New York Times Journal: Part III

Tea Party Set to Win Enough Races for Wide Influence
By KATE ZERNIKE
The movement stands a good chance of establishing a sizeable caucus to push its agenda in the House and the Senate, according to a New York Times analysis.
173.
Vincent Amato
New York City
October 15th, 2010
8:49 am

To all those right-wing wags who warn of Europeanization, it should be pointed out that it is the Tea Party types who are actually using a European model except that their ideal society is modeled not after twentieth-century Europe but eleventh-century Europe. The conservative "platform" put out for public consumption as the cure to modern ills essentially consists of cutting taxes to the bone, doing away with "big government," (that is, all regulations and checks on businesses big and small--including those designed to protect citizens from the excesses of those businesses), and suffusing public life in religious values. Their preoccupation with debts and deficits is a red herring since they actually love empty government coffers--at least as an expedient until their utopia can be put in place--since impoverished governments cannot pay for social programs. Such a program would essentially take us back to feudalism, and, of course, the enraptured individual visions of the Tea Party lot has them casting themselves in the role not of the serfs living on the wrong side of the moat, but of the aristocrats within the castle walls.

Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers

Palestinians Consider Shift in Strategy on Statehood
By ETHAN BRONNER
The Palestinian leadership, despairing of attaining a negotiated agreement with Israel, is focusing on how to get international bodies to declare a Palestinian state.
157.
Vincent Amato
New York City
October 20th, 2010
7:16 pm

Given Israel's insistence on building settlements for its citizens on territory it claims willing to ultimately cede to a new Palestinian state--a position as outrageous as it is illegal--it seems that a declaration of statehood that is recognized by all the international community (except the United States and maybe one of its allies in Micronesia) is the only road left open to Palestinians. Such a plan would, if nothing else, isolate Israel and the U.S. as the two rogue states unwilling to live by the accords the rest of the world has signed onto. Such a plan might also be seen as initiating a broader repudiation by the peoples of the world of the United States' assumed role of post-cold war Hegemon. Our little brother would not be strutting quite so arrogantly if he knew that he was on his own and could not count on his gigantic big brother for a fat allowance and to threaten any of the other kids on the block with annihilation should he get a black eye.

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The Fury Failure
By GAIL COLLINS
This election season, anger has not been working out for voters and candidates alike.
107.
Vincent Amato
New York City
October 21st, 2010
12:09 pm

It is entirely too early to glibly advertise a failure of the fear strategy employed by the right wing in this country. How it will play out in the end of course remains to be seen. Those who can recall or have acquainted themselves with the history of the Depression era know all too well just how many lunatic fringe elements developed then. And, in a way, the Tea Party strategy has so far been an enormous success. All the wrong parties have been blamed for the crisis, primarily, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (The mandate given those institutions to create housing for the poor--regardless of the financial risk--by the present candidate for the governor's mansion here in New York while he was Bill Clinton's HUD secretary adds a smidge of credibility to their charges. But only a smidge.) The Tea Party phenomenon has been given far more attention than the long history of deregulation, irresponsible and often outright illegal practices that actually led to the crisis. No talk from the right about an astounding half a quadrillion dollars in derivatives floating around, hedge funds, and collateralized debt. By a truly twisted logic that is often encouraged by mass media, the bad guys in our economy are teachers and other workers who still have unions and pension funds.One would expect expressions of anger from a working class and middle class that has been hard hit, but here in the U.S., the real villains get a free ride. No one has yet appeared in the courtroom docks. While we are experiencing the most disjointed distribution of wealth in history, with the most regressive tax and entitlement structure in history, the wealthy are immune to criticism. Our most mobilized political groups irrationally invite austerity budgets, while their more sophisticated French and European brethren do not hesitate to take to the streets to protect their interests.Other than the prevailing know-nothingism among the Tea Party crowd is the use of thug tactics most Americans would associate with Fascist brown shirts. This became manifest during the health care debate, and there is a real danger that such tactics will be utilized again in the next critical debate. Democrats allowed those tactics with a passivity that was a show of political timidity at a time when they should have martialed courage enough to strongly oppose them.No, Gail, it is too early to call fear a failure. The global response of capitalist governments to look to austerity budgets and ratcheting up the process of privatization guarantees that the fear card will continue to be played.

