May 1, 2013

Liberal Opinion

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Vol. 24 NO. 18 MAy 1, 2013

Week

Froma Harrop

Trumped-Up War Between The Generations During the big health care fight, the right told older Americans that Obamacare was grabbing money from their Medicare and giving it to young people. Now it tells young workers that Medicare and Social Security are draining their takehome pay to support retirees sitting around the pool.

The story, it would seem, moves from the young taking from the old to the old taking from the young. The one constant here is the motive: to weaken public support for government programs offering Americans a modicum of economic and health care security.

We can all agree that entitlement spending must be contained. The “how” of it is a big question. But the answer cannot be intergenerational warfare. And it need not be.

The storyline of the young being stripped by their elders has gotten a good deal of traction. Witness this headline on Charlie Cook’s National Journal column: “Democrats Risk Alienating Young Voters by Opposing Cuts in Entitlement Spending.”

Cook was referring to many liberals’ complaints about President Obama’s proposed budget, which would cut entitlement spending by about $800 billion over 10 years.

Among other things, the plan would ask Medicare beneficiaries, particularly the well-to-do, to pay more. Most controversially, it would change Social Security’s inflation formula in a way that would lead to smaller cost-of-living raises.

Obama’s budget would begin to correct the imbalance reflected in the Urban Institute computation that Washington spends seven times as much per older American as it does per child. It would increase spending on education, on infrastructure, on research, on jobs -- programs aimed at boosting an economy that has not been kind to younger workers.

This may be so, and that’s no

bad thing. The trouble with this conversation is that it avoids the real reason we’re having it. Yes, Medicare costs need restraining.

And altering the inflation measure in Social Security -- a program that’s holy ground for many liberals -- could be an acceptable, if painful, concession in budget talks.

But the origin of this phony war between the generations isn’t so much how the budget pie is being cut by age group. It is the size of the pie.

Years of reckless tax-cutting has eaten away the revenues available to meet many national demands.

This was the big rationale for cutting taxes. If you want to shrink government, conservatives kept saying, you have to cut off its allowance.

So all this carping in the richest country on earth that there’s no money to fix the bridges -- and that if it weren’t for all those oldsters’ entitlements, we’d have it -- is absurd. So is the spiel that we can’t guarantee health coverage to younger Americans without harming the elders’ medical benefits.

The right talks about Obamacare as though achieving universal coverage were some kind of moonshot. Almost every other industrialized country has been doing it for decades.

Obama’s budget offers a clever means of giving conservatives some of what they want, but it also names a price for them: $700 billion in new tax revenues. The proposal’s main idea, limiting itemized deductions

for the richest households, is wellchosen.

Rather than engage in hand-tohand combat over ending this tax break or that one, lawmakers could simply put a cap on the total taken.

That doesn’t mean all loopholes make equal sense. (Some, such as the deduction for mortgage interest, should be phased out.) But smart tax reform is going to take time that we don’t now have.

One last point. The aging baby boom generation will be large and expensive, but its members will eventually pass on, and the ratio of workers to retirees will stabilize.

In sum, no generation need be the enemy of another.

Copyright 2013 The Providence Journal Co. 4-18-13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Gene Lyons

Obama Negotiates With Himself Again The great mystery of Barack Obama remains the extent to which he has ever believed his own rhetoric about a transformative, post-partisan presidency. Was it really possible, I asked early last year, “that Obama had mistaken the U.S. government for the Harvard Law Review, where the emollient balm of his personality persuaded rival factions to reason together?”

No Chicago politician, I decided, could possibly be that naive. And yet here we go again. With Mitt Romney in the rear-view mirror and congressional Republicans more intransigent than ever, Obama has been taking GOP senators out to dinner, while the White House has supposedly made party hardliners the proverbial budgetary offer they can’t refuse.

Obama’s willingness to swap “reforms” in the way cost-of-living increases to Social Security benefits are calculated -- the so-called “chained CPI” -- in return for higher revenues from closing tax loopholes, has many liberals howling mad.

And yet Republicans will almost certainly refuse it.

But hold that thought...

“You cannot be a good Democrat and cut Social Security,” Arshad Hasan, the executive director of Democracy for America, told the New York Times. The group staged a protest outside the White House.

Newly elected Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) dispatched an email to her supporters arguing that “Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle-class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled inch by inch.”

Realistically, “inch by inch” is more apt than “dismantled.”

According to economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who strenuously opposes chained CPI, “President Obama’s proposal would reduce benefits by 0.3 percent for each year after a worker retires. After 10 years, benefits would be cut by 3 percent; after 20 years, 6 percent; and after 30 years, 9 percent. Over a 20-year retirement, the average cut would be 3 percent.”

That’s about $36 on the average $1,200 Social Security check - noticeable, but hardly crippling.

Obama’s proposal also comes with complicated formulas for protecting the poorest recipients.

The kinds of Washington wise men who wear expensively tailored suits on TV talk shows pronounced themselves well-pleased. On the PBS NewsHour, the lefty/righty team of Mark Shields and David Brooks called Obama “gutsy” and “brave,” respectively, for sticking it to greedy geezers.

And yet, as I say, none of this

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is likely to happen. No sooner had the Obama budget been released than partisans on both sides began showing something less than earnest good faith. The initial GOP response came from the head of the Republicans’ House campaign committee, Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, who denounced what he called the president’s “shocking attack on seniors.”

Speaker John Boehner sang a different tune. No revenue increases, no how, no way was his answer.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took the same line.

Never mind that both men had been urging the White House to adopt chained CPI for a couple of years.

The GOP commitment to preserving preferential tax rates for the Mitt Romneys and Koch brothers of the nation has achieved the status of an absolute.

“The offer that is there for Speaker (John Boehner) is not an a la carte menu,” National Economic Council director Gene Sperling told reporters.

Writing in his Washington Post “Wonkblog,” boy pundit Ezra Klein explained that the purpose of the White House budget was to expose GOP hypocrisy. “As the White House sees it, there are two possible outcomes to this budget. One is that it actually leads to a grand bargain, either now or in a couple of months.

Another is that it proves to the press and the public that Republican intransigence is what’s standing in the way of a grand bargain.”

That similar mixed motives have been part of every legislative proposal since the dawn of democracy might have made this unnecessary to say. But like a child riding a unicycle, this White House can’t seem to quit advertising its own cleverness. Besides, anybody who doesn’t get it by now probably can’t.

Most Democrats I know tend to agree with former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. “The only thing the president has accomplished by putting Social Security on the chopping block is to make it more vulnerable to future cuts, and to dampen the enthusiasm of Democrats

It probably didn’t matter, but it certainly didn’t help that the White House sent out various emissaries hinting that it was all a big head fake anyway.

“Administration officials spent most of Wednesday insisting that chained CPI was the Republicans’ idea, not Obama’s,” Politico reported, “and that he’d only agree to it if it had these protections and was included in a broader deficit Krugman continued on page 3 reduction package.

Reference Guide Government

Government

National

National

1 Harrop 2 Lyons

10 Carlson

18 Friedman 18 Dionne 19 Weinstein 20 Estrich 20 Page 21 Dionne 22 Blow 22 Groll 23 Bazelon 24 Loeb 25 Friedman 26 Petri

27 Young

Obama Budget Gun Control 3 Dvorak 4 Kaul 4 Marcus 5 Brasch 6 Press 6 Conason 7 Nocera 8 Dowd 8 Page

Republicans 9 Gadebusch 10 Pitts

Hillary Clinton Immigration 11 Lane

CIA

12 Dowd

Economy

12 Harrop 13 Meyerson 14 Krugman 14 Collins

15 Thom Hartmann Blog 16-17 Liberal Delineations

Boston Attack

Gay Rights 26 Bruni

Marijuana The Rich

28 Pizzigati

Food

28 Richardson

Education 29 Bruni

Women

30 Estrich

Environment 30 Richardson

Slavery

31 Dvorak

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Petula Dvorak

After Senate Collapse, A Background Check For Speaking Out, But Not For Buying A Gun

It turns out, none of the deaths mattered to much of the U.S. Senate Not the Batman fans sitting in a dark Colorado movie theater, not the folks waiting to chat with their congresswoman outside a Tucson Safeway, not the 15-yearold hanging out with friends in a Chicago park, not the college kids trying to master German at Virginia Tech, not even the 20 first-graders cowering in their classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

On Wednesday, keeping guns out of the hands of people like James Holmes, Jared Lee Loughner, Seung Hui Cho and Adam Lanza took a back seat to the political survival of a bunch of suits who cannot be moved by death, grief, the will of the people or even common sense.

“Shame on you!” shouted an emotional Lori Haas from the Senate gallery after 100 of the world’s most powerful men and women refused to impose any new restrictions on gun ownership.

Even background checks went down to defeat.

“We were just frustrated and angry,” said Haas whose daughter Emily was 19 when she survived two bullet wounds to the head during the Virginia Tech massacre.

It happened six years ago this week.

And what did Haas get for her emotional outburst? You aren’t going to believe it.

She and Patricia Maisch, who

Lyons continued from page 2

and many independents for the midterm elections of 2014.”

Once again, President Obama appears to be negotiating with himself -- like a guy playing a game of seven-card stud in which his hole cards, but nobody else’s, are revealed.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). You can email Lyons at eugenelyons2@ yahoo.com.

Copyright 2013, Gene Lyons 4-17-13

also shouted “Shame on you,” but is better known as the hero who knocked a high-capacity magazine out of Loughner’s hands before he could kill more people in Tucson, were escorted out of the Senate gallery by Capitol Police.

“They detained us for about an hour and a half,” said Haas, 55, who lives in Richmond, Va..

They had to turn over their IDs and wait. For what?

A background check.

“Clearly, we need to detain and do background checks on two people who speak out. But not on people who want to buy guns,” Haas marveled. She’s a mother of three and a former real estate agent who will never forget that 90-mphdrive to Blacksburg, when she got the call that her daughter had been shot by Cho during a spree that killed 32 people and injured at least 17.

Emily, now 25, is a teacher, wife and mother who avoids talking about that blood-soaked day. So now Haas takes up the cause, working for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and other groups.

The protections and security we afford senators, but deny others is absurd.

“Yes, mothers are frustrated, and we are angry,” Haas said.

“But we are not going away.”

See, we tried the empathy thing.

Apparently, even the corpses of 20 first-graders - some of whom had holes in the small hands they held up to try and stop the bullets - couldn’t inspire enough senators to buck the bullying of the National Rifle Association.

Even after the parents of the Sandy Hook victims gave brave and ferocious testimony about Haas reacted the same way how easy it is to kill children in many Americans did when they America, and what it feels like watched 46 senators turn their when that child is yours, they backs on a background check were ignored. proposal that 90 percent of I don’t think you can get Americans want.

The fury was immediate and much more innocent, tragic and visceral in my circle of friends - poignant than Sandy Hook. Maybe especially parents, who instantly the massacre of preschoolers, with posted their Facebook versions of some baby lambs thrown in, might plink one of those cold senators’ “Shame on you.”

“Disgusted, absolutely heartstrings. disgusted!” a military wife and But no, the sudden deaths of large amounts of people - along mother declared.

A teacher and mother of two with the slow, violent grind of wrote: “I am infuriated that the America’s daily death toll to gun Senate didn’t listen to the 90% of violence - has not been enough to us who want background checks. change things.

“I know it’s a cliche, but they Unacceptable.”

“Channeling my anger into do have blood on their hands,” something more productive today Haas said. “Everyone I talk to, . . . electing new officials who especially cops, they’re just don’t let their fears of things that waiting, and they fear the next may never come to pass prevent one.” an attempt at prevention of even a It’s going to happen again. after her personal tenth of these incidents,” another So background check for speaking mother of two vowed.

out Wednesday, Haas took back her driver’s license, left Capitol Hill and planned her next move.

Reviving the gun control debate will now take longer and it will prove more difficult. Sandy Hook already is becoming a painful memory for much of America, rather than a searing, open wound.

And it’s going to be women, moms especially, who can do this.

“Women are a driving force in politics right now,” Haas said. As the Sandy Hook parents learned, compassion and common sense aren’t going to turn the suits around.

As every mom knows, you can count to one, two and three, but eventually, booting a cowardly, insolent and unreasonable kid from the game is the only thing that will work.

Time to give 46 senators a permanent timeout. (c) 2013, The Washington Post 4-18-13

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Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Donald Kaul

No Progress On Gun Control To Report Yes, I know I said I wasn’t going to write any more columns on gun control, largely because the exercise is: 1. Futile.

2. A waste of time.

3. Unproductive.

But with Congress taking up the issue again and Washington awash with hypocrisy amid rumors of progress, it is a time that cries out for comment.

Progress? Seriously? The Senate has agreed to debate the issue. That’s the progress.

That’s pathetic.

The gun lobbies have our legislature of cowardly lions in their teeth and are shaking them like ragdolls. God, it must be awful to be a politician, particularly a Republican, these days — afraid of your own shadow, being forced by bullying lobbyists to stand there and smile while they shove beans up your nose.

Our government has reached a stage of dysfunction not seen since the 1850s, when Congress was guiding us toward civil war.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union followed suit, we became the most powerful nation on earth, virtually unchallenged in our supremacy.

And how did we use that power? To become stupid. We gave ourselves over to greed, jingoistic militarism, and anti-intellectualism. Now, far from being the most powerful nation on earth, we’re unable to do anything.

We can’t regulate gun sales, we can’t do anything about unemployment, we can’t even decide whether to pay our bills. And as far as building roads and bridges, investing in our kids, providing people with health care… fuhgeddaboudit.

There was a time, not so long ago, when you could say “People shouldn’t be allowed to own machine guns” and not start a riot over what constitutes a machine gun. You could say “People should be required to obtain licenses in order to own a gun” and get nods of encouragement rather than abusive mail.

No more. We’re paralyzed by the ersatz arguments you’re hearing from the Senate right now.

My least favorite among them is the “Cars kill a lot more people than guns. Are you going to ban those too?”

No, we’ll simply continue to license them and make people pass a test before they can use them — as we should be doing with guns.

My second-least favorite argument: The mythical little old lady who would be left defenseless before an intruder climbing in through her bedroom window. Do we want to leave her to her fate?

No, but she’s an unusual little old lady indeed if she shoots the miscreant with an AK-47. Say “assault weapons ban” to a gun nut and he or she immediately switches the debate to handguns.

Not that handguns are all they’re cracked up to rifle in Utah, a 13-year-old is executed gangland be. style by a bullet in the back of the head in Texas.

On and on it goes, children shooting their parents, Joe Nocera of The New York Times publishes parents their children, innocent bystanders cut a “gun report” on his blog, each day listing the down by crossfire, suicides, murders, accidents… previous day’s shootings throughout the nation. all in the name of the right to bear arms.

A six-year-old boy is shot to death by his four- Very, very, very few anybodies who shoot year-old neighbor in New Jersey, a three-year-old intruders coming through their windows are in South Carolina finds a gun in his home and mentioned. And none of those intruders use manages to kill himself, a 20-year-old shoots and assault rifles. kills his sister’s boyfriend while showing him OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in a gun, a 44-year-old man is fatally shot by his Ann Arbor, Michigan. son while sitting on his front porch in Texas, a OtherWords.org 21-year-old shoots his five-month-old son with a 4-17-13

Ruth Marcus

Fitting The Washington Stereotype

The way to stay sane in this city is never to expect too much.

So the soothing mantras of the capital involve admonitions about the art of the possible, the perfect and the good, the zen of baby steps.

Incremental, incremental, incremental.

Still, it is hard to remain calm in the face of the Senate’s failure -- its failure as the parents of children murdered in Newtown looked on from the gallery -- to pass the most modest of measures to curb gun violence.

We tend to speak easily here of how Washington is broken and gridlocked.

But those of us whose day jobs sit at the intersection of politics and public policy don’t completely buy it. We retain ragged shreds of faith that Washington, despite its maddening imperfections, remains capable of rising to at least some occasions.

Except on Wednesday, it didn’t, as the Senate fell six votes short of the 60 required to expand background checks for gun buyers. It is an indication of the perennially warped politics of guns that politicians can more safely support same-sex marriage than background checks.

Indeed, what passed Congress in 1994 -- an assault weapons ban and strict limits on magazine sizes -- is now unthinkable.

The background-check measure proposed

by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey is -- I’ll refrain from the past tense, because Wednesday’s loss was not the final chapter -- so sensible, so pared down, that the stronger argument against it is that it failed to go far enough, not that it ran roughshod over the Second Amendment.

To review: under current law, individuals who want to buy guns from licensed dealers must pass background checks. Manchin-Toomey would expand that requirement to in-state gun sales over the Internet (interstate sales are already covered, because the guns can only be sent to licensed dealers for transfer to the buyer), to gun shows and to other commercial transactions.

It would not apply to sales or transfers between family members and friends -notwithstanding the National Rifle Association’s claim that it would „criminalize the private transfer of firearms by honest citizens, requiring lifelong friends, neighbors and some family members to get federal government permission to exercise a fundamental right or face prosecution.”

As Manchin said on the Senate floor, “that is simply a lie. ... You can loan your hunting rifle to your buddy without any new restrictions ... you can give or sell a gun to your brother or your sister, your cousin, your uncle, your co-worker without a background check. You can post a gun for sale on the cork bulletin board at your workplace or on your church bulletin board without a background check.”

Another criticism of the measure -- that it “would put us inexorably on the path to a national gun registry,” as Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz put it -- is even less moored in reality. A national registry is banned under existing law; ManchinToomey would layer on a 15-year felony sentence for anyone who tries to implement one.

That leaves an array of other arguments against the measure that fail the simplest tests of logic.

Felons and others ineligible to buy weapons aren’t being prosecuted under the current system.

Also, the existing system fails to list numerous individuals already prohibited from having guns.

OK, prosecute the ineligible would-be guys and fix the list.

Expanded background checks wouldn’t have prevented the Newtown shootings. OK, but expanded checks might prevent another killer. No single change is going to prevent every episode of gun violence.

Expanded checks would impose a burden on law-abiding citizens without preventing criminals from obtaining guns. Under the existing system, more than 2 million people have been barred from buying guns. Did some of them go on to obtain weapons illegally? Of course.

Marcus continued on page 5

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Walter Brasch

NRA Liars and Congressional Cowards President Obama cast off his “No Drama Obama” garb, and became the fiery leader of hope and change that Americans first elected in 2008.

At a speech in Hartford, Conn., the President, frustrated by Republican obstructionism, demanded of his audience, “If you believe that the families of Newtown and Aurora and Tucson and Virginia Tech and the thousands of Americans who have been gunned down in the last four months deserve a vote, we all have to stand up.” He demand, “If you want the people you send to Washington to have just an iota of the courage that the educators at Sandy Hook showed when danger arrived on their doorstep, then we’re all going to have to stand up.”

He wanted the people to let Congress know it was “time to require a background check for anyone who wants to buy a gun so that people who are dangerous to themselves and others cannot get their hands on a gun.” He wanted the people to let Congress know, “It’s time to crack down on gun trafficking so that folks will think twice before buying a gun as part of a scheme to arm someone who won’t pass a background check.” He asked the people “to tell Congress it’s time to restore the ban on military-style assault weapons, and a 10-round limit for magazines, to make it harder for a gunman to fire 154 bullets into his victims in less than five minutes.” He pleaded that the people “have to tell Congress it’s time to strengthen school safety and help people struggling with mental health problems get the treatment they need before it’s too late.”

But, what he really wanted was a vote. A simple up-or-down vote.

The people, said the President, at

Marcus continued from page 4

But others were deterred -- and in any event the expanded checks would narrow the currently huge loophole that lets felons buy guns without background checks. That some criminals will always break some laws is not an argument against having those laws in the first place.

