Larijani has expressed "certain ambiguities and questions".But the ambiguities may run on both sides, and a key question centers on Iran's own diplomatic priorities. Larijani is fresh from constructive dialogue with Javier Solana, the foreign-policy chief of the European Union, in Ankara last week, on Iran's nuclear program. Solana has said Larijani told him Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had expressed "readiness to engage in direct dialogue" with the United States. [...]
Rice appears to be amenable to Solana's suggestion and has stated that she does not "rule out" the possibility of direct dialogue with Mottaki on the sidelines of the Egypt conference, adding that if this were to take place, she would discuss not only Iraq but also the nuclear issue.
MORE:
Inside the struggle for Iran (Simon Tisdall, April 30, 2007, The Guardian)
A grand coalition of anti-government forces is planning a second Iranian revolution via the ballot box to deny President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad another term in office and break the grip of what they call the "militia state" on public life and personal freedom.Encouraged by recent successes in local elections, opposition factions, democracy activists, and pro-reform clerics say they will bring together progressive parties loyal to former president Mohammad Khatami with so-called pragmatic conservatives led by Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. [...]
[O]pposition spokesmen say their broader objective is to bring down the fundamentalist regime by democratic means, transform Iran into a "normal country", and obviate the need for any military or other US and western intervention. Rightwing political and religious forces, divided and dismayed by Mr Ahmadinejad's much-criticised performance, are already mobilising to meet the threat.
The movement amounts to the clearest sign yet within Iran that the country is by no means unified behind a president who has led it into confrontation with the west over the nuclear issue, while presiding over economic decline at home.
WHICH RAISES THE QUESTION...:
Keep Foot On, Or Chaos and "Shiastan" (Leon Krauze, 4/30/07, PostGlobal)
Four years ago, George W. Bush opened Pandora’s Box. And now there is no realistic way to put the lid back on.For a while now, there have been only two possible outcomes in Iraq: the bad and the worse. Which is the latter and how to avoid it? The worst outcome for Iraq would be a full-scale civil war that ends in the country’s partition. There is little question that, once the American forces leave, the country will become a far bloodier and more lawless battleground than it is now.
Once that happens, I see no reason why Moqtada al-Sadr and other Shiite strongmen would seek any kind of compromise with Sunni leaders in a pluralist government. Outright Shia domination of Iraq should never be allowed.
...of why Mexicans should be allowed to dominate Mexico.
A HEALTHY RECOGNITION THAT CATHOLICISM IS IRRECONCILABLE WITH LIBERALISM:
Did Justices' Catholicism Play Part in Abortion Ruling? (Robert Barnes, 4/30/07, Washington Post)
Is it significant that the five Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold the federal ban on a controversial abortion procedure also happen to be the court's Roman Catholics?It is to Tony Auth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He drew Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. wearing bishop's miters, and labeled his cartoon "Church and State."
Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters hashed out the issue on "The View," with O'Donnell noting that a majority of the court is Catholic and wondering about "separation of church and state."
Not even the Stupid Party can fail to exploit this divide and win the Latino vote in perpetuity.
WOMEN VS MOTHER EARTH:
Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity: Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives (Blaine Harden, 4/30/07, Washington Post)
Alex and Sara Sifford, who live here on the Oregon coast, want to do the right thing to save a warming world.To that end, Alex Sifford, 51, has been buying compact fluorescent light bulbs, which use about 75 percent less power than incandescent bulbs. He sneaks them into sockets all over the house. This has been driving his wife nuts.
She knows that the bulbs, called CFLs, save money and use less energy, thus cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. She knows, too, that Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey and the Department of Energy endorse them. Still, the bulbs, with their initial flicker, slow warm-up and slightly weird color, bug her.
"What really got me was when my husband put a fluorescent in the lamp next to my bed," recalls Sara Sifford, 53. She said she yelled at her husband for "violating the last vestige of my personal space."
Experts on energy consumption call it the "wife test." And one of the dimly lighted truths of the global-warming era is that fluorescent bulbs still seem to be flunking out in most American homes. [...]
"There is still a big hurdle in convincing Americans that lighting-purchase decisions make a big difference in individual electricity bills and collectively for the environment," said Wendy Reed, director of the federal government's Energy Star campaign, which labels products that save energy and has been working with retailers to market CFL bulbs.
"I have heard time and again that a husband goes out and puts the bulb into the house, thinking he is doing a good thing," Reed said. "Then, the CFL bulb is changed back out by the women. It seems that women are much more concerned with how things look. We are the nesters."
But just try getting them to dust....
MORE:
Lamps Out Over D.C. (MARK STEYN, April 30, 2007, NY Sun)
Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Senator Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs.
WHICH IS THE POINT OF THE SURGE:
Maliki's Office Is Seen Behind Purge in Forces: Some Commanders Had Pursued Militias (Joshua Partlow, 4/30/07, Washington Post)
A department of the Iraqi prime minister's office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post.
Although some of the officers appear to have been fired for legitimate reasons, such as poor performance or corruption, several were considered to be among the better Iraqi officers in the field. The dismissals have angered U.S. and Iraqi leaders who say the Shiite-led government is sabotaging the military to achieve sectarian goals.
Why did they think Mookie agreed to the deal?
WHERE'S THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE WHEN YOU NEED THEM?:
What war?: At home, the economy soars and Americans let the good times roll. Meanwhile, Iraq burns. (Niall Ferguson, April 30, 2007, LA Times)
On Wednesday, fueled by seemingly limitless liquidity and reports of strong corporate earnings, the Dow Jones industrial average hit a record 13,000. The financial markets seem to have shrugged off their recent anxieties about so-called subprime mortgages, focusing instead on the megabucks being made at the other end of the income distribution scale. A survey by Alpha magazine revealed that three American hedge-fund managers earned more than $1 billion last year.Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Iraq burns. More than 3,100 Americans have died there, the equivalent of 100 Virginia Techs.
A more apt comparison for his point is that it's the equivalent of winning WWII while losing only three USS Indianapolis's of men the entire war. Or, to stick with his Vietnam example, at this rate we'd have to stay in Iraq for something like seventy years to match our losses in that earlier war. The war has had so little impact at home because in national and historical terms it is a pretty trivial exercise. Do Americans today even recall our fighting in the rather similar war in the Philippines?
THE DECLINE OF DARWINISM:
Generation tolerant: A cellphone poll of California youth shows remarkably liberal attitudes toward race but conservative beliefs on family values. (LA Times, April 30, 2007)
The survey, sponsored by New America Media, found dramatically liberal attitudes when it comes to the issue of getting along. Two-thirds say they have dated someone of another ethnicity, and a whopping 87% say they would marry or have a life partner of a different race. [...]Most young adult Californians have many friends outside their own race, the survey found. For Asians and Anglos, the majority of their friends are of different races, while Latinos and blacks said that about 40% of their friends come from different groups.
