New York Times Journal: Part IV

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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Published: December 18, 2010
Op-Art
Shakedown Street
By BRUCE McCALL
Those bike lanes eating up one or two traffic lanes were only a start: City crews are now out collecting overtime as they convert New York’s widest major thoroughfares into Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s dream of a vehicle-free paradise — and all for no more than the cost of a few thousand buckets of white paint!
To the Editor:

Had former Mayor Giuliani imposed his will on the city in the same manner as our current mayor has, the cries of "Fascist!" and mutterings such as, "Who does this guy think he is? Mussolini?" would have been rampant. Bruce McCall's piece on Sunday ("Shakedown Street") which is a supposedly humorous look at at the virtual havoc that Mayor Bloomberg has wrought on the city's streets is the kind of urban project that has more in common with that of Nero or Caligula than it does Mussolini, and though many New Yorkers are driven nearly mad themselves at the prospect of navigating our city's streets, no one, it appears, has the power to check or even question his ventures. After thinking about what is most malevolent in the mayor's revenge plot on New Yorkers who would not submit to his will on congestion pricing, (and the list is a long one--everything from bogus street fairs to bogus construction detours to bogus "parks" planted in the middle of major thoroughfares), I believe it is how terribly ugly our city now looks. The mayor has borrowed the sorcerer's hat and has gone mad with a paintbrush. But it is not just the ugliness that offends. The changes the mayor has directed the DOT to make have made driving more polluting and more hazardous. That we have to wait another eleven hundred days for the opportunity to get out our paint scrapers and restore our streets, boulevards and thoroughfares is sad, but fortunately these changes can be reversed.

Vincent Amato
37-18 85th Street, Apt. 1
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
718-478-0933


352.
Senate Support Builds for Pact on Arms Control
By PETER BAKER
The arms control treaty with Russia gained favor as some Republicans said they leaned toward a yes vote and a side deal took shape on missile defense.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 21st, 2010
10:08 am

After watching an hour or two of the debate in the Senate, I have no doubt that the only real Republican exception to the signing on to START is the prospect of giving the president a feather in his cap. Republican objections to the wording of the preamble with regard to missile defense were so obviously contrived that they almost led Senator Kerry to lose his usual equanimity and tell the opposition what he really thought.

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Are New York's Bike Lanes Working?
Mayor Koch's bicycle network died quickly. Mayor Bloomberg's is remaking the streets of the city. What is the verdict so far?
Better Ways to Help Bike Transit December 21, 2010
3.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 22nd, 2010 3:55 am

The sudden proliferation of bicycle lanes has little to do with promoting the use of bicycles as a transit alternative and everything to do with a petulant mayor who wishes to punish automobile drivers for not having gotten his way on congestion pricing. One can be an advocate for bicycle use and still find what the DOT has imposed on this city over recent months an outrage that is crying out to be reversed. Mayor Bloomberg must feel that his stands on such health and environmental issues (smoking, trans-fats, tree plantings, et al.) adequately shields him from charges of having ulterior motives when it comes to redesigning the streets of our city. The facts belie his real motives. His imposition (and it is clearly his rather than his feckless DOT Commissioner's) complex matrix of lane markings and special zones have destroyed the look and feel of our city and made it into a surreal labyrinth designed to impede the flow of traffic and thereby discourage auto use, but the major problem with the plan is not an aesthetic one. It appears that if Mr. Bloomberg could not get congestion pricing, he would settle for congestion alone. And he has brought his full talent for getting his way--at any cost--into play. Although the so-called outer boroughs have also seen changes, the real brunt of the changes is on display in Manhattan, which the mayor apparently feels should be transformed into an automobile-free zona rosa for the affluent, a zone in which the only automobiles in Manhattan would be taxis transporting the rich from 96th Street to City Hall unencumbered by pesky ordinary citizens in their cars. Thus we have not only major thoroughfares reduced to one usable lane, the others given over to bike lanes, bus lanes, floating parking lanes, tree islands, ugly "plazas" situated in a haze of pollution from cars idling in traffic jams of his own creation, hazardous turning lanes, retiming of traffic lights and, of late, exorbitant parking fees paid to machines that are often defective but clearly designed to enable a cheap method of ratcheting up fees even further, but also the proliferation of supposed street fairs hawking the same cheap goods whose impact during mild weekends is to tie up traffic for as much as half a mile.The floating parking lanes are particularly egregious. They have reduced available parking on such thoroughfares as First Avenue to a fraction of what was available while, at the same time, positioning bicycle lanes and concrete barriers in such a manner as to create hazards to drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike. While there seems to be zero tolerance for drivers of automobiles, cyclists who drive the wrong way in the lanes designated for them--or completely ignore using those lanes and persist in riding in traffic, again, often in the wrong direction--proceed essentially undisturbed by law enforcement. No provision is made for the delivery of goods on streets that have many shops or medical facilities, or just residential buildings. Like experimental animals trapped in a maze, taxis and other irresponsible drivers have quickly adapted to the absence of adequate lanes by driving over the existing lane markings, laying claim to two lanes as they carve out an option for themselves to weave in and out of lanes in an attempt to make better time. Once again, they are free to do so as a result of a complete absence of law enforcement.I am a driver. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that an automobile-free Manhattan, frankly, a world entirely free of private automobiles would be wonderful. Just give us a modern, clean, rapid transit system that we can all enjoy. It is the ultimate hypocrisy for a mayor to stay up nights trying to come up with new ways to frustrate some guy from Queens who drives into Manhattan while, at the same time putting very little apparent effort into improving public transit, in fact standing by as cuts are made to the very service he points to as an alternative. Mayor Bloomberg would no doubt respond that his congestion pricing plan would fund better transit. Well, forgive me, Mr. Mayor, but let me suggest that you make the first gesture. Improve public transit first, and if you are looking for the funds to do so, you might get some of your friends who sit on the boards of the authorities already collecting exorbitant tolls on our highways, bridges and tunnels to open their books to you and to the general public to see if they have a few dollars to spare. And while you are at it, take a look at their wages, stipends and expense accounts to see if there is any slush there.See you on the IRT.
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And it’s nice to get a compliment from time to time from other posters:

