NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

Putting defense spending on the table

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jun. 27 (News Analysis) - One of the many problems with the debt-reduction talks is the narrow scope of what Republicans consider acceptable. They are, or at least claim to be, desperate to cut spending and reduce the deficit in a hurry, but they’re also quick to reject all kinds of credible ideas that would achieve this goal.

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The 'most consistently misinformed media viewers'

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - “In polls,” Stewart said, in a surprisingly angry tone, “who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox. Fox viewers. Consistently. Every poll.”

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What the media establishment refuses to understand

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - May. 30 (Opinion) - It was quite a roundtable on “Meet the Press” yesterday. Viewers got to see a Republican strategist, a conservative pundit, a conservative Democrat, and an ostensibly center-left columnist who thinks that Democrats are big meanies when it comes to Medicare.

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House GOP to Democrats: Stop Telling the Public About Our Unpopular Agenda

Thu, 12 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steve Benen - May. 12 (News Report) - A wide variety of House Republicans, especially freshmen in competitive districts, heard from their constituents over the recent two-week break, and discovered that voters aren’t impressed with the GOP plan to end Medicare. Yesterday, they gathered to deliver a message to Democrats: Stop making us look bad by telling the public about our agenda.

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None dare call it sabotage

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Nov. 20 (Opinion) - Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?

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Religious right livid over transgender appointee

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Jan. 05 (Opinion) - In something of a milestone, President Obama has named Amanda Simpson to be a senior technical advisor to the Commerce Department. That wouldn't be especially noteworthy were it not for the fact that Simpson is one of the first-ever transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, and is a member of the National Center for Transgender Equality's board of directors.

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The fight over the fight

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Dec. 15 (News Analysis) - For the last several months, there's been a relatively quiet debate among progressive supporters of health care reform. While the participants tend to agree on nearly all of the relevant policy details, there's been an important point of division: whether a bill that lacks key liberal goals should be passed anyway, or whether such a bill should be scrapped altogether. In light of recent events, this fight is getting significantly louder. As Greg Sargent noted, the dividing line seems fairly clear: "[O]ne thing that's interesting is how cleanly it breaks down as a disagreement between operatives and wonks. The bloggers who are focused on political organizing and pulling Dems to the left mostly seem to want to kill the bill, while the wonkier types want to salvage it because they think it contains real reform and can act as a foundation for further achievements."

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Code Red

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Phillip Longman - Sep. 02 (Special Report) - Almost all experts agree that in order to begin to deal with these problems, the health care industry must step into the twenty-first century and become computerized. Astonishingly, twenty years after the digital revolution, only 1.5 percent of hospitals have integrated IT systems today—and half of those are government hospitals. Digitizing the nation’s medical system would not only improve patient safety through better-coordinated care, but would also allow health professionals to practice more scientifically driven medicine, as researchers acquire the ability to mine data from millions of computerized records about what actually works.

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A Shot in the Arm

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Jonathan Gruber - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Universal health insurance, far from suppressing entrepreneurship, could be a boon to it. The main reason for this is a phenomenon known as "job lock," a term coined during the last round of debate over universal health coverage in the early 1990s. Job lock refers to the fact that workers are often unwilling to leave a current job that provides health insurance for another position that might not, even if they would be more productive in that other position. This is because employer-provided insurance is traditionally the only reliable form of fairly priced private insurance coverage available in the U.S. The alternative is to purchase insurance in the nongroup market, where insurance prices and availability are typically not regulated, so insurance companies can drop individuals when they become ill or charge them exorbitant prices. As a result, individuals feel "locked" into less productive jobs.

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Tipping Back the Scales

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

Washington Monthly - By Rachel Morris - Mar. 26 (Special Report) - Since Barack Obama won the election, many have wondered what he will do to repair the damage that Schlozman and his allies inflicted on the DOJ’s integrity. But there is another important question to be asked. Meese’s inventive use of the Justice Department ultimately set American jurisprudence on a rightward course. Could Obama use his Justice Department to turn it back?

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What Obama Should Read

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - Jan. 19 (Opinion) - A president who is a serious reader is of course likely to be shaped by what he reads, and we know a bit about what has been on Obama’s list so far. From interviews, we know that Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls made an impression on him as a young man. His campaign reading list—or at least the books he chose to be seen with on the trail—included Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment, Larry Bartels’s Unequal Democracy, Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. And we know that, at least in the case of the latter book, Obama’s choice of reading has already had some impact on his governing choices (or at least on how pundits frame them on the Sunday-morning talk shows). So in the hope that he’s willing to take a few more reading assignments, we asked a few of our favorite writers and thinkers to offer their suggestions on what the new president should have by his bedside.

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Back on Tracks

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Phillip Longman - Jan. 14 (Special Report) - By all rights, America’s dilapidated rail lines ought to be a prime candidate for some of that spending. All over the country there are opportunities like the I-81/Crescent Corridor deal, in which relatively modest amounts of capital could unclog massive traffic bottlenecks, revving up the economy while saving energy and lives. Many of these projects have already begun, like Virginia’s, or are sitting on planners’ shelves and could be up and running quickly. And if we’re willing to think bigger and more long term—and we should be—the potential of a twenty-first-century rail system is truly astonishing. In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 85 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation’s highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emission by 38 percent and oil consumption by 22 percent. By moderating the growing cost of logistics, it would also leave the nation’s economy 13 percent larger by 2030 than it would otherwise be.

