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The folly of doubling down on electric cars

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Ed Morrissey - Jun. 01 (News Analysis) - But do electric vehicles make any sense from a financial, environmental, or national security perspective? At the very least, they do nothing to end our reliance on foreign resources, and at worst, they may well be more damaging than the internal-combustion vehicles we use now.

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Is America still a serious nation?

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Robert Shrum - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - Are Americans still capable of making this country serious? That is the question — the real and fundamental issue — that spans all the bitter debates now raging in Washington, and everywhere in a decidedly unhappy land.

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Was Sarah Palin's Reality TV Show Government-Subsidized?

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - her reality TV show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," received a $1.2 million subsidy from the state, covering almost a third of the show's Alaskan production costs. The state subsidy was signed into law by Palin herself in 2008.

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Arizona's latest immigration idea makes sense

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Will Wilkinson - Jul. 08 (Opinion) - It's xenophobic and unconstitutional, but Arizona's effort to deny citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants is actually a good idea — for immigrants and natives. The official site of The Week Magazine US edition. The best of the US and international media. Daily coverage of commentary and analysis of the day's events, as well as arts, entertainment, people and gossip, and political cartoons.

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The GOP decline starts Phase Two

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Robert Shrum - Aug. 11 (Opinion) - Republicans seem to be enjoying their August delirium and perhaps they should. For them, it only gets worse from here as the economy improves and Democrats ride growth—and their enactment of health care reform—into the midterm elections.

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On health-care, GOP faces risk, too

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By David Frum - Jul. 24 (Opinion) - Are the wheels coming off the Democratic plan to revolutionize American health care? We can only hope so. But as Republicans resist the new controls, new taxes, and new government expansion proposed by Democrats, they need to be very careful to avoid the opposite mistake: defending an indefensible status quo.

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Palin won't be GOP nominee in 2012

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Robert Shrum - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - Sarah Palin is the bright red thread in the dull grey fabric of the Republican Party. She is charismatic, quirky, melodramatic, and fervently anti-choice, anti-gay, and anti-Obama. But there's one thing she'll never be—the GOP nominee for President in 2012.

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Chrysler's road out of bankruptcy

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - May. 01 (News Analysis) - President Obama’s announcement that Chrysler will declare bankruptcy “isn’t as bad as it sounds,” said Matthew DeBord in Slate's The Big Money. Chrysler won’t “face liquidation,” and Michigan won’t face “an unemployment cataclysm.” This just means that Chrysler, which has been in de facto bankruptcy for months, will have some breathing room as it tries to climb back with the help of government cash and a new partner, Fiat.

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The Republicans' Paranoid Style

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Robert Shrum - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - What were the protests supposedly about? Taxes and government spending. But in fact, the President's economic program has already cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans—and state and local tax increases would be far steeper without the protestors' other target, the Obama stimulus package, which provides recession-fighting funds to state and local governments.

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The Obamas take Europe

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - Apr. 13 (Opinion) - President Obama this week wrapped up one of the more productive and substance-filled presidential trips to Europe in recent history—but at times it felt more like two love-struck teenagers on a giddy first date. Europeans, still blinking in joy and disbelief at the sudden end of the Bush era, showered Obama with affection from London to Strasbourg to Prague, and Obama returned the sentiment, showing more respect for—and comfort with—the Old World than any president since John F. Kennedy.

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The vanishing shopping mall

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - Mar. 31 (News Analysis) - Enclosed shopping centers, long the cathedrals of American consumerism, are closing their doors by the hundreds as the recession continues to clobber retail sales. Is America’s love affair with the mall over?

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The crisis -- and Geithner plan -- explained

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Brad DeLong - Mar. 26 (Opinion) - Q: But at least some economists know how to fix this, right? A: We think so. We recommend four things: (a) The Federal Reserve should purchase Treasury bonds for cash in as large a quantity as needed to push their prices up as high as possible. For if Treasury bonds are expensive, then investors will likely shift some of their demand to mortgage and corporate bonds, push up their prices somewhat; (b) Even after the Federal Reserve has pushed Treasury bond prices as high as they can go, it should keep buying Treasury bonds for cash in the hope that if people's pockets are full of cash, they will spend more of it, and that extra spending will directly pull people out of joblessness and into employment; (c) The government should run big, even extra-big, deficits so that its spending--like the government's wave of spending during World War II, like the wave of spending that followed the Reagan tax cuts of 1981, like Silicon Valley's wave of spending during the late 1990s, like the wave of spending on housing in the 2000s -- will also directly pull people out of joblessness and into employment; and (d) The government should undertake additional measures to boost financial asset prices and thus make it easier for those firms that ought to be expanding and hiring to obtain finance on terms that allow them to expand and hire.

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Is writing for the rich?