The depressing aspect of Wednesday’s vote is that the change was so small and the senators so seemingly impervious to logic.

the very least “deserve a vote” not more obstructionism.

Smirking with NRA drool slathering his five-term Senate body, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn’t about to let that happen. He didn’t want a vote, even a watered down version that would have all the ferocity of a baby canary.

McConnell said he would filibuster all proposed legislation.

The Senate Republicans, who believe they’re the “law and order party,” have rolled over and allowed the NRA to pet them on their porkbellied tummies. For more than three decades, the NRA and explosives manufacturers successfully lobbied Congress the to prohibit the use of taggants in explosives. These taggants would identify bombs before detonation and enable agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and explosives (ATF) to trace manufacturer and sale of the explosives after explosion. For six years, the NRA blocked the appointment of any nominee to head the ATF. With NRA paranoia guiding their own actions, the Republicans have also forbidden the ATF from creating a computerized database to better analyze and evaluate applications for firearms, and have left the ATF underfunded and undermanned.

This would be the same ATF that, with fewer resources, now plays a major role in the Boston Marathon murders.

Five weeks after the murders in Newtown, the McConnell for Senate campaign told the voters they were “literally surrounded” by those who want to take their guns away.

In a robocall to his constituents, he Wednesday’s vote will not end the gun debate. After nearly two decades in which Democrats barely dared whisper about gun violence, the notion of new restrictions has become safe again -- to broach, if not to enact. In the aftermath of Newtown, this time was different.

It just wasn’t different enough.

Ruth Marcus’ email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com. (c) 2013, Washington Post Writers Group 4-18-13

parroted the NRA erroneous claim that, “President Obama and his team are doing everything in their power to restrict your constitutional right to keep and bear arms.” This would be the same senator who, in 1991, supported Joe Biden’s bill that led to a 10 year ban on semi-automatic and automatic weapons. This is the same senator who, in 1998, voted to support Barbara Boxer’s bill that required trigger locks for the purchase of every hand gun.

In less than a decade, McConnell turned to the extreme Right and became little more than an NRA lackey, willing to wrap himself in a faulty interpretation of the Second Amendment and block the will of 90 percent of the American people, including a majority of all NRA members and gun owners.

Republic political strategist Karl Rove told journalist FoxNews reporter Chris Wallace, “People want this issue to be discussed, they want it to be decided and we don’t need to block everything in the Senate.” By a 68–31 vote, with 16 Republicans joining 52 Democrats, the Senate agreed to allow discussion on proposed gun control bills.

more than 900 American cities, called out the 46 senators who voted against the bill. “Today’s vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington,” said Bloomberg. “More than 40 U.S. senators would rather turn their backs on the 90 percent of Americans who support comprehensive background checks than buck the increasingly extremist wing of the gun lobby.” Gov. Dan Malloy (D-Conn.) said the minority “who voted against this proposal should be ashamed of themselves.” aid the Senate had “ignored the will of the American people,” adding that those senators who voted against the expanded background checks chose to “obey the leaders of the powerful corporate gun lobby, instead of their constituents.”

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has spent two years in recovery from an attempted assassination, said the failure to pass meaningful legislation was “based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association.”

In rapid succession, a ban on assault weapons, a ban on highcapacity gun magazines and a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for gun purchasers all failed to get the 60 votes needed. Even a bipartisan amendment to impose stiff penalties on gun traffickers was defeated, receiving 58 votes.

New York, Colorado, and Maryland have all recently passed common-sense gun safety reforms without violating anyone’s Second Amendment rights. The people of this democracy demand better controls over who can own guns.

But until the members of Congress develop that one iota of courage that President Obama asked for, the United States will continue to have the highest number of guns per population of 178 countries—and also rank among the world’s top 10 countries in the rate of deaths per population from guns.

Walter Brasch’s latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an indepth investigation of the health environmental, worker safety, and economic impact of fracking.

The first of several Senate bills, Wednesday, resulted in a 54–46 vote to expand background checks for gun purchases to include all internet and gun show sales, strengthen penalties for gun trafficking, and help fund additional school security.

The bill, known as a compromise proposal, was sponsored by Sens.

Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), both of whom carry “A” ratings by the NRA. Five Democrats voted against the bill; four Republicans voted for it. However, because of the 60-vote rule invoked by the NRA-fed obstructionist Republicans, and agreed to by the Democrats, it failed. The NRA, exercising its usual fear-mongering tactics, spread a $500,000 robocall campaign the day of the vote, and claimed the bill would lead to a national gun registry; provisions in the bill specifically excluded that possibility. President Obama would later say that the “gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on behalf of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, representing 4-18-13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Bill Press

Shame on Senate - Send ‘em All Home!

Let me begin this column with an apology.

Once a week, I pick an important issue and offer my reasoned analysis, based on the facts, of what it all means and how we should react. But there are times when the intellect fails and the heart and gut take over. And this is one of them.

In the spring of 1968, I walked into the McCarthy for President office in San Francisco and signed up as a volunteer. That was my first taste of politics and I’ve been involved in politics ever since, both as practitioner and observer.

I’ve managed local, statewide and national campaigns, raised money for candidates, served as Democratic state chair of California and run for statewide office. I’ve made my living as a political commentator on radio and television in Los Angeles, San Francisco and nationwide.

Throughout those years, I’ve experienced a lot of joy, but also a lot of disappointment. Candidates I supported lost their elections. Politicians I helped elect soon forgot who their friends were. Causes I passionately believed in failed in the legislature or on the ballot. Yet, through it all, I never lost my faith in the political system. I always knew, and preached, that things would eventually work out for the best. I remained a believer.

Until now. Until this week’s shameful vote in the United States Senate on gun safety. I’m no longer a believer. I’ve lost my faith in our political system. I’ve given up on politics. And I’ve given up on Congress. Because if they can’t get this right, they can’t get anything right.

There is simply no excuse -- none! -- for voting against extending criminal background checks to cover all gun purchases. Indeed, the arguments made by opponents of the ManchinToomey compromise bill don’t even pass the laugh test. How, for example, can anybody say he supports background checks at gun dealers, just not at gun shows? Really? In other words, it’s not OK for criminals to buy guns at licensed dealers, but it is OK for them to buy guns at gun shows or over the Internet. Give me a break.

In the biggest lie of all, other senators insist that expanded background checks will lead to some Big Brother gun registry that will in turn lead to federal agents seizing everyone’s guns. Baloney.

Again, no such gun registry has been created to date, even though criminal background checks have been required of gun dealers since 1994.

Not only that, both existing law and the ManchinToomey bill specifically prohibit storage and retrieval of personal data gathered in background checks. Manchin and Toomey make it a federal crime.

In the end, there are only three reasons why senators voted against common sense gun safety measures. One, they were born without a backbone. Two, they’re owned lock, stock and barrel by the NRA. Three, they don’t care.

They don’t care about the American people.

They don’t care about the victims of Columbine, Aurora or Virginia Tech. They don’t care about

Gabby Giffords. They don’t care about 20 firstgraders and six brave teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School. They don’t care about doing the right thing. They only care about saving their own political skin.

universal background checks in 1999, when the NRA supported them, voted against background checks this week, now that the NRA opposes them.

As Wednesday’s vote was announced, the cry of “Shame on you!” resounded from the Senate In the end, the vote on the compromise gallery. It was the voice of Tucson hero Patricia proposal to expand background checks was 54- Maisch, who grabbed a loaded magazine clip out 46, six short of the 60 votes necessary to break of Jared Loughner’s hands as he tried to reload. the filibuster. Democrats share some of the blame. In that dramatic moment, she showed more sense Four Democrats -- Max Baucus of Montana, and courage than the entire Senate. We might as Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North well send them all home.

Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas -- voted no. Bill Press is host of a nationally-syndicated But most of the blame lies with the Republican radio show, the host of “Full Court Press” on Party. Even though four of them -- John McCain Current TV and the author of a new book, “The of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Pat Toomey Obama Hate Machine,” which is available in of Pennsylvania and Mark Kirk of Illinois - bookstores now. You can hear “The Bill Press - broke ranks and voted yes, Republicans as a Show” at his website: billpressshow.com. His block voted against background checks. In fact, email address is: bill@billpress.com.

Buzzfeed reports, six Republicans -- Orrin Hatch, (c) 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc. Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, 4-18-13 Mike Crapo and Chuck Grassley -- who voted for

Joe Conason

Soft on Crime: Protecting the ‘Second Amendment Rights’ of Thugs and Terrorists

What can Americans learn from the bitter debate over the gun reform bill?

Perhaps the most obvious lesson is that the leadership of the National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners of America and their tame Republican politicians have all earned an epithet of derision they used to hurl regularly at liberals.

Yes, the gun lobby and its legislative servants are “soft on crime” -- although they routinely pretend to be tough on criminals.

During the Clinton presidency, NRA presidentfor-life Wayne LaPierre raised vast amounts of money with direct-mail campaigns against both Bill and Hillary Clinton for supposedly coddling criminals. Dubbed “Crimestrike,” the NRA crusade pushed prison construction, mandatory minimum sentencing and sundry other panaceas designed to position the NRA as the bane of muggers, rapists and murderers.

Those themes echoed traditional Republican propaganda messages dating back to the Nixon era, when the presidential crook himself often derided judicial concerns about civil liberties and promised to restore “law and order.” (When Nixon henchmen like the late Chuck Colson went to prison themselves, they often emerged as prison reformers and civil libertarians, of course.)

But in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, with the NRA angrily opposing any measure designed to hinder criminals from acquiring firearms, the public is learning who is really soft on crime.

Police officials across the country want universal background checks, magazine limits,

and stronger enforcement against illegal weapons sales, but the NRA and its Republican allies insist that such changes will penalize legitimate gun owners. Or they complain that criminals mainly obtain weapons by stealing them, so restrictions on sales won’t make any difference.

Even a cursory examination of the facts demonstrates those claims are false. Gun trafficking experts at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have long known that less than 15 percent of all crime guns are stolen from their original owners. Much more common sources of guns used by criminals are so-called “straw purchases,” where a person with a clean record buys a gun on behalf of a criminal, and corrupt purchases, where a licensed gun dealer knowingly sells to a criminal. Bipartisan gun legislation now before the Senate would crack down on these sales by increasing penalties for straw purchasers who willfully help criminals buy guns. The NRA has offered tepid support for that provision -- but it is virtually meaningless without universal background checks, which the gun lobby opposes.

As Will Saletan pointed out in Slate last January, the NRA has consistently (and successfully) sought to kill the most basic efforts to keep guns away from convicted criminals and other dangerous characters -- including abusive spouses under court protection orders, drug dealers and even individuals listed on the Justice Department’s terrorist watch list.

In the wake of the Boston bombing, as the nation

Conason continued on page 7

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Joe Nocera

The Spineless Gun Vote On April 20, 1999, Katie Lyles, a high school sophomore, was taking a math test when she heard a popping sound. “I assumed it was a prank,” she says.

It wasn’t. The fire alarm soon went off, and a teacher shouted, “This is not a drill. Go, go, go!”

Katie and several classmates ran through the neighborhood, seeking shelter. All around them, they could hear the screams of sirens and the whir of helicopter blades.

Finally, a woman answered their frantic knocking. “Are you all from the high school?” she asked. When they said yes, the woman invited them in. That is where they learned that two of their fellow students at Columbine High School had gone on a murderous spree, killing 13 and wounding 21, before turning their guns on themselves.

On Wednesday, 14 years later, I met Katie Lyles in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Now 30 and married, Katie is a grade-school art teacher in Littleton, Colo., the same town where she became, in the sad vernacular of our age, “a Columbine survivor.” She was in Washington as part of a lobbying effort by the National Education Association, the big teachers’ union, to back the handful of simple, common-sense gun laws, starting with universal background checks, that the Senate would be voting on later that day.

Until the shootings in Newtown, Conn., Katie had never spoken publicly about her experience. She is still affected by what happened that day. But after Newtown, Katie realized that the school where she now teaches was as vulnerable to gun violence as Columbine had been in 1999. And she couldn’t stay silent. “I realize that my life has led me to this moment,” she says.

We

talked

for

maybe 20

Conason continued from page 6

ponders how to bolster its security, the gun lobby’s tender concern for the Second Amendment “rights” of terrorists and thugs ought to permanently discredit them and their political servants. Instead they have achieved another bloody victory in Washington.

Copyright 2013 Creators.com 4-19-13

minutes before Katie and the NEA lobbyists went off to their next appointment. And, of course, a few hours later, the Senate voted down every single gun proposal that was on the table. Among those who cast votes against universal background checks, which should have been a no-brainer, were four Democrats.

They are: Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mark Begich of Alaska and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. (The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, changed his vote from “yea” to “nay,” but that was said to be for tactical reasons, so he could bring the legislation up again at a later date.)

I spent much of Thursday calling the offices of the four Democrats with one question: Why? Why had they voted against universal background checks? Begich’s office put out a statement claiming that universal background checks “do not reflect Alaska values.”

How so? His office wouldn’t say.

Although Heitkamp issued a news release boasting of protecting “the Second Amendment rights of North Dakotans,” calls to her office

produced only busy signals. The On Thursday afternoon, I spoke phone in Baucus’ office rang and again to Katie Lyles. She was rang and rang. Nobody answered. deeply disappointed, of course, but she wasn’t ready to give up. A few Of course, we all know the months earlier, she had testified reason: The four Democrats - before the Colorado Legislature as it along with many Republicans - debated stricter gun laws, including quake in fear of the National Rifle mandatory background checks and Association. In 1994, Baucus voted a limit to the size of magazines. The in favor of the assault rifle ban - and laws passed a month ago. then nearly lost his re-election bid. “It took a long time,” she said.

He never again stood up to the NRA. “Fourteen years. You can’t give up Yes, his phones were undoubtedly just because you lose one battle.” jammed this week. Still, it seemed She pointed out something else. to me that his unanswered phone Colorado has seen some of the was a potent symbol. I could almost nation’s worst gun tragedies - not picture him cowering in his office, just Columbine, but last year’s waiting for us to stop asking why shooting in Aurora. “We’re a he sold the country down the river. Western state,” she said. Colorado I loathe single-issue politics, but has plenty of gun owners. Yet it maybe this is what it has come to. was still willing to pass tough new Maybe it is going to take senators gun laws. Katie believes that all like Max Baucus losing their jobs that pain Colorado has experienced because they wouldn’t stand up is the reason. to the NRA. Maybe it is going to “I fear that people are going to require the majority of Americans have to experience that pain for who support sensible gun laws to themselves before we can pass turn themselves into an avenging these bills,” she said. political force. I wish it weren’t so, “But I hope not.” but nothing else seems to move them c.2013 New York Times News Service - not even the sight of 20 slaughtered 4-19-13 children in Connecticut.

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Maureen Dowd

No Bully In The Pulpit The graying man flashing fury in the Rose Garden on behalf of the Newtown families, the grieving man wiping away tears after speaking at the Boston memorial service, is not the same man who glided into office four years ago.

President Barack Obama has watched the blood-dimmed tide drowning the ceremony of innocence, as Yeats wrote, and he has learned how to emotionally connect with Americans in searing moments, as he did from the White House late Friday night after the second bombing suspect was apprehended in Boston.

Unfortunately, he still has not learned how to govern.

How is it that the president won the argument on gun safety with the public and lost the vote in the Senate? It’s because he doesn’t know how to work the system. And it’s clear now that he doesn’t want to learn, or to even hire some clever people who can tell him how to do it or do it for him.

It’s unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants.

No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him.

Even House Republicans who had no intention of voting for the gun bill marveled privately that the president could not muster 60 votes in a Senate that his party controls.

Obama thinks he can use emotion to bring pressure on Congress. But that’s not how adults with power respond to things. He chooses not to get down in the weeds and pretend he values the stroking and other little things that matter to lawmakers.

After the Newtown massacre, he and his aides hashed it out and decided he would look cold and unsympathetic if he didn’t push for some new regulations. To thunderous applause at the State of the Union, the president said, “The families of Newtown deserve a vote.” Then, as usual, he took his foot off the gas, lost momentum and confided his pessimism to journalists.

The White House had a defeatist mantra: This is tough. We need to do it. But we’re probably going to lose.

When you go into a fight saying you’re probably going to lose, you’re probably going to lose.

The president once more delegated to the vice president. Couldn’t he have come to the Hill himself to lobby with the families and Joe Biden?

The White House should have created a war room full of charts with the names of pols they had to capture, like they had in “The American President.” Soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling.

Instead of the pit-bull legislative aides in Aaron Sorkin’s movie, Obama has Miguel Rodriguez, an arm-twister so genteel that The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker wrote recently that no one in Congress even knows who he is.

The president was oblivious to red-state Democrats facing tough elections. Bring the Alaskan Democrat Mark Begich to the White House residence, hand him a drink, and say, “How can we make this a bill you can vote for and defend?”

people on the Hill that the president actually considers a friend. Obama wrote a paean to Coburn in the new Time 100 issue, which came out just as Coburn sabotaged his own initial effort to help the bill.

Obama should have pressed his buddy: “Hey, Tom, just this once, why don’t you do more than just talk about making an agreement with the Democrats? You’re not running again. Do something big.”

Couldn’t the president have given his Rose Garden speech about the “shameful” actions in Washington before the vote rather than after?

There were ways to get to 60 votes. The White House just had to scratch it out with a real strategy and a never-let-go attitude.

Obama hates selling. He thinks people should just accept the right thing to do. But as Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., noted, senators have their own tough selling job to do back home. “In the end you can really believe in something,” he told The Times’ Jennifer Steinhauer, “but you have to go sell it.”

The president said the Newtown families deserved a vote. But he was setting his sights too low. They deserved a law.

Sometimes you must leave the high road and fetch your brass knuckles. Obama should have called Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota over to the Oval Office and put on the squeeze: “Heidi, you’re brand new and you’re going to have a long career. You work with us, we’ll work with you.

Public opinion is moving fast on this issue. The reason you get a six-year term is so you can have the guts to make tough votes. This is a totally defensible bill back home. It’s about background checks, nothing to do with access to guns. Heidi, you’re a mother. Think of those little kids dying in schoolrooms.”

Obama had to persuade some Republican senators in states that he won in 2012. He should have gone out to Ohio, New Hampshire and Nevada and had big rallies to get the public riled up to put pressure on Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte and Dean Heller, giving notice that they would pay a price if they spurned him on this. c.2013 New York Times News Service Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is one of the few 4-20-13

Clarence Page

Gun Vote Reveals New GOP Divide

It pains me to congratulate the National Rifle Association, but their help in the Senate’s defeat of background checks for gun purchases was an impressive victory -- against common sense.

Although there is widespread disagreement over what constitutes “common sense,” it’s not unreasonable to assume that an issue like universal background checks -- for which public support runs as high as 90 percent in some polls -- fits the definition.

What’s surprising is how quickly the high hopes for background checks collapsed, despite their popularity. Are the senators listening, many wonder? Does American democracy work anymore?

After all, it is widely reasoned, if background checks are such a good idea for immigrants, why not for gun buyers? What better way to put a pinch in the flow of guns to people whose criminal backgrounds or mental health records indicate they should not have firearms?

Adding to the amendment’s common-sense credentials were its two exemplary Senate sponsors, conservative Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and even more conservative Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Both labored through weeks of negotiations to make the measure as palatable as possible to all sides.

Besides, even the NRA supported background

checks back in the 1990s, although they worked hard to dilute the reforms at every turn.

But as Sandy Hook and other high-profile massacres in recent years fired up the public in favor of expanded background checks, the NRA turned against them.