55.
Perfect Gentleman
New York
December 22nd, 2010 11:13 am

No. 3, Mr. Amato, has made the best, most reasoned and cogent arguments against this mayor and his draconian traffic plan I've ever read.

Choreographing a Snowplow Ballet, to Mixed Reviews (Again)
By RUSS BUETTNER
Even before the high winds and snow ended Monday morning, cries of neglect regarding snow removal efforts could be heard across the five boroughs.
61.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 28th, 2010
9:30 am

If and when I can leave my Jackson Heights community any time soon, I will be curious to see the impact of the mayor's lane changes on snow removal. How, for example, will those narrow green bicycle lanes get plowed when they are hemmed in by "floating" parking lanes? How many of the curbs and plastic stanchions protecting those lanes be left standing after a snow plow makes a run or two down First Avenue, for example? Add impractical to the list of such adjectives as ugly and vindictive to describe the Bloomberg redrawing of our street maps. This is what happens when autocrats impose their will by mandate rather than through a democratic process.
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The Sidney Awards, Part II
By DAVID BROOKS
Here’s the second batch of winners of the 2010 Sidney Awards. It seems as though turbulent times produce good essays.
61.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 28th, 2010
11:58 am

"Smart people, especially in the financial sector, now have tremendous incentives to take great risks. If the risks fail, they still have millions in the bank. If the risks pay off, they get enormously rich. The result is a society with more inequality and more financial instability. It’s not clear we know how to address this phenomenon."Are you kidding, David? "Not clear we know how to address this problem"? Where would you like to start? First of all, who is "we"? If by "we" you mean our society, a partial answer lies in your choice of the word "phenomenon" rather than "problem". Our elected representatives, if the recently passed tax bill is any indication certainly don't see it as a problem. If anything they gave "smart" people bags of extra cash to play with. Your describing such people as smart is offensive. They are given their advantages on a platter. Even an idiot could make money if that idiot is the benficiary of skewed economic policies paid for by those of us not smart enough to invest our millions in hedge funds and derivatives--in full confidence that our government will bail us out if we have a problem. Thank you for yet another insight into how conservatives really see the world and its wondrous workings.
Recommended by 6 Readers

For City’s Sanitation Chief, Fighting Snow and Taking Heat
By SAM DOLNICK
John J. Doherty’s low point might have been Wednesday, when he had to hire two men to shovel him out.
51.
Vincent Amato
New York City
December 31st, 2010
2:08 pm
No amount of throwing rhetorical sand in our eyes along with the snow flakes can contradict the evidence of what took place during the recent blizzard. For most New Yorkers, the silence that fills the air in the first throes of a snow storm is soon broken by the sound of Sanitation Department shovels scraping the pavement in streets not yet filled with snow. The sanitation crews are typically out there early and out there in force, shoveling and salting the streets. This is the first time in a long life's worth of memories, that this did not happen, (1969 being a possible exception, and it was very obviously a job action by one or more city agencies that was responsible. Our mayor, the very personification of top-down leadership, was clearly stonewalling, and he got his obedient commissioner to follow suit. Commissioner Doherty, asked directly by one reporter at the mayor's press conference if the poor performance was due to the layoff of 100 sanitation workers, angrily responded that no workers had been laid off. He did not elaborate on cuts to his department. So much for transparent governance.What this illustrates is that unions are messed with only at the peril of those who discount their power. For the anti-union crowd, this merely fuels their desire to have all unions disappear, based on the time-worn argument that strikes and job actions hurt the public interest. A rebuttal of this argument would take too long to recite here. Suffice it to say that whether one approves or disapproves of strikes by unions both public and private, the strike is clearly a powerful weapon, perhaps the only really effective weapon in protecting working class interests. It is not difficult to see why this mayor would prefer to pretend that what we have witnessed over the past few days is just a perfect storm of exceptionally bad weather and anti-social behavior by citizens whose cars were trapped in the snow.
Recommended Recommended by 8 Readers

Ladders for the Poor
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Nearly a year after the earthquake in Haiti, what people really need isn’t charity but livelihoods. Here’s an example of how an organization is turning Haitians into entrepreneurs.
59.
Vincent Amato
New York City
January 6th, 2011
10:26 am

As Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" so eloquently documents, global capitalism loves disasters--both natural and man-made. They just prepare the terrain for corporate scavengers to come in and profit. Disasters are front-loaded austerity programs. That this phenomenon is taking place in Haiti, which has so long suffered the abuses of both France and the United States, seems deeply unfair. Haiti celebrated the bicentennial of its independence in 2004, and it sometimes seems that the talented and wonderful people of that nation cannot be punished enough for having dared to declare their freedom. With its relatively small population, it would take so little really for all of its people to live decent lives, yet the white European powers continue to exploit rather than to initiate any real program of assistance.
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Buckle Up for Round 2
By DAVID BROOKS
The health care crackup is coming, no matter how much people wish the issue would just go away.
Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment

