Articles of Interest 8-26-07
439 Days until election day.
MORNING UPDATE:
Michigan Republicans unanimously approved early Presidential Primary rules and procedures.
Democrat National Committee slaps Florida Democrats…toss-up or “anti-Democrat…a great opportunity
************************************************************************
FOR THE LATEST NEWS, COMMENTARY & INFORMATION:
www.migop.blogs.com
Check…out…our…blog………News…you…can…use………
************************************************************************
THE REST OF THE STORY:
Thanks again to all the State Committee and County Chairs who worked so hard to set up our 2008 process and allow use to come out of the State Committee meeting united and ready for victory!
I appreciate everyone's hard work, patience, willingness to compromise and come to a general consensus. I understand some may not be completely satisfied, but the system worked because all of you made it work.
We agreed to disagree on certain points...but lets keep in mind our end goal is to elect Republicans....and lets start focusing our energies on them...not one another.
The Michigan Republican State Committee of the Michigan Republican Party, during its quarterly meeting held in Lansing, unanimously approved a Jan. 15, 2008, state-run presidential primary and its corresponding rules.
We unanimously support a state-run primary. We are united. Moving up the primary will make Michigan the first major industrial state to hold a presidential primary and will give our voters a chance to educate the next president of the United States about Michigan and its specific issues. Republicans and Democrats agree that Michigan must move up its primary in order to be relevant in the presidential selection process.
In addition to affirming its preference for a state-run presidential primary, the Michigan Republican State Committee also established rules to apportion delegates to the 2008 Republican National Convention. Specific action by the committee decided today included:
· Affirming its support for a semi-open/semi-close presidential. The exact date currently being negotiated between legislative leaders and Governor Granholm;
· Apportioning delegates by winner-take-all by Congressional Districts and at-large delegates by a percentage of the raw vote for presidential candidates;
· Adopting, unanimously, the rules that will govern the Republican convention that will follow that primary, where delegates will be apportioned; and,
· Ratifying a contingency plan in the event a state-run primary is not held. If such a circumstance was to occur, a Republican state convention will be held on Jan. 25-26, 2008. The state committee also unanimously approved rules to govern the process for such a convention.
On Wednesday, the Michigan Senate passed legislation setting Jan. 15, 2008, as the state for a joint Republican and Democrat presidential convention. The state House of Representatives currently will be considering the legislation next week.
We encourage everyone who supports this process to call your State Representative, Republican or Democrat, and encourage them to vote for the Presidential Primary.
-The Democratic National Committee voted to take away 100% off all the delegates from Florida to the their National Convention. Wow…could we be so lucky?
RNC rules say if you go early, states could lose 50% of their delegate. Very few believe that will happen - unless there is a brokered convention that such sanctions would actually stand.
However, the Democrats at the DNC just went wild this weekend. Could you imagine if the DNC said the same thing to Michigan….please slap the Democrats around. All “The Mayor” has to do…and maybe the Governor is “sit on their hands”. Disenfranchise the Democrat base and Michigan tilts our way.
I’m sure the Florida Democrats will fight back as well. Could you imagine some of their top constituent groups or leadership saying the same thing? You poke a stick in our eye, we’ll poke back!
As with both Republicans and Democrats, ultimately the nominees will want to unite the parties behind their candidacy and go into November 2008 with one voice…seating everybody.
It’s the system that has encouraged this “leap-frogging” ahead. The system is broken and there is every incentive to “violate” these rules. If you attempt to live within the rules, which I believe most start out planning to do you risk being irrelevant on the national scene.
So we have to make a choice. The Michigan Democrats announced early that they would challenge the “system”. We announced early that we preferred to go on February 5th, but would follow the Democrats if “we have to” because we prefer to hold a primary.
Everyone is talking about “reform”. We’ll see. But we have decided to go with the Democrats, and in a bi-partisan effort, to hold an early primary to make Michigan relevant. Let’s see if the Democrats really over-play their hand and give us a unique opportunity as they disenfranchise their party loyalist and grassroots troops!
Saul Anuzis
STATE STORIES
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/OPINION03/708260308/1008/OPINION01
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Business surveys show state still lacking
Manny Lopez
It could be worse, Michigan. We could be West Virginia.