Lawmakers pay attention to that. The NRA doesn’t just make noise or, backed by the firearms industry, donate barrels full of campaign cash.

They also mobilize voters.

In general, those who oppose gun limits are much more likely to get off the couch and vote for -- or against! -- a candidate on that single issue than those who favor such limits.

Unable to come up with good reasons why background checks used to be a good idea but aren’t now, the opposition makes stuff up.

There’s the argument, for example, that they don’t do any good because criminals will still find other ways to buy guns. Sure. But making guns harder for dangerous people to purchase is the whole point.

Then there’s the slippery slope argument: background checks will lead -- “inexorably,” says Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas -- to federal gun registration, which paranoid opponents see as no more than a pistol shot away from gun confiscation.

Page continued on page 9

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Ruth Gadebusch

Thoughts For The GOP As the Republicans dissect, analyze (and whatever...) the results of the last election I am going to pass on a few thoughts. I do this with great hesitation because I truly was, and am, more than satisfied with the results of the last presidential election. Tis sad, however, to see grown men (and the occasional women allowed into the “in crowd”) cry so I feel compelled in the sense of compassion and bipartisanship to help them.

First and foremost, it was not the method of delivery that did them in. Nor was it that the Democrats and President Obama’s campaign committees were better organized, although, arguably, they were. It was the candidate and the message.

The problem with the candidate is too obvious so I will leave that but, even after all this time, they don’t seem to understand that they are out of sync with the citizen majority.

Actually I must acknowledge it is not everybody with whom they are at cross purposes, because there are all those in gerrymandered districts that give us the rather warped congress.

Here I must admit that the Republicans have played that one well. With their control of the House of Representatives they are in position to wield great power despite their overall minority status in the nation as a whole. Fortunately for us progressives the way they are using that power does not seem to move them toward their end goal of controlling the nation. I repeat: for the country as a whole it is the message, not the candidate.

In the end, arguments like that, questionable as they may be, were enough to prevent the ManchinToomey amendment from winning more than 54 votes. Yes, that’s a majority of the 100-member senate, but not enough to reach the 60-vote threshold set by Senate rules.

Still, inside Republican congressional leadership, celebrations are muted. This fight exposed a dangerous divide in the Grand Old Party’s ranks that has opened up since the party’s presidential election defeat.

voters through the same appeals to religious conservatism and economic liberty that have built the party’s base.

The surprising setback for gun safety puts a new cloud of uncertainty on the post-election momentum for immigration reform.

We have heard a lot from those who want to bring undocumented workers out of the shadows. We have yet to hear much from nonHispanic white workers in the GOP base whose idea of immigration reform is increased border security -- and not much else.

No wonder Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and other members of the “Gang of Eight” senators working on an immigration reform bill appear to be taking their sweet time. It has often been said that Democrats have to “fall in love” with their candidates while Republicans “fall in line.”

In Congress, at least, they don’t seem to be falling in line as quickly as they used to.

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@ tribune.com.

Page continued from page 8

Since the GOP appears to have such difficulty with understanding that women are due equal treatment, that we are capable of managing our own lives I quote Harriett Butler Laidlow, an early suffragist, “In so far as women are like men they ought to have the same rights. In so far as they are different they ought to represent themselves.” It really is that simple.

The statement even refers to more than our reproductive lives. Read: SEX, that being what so many can’t seem to get past. While it does play a major part there really is more

On one side are the pragmatic congressional leaders, who favor a radical restructuring of “big government” but also want to widen the party’s appeal. That means talking not only about cutting taxes and spending but also how to boost social mobility and fix the country’s broken immigration system.

On the other side are the newer tea party generation in both houses of Congress who blame the party’s establishment and fundraising elites for the party’s problems.

Instead of immigration reform, (c) 2013 Clarence Page they would rather reach Hispanic 4-21-13

to the female being. Let us also note that men too are affected even though all too often they seem to fail to recognize that part of it when they are dreaming up ways to keep women in line.

the Rs do have a few tokens beyond the Anglo Saxon world.

It would also be wise to accept that not all down and outers are in a sad position because they are lazy.

Few in life, no matter the economic status of their birth, escape at least some difficulties when a helping hand would be greatly appreciated.

The results may differ but certainly, greed does not play any bigger role at the poor end than at the wealthy end.

Another truth is that most want to be gainfully employed, more than willing to pull their share of the load. It is painfully obvious that the GOP’s push to reward the already rich, ostensibly allowing them to create jobs, is not working.

Doubtless there are other matters that the party should think about as they continue their finger pointing and blame placing but I think I have given them enough hints for improvement for one time. Except, I will remind them that we are one nation and that we all benefit by working together.

Then there are those “illegals” who would prefer being called by more correct and respectable names.

Nor are they living among us in order to overthrow the government. They came to better themselves and to fulfill our need for labor. All they are asking for is some kind of reasonable solution to the predicament they now find themselves in. Never mind how the situation came to be. It is the here and now with which we must deal.

Then there is that other great of group of singled out citizens: African Americans. Here too, respect is the core word. As citizens they expect to be able to vote without scurrilous roadblocks of one sort and another being used to compromise their vote.

The truth be known, the belief is that the goal was more than roadblocks.

It most assuredly appeared to be to eliminate their right to vote entirely. 4-18-13 Voing is to be encouraged, not made more difficult.

The GOP powers that be should also note that “people of color” are Online Subscription rapidly becoming the majority in Beat The Postal Delay, the nation. The Rs would do well Subscribe Online Today! to show a bit more consideration, if not for altruism and fairness then to make a friend for self protection. www.liberalopinion.com This latter would apply to the Or call Toll Free Democrats too. Although to be fair 1-800-338-9335 we must note that they, the Ds, are already a more mixed group and that

10

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Rand Paul Gets Schooled At Howard Rand Paul did just fine at Howard University, thank you very much. Or at least, that’s how he remembers it.

Paul, GOP senator from Kentucky, told the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday that his recent visit to Howard didn’t go so bad at all. He said any perception to the contrary was created by -- all together now -- the “left-wing media.”

Knowing what we do about the political right’s capacity for self-deception, we may trust that he’s telling it like it is -- or at least, telling it like he believes it to be.

But reality-based Americans know it wasn’t left-wing media that insulted students at the historically black school by acting as if a visit to their campus was like a visit with headhunters.

“Some have said that I’m either brave or crazy to be here,” Paul said, somehow resisting the urge to add, “Me come-um in peace.”

And it wasn’t left-wing media that lied to those students. “I’ve never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act,” claimed Paul who, in fact, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in 2010 that the act overreached in telling private businesses they could not discriminate against black people.

It wasn’t left-wing media that told those students, “I want a government that leaves you alone,” somehow neglecting the fact that, had government left their grandparents alone, those kids would still be legally required to feed their money into the colored-only slot of the CocaCola machine.

Finally, it wasn’t left-wing media that condescended to those students, at one point telling them, “If I were to have said, ‘Who do you think the founders of the NAACP are?’ would everyone in here know they were all Republicans?”

“Of course they would,” one woman grumbled.

Indeed. Any first-year history student would know that. But they’d also know the Republicans are not the same party now that they were prior to 1968, when they essentially traded ideologies with the Democrats and inherited from them all those disaffected white Southern voters who were mortally offended by the aforementioned Civil Rights Act and its sequel, the Voting Rights Act. And would someone please tell Paul and any other Republican planning “outreach” to AfricanAmericans that if you must go back 104 years (the NAACP was founded in 1909) for examples of solidarity with black folks, it kind of illustrates the problem?

For decades, the Democratic Party has commanded the African-American vote. Yet, the Obama phenomenon aside, this dominance seems not to reflect love for the party so much as the fact that the Democrats are all that is left once the GOP has effectively removed itself from contention.

But let the record show that, as Paul had to reach back to 1909 to show solidarity with black

folks, the Democrats themselves are still living on the 50-year-old fumes of Lyndon Johnson’s legacy. So there is no reason the GOP cannot command a portion of the black vote.

To do that, it must repudiate its own recent legacy of bigotry. Stop acting as if going to Howard University is like traveling into the rainforest. Stop trying to repeal the Voting Rights Act. Stop trying to repeal the 20th century. Stop expecting a tickertape parade for things that happened before movies had sound.

And begin to provide much-needed leadership on issues urgent to African-American voters in the here and now. For instance, mass incarceration, the failed drug war, the achievement gap and job discrimination.

In a word: compete.

That, after all, is how the Democrats broke the Republican stranglehold on the African-American vote in the first place. It would be nice -- it would create a healthier nation -- if Republicans returned the favor.

Unfortunately, Paul’s performance at Howard suggests that we ought not hold our breath while we wait.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132.

Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@ miamiherald.com. (c) 2013 The Miami Herald 4-21-13

Margaret Carlson

Could Hillary Clinton Ever Be Our Thatcher?

Who thought that in stuffy old England in the 1980s a woman could act like a man and thrive, but here in the New World, Hillary Clinton still has to watch her p’s and q’s in 2013?

Margaret Thatcher didn’t change a hair, hedge a bet or trim a sail. She never had to be told to lean in because she never leaned back. She was certain, opinionated and strident to the point of, yes, shrillness. Listen to her on gay rights: It’s fingernails on a chalkboard.

In the United States, three decades after Thatcher, a woman still has to back into her positions. Watch Hillary come out for same- sex marriage in a well-rehearsed video - after it was entirely safe. (Every Democratic senator but three politically vulnerable residents of red states has done so.) After leaving her post as secretary of state, she laid low, got some rest and cleaned out her closets. When she re-emerged, she did so at soft-focus women’s events and at her husband’s philanthropy, the Clinton Global Initiative.

If there is one thing Clinton has learned through 40 years or so of feminine ambition, it is to be less Thatcher and more Ginger Rogers: Do everything a man does but backward and in high heels, as Ann Richards memorably phrased it. (What’s more, do it with a smile so ingratiating that it’s practically an apology.)

When Clinton first ran for the Senate in New York, she began her campaign with a listening tour. Yes, one of the most articulate and intelligent women in politics was mute for months as she traveled the state entreating voters to accept her.

Her coyness isn’t in her nature, but it appears to be in ours. What Britain accepted in 1979 - a powerful female leader - we still talk about like a total eclipse of the sun; we may see one in our lifetime, but maybe not.

After winning election, Clinton came to the Senate and promptly disappeared, placating not

just then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who had expressed hopes he might never see her, but also her Democratic brethren, who feared an eclipse of their own.

While Thatcher thrust herself forward as a conviction conservative, Hillary learned the art of leaning back. Early on, she had changed her name to Clinton to help her husband in Arkansas. She apologized for practicing law. For her husband’s first presidential run in 1992, she changed her persona as often as her hair, desperately trying to modulate the public’s visceral reactions to her.

Two for the price of one? Working instead of staying home to bake cookies? Not so fast, little lady.

Once in the White House, she worked tirelessly to fix health care. What was she thinking? The failure of Democrats to pass a bill was laid entirely at her feet. In fact, many things that went wrong in the Clinton White House (the travel office fiasco, personnel clashes) were often traced to her butting into the man’s world of the West Wing.

What worked best was standing by her man.

That, and the sympathy borne of domestic betrayal and humiliation, finally raised Clinton’s favorability ratings enough to run for the Senate.

Everyone thinks she’s running for president in 2016. But Clinton knows from sad experience that the minute she steps into the ring, she will no longer be the good girl who knows her place.

Would she even be deemed such a formidable candidate if she hadn’t swallowed her pride and once again played helpmate after 2008 - this time at Barack Obama’s State Department?

One way to look at 2008 is to say that Clinton was hit by a tsunami called Obama. Another is to conclude that voters were readier to embrace

Carlson continued on page 11

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

11

Charles Lane

Give Me Your Huddled Fat Cats Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe is under fire because an electric-vehicle firm the Democrat formerly headed raised capital through a program that awards green cards to foreign investors in return for creating jobs in the United States - but it’s not clear how many jobs McAuliffe’s firm generated.

McAuliffe quietly resigned from GreenTech Automotive before e-mails surfaced and sparked questions about the company. I don’t know whether McAuliffe did anything especially wrong - and, in a way, I don’t care. The EB-5 visafor-dollars program itself is the real scandal.

When Congress approved it in 1990, lawmakers saw a win-win: Investors and their families get to emigrate; the United States gets their money, talent and ambition.

Federal law sets aside 10,000 permanent-residency slots for EB5 each year, along with 130,000 other employment-based immigrant visas and several hundred thousand additional green cards allocated for refugees, family reunification and the like. U.S. officials tout the $6.8 billion invested and 50,000 jobs created since the program’s start.

Sounds impressive - until you realize that foreign investment in the United States totals $2.5 trillion and that the program’s fuzzy job-creation count includes jobs “indirectly” attributable to the investment.

EB-5 would be dubious policy even if it could claim five times that impact. Simply put, it is corporate welfare - yet another attempt to subsidize the flow of capital into politically favored channels.

The standard objection to EB-5 is moral: The United States should not be in the business of selling the right to live in this country.

Carlson continued from page 10

an enigmatic, untested, first-term senator than the nation’s leading female politician. She lost in 2008 because in the U.S., unlike Britain, we still don’t know what to do with an uppity woman.

Margaret Carlson is a Bloomberg View columnist. (c) 2013, Bloomberg News 4-17-13

Though a fair point, it is also a slight misconception. In effect, the government gives away the visas - to profit-making businesses that have jumped through the program’s requisite bureaucratic hoops. Then the companies “sell” them, by soliciting investment based on the promise of permanent residency.

Since Uncle Sam sweetens the deal with a green card, the firms can offer potential overseas investors a lower rate of return than they would otherwise demand. In other words, the government is leveraging its monopoly on green card-issuance into a source of artificially cheap capital for a few lucky companies.

I wonder how many jobs we could create if the government sold 10,000 visas to the highest bidder - then spent the cash on, say, infrastructure or aid to the poor, with their respective Keynesian multipliers.

What we do know is that EB5 has created a lot of jobs - for consultants, brokers and other feeseeking middlemen. Again, it’s an open question whether that’s the most productive use of scarce resources, domestic and foreign.

EB-5 also spawned a good deal of outright fraud, though federal officials have cracked down on

this in the wake of a critical 2005 Government Accountability Office report.

Among the businesses eligible for the program are “financially troubled” firms, which, by definition, are already failing in the free market.

Is it “job creation” when the U.S. government enables foreigners to bail them out?

Originally, EB-5 required a $1 million investment, but a decade ago lawmakers discounted that arbitrary price to $500,000 for rural or “Targeted Employment Areas (TEA),” where the unemployment rate is 1 1/2 times the national average.

This additional stroke of central planning explains why the firm McAuliffe headed plans a factory in Tunica, Miss. More surprisingly, perhaps, most of the District of Columbia is also a “targeted employment area.” Hence developers of a Marriott hotel in the go-go area near the Washington Convention Center are taking advantage of EB5. Hotel moguls nationwide are doing the same.

Indeed, real estate is the top recipient of EB-5 investment flows, according to a 2010 study for the Department of Homeland Security.

Do the nation’s developers really

need this helping hand?

Distributing EB-5 visas in this manner doesn’t cost the government anything upfront, beyond the expense of printing the visas and paying the bureaucracy to administer the program.

But that doesn’t make it a free lunch. Capital steered to EB-5favored business is capital not available to others who might have used it more efficiently. Demand for green cards far exceeds the limited supply. Every green card awarded to an immigrant who has already made his fortune abroad is a green card that can’t go to an immigrant who wants to make his fortune in the United States.

The typical EB-5 recipient is a middle-aged man with a family from South Korea, China or Taiwan, the DHS-funded study found. The line for U.S. visas is especially long in those countries.

You can understand why wellheeled individuals would want to buy their way to the front of the queue. What’s harder to understand is why the U.S. government would want to favor them.

Charles Lane is a member of The Washington Post’s editorial board. (c) 2013, The Washington Post

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Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Maureen Dowd

The CIA’s Angry Birds Over the winter, I heard military commanders and White House officials murmur in hushed tones about how they would have to figure out a legal and moral framework for the flying killer robots executing targets around the globe.

They were starting to realize that, while the American public approves of remotely killing terrorists, it is a drain on the democratic soul to zap people with no due process and little regard for the loss of innocents.

But they never got around to it, leaving Rand Paul to take the moral high ground.

After two bloody, money-sucking, neverending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the idea of a weapon for war that precluded having anyone actually go to war was too captivating.

Our sophisticated, sleek, smart, detached president was ensorcelled by our sophisticated, sleek, smart, detached war machine.

In an interview with Jon Stewart last year, President Barack Obama allowed that he was in the grip of a powerful infatuation.

“One of the things that we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place,” he said, “and we need congressional help to do that to make sure that not only am I reined in, but any president is reined in.”

America’s secret drone program, continually lowering the bar for lethal action, turns the president, the CIA director and counterterrorism advisers into a star chamber running a war beyond war zones that employs a scalpel rather than a hammer, as the new Langley chief, John Brennan, puts it.

But as The Times’ Mark Mazzetti notes in his new book, “The Way of the Knife,” “the analogy suggests that this new kind of war is without costs or blunders - a surgery without complications. This isn’t the case.”

Mazzetti raises the issue of whether the CIA - which once sold golf shirts with Predator logos in its gift shop - became “so enamored of its killer drones that it wasn’t pushing its analysts to ask a basic question: To what extent might the drone strikes be creating more terrorists than they are actually killing?”

Mazzetti writes that Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of M16, the British Secret Intelligence Service, watched one of the first drone strikes via satellite at Langley a few weeks after 9/11. As he saw a Mitsubishi truck in Afghanistan being blown up, Dearlove smiled wryly.

“It almost isn’t sporting, is it?” the Brit asked.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Donald Rumsfeld and his hawkish inner circle were disgusted that the CIA dismissed their spurious claims of a connection between Saddam and al-Qaida, so they set up their own CIA at the Pentagon.

Soldiers became spies.

Meanwhile, the CIA was setting up its own Pentagon at Langley, running the ever-expanding paramilitary drone operation. Spies became

soldiers.

Mazzetti writes that after 9/11, the CIA director morphed into “a military commander running a clandestine, global war with a skeleton staff and very little oversight.”

Why did the CIA, as Gen. James Cartwright asked when he was the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, need to build “a second Air Force?”

Leon Panetta made the CIA far more militarized and then went to the Pentagon. When an actual military commander, David Petraeus, became head spook in 2011, he embraced the drone program, pushed to expand the fleet and conducted the first robo-targeted killing of an American citizen.

“A spy agency that on September 11, 2001, had been decried as bumbling and risk-averse had, under the watchful eye of four successive CIA directors, gone on a killing spree,” Mazzetti writes.

to gather on-the-ground intelligence.”

Mazzetti observes that the CIA, playing catchup through so much of the Arab Spring, has turned a perilous corner, where a new generation at Langley much prefers “the adrenaline rush of being at the front lines” hunting and killing to the more patient, tedious, “gentle” work of intelligence gathering and espionage. Relying on foreign spies for counterterrorism information can blind you to what is really happening on the ground.

Ross Newland, a career clandestine officer, told Mazzetti that the allure of killing people by remote control is “catnip” and that the agency should have given up Predators and Reapers long ago. The death robots have turned the CIA into the villain in places like Pakistan, Newland said, where the agency’s mission is supposed to be nurturing relationships to gather intelligence.

Obama, who continued nearly every covert program handed down by W., clearly feels tough when he talks about targeted killings and The CIA now has a drone base in Saudi considers drones an attractive option.

