Entries for July 2006

One of the best political magazines around is the Democratic Leadership Council's bimonthly Blueprint, edited by my former U.S. News colleague Peter Ross Range. This month's issue has several thoughtful and interesting articles. I'd like to focus on one, Austan Goolsbee's "Democratic Capitalism." Goolsbee is an economics professor at the University of Chicago but not a discipleine of the "Chicago school" of Milton Friedman and others. He's bothered, as many Democrats and the editorial writers of the Washington Post are, by the apparent rise in economic inequality in the United States. In this article, he focuses not on incomes but on wealth:

Demographics

The Washington Post had a nice story yesterday on Page A2 on demographer William Frey. Frey teaches at the University of Michigan and also works at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He also has his own website and has helped set up other demographic websites. I have found his work to be first-rate. I found only one irritating passage in the story:

This has been a big news week. Israel's campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon continues into its third week, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continues to resist calls to negotiate a cease-fire. Rep. Mike Pence and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison brought forward an immigration bill, with border enforcement and guest worker provisions, which may form the basis of a bill that is passable in both the House and the Senate. I've commented on Pence's approach before.

The Middle East

Here is my Creators Syndicate column for this week, via realclearpolitics.com. The Hezbollah attack on Israel was launched when I was on vacation, so I probably have some catching up to do. But it strikes me that this is a Middle East crisis very different from those of the past. We see the governments of Arab states blaming not Israel but Hezbollah and inferentially Iran for the attacks. For years we have been told that in order to please the Arabs, we need to settle the Israel/Palestine issue, by forcing Israel to make concession after concession.

Mexico: What accounts for the durability of the PRI system, which lasted from 1929 to 2000? Under that system, each president served just one six-year term and in his sixth year chose his successor, who became the PRI candidate. The nominee was said to have been chosen by dedazo, by his predecessor's finger. Why did this system last so long? Because, I think, it was in sync with the Aztec side of Mexico's part-European, part-Mesoamerican culture. In three ways:

While I'm away, my assistant, Brian Sopp, has put together a few issues worth considering.

There is a good post on "Phi Beta Cons" about the deans of several journalism schools coming to the defense of the New York Times's publication of information about SWIFT. The deans wrote in the Washington Post that the government's objections to the Times story were unfounded.