Or Louisiana, Maine or Alaska. They're the only states in the nation that are actually worse places in which to do business than Michigan, according to Forbes magazine's most recent "Best States for Business" list.
Unfortunately, we no longer can hang our hat on not being Mississippi. As the 43rd best state for business, Mississippi is snickering at us in the passing lane. The Magnolia State moved up five spots, while we dropped a notch to the 46th best (fifth worst?) state for business.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/OPINION01/708260304/1008
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Look south to see factory flexibility the Big 3 need
Executives of the Big Three automakers know what they have to do to turn around their North American operations, and most of the workers know, too. They need only look south to get a better sense of what to expect.
Not in Alabama or Tennessee, but in Brazil.
It is in South America's largest nation that Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. are changing the way cars and trucks are made.
Workers not only know how to do more than one job in the auto plant, but they want to be cross-trained and can be ready to do seven or eight jobs skillfully. Suppliers work inside the factory, too, speeding delivery and improving quality.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/NEWS06/708260646/1008
August 26, 2007
A dying Muskegon tries to revive its downtown through tax breaks
Initiatives bring only short-term success, critics say
MUSKEGON -- In economic development, Muskegon's downtown is the emergency room.
Federal, state and local governments have launched an intensive intervention to revive a dying industrial city battered for decades by a changing economy and global competition.
Muskegon's downtown has vacant blocks with parking lots and no buildings. It has abandoned factories riddled with broken windows. It has competition from big-box stores on the outskirts of town.
Muskegon also has a core of local officials and businesspeople who have refused to give up. The city, the Chamber of Commerce and other groups have secured millions of dollars in tax breaks, grants and subsidies that federal, state and local governments have to offer.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/NEWS06/708260608/1008
August 26, 2007
MICHIGAN
Merit exam scores like other states
Colorado, Illinois also saw big declines
The news looked bleak earlier this month when the Michigan Department of Education released the inaugural scores from the Michigan Merit Exam.
The scores from the exam, a collection of tests that includes the ACT, suggest large numbers of Michigan students are strikingly unprepared for postsecondary education.
But the performance is exactly what should have been expected, based on the experiences of Colorado and Illinois which, like Michigan, switched to the ACT as their primary high school test. "Both saw significant drops in their ACT scores," said Ed Colby, spokesman for the ACT, said of Colorado and Illinois. Both made the switch in 2001.
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/NEWS01/308240014
Schwarz, Giuliani winners in 7th District poll
If the 2008 election were held today, 7th District residents would vote for Rudy Giuliani for president and Joe Schwarz for Congress.
A newly released poll of 600 registered voters by Glengariff Group Inc., a Chicago-based Republican polling firm, showed the the once-solid Republican district has shifted Democratic-independent.
The poll, taken July 24 to 28, showed 36 percent of voters in the seven-county district identified as Democrats, 29 percent as Republicans and 12 percent independent.
If Schwarz, a Battle Creek Republican, were to run as a Democrat, the poll shows him beating U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, 44 percent to 41 percent. Schwarz lost his congressional seat after Walberg defeated him in the 2006 GOP primary.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070825/NEWS06/708250330/1008/NEWS06
August 25, 2007
Hoekstra doubts Bush Iraq policy
Forget democracy, GOP leader says
EAST LANSING -- President George W. Bush should forget about forging a democracy in Iraq and focus on stabilizing the country and combating Islamic extremists, Michigan's top congressional Republican on foreign intelligence said Friday.
U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra said Iraq's tribal, Islamic culture is not receptive to democratic ideals. He said Bush should consider other ways to control Iraq, whose government, he said, is floundering under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
"The president has to be willing to say, 'I'm going to take democracy off the table. We're going to aim for safety and stability,' " Hoekstra said after taping public television's "Off the Record."
NATIONAL STORIES
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/NEWS06/708260678
August 26, 2007
Early primary has its perks
Michigan parties eager to move vote to January
Michigan's fractious Democrats and Republicans rallied last week around the notion that it's time to declare war on the outsize influence Iowa and New Hampshire have in picking presidential candidates.
The solution: Create a mid-January presidential primary to give Michigan voters outsize influence
Here are answers to some questions about the primaries.
QUESTION: Why should Michigan voters care whether we go early?