Arabia, and both the Pentagon and the spy agency As Mazzetti says, “fundamental questions are running parallel drone wars in Yemen, each about who can be killed, where they can be killed fighting for resources. and when they can be killed” still have not been And the Pentagon continues its foray into human answered or publicly discussed. spying. As W. George Jameson, a lawyer who It almost isn’t sporting, is it? spent 33 years at the CIA, lamented: “Everything c.2013 New York Times News Service is backwards. You’ve got an intelligence agency 4-16-13 fighting a war and a military organization trying

Froma Harrop

Housing Hot, Again?

Another housing boom? N-o-o-o!

Housing starts are now inching up. Mortgages are easier to obtain. Even the “piggyback loan” has returned. That lets you take two mortgages at the same time and get around having to buy mortgage insurance when borrowing more than 80 percent of a home’s value.

“Housing Is Back!” hollers the cover of Money magazine.

And time to lock up friends and relatives with short memories. While we’re at it, let’s lock up the government and its compulsion to push homeownership.

Note that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still subsidize the financial industry with taxpayerbacked guarantees on mortgages -- in the name of turning more Americans into homebuyers, of course. The housing meltdown exposed their systemic flaws, leaving you-know-who to bail them out.

Last year, the liberal-leaning Urban Institute came out with a truly awful plan to help struggling young people buy a home. It would expand the federal government’s Housing Choice voucher program to include homebuyers.

OMG.

Housing Choice now gives low-income people vouchers to help them pay rent. It’s a good program. But handing out vouchers to buy homes?

The Urban Institute explains: The housing bust caused many first-time buyers to lose their homes.

It also created a potentially good market for new homebuyers.

“In many ways,” its report says, “this represents the worst of all worlds for these families: a ‘buy high, sell low, but don’t buy low’ prescription ...”

But if you can now buy low, and still can’t afford a home, perhaps you should be renting.

The authors, not without reason, point to an unfairness: Big housing subsidies, such as the mortgage interest deduction, favor the upper incomes. They are correct. Over half this benefit goes to households making at least $100,000.

So let’s phase out the mortgage-interest deduction. One foolish government subsidy should not beget another.

Also off-base is the authors’ claim that by not owning homes, young people are hurting their ability to accumulate wealth. True, paying off a mortgage is a form of forced savings. Also true,

Harrop continued on page 13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

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Harold Meyerson

Bad Service, Crummy Economy Go Hand-in-Hand For decades, U.S. corporations have been told to slim down. Not to abandon corporate jets or cut CEO pay, mind you, but to produce more with fewer employees. The conventional wisdom couldn’t have been clearer: The minimum number of required workers yields the maximum level of profits, all else being equal and the creek don’t rise.

During these decades, however, the United States was also shifting to a service economy - a new reality that didn’t always comport with the doctrine of “lean is good.”

The minimum number of required workers - a subjective standard at best - seldom yields the maximum level of customer satisfaction (or anything close to it).

So it was at J.C. Penney, an iconic retailer of America’s past that stumbled as it sought to adapt to the management shibboleths of America’s present. When Apple executive Ron Johnson took over in 2011, he decided there was nothing wrong with Penney that couldn’t be fixed by abandoning many of the chain’s product lines and laying off nearly a quarter of its employees.

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Penney employed at least

Harrop continued from page 12

150,000 people for almost a decade, but within a year of Johnson’s arrival it had cut its labor force to 116,000.

The retailer administered layoffs in wholesale fashion: At the company’s headquarters, employees were summoned to meetings in groups, some of more than 100 workers, where they were all summarily dismissed.

The Johnson plan didn’t work out so well. Revenue at Penney, the Journal documents, was roughly $17.5 billion annually for the three years before Johnson’s arrival.

One year into his tenure, however, revenue had plunged to $13 billion; consumer dissatisfaction, not to mention worker dissatisfaction, was high. Earlier this month, Johnson got the ax himself.

Johnson’s is not the only cautionary tale of lean staffing run amok. Wal-Mart has been shrinking its U.S. workforce, according to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek report and company filings, even as it expands. During the past five years, Wal-Mart added 455 stores in the United States - a 13 percent increase - while reducing its U.S. workforce by 1.4 percent, or about 20,000

specialist Robert Shiller has done this monthly task could redirect his own calculations. In this country, family income that might otherwise houses historically appreciate at be frittered on fun. about 1 percent over inflation. A simple investment in the Standard Housing isn’t the only place & Poor’s 500 surpasses inflation by to put one’s savings, however. A over 6 points. study from the Federal Reserve In good times and bad, the Bank of Kansas City found that soundest investment advice must for 10-year occupancies started be heard over the bullhorns of during most of the 1980s, renting the American Dream marketing and investing generally built more machine. “They’re not making land wealth than homeownership. That anymore,” the promoters still say. would definitely apply to the Well, they weren’t making land in housing bubble years. Stocks are 2008. now hitting new highs, while most The emotional pull of home prices remain below their homeownership is undeniable. The 2006 peak. question remains, how much is Whether homeownership is freedom to choose one’s doorknobs a good investment, of course, worth to us? depends on when you start. And With the weather warming up who can predict real estate values and puppies bouncing outdoors, over the long term? For too many dreams of owning a house -- or Americans of modest means, owning a bigger one -- are uniting the home has become the only with dreams of lots more money. In investment. It’s never a good most cases, the choice is really one idea to put all one’s capital in the or the other. same place. As they say, diversify, Copyright 2013 The Providence Journal diversify.

Co. Yale economist and real estate 4-16-13

employees (the U.S. workforce includes the company’s Sam’s Club division). The number of employees per store has been cut from 343 to 301.

Fewer workers have meant fewer products on Wal-Mart’s shelves.

Businessweek reports that “pallets of merchandise are piling up in its stockrooms as shelves go unfilled” and overworked employees can’t find the time to restock the products.

According to the minutes of a Feb. 1 managers meeting that the magazine obtained, Bill Simon, the company’s U.S. chief executive, acknowledged that Wal-Mart was “getting worse” at stocking shelves. The company has placed or tied for last among department and discount stores in the American Customer Satisfaction Index for several years. Wal-Mart is no J.C. Penney, however: For many shoppers, disgruntled or not, it’s still the only game in town.

argued in Harvard Business Review last year, Costco and Trader Joe’s pay their workers far more than many of their competitors, offer their employees opportunities for promotion and enjoy markedly lower worker turnover and far higher sales per employee than their low-road counterparts. Sales per employee at Costco are nearly double that at Sam’s Club.

Problem is, the Wal-Mart model of employment and service not only reflects but also reinforces the declining economic prospects of the majority of Americans. The nation’s largest private-sector employer has used its market power to impose its low-wage model all along its supply chain, leaving millions of Americans with no shopping option other than the kind of discount, and frustrating, experience that Wal-Mart provides.

The U.S. economy that Wal-Mart has built - with plenty of help from Wall Street and the government - is in the shape of a downward spiral, and it will take all our ingenuity, and a mass movement for worker power, to free ourselves from that path.

Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American Prospect.

One lesson that emerges from the experience of low-end retailers is that putting workers in crummy, low-wage jobs tends to yield crummy service as well. McDonald’s earnings have fallen, The Wall Street Journal reports, and a management webcast Special to The Washington Post to franchise owners acknowledged 4-17-13 that customer dissatisfaction is rising Online Subscription in part because “service is broken.”

Beat The Postal Delay, But are mass retailers compelled to skimp on labor costs by slashing Subscribe Online Today! their workforce and paying the www.liberalopinion.com minimum wage or close to it? Some of the most successful retailers Or call Toll Free follow a different path. As MIT 1-800-338-9335 management professor Zeynep Ton

14

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Paul Krugman

The Excel Depression In this age of information, math errors can lead to disaster. NASA’s Mars Orbiter crashed because engineers forgot to convert to metric measurements; JPMorgan Chase’s “London Whale” venture went bad in part because modelers divided by a sum instead of an average. So, did an Excel coding error destroy the economies of the Western world?

The story so far: At the beginning of 2010, two Harvard economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, circulated a paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” that purported to identify a critical “threshold,” a tipping point, for government indebtedness. Once debt exceeds 90 percent of gross domestic product, they claimed, economic growth drops off sharply.

Reinhart and Rogoff had credibility thanks to a widely admired earlier book on the history of financial crises, and their timing was impeccable.

The paper came out just after Greece went into crisis and played right into the desire of many officials to “pivot” from stimulus to austerity. As a result, the paper instantly became famous; it was, and is, surely the most influential economic analysis of recent years.

In fact, Reinhart-Rogoff quickly achieved almost sacred status among self-proclaimed guardians of fiscal responsibility; their tippingpoint claim was treated not as a disputed hypothesis but as unquestioned fact. For example, a Washington Post editorial earlier this year warned against any relaxation on the deficit front, because we are “dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.” Notice the phrasing: “economists,” not “some economists,” let alone “some economists, vigorously disputed by other economists with equally good credentials,” which was the reality.

For the truth is that Reinhart-Rogoff faced substantial criticism from the start, and the controversy grew over time. As soon as the paper was released, many economists pointed out that a negative correlation between debt and economic performance need not mean that high debt causes low growth. It could just as easily be the other way around, with poor economic performance leading to high debt. Indeed, that’s obviously the case for Japan, which went deep into debt only after its growth collapsed in the early 1990s.

Over time, another problem emerged: Other researchers, using seemingly comparable data on debt and growth, couldn’t replicate the ReinhartRogoff results. They typically found some correlation between high debt and slow growth but nothing that looked like a tipping point at 90 percent or, indeed, any particular level of debt.

Finally, Reinhart and Rogoff allowed researchers at the University of Massachusetts to look at their original spreadsheet - and the mystery of the irreproducible results was solved.

First, they omitted some data; second, they

used unusual and highly questionable statistical procedures; and finally, yes, they made an Excel coding error. Correct these oddities and errors, and you get what other researchers have found: some correlation between high debt and slow growth, with no indication of which is causing which, but no sign at all of that 90 percent “threshold.”

the obviously intense desire of policymakers, politicians and pundits across the Western world to turn their backs on the unemployed and instead use the economic crisis as an excuse to slash social programs.

What the Reinhart-Rogoff affair shows is the extent to which austerity has been sold on false pretenses. For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity. Economic research, austerity advocates insisted, showed that terrible things happen once debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP. But “economic research” showed no such thing; a couple of economists made that assertion, while many others disagreed. Policymakers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they wanted to, not because they had to.

So will toppling Reinhart-Rogoff from its pedestal change anything? I’d like to think so.

But I predict that the usual suspects will just find another dubious piece of economic analysis to canonize, and the depression will go on and on.

In response, Reinhart and Rogoff have acknowledged the coding error, defended their other decisions and claimed that they never asserted that debt necessarily causes slow growth. That’s a bit disingenuous because they repeatedly insinuated that proposition even if they avoided saying it outright. But, in any case, what really matters isn’t what they meant to say, it’s how their work was read: Austerity enthusiasts trumpeted that supposed 90 percent tipping point as a proven fact and a reason to slash government spending even in the face of mass unemployment.

So the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco needs to be c.2013 New York Times News Service seen in the broader context of austerity mania: 4-18-13

William Collins

Where The Money Is

As foreclosures trim our ranks, The biggest scoundrels are still the banks.

The nation’s big banks are making big profits again. Whew! I was a little worried there for a minute. During America’s recent financial meltdown we actually lost a few biggies, and plenty more nearly crashed on the rocks. Well, you can relax now…banks are rolling in clover once more. And they’re still steering the wheel of government.

Running the government has advantages. It assures that neither presidents nor Congress will advance laws bringing bankers to justice. Stern regulators? They will be neither appointed nor confirmed. It means that even egregious cases of bank fraud, corruption, and miscellaneous villainy won’t be prosecuted, even if they may get negotiated from time to time.

Thus, even when tycoons admit error and pay billions in fines, no one goes to jail. Fines have become merely a cost of doing business.

Yes, America’s banks have always been shady, even before that celebrated event when they were temporarily thrown out of the Temple. The big ones unleashed the crash of 1929 as well as the burst housing bubble that fueled the Great Recession.

Small banks, though, once gave the industry a good name. They managed our childhood nickels and dimes, paid interest, and loaned our parents money for cars and homes. They even gave out lollipops and toasters. It was a wonderful life.

Now, not so much. Small banks mostly bide their time until they can cash out to big ones.

The big ones, in turn, have learned to make their killing on fees, leaning heavily on gouging the poor. The fine print is where their profits lie…late fees, overdrafts, small loan charges, and service fees of every description dominate the business.

And now even some state governments are playing their game by sending out tax refunds not as checks, but as debit cards. More fees aplenty for the bank while the state lays off the check writers.

Meanwhile at the global level, big banks play games in the stratosphere. In the LIBOR scandal, shaping up to be the biggest scam in history, several large banks were caught manipulating international interest rates.

A few chaps in England may actually do time.

But none of our American guys will land in the slammer. We prefer not to arrest bankers. For all the crookedness in the securitized mortgage scandal, no one has yet been pinched. And a U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan ruled in late March in favor of the big banks. Her decision further decreased the odds that they’ll ever learn that rigging interest rates doesn’t pay.

OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut.

OtherWords.org 4-17-13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

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Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann Blog The Boston Marathon Tragedy Yesterday’s horrific Boston Marathon bombing left three people dead and at least 154 injured. Eight-yearold Martin Richard was one of the fatalities. CNN reports that of the 154 people hospitalized yesterday, 41 were listed in serious condition and 17 were critical.

President Obama spoke just hours after the attack, and said, “make no mistake, we will get to the bottom of this and we will find out who did this, we’ll find out why they did this.

Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice.”

The hunt for clues of a motive and suspect are still on-going, and the FBI Boston Division is asking the public to check their cell phone cameras for any information or images that could provide clues.

Conflicting news reports circulated quickly after yesterday’s attack, and authorities say they are still speaking with witnesses, and reviewing evidence collected at the scene.

The Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon, dating back to 1897, and it’s historically been a celebratory event for Massachusetts. Organizers say the marathon will take place again next year, but it will be forever changed after yesterday’s tragedy.

One thing is for sure...we must find the person responsible, and bring them to justice. Until then, let’s come together as a nation and support those who need us now. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone impacted by yesterday’s horrible events.

The Post Office Safety Protocols Worked...

Just days after the Boston Marathon bombing, more frightful events are making headlines. Officials report that letters addressed to President Obama and U.S. Senator Roger Wicker tested positive for poison.

The substance that raised concern may be a poison called ricin, which CNN describes as “a highly toxic substance derived from castor beans.” However, it is possible another organic substance triggered a false positive test result.

Unlike the bombings in Massachusetts, police sources told Time Magazine that they have a suspect in the Roger Wicker letter case, but de-

clined to comment on the individual or the on-going investigations. According to Time, there is no evidence of a connection between the letter and the Boston Marathon attack.

Events were already canceled at the U.S. Capitol after the bombings, and the discovery of these letters raised additional concerns among congressional officials. So far, no information has been released about a motive in these cases, or why either leader was targeted.

Many people remarked that the Boston Marathon bombing brought back the tragic memories of September 11th, and these possibly-poisoned letters are certainly reminders of the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people. It was the very protocols put in place after those anthrax attacks that identified the letter sent to Rep. Wicker yesterday, and we are thankful that the security measures worked. The Maryland mail facility, where one of the ricin letters was detected, will be closed for a few days while the Capital Police and the FBI continue the investigation. In the coming days, more information will likely be available about the Boston bombing and the suspicious letter. Stay tuned.

We are governed by those who refuse to represent us.

Yesterday, the majority of Senators voted to pass a background check bill, meant to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. But that majority wasn’t enough to reach the 60 vote threshold needed to turn that bill into law. The final vote was 54 to 46. Four Republicans voted to support the background check measure, and four Democrats voted against it.

Yesterday, 46 members of the upper chamber said doing absolutely nothing is an adequate response to the Newtown massacre, and the thousands of gun deaths that have taken place since. Forty-six Senators voted against a measure that the vast majority of Americans support.

President Obama spoke from the Rose Garden shortly after the vote, and directly addressed those who prevented the measure from passing. He said, “I’ve heard some say that blocking this step would be a victory. And my question is, a victory for who? A victory for what?... It begs the question, who are we here

to represent?” It’s certainly clear that there are 46 senators who choose not to represent the will of the people, and preferred to guarantee a victory for the gun lobby instead.

As President Obama said yesterday, “this isn’t over.” As a nation, we will not accept that doing nothing is the appropriate response to a tragedy. We are better than that. Poll after Poll show that over 90 percent of our nation support background checks, and the majority of Americans support stronger gun control laws in general.

We cannot allow this country to be governed by those who refuse to represent us. Come next election, we must remind our elected leaders that they work for us. And if they refuse to carry out the will of the people, than the people will find leaders that will.

We must defend civil rights... even for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

After a day-long manhunt, and the lock-down of a major American city, the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was finally taken into custody on Friday. A Watertown resident tipped police after noticing blood on a boat in his backyard, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding out inside. Authorities report that he was severely wounded before agreeing to surrender.

According to the New York Times, a federal law enforcement official stated that the FBI is invoking a “public safety exception,” which allows them to delay reading the suspect his Miranda rights.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the FBI has a “narrow” right to delay mirandizing a suspect in “exceptional cases,” where the FBI believes there to be an imminent threat to public safety.

However, this exception is only temporary, and the FBI must read a suspect their rights once it becomes clear no additional threats exist. Information obtained by questioning the suspect during this “exception” period may also be considered as evidence during a future trial.

This legal loophole is a concern for many civil rights advocates, even when the suspect in question is a potential terrorist. Yet, some in our media and political arena aren’t concerned with civil rights, and are calling for Tsarnaev to be held as

an enemy combatant, and taken to Guantanamo Bay. But we must not circumvent our justice system simply because of the horrific nature of these crimes.

When we deny one individual their civil rights – no matter how evil we may believe them to be – we chip away at the civil liberties that protect all of us. We must defend these rights at all costs....even when it means defending the rights of Dzhokar Tsarnaev.

The Banksters are cashing in on the mortgage meltdown.

The banksters are cashing in off their own disaster. The big banks are buying up distressed real estate by the boat load, and renting or selling it back to the public for huge profits. And, in addition to making it even more difficult for economically-strapped Americans to become home owners, the banksters are increasing the likelihood of another Wall Street-fueled bubble that could crash our economy.

According to the Washington Post, institutional investors account for as much as 70 percent of sales in some markets, and their purchases are increasing home prices in those areas. Some investors are bidding on as many as 200 homes in a single day, crowding out individual buyers, re-inflating prices, and taking on a huge volume of inventory that can’t be liquidized quickly if and when big banks get into financial trouble.

Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, expressed his concern about the risk the banksters are taking on. He said, “This is frightening to me. At some point the music stops. The investors, if they get hurt, that is their problem...but invariably a lot of other people will get caught up in that.”

Because of the risky trading practices and sub-prime mortgage scandals of the big banks, the taxpayers were forced to spend 700 billion dollars bailing out the banksters.

Now, they are putting our economy at risk again, and they’re making huge profits off of the homes they foreclosed on. And, taxpayers could be left holding the bag, when the big banks get into trouble again.

This practice must be stopped.

Let’s break up the big banks, and stop the banksters from cashing in on the very disaster they created.

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May 1, 2013

LIBERAL DELINEATIONS

Liberal Opinion Week

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

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Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Thomas Friedman

Bring On The Next Marathon Looking at scenes of the Boston sidewalk a few hours after Monday’s bombing - torn clothing, bloodstains, shards of glass - I found my mind going back to a similar sidewalk in Tel Aviv in September 2003.