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G.O.P. Is Poised to Seize the House, if Not the Senate
By JEFF ZELENY and CARL HULSE
Republicans have placed enough seats into play that Washington is on the brink of a substantial shift in the balance of power.
Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment
Once again, should they lose their majorities in the House and Senate, it will be with the complicity of the Democratic Party, (I'm almost ready to join the right wing zealots in hesitating to use Democratic to describe the party, and adopt their \"Democrat Party\" usage.), that they cede the political landscape to the Republicans. Democrats have given new meaning to the proverbial \"pushing on a wet noodle\" when it comes to their taking on the whole spectrum of Republican opposition--from mainstream to Tea Party. Even in this newspaper, the article directly following this one on this morning's web page states that sometimes it is better to have the opposition party rule in the congress. Yes, that's true--if your agenda is to maintain the illusion of two-party government without having to enact legislation that would actually have a positive impact on the lives of Americans.

While this political Kabuki drama gets played out, we await one of two scenarios: fist, that there will be a miraculous intervention to improve the economy; and second, that American working people will finally follow their European brethren and take to the streets. In either event, it will happen without the guiding hand of the party that supposedly represents their interests.


Plot Said to Have ‘Hallmarks of Al Qaeda’
By SCOTT SHANE
The two packages seized in Britain and Dubai contained PETN, the same chemical explosive used in a foiled Christmas Day bomb plot last year. The packages were addressed to synagogues in Chicago.
311.
Vincent Amato
New York City
October 30th, 2010
9:12 am

If there is any tactic a government can use to make the populace feel powerless, it is the fear tactic. How dare anyone question the seriousness of a threat when the possibility of a violent attack is always present? That is, should an attack take place that results in death or injury those who react with scepticism to heel bombers, underwear bombers, and now printer cartridge bombers will seem, in retrospect, to have been irresponsible, out of touch with reality and, worse, unpatriotic. Thus, it's best to keep one's mouth shut. Nevertheless, the timing of these exposed plots cannot help but raise questions, coming as they so often do at politically expeditious junctures. Is it unpatriotic to suspect that what we have just been treated to is a prelude to our government's taking some action in Yemen, and that this episode is, if not a casus belli, then at least a justification for taking some action short of war? The fact that synagogues were the alleged targets of these package bombs makes the issue even more sensitive. Who would wish to seem less than concerned over possible attacks on American Jews, some of whom may not even be supporters of Israeli policy? Yet the constant saber rattling with regard to Iran from many Zionist organizations, rattling that has constant echoes in the rhetoric of American politicians--from the president on down--must inevitably give rise to suspicion. To attack Iran, even using what are euphemistically called "tactical" attacks, would, in the opinion of many observers, have truly terrifying consequences. Only what is called, (to take yet another example of jingoistic phrase-making, an existential threat could possibly justify taking such action, and that is precisely the point. Ultimately, how one reacts to alleged threats on the "homeland" is a matter of trust, and, if there is one incontrovertible statement that can be made at times like these, it is that there is a significant number of Americans who simply don't trust our government. Had there been more Americans who actually lived by the motto in circulation that one should "trust but verify," we would not have had the debacle of the war in Iraq, an adventure that almost everyone now concedes was ill-begotten, ill-conceived and ill executed. And one of the many reasons Americans who voted for President Obama are disappointed is that he seems to be advised and guided by precisely the same folks who got us into that tragic war. There are times, looking at our increasingly haggard looking young president that, at bottom, he, too, seems a prisoner of policy makers who feel they hold all the cards in the on-going "game" of power politics.

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G.O.P. Faces Choice in How to Oppose
By MATT BAI
The new Republican House majority is facing a choice between cultural or intellectual dissent.
Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment
The way the American electoral process currently works (works may be the wrong word) is that outcomes are determined by marginal elements within the electorate. The most significant constituency is the fifty percent of the electorate who abstain. Obama got in because enough of a left-leaning margin was so sickened by the actions of the eight years of Bush that they were moved to vote. What Obama was actually able to achieve, however, given his too slim mandate, disappointed them, and they stayed home for this round. What any rational observer would have concluded from the first two years of the Obama administration is that to actually deliver on his promises, he would need a bigger cushion, a super majority in the senate, for example, rather than a slap across the wrist. That might have gotten us the public option in health care and a bigger stimulus package in the form of public works programs or even bailouts of gravely ailing state treasuries. Had that occurred, the margin of voters on the right who have a pathological fear of socialism and Europeanization would have been allowed to rant all they wanted to, but been rendered essentially irrelevant.