ANSWER: State politicians are nearly unanimous in the view that hosting an early primary in the 2008 election season presents a rare opportunity to make Michigan matter.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/POLITICS/708260342/1022
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Michigan warned: Dems order Fla. to rescind early primary or lose delegates
Gordon Trowbridge and Mark Hornbeck / The Detroit News
In a warning to Michigan and other states threatening to upend the presidential nomination calendar, the Democratic National Committee on Saturday ruled that Florida must rescind its decision to hold a primary on Jan. 29 or lose all its delegates to next summer's national party convention.
The vote could mean that Florida Democrats have no votes in choosing the party's presidential nominee. Michigan, which is expected to finalize this week a plan to move its primary to Jan. 15, also in violation of party rules, could suffer a similar fate if it forges ahead.
Saturday's vote raises the stakes in what has been a months-long battle for clout in the presidential nomination process. Michigan Democrats, led by Sen. Carl Levin, have complained for more than two decades about the privileged first-in-the-nation status accorded to Iowa and New Hampshire, two largely white, rural states with little of the manufacturing industry that is such a major part of the Michigan economy.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427655/site/newsweek/page/0/print/1/displaymode/1098/
Sept. 3, 2007 issue
Quindlen: Why Giuliani Victory Could Be Good for the GOP
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek
One of the complaints you hear a lot from readers when you're in my line of work and live in my part of the country is that you can't understand America from the vantage point of New York City. I'm beginning to think there's some truth to that, and it's all because of the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.
Ever since the presidency was a mere gleam in his eye, lots of New Yorkers have been predicting that Rudy, like a toddler or a genuine bagel, would not travel well across the country. It wasn't just the quasi-liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control: he could massage those, and sometimes has. It was his private life, which his former constituents have watched with all the avidity of a soaps addict tuning in to "All My Children." There was the annulment from the first wife, who was his second cousin, the press conference he used to inform the second wife that she was history, the girlfriend he met in the cigar bar who became wife number three, and the very public estrangement from his children, both of whom have suggested that they won't be stumping for Dad. To which the candidate recently responded at a town-hall meeting, "Leave my family alone, just like I'll leave your family alone."
Aug 26, 2007
Giuliani: Watch your wallet
By PHILIP ELLIOTT
The Associated Press
A |
Democratic president would raise taxes and ravage the economy, GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani said yesterday.
The former New York City mayor said he would lower taxes, make permanent President Bush's tax cuts and eliminate inheritance taxes.
"The Democrats believe in government when they have a choice. Republicans believe in people when we have a choice. . . . The Republican Party is the party of the people. The Democratic Party is the party of the government," Giuliani said at a town hall meeting in Manchester. He appeared with former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, who is a campaign adviser, and former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci.
Giuliani paid little attention to his GOP rivals while taking on the Democratic candidates.
"If you've never run anything, you sometimes have unrealistic ideas," he said, noting that none of the leading Democratic contenders has served as an executive. "This is not a place for on-the-job training."
Giuliani criticized Democrats who want to repeal Bush's cuts. "When it's working, let's change it. That's a brilliant philosophy. It sounds a little bit like Iraq," Giuliani said to laughter.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usrudy0826,0,4237338,print.story
August 26, 2007
Rudy: Dems will raise taxes
BY CRAIG GORDON
Rudy Giuliani warned Saturday that his Democratic rivals would hit American families with up to $3 trillion in tax hikes and promised to slash taxes as president, but he offered few specifics on how he'd find the money to pay for his plan.
Giuliani said if any of the top Democrats is elected president, a family of four earning $50,000 a year would pay more than $2,000 in additional taxes -- because most of the Democrats have proposed rolling back or eliminating President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
"I think the promise to raise taxes is a promise they will keep," Giuliani said. He pledged to make Bush's tax cuts permanent and focused on other targets of conservative ire in the tax code: killing the inheritance tax and "marriage penalty" that causes couples to pay more. He'd also cut corporate tax rates, which few expect Bush to accomplish before leaving office..
At one point, Giuliani mocked a statement by Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that the government sometimes must take taxes from people to pay for the "common good ... Do you understand what that implies?" he asked.