A Hamas suicide bomber had blown himself up at a bus stop outside the Tsrifin army base, and by coincidence I was nearby and got there to witness the immediate aftermath. As I wrote then, parts of the bomber were still on the street, including his hairy leg. His shoe had been blown off, but his brown sock was still daintily on his foot. Israeli rescue workers calmly carried away the dead on stretchers, with an odd mix of horror and routine.

But what I remember most was something the police spokesman said to me: “We will have this whole area cleaned up in two hours. By morning, the bus stop will be repaired. You will never know this happened.”

We still do not know who set off the Boston Marathon bombs or why. But we do know now, after 9/11, after all the terrorism the world has seen in the last decade, what the right reaction is: wash the sidewalk, wipe away the blood, and let whoever did it know that while they have sickeningly maimed and killed some of our brothers and sisters, they have left no trace on our society or way of life. Terrorists are not strong enough to do that - only we can do that to ourselves - and we must never accommodate them.

So let’s repair the sidewalk immediately, fix the windows, fill the holes and leave no trace - no shrines, no flowers, no statues, no plaques and return life to normal there as fast as possible.

Let’s defy the terrorists, by not allowing them to leave even the smallest scar on our streets, and honor the dead by sanctifying our values, by affirming life and all those things that make us stronger and bring us closer together as a country.

“suspicious” bundles on the curb. In today’s world, sometimes we pay for that quintessentially American naivete, but the benefits - living in an open society - always outweigh the costs.

Terrorists know that, of course, and feed on it. The explosives were reportedly packed into six-liter pressure cookers, tucked into black duffel bags and then left on the ground. That is the signature of modern terrorism: to turn routine items from our lives into bombs - the shoe, the backpack, the car, the airplane, the cellphone, the laptop, the garage door opener, fertilizer, the printer, the pressure cooker - so that everything and everyone becomes a source of suspicion.

This can pose a much greater threat to our open society than the Soviet Army ever did - if we let it - because this kind of terrorism attacks the essential thing that keeps an open society open: trust. Trust is built into every aspect, every building, every interaction and every marathon in our open society. Terrorists can steal it for a moment or even a while, but we dare not let them fundamentally erode it, and I don’t think we will. When you watch the video of the bombing aftermath, notice how many people you see running toward the blast within seconds to help, even though more bombs easily could have been set to explode there.

Fortunately, we don’t frighten easily anymore. You could feel it in the country on Tuesday morning. We’ve been through 9/11. We probably overreacted then, but never again. We tracked down Osama bin Laden with police and intelligence work, and we’ll do the same in this case.

But meanwhile, even in this age of terrorism, let’s keep heeding the advice of an advertisement that you could see hanging in a Boylston Street window in a picture taken after the blast. The picture showed a marathoner sifting through unclaimed runners’ bags left behind after the explosion. Behind him, in the window, the ad poster says: “Your home should be a place to rest easy.”

Only we can take that away from ourselves - not some terrorist with one despicable spasm of madness. So hug your kids tonight, but also encourage them to start training for the next marathon tomorrow. Now that I think of it, maybe we should make this one longer - from Boston to the site of the World Trade Center to the Pentagon - to remind ourselves and anyone else who needs reminding: This is our house.

We intend to relax here. And we are not afraid. c.2013 New York Times News Service 4-16-13

E.J. Dionne Jr.

Patriots’ Day Defiled

The bombings at the Boston Marathon would be horrific on any day, but there is something particularly disturbing that they happened on Patriots’ Day. It’s a holiday celebrated only in Massachusetts and Maine, but it’s my favorite patriotic holiday, for reasons both historical and personal.

President Obama was right when he said Patriots’ Day is “a day that celebrates the free and fiercely independent spirit that this great American city of Boston has reflected from the earliest days of our nation.” Though celebrated on the third Monday in April, the actual Patriots’ Day is April 19. It marks the Battles of Lexington and Concord and “the shot heard ‘round the world.” In a sense, it’s our first day as an independent nation, even though we didn’t declare independence until July 4, 1776.

is explained by the fact that for several years, my late father and I would catch a Red Sox day-night doubleheader. There was a game in the morning, then we would go out to have lunch and watch the end of the Boston Marathon, and then we’d be back to watch the Red Sox later in the afternoon.

Countless families had comparable Patriots’ Day rituals. To celebrate freedom, baseball and the international competition of the marathon all at once was something we could only do in Boston.

At this point, we have no idea who did this. So we don’t know how the significance of Patriots’ Day factored into the decision to commit an act of terror. But it is a horrible defilement of a date treasured by the whole nation, and especially by those of us who have known its joys very personally.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@ washpost.com.

Let’s name a playground or a school after that 8-year-old boy, Martin Richard, who was standing by the finish line, and who ran out and hugged his father, Bill, after he completed the race, and then trustingly walked back to the sidewalk to be with his mother and sister when the bomb tore through them all. Let’s donate to the favorite life-giving charities of the other victims. Let’s pitch in to help the injured recover. But on lovely Boylston Street in Boston, a place normally so full of life, let there be no reminder whatsoever of what President Barack Obama called this “heinous and cowardly act” of terror.

And while we are at it, let’s schedule another Boston Marathon as soon as possible. Cave dwelling is for terrorists. Americans? We run in the open on our streets - men and women, young and old, new immigrants and foreigners, But for many people from Massachusetts, in shorts not armor, with abandon and never myself included, the day also carries intense (c) 2013, Washington Post Writers Group fear, eyes always on the prize, never on all those personal memories. If I’m honest, my real love 4-16-13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

19

Bruce Weinstein

Stay The Hand Of Vengeance A few days before Christmas in 1970, a teen-ager named Louis Taylor was having a good time at a party at the Pioneer Hotel in Tucson but quickly snapped into action when a fire broke out in the facility.

The young man knocked on doors to alert guests of the situation and, when casualties started to mount, helped put injured people on stretchers.

Twenty-eight people were killed that night. But as Steve Kroft recently reported on “60 Minutes,” rumors started circulating that Taylor might have been the culprit behind the blaze, and he was arrested and convicted.

He spent the next 42 years in prison and was released only a few weeks ago.

There is little evidence, however, that Taylor committed the crime. For one thing, several fires had broken out at the location previously and all had pointed to another suspect, but that information was never presented to the jury. Top fire experts, looking at the case today, say that it’s not even clear that arson was the cause.

Taylor confessed only after being questioned all night by eight different police officers and he did not have an attorney or guardian with him, suggesting, as Kroft puts it, that Taylor had been “railroaded.” Far from there being enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, even the trial judge said later that he would not have voted to convict.

How, then, could Taylor have been wrongfully imprisoned? In the aftermath of what turned out to be the worst fire in Arizona’s history, there was a strong and understandable desire to make sense of this tragedy, to find the guilty party, and to bring that person to justice. This desire, however, was not tempered with reason; other, less noble impulses played a role. The original fire investigator decided that Taylor was the one to blame because, as an African American,”. . . if they get mad at somebody, the first thing they do is use something they’re comfortable with. Fire was one of them.” The result was that a man who was probably innocent was denied something that can never be given back to him: more than four decades of freedom.

the terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon and the ensuing hunt for the person or persons responsible for this reprehensible act. The second is the publication of Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s op-ed in the New York Times, “Gitmo Is Killing Me,” which details the vicious treatment that Moqbel, who has not been convicted of or even charged with a crime, is receiving at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. He writes: I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.

As someone who has had a nasogastric tube placed without anesthesia myself, I can personally attest to the excruciating distress this causes, and in my case, the device was inserted by a physician who was trying to help me get better. I can’t even fathom what it must have been like in Moqbel’s situation.

“All men [sic] by nature desire to know,” writes Aristotle in the opening of his work, “Metaphysics,” and when we’re faced with evil on the scale of 9/11 or the Boston bombing, what we want to know most of all is, “Who did this and why?” On the heels of these intellectual questions comes a more primal desire: revenge.

We want to inflict the worst possible damage on those who would do us harm. The thinking - if you can call it that - goes something like this: “You hurt me. Now I’m going to hurt you even more.”

There are several ethical problems with this line of reasoning. As the Pioneer Hotel case illustrates, a hotblooded response to tragedy may result in punishing someone who had nothing to do with the crime.

Meting out justice requires a cold, dispassionate view of the facts, and when you’re filled with rage, it’s virtually impossible to maintain the critical distance you need to see the world as it really is.

Another ethical issue that follows from an emotional, reflexive Two incidents this week prompt response to injustice is that the us to reflect upon the lessons punishment we devise might be from Taylor’s story. The first is disproportionate to the crime. Even

if Moqbel is lying when he claims that he had nothing to do with 9/11, how are we justified in subjecting him to the horrors he describes?

Aren’t the military’s measures to keep him alive in the wake of his hunger strike a violation, at the very least, of the Geneva Conventions, the post-World-War-II protocols that legally prevent all governments from abusing prisoners of war?

The only way to justify the treatment of people like Moqbel is if we declare that what they’ve done - or believe they’ve done - is of a magnitude so atrocious that even international law like the rules specified in the Geneva Conventions simply don’t apply. That is the unapologetic position taken by one of our former vice presidents and recapped in R.J. Cutler’s new documentary, “The World According to Dick Cheney.” As Cheney puts it in the film: The basic proposition here is that somebody who conducts a terrorist operation, killing thousands of innocent Americans, they don’t deserve to be treated as a prisoner of war, they don’t deserve the same guarantees and safeguards that would be used for an American citizen going through the normal judicial process.

This is a wartime situation and it does require tough programs and policies if you’re going to be successful. And it [is] more important to be successful than it [is] to be loved.

rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, nor will we proceed with force against him, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

This edict is a cornerstone of our democracy, but the formulation I’ve just quoted isn’t found in the U.S. Constitution; it’s from the Magna Carta, written - in Latin - in 1215. In our efforts to find terrorists and bring them to justice, whether the crime at hand is 9/11 or the bombing of the Boston Marathon, it’s worth taking a step back, and perhaps a collective deep breath too, to consider how righteous fury can sometimes cloud our ability to see and do what’s right.

If we’re unwilling or unable to rethink our domestic and foreign policy regarding suspected terrorists, we’ll undermine the very goal of our extreme counterterrorism measures. That’s the conclusion of the Constitution Project, which on Tuesday issued a nearly 600page review of America’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation programs.

These practices, the nonpartisan, independent legal research group concluded, have “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.”

It’s of the greatest importance for a government to protect the lives of its citizens. But it’s also crucial to uphold the ideals upon which that government rests. Good governments do both.

Weinstein, The Ethics Guy, gives keynote speeches on ethics and leadership around the world.

His latest books are “Ethical Intelligence” and “Is It Still Cheating If I Don’t Get Caught?” Take his ethics quiz at TheEthicsGuy.com.

The problem with Cheney’s position isn’t that our management of detainees at Gitmo makes us unlovable; it’s that any society with a legitimate claim to being a democracy, one that has always prided itself on being committed to moral principles, cannot dispense with simple human decency the way one might discard an old wallet that has outlived its usefulness. We ought (c) 2013, Foreign Policy to treat everyone, even prisoners, 4-17-13 with a modicum of respect and dignity, not for the narcissistic reason Change Of Address: that we’ll feel better about ourselves Please send your old mailing label and your new if we do, but because every human address three weeks prior to moving. being is entitled to this.

Liberal Opinion Week Consider the following principle, P.O. Box 606 upon which our way of life was Hampton, IA 50441-0606 built: Or call Toll Free No free man shall be seized 1-800-338-9335 or imprisoned, or stripped of his

20

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Susan Estrich

Hitting Home I’m from Boston. Over the years, I lived in two apartments within a stone’s throw of Monday’s bombings. Over the years, I stood and cheered marathon runners countless times.

I know every square inch of the area in all the pictures, which is hardly unusual. It’s the center of Boston. My nephew was around the corner when the explosions went off.

This week’s terror hit home for me.

And what to do? That is always the question.

Do you stop going to sporting events? Cultural events? Outdoor rallies?

I was raped around the corner from where the bombs hit. I did not stop going out, didn’t quit my job working nights as a bartender. (I was raped during the day, anyway.) I was determined not to let the crazies run my life. I was younger then.

An even harder question: What do we want the government to do?

How much of our liberty and privacy are we willing to give up in the hopes that it might stop terror?

My answer to that now is also different from what it would have been in the days when I lived around the corner from the bombings. Maybe it’s because I’m older. Maybe it’s because I’m a mother. Or maybe, probably mostly, it’s because of the horrors we have seen. The two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11 took off that morning from Boston (my old home) en route to Los Angeles (my current home). Until my children were born, I commuted on those flights from Boston to LA. So this is my answer: I’d give up a lot. You want to put cameras on every corner? Fine with me. I don’t care who pats me down at the airport.

Pat away. Keep the confidences of my clients, but otherwise, my email is an open book. Mine my data; listen to my conversations. If it will keep my children safe, I don’t care.

was dedicated to the 26 who died in Newtown.

But the media are reporting that a Saudi student was being questioned after the bombings because of his proximity, the nature of his injuries and, yes, his nationality. Racist?

can have it all: freedom and safety, privacy and security, not to mention equality.

When I was a kid, we worried about the Russians. We practiced going to the basement of the school in case of a nuclear attack. How odd to see those as less terrifying days -- and to long for them.

I hope the Saudi man had nothing to do with it. I hope the culprits, when they are found, will not add to our collective terror of “others.” I hope this will not be a case that makes us even more afraid of those who are different from us, even though 99.9 percent of them mean us no harm. I hope.

How do you avoid being a racist when you’re afraid?

How do you avoid offering up your privacy and liberty -- or, more likely, someone else’s -when you are terrified of terror?

How do you maintain a free society when you see limbs flying?

It’s true these events are rare. It’s true that, compared to other countries, we are indeed Copyright 2013 Creators.com remarkably free and safe. And perhaps we also 4-17-13 are spoiled to believe that in this day and age we

Clarence Page

Horror Without Terror, Just Anger

President Barack Obama has made it official. The Boston Marathon bombing was an “act of terror,” he declared.

But here’s my little message to whoever is responsible: Make no mistake, I don’t feel terrorized; I feel mad.

And, furthermore, you will be found.

I don’t yet know who you are or what voices in your head told you to do what you did.

You may be one or you may be a dozen. You may be foreign or domestic.

You didn’t even grant us the simple courtesy of blowing yourself or yourselves up like the 9/11 hijackers did.

You acted more like Timothy McVeigh, who lit a fuse to a truckload of explosive fertilizer in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and walked away. He was eventually caught.

You acted more like Eric Rudolph, who blew up a backpack at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. He disappeared for a few years but he eventually was caught, too.

And maybe you’ll end up like Osama bin Laden. It took years to catch him, but he was caught -- and killed.

Who knows? Maybe you were given some sort of false confidence by the ways we Americans don’t always get along. Our differences make headlines every day. We live in a very diverse country and we have a lot to argue about.

But, nothing concentrates our minds like the certain knowledge that somebody, somewhere is trying to kill us -- just for being Americans.

What else are we to make of this psychopathic assault on one of America’s proudest and most festive events?

But of course, that’s not the question, either. I’m a middle-aged, well-dressed (mostly), respectable-looking white woman. No one is really interested in me, terrorism-wise.

So when I ask myself or my students how much liberty we’re willing to give up, I’m not really asking about us. I’m asking about “others” -- and we all know which others I mean. As I write this, Monday night, I would not want to be a Muslim going through security at Logan Airport. Just for instance. And I don’t blame the TSA if they pay more careful attention. I just want the planes to take off and land.

I ask my students: If there are two security lines at the airport, and one has three white businessmen about to whisk off their jackets, and the other has three Muslim men, which line do you join? I know what I would do. Is that racist?

Are we?

As I write this, we don’t know who planted the bombs that tore off limbs, took innocent lives, We don’t know who placed the two bombs disrupted a race that celebrates “Patriots Day” that within seconds of each other ripped through every year, a race where this year the 26th mile crowds of spectators near the finish line of the

marathon.

But we can tell that the bombs were meant to kill or injure as many as possible and terrorize the rest of us.

Officials counted three dead by the next morning and more than 150 injured, a statistic that hardly captures the breathtaking horror in witness accounts.

“War Zone at Mile 26,” read a New York Times headline: “ ‘So Many People Without Legs’.”

“These runners just finished and they don’t have legs now,” said Roupen Bastajian, 35, a Rhode Island state trooper and Marine veteran, according to the Times.

One moment he was one of thousands of exhausted runners. The next, he was helping to tie tourniquets on bleeding legs -- and what was left of legs.

“So many of them,” he said. “There are so many people without legs. It’s all blood. There’s blood everywhere. You got bones, fragments. It’s disgusting.”

Yet the big story soon turned from terrorism to heroism. No one knew how many more bombs might explode at any moment. Yet without hesitation, police officers, marathon workers, firefighters and emergency medical workers jumped in to rip out temporary barricades by hand and treat the wounded.

Twitter and bloggers buzzed with praise for the selfless first responders, who did not look in any way terrorized. They were too busily focused on helping bomb victims. Out of the horror, Americans were making their own good news with stories of courage and sacrifice.

TV viewers wanted to help, too. Phone calls flooded in from across the country with offers of assistance. The American Red Cross was flooded with so many blood donations that they politely

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Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

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E.J. Dionne Jr.

To Boston, With Love Boston is tough and sentimental, traditional and forward-looking, working class and wealthy, parochial and global, warm and reserved, reform-minded and un-reformable, restrained and boisterous, superstitious and free-thinking, very new and very old.

Boston is the plain, practical threedecker houses of Southie, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain and the elegant Federal-style row houses of Beacon Hill and Back Bay. Great hospitals and high tech coexist with a bluecollar ethos.

Boston is forgiving but relishes grudges. It values loyalty, sometimes to a fault -- and rejects the idea that there ever could be any fault in loyalty. History is everywhere, and Bostonians ignore history whenever they feel like it.

Boston is Irish and Yankee. It’s also Italian and Jewish, African-American and Greek, Latin and Asian. Come to think of it, every kind of American there is flocks to the Hub. But there are times when the Irish-Yankee thing is unavoidable, and you have to take sides whether you want to or not.

Boston is so political that the late Mary McGrory said that every baby who comes to life there (and throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is born with a campaign manager’s gene.

Boston is a city known for its liberals and good-government types - and it has elected or re-elected guys sitting in jail cells. It was the cradle of the abolitionist movement and the scene of some of the most vicious battles over school desegregation during the busing battles of 1970s.

It’s Barney Frank running for

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asked would-be donors to make an appointment to come back in the coming weeks and months.

“The Boston Marathon has lost its innocence,” one surviving runner told an NPR interviewer. She was referring to how the marathon, an event that beautifully brings people together from all over the world has been assaulted by terrorism.

In that sense, the nation lost its innocence years ago. Yet we seem to have replaced it with a new readiness and a new realism.

The reactions to this tragedy

re-election to the state Legislature with the slogan “Neatness isn’t everything,” and anti-busing activist Louise Day Hicks being able to say simply “You know where I stand.”

Everybody did.

It’s the Cabots and the Lodges as well as the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds. Its current mayor, Tom Menino, won five elections in a row by being a resolute neighborhood guy who gets stuff done without fancy rhetoric or grand theories of urban life. University towns appreciate the pragmatic more than you think.

Boston is the Standells singing “Dirty Water,” now the city’s allpurpose sports anthem. It celebrates the Charles River before it was cleaned with a little help from Tip O’Neill and Ted Kennedy. I most seemed to be less panicked, more professional.

Even the Twitter frenzy seemed to include more cautionary notes against spreading the usual unsubstantiated rumors. That’s a blessing. When we panic we only terrorize ourselves.