Instead, we got the domestic version of the latest \"existential threat\" to our existence, the huge national debt. We will now be treated to an endless series of Cassandras telling us that we have no choice but to emulate other nations around the world who are imposing strict austerity programs (including the one-time bastions of social democracy such as France and England). They will go after the few remaining unions in the public sector; they will, more accurately, try to eliminate the public sector all together, privatizing everything on their radar screens, form schools and prisons to the very air we breathe.

The irony is that the \"band-aids\" patched together by the usual permanent government types in the waning days of the Bush administration and early days of the Obama administrations went just far enough to create the illusion that the crisis wasn't so bad after all, (so long as you were not one of the many unemployed), and we could back to business as usual--which, in the post-Cold War conservative era means laissez-faire with a vengence.

We'll have to wait and see what those marginal voters will decide after the Republican program inevitably makes matters worse.

Some Fiscal Reality
A draft proposal from leaders of President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission frankly acknowledges that shared sacrifice will be required.
54.
Vincent Amato
New York City
November 11th, 2010
10:06 am

George Soros, Pete Petersen and a host of other billionaires have been sounding the alarm over the immanent bankruptcy of the American economy for years. With the European economies now reeling from the aftermath of the 2008 debacle, (could this have anything to do with that half a quadrillion dollars in IOUs that were said to be out there waiting to come due?), conservatives can relish the prospect of rent safety nets (the much dreaded European-style, socialist economic regimens) putting global capitalism on an austerity budget, belt-tightening, all the other cliches. Unions are gone. Liberalism is dead. The Soviet Union is defunct. Now all that remains to be done is to completely privatize everything. In other words, we can now go back to the good old days, let's say sometime before 1848. Next, we can repeal the child labor laws, close down entirely the already seriously hobbled agencies that were once designed to protect us. Goodbye FDA, FCC, EPA, OSHA, etc. Our highest court has given privilege a blank check to support politicians and lobbyist whose mission it is to explain to us how this is all for the best, necessary, inevitable, for the greater good. The greatest danger to privilege is large masses of well-fed, well-educated, well-housed, healthy human beings who don't have to spend their lives in constant fear. Fear is good. Content people are extremely dangerous.

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The Two Cultures
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 15, 2010
Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment
Gee, David, I hope you don't have to share office space with Paul when your article seems so clearly aimed at him. It is hard to decide whether you are being disingenuous or whether your intellectual underwear is as twisted as it appears to be. You moan about the limited success of the stimulus package when your Nobel prize winning colleague has argued almost daily in this newspaper that the stimulus package has been front loaded for failure by being too small. But when you state, \"Maybe in a nation of robots the government can run a policy that offends the morality of the citizenry, but not in a nation of human beings, as the recent elections showed.\", you fall into an equivocal use of the term morality that is hard to take seriously. For us cold-hearted liberal technocrats out here, morality dictates that our government take steps to ensure public health and protection against rapacious corporations. One can only guess what morality you have in mind, something like the morality of the warm, loving right wing masses that lives in fear of a progressive tax structure that would close the door on their opportunity to one day benefit, perhaps. David, when you lapse into such a vein as you are today exploring in your column, I fear you have crossed a line, from being disingenuous or just wrong-headed into outright demagoguery. You must know that what you are saying just isn't true.

The Power Elite
By DAVID BROOKS
As the diversity and talent level of people at the top of society has increased, the trust in elites has declined.
HIGHLIGHT
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 19th, 2010
1:29 pm