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Last Secrets of the Bush Administration

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Charles Homans - Dec. 01 (Opinion) - when Bush hands over the keys to the White House in January, he will leave behind more unanswered questions of sweeping national importance than any modern president. ... the things we know we don’t know—there are also what Donald Rumsfeld might call the unknown unknowns.A few key actions will take us much of the distance between what we know and what we need to know.

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Has Newsweek Gone Mad? New Article Gives Voice to Antichrist Whack Jobs

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Steve Benen - Nov. 19 (News Analysis) - When bizarre, fringe publications speculate openly about who may or may not be the Antichrist, it's easy to dismiss. When Newsweek publishes a 600-word piece on those who wonder about Obama being the Antichrist, one really has to wonder what on earth the editors were thinking.

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Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By T. A. Frank - May. 05 (Special Report) - Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have criticized trade deals such as NAFTA as unfair to American workers, and the new thinking is that trade agreements should include strict labor standards. Obama has cited a recent free trade agreement with Peru as an example of how to go forward. I hope he's right, but let's remember that NAFTA was also hailed, in its day, for including labor protections. Our solutions on paper have proved hard to enforce. Peru attempts to remedy some of the problems of NAFTA, but we're still advancing slowly in the dark.

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No Torture. No Exceptions. - Stephen N. Xenakis

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Stephen N. Xenakis - Mar. 14 (Opinion) - Doctors are different; they hold a special place in the hearts of people throughout the world because of the powers their training gives them to relieve suffering. The idea that military doctors would use those skills and techniques to inflict pain, or to aid those who cause suffering, is shocking. By putting physicians in that position, our government has sent a horrible message to the world.

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No Torture. No Exceptions. - Kenneth M. Duberstein & Richard Armitage

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Kenneth M. Duberstein, Richard Armitage - Mar. 13 (Opinion) - Let there be no mistake: waterboarding is torture--and it should never be used by the United States. No less a hero than John McCain will attest to this. Every American president bears a mighty burden as commander in chief. We saw this firsthand with President Reagan. But President Reagan understood that our response to threats must neither diminish who we are nor undermine our values. It was President Reagan who said, "Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him."

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No Torture. No Exceptions. - Chuck Hagel

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Chuck Hagel - Mar. 12 (Editorial) - During World War II, U.S. Army intelligence officers at Fort Hunt, Virginia, questioned Nazi prisoners of war using ingenuity, skill, and knowledge of foreign cultures. They gleaned valuable intelligence at a time when the United States was fighting for its existence against an evil equally as menacing as that which we face today. And they acquired this information without resorting to abusive techniques, such as waterboarding, that are considered to be torture. In fact, until now, every previous U.S. administration and every civilized government in history has condemned the practice of waterboarding. After World War II, the American government convened war crimes tribunals that prosecuted and convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war. A century ago, the U.S. Army court-martialed American soldiers for using similar methods during the Philippine insurrection. The public acknowledgment on February 5 by CIA Director Michael Hayden that the U.S. government has engaged in waterboarding is a disgrace to America and the values we represent.

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No Torture. No Exceptions: Wesley K. Clark

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Wesley K. Clark - Mar. 12 (Opinion) - Today, in the struggle to finish off the extremists plotting against us, it won't be torture and fear that win the day for America. Far from it. Nations that torture end up despised and defeated. No, to win we'll have to live up to the values we profess, the belief in human rights, equal justice, fair trials, and the rule of law. These ideals are potent weapons. They will give us allies, friends, information, and security--but only if we live them.

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No Torture. No Exceptions: Bob Barr

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Bob Barr - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - Waterboarding is, in essence, a torturer's best friend--easy, quick, and nonevidentiary. It had always been considered torture by civilized governments such as ours--until, of course, this administration.

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Indemnification

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Mar. 02 (Comment) - It is my contention that the telcos have just such indemnification agreements with the Administration/government, that we do not know about because they are classified and hidden, that so protect them for any liability and losses resulting from the litigation they are faced with; thus they do not need immunity to protect them from potential liability verdicts, they are already covered..

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National Security

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Feb. 02 (News Report) - The emerging consensus about the lovefest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last night is that Clinton was better in the first half, when they discussed domestic policy, and Obama was better in the second half, when they discussed Iraq. Maybe so.

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The China Card

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Kevin Drum - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - Americans, perhaps, just aren't open to the idea that a "focused, targeted effort" is what we need. Maybe the politics of fear works really well, and once the genie is out the bottle then you either adopt a hard-edged, interventionist rhetoric or else you sound like a wimp.

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The Unbearable Inanity of Tim Russert

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:30:06 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Matthew Yglesias - Jan. 16 (News Analysis) - Actually, the balls Russert favors may be hard, but the pitches he throws aren't curveballs, which go someplace useful. They're sillyballs, which go somewhere pointless. Russert has created a strike zone of his own where toughness meets irrelevance. John McCain entered the zone last May, when he went on the show and repeatedly asserted that the Bush tax cuts had increased the federal government's revenue. Hearing this, a tough but conscientious journalist might have pointed out that this is demonstrably false. Russert, however, reached for a trusty hardball and sent it sailing. McCain, he pointed out, was now supporting extending the very same Bush tax cuts that he had once opposed.

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The Army's Other Crisis

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:05:01 -0800

Washington Monthly - By Andrew Tilghman - Dec. 19 (Special Report) - the top uniformed and civilian leaders at the Pentagon who think hardest about the future of the military have a more fundamental fear: young officers ... are leaving the Army at nearly their highest rates in decades.

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