And as for illegal immigration, basically the kids don't see what the fuss is all about — 82% say illegal immigrants should be given a chance to earn citizenship.
But if you think that California is producing a generation of young liberals, think again. The young people in the survey swing to the right when it comes to family values and religion.
Their No. 1 concern is the breakdown of the family. Second is violence in their neighborhoods. A majority say they are religious and spiritual. They plan to go to college, have jobs, marry, buy homes, raise kids.
From their morality follows the views on race and immigration.
IMAGINE? A STATIST SOUNDING FRENCH POLITICIAN...:
Sarkozy: I am no fascist (even if I sound like one) (John Lichfield, 30 April 2007, Independent)
The centre-right candidate gave a cheering crowd of 20,000 people a piece of vintage "Sarko" - 80 minutes of finger-jabbing indignation against the political system to which he has belonged for 20 years.True, M. Sarkozy, 52, the centre-right candidate for the presidency, angrily denied that he was a fascist or even a "nationalist". He reminded the crowd that France's greatest, modern political hero, Charles de Gaulle, had also been accused of having fascist, anti- democratic leanings. True, M. Sarkozy promised, if elected, to introduce a small dose of proportional representation into one of the two houses of the French parliament. That is a long-standing demand of supporters of the centrist UDF party who hold the key to Sunday's election.
Otherwise, it was a high-octane performance of controlled populism, touching every button of anger and indignation in a country with as many grumbles as cheeses. M. Sarkozy said that he wanted to be the "spokesman for France".
He wanted to stand up to all those who fleeced the French people, which included "politicians, technocrats, trades unionists and fraudsters". Presumably, M. Sarkozy does not count himself as a politician.
This was the language of the extreme, populist right, in the name - M. Sarkozy insisted - of consensual, pragmatic, liberalising reform. M. Sarkozy may not be a fascist but he is not afraid of sounding like one. This may be the secret of his success but it also explains why a large part of France - and not just on the left - is scared of the prospect, even the probability, of a Sarkozy presidency.
Doesn't that mean an even larger part is afraid of his opponent?
MALI CONTENT:
Malians vote in model election for Africa (Simon Usborne, 30 April 2007, Independent)
It is one of the world's poorest countries and lies at the heart of a region often marred by vote rigging and polling day violence, but as Malians await the results of yesterday's election - their fourth free ballot in 15 years - the former French colony is quickly emerging as a democratic model for Africa.A steady trickle of voters began lining up early yesterday morning at polling stations in Bamako, the Mali capital, and throughout the vast West African state, which stretches from the windswept dunes of the Saharan north to the fertile cotton fields that lie beside the River Niger in the south.
Soldiers guarded voting centres and early balloting was reported to be calm and orderly, in stark contrast to the bloody chaos that beset elections in Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, earlier this month.
Most voters predicted an easy re-election victory for former coup leader, President Amadou Toumani Touré, known as "The Soldier of Malian Democracy" by his supporters after he saved the country from decades of dictatorship.
Speaking to reporters after voting in central Bamako, Mr Touré, who faced competition from seven other candidates, was quick to affirm that elections would be free and fair.
"My wish is for a turnout which reflects our democratic culture," he said as supporters mobbed him chanting "ATT", the initials by which is he popularly known.
EV...:
Companies Shift More Donations To Democrats: House Leaders' Coffers Swell as Balance Swings Against Republicans (BRODY MULLINS and DEAN TREFTZ, April 30, 2007, Wall Street Journal)
For the new Democratic bosses in the House, power has quickly translated into money, as many big companies have shifted more of their campaign contributions to the new congressional majority, and away from longtime Republican allies.The top four House leaders -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Majority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland and their main lieutenants -- raised a combined $2.24 million in the first quarter of 2007, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. That was more than three times as much as the $697,694 they raised in the first quarter of 2005, the comparable period in the previous two-year election cycle.
Business is buying and the Democrats are selling and so it goes...
OLD GUYS DON'T GET YOUNGER:
Yanks' pitching, not Torre, is to blame (Ken Rosenthal, 4/30/07, FOXSports.com)
Torre shouldn't be fired Monday. He shouldn't be fired Tuesday. He probably shouldn't be fired at all this season, not when general manager Brian Cashman handed him a pitching staff that would make any manager look dumb.Even Cashman could not have anticipated that four of the Yankees' top six starters would get injured, though the losses of Mike Mussina and Carl Pavano do not exactly qualify as surprises.
The truth is, rival general managers have spent years waiting for this moment — the moment when the Yankees' pitching staff would be caught in a difficult transition between old and young.
In other words, everyone but Cashmoney anticipated it. The problem is that, once you get past Phil Hughes, there is no young to be integrated.
SOMEWHERE, LEE ATWATER SALIVATES:
A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith (JODI KANTOR, 4/30/07, NY Times)
Members of Trinity United Church of Christ squeezed into a downtown hotel ballroom in early March to celebrate the long service of their pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. [...]Few of those at Mr. Wright’s tribute in March knew of the pressures that Mr. Obama’s presidential run was placing on the relationship between the pastor and his star congregant. Mr. Wright’s assertions of widespread white racism and his scorching remarks about American government have drawn criticism, and prompted the senator to cancel his delivery of the invocation when he formally announced his candidacy in February.
Mr. Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate who says he was only shielding his pastor from the spotlight, said he respected Mr. Wright’s work for the poor and his fight against injustice. But “we don’t agree on everything,” Mr. Obama said. “I’ve never had a thorough conversation with him about all aspects of politics.”
It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly distance himself from Mr. Wright. [...]
It is difficult to tell whether Mr. Obama’s religious and political beliefs are fused or simply run parallel. The junior senator from Illinois often talks of faith as a moral force essential for solving America’s vexing problems. Like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and John Edwards, his fellow Democratic candidates, he expresses both a political and a religious obligation to help the downtrodden. Like conservative Christians, he speaks of AIDS as a moral crisis. And like his pastor, Mr. Obama opposes the Iraq war.
His embrace of faith was a sharp change for a man whose family offered him something of a crash course in comparative religion but no belief to call his own. “He comes from a very secular, skeptical family,” said Jim Wallis, a Christian antipoverty activist and longtime friend of Mr. Obama. “His faith is really a personal and an adult choice. His is a conversion story.”
The grandparents who helped raise Mr. Obama were nonpracticing Baptists and Methodists. His mother was an anthropologist who collected religious texts the way others picked up tribal masks, teaching her children the inspirational power of the common narratives and heroes.
His mother’s tutelage took place mostly in Indonesia, in the household of Mr. Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids.
“My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim,” said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Mr. Obama’s younger half sister. [...]