Your strength as a writer and a thinker, David, is crafty disingenuity posing as innocence. Too much transparency? No power elite? Give me a break. The fact that the "old" power elite has withdrawn from the public political process does not mean that it has given up its power, its elitism, or its role in shaping events, just that it is too refined (in its own view of itself) to get down and dirty in the messier realities of the new, supposedly "multi-cultural" agora.
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What Do You Think of City’s Support for Biking?
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
159. November 22, 2010 12:35 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
These bike lanes have very little to do with making our city more hospitable to cyclists and everything to do with making driving in Manhattan near impossible. The emperor did not get his way on congestion pricing, and so he has taken every conceivable measure to exact revenge on the driving public–even if this has meant turning our once beautiful city into a nightmarish matrix of green lanes, red lanes, “floating” parking areas, barrier “islands,” barricades, and a labyrinthine array of white lines that has not only made driving slower, more hazardous and more polluting, but has made our city downright ugly. The DOT commissioner is nothing but a beard for a mayor who, given the frenzy with which he has sent out crews to put these changes in place–without consultation and at a huge expense–has created the impression that he does little but sit at a huge conference table with maps sprawled out before him searching for ever more devastating ways of destroying our city. It was good to see that a protest on Staten Island was effective in overturning just a small segment of his plan, but what really needs to be done is to have all of the changes he has made reversed. It can only be hoped that when this mayor leaves office, wiser heads will prevail and the city’s streets can be restored.
Even the so-called street fairs that throw up roadblocks all over Manhattan have clearly been part of the mayor’s maniacal revenge saga. And the timing of construction projects and street closings has been thrown into the mix as well. Whole avenues are often closed on weekends with no apparent work taking place in the closed areas. It appears that there is no one who can stop this man. If the traits he has put on display are those that allow one to acquire vast billions, it has been enough to convince this New Yorker that I would rather be poor. His arrogance, disingenuity, and contempt for any views other than his own should also be enough to convince voters that men who can buy their way into office are dangerous.

Irish Debt Crisis Forces Collapse of Government
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
A day after signing off on a $100 billion bailout, Prime Minister Brian Cowen said he would dissolve the government next month.

12.
Vincent Amato
New York City
November 23rd, 2010
6:14 am

A few billion here, a few billion there, and before you know it... It has surely occurred to more than one or two Americans that when shortfalls of billions are discussed--whether it is in Ireland or right here in our city and state governments--that such figures represent the net worth of various U.S. billionaires. The fact that a Bill Gates and a Warren Buffet alone could more or less cover the entire debt of an entire nation should raise questions about how the capitalist system works, or, more accurately, fails to work. What the financial masters of the universe around the world are now telling the average citizen of their various realms is that they will need to bail out--via austerity budgets, belt-tightening, etc.--the very individuals who brought about the crisis in the first place and whose personal wealth nicely buffers them from any fear and trembling about paying the rent or covering their health costs.Tea Party populism may serve as an adequate weapon of mass distraction here at home to guarantee that the focus--and the onus--is misplaced on would-be reformers, but that is not as likely to work in most European nations. And the other shoes that are dropping in Dublin or London or Lisbon or Madrid may soon wash up on our own beaches.

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Education Chief Raises Doubts on Pick by Bloomberg
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ and SHARON OTTERMAN
New York State’s education commissioner will reject Cathleen P. Black as head of city schools unless an official with education experience is her deputy.
168.
Vincent Amato
New York City
November 24th, 2010
9:48 am
The current controversy over placing a non-educator at the helm of the city's school system is the macro version of a debate that should take place on the micro level of each school. The fact is that most of what it would take to improve a school has little to do with educational expertise and a lot to do with business acumen. A school principal is asked to be far more than a mere headmaster; he or she is CEO and CFO of what may be viewed as a not-so-small business, often with a multi-million dollar budget. Most principals rise through the system from the ranks of the teaching staff, and then onto roles as assistant principals before finally taking over a school. In my experience as a teacher, I often observed principals who were ill-prepared for over-arching responsibility for large budgets, relationships with custodian's unions and relations with the public in general, to cite just a few crucial examples of factors that can make or break a school and have nothing whatsoever to do with pedagogy.In fact, some principals go to great lengths to prove they are just one of the guys by taking on a class or two when their real job is not to prove they can teach (and thereby set a good example) as it is to provide a viable institution in which good teaching is possible. One observer of the debate now taking place suggested that there be two school heads, one drawn from the business world, the other from education. I second that idea and further suggest that a similar arrangement might be wise--from the city's kindergartens to its high schools. The benefits should be obvious--both in terms of improved climates within the city's thousand schools/"small businesses" as well as in addressing the budgetary waste that is rampant throughout the system.
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The Great Game Imposter
By MAUREEN DOWD
The Great Game is now about conning the Americans who have come to help.
446.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
Vincent Amato
New York City
November 24th, 2010
3:10 pm