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Week - By Francis Wilkinson - Mar. 05 (Opinion) - It’s not obvious how young writers without accommodating, well-to-do parents or a trust from gramps make it these days. Surely they can’t spend a year or two blogging without pay until an audience evolves to nurture them. They’ll starve. Meantime, freelance rates for non-fluff magazine writing have barely risen in the past 15 years. And the chances of getting a job at a quality newspaper or a serious magazine are fast approaching zero.

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Holding on to happiness in hard times

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Week - Nov. 30 (Review) - With economists projecting a gloomy Christmas and an even gloomier 2009, new research offers clues into how a dispirited nation can hold on to some optimism. Is there a cure for the blues? When did happiness become a subject for science? Philosophers have been on the case for centuries. But in the past decade, a burgeoning field of study known as “positive psychology” has sought to redirect scientific attention from humanity’s psychological ills to its psychological successes. More than 200 colleges now offer courses in positive psychology, which seeks to maximize happiness both for individuals and for society at large. “The focus on pathology,” writes University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, “results in a model of the human being lacking the positive features which make life worth living.”

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End Times for Reaganism

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - By Bob Shrum - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - But now McCain is learning the hard way, even if he won’t yet admit it, that the Reagan playbook’s time has come and gone. The old Republican trick was to lie about taxes: Democrats would raise everybody’s and Republicans would cut everybody’s. (In reality, Republican largesse meant the millionaire reaped a windfall while the waitress got pennies and the public debt soared.) McCain has resuscitated that canard, making the case against Obama’s progressive tax policy. But he’ll lose the argument—and the Presidency—because the Republican era of wholesale deregulation and the redistribution of wealth, upward, is over.

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The trouble with Georgia

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - Aug. 11 (News Analysis) - Russian forces attacked neighboring Georgia, hitting military and civilian targets, after Georgia tried to reassert control over the Russian-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia over the weekend. Georgia called for a cease-fire, after its troops were repelled, but Russia said it wouldn't stop its attacks until all Georgian troops were gone. What the commentators said It's not clear what Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili expected to achieve, said India's The Hindu in an editorial, by "attacking and attempting brutally to take military control of" South Ossetia, but what he got was "a bloody nose." The "diehard ally" of the U.S. "had zero chance of success" against Russia's overwhelming military might, and now he's worse off than before.

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Giving Iraq another look

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Week - Jul. 08 (News Analysis) - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has made a series of statements recently in an apparent appeal to centrist voters. Obama said he supports gun-ownership rights, and would consider cutting corporate taxes. On July 3, he said he would "continue to refine my policies'' on the Iraq War.

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Mercy for Lawyer Who Helped Terrorist

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 01:40:56 -0700

The Week - Oct. 21 (Special Report) - A federal judge in New York this week sentenced radical lawyer Lynne Stewart to 28 months in prison for passing messages to and from a convicted terrorist. Federal prosecutors had asked that Stewart, 67, receive the maximum, 30-year sentence. But Judge John Koeltl said that while Stewart was guilty of “extraordinarily severe criminal conduct,” she deserved leniency in light of her 30-year-career of “public service” representing the poor and unpopular radicals. Koeltl also cited Stewart’s health problems; she is suffering from breast cancer. “You get time off for good behavior usually at the end of your prison term,” Stewart said. “I got it at the beginning.”

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The skies darken for the GOP

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 01:56:48 -0700

The Week - Oct. 21 (Special Report) - "Republicans and conservatives, brace yourselves!" said Fred Barnes in The Weekly Standard. On Election Day, your domination of Congress will come to an end. For 12 years, the GOP has held a solid majority in both the House and Senate. Now strategists from both parties predict that in the upcoming November elections, Republicans will lose the House and, in all likelihood, maintain only a one- or two-seat majority in the Senate. The poll numbers are "ominous," with 54 percent of registered voters preferring a Democratic Congress. Democrats - fired up by their contempt for President Bush - are telling the pollsters that they are highly motivated to vote, while the conservative base is "gloomy" and disgusted. The recent sex scandal involving former Republican Rep. Mark Foley didn't help, said David Broder in The Washington Post. But the public's disaffection with the ruling party goes far deeper than that. Republicans have come to stand for the botched war in Iraq, the disastrous Hurricane Katrina response, and the Abramoff lobbying scandal. They're being blamed, quite rightly, for a failure to act on the serious problems of illegal immigration, foreign oil dependency, and soaring health-care costs. In recent weeks, I've heard a dozen key Republicans say, "We deserve to lose this election."

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McCain: Is the Republican senator Bush's heir apparent?

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:37:25 -0800

The Week - Mar. 17 (News Analysis) - The Republican race to succeed George Bush is on, said John Dickerson in Slate.com. Last weekend, some of the GOP's brightest talent could be found preening before delegates from 36 states at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis. Each candidate was very visibly making his case to be the party's nominee in 2008.

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