Mr. Obama was entranced by Mr. Wright, whose sermons fused analysis of the Bible with outrage at what he saw as the racism of everything from daily life in Chicago to American foreign policy. Mr. Obama had never met a minister who made pilgrimages to Africa, welcomed women leaders and gay members and crooned Teddy Pendergrass rhythm and blues from the pulpit. Mr. Wright was making Trinity a social force, initiating day care, drug counseling, legal aid and tutoring. He was also interested in the world beyond his own; in 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views.
Followers were also drawn simply by Mr. Wright’s appeal. Trinity has 8,500 members today, making it the largest American congregation in the United Church of Christ, a mostly white denomination known for the independence of its congregations and its willingness to experiment with traditional Protestant theology.
Mr. Wright preached black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as the story of the struggles of black people, whom by virtue of their oppression are better able to understand Scripture than those who have suffered less. That message can sound different to white audiences, said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at University of Chicago Divinity School and a Trinity member. “Some white people hear it as racism in reverse,” Dr. Hopkins said...
It's going to be like clubbing seals.
JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS...:
Sexier and slimmer with a pill that raises the libido while making you thin (SAM GREENHILL, 29th April 2007, Daily Mail)
It could be the answer to many women's prayers - not to mention men's.A wonder pill has been developed which not only boosts a female's sex drive, but helps her lose weight at the same time.
So far it has been tested only on shrews...
Skinny horny harpies.
MOSS-GATHERING (OR ROLLING STONED?):
Pats procure incomparable weapon (John Tomase, 4/30/07, Boston Herald)
It’s fair to say that Tom Brady has never thrown to anyone even remotely approximating Moss, who’s big (6-foot-4), strong (210 pounds) and blazingly fast (4.29-second 40-yard dash, if you’re to believe his representatives).
He can sprint by defensive backs on one play, then leap over them on the next. He can stretch the field before the catch, and run with the ball after it. He’s a weapon on either 10-yard line.
Oh, and he’s dying to win a Super Bowl, as he proved yesterday by leaving $21 million on the table to sign a one-year, $3 million deal with the Pats that includes $2 million in incentives.
“I’ve made a lot of money in my career and I still have money in the bank,” Moss said. “So by me coming to an organization like the Patriots, why would money be a factor?” [...]
Imagine being an NFL defensive coordinator and game-planning for the Pats. Moss and Donte’ Stallworth represent vertical threats on every play. Wes Welker works the slot as well as anyone. Tight end Ben Watson, freed from the pressure of serving as the top target, can exploit mismatches underneath. That still leaves Kevin Faulk out of the backfield, Laurence Maroney in the running game or tight end David Thomas sitting in a zone.
It’s no stretch to say the Patriots have transformed the league’s worst receiving corps into its best. Last year’s starters, Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney, might not even make the team. Same goes for old favorite Troy Brown.
Straight out of Moneyball, Belichick picks up the undevalued troubled guy (likewise with their first round pick) when the rest of the League suddenly shies away.
MORE:
Patriots have dealt themselves into Super Bowl favorite's role with Moss (David Steele, April 30, 2007, Baltimore Sun)
Moss going to the Patriots -- baggage, Hall of Fame numbers and all -- eclipsed everything that had happened in the draft Saturday and everything that followed it yesterday. JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, all the overblown, premature hype surrounding the most out-of-control non-event in sports, were quashed by the news of Moss joining forces with Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, fellow wide receiver newcomers Donte' Stallworth and Wes Welker and some guy named Adalius Thomas on the three-time champs.Even the most hard-core, purple-clad here in town now have to look at everything that's happened with their team this offseason, and everything that will happen, through the Moss-New England filter. [...]
Remember last January: Brady had Reche Caldwell and Jabar Gaffney as his wide receivers, and he had them one minute away from a Super Bowl berth in the AFC title game at the RCA Dome.
He also gets A.D. on defense this season. The Ravens, you might have heard, lose A.D. on defense.
Yikes.
Of course, they lost to the Colts because they stopped running themselves and couldn't stop the run.
MAKING TAKING SIDES MAKE SENSE:
FRENCH LESSONS: a review of PACIFICATION IN ALGERIA 1956-58 and COUNTERINSURGENCY WARFARE: THEORY AND PRACTICE
BY DAVID GALULA (Ann Marlowe, 4/29/07, NY Post)
Galula's big idea was simple: to place small numbers of the 100 soldiers under his command in isolated villages, living among the populace. His company was "spread over six posts with 10 to 15 men each." Galula's men supervised and funded the building of the area's first schools, first latrines, garbage pits and street cleaning in their villages.The top brass didn't get it. An inspecting general complained, "Your posts are utterly useless, their strength is too small to allow a serious sortie against the guerrillas!" The generals were looking for body counts.
Galula "tried to explain that the very fact that I could disperse my company so much was proof of my success." He realized that the objective wasn't to kill terrorists so much as to create an environment in the civilian population where they could not find support.
Galula's practice mustn't be mistaken for the nonsense known as "winning hearts and minds," which suggests bribing the locals into obeying the laws of their own elected government. Galula restored the government's control over disputed areas and showed the locals that taking the government's side made sense.
"Pacification" also discusses in grainy detail such issues as the use of torture and the press' role in counterinsurgency. The Algerian war was the last major conflict fought just before the advent of television, but print journalism had an enormous influence on its conduct.
Happily, the U.S. Army has recognized Galula's insights.
AN APPROPRIATE BUGLER FOR THE NATIVIST F-TROOP:
Isolationist Ignorance in Action: Watch Lou Dobbs ascend to the pinnacle of protectionist prevarication. (Donald Luskin, 4/30/07, National Review)
The advocates of free trade have on their side over 200 years of settled science in economics, going all the way back to Adam Smith. The advocates of protectionism have Lou Dobbs.With his nightly harangues on CNN and through his books, Lou Dobbs has become the public face of today’s dangerous movement toward economic isolationism. That movement has become all the more dangerous since the Democratic party took control of Congress. Beholden to Big Labor, the Democrats have no choice but to cater to that powerful lobby’s fears of a dynamic globalized American economy.
Last month, when Dobbs testified before Congress, it was not just a case of preaching to the choir, or even the blind leading the stupid. It was vivid proof of Goethe’s famous dictum, “Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.”
Except ignorance in power.
FLATTENING THE WORLD:
All Eyes on Slovakia's Flat Tax: Q&A with: Laura Alfaro, Vincent Dessain, and Ane Damgaard Jensen (Martha Lagace, April 30, 2007, HBS Working Knowledge)
The flat tax is an idea that's burst to life in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe, especially in Slovakia. But is the rest of the world ready? A new Harvard Business School case on Slovakia's complex experience highlights many hurdles elsewhere, as HBS professor Laura Alfaro, Europe Research Center Director Vincent Dessain, and Research Assistant Ane Damgaard Jensen explain in this Q&A.Q: Could the flat tax only have been introduced in the context of other reforms that Slovakia was managing during its post-communism transition, such as labor reform and privatization?