If there is an \"existential threat\" to anything right now, it is to the balance between publicly and privately provided services that has been the hallmark of the American economy since the Great Depression. Why does a majority of Americans seem to vote against its own best interests and put Republicans in office? Because Republicans, at least, seem to have a better grip on the crisis facing capitalism \"as we have known it.\" Democrats, on the other hand, nervously attempt to tweak a failing system. The young scion of liberalism who just ascended to the governor's mansion in New York gave an inaugural speech in which he committed to policies remarkably like those being put in place by his conservative counterpart in New Jersey. While many Americans fear the \"Europeanization\" of our way of life, European capitalism is ironically being compelled to privatize and put in place austerity measures that are opening huge holes in its safety nets. It might even be worthwhile for Americans to better familiarize themselves with what has occurred in China over the last couple of decades where in a supposedly communist country, 1.3 billion people must now educate themselves, care for their health and house themselves completely at their own expense. It seems a small globe indeed when, on every continent, in every nation, old orders either have fallen or are in the process of doing so, and we will all soon find ourselves in the same proverbial boat. Perhaps some as yet unborn sage will then come up with a new way of dealing with the perennial problem of how best to organize a society. Unless, that is, we then find ourselves preoccupied with how best to escape the rising waters of the world's oceans.


Poll Finds Wariness About Cutting Entitlements
By JACKIE CALMES and DALIA SUSSMAN
Americans say that they prefer cutting government spending to paying higher taxes, but their preference dissolves when it comes to Medicare or Social Security.
215.
Vincent Amato
New York City
January 21st, 2011
10:45 am
The notion that someone earning in excess of $250,000 a year is "entitled" to the same protections as someone earning, let's say, $32,000 a year in the form of Social Security and Medicare is patently absurd, yet we continue this charade year after year. Were we to be entirely honest, we would acknowledge that the reason we have social security in the first place is to keep the poor masses from rising up in rebellion when times got tough. When a rich person pays into social security, what he is buying is the peace of mind that comes from knowing that no one will be storming the gates of his mansion during times of strife because the government will have allotted enough of its resources to feeding and housing the poor to keep them from having such dangerous thoughts.Richer Americans may also want to reflect on the fact that they have a huge tax advantage beyond what is already negotiated for them in favorable federal tax rates. The taxes the rich pay on, for example, soap, toilet paper, diapers, or in such indirect taxation as on transportation, tolls, and fees are precisely the same as those paid by the poorest in our society.One need not go so far as to advocate socialism as a cure for our ills. It might be interesting for our nation to just try to apply the rule of fairness and see what happens.
Recommended Recommended by 4 Readers

State of Union Near, Republicans Draw Line on Spending
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Seeking to recapture the debate over the country’s economic recovery, Congressional Republicans said they would pursue budget cuts and oppose new spending.
136.
Vincent Amato
New York City
January 24th, 2011
12:30 pm
It is entirely predictable that Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin will be the Republican respondent to the president's state of the union address. Ryan is a smooth operator, a Catholic conservative in the old Bill Buckley mold. Buckley took no prisoners in his assault on the full spectrum of liberal and left-wing philosophies. His fervor was expressed in the heightened emotional climate of the cold war. For men such as Paul Ryan, however, the mere collapse of the soviet union was not the end of the battle,(against utopian philosophies that defy St. Augustine's warning about striving for temporal happiness), it was just the beginning of the end. It would fall to his post-cold war generation to perform the clean-up operation. Ryan got his political education through his associations with such conservative luminaries as Robert Kasten, Jr., Sam Brownback, Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp. He has been well-groomed for the task of taking on such remnants of the evil empire as social security and health insurance--two of just a handful of misguided twentieth-century social reforms that have survived thirty years of conservative government.Polite liberalism is not up to the task of responding to such as Paul Ryan. He has not only been armed with the weapons of a proper Christian knight, (particularly the absolute conviction that life is meant to include a lot of suffering, especially for the poor who, after all, we are told shall always be with us), but with special weapons (a set of noses that enables him to smell any threats to wealth and power) provided to him via the acolytes of the Chicago school, scholars like Milton Friedman.No, Rep. Ryan, our cool young knight, will win Tuesday night's debate. It will be a total mismatch. And it will give him time to prepare for the real thing in 2012 (unless the governor of New Jersey bumps him). Eventually, Democrats will realize that they may have to abandon Emily Post or disappear from the political landscape entirely.
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Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds
By SEWELL CHAN
A Congressional inquiry said bankers and regulators could have seen the 2008 crisis coming and stopped it.
457.
Vincent Amato
New York City
January 26th, 2011
12:16 pm