"Karl Marx?" someone in the audience responded, referring to the communist author.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/POLITICS/708260344/1022
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Thompson speaks to GOP activists, but doesn't tell all
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
INDIANAPOLIS -- Not-quite-presidential candidate Fred Thompson spoke to Republican activists from a dozen Midwest states Saturday night, making clear they should expect plenty of folksy banter and talk about the greatness of American, but no "30-point plans" and, at least for now, no campaign announcement.
"I believe on the present course we're going to be a weaker, less prosperous, more divided nation than what we are today," Thompson said, arguing that only reliance on the bedrock principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence would prevent that slide.
Though widely considered a candidate for the Republican nomination, Thompson has not formally declared himself a candidate, and despite a steady stream of rumors that an announcement is on the way soon, did not do so Saturday night.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/newt_advises_fred.html
August 25, 2007
Newt Advises Fred
By Robert Novak
WASHINGTON -- Fred Thompson's decision to announce his presidential candidacy with a video was suggested by Newt Gingrich, who is considered a possible contender himself.
Former House Speaker Gingrich has indicated he will run only if Thompson does not or his late-starting campaign crashes and burns. Actor-politician Thompson plans to follow the model of Democrat Hillary Clinton by launching his campaign with a video, followed by a fly-around to several cities.
Gingrich has expressed contempt for becoming one of many announced Republican candidates at crowded debates. Thompson has decided to be one of many at the Sept. 27 debate at Baltimore's Morgan State University.
August 25, 2007
Romney unveils healthcare reform plan
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday released his principles for national healthcare reform but left out the linchpin of the plan he enacted as governor of Massachusetts: a requirement that individuals get coverage.
That shift could help him win over conservative Republican primary voters, experts said. But if he succeeds in becoming the GOP nominee, he may have to zigzag back to his Massachusetts roots to appeal to independents and Democrats.
Speaking to doctors in South Florida, Romney said he would encourage each state to seek its own solution to the problem of 45 million uninsured people in America.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/elections_arent_won_on_paper.html
August 25, 2007
Elections Aren't Won on Paper
You can almost hear the Democrats singing: There's no way even we can lose the 2008 election. There's upheaval in Iraq, uncertainty in the financial markets, unease in the country. President Bush's disapproval ratings are at Richard Nixon levels. Many loyal party members think the GOP has veered off course. This is not an easy time to be a Republican.
But here's a word of caution to the Democrats and a word of perspective for the Republicans: Presidential elections are almost always easier to analyze in retrospect than in advance, and what appears to be clear 14 months before the voters go to the polls can often turn out to be muddied once the voting starts.
Though any sober politician would rather be in the Democrats' position today than in the Republicans', a Democratic victory next November is no sure bet, and a new Democratic era, powered by public revulsion of the errors of George W. Bush, is an even less certain development.
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=ready_to_rumble_2007
August 25, 2007
Ready to Rumble
Ronald Brownstein
Political reporter Matt Bai dissects today's Democratic Party, and urges it to move beyond the Clintonism of the '90s -- something that the current crop of presidential candidates (John Edwards excepted) doesn't seem all that inclined to do.
The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics by Matt Bai (The Penguin Press, 316 pages, $25.95)
Not since Watergate has the electoral landscape appeared as favorable for Democrats as it does today. All polls show gale-force discontent with the country's direction under President Bush (he recently received the second highest disapproval rating Gallup has ever recorded in seven decades of measuring attitudes about presidential performance). From the 2008 presidential candidates to the party campaign committees, Democrats are consistently outraising Republicans. Even the electoral calendar is cooperating: Democrats next year must defend only 12 Senate seats compared to 22 for Republicans, including seven in blue or Democrat-trending states where disillusionment with Bush and the Iraq War is most intense. Not all trends, though, are as positive for the party. Many Democratic strategists understandably remain uneasy about Congress' sinking approval ratings and the mixed performances by the leading 2008 Democratic presidential hopefuls in head-to-head polls against the top Republican candidates. But overall, it seems more relevant than it has in many years to ask how Democrats would govern if provided unified control of Congress and the White House.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0807/5515.html
'Nobody but Hillary' is hope of GOP
INDIANAPOLIS — He may be on his way out the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in coming days. But the party Karl Rove has labored to build over the past eight years seems to have picked up his talking points on next year’s presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and that could be the GOP’s saving grace in an otherwise uphill battle.