Alfaro: It is true that the countries that have introduced a flat tax have all been in macroeconomic situations where something had to be done to foster growth and attract investments, which indicates a major trend for linking tax reform with, for instance, privatization and labor and welfare reforms. So existing evidence indicates that overhauling other parts of the public system, in order to afford a perceived cut in tax revenues through a flat tax implementation, is needed. This, however, does not indicate that the opposite is impossible.
It also has to be said that a lot of the appeal behind the flat tax is related to the reduction in the administrative burden, but also that flat taxes tend to be low. So one could question whether the theoretical flat part of the flat tax concept is in fact what has been attractive or whether the flat aspect has been a political way to sell the overall tax reform, and hence mostly low taxes.
Q: Can Slovakia serve as a model for other countries that are weighing a flat tax? If so, how should other countries learn from positives and negatives of the Slovak experience?
Dessain: Estonia, Slovakia, and other Eastern European countries are in fact already serving as models for other countries that are considering adopting a flat tax. The former Prime Minister of Estonia, Mart Laar, was the pioneer in Eastern Europe, implementing a flat tax in 1994. One of the fascinating aspects about the Estonian example is that Laar thought that a flat tax had already been tried and proved successful in Western economies, as the literature on the concept was widespread and it seemed so obvious to him what a flat tax could do. So he decided to give it a try. And this is essentially what he advocates: that countries should try it out. Laar has made a tour of many countries and recently paid a visit to Costa Rica to talk to government officials, members of congress, economists, and businesspeople about his country's experiences with the flat tax. He also gave advice on what he believed the flat tax should be linked with (privatization and access to a free trade area) in order to turn the economy around and make it grow.
Jensen: Former Finance Minister Ivan Mikloš, who introduced the flat tax in Slovakia, has also been a strong advocate for the wider spread of the concept. Martin Bruncko, a 2003 graduate of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and the chief economic adviser to Finance Minister Mikloš, has traveled extensively throughout Europe in order to explain what a flat tax is and what it can do. Interestingly enough, Western European countries are also listening. But again, the fact that many countries are thinking about adopting a flat tax may have something to do with finding a political way to implement low corporate tax rates. And there are fears of a race to the bottom. However, recent events in Slovenia might demonstrate a reversal in Eastern Europe. Slovenia is one of the smallest among the recent wave of EU entrants, and it is also the closest to the standards of living enjoyed in the more established EU countries. Slovenia rejected the flat tax, which is consistent with the aversion seen in some EU 15 countries.
Alfaro: Overall, other countries can look to Slovakia as a model of what might happen when a flat tax is adopted, as this example illustrates several aspects. The overall economic performance has improved: Real output growth in Slovakia was 8.2 percent in 2006—a record high. However, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the flat tax from that of the other reforms. Clearly, a lesson to be learned from Slovakia is that such a drastic change to fundamental tax habits needs to be thoroughly explained to all individuals and groups affected by it. It has to be taken into consideration, however, that flat taxes in these countries were often made possible by the fact that tax collection had been limited under the communist regime, so in any case tax revenues were likely to increase. Recently, the government elected in June 2006 introduced some changes to the original reforms, even through these changes were, in the eyes of many, quite minor. But again, the case of Slovakia highlights that beliefs and views of a country on what is fair matter for the long-term sustainability of reforms.
Q: What do you think it would take for the idea of a flat tax to gain ground in the U.S. or Western Europe?
Dessain: Economists and business leaders alike are talking about flat taxes in many countries. As Western European countries lose ground vis-à-vis countries in Eastern Europe endowed with low tax rates, low salaries, and skilled labor, governments will increasingly look for ways to reform their tax and labor systems in order to attract business—or simply stop businesses from delocalizing. The direct effect of the Slovak flat tax can be seen in Europe, where neighboring Austria has lowered its corporate tax rate from 34 percent to 25 percent. This has been perceived by many as a clear sign that the Slovak reforms have been attractive to foreign investors. In response to broader initiatives, Germany has recently decided to reduce its corporate tax rate from 39 percent to below 30 percent in an effort to make the country attractive for investors.
Jensen: Similarly, voters in Finland decided to oust the ruling Social Democrats in favor of parties promoting tax cuts in response to the attraction of neighboring Estonia's flat tax. Most recently, the United Kingdom reduced its corporate tax rate from 30 percent to 28 percent and its income tax rate from 22 percent to 20 percent in an attempt to simplify the tax system. Still, the British government decided to reduce social security contributions and industry allowances, as the initiative was supposed to be revenue neutral.
Alfaro: In spite of these examples of tax reduction, there is a long way to go from lowering tax rates to introducing a flat tax in the U.S. or in Western Europe. This would require a change of attitude in countries marked by a substantial history with progressive taxation. To many, the concept of applying the same rate of tax to everyone regardless of income is simply not possible. Most certainly, the elimination of deductions and exemptions—such as mortgages, etc.—is a battle many politicians will not want to take on in the near future. Also, the argument that a flat tax is likely to be paid by the middle classes is probably one reason why the concept has yet to gain ground in the U.S. or in Western Europe; the middle class simply doesn't want it. As economist Joseph Schumpeter said, "The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare—all this and more is written in its fiscal history."
One of the perverse ironies of the success of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is that our taxes are too low for us to care much about making the code more coherent.
April 29, 2007
CAN WE DIG CARL UP AND TAUNT HIM?:
Climate change hits Mars: Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap (Jonathan Leake, 4/29/07, Sunday Times of London)
Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.
The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.
Strange, scientists solemnly assured us in the 80s that the dust kicked up by nuclear warheads would cause global winter. If they weren't smarter than everyone else you'd swear they had no idea what they're talking about.
THREE'LL DO:
Tulowitzki turns unassisted triple play (Owen Perkins, 4/29/07, MLB.com)
Rookie shortstop Troy Tulowitzki gave the Coors Field crowd something to cheer about Sunday, once they recovered their dropping draws.In the top of the seventh inning of a tied game, with runners on first and second and nobody out, Chipper Jones hit a line drive at Tulowitzki, who snared the ball in flight, stepped on second to double up Kelly Johnson, and tagged Edgar Renteria just between first and second for an unassisted triple play.
Just to be safe, Tulowitzki fired the ball to Todd Helton at first, but three outs was sufficient on the play.
ONE THING THAT HAS MADE WINNING THE LONG WAR SO EASY...