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses, And all the King's men. Couldn't put Humpty together ...
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Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burke
By DAVID BROOKS
Two of the greats debate the president’s State of the Union address.
59.
Vincent Amato
New York City
January 28th, 2011
9:22 am
For many Americans, there was a sense when this young president took office that he was our last best hope. In a sense, we really did believe, or perhaps more accurately, hoped and prayed, that he could turn a country around that had reached its nadir. We understood the economic desperation that had ceded the ground to Reaganism for nearly thirty years. We understood that the rust belts left behind in Northern cities were as devastated in their way as if General Sherman had marched through and left waste in his path, and that there was a new world order. We had been silent or stoic in the face of our lingering race problems, all that the civil rights movement had left undone. Even more shattering was the realization that all Americans shared that 9/11 really had changed us forever, that we were not England during the blitz or even France during the occupation, that we had had the sweet luxury of having been separated by an ocean and our youth as a culture from centuries of European war and devastation, and now we had been violated. What that sense of violation had brought out in us, however, frightened us, and we wanted it reined in. We were good Americans, more comfortable giving out Hershey bars and chewing gum than torturing our foes. We thought it was not too late, that the sun belt and bible belt fundamentalists had merely filled in during a temporary, if prolonged, lapse in the confidence of our more traditional leaders to govern.Sadly, it seems, our young best hope has proven himself not up to the task of being a one-man reparations program, FDR reborn, a great unifier who will restore our landscape and criss-cross it with bullet trains and windmills. It is possible that we will continue to be what we have become, that we have crossed the Rubicon.
Recommended Recommended by 2 Readers

Mubarak’s Grip on Power Is Shaken
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL
More than one hundred thousand people in Tahrir Square on Tuesday demanded the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, despite government efforts to block access to Cairo.
80.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 1st, 2011
9:32 am

Let's see now, no threat of an alliance with the Soviet Union, no apparent threat of a fundamentalist government; what possible rationale can we come up with for CIA meddling in this revolution?
Recommended Recommended by 9 Readers

Bloomberg Seeks a Sweeping Overhaul of City’s Pensions
By DAVID W. CHEN
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg would bar retirement checks for new employees until age 65 and require more years of service.
106.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 3rd, 2011
12:03 pm

In fairness to Mayor Bloomberg, he did, (admittedly in flusher times), finally give teachers a living wage. In doing so, he was acknowledging the fact that, prior to his tenure, few teachers could afford to maintain their families here in the city without working one or more additional jobs, that what had once been considered odiously as "moonlighting" was eating into the time and energy dedicated teachers needed to be fully effective, that teaching should be treated in our society as a profession. Prior to his tenure, the wages of teachers were not keeping up with the rise in the cost of living, particularly for heads of households. Prior to his tenure, too, other mayors had already acknowledged that city coffers could not continue to provide pensions at their original levels. We are now up to tier five, and pension benefits have already been adjusted downward. There are just a handful of tier one teachers left in New York. To further erode pension benefits, riding the right wing tsunami against all unions and all pensions for workers in this country, is, at best, disingenuous. Governor Christie seems at the moment the poster boy for this trend, and he will more than likely ride the wave into the White House in 2012. But the overwhelming reality is that state and city budgets will not be balanced by breaking unions and making union benefits a thing of the past; they are, from the right wing perspective an end in themselves. The ultimate consequence of this move against the teaching profession, whether it takes the form of wages, benefits, charter schools, anti-tenure proposals will be to gravely diminish the caliber of men and women in the profession. Over the last five decades of my experience in education, the irony is always that the more high flung the rhetoric gets about the importance of education to the fate of the nation, the more strident are the calls to rein in the alleged privileges of those who choose teaching as a profession. Mediocre teaching may work in some Asian nations where the home culture is strong and provides adequate influence upon children to achieve, but here in the good old USA, making teachers into low paid drones will spell disaster.
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Protesters Clash Again on Cairo’s Streets
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL
Moving against foreign media and human rights workers, the Egyptian government began an effort to remove witnesses to its battle with protesters.
Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment
One can only hope that the thugs unleashed by the forces wishing to maintain the status quo in the Arab world will eventually be overwhelmed by the vast majority of Egyptians (as well as their counterparts fighting a similar battle in other Arab nations)in their quest for social justice and democracy. That such an outcome would be, to put it mildly, inconvenient for the U.S. and Israel, has been obvious for the last sixty years. The rationale for subverting secular governments in that part of the world used to be the Soviet threat. What will our excuse be now for not doing everything in our power to assist the forces of democracy in that part of the world?


White House, Egypt Discuss Plan for Mubarak’s Exit
By HELENE COOPER and MARK LANDLER
President Hosni Mubarak has balked at leaving, but talks are continuing with Egyptian officials about a plan in which Vice President Omar Suleiman would begin a process of reform, officials said.
155.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 4th, 2011
10:10 am

It is astounding for this American to watch the pieties coming out of the White House and the State Department about a peaceful transition to democracy in a land ruled over by a dictator whose main source of support was the U.S. government. This may be lost on many Americans, but it is not lost on Egyptians nor on any of the citizens in lands where we similarly support dictatorships.President Obama is, by nature, a tweaker and a technocrat. We and the rest of the world have come to know him as an eloquent speaker, but after the speechifying is over, there is the abyss. What many who voted for him had hoped for was a president who, both in foreign and domestic policy, could take us back to a (perhaps partly imagined) time in which we actually stood for freedom and democracy. Such a president would make it clear that it is American policy not to support dictators who suppress, jail and even torture their opponents, even when it might serve our interests to do so.It is laughable to hear fretting about the U.S. possibly being "behind the curve" when it comes to the thirst for popular democracies in the Arab world. Asleep at the wheel might better describe our posture.
Recommended Recommended by 1 Reader