Conversations with Republicans gathered here for the biennial Midwest Republican Leadership Conference reflect a party unenthused or just plain uncertain about their potential White House nominee. But GOP faithful also seem quite confident and even upbeat about the prospect that the senator from New York is, as Rove put it, the “prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/25/AR2007082501112.html
Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page A04
Obama and Edwards Step Up Attacks on Front-Runner Clinton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Toiling behind Hillary Rodham Clinton in most national polls, her two main rivals in the 2008 Democratic presidential field, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, are increasingly seeking to contrast themselves with the New York senator.
The sharpest attacks are coming from Edwards, who in a speech in Hanover, N.H., on Thursday took several thinly veiled swipes at both Clinton and her husband's administration. Invoking the 1990s controversy over the Clintons' allowing major campaign donors to stay overnight at the White House, Edwards declared, "The Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent." And although Edwards did not name Clinton in that speech, Obama was more direct at a house party in Portsmouth, N.H., earlier in the week. "This last question I will prompt myself, and that's, 'Why you instead of Hillary?' That's in the back of minds of a lot of people," Obama said, the Associated Press reported.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/024nesep.asp
09/03/2007, Volume 012, Issue 47
The Horror! The Horror!
The paranoid style of the American left.
by Noemie Emery
The fascists are coming! Or rather, they're already here, installed in the White House, planning like mad to subvert the Constitution and extend their reign in perpetuity, having first suppressed and eviscerated all opposition and put all of their critics in jail. Thus goes the rant of America's increasingly unhinged left. If only, sigh many Bush partisans, wondering when this administration will get out of the fetal position and show some fighting spirit. To them, as to most reasonable observers, the White House shows the chronic fatigue of a two-term presidency reaching its final year. Nonetheless, paranoia about what Bush and Co. are up to preys on the minds of many progressives, who have progressed, in this case at least, beyond reason.
It Can Happen Here, says Joe Conason, in his book of the same name, and in fact it already has started: George W. Bush and his coterie are the very picture of the pious and scheming homegrown fascisti that Sinclair Lewis described in his 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here. Similarities abound. In Lewis's novel, "Buzz Windrip" (Bush), an illiterate dweeb with sleazy charm and low animal cunning, backed by Lee Sarason (Karl Rove), a smooth and duplicitous political mastermind, becomes president, cooks up a fake war to extend his own power, cows Congress, corrupts the courts, bankrupts the country, and all but destroys the free press. The core of his power is a sinister nexus of theocrats joined at the hip to corporate interests, and you can tell how evil they are by their proclaimed love of country, and their incessant talk about God. In their endeavors, they are backed by the Hearst newspaper empire (Fox News), the only one left after all other outlets have been shut down.
Fox News looms large in the liberal panic about creeping fascism--an immense smoke machine pumping poison gas into the atmosphere 24/7, against which there is neither escape nor defense.
Looking over Dems' purity primary
By RUTH MARCUS
EVERY CAMPAIGN has moments when candidates substitute political preening for substance. Such an episode is unfolding now in the Democratic field, and it involves that perennial pinata, the Washington lobbyist.
John Edwards and Barack Obama won't take lobbyist money; Hillary Clinton will. Edwards, angling for attention in the purity primary, has kicked things up a notch. He is calling on all Democrats to reject lobbyist contributions, and calling on Obama to join him in that call.
Of course, the folks who would be most delighted with this outcome are lobbyists, the target of relentless haranguing for campaign cash. Of course, it's not going to happen: Democrats, back in partial power and desperate to keep it, aren't about to give up a dime from any (legal) source.
Edwards is no less tainted by the trial-lawyer money he scoops up by the bucketful than he would be by lobbyist contributions. Obama is no more ethical now than when he was an unknown Senate candidate dutifully calling lobbyists and asking for a check, please.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Hillary's running mate race: Sen. Dodd and Gov. Richardson are possibilities
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Democrats are increasingly giving evidence that they seem to feel that they have already held their primaries and nominated the former first lady. Neither national debates nor Obama’s increasingly assertive foreign policy proposals seem to weaken her hold on the nomination. Even Edwards’ vocal and effective criticisms of Clinton's ties to special interests appear to do nothing to cut into her lead. Instead, it just keeps on growing.