New Saudi tack on Al Qaeda: The arrest of 172 suspected militants reveals a Saudi public that is helping in the fight against the terrorist group. (Dan Murphy, 4/30/07, The Christian Science Monitor)
What happened, analysts say, is that the Saudis came to view Al Qaeda as a legitimate threat as average Saudis – who had been somewhat supportive of Al Qaeda when its attacks seemed targeted at driving the US out of Afghanistan or Iraq or focused on foreigners in the kingdom – grew disgusted with bloodshed on their own soil. [...]"More importantly, there has been a change in Saudi society," says Alani. "Al Qaeda made a strategic mistake by attacking Saudis, Arabs, and Muslims. For the sake of killing one foreigner, they are killing five or 10 Saudis. The average man no longer believes it is jihad. Any attacks in Saudi Arabia they see as unjustifiable, illegitimate, and terrorism, not jihad."
...is that the enemies have been too crazy to win.
LOCK DOWN:
California to expand its packed prisons: California's solution to desperately overcrowded prisons seems simple enough: Expand the prisons. (Ben Arnoldy, 4/30/07, The Christian Science Monitor)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) this week is expected to sign a $7.4 billion bill that will primarily add 53,000 beds, with a $50 million sliver going to rehabilitation programs. California's state prisons currently house 172,000 convicts, nearly twice the system's capacity. [...]But the bill's critics – and even some lawmakers who voted for it – decry the lack of changes to sentencing and parole policies, and the proportionately small funding increase for rehabilitation.
It's always fun to hear the American Right -- where the prison population is over 2 million and growing -- denounce the strictness of Islamists.
ALL RADIO IS LOCAL
Friend John Barrett, Jr. has a jazz radio show on WIDR, which streams over the web. He invites everyone to join him for the broadcast from noon to three on Sunday.
NOR WAS THE CHURCH REFORMED FROM ROME:
Islam's coming renaissance will rise in the West: A wave of rationalism is spreading from emigre Muslim intellectuals (Ameer Ali, April 30, 2007, The Australian)
IN the minds of many Muslims, an imagined West is the source of all or most of the problems afflicting the world of Islam. Similarly, in the West, an imagined Islam, purposefully structured and popularly propagated, has created a perception that this religion is a threat to Western civilisation. Between these mutually exclusive mind-sets a new phenomenon is emerging in the real West, laying the foundations for a new wave of Islamic rationalism in the 21st century.The Islamic resurgence of the post-1970s strengthened the hands of the religious orthodoxy and engendered the spectre of political Islam but failed to rekindle the spirit of intellectual rationalism that once pushed Islam to the frontiers of science and modernity. That failure was compounded and worsened by the rise of tyrannical regimes in the Muslim world. The absence of democracy and lack of popular support forced these regimes to look for legitimacy elsewhere.
By championing the cause of religious orthodoxy of the dominant variety in each context, these regimes masqueraded as champions of popular and populist Islam. Any intellectual pursuit that threatened this state-mullah alliance was aggressively curtailed. In Egypt, in Pakistan, in Syria, and in many other Muslim countries Muslim intellectuals who challenged populist Islam faced condemnation not only by the religious hardliners but also by the secular elite that governed these countries.
One happy outcome of this tragic situation was the voluntary exodus of Muslim intellectuals to the West. From an inhospitable environment of political tyranny and ideological oppression Muslim scholars migrated to find refuge in the West, where the mind enjoys more freedom to think, debate and express. As a result, the migrant Muslim intellectuals are now producing a new genre of publications, many of which are questioning centuries-old interpretations of the primary texts in Islam. A new era of ijtihad (independent thinking) rooted in scientific, objective reasoning is spreading from the West and is beginning to make its mark in the Muslim mind-set.
One of the things this points up -- if all our military forces in the Middle East don't -- is that Islam actually is under assault from the West. Not that it's a bad thing....
WE EASILY FORGET...:
Boris the Fighter (BILL CLINTON, 4/29/07, NY Times)
The last time I saw Mr. Yeltsin during my presidency was in June 2000, six months after he became the first leader of Russia to step down voluntarily as part of a constitutional transition. Though the burdens of office and his heart surgery had taken a toll on his health, he still had his trademark bear hug and smile. He clearly thought he had done the right thing in stepping down early and in selecting as his successor Vladimir Putin, who had the intelligence, energy and stamina the country needed to get Russia’s economy on track and handle its complicated politics.I told him I was impressed by what I had seen of President Putin but wasn’t sure he was as comfortable with or committed to democracy as Mr. Yeltsin. Mr. Yeltsin replied that we would have disagreements as Russia found its way into the future, but that President Putin would not turn the clock back and we would find a way to work together.
I saw Mr. Yeltsin one more time, when I went back to the Kremlin for the 75th birthday party President Putin held for him last year. He seemed in good health and at peace with himself and his work.
Boris Yeltsin was intelligent, passionate, emotional, strong-willed and courageous. He wasn’t perfect, and he had to contend with staggering political and economic challenges as he led Russia away from centuries of authoritarian rule. But lead he did. At the end of the cold war, Russia and the world were lucky to have him.
History will be kind to my friend Boris.
...that nothing made George Washington greater in the eyes of his contemporaries than his willingness to turn power over to others. Just because it took a Russian two hundred years to follow the example doesn't make it any less worth celebrating.
WHEN COURT'S NOT IN SESSION:
Somalia's 'total nightmare': The Somali capital Mogadishu has this week seen some of its worst fighting for 16 years. A fragile transitional government there has been trying to destroy groups of fighters left over from the so-called Islamic Courts group which was in control of much of the country last year. (Adam Mynott, 4/29/07, BBC News)
Just a few months ago, Mogadishu and much of Somalia were enjoying their most stable period for 16 years.Under the brief control of the Islamic Courts Union, the grip of the warlords was loosened and some of the basic expectations of an organised life were being restored.
Schools were opening, police were being trained, roadblocks were removed and litter was even collected from the streets.
Many Somalis were unhappy with the more extreme rules of the Islamic Courts: closing down the cinemas, banning music and insisting women were veils.
But the Islamists were able to spread their power steadily through more of Somalia and this alarmed the government in neighbouring Ethiopia who have long feared a radical Islamic group in control of the country.
It worried the Americans too, who feared the Islamic Courts were harbouring al-Qaeda elements.
So with tacit American approval and with other international governments looking on, Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia to support the weak transitional government.
Ethiopia is now trapped.
It wants to get out of Somalia, but cannot go until what it calls the "Islamist threat" is eliminated.
But every moment Ethiopian troops spend in Somalia stirs up more resentment and their presence acts as a compelling recruiting sergeant for insurgents, who say they will die trying to rid their country of the Ethiopian invaders.
The one big mental adjustment the Bush Administration hasn't made is the recognition that just as Americans may choose a conservative religious leadership, so too may Muslim nations. Until they can process the fact that Islamist parties can lead popular governments they'll be at odds with their own strategy of liberalization/democratization.