Emotions of a Reluctant Hero Galvanize Protesters
By KAREEM FAHIM and MONA EL-NAGGAR
An interview with the Google executive and activist Wael Ghonim injected vigor into Egypt’s protests.
74.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 9th, 2011
10:29 am
What we are learning about the vast number of Egyptian citizens who are thirsting for freedom should serve as a lesson for all Americans. It contains echoes of the old political cliche about not having problems with a nation's people, but its government. Egyptians are not alone in having tired of being manipulated and controlled. The panic that the protests in Egypt have caused in various chambers of government--including our own--illustrates the weakness in the new world order that has emerged since the fall of the Soviet Union. Unafraid of opposition by any comparable force, governments all over the globe have pressed their populations with various "privatization" and austerity schemes that are designed to entrench privilege and roll back hard won gains made by working people or prevent them from ever emerging. Events in Egypt may be an early indicator that this arrangement is far more fragile than any have understood so far. It is not the Egyptian people who are "not ready for democracy," it is their government, a government that--unfortunately for twenty-first century humanity--has all too much in common with its cohorts around the globe.Recommended Recommended by 4 Readers

Egypt Foreign Minister Warns of Military Intervention
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, ANTHONY SHADID AND ALAN COWELL
As Egypt’s uprising entered its 17th day, a senior government official said the army would take control if the country fell into chaos.
55.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 10th, 2011
10:51 am

Western news reports that consist of interviews with standing Egyptian government officials merely reflect the old truism that power is never surrendered without a fight. Well-tailored, suave and often educated in Europe and America, the Egyptian bureaucrats who blithely warn of chaos if the people's call for President Mubarak to step down do so in keeping with the time-worn tradition of the palace guard's stone-walling until the bitter end. Mubarak's governance is already at an end. The challenge now is for opposition groups to rally behind a leader who can give voice to their movement. A leader unbeholden to foreign influence.
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Abraham Lincoln, Inflationist
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Why does it seem as if Republicans have refrained from referring to themselves as “the party of Lincoln” these days?
168.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 11th, 2011
1:44 pm

When the phrase "the New South" entered our vocabulary, the belief was that the South would finally be joining the twentieth century. It appears that what we are actually witnessing is the restoration of plantocracy values, only this time those values are being imposed not in the South alone, but in the whole country. This crowd, which gained momentum with the Civil Rights Act signed by Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, a southerner himself, still had slave shanties on his Texas ranch. Then onto the Sunbelt presidents from Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Clinton to the two Bushes, expatriate Yankees transplanted to Texas. Johnson was forced to step down, Nixon to resign, Reagan and Bush senior would have been impeached for their Iran-Contra caper were the country not impeachment weary at the time, aClinton barely escaped being cast out of office by braving out a humiliating scandal, and Bush junior only survived by submitting to a palace coup. The record of post-Kennedy assassination presidents is a depressing one. What is even more depressing, however, is the almost total lack of a response from an opposition party. The South is refighting the Civil War and is, so far, winning that war. Northern power grew out of its industrial base. As that base has now rusted into dust, our nation has lost its way.
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Egypt Erupts in Jubilation as Mubarak Steps Down
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ANTHONY SHADID
The departure of President Hosni Mubarak was a pivotal turn in a revolt that has upended one of the Arab’s world’s most enduring dictatorships.
813.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 11th, 2011
7:55 pm
Very, very dangerous. Why this kind of thing could spread! It is infectious. Yes, as with all revolutions, there will be a hangover when the actual work of trying to form a new government begins, with the same old forces scrambling to retrench, but it is exhilarating to at least cast out one devil. If we're not careful the lesson of Egypt--that people can make a difference--may spread. Which way to Times Square?
Recommend Recommended by 2 Readers

Eat The Future
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The Republicans face a budget conundrum, and their answer is to sacrifice tomorrow.
64.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 14th, 2011
10:45 am
The almost uninterrupted conservative regimen imposed on this country since the Reagan era has been eating into our future for thirty years. Our present is the future laid out by those very policies. It is clear that it has long been a major thrust of conservative policy to dig us into so deep a hole that it will take a long time (from their point of view, hopefully forever) to reverse a regimen of deregulation, deunionization, degovernmentalization.We need not wonder what such a future will look like. We already live in one such future. It is a nation where a tiny handful of individuals hold heretofore unimaginable wealth alongside millions of unemployed and under-employed, the greatest gap between rich and poor we have ever experienced.If our future "future" promises to be even worse, the blame can not be laid at the door of Republicans alone. When the thirty-year plan consummated in the near collapse of the very financial system that largely Republican policies had designed, innocents like certain Nobel Prize winners, this writer and probably the vast majority of Americans believed that the poverty of their philosophy had finally been exposed and occasion a reversal of those policies. Our naivete, it seems, did not allow us to predict that, on the contrary, the right would "double down" and amazingly, perversely, insist on digging an even deeper hole. What recent events have exposed is that it is not Republicans alone who have no creative response to the crisis of latter-day capitalism. It now appears that we will watch things get a lot worse before they get better, and I fear it may only be the youngest readers of this newspaper who will live long enough to see a reversal. On the other hand, as events in Egypt and elsewhere teach us, history is full of surprises.
Recommend Recommended by 13 Readers