The Boston Marathon will continue, I am confident and, again, here’s a note for whoever set off those bombs: You will be found.

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@ tribune.com. (c) 2013 Clarence Page 4-17-13

associate the song with Red Sox victories at Fenway and played it in my car the other night. I started to cry.

Before he died, Parker called Spenser, his self-contained hero who only barely hides his huge heart, “serious but not anguished.” Not a bad description of Boston.

I was born in Boston and grew up down the road in Fall River, so I can say this: Boston’s drivers are nutty, reflecting a proudly anarchic spirit beneath a rationalist and Puritan heritage of orderliness.

A friend dismisses the street layout as “cow paths. So “insane” is the city’s highway system, said Bill Bryson, that is was “clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.” Lots of road projects around the country have come in over the estimates.

Only Boston has the Big Dig. It was supposed to cost $2.8 billion, came in at around $15 billion and could, when everything is calculated, end up as high as $24 billion. Still, it’s a heck of an achievement.

This wondrous bundle of contradictions that happens to be a city is also the home of the Marathon and the place where Patriots’ Day is sacred. And always will be.

Spenser might dismiss me for saying it outright. But Boston, you’re home, and I love you.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com.

Boston is also the Celtics, the Bruins and, yes, the Patriots out there in the suburbs. In 2004, the magical Red Sox year, the city was plastered with signs proclaiming: “Believe!”

We still do.

Boston is Johnny Most, the world’s best basketball announcer, yelling “Havlicek stole the ball!” It’s Curt Schilling’s bloody sock, Adam Vinatieri’s Snow Bowl kicks in 2002 against Oakland, and Red Auerbach’s victory cigar. When I was little, I was sure Bill Russell’s first name was “Rebound.” Yes, there’s Bill Buckner’s mistake, but that’s been redeemed. Overcoming adversity is Boston’s way.

And bless the New York Yankees (never thought I’d say that) for playing “Sweet Caroline,” the weird and wonderful Fenway favorite, at the end of the third inning at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night.

Boston is a literary town where the hardboiled writers compete with the genteel scribes of the past. It’s “Mystic River, “Good Will Hunting,” “The Last Hurrah” and “The Friends of Eddie Coyle.” It’s Robert B. Parker, Dennis Lehane and George (c) 2013, Washington Post Writers Group V. Higgins.

4-18-13

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Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Charles Blow

The Mind Of A Terror Suspect While the Boston area lay paralyzed by a citywide lockdown, with one terror suspect dead and another who was on the loose as a massive manhunt filtered through the area’s arteries, we got a better sense of the second young man.

It’s complicated.

The suspects were brothers. The one who was on the loose was taken into custody Friday evening. He was the younger of the two, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. The elder, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a confrontation with authorities, but not before participating in the fatal shooting of an MIT police officer, the carjacking of an SUV and the shooting of a transit police officer, who was critically injured.

They were from Chechnya. Tamerlan was a boxer; Dzhokhar, a college student.

“A picture has begun to emerge of 26-yearold Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an aggressive, possibly radicalized immigrant who may have ensnared his younger brother Dzhokhar - described almost universally as a smart and sweet kid - into an act of terror,” The Boston Globe reported Friday.

The Globe quoted a person named Zaur Tsarnaev, who the newspaper said identified himself as a 26-year-old cousin of the suspects, as saying, “I used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamerlan was up to no good.” Tamerlan “was always getting into trouble,” he added. “He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling. He used to strike his girlfriend. He hurt her a few times. He was not a nice man. I don’t like to speak about him. He caused problems for my family.”

But what about that image of Dzhokhar as sweet?

On Friday, BuzzFeed and CNN claimed to verify Dzhokhar’s Twitter account. The tweets posted on that account give a window into a bifurcated mind - on one level, a middle-of-the-road 19-year-old boy, but on another, a person with a mind leaning toward darkness.

Like many young people, the person tweeting from that account liked rap music, saying of himself, “#mamacbookrapper when I’m bored,” and quoting rap lyrics in his tweets.

He tweeted quite a bit about women, dating and relationships; many of his musings were misogynistic and profane. Still, he seemed to want to have it both ways, to be rude and respectful at once, tweeting on Dec. 24, 2012: “My last tweets felt too wrong. I don’t like to objectify women or judge anyone for their actions.”

He was a proud Muslim who tweeted about going to mosque and enjoying talking - and even arguing about - religion with others, but he seemed to believe that different faiths were in competition with one another. On Nov. 29, he tweeted: “I kind of like religious debates, just hearing what other people believe is interesting and then crushing their beliefs with facts is fun.”

His politics seemed jumbled. He was apparently a 9/11 Truther, posting a tweet on Sept. 1 that read in part, “Idk why it’s hard for many of you to

accept that 9/11 was an inside job.” On Election Day he retweeted a tweet from President Barack Obama that read: “This happened because of you. Thank you.” But on March 20 he tweeted, “Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” This sounds like a take on a quote from Edmund Burke, who is viewed by many as the founder of modern Conservatism: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had strong views on the Middle East, tweeting on Nov. 28, “Free Palestine.”

Later that day he tweeted, “I was going to make a joke about Hamas but it Israeli inappropriate.”

accident.” And on Feb. 6 he tweeted, “Everything in life can be free if you run fast enough.”

He posted other tweets that could be taken as particularly ominous.

Oct. 22: “i won’t run i’ll just gun you all out (HASHTAG)thugliving.”

Jan. 5: “I don’t like when people ask unnecessary questions like how are you? Why so sad? Why do you need cyanide pills?”

Jan. 16: “Breaking Bad taught me how to dispose of a corpse.”

Feb. 2: “Do I look like that much of a softy”?

The tweet continued with “little do these dogs know they’re barking at a lion.”

Toward the end of last year, the presence Feb. 13: “I killed Abe Lincoln during my two of dark tweets seemed to grow - tweets that in hour nap (HASHTAG)intensedream.” retrospect might have raised some concerns.

The last tweet on the account reads: “I’m a He tweeted about crime. On Dec. 28 he tweeted stress free kind of guy.” The whole of the Twitter about what sounds like a hit-and-run: “Just saved a feed would argue against that assessment. bunch of money on my car insurance by switching c.2013 New York Times News Service my car into reverse and driving away from the 4-19-13

Elias Groll

The New York Post’s Pathetic Boston Coverage

It’s been a tough week at the New York Post.

When news first broke of the bombing at the Boston Marathon, the Post was far ahead of other media outlets, reporting that 12 people had been killed in the attack. It all seemed plausible, and it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that the Post had some iron-clad law enforcement source feeding it casualty reports that bordered on the clairvoyant.

Then it all fell apart. Every media outlet not named the New York Post nailed down the death toll at three, and the Post was left looking rather silly. Then the paper reported that a Saudi national kept under guard at a local hospital had been named a “suspect.” That too turned out to be false.

Thursday, the Post managed to really outdo itself, splashing a photo of two dark-skinned young men whom the paper claimed were sought by the FBI. “BAG MEN,” the headline screamed, “Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.”

ABC News tracked down one of the two men, a 17-year-old runner named Salah Barhoun, who said he had decided to watch the race when he couldn’t run it. “It’s the worst feeling that I can possibly feel,” he told ABC. “I’m only 17.”

Call it the tabloid death-spiral: attempting to make readers forget yesterday’s inaccuracies with even worse conjecture on today’s front page.

When asked to comment on the article, New York Post editor Col Allan said he stands by the story: We stand by our story. The image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday [Wednesday] afternoon seeking information about these men, as our story reported. We did not identify them as

suspects.

Thursday afternoon, the Post caught up somewhat to the facts, reporting that the two men on their cover had been cleared by investigators.

In all fairness, the paper has gotten some things right in its coverage. As Vanity Fair points out (for another priceless take on the paper’s editorial strategy, see the Onion): The New York Post correctly reported that the Boston Marathon takes place in Boston, Massachusetts.

“Boston” is spelled correctly.

The current governor of the state is Deval Patrick Participants in the Boston Marathon are, in American English, colloquially referred to as “runners.”

Massachusetts General Hospital is a medical facility.

So what’s going on at the Post? In its initial story on the attacks - the one that pegged the death toll at 12 - the paper has simply scrubbed its initial, inaccurate reporting from the story. The number “12” is nowhere to be found, nor is a death toll.

Instead, the paper simply offers: “More than 130 people were injured today as multiple explosions rocked the Boston Marathon in a ‘coordinated’ terror attack.” Meanwhile, its story on the Saudi “suspect” remained online without a correction, editor’s note, or any kind of acknowledgement that it is completely false. (c) 2013, Foreign Policy 4-19-13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

23

Emily Bazelon

Why Some Terrorist Attacks Go Unsolved Law enforcement authorities have identified “clear video images of two suspects” in the Boston Marathon bombing, according to the Boston Globe. The New York Times reports that one of the suspects, a man, may be dropping a black bag near one of the blasts. If these reports hold up - unlike the tangled mess of mistaken reporting of an arrest on Wednesday - the authorities will be a step closer to making good on President Barack Obama’s promise that “We will find whoever harmed our citizens, and we will bring them to justice.”

The president is sending the right message of determination, and he has a reassuring track record to back him: In the last few decades, most terrorism cases in the United States have been solved. This can of course take an enormous amount of work and skill (as well as some luck). And sometimes, it also takes years. Maybe the investigation into the Boston bombing will move more quickly. But if it proves harder to crack, what clues do bombings and other terrorist crimes that have gone unsolved offer for this one?

One of the worst of these crimes is the bombing in the baggage claim of La Guardia Airport in December 1975, which killed 11 people and wounded 75. No one took responsibility. No one was arrested.

“It remains unsolved and almost forgotten - except by those whose loved ones were killed or maimed,” a former New York police supervisor told The New York Times in 2008.

One suspect, Croatian independence fighter Zvonko Busic, went to prison for hijacking a TWA jet and planting a bomb that didn’t go off in Grand Central Terminal. But he always said he knew nothing about the La Guardia bombing, and it remains a mystery.

There is also the botched investigation of the 1992 and 1994 Buenos Aires bomb attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community building, which together killed 115 people. That may be the Argentine government’s fault: After getting international arrest warrants for six people - including the Iranian defense minister - and accusing Hezbollah of being behind the attack, and Iran of financing it, Argentina - incredibly - agreed to

a nonbinding “truth commission” with Iran. Blech.

But in this country, since 9/11, investigations have become more advanced and more coordinated, with sophisticated forensic techniques and a wide network of informants. Because terrorism is a performative act, the bombers often send up alerts, on purpose or by accident. Video feeds have proved hugely useful in other cases, like the 2008 late-night bombing of a San Diego courthouse, where surveillance cameras caught the guy who lit the bomb in the backpack.

That one wasn’t terrorism: It turned out the bomber had a kooky plan to collect reward money for calling in information about the crime. When a bombing is not a terrorist act, the culprit may be less theatrical and more elusive. In 2003, a pipe bomb went off in the main hallway of Yale Law School, and the FBI never caught anyone. (I remember this one well because my then 3-yearold son was in day care in another corner of the building. No one was injured, but for a moment there, it was terrifying.)

RAND terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins says that historically terrorist groups have claimed credit for 50 percent of terrorism acts worldwide. In another 25 percent of cases, he says, it was easy for investigators to identify the perpetrators. (For example, Shining Path in Peru didn’t have to claim all its attacks - everyone knew.) It’s the last 25 percent that have proved harder to solve. (The stats end at about the year 2000: RAND hasn’t kept up its database since then.) When no one claims credit for a bombing, it makes the crime eerier, but it isn’t necessarily a deciding factor in catching the culprit. “Keep in mind that no claim of responsibility was made for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the 1996 Centennial Park bombing in Atlanta, or the 2010 attempted bombing in Times Square,” Jenkins wrote in an email. “In each case, suspects were eventually identified and successfully prosecuted: jihadists in the 1993 and 2010 cases and rightwing extremists in the 1995 and 1996 cases.”

That’s good news. But the investigation of the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics is, of course, also a cautionary tale. The initial suspect, Richard Jewell, turned out to be innocent. He was the one, who while working as a temporary guard, saw the backpack that had the bomb in it, alerted police, and began clearing people from the area.

But he became a suspect, with all the glare of the media spotlight, and it took months for the police to clear him. The real culprit, Eric Rudolph, was only arrested years later, in 2003, after he bombed a gay night club and several abortion clinics.

“He was eventually traced based on the forensics of those other bombs,” says Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University.

Rudolph was a classic lone wolf: The independent operator who has no connection to the terrorist groups the FBI and other agencies monitor.

If Rudolph had only bombed Atlanta, would he have gotten away with it?

It seems likely.

Then there’s the anthrax killer, whose deadly letters killed five people in 2001. The FBI wanted to try Army scientist Bruce Ivins for the crimes, but while the agency was preparing the case, he committed suicide in 2008. The FBI put out a 92-page summary of the evidence against Ivins two years later, but his guilt is still strongly disputed. And if he didn’t send the anthrax-laced letters, then we don’t know who did.

This is either the one that got away,

or it’s not.

Four lessons here that are relevant to the current investigation: 1. It’s easier to catch bombers who already have profiles in the groups counterterrorism agencies monitor.

2. The terrorist impulse toward theater and symbolism is an Achilles heel - by choosing the Boston Marathon, this bomber may have ensured that he’ll be caught on film or on camera.

3. Lone wolves are often harder to find than cell members, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get them in the end 4. We’ve gotten much better at the hunt, but sometimes it’s still important to slow down to get it right.

Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and writes about law, family, and kids. Her new book is “Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Empathy and Character.”

Find her at emilybazelon@gmail. com or on Facebook or Twitter. (c) 2013, Slate 4-18-13

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24

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Vernon Loeb

Running Boston. Then Reporting It. On my way to the lineup for the 117th Boston Marathon on Monday, I stopped and stood for a long moment on the finish line, a wide blue-andyellow stripe painted across Boylston Street. It is hallowed ground for marathon obsessives like me who spend months every year doing fast, short runs during the week and slow, long ones on weekends so that we might one day be fast enough to qualify for this race.

I gazed at the empty bleachers on the south side of the street and the scaffolded structure over the finish line, beneath which thousands of elated and exhausted runners would pass later that afternoon.

There’s no lingering here once the race is over, so a chance to stand quietly and savor the spot inspires enormous emotion.

Little did I know.

Had I glanced 10 or 15 yards down on the north side of Boylston Street, I would have seen the spot where the first of two bombs would explode during the race, killing three, injuring 176 and showing the world how impossible it is to secure the 26.2mile course.

For someone bent on killing and maiming as many innocent people as possible, the Boston Marathon was a tailor-made target.

I crossed the finish line at 2:11 p.m., 39 minutes before the bombings. I’d been injured for much of the winter, hadn’t trained much and was hoping just to break four hours. I ran a 3:49 and was elated. I was about three blocks away, wearing my finisher’s medal and a metallic space blanket, when the bombs rocked what is always an exuberant post-race party.

I’m a former national security reporter. I wrote about the CIA for three years before Sept. 11, 2001, and began covering the Pentagon three months before the terrorist attacks. I soon found myself reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. A terrorist attack was hardly beyond my imagination. Right away, I knew that Monday’s explosions were bombs.

I remember once during a firefight in Fallujah how unprepared I was for the sheer volume of combat. What I heard reverberating down Boylston Street was way too loud to be some sort of industrial explosion - and the second blast only confirmed that.

Unable to take even a normal step, my knees aching and my calves knotting up, I typed a note on my iPhone to The Washington Post’s new executive editor, Marty Baron. He used to edit the Boston Globe, whose coverage of the Boston Marathon has always been spectacular.

Subject line: “Marathon bombs.” Message: “Seems like two bombs just went off near the marathon finish line, on Boylston St, in a instant, a hush fell over the post marathon scene, then the back bay erupted in sirens. CAnt call right now no lines.”

Right before the bombings, I had realized that I was starving and started plotting where to find food as I made my way to my car, which I’d parked in the garage under the nearby Prudential Center. I’m

a vegetarian, for the most part, but after running a marathon I crave fat and have been known to devour double cheeseburgers. I was planning to drive straight back home to Maryland and had loaded my cold packs in a cooler filled with ice so that I could strap them around my knees as I drove.

But then the bombs went off. My first thought was: I have to get to my car to get my notebooks.

escape e-mail, texts, phone calls and Facebook, to find the off switch.

Even under the best of circumstances, though, marathon running can be hazardous to your health.

Some people break down and can’t handle the mileage required by the normal 18-week training cycle. On race day, you can suffer heatstroke from dehydration or hyponatremia from drinking too much water. Or you can have a heart attack on the course - that’s happened to men in numerous marathons I’ve run.

After last year’s 90-degree scorcher in Boston, about 150 people remained in the hospital the day after the race. But a comforting aspect of the Boston Marathon has always been the medical talent the city commits to runner safety. Worldclass emergency room physicians populate the medical tent just past the finish line, and solicitous nurses and medical personnel ask if you’re okay at the even slightest wobble.

This year, the medical personnel deployed like combat doctors, racing down Boylston Street, where they stabilized 90 victims and loaded them into ambulances in half an hour. Without their presence at the finish line, more people undoubtedly would have died.

I ran my first Boston Marathon in 1996, the 100th running, when race organizers opened up the field and let more than 38,000 runners participate.

When my oldest daughter was a student at Boston University, I ran four in a row from 2007 to 2010.

She and her friends would make signs and cheer me on. We’d have a big party after the race, and the tradition was that I would give my finisher’s medal to whomever came up with the best cheer.

I warmly remembered those days on Monday, before the bombs went off and Boylston Street was covered in blood.

I would never equate the importance of running marathons with the persistence and dedication we ask of our counterterrorism professionals. But both fields demand intense preparation and a belief that little successes now can mean finishing a race months later. There is no instant gratification in either. Victory is elusive in both. Most marathon runners never win a race, they only finish.

Counterterrorism officials, similarly, are fighting a war they never win. But like marathon runners, they carry on. Whether they’ve succeeded or failed comes down to how smart they’ve been and how hard they’ve tried.

People who hunt terrorists never sleep well at night, in my observation. I remember then-CIA Director George Tenet before Sept. 11, taking his PowerPoint presentation on the dangers of alQaida around Washington, pleading for attention.

I remember thinking that Richard Clarke at the National Security Council was obsessed with Osama bin Laden, for good reason. I’ll never forget how John O’Neill, the FBI agent who spent his career hunting down Islamic terrorists, got pushed out of the bureau, went to work as security director

So I trudged along, in some pain, and gathered up two legal pads and a handful of pens, leaving my laptop, my iPad and, most critically, my iPhone charger in my car. I can come back and get them after an initial round of reporting, I thought. But within minutes, Boston police had expanded the crime scene around the Prudential Center, stringing yellow tape between me and my Honda. I couldn’t get back to my car until Tuesday morning, hours after my iPhone ran out of juice.

I’m still struggling to comprehend someone bombing this race. I’ve run it 11 times, and it never gets old. I know the grueling, hilly course almost by heart. I’ve run it in 90-degree heat and in a nor’easter. I look forward to the challenge of qualifying year after year in a vain but glorious quest to stay one step ahead of age. The pageantry and the tradition of the race have a special hold on me, which is why it’s so hard to reconcile the joy of the event and the horror of the attack.

That is precisely the power of terror.

Patriots’ Day is a soulful holiday in Boston; the Red Sox play at Fenway at 11 a.m., and the rest of Red Sox nation lines the marathon course from its start in Hopkinton to Boylston Street, cheering with the brio only Bahston can muster.