THEIR EVANGELICALS:
Catalytic Converters (ANDREW TABLER, 4/29/07, NY Times)
Direct inquiries into Shiite numbers in Syria raise more questions than answers, as the sensitive topic gives observers complex incentives to round up or down. When I asked Sayyid Abdullah Nizam, leader of Syria’s Shiite community, to estimate the size of his flock, he put it at less than 1 percent of the population of 19 million. Asked the same question, the leader of Syria’s Sunnis, Grand Mufti Sheik Ahmad Badr Eddin Hassoun, replied carefully; he said that 6 to 8 percent of Syrians now adhere to the “Jaafari school,” the school of Islamic jurisprudence followed by mainstream Shiites in Iran and Lebanon.It was only when I met an actual convert that the mufti’s words began to make sense. Louay, a 28-year-old teacher in Damascus wearing jeans, a wool sweater and a close-cropped beard, seemed the epitome of the capital’s Sunni middle class. Yet within the last year, as Hezbollah rose to national prominence in the Lebanese government, he — along with his mother — began practicing Shiite Islam. He changed the wording of his prayers and his posture while praying, holding his arms at his sides instead of before him, and during Ramadan he followed Shiite customs on breaking the fast. In many Middle Eastern countries, his conversion wouldn’t be possible — it would be considered apostasy. The Syrian regime restricts its people’s political liberties, but unlike most other ruling dynasties in the Arab world, it allows freedom of religion. “In Saudi Arabia, they ban books on other faiths,” Louay said. “In Syria, I can buy whatever book on religion I want, and no one can say a word.”
Politics, it seems, is only one of the attractions of Shiism. In addition to Louay, I spoke with four other Syrian converts, who asked not to be identified for fear of harassment by Sunni fundamentalists. Louay and the others all spoke of religious transformation as much as of Hezbollah. “Half the reason why I converted was because of Ijtihad,” Louay said, using the Arabic word for the independent interpretation of the Koran and the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. Suddenly the mufti’s enigmatic answer became clearer. Ijtihad is practiced more widely by Shiites of the Jaafari school than by Sunnis. These Shiites believe that, on all but the largest moral issues, Muslims should interpret their faith by reading holy texts and reasoning back and forth between them and current issues. Many Sunnis say they quietly practice Ijtihad in everyday life as well, but conservative Sunnis do not encourage individual interpretation of the Koran.
For Louay, the difference is immense. “Take the Internet. Some conservative Sunni sheiks say the Internet is haram,” or illegal, he said. “If I go back to Jaafar al-Sadiq” — the eighth-century founder of the Jaafari school — “I will not find a ruling on it. So instead I use my mind to sort it out. On the Internet, some things are positive, some negative. I choose the positive for myself.”
Americans might find it surprising that the man Louay looks to for more current and oftentimes liberal guidance on controversial issues is Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. For four decades, Syrians had to rely on advice from the local Sunni clerics who appeared in state-owned media. With the advent of satellite television and the Internet, however, Louay said he is now able to keep up with his favorite scholars across the Islamic world. You could easily draw a comparison with the way Protestants in Europe were able to follow the likes of Martin Luther after the introduction of movable type.
Even if Shiitization is at this point as much a rumor as a confirmed fact, the subject is highly charged. It is part of a much larger discussion among Washington’s Sunni allies about the rise of a “Shiite Crescent” — an Iranian-backed alliance stretching westward from Iran to Syria to Lebanon that could challenge the traditional power of Sunni elites. With its Sunni masses and minority Tehran-backed regime, Syria is the weak link in the chain. Many Syrians say they are worried Iraq’s sectarian strife might spread to Syria; the execution of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, at the hands of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, infuriated many. The conversion of Syrians to Shiism could create still more conflict.
Few places need such conflict more than Syria.
STUCK IN THE MERDE:
Change France but keep the lunches (Caroline Wyatt, 4/29/07, BBC News)
As France goes to the polls many agree that change is vital to tackle the slowing economy and growing public debt. But they also want to keep the best of what makes the country so distinctive... so French...
Choosing to die off comfortably is perfectly rational.
AL QAEDA'S BIG PROBLEM...:
Iraqis reclaim Ramadi from insurgents: Residents turn against militants and cooperate with the U.S. after three years of oppression and killings of friends (Chris Kraul, April 29, 2007, LA Times)
They closed down Hissam Hamed's Internet cafe, told history professor Abid Mohammed how to pray, and killed 16-year-old Ammar Alwani because he scoffed at their religious edicts.Nearly everyone you talk to in Ramadi has a story about how life under the insurgents calling themselves Al Qaeda in Iraq progressively worsened over the three years they were in control here, finally pushing the residents of this Sunni Triangle city into the unlikely arms of the U.S. military.
When they arrived in the summer of 2003, the Islamic extremists found Ramadi fertile ground for recruits to fight the U.S. Marines and soldiers who had occupied the city after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Al Qaeda in Iraq even declared an Islamic state of Iraq, with Ramadi its provisional capital.
But over time, the extremists overplayed their hand by imposing strict religious doctrine, hijacking the city government and enforcing a brutal intimidation campaign to keep the locals in line, residents said.
"They killed people right in front of our eyes," said Sameh Khalif, an apparel merchant on Market Street, referring to insurgents from foreign countries, including Syria, Algeria and Morocco, who flocked to Ramadi.
U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mike Silverman, who commands a unit in charge of northwest Ramadi, permits himself the hope that a corner has been turned here in Al Anbar province, thanks in large part to Al Qaeda in Iraq's missteps.
"They nearly achieved it, turning Al Anbar into the new Afghanistan," Silverman said. "But they shot themselves in the foot. Their violent tactics just discredited them further and further." [...]
The militants also targeted Ramadi's educators, killing several schoolteachers as well as 10 professors at Al Anbar University who refused to teach Sharia, or Islamic law, said Arab history professor Abid Mohammed. As a result, Ramadi's school system was closed for months because students and teachers were terrified that Al Qaeda would raid classes.
But schools in most of the city have been open since September, officials say, and Mohammed is running a special literacy school for security force recruits working out of the new police station in the Faraj neighborhood.
Young entrepreneur and Internet cafe operator Hamed said Al Qaeda in Iraq threatened to blow up his shop unless he shut down his two computers. "They ruined my income," Hamed said. "Then suddenly the Iraqi police were here and security has improved, and so I've reopened. Of course I support the security forces here."
That support has been evidenced by a surge in police and army recruits, a downturn in attacks on U.S. forces and a rise in weapons cache recoveries, a cycle fed by improved security. Most insurgents were flushed from Ramadi in 10 U.S.-led military operations between January and mid-April. In its wake, the military left a score of police stations manned by the fresh recruits.
"I couldn't have joined a year ago. I would have been beheaded," said police recruit Nasser Ibrahim Hussein, 20, as he stood guard at Ramadi General Hospital.