Have the Democrats, in their hearts, anointed Clinton as their candidate already? Do they regard the criticisms of her fellow candidates as just fissures in a party they are determined to keep united and focused on the objective of defeating President Bush? Are they rallying around their standard-bearer a year before she is awarded their standard?
The Democratic desire to bring the Bush administration to an end and their desperation to terminate the war in Iraq is so polarizing the electoral process that there seems to be little room for primaries anymore. The notion that Democrats compete against one another to find out, at best, who would be a good president and, at worst, which would be most likely to win, seems to becoming increasingly passé. In a sense, the entire primary process, which has dominated presidential selection since 1972, appears to be losing its grip in the face of a determination to rally around the candidate, even if she be anointed, in the first instance, by the established leaders of the party, meeting, these days, in a smoke-free environment to make their choice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082402009.html
Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page B07
Bloomberg And Hagel For 2008?
Chuck Hagel, the senator from Nebraska, describes himself as a "tidal" politician, one who believes that larger forces in society shape careers more than the ambitions of individuals. "The only mistakes I've made," he told me last week, "were when I tried to go against the tide."
Today, that tide may be carrying him away from his Republican Party and toward a third-party or independent ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- a development that could reshape the dynamics of the 2008 presidential race.
Next month, Hagel will make a threshold decision -- whether to run for a third term in the Senate. He gave me no definitive answer, but my guess is that he will say that 12 years of battling the institutional lethargy of Capitol Hill will be enough. Certainly he is under no illusions about how much he can achieve as one of 100 lawmakers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401697.html
Saturday, August 25, 2007; Page A15
Taking Exception
The Folly Of Higher Gas Taxes
By Mary E. Peters
America was stunned on Aug. 1 when the Interstate 35 West bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed in a tangle of vehicles, concrete and steel. My department is working closely with the National Transportation Safety Board to determine why the bridge failed, and in the aftermath of this tragedy, a necessary national conversation has begun concerning the state of the nation's bridges and highways and the financial model used to build, maintain and operate them.
Many, including The Post [" Paying the Price," editorial, Aug. 21], are taking this opportunity to call for gasoline tax increases and a larger federal presence in transportation investment decisions. For a variety of reasons, a response of this sort would exacerbate our transportation system failures, not alleviate them.
A far better question than whether gas taxes are high enough is what taxpayers get if we expand our dependence on the gasoline tax. The answer is almost certainly higher gas prices, more congestion and stagnating quality of life, which is why The Post's call for a substantial increase in the nation's gas tax is ill-advised.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=14019&R=114A91E41A
09/03/2007, Volume 012, Issue 47
Hands Off My Analogy
Liberals object when Bush discusses Vietnam.
by Matthew Continetti
On August 22, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, Missouri, President Bush delivered a 43-minute speech in which he compared the war in Iraq, and America's war on Islamic terrorism in general, to the three large 20th-century U.S. military interventions in Asia. The most controversial section of Bush's speech was 15 paragraphs likening those who claimed that America was the problem in Vietnam and that "if we would just withdraw, the killing would end" to those who today are saying similar things about Iraq. Bush's speech received an enthusiastic response from the audience, which frequently burst into applause (some 36 times, according to the White House transcript). Advocates of American withdrawal from Iraq were far less enthusiastic about the comparison of Iraq to Vietnam. Which is curious, as opponents of the war have been comparing that conflict to Vietnam since at least 2002, long before Saddam was deposed.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/vietnam-people-america-1821074-times-new
Saturday, August 25, 2007
They wait for us to run again
Mark Steyn:
George W. Bush gave a speech about Iraq last week, and in the middle of it he did something long overdue: He attempted to appropriate the left's most treasured all-purpose historical analogy. Indeed, Vietnam is so ubiquitous in the fulminations of politicians, academics and pundits that we could really use anti-trust legislation to protect us from shopworn historical precedents. But, in the absence thereof, the president has determined that we might at least learn the real "lessons of Vietnam."
"Then as now, people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end," Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention Aug. 22. "Many argued that if we pulled out there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people … . A columnist for the New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: 'It's difficult to imagine,' he said, 'how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.' A headline on that story, dateline Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: 'Indochina Without Americans: For Most a Better Life.' The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be."