The Experience Economy
By DAVID BROOKS
What happens when wealth and living standards diverge?
213.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 15th, 2011
3:18 pm
"During these years, commencement speakers have urged students to seek meaning and not money."Really, David? Who are these commencement speakers? Members of the BTV, or Blame the Victim group? You remind me of a minister in a near empty church who takes to the pulpit each Sunday to chastise the few in the pews for poor attendance. In fact, your particular sermon, "Meaning without Money," touches on a very fundamental tenet of conservative thought, namely that material well-being corrupts the human spirit--unless, of course, one is part of the anointed one percent of the population whom you represent.The ideal social configuration for conservatives is medieval feudalism, and you and your cohorts are doing a very fine job of "advancing" the human narrative back to a time of great spiritual depth in which people knew their place and kept to it. The Protestant ethic was a good thing in that it produced capitalism and encouraged us to actually read our bibles, but unfortunately, once empowered by literacy, too many mortals put that skill to reading other texts. Literate masses are dangerous. Thus, it is with barely hidden glee that conservatives now close libraries, underfund schools and witness the development of an ever-growing arsenal of weapons of mass distraction that includes everything from the ability to, let's say, post one's thoughts to the internet on one's iphone to falling into the rapture of Dancing with the Stars. Since modern man (outside of Mississippi that is) is no longer tormented by the fear of hell, (always a good rein on trouble-making thoughts), we instill worry as an alternative. Worry about money is a far better recipe for a decent society than actually having access to the filthy lucre.
Recommended Recommended by 6 Readers

Pharaoh Without a Mummy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The people of Egypt have their liberation moment.
163.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 16th, 2011
2:45 pm

I'm curious, Tom. Do you really think that a new Egyptian government that actually reflects the attitudes of young Egyptians will not be more inclined to wish to help redress the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank--in spite of existing treaties? And, should we see similar changes take place in other Arab regimes, will this not place even greater pressure on the Israeli government to finally allow a sovereign Palestine with a capital in Jerusalem? Or is what is happening in Egypt right now just about creating cleaner streets in the tourist zones of Cairo and instituting graffiti removal programs?
Recommend Recommended by 0 Readers

China’s Intimidation of Dissidents Said to Persist After Prison
By ANDREW JACOBS and JONATHAN ANSFIELD
Security officials appear to be expanding the use of home confinement, abductions and in some cases torture.
79.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 18th, 2011
10:00 pm
One can get the news out of China daily on a local cable network here in Queens called "Bon." They feature a news show on which letters to the editors of Chinese newspapers are translated for American viewers. I found one such letter particularly pertinent, although the attitude expressed in it was far from uncommon among average Chinese. The writer complained of China having become a U.S. colony. From his point of view, the Chinese labor for us at extremely low wages, and we enjoy a life of relative leisure. Such a scenario may not be entirely accurate, but, as I say, it is a commonly held view.The issue of whether or not China can be considered a colony of the U.S. is an interesting one. For hundreds of years, the Chinese fought off colonization such as India, for example, experienced. There were Opium wars and spheres of foreign influence, but no outside power had the wherewithal to colonize China. Mao's revolution, what some saw as the tiger finally awakening, and what the Chinese still call "liberation" appeared to have finally won China for the Chinese. On the other hand, Mao's body was still warm when the socialist utopia he had struggled to build was overthrown and it became acceptable to get rich under a quickly constructed state capitalist regime.In a sense, that Chinese writer seems to have gotten it right. China may not be a colony in the traditional sense, or even fall into the category of a neo-colonial enterprise. What they are experiencing may be called post-neo-colonial in nature. It is a great historical irony that neo-liberal states have managed to succeed at the colonial enterprise far better than their antecedents. The question that now arises is: once the Chinese masses have had enough, who will they blame more, the U.S. or their own leaders?
Recommend Recommended by 0 Readers

For Christie, Ailing Economy at Home May Test His Allure
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and DAVID M. HALBFINGER
For Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, the challenges of the coming year could cinch his reputation as a political superstar — or puncture it.
156.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 22nd, 2011
11:06 am

The next president of the United States--or at least the next Republican nominee. He has it all. In the land of the fast-food consuming obese, the most non-threatening of all the professional haters with a smiley face. A winning combination of phony piety, phony horror at deficits, extortionate taxation and unions, (particularly teachers with defined benefit pensions), this eye-rolling, finger-jabbing huckster is just smart enough to be truly dangerous. A gun-toting ninety-pound beauty queen with a bad education from Alaska may be just a little too much for Plumber Joe and Plumber Jane to swallow as presidential timber, but she would be the absolutely perfect running mate for a New Jersey governor with ersatz gravitas. One mis-step by Obama or unfortunate twist of fate prior to November 2012 and the U.S. will come to resemble Argentina under the Perons.
Recommend Recommended by 2 Readers

Make Everybody Hurt
By DAVID BROOKS
Debt fighters everywhere, including Wisconsin, must establish a set of practices to help us cut spending effectively now and in the future.
192.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 22nd, 2011
12:57 pm

Gee, David, when I saw the title of your article, I was foolish enough to believe that you were going on the record against the recent extension of tax advantages for millionaires, but it seems all you meant by "everybody" were those allegedly Republican uniformed municipal workers. Tax breaks for millionaires are apparently off the negotiating table in your world view. The sophistry on display in helping your readers to distinguish between the sins of private sector and public sector unions is clear when you omit the one real distinction that makes public sector unions so odious, namely that they still exist. Corporate America can ship auto manufacturing to Southern states where non-union labor is available, but it is unfortunately impossible to transport all crime, burning buildings and Northern school children to the South. The right will not rest until it has destroyed the one major obstacle to the total elimination of unions.In the dystopian future that the right wishes to nudge us toward, all human enterprise will be privatized. Then police and fire fighters and teachers will enjoy all the advantages of their new status as "associates," free to look after their health and retirement needs without the evil tentacles of government and unions choking their ability to make unhampered choices.
Recommend Recommended by 13 Readers