For amateur runners the world over, pinning on a Boston bib is like playing in the World Series or the World Cup. We never see the Kenyans and Ethiopians who win in times that hardly seem possible. But running in the same race with them is still a thrill, given the marathon’s history and the lore of the rolling terrain that burns up runners’ quadriceps and then offers the ultimate test, late in the race, called Heartbreak Hill. If you have something left at the top of Heartbreak, a great race might be yours. The final five miles are fast and mostly downhill. The adrenaline that comes with the turn onto Boylston Street, with the finish line 600 yards ahead, is addictive.

This year, the biggest heartbreak was not in Newton at the 21-mile mark. It was a few yards from the finish line.

Marathon running is not for everybody, but it isn’t as hard as it seems. Most people can run one if they train properly, and finding out what your body is capable of is amazing. For some, it’s lifealtering. I’ve seen people go from couch potatoes to marathoners in nine months, transforming their self-image.

Hundreds of thousands of people wouldn’t be running marathons if they weren’t getting something out of it physically and, even more important, mentally. I run to quiet the mind, to Loeb continued on page 25

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

25

Thomas Friedman

How To Put America Back Together Again Until we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young men. With all our warts, we have built a unique society - a country where a black man, whose middle name is Hussein, whose grandfather was a Muslim, can run for president and first defeat a woman in his own party and then four years later a Mormon from the opposition, and no one thinks twice about it. With so many societies around the world being torn apart, especially in the Middle East, it is vital that America survives and flourishes as a beacon of pluralism.

Rebuilding our strength has to start with healing our economy. In that regard, it feels as if our budget drama has dragged on for so long that it has not only been drained of all emotional energy but nobody even remembers the plot anymore. It’s worth recalling: What are we trying to do?

We’re trying to put America back on a sustainable growth track that will expand employment, strengthen

our fiscal balance sheet to withstand future crises and generate resources to sustain the most needy and propel the next generation. That requires three things: We need to keep investing in the engines of our growth - infrastructure, government-financed research, education, immigration and regulations that incentivize risktaking but prevent recklessness. We need to reform Social Security and Medicare so they can support all the baby boomers about to retire. And we need to raise more revenues, in the least painful way possible, because we can’t just cut everything. As I’ve said, you can lose weight quickly by cutting off both thumbs, but that will be a problem at work.

It was good to see President Barack Obama put out a budget proposal that addressed all three needs. The attacks on him from the left are unfair because, ultimately, we will need to do all three even more. As Bloomberg News reported Monday: “Typical wage-earners retiring in 2010 will receive at least $3 for every $1 they contributed to the Medicare health-insurance program, according to an Urban Institute study.” That’s unsustainable. The Republican budget plan, though, would cut so much so fast - including taxes - that it would leave virtually nothing for

for the World Trade Center in New York - and died in the 9/11 attacks.

They would have been great marathoners.

In the days after Sept. 11, I often wondered why al-Qaida, in its quest to sow terror and attack the United States, didn’t stage smaller bombings at cafes and shopping malls. I figured it hadn’t happened because the United States had made such attacks significantly harder to pull off after 9/11.

We’ve now seen that bombing an open, crowded event such as the Boston Marathon is something determined terrorists can manage.

The course is long. The crowd is dense. The bombing underscored an attacker’s asymmetric advantage: While authorities have to defend 1,000 targets, a terrorist need only hit one.

The bombs on Boylston Street made running a marathon seem trivial. But what each of us gets out of this particular obsession feels

more essential now, not less. If nothing else, running helps power us through the insanity. We’re a determined bunch, a little nuts, perhaps, and my sense that is most of us will respond by saying that we’re not going to let a terrorist take our sport away.

President Barack Obama said as much at an interfaith prayer service for the bomb victims on Thursday.

“We will all be with you as you learn to stand and walk and, yes, run again. Of that I have no doubt,” he said. “You will run again.”

I, for one, am signing up to run the Delaware Marathon in Wilmington on May 12. I should be able to take my Boston time down to qualify for next year’s race.

I bet it will sell out in record time.

Loeb is The Washington Post’s Local editor. Monday’s Boston Marathon was his 61st marathon.

Loeb continued from page 24

(c) 2013, The Washington Post 4-19-13

investing in our growth engines.

That’s irresponsible.

So what to do? We need a more “radical center” - one much more willing to suggest radically new ideas to raise revenues, not the “split-thedifference-between-the-same-oldoptions center.” And the best place to start is with a carbon tax.

A phased-in carbon tax of $20 to $25 a ton could raise around $1 trillion over 10 years, as we each pay a few more dimes and quarters for every gallon of gasoline or hour of electricity.With that new revenue stream, we’d have so many more options. One, preferred by Republicans like the statesman George Shultz and the Nobel laureate Gary Becker, is to make the carbon tax “revenue neutral.” It could be offset entirely by a rebate or by cutting tax rates for every U.S. citizen and corporation, which would increase spending. Another option, the one I’d prefer, would devote half the carbon-tax revenues to individual and corporate tax cuts, use a quarter for new investments in infrastructure, preschool education, community colleges and research - which would create jobs now and tomorrow - and then use a quarter on deficit reduction.

In short, if you added such a carbon tax to Obama’s budget, you’d have the makings of a radical grand bargain: Republicans would have the income tax cuts they want; Democrats would get the additional infrastructure stimulus they want, plus a new revenue stream to start gradually addressing the deficit, while reducing the amount that we’d have to bite from entitlements now; and the country would have a vehicle to address climate change, to drive clean-tech innovation (and to take money away from people who fund jihadist hate sites on the Internet).

for community colleges, just when every good job requires more skill.

That is truly cutting off our thumbs to lose weight. Last week I interviewed Gary Green, the president of Forsyth Technical Community College, in Winston-Salem, N.C., with 10,000 students.

“We have a labor surplus in this country and a labor shortage at the same time,” Green explained to me. Workers in North Carolina, particularly in textiles and furniture, who lost jobs either to outsourcing or the recession in 2008, often “do not have the skills required to get a new job today” in the biotech, health care and manufacturing centers that are opening in the state.

If before, he added, “you just needed a high school shop class or a short postsecondary certificate to work in a factory, now you need an associate degree in machining,” a two-year program that requires higher math, IT and systems skills. In addition, some employers are now demanding that you not only have an associate degree but that nationally recognized skill certifications be incorporated into the curriculum to show that you have mastered the skills they want, like computer-integrated machining.

I know: If we can’t get some simple gun control, how do we get a carbon tax to pay for all of this? With both, you have to try and keep trying, until the unimaginable becomes the inevitable. Our goal is not just balancing the budget. It’s generating the resources in the most intelligent way possible to renew America for the 21st century. I hope the president swings for the fences. It’s the only way to revive the country and a moribund Republican Party.

“Margaret Thatcher’s big ideas set the context for the creation of New Labour,” said Don Baer, the former Clinton administration communications chief. “Ronald Reagan’s big ideas did the same for the New Democrats.” Maybe only big ideas from Obama can give birth to New Republicans - and the revival of the country. Competition works. But if we treat every good big idea as “dead on arrival” then so are we. We cannot allow that. A more interdependent world desperately needs an America at its best.

However we divide the money, a carbon tax would enable a radical grand bargain that would be more fiscally responsible for the long run and more stimulative in the short run, paving the way to more sustainable growth. (Yes, a carbon tax is not painless. We would have to, and easily can, cushion the poor from its impact.) We’d be serving the present c.2013 New York Times News Service and the future. Here’s one example 4-20-13 how: Today states are slashing budgets

26

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Alexandra Petri

Our Favorite Chechen Uncle Ruslan Tsarni is angry.

Uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects whose baseball-capped images have dominated our TVs and computer screens, Tsarni delivered an impromptu news conference Friday from his Montgomery Village, Md. yard that has already slipped into the realm of meme and legend.

He denounced the men who authorities say are responsible for Monday’s tragedy. Asked what the suspects’ motive might have been, he responded simply, “Being losers.”

It is difficult to comment while a story is still unfolding. No formulating your thesis before all the facts come rolling in. No reviews before the movie ends. No obituaries with George Soros still alive and kicking. But the half-tirade, halfinspirational speech from the man Twitter is already dubbing “Uncle Ruslan” was an isolated, brilliant moment in the midst of chaos. It was not just Antoine Dodson meets that University of Maryland sorority sister whose irate rant has been lighting up the blogs this week. It was more than that. It was quotable, timely and poignant. It was wild, dramatic, angry, over the top. We can learn a great deal in the coming weeks, and it will not alter the peculiar magic of this speech.

Tsarni began by delivering condolences: “Those who were injured - this boy, this Chinese girl, the young 29-year-old girl - I’ve been following this from Day One.” He is with us.

He is one of the millions of people watching, horrified, as tragedy unfolds. The New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson said Tsarni looked about ready to go hunt down the suspects himself.

Some online compared him to a Russian Chuck Norris. You don’t want to be on Uncle Ruslan’s bad side. Best Dramatic Performance by an Uncle, Twitter agrees. Skip the Eugene O’Neill plays. Give this man a talk show. Give him everything we have to give. Fire Uncle Sam. Get us Uncle Ruslan.

This is the sort of inspiring speech that we all hope we could give, under any circumstances - much less the one in which he was asked to step up. Anything that rears its head after moments of tragedy, he covered. He was irate at the perpetrators of this violence and said they did not deserve to be on this earth.

He acknowledged our unfortunate tendency to spread the blame to entire groups. (“He put a shame on our family. . . . He put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity because now everyone blames Chechens. . . . When a Muslim or a person of color does something, someone always has to defend the whole community.”)

“Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured and from those who left,” he pleaded.

People like Uncle Ruslan remind us that it’s the apples, not the barrel. Here is the humanity the bombers themselves were missing, in indignant

spades. This is the spirit Patton Oswalt was talking about when he posted on Facebook right after the bombings: “Every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness. But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. . . . So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just gardenvariety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good outnumber you, and we always will.’ “ He’s right. We outnumber you. Your uncle is on our side.

country which gives chance to everybody else to be treated as a human being and to just to be human being. To feel yourself human being.”

I hope we keep living up to that.

To hear this from the uncle of the suspects, someone who could be on the receiving end of serious ugliness himself (if the behavior of our worse angels in previous circumstances is any indication), is a testimony to all the best things we hope are true about this country. And this in the midst of memorable yelling about the shame his nephews have brought on their family and entire ethnicity. (“Losers!”)

“From now on, I ask you to respect our property,” he concluded. I hope we do. I hope we keep showing the good side of this place he’s It would have been remarkable had it chosen to make his home. He certainly managed stopped there. But it didn’t. to. Let’s keep being the place that Ruslan Tsarni A reporter asked Tsarni his opinion of America. believes we are. After all, the last thing America He spoke eloquently: “I teach my children. . . . needs is to get on Uncle Ruslan’s bad side.

This is the ideal micro-world in the entire world. (c) 2013, The Washington Post I respect this country. I love this country. This 4-20-13

Frank Bruni

The Locker and the Closet

I’ve been hearing the name Jackie Robinson a lot lately, and not just because a movie about him, “42,” hit multiplexes Friday and had a bigger opening-weekend gross than any baseball movie ever.

I’ve been hearing it in the context of an intensifying drumbeat: that the “gay Jackie Robinson” is just weeks or months away.

We should retire the phrase now. It’s a flawed comparison.

As a few other observers have noted, it doesn’t do justice to Robinson’s experience and to the many differences between the challenges he confronted and those facing the first man or men to acknowledge being gay while still active in one of America’s four major professional sports (baseball, football, basketball and hockey).

It doesn’t do any favors to the gay trailblazer.

Robinson’s cleats - his place in history, his meaning then and now to a nation almost cleaved in two by racism - are pretty much impossible to fill. There’s only one number in major league baseball no longer put on players’ jerseys, in tribute to the titan who wore it. That’s 42. His number.

I’m shocked that he never got a splashy Hollywood movie before. I wish the current one were better. It paints with too broadly sentimental a brush, giving us a Robinson who’s more icon than individual.

But it’s still an important, stirring reminder of our country in 1947, when he broke baseball’s color barrier. He couldn’t stay in hotels open to white teammates. Other teams’ pitchers threw at his head. The manager of the Philadelphia Phillies loudly taunted him with racial epithets

as he stepped up to bat.

In laying out this galling ugliness, “42” elicits all the disgust and outrage it should.

The movie also makes clear that Robinson got his precedent-setting assignment not just because of his talent but because of his character.

Branch Rickey, the team president who hired him, wanted and picked someone who might not buckle, as most men surely would, under such pressure and such a mantle.

The first openly gay player in a major sport could instead be an accidental and unwilling hero, hauled into history by a random photo, a talkative boyfriend, some other unintended exposure or the fear of it. That sort of messy scenario was suggested by Cyd Zeigler and Howard Bragman in a post on the sports website SB Nation. Its headline: “Hoping Our `Gay Jackie Robinson’ Isn’t the `George Michael of Sports.”’

Robinson was openly black, if you will, before he played in the big leagues, and what he ended in baseball was apartheid.

The trailblazer still to come will most likely have his place in the big leagues before he’s openly gay, and the frontier he’ll inhabit is not one of access - there have been and are gay players in the four major sports - but of candor.

What he’ll end, or erode, is a culture of duplicity and denial. And if he hasn’t in fact been forced out of the closet, there will a particular kind of decision and volition in his emergence.

It will in turn be met with a particular kind of scrutiny. Why didn’t he act sooner? What’s

Bruni continued on page 27

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

27

John Young

Pot and Redefining Crime How about some good news today? This year, reports Time magazine, drug cartels in Mexico stand to lose $1.4 billion.

Why? Because Colorado and Washington decriminalized recreational marijuana in November.

American taxpayers have been financing a drug war with costs past comprehending, and without measurable gains. Now here come voters in two states who have hit organized crime where it really hurts.

Not long after decriminalization of an ounce of pot became law in Colorado, a friend called, curious to know if all hell had broken loose.

It took me a moment to realize that, in fact, it hadn’t.

I had to acknowledge that almost nothing had changed, except for most assuredly the state’s police blotters. To voters’ immense credit — 55 percent in both states — what had changed was their definition of crime.

The real crime, they said, was that in 2011, marijuana arrests approached 1 million nationwide — most involving incarceration,

Bruni continued from page 26

his motivation now? Is he creating an unnecessary distraction for his team?

That last issue was raised last month by a player for the Seattle Seahawks, who responded to forecasts of an imminent disclosure in the National Football League with disapproving tweets.

“Who on God’s earth is this person saying he’s coming out?” asked the player, Chris Clemons, in one tweet. In another he said: “It’s a selfish act. They just trying to make themselves bigger than the team.”

each with its court case. Summon the attorneys.

The real crime was diverting police attention from offenses with actual victims to these, which had none. The real crime was shoving more coal into the blast furnace of a criminal justice system voracious for public dollars.

If you like to think only in money terms, something on which many Americans insist, this sounds like a slam dunk.

Back to that friend’s inquiry: Lest anyone assume that Colorado was awash in a fog of THC in the dawning of a new criminal justice day: It wasn’t. It hasn’t been.

For one thing, it’s still illegal to smoke pot in public, and illegal to possess it under age 21. Marijuana remains a very controlled substance, though Colorado and Washington aren’t entirely sure yet how they will control it. In Colorado, people are able to grow as many as six plants. In Washington state, users will have to buy their marijuana from licensed providers.

Up next: how to regulate that, and tax it: more revenue for the football, baseball, basketball or hockey will be tested, no question.

With an extra measure of fame will come naysaying and nastiness.

And he’ll potentially have a huge impact, toppling certain stubborn stereotypes by “smashing through the closet door in the most masculine of our pastimes,” as Brian Ellner, a prominent gay rights advocate, said to me.

That burden and promise are noteworthy enough that whoever takes them on needn’t be framed in terms of anybody else.

But there’s one Robinson analogy I’ll indulge.

In a few emotional scenes, “42” emphasizes his special meaning to black children, who see in him a future they weren’t sure they had.

The first linebacker or center fielder to say “I’m gay” will be a similar agent of hope, assuring more than a few scared boys that glory and honesty are both possible, even in our country’s sacred cathedrals of sport.

At the league’s scouting combine in late February, concerned recruiters reportedly quizzed prospects about their sexual orientations. A month earlier, before he played in the Super Bowl, San Francisco 49er Chris Culliver said, “We don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do.” c.2013 New York Times News Service The first openly gay player in 4-15-13

states.

Opponents of these measures raised the specter of generations of hop heads. They probably needed to concentrate instead on the hops and barley that make beer so appealing.

Intoxication is intoxication.

But when it comes to dependency, let’s acknowledge two kinds that serve almost no one: the narco dollars that make drug cartels so wealthy in Mexico and Central America, and the insatiable demand for resources by the American criminal justice system. Anything that tightens the spigot feeding either is serving humanity.

and to put it under the purview of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, with “Marijuana” making the acronym ATFM. Meanwhile, other considerations loom, such as the fact that under federal regulations banks can’t handle money obtained from drug deals. This means that even enterprises created by voters in the 18 states that allow medicinal marijuana don’t have a place to put their money.

Some will call Colorado’s and Washington’s dilemma a legal morass. So be it. It’s a better investment of legal minds than more arrests, packed jail cells and criminal court dates.

As a Coloradan, I’m proud to say that’s where my tax dollars go now rather than to manufacturing more felons and puffing the Medellin Cartel up into a presence on a par with General Motors.

Longtime Texas newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado.

Email:jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

For a long time Americans have bought into the appeal that marijuana serves as a gateway drug for harder and more dangerous substances. Of course, it is exactly that when coming from the same illegal pipeline. Take that business away from the connection, remove the cartels and pushers from the transaction, and pot is a gateway drug no more.

4-17-13 Of course, many serious questions remain in these trailblazing states.

First is how to operate under two sets of law, state and federal, which Join behold pot differently.

Colorado Congressman Jared Liberal Opinion Polis has authored a bill to remove marijuana from the Controlled Week Substances Act. It would to shift on Facebook. control over the substance from the Drug Enforcement Administration

28

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Sam Pizzigati

The Art of Inequality Thomas Campbell directs the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. He’s smiling a great deal these days. Why? Campbell has just received something museum directors only dream about: a donation of paintings, drawings, and sculptures worth over $1 billion.

The donor: cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder.

His gift? Seventy-eight masterpieces, including 33 Picassos and dozens of works by other prominent members of the Cubist movement.

Forbes estimates Lauder’s overall net worth at more than $8 billion. He’s been donating hefty chunks of these billions to the art world for some time now. In 2008 alone, Lauder gave $131 million to New York’s Whitney Museum.

Philanthropy this bold thrills apologists for inequality. Immense concentrations of private wealth, these cheerleaders for grand fortune claim, enrich our civilization’s culture.

“The rich make life more interesting,” the prominent business editor William Davis gushed in the early 1980s.

“Being rich doesn’t make you evil,” a New York Post editorial proclaimed after the new Lauder gift. “And the accumulation of wealth can enrich others — in countless ways.”

Subjecting the rich to “millionaire taxes” meant to “share the wealth,” the editorial board fumed, only discourages gifts as generous as Lauder’s.

In reality, we’re seeing precious little wealthsharing. The Lauder family and their fellow billionaires have watched tax rates on their incomes plummet. And the resulting squeeze on the public purse is having a substantial — and troubling — artistic impact, especially in America’s schools.

In New York City, as one local arts group relates, budget cuts have painted a “grim picture for arts education.” Nearly a quarter of the city’s schools have no certified arts instructor.

New York hardly stands alone. In Los Angeles, an arts activist noted last fall, more than half the city’s elementary-age kids are getting no exposure to arts instruction. In Detroit, 60 percent of schools “lack art education as part of the curriculum.”

