Race in Your Face
In an interview with Mark Oppenheimer, Algernon Austin takes liberals and conservatives to task on race and racism
Fair Haven's Algernon Austin says that many famous black intellectuals are getting it all wrong.

Algernon Austin is what you might call an intellectual entrepreneur. He's trying to earn a living by trafficking in ideas. A resident of the Fair Haven section of New Haven, Austin left a tenure-track job at Wesleyan University to start the Thora Institute (thorainstitute.org), a one-man think tank that he hopes will become influential in American debates about race. He's the author of two books. The first, Achieving Blackness: Race, Black Nationalism, and Afrocentrism in the Twentieth Century, was published this month by NYU Press; the second, Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals Are Failing Black America, will be published in June.

Quote of note:

"If we're at a point that we need a national ID card, then let's do that," Mr. Huckabee said. "But let's not act like we're addressing this at a federal level and then blame the states if they mess it up. There's not a governor in America that wants that responsibility."

Mandate for ID Meets Resistance From States
By PAM BELLUCK

Reacting to the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress passed the Real ID law last year, intending to make it tougher for terrorists to obtain driver's licenses and for people without proper identification to board planes or enter federal buildings.

[TS] A Taste of His Own Medicine
By JOHN TIERNEY

Now that Rush Limbaugh has managed to keep himself out of prison, the punishment he once advocated for drug abusers, let me suggest a new cause for him: speaking out for people who can handle their OxyContin.

Like Limbaugh, Richard Paey suffers from back pain, which in his case is so severe that he's confined to a wheelchair. Also like Limbaugh, he was accused of illegally obtaining large quantities of painkillers. Although there was no evidence that either man sold drugs illegally, the authorities in Florida zealously pursued each of them for years.

Unlike Limbaugh, Paey went to prison. Now 47 years old, he's serving the third year of a 25-year term. His wife told me that when he heard how Limbaugh settled his case last week — by agreeing to pay $30,000 and submit to drug tests — Paey offered a simple explanation: "The wealthy and influential go to rehab, while the poor and powerless go to prison."

Statistics Aside, Many Feel Pinch of Daily Costs
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

BRANDON, Fla., May 2 — As a rule, when Americans feel financially pinched, the causes are clear: high unemployment, soaring interest rates, depressed home values and a wilting stock market.

But many Americans now say they are feeling squeezed in the absence of these factors. Their concerns are instead centered on a combination of high gasoline prices, creeping insurance costs and the pressure of a large number of adjustable-rate mortgages, now jumping to market rates, that helped to fuel one of the largest housing booms in American history.

Nice article.

The Great Republican Rebranding
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Saturday, May 6, 2006; A17

...The poor, the poor, the poor, the poor are not typical words in a Republican's political litany, and that is the point. Santorum has been running behind for months in his reelection struggle against the popular Democratic state treasurer, Robert Casey Jr. If Santorum doesn't change his image, he loses.

Santorum is nothing if not shrewd. Running with the 1994 conservative tide, he won his seat from then-incumbent Harris Wofford after characterizing AmeriCorps, the national service initiative and a Wofford legislative monument, as a program "for hippie kids to stand around a campfire and sing 'Kumbaya' at taxpayers' expense." (Santorum later became an AmeriCorps supporter.) With the tide running the other way 12 years later, Santorum is eager to cast himself as a champion of social justice.

In Sunday's Washington Post, Byron York will ask the musical question, John McCain: Can He Be A Falwell Republican?

Silly question. He already is one.

McCain's visit to Liberty University is indeed a conciliatory signal not just to Falwell but to millions of Christian conservatives who question the depth of McCain's commitment on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. But it is as much a chance for Falwell and his supporters to assert their influence in the Republican Party -- an influence that has waned in recent years.

Expediency overrides principle. We KNOW McCain is aware of the racist slurs and other nastiness Bush pulled in 2000.

