February 8, 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
If you didn’t watch Sarah Palin’s speech at the National Tea Party Convention on Saturday night, you should definitely give it a gander. It was in some respects an unprecedented opportunity for her: a prepared text (obviously her best format), but not one scripted by a campaign (unlike her 2008 Republican Convention address), and guaranteed major media attention. As a private citizen, she was in a position to say pretty much whatever she wanted. Yes, the venue was a bit tricky, because of the widespread criticism of the Tea Party Convention itself, but not remotely as perilous as her resignation speech as governor of Alaska.
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February 8, 2010
Elbert Ventura
Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Elbert Ventura
A viewing tip for this evening: Filmmaker Aaron Woolf, director of the acclaimed King Corn (2007), turns his camera on America’s dilapidated infrastructure system. Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City explores how the plight of Detroit, long the emblem of American manufacturing might, now its most damning symbol of urban and infrastructure disrepair, is actually a microcosm of a larger national failure.
The movie airs tonight at 8:00 pm on PBS, though check your local listings. Here’s a preview:
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February 8, 2010
Elbert Ventura
Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Elbert Ventura
An onside kick to start the second half may have been the biggest play call of the night, but President Obama’s audacious gambit to jump-start the stalled health care reform effort was not far behind. In an interview with Katie Couric, the president announced that he would like to hold a bipartisan health care summit in front of TV cameras at the end of the month.
Perhaps emboldened by his masterful performance at the televised House GOP caucus retreat — by consensus one of the most compelling pieces of political theater this country has seen — the president goes to the well for the second time in a month.
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February 8, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
The following op-ed ran in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer:
One homeland security item that jumps out in the president’s 2011 budget is $700 million to buy an additional 1,000 full-body scanners for airports. The decision underscores the new politics of security in the wake of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S.-bound Northwest Airlines flight.
The scanners will help for now, but it’s only a matter of time before a terrorist comes up with a way to get around them. A cheaper and more effective alternative exists — smart screening. And smart screening doesn’t take naked pictures of everyone trying to board a plane.
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February 5, 2010
Elbert Ventura
Elbert Ventura is the managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Elbert Ventura
In case you missed it, here are Progressive Fix’s highlights from the past week:
- PPI Policy Memo, “Haiti After the Quake: Nation-Building Next Door,” Jim Arkedis and Mike Derham
Helping Haiti firmly stand on its own over the long term — both with reconstructed buildings and a functioning government — is not only the right thing to do but will lead to a more stable region. Read more…
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February 5, 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
While virtually all national attention has been focused on the difficult straits of the higher-visibility items of the Obama administration’s legislative agenda (and even there, according to the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann, his record has been vastly underappreciated), on the domestic matters that a president actually has some control over, the federal government’s regulatory apparatus, the administration has quietly undone many years of Republican mischief.
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February 5, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
A few days ago on Iranian television, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad let it slip that after months of heel-dragging, outright refusal, and/or disinterest, he was suddenly intrigued by a long-dead international uranium swap, designed to remove low-enriched uranium from Iran in exchange for higher-enriched uranium needed by Iran’s medical facilities. I’m brushing over the details, but the goal of the exchange was to provide Iran with uranium required for humanitarian purposes while denying Tehran the practice of performing the enrichment — an experience that could be applied to making a nuclear bomb.
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February 5, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
Paul Krugman wants Americans to stop worrying and learn how to love the bomb – the fiscal bomb that is.
Just as Dr. Strangelove in the eponymous film classic assures the president that America can survive thermonuclear war, Krugman professes blithe disregard for the impact of massive government borrowing on U.S. fiscal stability.
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February 5, 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
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has done a very irresponsible thing that nonetheless offers Democrats a classic “teachable moment” about the true fidelity of Republicans to fiscal discipline.
Shelby put a hold on all presidential appointments (70 are pending at present ) until he gets his way on a couple of big projects — one involving a Shelby appropriations “earmark” — benefiting Alabama.
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February 5, 2010
Tom Lee
Tom Lee is a project director for the Sunlight Foundation. The views expressed here are his own.
by Tom Lee
Last week’s Verizon/Google joint FCC filing on net neutrality contained a substantive idea that was worth discussing – a proposal for “Technical Advisory Groups.” But there’s an item that’s also worth discussing because of its incompleteness: net neutrality in the wireless space. Google and Verizon apparently consider it an important enough issue to include, even though they couldn’t agree on anything more specific than to encourage the FCC to “examine specific market and technical factors before applying any general oversight or specific rules to wireless broadband networks.”
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February 4, 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
In any highly fluid political situation, you will always find some observers determined to argue that it’s not fluid at all–that underneath the surface, the status quo prevails, and anyone thinking otherwise is naive or poorly informed.
Tuesday night, you just knew that Mark Kirk’s U.S. Senate primary victory in Illinois would be interpreted in some circles as proving that the much-discussed rightward trend in the Republican Party, sped along by pressure from the Tea Party Movement, was actually a mirage. And sure enough, Politico’s Jonathan Martin published an article today entitled: “Tea leaves: Republican establishment Still Rules.”
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February 4, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
Gary Orfield, a UCLA education professor, has long been the nation’s foremost chronicler of racial segregation in schools. According to today’s Washington Post, a new study by Orfield’s Civil Rights Project shows that public charter schools are less racially diverse than traditional schools.
“As the country continues moving steadily toward greater segregation and inequality of education for students of color in schools with lower achievement and graduation rates, the rapid growth of charter schools has been expanding a sector that is even more segregated than the public schools,” the report concludes.
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