...they can't control any territory anywhere for any significant period of time.
HOLLYWOOD KINGPIN:
Revenge of the Dark Knight: Hard-edged comics guru Frank Miller is hot in Hollywood. Now for the graphic details (Geoff Boucher, April 29, 2007, LA Times)
FRANK MILLER, his pale hands wrapped around a cane and the smoke from his cigarette swirling beneath the brim of his Homburg, sat at the poolside bar at the W Hotel in Westwood and watched the swimsuits saunter by. "I'm married to New York," he said between sips of a fizzy Red Bull cocktail. "But there's something to be said about Los Angeles too."Miller arrived at the W a month and a half ago with a one-week reservation, but the L.A. fling is still going and he's still living out of a suitcase filled with black clothes. The reason is that Miller, the most important comic book artist of the last 25 years, is enjoying his moment in the Hollywood sun. There was, of course, the record-breaking March box office of "300," a lovingly faithful adaptation of Miller's bloody 1998 graphic novel, but there's also the two sequels to "Sin City" now in the pipeline and the Batman project now being filmed in London that borrows its title from Miller's 1986 masterpiece, "The Dark Knight Returns." "They finally got the title right," Miller said with a pretend sneer. "I was wondering when that would happen."
Miller fancies himself a curmudgeon, and on talk shows he's proven to be a firebrand with his political views challenging modern-day Islam. But it's hard to stay grumpy when everything is going your way. Like most stars of the comic-book community (where he is the rare artist who became equally celebrated as a writer), he had become accustomed to be treated like a valet by Hollywood — Hey, kid, thanks for the keys and the vehicle, here's a couple of bucks — and then forced to watch the studios wreck everything on screen. The 1990s Batman movies, for instance, would not have happened without Miller's work, but they often ignored or trampled his contributions to the character. On two "RoboCop" films, meanwhile, Miller was hired as a screenwriter, but the efforts fell flat. Then Elektra, a beloved character he created, tanked badly on the screen in the hands of others.
Now there's a sweet satisfaction in the fact that the new Hollywood approach is to hire fan-boy directors and show fawning respect for the source material. "Sin City's" Robert Rodriguez even insisted on sharing director credits with Miller on those films (a maverick stand that cost Rodriguez his membership in the Directors Guild), and that led directly to a somewhat shocking development: Miller has now been tapped to write and direct his own film based on Will Eisner's classic noir hero "The Spirit." [...]
MUCH has been made of Miller's politics in the wake of "300." The deliriously violent and stylized sword film is based on a Spartan battle in 480 B.C., and although Miller wrote and drew the story for Dark Horse comics a decade ago, in film form it was received by many as a grotesque parody of the ancient Persians and a fetish piece for a war on Islam. Miller scoffs at those notions. "I think it's ridiculous that we set aside certain groups and say that we can't risk offending their ancestors. Please. I'd like to say, as an American, I was deeply offended by 'The Last of the Mohicans.' "
Still, Miller gets stirred up about any criticism of the war in Iraq or the hunt for terrorists, which he views as the front in a war between the civilized Western world and bloodthirsty Islamic fundamentalists.
"What people are not dealing with is the fact that we're going up against a culture that finds it acceptable to do things that the rest of the world left behind with the barbarians in the 6th century," Miller said. "I'm a little tired of people worrying about being polite. We are fighting in the face of fascists."
The director of "300," Zack Snyder, chuckled about the portrayal of Miller as a conservative on the attack or a "proto-fascist" as one pundit called him. "I don't think he really has politics, he just sees the world in moral terms."
Memo to Mr. Snyder: that's all conservatism is.
YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM GO SLOW, BUT YOU NEEDN'T LET THEM GO AT ALL:
Deadly crashes are wrecking young lives (Marie Szaniszlo, Heather Schultz and Laura Crimaldi, April 29, 2007, Boston Herald)
The lucky survivors of teen car wrecks are warning their peers against the heartbreaking formula of speed and an inexperienced driver after a devastating spate of car crashes claimed the lives of at least nine young Bay Staters in the last 19 days.
CAUTION--CURVY HILL:
Hill's big break (CAROL SLEZAK, 4/29/07, suntimes.com)
Rich Hill's curveball has been called lethal, unhittable, dominating, baffling, wicked and nasty, and that's just for starters. It's tough to find the perfect word for Hill's curve. How do you describe a pitch that breaks so sharply, it looks as though it's being yanked toward the ground by an invisible string? Magical?''I don't think it's magic,'' the Cubs left-hander said with a laugh. ''I think probably the majority of it is God-given. I've been fortunate to be blessed with a good curveball. Sometimes I try to teach my curveball, and I don't know how to explain it. You can tell somebody how to do it, but unless you have the ability to do it, it just usually doesn't come out.''
Holding a baseball, the 6-5, 205-pound Hill demonstrated the grip as he tried to explain it.
''If the horseshoe part of the stitching is facing where it makes [the letter 'C'], you put your [middle] finger on the outside seam of the 'C,''' he said. ''Your thumb goes underneath, on the other seam. And you want to throw it almost like a chop action with your hand.''
And then, abracadabra, the ball will do its thing and frustrate the heck out of the batter. (Note to kids: Don't try this at home. Hill didn't throw his first curve until he was 17.)
IT'S A CIRCADIAN THING:
Saved by the (Later) BellTen schools in Massachusetts are testing a first-in-the-nation initiative to extend learning time. Believe it or not, the students (after initial grumbling) seem to like it, and so do their parents. Shouldn't every school rethink its schedule? (Lisa Prevost, April 29, 2007, Boston Globe)
School schedules that stretch into late afternoon are keeping kids off the street and away from the television, filling once-empty hours with extra teaching, homework help, sports, music lessons, and theater. Some students relish the structure, some still resent it. Either way, cops say it’s keeping kids out of trouble, and some parents say it’s boosting their children’s grades. Politicians like Governor Deval Patrick and US Senator Ted Kennedy are promoting the longer school day as the 21st-century norm in a global economy where American students’ competitors spend an average of 30 percent more time in school.Most folks applaud expanded days for underperforming schools and students whose parents don’t have the resources to provide quality after-school activities. (Together, the 10 ELT schools have high rates of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals and low rates of proficiency on state exams.) But the politically charged question is whether a longer day is right for all schools. Many middle-class parents, after all, are already paying for Little League and tutors and piano lessons. Their children are already getting high marks on standardized tests and college acceptances. Why lengthen their school day if it means stealing hours from family time?
Advocates say all children deserve more enriching class time (and, in many cases, a restoration of the art and physical education classes that have been eliminated over the years). They hope that momentum for longer days will build on its own if kids at underperforming schools begin showing their stuff on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams, the proficiency tests that reveal school performance and dictate whether high schoolers can graduate. Despite the disagreement, educators know there is nothing like the gift of time.