Quote of note:

The department justified its decision by a combination of evidence and law. That included confidential commercial information that the department says it cannot make public; a very broad definition of the marketplace to include foreign companies, some of which have yet to make a bigger push in the United States; and an expansive reading of the economic efficiency defense for permitting such deals. 

The decision demoralized the career ranks of the antitrust division at the Justice Department, officials there have said. And it left private antitrust practitioners in Washington wondering whether, in light of the decision and the flurry of corporate dealers, there are could really be any mergers that this administration would challenge.

New View of Antitrust Law: See No Evil, Hear No Evil
By STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON

Quote of note:

If you dig a bit deeper than the base growth statistics, though, the picture clarifies considerably. Our economy has grown so starkly unequal that the statistician's view now says surprisingly little about the average American's experience. Last quarter may have seen 4.8% growth, but hidden in those numbers was a depressing factoid: Wages had only grown 0.7% — slower than housing, health or gasoline costs. 

That's been the story of the last few years, a rising tide that lifts only yachts. It used to be that economic growth ensured wide benefits across society. But the last four years of economic expansion have been historic for the steadily increasing poverty rate — a depressing sign that inequality has so split the poor from the rich that the two hardly inhabit the same economy.

A rising tide that lifts only yachts
By Ezra Klein
EZRA KLEIN is a writing fellow for the American Prospect. He also writes a blog at www.ezraklein.com.
May 5, 2006

If Tenet, Bremer and Franks get one...

Mr. Goss's time with the C.I.A. was marked by the departure of many long-time agency officials, some of whom complained that he had been overly political in his approach to his job. Mr. Goss sometimes appeared uncomfortable in the office, as when he remarked in early 2005 that the workload was heavy and he sometimes felt pulled in different directions.

Mr. Goss's departure comes as the president and his top aides are trying to reinvigorate an administration whose public support has sagged in recent public opinion surveys. The new White House chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, has already announced some changes and has said that more are on the way. And he pointedly invited people who were thinking of leaving the administration by the end of the year to step down a lot sooner.

Analysis of Tax Bill Finds More Benefits for the Rich
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

The tax cut bill that Senate and House leaders have generally agreed upon is expected to save Americans at the center of the income distribution an average of $20 each, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

The top tenth of 1 percent, whose average income is $5.3 million, would save an average of $82,415. Those in the top group would see their tax bill cut 4.8 percent, while Americans at the center of the income distribution — the middle fifth of taxpayers, who will earn an average of $36,000 this year — could expect a 0.4 percent reduction in their tax bill, or about $20.

Those who make less than $75,000 — which includes about 75 percent of all taxpayers — would save, at most, $110 each. Those making more than $1 million would save, on average, almost $42,000.

Any questions?

"I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!"

U.S. Warns Russia to Act More Like A Democracy
St. Petersburg Hosts G-8 Summit in July
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 5, 2006; A01

The Bush administration has warned Russia that the upcoming summit of the Group of Eight nations in St. Petersburg could be a debacle unless the Kremlin takes specific actions in the coming weeks to demonstrate a commitment to democracy, according to U.S. officials.

The administration has privately identified to Moscow concrete steps it should take before the July meeting, such as registering civil society groups that have been harassed, as a way of deflecting criticism that Russia has no business hosting a summit of democratic nations. And administration officials have sharpened their rhetoric about Russia's backslide toward autocracy.

Quote of note:

...The provisions, which draw on the USA Patriot Act of 2001, were enacted last year as part of the Real ID Act and incorporated into U.S. immigration law. One involves a catchall definition of "terrorist organization," said to be any group of two or more people who bear arms with the intent to endanger the safety of any individual.

...The lack of specificity in the law has created problems for groups as varied as Colombian refugees fleeing the terrorism of leftist insurgents and Liberian women raped and forced into servitude by rebels. Its restrictiveness is affecting even groups whose causes the Bush administration supports, such as some in Afghanistan who aided the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.

Immigration Waiver Granted to Refugees
Some Burmese Lose Pro-Terrorism Label
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 5, 2006; A14

I think I remember hearing the Beltway definition of 'blunder' is "a politician giving an honest opinion." Seems economics and business types can blunder as well.

