Letters to the Editor
i_like_tuesday
Published Letters: 25 Editor's Choice: 4
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Sending it to the French - Please Hurry!
[Read the article: What will YOU do with your fiscal stimulus check?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I hope they get the check in mail before the dollar's decline against the Euro puts half a case of LR's 2000 Crystal out of reach.
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Let's throw around some labels and call it a "debate"
[Read the article: The most left-wing president since Nixon?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think this blog entry misses the mark somewhat. The paragraph quoted from the economist's blog quotes a column/blog entry from Clive Crook which appeared in the FT. Since it's all getting a little too meta around here, I'll add those more eloquent words to this debate (link below). Crook writes,
"Mr Obama is a paradox, as yet unresolved. His plan and his votes in the Senate show that he is a liberal, not a centrist. And he is no wavering or accidental liberal. His ideas are of a piece. He sees – or convinces people that he sees – a bigger picture. And yet this leftist visionary is pragmatic, non-ideological and accommodating of dissent. More than that, in fact, he seems keen to listen to and learn from those who disagree with him. What a strange and beguiling combination this is."
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Overproduced Festival of Mediocrity
[Read the article: Does Oscar hate his own smell?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is quite aparent that the Oscars boil down to the lowest common denominator. All that pomp and circumstance is more about the celebrity industry than the film industry. Who can bear to watch?
In this light is it really any wonder that "foreigners" win the prizes when most "American" films are focus-grouped into artistic irrelevence and have the shelf life of unpasteurized milk. Despite this year's highly visible triumph of the "outsider", the oscars are really nothing more than a well-dressed marketing campaign to increase DVD sales of star-driven blockbusters.
However, much more frequently the Oscars self-annoint mediocre films as "masterpieces", going to great lengths to validate a near-universal lack of artistic vision and risk-taking. Making money is, after all, the only thing in Hollywood. Best to stick to a proven formula and leave the risk-taking to the government-subsidized europeans.
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@ Reality-based Liberal
[Read the article: McCain, Obama spar over war in Iraq ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Would you like something else to wash down that bad acid instead? You don't think that the U.S., having invaded Iraq, now has some kind of responsiblity to the people of that country? You don't think that Russert's inane hypothetical presents a slightly different situation than when Bush decided to invade Iraq? Somehow I doubt Obama and Clinton were proposing an unjustified unilateral invasion based on lies and debunked intelligence.
Obama's response to McCain was spot on, and the response to Russert's question was spot on. The argument that both Clinton and Obama should've taken the option off the table is the same kind of impoverished strategic thinking that has had the democrats cowering on the national security issue for so many years. The excitement surrounding Obama's remarks is because it's clear he's going to respond to republican attacks in an area perceived to be his weakness - not doing so would have been the latest iteration of a losing strategy. But, for either candidate to say "No, I wouldn't reinvade Iraq if Al Qaeda took the country over" in response to a far-fetched hypothetical would provide the right wing noise machine with enough ammunition to kill off their chances of winning the presidency.
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Common Sense on Trade
[Read the article: The chronicles of Austan Goolsbee]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The controversy over NAFTA is stupid and just proves that people who lose jobs to trade are, for the most part, simply unwilling to adapt to the demands of a changing economy. Instead of yearning for the jobs of yester-year they should be clamoring for a strong support system to assist those who suffer trade-related job loss with education and retraining programs to help them rejoin a workforce. The part that transfers the unneccesary Farm Bill largesse into trade job-loss assistance will stay in power for a generation.
But Workers who have lost their jobs to trade hate change like trade liberals hate America - and ultimately they will both denounce and reject Obama's message of change. They subscribe to the platonic ideal of the arrested state of social affairs, a state of mind where all change is only the decay of a truer form of society (an egalitarian Sparta of union jobs and benefits). However, the reality is that they themselves helped drive the change by taking their patronage from main street to wal-mart in search of the cheapest prices and a better quality of life; looking forward to a secure retirement, they held stakes in union pensions and 401(k)s heavily invested in the same mutlinationals that employed them. They too clamored for the best returns. They too were part of the quarterly chorus for cut costs and higher returns. Does this make such workers responsible for hastening their own jobs overseas? Their proposed solution to their dilema - to bring the jobs back - is no solution at all. Are they willing to work for developing country wages and no benefits besides, perhaps, dormitory housing?
So why do politicians pander to this tragic chorus? Because their eternal dirge is an order of magnitude louder than the satisfaction of those many millions sitting in quiet enjoyment of their improved prospects because of trade. To not address them is to look uncaringly upon their plight. Yes, Obama's populist grandstanding has been the low-point of his primary campaign, but outside his rhetoric every other indicator shows a common sense approach to trade. Yes, trade makes some losers on the individual level, but it only makes winners by agregate measures. In america there is, however, no excuse for losers to be losers permanently, besides their own arrested state of mind.