Nationwide, the same pattern. The U.S. Department of Education reported last spring that 4 million elementary school students are going without visual arts instruction. Adds Dan Domenech, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators: “We haven’t hit bottom yet.”

The “top” for arts education came back in America’s share-the-wealth golden age in the mid-20th century, the years when America’s wealthiest faced federal income tax rates as high as 91 percent, over double the top current rate.

In 1960, lawmakers in Albany okayed the creation of the New York State Council on the Arts. Five years later, Congress established the National Endowment of the Arts. The federal government became, for the first time ever, a major player in arts funding. In community after

community, federal dollars began leveraging So let’s keep in mind what really happens to the a vital partnership of nonprofits and public arts when we let wealth concentrate. Museums agencies. The arts flourished. get paintings from the awesomely affluent. These donors get plaques in the museums attesting to We can’t, of course, totally blame the demise their generosity — and lucrative deductions on of this golden age on shrinking billionaire top- their tax returns. bracket tax rates. Other factors have been at play, And the rest of us? We pay our $25 admission most particularly the rising pressure on school to enter museums like New York’s Met as art systems to narrow the curriculum to subjects that education fades away from our schools. lend themselves to endless rounds of standardized OtherWords columnist Sam Pizzigati is an testing.

Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow. His But who’s bankrolling this intensely market- latest book is The Rich Don’t Always Win: The driven approach to education that has no patience Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created for “frills” like art? America’s billionaires, through the American Middle Class. the vast network of think tanks and foundations OtherWords.org they’ve so lavishly underwritten.

4-17-13

Jill Richardson

A Recipe For A Sounder Diet

Healthy food is expensive and telling people to eat organic, local food is elitist. Have you heard that argument before?

It’s true. Healthy, organic, local food is expensive. Calorie for calorie, you get more for your money at a fast food drive-thru than at a farmer’s market. And the fast food will be cooked and ready to eat, whereas you might need to take your fresh, organic produce home to cook it.

Now, you might say, that’s only a short-term calculation. Today, a $5 burger, fries, and large soda looks like a better deal than a few ounces of spinach, a handful of dried beans, and a bunch of carrots for the same price. But that overlooks the health consequences of either meal. One of these meals, if eaten regularly, will land you in the hospital someday. The other won’t.

Factor the costs of medical care needed to treat diet-related chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes into the equation, not to mention the quality of life problems. Can you put a price tag on a year of your life? How about endless hospital visits? Suddenly, the spinach, beans, and carrots look like a better deal.

Yet, this kind of logic assumes that you have enough money right now to make either choice.

And millions of Americans don’t. How many families struggling to raise their children and pay their bills simply lack the cash needed to buy healthy foods or the time needed to prepare them?

So what’s the answer? How do we give more Americans the ability to choose healthy foods?

Some say we ought to make them more affordable.

I disagree. We need to pay Americans a living wage.

Working hard for 40 hours a week should guarantee a living wage. Who does it benefit if Americans lack the time, money, and resources to feed their families healthy food?

Economically, we’ll all fare better if our fellow citizens are able to work and their children are able to concentrate in school. Poor diets and the health problems that they cause lead to increased absenteeism and a weaker performance. That is, when one does show up to work or school.

For argument’s sake, let’s examine the alternative: cheaper food. We’ve already got the cheapest food in the world. We spend a mere 9.4 percent of disposable income on food — less than people in any other country in the world.

How does one decrease the price of food?

Subsidies are one way. Increasing efficiency is another. But in the United States, we also produce an awful lot of cheap junk and call it “food.” If you grab a box of anything off the supermarket shelves, it’s likely full of the same ingredients: corn, soy, wheat, sugar, and stuff to make it taste better, look appealing, last longer, and appear more nutritious. But it’s not nutritious. This cheap food is the stuff that’s making us sick.

Another way to lower the cost of food comes at the expense of the people who grow and harvest our food. Journalist Tracie McMillan worked in the fields of California, where she documented systematic wage theft from farmworkers. The fruits and vegetables the farmworkers pick are healthy, but exploiting the people who plant and harvest our food to lower prices for consumers isn’t the answer.

There’s no free lunch. Good food costs money, and good health requires healthy meals. So here’s a recipe for a sounder diet: Equip Americans to afford good food.

OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org 4-3-13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

29

Frank Bruni

Questioning The Mission Of College The flagship campus of the University of Texas here has been in the national news often over the last year, mainly because of a legal challenge to its race-conscious, diversity-minded admissions policy. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in October; its decision, not yet rendered, could affect affirmative action nationwide.

But there’s another, equally weighty contest being waged at the school, and it concerns nothing less than the future of higher education itself.

Do we want our marquee state universities to behave more like job-training centers, judged by the number of students they speed toward degrees, the percentage of those students who quickly land good-paying jobs and the thrift with which all of this is accomplished? In the service of that, are we willing to jeopardize some of the trailblazing research these schools have routinely done and the standards they’ve maintained?

Those questions are being asked and fostering acrimony on campus after campus, the one here in Austin chief among them. In public remarks over the last few years, Hunter Rawlings, the president of the Association of American Universities, has called Texas both the “epicenter of public debate about the function” of higher education and “ground zero” in a welling crisis.

Rawlings is referring to the tension between the nine regents who set policy for the University of Texas, Austin, all of them appointed

by Gov. Rick Perry, and the university’s president, Bill Powers.

The regents’ apparent animosity toward Powers, whose most recent request for a modest in-state tuition increase they denied, reached a point where state lawmakers passed several resolutions in February making their support for him clear.

That was a slap at the regents - and, by extension, at Perry.

And while it reflected political factionalism, it also tapped into a philosophical divide. The regents, Perry and a conservative think tank with great sway over the governor have all called for, or mused publicly about, reforms at the university that many other Texans have deep and

warranted reservations about.

The reformers want professors evaluated by how many students they teach and how many research dollars they attract, metrics that favor large classes and less speculative, visionary science.

They want the school to figure out a way, despite huge cutbacks in public funding, to offer students a four-year degree for a sum total of $10,000 in tuition, which is a small fraction of the current cost and seemingly impossible without a diminution in the quality of instruction.

They want expanded online classes. And they want programs tailored more precisely to the job market of the moment.

Powers says he’s open to much of this - to a point. “I and every other university president I know has made efficiency and affordability and using new teaching systems a high priority,” he told me when I met with him last week. The issue, he added, is how to do this while still “educating students at the highest level.”

The pressures on him and university administrators around the country stem from the severity of the country’s economic downturn and state governments’ accordant budgetary woes. Funding of public universities hasn’t just declined; it’s plummeted. Increases in tuition have been necessary, even as students find it more difficult to afford. Some students can’t make it to the finish line of a bachelor’s degree, which betters their odds of employment. Others graduate with crippling debt into a grim job market and wind up with work that doesn’t reflect the level or focus of their education.

And so colleges in Virginia are now required to provide information for a database that shows what graduates majored in and what they wound up earning 18 months after getting their diplomas.

Florida lawmakers have toyed with encouraging students to study engineering by making their tuition cheaper than humanities majors’.

Pat McCrory, the new governor of North Carolina, recently advocated legislation to distribute funds to the state’s colleges based not on their

enrollments - or, as he said on a radio show, on “butts in seats” but instead on “how many of those butts can get jobs.”

“If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine, go to a private school,” he added. “But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.”

How practical versus idealistic should the approach to college be? I’m somewhat torn, and past columns have reflected that. I applaud proposals to give young people better information about how various fields of study match up with the job market and about projected returns on their investments in college. And for students who want college to be an instant pivot into a job with decent pay, a nudge toward certain disciplines makes excellent sense.

But college is about more than that, with less targeted, long-term benefits that aren’t easily captured by metrics. And some of the reforms being promoted right now lose sight of that and threaten to lessen the value of a degree.

“You just don’t know what your education is going to result in,” Rawlings told me by phone last week. “Many of the kids graduating from college these days are going to hold a number of different jobs in their lives, and many of those jobs have not yet been invented.

For a world like that, what’s the best education? Seems to me it’s a very general education that enables you to think critically.”

For precisely that reason, he said, the push in China now is for more young people to study humanities,

even as the new emphasis here is vocational.

He and Powers raised an additional concern: that the devaluation of any university research that doesn’t have an imminent payoff or attract outside sponsorship could put the country at a global disadvantage down the line. “You never know where scientifically driven curiosity will lead you,” Powers told me, and he’s dead right. Sometimes gamechanging, immensely lucrative epiphanies lie on the far side of seemingly esoteric inquiries.

I’d sound yet another alarm.

Scratch the surface of some of the efforts to reform state universities and you find more than just legitimate qualms about efficiency and demands for accountability.

You find the kind of indiscriminate anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism popular among more than a few right-wing conservatives.

It’s worth noting that Perry has dismissed global warming as “one contrived, phony mess” and that many of the voices calling most loudly for change at the University of Texas are from the tea party fringe.

In other words there’s some crude, petty politics in all of this.

And as we tackle the very real, very important challenge of giving young Americans the best and most useful education possible in an era of dwindling resources, that’s the last thing we need. c.2013 New York Times News Service 4-20-13

30

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

Susan Estrich

Girl Rising It was a very tough week. Limbs flying in Boston. Ricin in the mail to the president and a senator. The Newtown families, bewildered in the White House, unable to understand how a bill that 90 percent of the public supports, that no one has offered a coherent reason to oppose, that was drafted by two of the NRA’s strongest supporters in the Senate could go down in an exercise of petty politics at its worst. Enough.

What more can I say? This.

There is a wonderful and important movie that will be playing in theaters near you for one week beginning Friday, April 19. The name of the movie is “Girl Rising” (girlrising.com).

It is about nine girls in nine countries telling stories (with the help of women writers from their own countries with whom they were paired) of their own lives, which is to say lives of tragedy and hopelessness rescued by courage and determination -- and school.

You cannot make a better investment in the developing world than educating a girl.

It is that simple. If you don’t understand this, or if you do and you want to feel that there is more to the world than bombs exploding and ricin in envelopes and petty politicians playing parliamentary games, go to your local theater and let them touch your heart.

“I feel as though I have power. ... I can do anything. And I have important things to do.”

-- Suma, Nepal This has been a week when I didn’t feel that way.

I remember, years ago, attending a talk

by Mavis Leno, who was way ahead of the curve on how women were being treated by the Taliban. It must have been the late ‘90s, and she was trying to get the world to focus on the oppression of Afghan girls and women and how you could and should judge a country based on how it treats its women. And its girls. She was right. Sadly, it took us a while to figure that out.

Kayce F. Jennings, senior producer of The Documentary Group (which she founded with her late husband, ABC anchor Peter Jennings), gets it. She produced the movie, believed in it and has been reaching out to old friends like me to get the message out. Peter would be so proud.

This is so right -- and it’s especially so right now.

Two of the nine girls in the movie do not themselves portray their life stories. Too dangerous. That is the world. There is no escaping it. But their eyes -- you can see their eyes -- burn with hope.

You can’t help but feel lucky in every way watching an orphaned girl picking plastic bags from the trash and dreaming not of Hollywood or stardom or of a prince on a white horse, but of a crisp white shirt and a school jumper and shelves full of books.

But there is a moment, too, when you may

start thinking: When did I give up believing the world is a place I can change? When did I stop hoping and start hiding? I feel like that, too often, watching videos like those from this week. The only time I do not regret the march of time -- the wrinkles on my face, the arthritis in my hands -- is when I think of the monumental challenges my children and yours will face as they try to make their way, peacefully and safely, in this dangerous and often evil world.

There has got to be a better answer than

squinting to try to figure out the nationalities of the two Boston bombing suspects whose pictures have just been released so we can focus on whom to hate right now or figure out who could hate us that much.

Choose life, we say. Choose hope. Nine girls are rising at your local theater. Millions more could be following them. If they have the courage and the hope, so should we.

Copyright 2013 Creators.com 4-19-13

Jill Richardson

How To Send Less Trash To The Landfill

My new neighbor knocked on my door and introduced herself as the vice president of the local homeowner’s association. “How friendly!” I thought. “She’s welcoming me to the neighborhood.”

Then she wrinkled her nose and motioned toward an enclosed bin on my porch, saying, “Your — what is it? Came-post? That’s not allowed here. You’ll need to get rid of it.”

My compost bin, designed to allow air and water in while keeping rodents out, was no nuisance whatsoever, but the HOA had decided it was unsightly. In my opinion, they had pretty odd standards about what constituted “unsightly” since they banned basketball hoops too.

That incident happened years ago when I first started composting. I never gave up, but I’ve encountered plenty of pushback despite the spread of this increasingly routine waste management practice. Once, a neighbor actually dumped rat poison into my compost bin after blaming it for her home’s rat problems. I have three cats and they hunt. We were not harboring rats, I guarantee it.

Another person I met while trying to be “green” and efficient paid over $100 for an electric compost machine that accomplishes the same thing that nature does for free.

Why are we so squeamish about our waste, especially when our food and yard waste turns into such a valuable gardening resource? Often, it’s the fear of foul odors.

cardboard and six percent was wood. Together, compostable materials make up more than half of our waste — 155 million tons. And, while we recycle and compost some of it, a lot of it goes into landfills.

Then, after throwing away these valuable resources, Americans go out and buy garden and landscape products like compost, topsoil, and fertilizer. Why don’t we simply compost the food scraps, yard waste, and cardboard that we routinely throw away instead?

Besides, composting feels magical. You toss your unwanted waste into a pile or a bin, wait several months, and — voila! —you’ve got something that will make your soil amazing.

Your old banana peels and coffee grounds can help grow food and flowers in your garden.

I admit I’m a little weird, but I love digging through my pile to smell the earthy aroma, feel the heat of my food breaking down, see how my waste is turning into rich, valuable compost, and check out what kinds of worms and other beneficial critters are making their homes there.

If you want to have even more fun, make a worm bin with a group of kids. I’ve never seen second graders pay such rapt attention to anything like they did to the red wriggler worms and the apple cores, grass trimmings, and newspaper scraps we fed them. The kids got so excited that they even began naming the individual worms and proposing to take them home as pets.

This spring, make a down payment on your own soil’s fertility by starting a compost pile.

You’ll send less trash to the landfill, keep the stuff that rots and stinks out of your garbage can, and if you garden, your finished compost is sure to help you grow juicy heirloom tomatoes and delicious herbs.

OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.

When it’s done wrong, compost can certainly stink. But when done right, compost doesn’t stink. It has a mild, earthy aroma that I actually like. The solution is simple. Just add more cardboard, paper, twigs, wood chips, dead leaves, and other carbon-rich materials that will freshen the pile as they decompose. Plus, you can build or buy a bin that keeps rodents out if you worry about that.

Out of the 250 million tons of waste Americans produced in 2010, compostable materials like yard waste and food scraps made OtherWords.org up 27 percent. Another 29 percent was paper and 4-17-13

Liberal Opinion Week

May 1, 2013

31

Petula Dvorak

Escaping From Modern Day Slavery Esther is free now.

Free to go to church, have a picnic, drive a car, eat, sleep, shower, take out the trash, go outdoors and even free to get a haircut. These were all things she couldn’t do during that dark time when she was - essentially - a modern-day slave right here near the nation’s capital.

A few years ago, a kind lady at church suggested she make a run for it. “Run, run,” she told her. “Don’t shower, don’t change your clothes, don’t take anything.” Just run into the dark of early morning, through the nice, American neighborhood, when all are still asleep. And the kind lady from church picked her up at the rendezvous point.

Esther celebrates her emancipation day every day.

“Now, I have peace. Peace in my heart. It is happy. I am happy,” Esther told me, asking that I not reveal her full name or native country because she still fears her captors.

Esther is one of thousands of survivors of human trafficking in the United States.

The State Department estimates that more than 27 million people are trafficked around the world.

And we look at the foreign cases in horror - boys beaten and burned while forced to work in factories in India, girls tattooed with bar codes and their debt while forced to work in brothels in Spain.

But in 2010, the State Department began detailing our own problem with modern-day slavery in its report. And the White House hosted its first-ever forum on combating human trafficking last week.

of them domestic workers, like Esther.

When someone in her home town in Africa offered her a job in America six years ago, she was anxious for the opportunity.

“I have no one there. No family,” said Esther. She was 30 and still living with the family who adopted her after her parents died.

Her captors were friends of her adoptive family who said they would pay her $500 a month to be their housekeeper. The American family shook hands with the African one, and they bought her a plane ticket.

The day she arrived in Washington, her host family took away her visa and her passport.

“They said I don’t need them,” Esther told me. And they told her to cook dinner that night.

The next morning, they gave her the crying baby and told her to do all the laundry and clean the floors and to cook for all the families who kept coming over.

“They had many parties, many people.”

She tied the screaming infant to her back, “like we do in Africa,” and got to work, with the bellowing husband always behind her, threatening to hit her. She wasn’t allowed to eat until the entire family had eaten.

“I got thin, so thin, like this,” she says, holding up her pinky finger.

At that point in her story, I had to ask Esther why she didn’t just leave or ask for help.

“They tell me the police will get me. . . . Behead me,” she said, chopping the back of her neck with her hand. “That is what they do in my country. So I believe that is what happens here.”

And when she tells this part of the story, her face grows drawn, wrinkles slash her high forehead and her eyes narrow.

The husband works for one of the big nongovernmental organizations in town. And the wife?

“She not work. And when the husband tell me he is going to hit me, she just tell me: ‘Work!

Work!’”

The numbers aren’t huge.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated the United States had 2,500 cases from 2008 to 2010.

But a group in Washington - the Polaris Project - reported nearly 20,000 calls for help nationally in 2012.

Many are forced into sex work, young girls brought across the border with the promise of a better life. Or runaways who are coerced into believing that they’ve found a new home.

The rest are laborers, many For Esther, this was a strange,

new world. One much more complex than her home country she recalled staring for an hour at the moving walkway in the airport before she found the courage to board it. And she knew no one except her employers. It became easy to see how she might have been too afraid to flee the small apartment where she was held captive.

And what her captors did - the seizing of the passport, the threats, the isolation - is textbook human trafficking, according to Carolina De Los Rios, the director of Client Services at the Polaris Project and an expert on America’s hidden slave trade.

On any day, there are about 60 Esthers who just escaped from their captors in the nation’s capital, people - usually women - who were trafficked as either labor or sex slaves.

Many escape and rebuild their lives through an underground railroad right in the heart of Washington, run by the Polaris Project.

There, the women find food and clothing. One day, I walked in on a financial class for three young women; computer training was happening on the other side of the room.

The usual tipster is a first responder - a police officer, firefighter, paramedic - who happens into a weird situation that has the signs of human trafficking.

The captors won’t let people speak for themselves and won’t

let them outside or out of their sight. The victims have no papers, no identification, and the captor is stepping in between every interaction.

Esther begged for months to go to church. Finally, the family relented, but the husband waited at the door for her throughout the service. A woman at church noticed Esther was always crying when she prayed, so she sat next to her and asked. After a couple of weeks, Esther told her about her situation.

The kind woman who rescued Esther took her to an immigration lawyer, who immediately saw the situation as trafficking and called Polaris.

Polaris employees work in an undisclosed location, so vigilant are they about protecting the survivors they’ve helped liberate.

I had to meet them outside a restaurant. I was then led to their offices and had to sign a statement promising I wouldn’t disclose their location.

In the secret location, Esther began to learn English, got her green card, enrolled in classes and opened a bank account. She now works as a home health aide and just got her driver’s license.

But she is always, always fearful that she’ll encounter the man and woman who held her captive.

“I feel like he is always behind me, looking for me,” she said. (c) 2013, The Washington Post 4-16-13

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