How Chris Christie Did His Homework
By MATT BAI
The governor of New Jersey became the most celebrated Republican in America by tagging public-sector workers like cops and firefighters — and especially teachers — as 21st-century welfare queens.
221.
Vincent Amato
New York City
February 24th, 2011
2:25 pm
Republicans always hated unions. What we are seeing in the current wave of right wing demagoguery literally sweeping the nation is merely the right's mouth watering at the opportunity to achieve what they have always dreamed of achieving--the total destruction of unions. They are almost there. The de-industrialization of this country due to so-called free trade and globalization--two euphemisms for large business scouring the planet for ever cheaper labor in countries where workers are bereft of rights, benefits or decent wages--has cleansed it of its once powerful working class. Sadly for the right wing, it is not so easy to export our native crime, burning buildings and children in need of an education overseas. Thus other tactics must be invented to immobilize city and state workers and to render them just as powerless as American workers in the private sector are to get work with decent wages and benefits (assuming at the moment that they can get any work at all). Truly sad is the fact that it is so easy to get Americans disgruntled with their plight to turn on the remaining few who still have union protections and, heaven forbid, defined benefit pensions. Rather than draw the lesson that their lives might be better if they, too, organized, formed or joined unions and stood up for their rights against their real opponents, they are seduced by the demagogues into attacking unionized workers. Divide and conquer.It is interesting that since the notorious Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to make unlimited contributions to politicians of their choosing, the oft heard argument that corporate contributions are counterbalanced by contributions from large, powerful unions, (what the right disingenuously labels "special interests"), will, if the right gets its way and eliminates viable unions, allow corporate America to have its way essentially unopposed by any organized entities.Back in the 1980s, in the early years of the Reagan administration when the siege of union-busting was initiated with the destruction of the Air Traffic Controllers' Union, there were at least some Americans who could still recall the early history of the union movement. Decent wages, the eight-hour work day, the elimination of child labor, decent working conditions and benefits were not handed over by corporate America without an often violent struggle.It is important to remember where we live. This has always been a basically conservative nation whose history is replete with instances of making "the other," be it blacks, native Americans, immigrants or "radicals" the enemy. The majority, through most of our history, holds onto the dream of making it big. In spite of the fact that few have and few do, the roulette wheel keeps turning. You can't win it unless you are in it. A dollar and a dream. Not the best recipe for decency, fairness or justice.
Recommend Recommended by 17 Readers


Union Pay Isn’t Busting State Budgets
By DAVID LEONHARDT
206.
Vincent Amato
New York City
March 2nd, 2011
12:33 pm
While Democrats must share with Republicans responsibilty for the destruction of New Deal reforms that protected us from the kind of institutionalized risk-taking that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008, it is Republicans who find in the present crisis a once in a lifetime opportunity to finally destroy unions and the entire structure of regulation and reform that protected ordinary Americans from the rapaciousness of corporate America. Carpe Diem. As if in a dystopian chapter out of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," the current impoverishment of government on all levels is used as an excuse to end unions, social security and government regulation, bringing the country back essentially to the nineteenth century.The Manchurian candidate in the White House, elected by a majority to turn the demons out, has, with a fair amount of aplomb, finessed a highly compromised health care bill, allowed the rich to keep their inordinate wealth from the tax collector, invited the defunding of social security, created a commission to recommend a Draconian set of "reforms" that would leave the rich richer and the poor even poorer and peopled his administration with a cast of characters drafted out of the very institutions that turned a blind eye to the gathering storm that culminated in what is nothing less than national bankruptcy.One such individual is Ben Bernanke, whose testimony yesterday was given in a weary, ashen demeanor as he quibbled with Senate inquirers as to just how much Republican cuts to federal programs would negatively impact our GDP. Would 60 billion be too much? How about 100 billion? Are we talking fiscal year of calendar year? How much would already impoverished state governments be impacted?It is clear what is happening, The veil has been swept aside in Oz. That unbelievable half a quadrillion in derivatives (just nominal debt, of course, albeit it about 50 years worth of the total GDP of the nation) broke the bank. The rich aren't going to cover the losses. Frnakly, they couldn't even if they wanted to. But rather than totally restructure American government and threaten privilege in this country, the plan is now to squeeze out of the too fat American populace all of their resources. Make them pay for their own health care, their own schools, their own books. Raise prices and taxes (and a host of "fees") while pretending their is little inflation, and most important of all, destroy the one institution capable of defending the interests of American workers--unions.To live in a nation where its teachers are morphed into Public Enemy Number One is truly the stuff of science fiction. Its teachers, for crying out loud! And sadly, there are more than enough nervous, struggling, angry Americans out there to make of this a real issue. The Walkers and the Christies are not old guard Southerners, they now oversee the business of two of the most historically progressive states in the North.If this strategy works, and we, let us say, have a President Chris Christie walk into the oval office in 2013, we see the final consummation of the thirty years of our descent into darkness.
Recommend Recommended by 3 Readers

Tea Party Tailspin
By CHARLES M. BLOW
For the Tea Party, anger is too exhausting an emotion to sustain.