Peter Hopkirk's "The Great Game" should be mandatory reading for all U.S. policy makers involved in our own imperial adventures in Afghanistan. In the nineteenth century, it was all about protecting the British Empire from the Russian Empire. For some American students of our own history in that part of the world, starting with our covert war against the Soviets, it no doubt seemed that we had turned a trick the Brits were never entirely successful at. There can be little doubt that the Soviet attempt to hold onto a satellite in Afghanistan played a role in the regime's collapse. For American cold warriors, that, of course, was the greatest prize of all. The Soviet Union is no more.On the other hand, if one takes a longer view, the price attached to our winning that skirmish in the cold war has been enormous, and Afghanistan still appears to be holding onto its nickname as the burial ground of empires. "Afghanistan" may be taken as symbolic of a whole culture with which we are now engaged and whose pathology we ourselves ended up being largely responsible for. By treating all attempts at secularization in that part of the world as trending toward socialism or communism, we created a monster. Nor was this merely a passive result; we encouraged, supported and courted fundamentalist zealots as our allies. That a nation like Pakistan has nuclear weapons is one of the most dangerous by-products of our policy.If policy makers are lured into keeping an American military presence in Afghanistan because of some larger global strategy that includes Russia or China, they may want to take another look at Hopkirk's book. Ultimately, the jewel in the crown was lost, commissars replaced Tsars and a focus on improving the lives of people in that part of the world was put off for another day. We might be a lot better off if we were to withdraw our military presence and devote just a part of the enormous military expenditures we are currently laying out to aiding the people of the area.

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In Tax Cuts, the Options Run Short
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Democrats’ only chance to pass legislation on the Bush tax cuts before they expire involves a retreat, and a millionaire’s tax may be part of the calculation.
Display Name
Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment
The time is now overdue for all those Americans who were scammed into voting for the current occupant of the Oval office because they were led to believe that he would begin to restore a century's worth of hard won gains for the common man to seek new leadership. The truth is that no one knows who this president is or what he really believes or stands for. The greatest political disappointment in our history.

Freezing Out Hope
By PAUL KRUGMAN
After the pummeling in the midterm elections, has President Obama suffered a moral collapse?


"But all indications are that the party will have to look elsewhere for the leadership it needs."
If one had suggested this during the campaign in 2008, when, frankly, all the signs were there that, to put a fine point on it, this was a man who would break our hearts, one was viewed as a traitor to the cause. He would break our hearts because the prospect of a talented young man who could identify as a black becoming president of the United States seemed such a miracle. Because he was handsome, Harvard educated and possessed of the ability to charm audiences, and because we were so weary of and frightened by the depths to which his predecessor had dragged this country, he seemed just what we needed. Moreover, he had voted against the war in Iraq. That was crucial. Our permanent government had already decided that the Bush administration had to be reined in and one of its own came not only to replace a disgraced Defense Secretary, but ended up being retained in the Obama cabinet. It soon became clear that Obama himself was a creation of that permanent government, a group of technocrats whose job it is to serve not as agents of change (as promised during the campaign) but as defenders of order during times of crisis. We needed and wanted it all--a reincarnated FDR and a Black redeemer. That was not going to happen.
Eight years of neo-con government, an alliance between Southern fundamentalists, Zionist intellectuals and powerful lobbyists against all manner and form of true governance had given us an illegal war and occupation of a foreign land that had resulted in the death of countless innocents and an unregulated financial system that had created the greatest disaster since 1929.
If ever there was an opportunity to repudiate the previous eight years and to restore good government, it existed in 2008. Given all the freedom to run things their way, the right had brought us near existential disasters. As many honest observers have pointed out, that opportunity is now gone. And the man who protected the system from the kind of deep and meaningful change that seemed to threaten American business as usual now sits in the White House. Mission Accomplished.

