March 12, 2010
Steven Chlapecka
Steven K. Chlapecka is the director of public affairs for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Steven Chlapecka
Some of the day’s best reads:
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March 12, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
For the past year, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has been the Obama administration’s equivalent of the Maytag repairman—a capable official with nothing to do. That is about to change.
As part of a broader push for job creation, the president yesterday unveiled an ambitious strategy for doubling U.S. exports over the next five years. Key elements include $2 billion more in export financing, an easing of export technology controls and a new Cabinet office to promote sales of U.S. products abroad. Obama also picked W. James McNerney, CEO of Boeing—one of America’s export champions—to chair the President’s Export Council.
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March 12, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
President Obama gave away his $1.4million Nobel Peace Prize award yesterday, and where national security is concerned, he literally put his money where his mouth is.
The largest donation – $250,000 – was given to Fisher House, an organization that builds “comfort homes” on the grounds of major US military installations that allow service members’ families “to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times—during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.” It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that President Obama would choose a charity like Fisher House, given the First Lady’s focus on the cause since the beginning of her husband’s presidency. And with America’s military facing unprecedented strains, every drop in the bucket helps.
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March 12, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Today’s big whoop in the manic conservative drive to kill health care reform is a Washington Post op-ed by Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen urging Democrats to abandon reform and work with Republicans on “bipartisan” proposals like “purchasing insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, incrementally increasing coverage,” and so on and so forth.
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March 12, 2010
Steven Chlapecka
Steven K. Chlapecka is the director of public affairs for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Steven Chlapecka
Join the Progressive Policy Institute and Americans for Campaign Reform for a special presentation featuring Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — Wednesday, March 17 from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. Space is extremely limited. RSVP required. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis and not guaranteed. RSVP to attend the event
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March 11, 2010
Steven Chlapecka
Steven K. Chlapecka is the director of public affairs for the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Steven Chlapecka
Some of the day’s best reads:
- Charles Kenny on how TV will save the world and changes lives.
- Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins on energy efficiency and job creations: “While job creation is the consensus national priority at the moment, global climate change threatens not only the long-term health of the planet but our economic viability as well. We believe that the solution to both these crucial problems is a clean-energy economy that creates million of green jobs that do not harm the planet.”
- Marc Ambinder on Paul Ryan’s budget roadmap and why Republicans aren’t thrilled about his approach.
- L. Michael Hager on fighting extremism with job creation: “With more than 60% of its populations under age 24, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has the highest percentage of youth unemployment. At least one in four youth is jobless.”
- Kenneth Walsh on the perfect storm brewing for Obama and the Democrats.
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March 11, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
If you supported the Obama administration on this one, it couldn’t have turned out any better.
Back in September, the White House decided to swap missile defense programs. Out was a ground-based system in Eastern Europe that depended on a stationary missile battery and radar station in Poland and the Czech Republic, respectively. It was geared towards a long-range ballistic missile threat, and was over cost, over schedule, and under-performing to boot.
Conservatives howled that the White House was “abandoning its Eastern European allies” to a salivating Russia. Or was it a salivating Iran? Either way, conservatives were all worked up in a tizzy that, despite our mutual-defense pact with Poland and the Czech Republic, surely we were doing irreparable damage to the NATO alliance.
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March 11, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
When we last checked in on the Texas textbook wars, the craziest advocate on the state School Board for rewriting American history was a dentist named Don McLeroy, who had become so embarassing that he faced a Republican primary challenge from a more conventional conservative. The good news is that McLeroy lost, albeit very narrowly. The bad news is that he remains on the Board for ten more months, and as James McKinley explains in the New York Times today, McLemore and the conservative bloc he leads on the Board is going for the gold in imposing its revisionist views on the school children of the Lone Star State (and many other states, given Texas’ outsized clout in the textbook market).
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March 11, 2010
Elbert Ventura
Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Elbert Ventura
The following is an excerpt from Elbert Ventura’s review of Peter Richardson’s A Bomb in Every Issue in the newest issue of Democracy journal:
Flipping through The New York Times on the morning of February 16, 1966, a reader would have come across a startling photo: a stern-faced soldier, standing against a pitch-black backdrop, crowned by the bold declaration “I quit!” The soldier was Donald Duncan, a decorated Green Beret who had just returned from Vietnam. The small print announced Duncan’s opposition to the war after an 18-month tour. “I couldn’t kid myself any longer that my country was acting rationally, or even morally,” he said. But the photo wasn’t telling his story. It was selling it–it appeared in a full-page ad promoting the newest scoop fromRamparts magazine.
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March 11, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
Today’s strange quasi-political news is that Tiger Woods has turned to former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer to help manage public relations for his comeback to the professional golf tour. Fleischer last made national news by becoming the spokesman for college football’s Bowl Championship Series, and earlier represented Mark Maguire and (as they were getting rid of quarterback Brett Favre) the Green Bay Packers, powerfully unpopular clients all.
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March 11, 2010
Mike Derham
Mike Derham is chair of PPI's Innovative Economy Project.
by Mike Derham
So I wasn’t the only one who thought the FCC dropped the ball in its dealing with the carriage fee kerfuffle over the weekend—some of the nation’s largest cable and broadcast companies have sent a letter to the FCC to that effect.
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March 10, 2010
Elbert Ventura
Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Elbert Ventura
Some of the day’s best reads:
- Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) supports filibuster reform.
- Steve Lombardo on the midterms: “It’s clear that an electoral wave has been building since last fall. The problem for Republicans is that at some point a wave must crest. And so the question that begs to be asked is this: are we seeing the crest of the wave now or is it still gaining strength and getting bigger?”
- Edmund L. Andrews on Paul Krugman and “fiscal scare tactics”: “Perhaps because he’s convinced this is a political battle, he resorts to gimmicky arguments to make a simplistic case that there really isn’t much of a deficit problem at all.”
- Mark Schmitt on progressives and Rahm Emanuel: “[T]here have always been conservative Democrats and vulnerable, cautious Democrats, and the bigger the Democratic majority, the more of them there will be. That’s political life, not Rahm Emanuel’s invention.”
- Econompic Data on the improved labor market.
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