In spite of my Democratic Party leanings, last election night I accompanied a Republican friend to a predicted victory celebration held by the party faithful at a tavern in Queens. In the midst of all the excitement, I felt a bit like Kim Philby sipping a drink at an MI-5 office party. For me the highlight of the evening occurred when one staunch conservative took a phone call and then bellowed out, "Yes! Two years of gridlock and then the White House!" I was a bit shocked at both the nature and the transparency of the Republican plan, a plan that in spite of its strange recipe for "leadership," was nevertheless patently clear to the party's rank-and-file. "This maniac is getting excited over the prospect of his party doing nothing," I thought.
In our moribund political climate, gridlock may actually work as a strategy for future victories. It is not, however, a strategy that can sustain excitement or ideological passion for very long. And, fortunately, this is not Weimar Germany. Making a nation's schoolteachers into scapegoats can get only so much political mileage. Alternate candidates for the role, namely big government or one of its satellites like Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, doesn't seem to work either. And the war card has proven to be a disaster in the post-cold war era. It's depressing.
The problems facing American (and thus global) capitalism will require remedies that few are ready to face, problems that have even the once cocksure Tea Party types scratching their heads.

Better Ways to Help Bike Transit
Updated December 22, 2010, 03:15 PM
Alex Marshall is the transportation columnist for Governing Magazine and the author of "How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken." He is also a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association.
This is not about bike lanes, and every New Yorker--driver or not--knows it. This is a mayor having a tantrum about not having gotten his way on congestion pricing and directing his DOT commissioner to spend whatever taxpayer money it takes to make of New York city's streets an ugly maze of concrete barriers, "floating" parking lanes, mid-thoroughfare islands, reduced traffic lanes, feeble plastic cones warning of dangerous mid-street curbs, encouragement of so-called street fairs that serve as multi-block barriers to the flow of traffic (often several at a time), open plazas in which unwary citizens are invited to sit and breathe in the fumes of countless automobiles forced to idle as they slowly maneuver through the maze, even a one point swimming pools on Park Avenue. Mayor Bloomberg makes the robber barons of old look saintly by comparison. They at least gave us libraries and concert halls with their ill-gotten gains. His heritage, which hopefully will not outlast his third term, (itself only achieved by thwarting the will of the people on term limits), is a nightmarish array that is a monument to his callousness and arrogance. Let's hope that all of the candidates for his office who state that their first order of business will be to restore our streets and avenues to their original condition will fulfill their promise.

The Forgotten Millions
By PAUL KRUGMAN
But for a few notable political figures, most of Washington seems to have abandoned unemployed Americans.

Retired now, with the opportunity to watch House debates on C-Span, it is clear that we are now in the thrall of politicians from the South, the West and the Middle West whose "philosophy" was once considered a marginal aspect of American politics, but who now hold sway due to the almost complete abdication of what was once called the Northeastern Establishment. Unions, once powerful advocates for workers rights, are, as is painfully evident in Wisconsin and elsewhere, being rendered impotent. When the Northern industrial states were abandoned to so-called globalization and the former barons of industry took to making money in the emerging financial sector, producing nothing but wealth for themselves, all of the goals of the Old South could be given a new lease on life. Without an industrial sector (outside of the military which is located in the sunbelt and agrarian states to a great extent) and with non-union shops having been established all over the South, this is a new country. We are, in a weird way, a bit like China now, making money for the few, waiting for democracy to emerge. It will, but it will take some time.

On Libya, Suspicious Minds
By PETER CATAPANO

Vincent Amato
Location
New York City
Comment

All the unanimous vote in the United Nations accomplished was to make me even more despairing of the misuse of U.S. power. The U.S. has cherry picked its way through UN resolutions it is inclined to adhere to or to blatantly ignore. That the institution is too frail to withstand pressure from this country is a global tragedy since such an institution would be invaluable for true world harmony. The world we presently inhabit is one in which a single nation rules by mandate, and we are that nation. It is always a dangerous situation when there is an absence of checks on absolute power. We violate our own constitution wholesale while claiming its sacred nature. Only congress has the right to declare war. Libya is clearly in the throes of a civil war, and other nations should stay out of the fight.

French Official Urges Patience With Allies’ Libya Effort
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, ELISABETH BUMILLER and ALAN COWELL
France’s foreign minister on Thursday said that the effort could still take “days or weeks,” as the allies continued their airstrikes on Libyan forces.

58.
Vincent Amato
New York City
March 24th, 2011
12:39 pm
Beyond the illegality of this attack on a sovereign nation, beyond yet another instance of this president's apparently endless capacity for contradicting the very principles that he voiced to gain the White House, what is truly disturbing about this episode is the apparent unanimity of the great powers. From Ban Ki Moon on down, the U.S. seems to have gotten everyone on the same page on this caper. Of course, were this to go to a vote in the United Nations General Assembly, a very different picture might emerge. Now, however, bound together by global capitalism and the frightening dimensions of the crisis that it has led to, it seems that we will, from hereon in, see a shared vision from the European powers and their satellites. Who now will dare to question the morality of so estimable a group? The pathetic ruse of having the once dissident French fronting for us only adds to the sense that the big boys have come up with a game plan they think may save their hides. Moral hazard will not be a factor here. No kind of morality will be.
Recommend Recommended by 0 Readers