Murmurs of Primary Challenge to Obama
By MATT BAI
That a primary is being discussed reflects how fully the president’s relationship with his party’s liberal activists has ruptured.
317.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 8th, 2010
8:30 am

The president's press conference persuaded me--at least for a little while--that perhaps we on the left are being unrealistic, too doctrinaire. Barack Obama is an extremely persuasive speaker, no less than one might expect from a young man who once served as president of the Harvard Law Review. Had he been arguing a case before the Supreme Court, a 5-4 decision in his favor might be the least that he had a right to expect. Perhaps, in the court of public opinion, too, his stance as a great compromiser will work its magic. And it truly seems that it would take a magician, or for any one man, even an activist president, to dig us out of the crisis this country has been in for decades. There is so much that needs to be done.On the other hand, it is precisely the long list of what needs to be addressed--everything from our foreign policy to unregulated factory chicken farms--that forces this citizen to the conclusion that if Barack Obama is the best we can come up with, our last best hope, we are indeed headed for a profound time of troubles.
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As the Ground Shifts, Biden Plays a Bigger Role
By HELENE COOPER
Halfway through a term in which the president has relied mostly on counsel from an inner circle, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is assuming more influence.
4.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 12th, 2010
10:13 am

Not since Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate here in New York switched parties and given their erstwhile Republican opponents in the Albany legislature a majority has there been such a crass betrayal of party principles as the president has displayed in brokering a deal that would allow the extension of the tax cuts to the richest Americans, lower their estate and capital gains taxes and erode the solvency of social security.It appears that the financial crisis is far graver than most Americans imagine. The establishment has circled the wagons on this one--even to the point where the venerable New York Times has put in effect a blackout on all opposition to the Obama "compromise." This, too, is reminiscent of an earlier phenomenon, namely the tendency of the mainstream media to constantly play down protests against the war in Vietnam by under-reporting such events and under-counting the number of participants.I cannot believe that my household and circle of friends was unique in being electrified upon hearing reports of Democratic Party opposition to the plan. Little of that excitement has been reported anywhere. Instead, we have news reports of the usual cast of characters who ride shotgun for the establishment riding in to hold the president's hand. Some Americans, however, do watch C-Span and many were glued to their television sets as Senator Barney Sanders of Vermont spoke for eight hours on the senate floor in a rare and commendable demonstration of political courage.The suspicion arises that all those derivatives, CDOs and hedge funds out there continue to represent an existential threat to the system both here and the rest of the capitalist world. Working people are now being asked to make sacrifices to save the system. Any proposal that does not spread sacrifice across all classes of Americans should be challenged.
Recommend Recommended by 93 Readers

In Tax Benefits to the Middle, Political Lift for Obama
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
A hefty portion of the tax package that the Senate is poised to vote on Monday will benefit middle-income Americans, and could pay political dividends to the president and Democrats.
151.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 13th, 2010
1:00 pm
If this so-called compromise tax proposal is allowed to go through--even with some marginal changes designed to make it a bit more palatable--it will merely serve as a template for more of the same to follow. Within just a short time, we will be treated to Cassandra-esque cries for paring down government (read social programs such as social security, health care, education, regulatory functions). Capitalism is in crisis here and around the world. The "trick" that those who are currently charged with preserving the system seems to wish to perform is to secure the prerogatives of the wealthy while at the same time making ordinary citizens believe that they have no choice but to adjust to a markedly lower standard of living. To this end, the full panoply of weapons of mass distraction is currently being employed. Rather than resorting to such tactics, a little less greed on the part of these gatekeepers would go a long way toward postponing the day when Americans begin to emulate those English protesters who last week were heard to cry out, "Off with their heads!"
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Health Care Law Ruled Unconstitutional
By KEVIN SACK
The judge said Congress went too far by requiring most Americans to obtain insurance, a key provision of the health care overhaul that passed muster in two prior court challenges.
2.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 13th, 2010
12:38 pm
What a surprise! Now, where do I go to sign on to a class action suit that would relieve me of the obligation to have automobile insurance?
Recommended Recommended by 633 Readers