The Apprentice Maestro's Missteps
By David Ignatius
Friday, May 5, 2006; Page A19

Alan Greenspan was often accused of being incomprehensible in his public utterances. "If you understood what I said, I must have misspoken," he famously told a senator once. Yet in private, Greenspan communicated so clearly through a network of invisible intermediaries that his actions rarely surprised the financial markets.

Now the world economy is adjusting to an apprentice maestro in Ben Bernanke, and the wires are getting crossed. The new Fed chairman is communicating too bluntly in public and too opaquely on the hidden channels that steady the markets. It took Greenspan years to perfect his weird combination of opacity and clarity, but the financial world will be unhappy if Bernanke doesn't quickly learn the art of indirect communication.

VERY little thought.

Last Sunday's Boston Globe carried an alarming 4,000-word front-page article about President Bush and the Constitution. It seems that Bush has asserted the right to ignore "vast swaths of the law" simply because he thinks that these laws are unconstitutional.

The article is specifically about "signing statements," in which the president offers his interpretation of an act of Congress as he signs it into law. This was an innovation of the Reagan administration, intended to give courts something other than a law's legislative history -- that is, Congress's side of the story -- in any future dispute. Bush often signs a law and at the same time says that parts of it are unconstitutional. Sneaky!

The Globe does not report what it thinks a president ought to do when called upon to enforce or obey a law he or she believes to be unconstitutional. It's not an easy question.

Sure it is..

Justice Department Alleges Discrimination Against White Voters in Mississippi
Tuesday , May 02, 2006

MACON, Miss. — Ike Brown is a legend in Mississippi politics, a fast-talking operative both loved and hated for his ability to turn out black voters and get his candidates into office.

That success has also landed him at the heart of a federal lawsuit that's about to turn the Voting Rights Act on its end.

For the first time, the U.S. Justice Department is using the 1965 law to allege racial discrimination against whites.

Why not? The Just-us department did a really bang-up job undermining the the National Science Foundation's Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Program.

Charles S. Dutton's Black Separatist Miniseries Worries HBO
Date: Tuesday, May 02, 2006
By: EURweb.com

Consider the plot of the forthcoming 10-hour miniseries being developed by actor Charles S. Dutton for HBO: African Americans in a black separatist movement are given their own state within the U.S. under a multibillion-dollar reparations package.

But...

The new state must only take in the poor, imprisoned and downtrodden blacks in the U.S. The theme of the series is supposed to ponder the possibility of blacks prospering in an environment where there is no white man to blame for their predicament.       

"HBO seems a little afraid of it; it's very provocative,” the actor tells entertainment columnists Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith. The cable network reportedly wants Dutton to write the story as a novel first before moving forward with a miniseries.      

What's Really Behind the Plunge in Teen Pregnancy?
It's time to look at boys' contributions.
By Liza Mundy
Posted Wednesday, May 3, 2006, at 10:20 AM ET

May 3—in case you didn't know it—is "National Day To Prevent Teen Pregnancy." In the past decade, possibly no social program has been as dramatically effective as the effort to reduce teen pregnancy, and no results so uniformly celebrated. Between 1990 and 2000 the U.S. teen pregnancy rate plummeted by 28 percent, dropping from 117 to 84 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-19. Births to teenagers are also down, as are teen abortion rates. It's an achievement so profound and so heartening that left and right are eager to take credit for it, and both can probably do so. Child-health advocates generally acknowledge that liberal sex education and conservative abstinence initiatives are both to thank for the fact that fewer teenagers are ending up in school bathroom stalls sobbing over the results of a home pregnancy test.

What, though, if the drop in teen pregnancy isn't a good thing, or not entirely? What if there's a third explanation, one that has nothing to do with just-say-no campaigns or safe-sex educational posters? What if teenagers are less fertile than they used to be?

Not the girls—the boys?

...when I said Let the redevelopment begin?

As Waterfront Smolders, Attention Turns to a Failed Deal