I don't know about "the world," but apparently a big chunk of America still believes in these "misimpressions." As the New York Times put it, "In urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Mr. Bush is challenging the historical memory that the pullout from Vietnam had few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies."
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/OPINION03/708260306
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Continue surge and change Iraq government
Charles Krauthammer
After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so.
In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities on the ground in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both critics and supporters of the war, agree that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the national political level the Maliki government remains a disaster.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/OPINION03/708260312
Iraq debate heads for a rancorous moment
George Will
Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable.
After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power.
The Weimar Republic was fragile; America's domestic tranquility is not. Still, remember the bitterness stirred by the accusatory question "Who lost China?" and corrosive suspicions that the fruits of victory in Europe had been squandered by Americans of bad character or bad motives at Yalta.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401974.html
Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page B07
Post-Iraq Strategy
The Bush administration, beyond the daily temperature readings about the progress of the U.S. troop surge in Baghdad, is making a subtle but important shift in its strategy for the Middle East -- establishing containment of Iranian power in the region as a top American priority.
A simple shorthand for this approach might be "back to the future," for it is strikingly reminiscent of American strategy during the 1980s after the Iranian revolution. The cornerstone is a political-military alliance with the dominant Sunni Arab powers -- especially Saudi Arabia. The hardware will be new arms sales to Israel, Egypt and the Saudis. The software will be a refurbished Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
"The message to Iran is, 'We're still powerful, we protect our friends, we're not going away,' " explains a senior State Department official.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401645.html
Saturday, August 25, 2007; Page A15
The Work Behind Our Iraq Views
By Michael O'Hanlon
How can one gather and assess information about Iraq -- collected on a trip or from any other source? Information from a war zone is difficult to attain and interpretation is open to many views.
Unfortunately, much of the blogosphere and other media outlets have emphasized the wrong question, challenging the integrity of anyone who dares to express politically incorrect views about Iraq. Last week, Jonathan Finer criticized on this page [" Green Zone Blinders," Aug. 18] a New York Times essay that Ken Pollack and I wrote, as well as the comments of several senators, for claiming too much insight based on short trips to Iraq. Finer suggested that we did not leave the Green Zone, although we frequently did, on this and other trips, and he ignored how critical Pollack and I have been of administration policy in the past.
Worse, Finer and critics such as Rep. Jack Murtha and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald have suggested that our analyses are based on a few days of military "dog-and-pony shows." Our assessments are based on our observations as well as on years of study. That experience creates networks of colleagues such as military officers whose off-the-record insights can inform ours and who in the past have often told us when they did not think their strategies were working or could work.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082401971.html
What Sarkozy Won't Change
Sunday, August 26, 2007; Page B07
PARIS -- French libraries are said to file their nation's constitutions -- there have been more than a dozen since 1789; the current one is a relatively ancient 49 years old -- under periodicals. Now Nicolas Sarkozy, France's peripatetic new president, has created a commission on constitutional reform. The commission includes Jack Lang, who, as minister of culture in 1983 under President Francois Mitterrand, staged a sublimely unserious conference on the (supposed) world economic crisis, featuring the likes of Sophia Loren, Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer.
Is Sarkozy a serious man? Some American conservatives consider him a kindred spirit and think they see in his election a heartening portent of their coming revival: He succeeded an intensely unpopular two-term president of his own party (Jacques Chirac) by promising bold reforms. Perhaps.
Sarkozy does know of Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, who was one of Margaret Thatcher's intellectual heroes. Sarkozy has, however, said, "I don't wake up every morning asking what Hayek or Adam Smith would have done." That is, unfortunately, obvious. A fountain of suspiciously opaque formulations (he advocates "regulated liberalism" and "humane globalization"), he is pleased that "the word 'protection' is no longer taboo." (When was it ever taboo in France?)
August 25, 2007
Challenging the UN's darker side
UNITED NATIONS Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, now eight months in office, is proving that his courteous manner should not be mistaken for lack of resolve. The Korean diplomat's administration has spoken out for the victims of Darfur, confronted Sri Lanka over the killings of aid workers, and acted to establish the international tribunal on the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon. Quietly but firmly, Ban is helping to confirm the UN's indispensable role in the wor