At the 10 schools participating in this reform experiment, the teachers’ obvious elation – in spite of their fatigue – is perhaps the most persuasive indicator that the program makes sense. “I’m absolutely exhausted, but this has been one of my most rewarding teaching years in all my life,” says Stephanie Baker, a family and consumer science teacher who has taught at Fall River’s Matthew J. Kuss Middle School, another ELT grant recipient, for the past 22 years. Baker says the longer day allows her more time to answer students’ questions and to connect with them on a more personal level, especially in her new afternoon cooking class. “I feel good about this year,” Baker says. “There’s something absolutely right about this.”
Education officials here and around the country are keeping close watch on the experiment. The ELT initiative is an outgrowth of the work of Massachusetts 2020, the nonprofit foundation started by venture capitalist and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli. After initially leading the effort to strengthen Boston’s after-school programs, the foundation rolled that success into a drive to make those programs part of the normal school day. “It’s not that it’s more convenient to extend the day,” Gabrieli says. “It’s just that you can’t do it all in less time.” As it stands now, higher-income parents are unlikely to entrust the public schools with providing the same quality of afternoon enrichment they’re currently paying for elsewhere, he acknowledges. More middle-class districts, including Framingham and Methuen, are considering a longer day, however. As the concept gains traction, Gabrieli says, “we’re hoping that it will be hard to resist.”
Also watching the experiment closely is Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who supports extended days for students falling behind as well as four successful students, who would benefit from extra enrichment programs like art. “Our school day was created 70 years ago, when we had farms,” he says. “If we really want to get serious about education, we need longer school days.”
While school districts in other states are adding an hour here and there at underperforming schools, Massachusetts is the first state to sponsor competitive grants for expanding learning time and to open up the opportunity to the entire system (even schools meeting state testing goals). Every participating school must commit to extending its schedule by 25 to 30 percent. If Massachusetts 2020 is the chief architect of the expanded day, the principals and staff are the craftsmen, molding the concept into a workable form that looks slightly different at each school. One of their primary aims, and the measure by which they will be judged, is to move as many kids as possible to proficiency on the MCAS. Across the 10 schools, about 65 percent of students have not achieved proficiency in English/language arts and about 75 percent have fallen short in math. Most of the kids at the ELT institutions began to fall behind in elementary school, “so to help them catch up requires a very intense intervention,” says Michael Sabin, principal of Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, one of the ELT schools. “It’s not realistic to think it’s going to happen without more time.”
Simply tacking two or three hours onto the school day isn’t enough. Research has shown the strongest links between additional time and increased learning when those hours are used for more direct instruction and active learning.
Kids should also start their school day later and get more sleep in the morning.
April 28, 2007
VITAL ATTRACTION:
Why health saving accounts are growing popular (KAREN KERRIGAN, April 28, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times)
There are two things a small business or self-employed person dreads the most: taxes and health-care costs. However, the small business and self-employed sectors have been increasingly turning to a solution that provides a much-needed break: health savings accounts.These accounts help control costs and provide attractive tax advantages, both for people who purchase their own insurance (self-employed) and for small business owners. The market is headed in this direction as the U.S. Treasury estimates the number of Americans with health savings accounts will grow to 25 million to 30 million by 2010. Many insurance companies are seeing the growth in their popularity and are marketing a variety of products.
United Healthcare's Golden Rule Insurance Co., based in Indianapolis, pioneered the health savings account concept about 15 years ago, and now 40 percent of its customer base has the accounts. Other companies including Aetna, Cigna and Blue Cross Blue Shield continue to enter the health savings account market in large part because of its attractiveness to small-business and self-employed individuals.
That attraction is being driven in part by prohibitive costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits 2006 Survey, health insurance premiums have ''increased more than twice as fast as workers' wages and overall inflation.'' Premiums have actually increased by 87 percent over the past six years.
The same report noted that the self-employed pay an average of $11,480 for family health coverage. This is where health savings accounts become an increasingly attractive solution.
WHERE'S THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WILLING TO EMBRACE SUCH THIRD WAY REFORMS?:
10 Steps to Reforming Baby-Boomer Retirement (John C. Goodman, Devon M. Herrick and Matt Moore, April 2007, Kiplinger's)
Step 2: Improve 401(k) Plans. More than half of all workers invest in a 401(k) or similar savings vehicle. But not enough people are investing appropriately for their future. They either do not invest enough or they pursue investment strategies that will not provide an adequate retirement income. To correct this problem, employers should be given a safe harbor against lawsuits and receive other regulatory relief if they invest employees in diversified portfolios, follow an investment strategy that becomes more conservative as the employee ages, and convert the funds into an annuity at retirement -- unless the employee specifically opts out.Step 3: Expand Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). Current tax law penalizes those who do not have employer-sponsored savings plans. For example, participants in an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan can contribute up to $15,000 annually, while nonparticipants can contribute only $4,000 to a tax-advantaged IRA. Treat all savers equally. [...]
Step 6: Use the Roth Method of Taxation. Unlike traditional savings vehicles, deposits into Roth IRAs are made with after-tax dollars, and withdrawals are tax free. Given the effects of the Social Security benefits tax and the expectation that tax rates will be much higher in the future (in part to deal with the expenses of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid), Roth taxation makes sense for many taxpayers. Yet Roth IRAs, like traditional IRAs, are discriminated against relative to employer-provided savings plans. Level the playing field. [...]
Step 9: Create Health Savings Accounts for Seniors. Despite coverage from Medicare, seniors pay half their medical bills out of their own pockets. And they have few opportunities to use tax-free savings to prepare for these expenses. Under current law, Medicare-eligible seniors cannot open or make deposits to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), and opportunities for young people to make deposits are too restrictive. Clearly we need a more liberal HSA policy. Short of that, seniors should be able to turn IRA and 401(k) funds into new Roth HSAs so money spent on health care is not taxed.
THANKS, AYATOLLAH:
Iranian tip-off may have led Americans to al-Qaeda leader: A major in Saddam's army, believed to have masterminded the London bombings, could have been betrayed in Tehran (Jason Burke, April 29, 2007, Observer)
Abdul Hadi, 45, a former Iraqi army officer who speaks five languages and is a key link between the al-Qaeda leadership in western Pakistan and militants in Iraq, had 'met with al-Qaeda leaders in Iran' and had urged them to support efforts in Iraq and to cause 'problems within Iran', US military sources told The ObserverElements within the complex matrix of interest groups that make up the Iranian regime, who have co-operated with Western intelligence services before when it has served their purposes, provided crucial elements of information, possibly through intermediaries, allowing Abdul Hadi to be captured. 'They may have felt he posed an equal threat to them,' said one Paris-based Middle Eastern diplomat yesterday. 'One of Tehran