113.
HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
David NYC
New York City
December 13th, 2010
1:04 pm
Vincent Amato makes the common error that those on the left have made throughout the Health Care debate. They used the fallacy that auto insurance was the same as health insurance. Auto insurance can be mandated because the gov't is not requiring you to buy an car. If you choose to buy a car, then you have to get insurance. The reason this is different is that the gov't is requiring you to buy health insurance, regardless of whether you want to or not. If this wasn't ruled unconstitutional, this law would be the first law in our history that required citizens to buy a commercial product.
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Ben Franklin’s Nation
By DAVID BROOKS
America should focus less on losing its star status and more on defending and preserving the gospel of middle-class dignity.
36.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 14th, 2010
10:22 am
An extremely thought-provocative column, today, David. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution certainly changed the material well-being of countless millions on our planet. What your Swedish professor's clever chart also richly illustrates is that the benefits of this progress have not been equally distributed--either between or within nations. These disparities led even Marx to have a somewhat ambivalent attitude to progress itself, sometimes even lapsing into a nostalgia for the Middle Ages. Few sane people would choose to surrender the benefits of science and technology that we have seen over the last two centuries. Yet, unless we solve the problem of the inequitable distribution of the good that science and technology offer, our small planet will continue to be plagued by overpopulation and the strife that too many humans striving for too few benefits generate. The United States--in spite of slavery and its over-riding sense of a manifest destiny--was long been looked upon as the best hope in the New World for a true establishment not just of freedom, but of equality. In this, I believe, lies the nation's greatest potential contribution. In order to achieve this goal, however, we must guard against a very real danger visible in our present political climate to retreat into the ancient regimen of maintaining privilege--at any cost.
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We’ve Only Got America A
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
A rising superpower (think China) and a rising group of superempowered individuals (think WikiLeakers) are currently challenging the world system.
Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment
While ready to concede that China's still evolving take on human rights has a long way to go, is it not somewhat disingenuous to wring our hands over their unwillingness to buy into a system of granting prizes that are clearly designed to send a self-serving political message? When one considers the number of Nobel recipients who took their medals with blood soaked hands or the recent case of granting a Peace Prize to a president carrying out a war in Afghanistan, it is easy to see how the Chinese may find our Western ways rather inscrutable.

Wall Street Whitewash
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The financial crisis has provided a teachable moment, all right, but not the one first expected.

488.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 17th, 2010
5:25 pm
If less than half of the Democrats who voted yes on the tax bill passed last night had voted against the bill, it could not have passed. In my own Jackson Heights district here in Queens, the obviously ambitious Representative Joe Crowley was one of only two local Democrats to cast a yes vote. This from a man who was never elected to his seat but given it as a gift by the late Tom Manton. One has to wonder who he believes he was charged with representing in his largely working class district.Members of Congress who voted for the bill never really bothered to justify its give-aways to the richest Americans at a time when the distribution of wealth in this country is already more skewed to the rich than at any other time in our nation's history. They just kept repeating the mantra that this was a good, bi-partisan compromise, tha alternative being "the greatest tax increase in history." The double-speak and smoke-screen terminology churned out of the Republican propaganda mill, as anyone masochistic enough to watch C-Span can attest, goes largely unchallenged. Unlike the British parliament, our Congress has evolved rules of politesse and mandatory courtliness that allows the most outrageous misrepresentations of facts. Thus, it is no surprise to see Republicans (who read Orwell backwards) to put such terms as "Wall Street" on the verboten list. And this all took place while the Democrats had a majority in both houses. One shudders to contemplate what the next two years will bring.
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I could not resist submitting a second post:

500.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 17th, 2010
5:25 pm

Paul, I think I have the answer to explain the rationale behind so much that seems irrational in the stand taken by the Republican Party. The key, I believe lies in that half a quadrillion dollars of debt we were told was lying out there like some monster out of Beowulf. I now believe that figure is real and the debt has not gone away. Thus the crisis is far deeper than the public has ever been led to understand. It is what is nowadays called an existential threat, and the threat is to the capitalist system itself. If this is so, it goes a long way toward explaining the drum beat over deficits, debt and government spending. Capitalism's resources must now be devoted to digging itself out of the hole that--unfettered by regulation--it dug itself into. It even explains the giveaways to the richest one percent. Were the top one to five percent required to give, let's say, it's fair share, the leveling that would take place would itself be yet another sign of the demise of traditional capitalism. The top must be maintained. Call it a showcase of capitalist success or a Potemkin Village. Republicans understand that they must take Draconian measures to save capitalism even if it means making utterances that make them appear to be callous or ridiculous. After all, we cannot forget that in the first days of the crisis, we had already begun not just to hear the word nationalization, but to see banks and automobile companies absorbed by the government. From the perspective of a true capitalist there really was the danger of the slippery slope into socialism, and that, of course, is unthinkable not just to Republicans but to most Americans. The bottom line is that the average American, of for that matter, Greek or Spaniard, is being asked to save a system that is still teetering, and there is still no certain outcome.
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