President Obama endorses cutting one day of mail delivery to save the U.S. Postal Service. [Associated Press]
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A great nation defines itself not by what it fears and opposes but by what it believes in and champions. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, President Kennedy’s visionary effort to promote social justice and economic development in Latin America. The Alliance had a short ten-year life, but its influence was real, and its vision of the Americas is still relevant today. The Alliance was a wager on the capacity of progressive democratic governments to carry out a peaceful revolution with the help of political support and carefully designed economic assistance. The idea for the Alliance grew from my uncle’s capacity to listen to the leaders of Latin America, and from his openness to what he heard. The leaders said, “The United States in all its power and wealth and influence should be our partner as we build a more just society for all our citizens.” They added, “This partnership must be built on respect for the values and vision of the southern hemisphere.” John Kennedy took their arguments seriously. In launching the Alliance, he built on the work of Douglas Dillon, who in 1958 had attended a three-week meeting in Brazil as a As Arthur Schlesinger recounts it, Senator Kennedy read a memorandum from ten leading Latin American economists, and, impressed with the urgency and energy of their ideas, conceived of a new approach to inter-American development. Read the rest of…  The Politics of Pigskin The Sunday night primetime game between the Eagles and Falcons was a fantastically exciting game. The Falcons came away with the win, but the Eagles have bigger worries – Michael Vick was knocked out of the game and was later diagnosed with a concussion. This will be a good opportunity for the NFL to show off its new concussion testing procedures. [ESPN] This week on MMQB Peter King talks about the very cool story of Jesse Holley, the Cowboys receiver who caught the game-clinching pass on Sunday. Holley got a shot at playing in the NFL after winning a reality TV series put on by Michael Irvin and Jerry Jones. Follow the link for other goings-on around the league. [Sports Illustrated] Here are your winners and loser for Week 2 in the NFL. [Y! Sports] The talk of the NCAA football world is conference expansion. All signs are pointing to the Big East going under as two of its biggest draws: Pittsburgh and Syracuse have accepted invitations to join the ACC. [Fox Sports] In reaction to conferences shuffling Florida State University has formed an exploratory committee to evaluate the school’s options. [International Business Times]
Has American society shifted from deep sectarianism to “liberal whateverism”? Sociologist Christian Smith argues that both should be rejected in favor of “authentic pluralism.” [Huffington Post] In Mississippi, the state with the highest obesity rate, one pastor bans fried chicken from church events in an effort to live according to the gospel of healthy eating. [NPR] Is God a Christian? Here’s a review of R. Kirby Godsey’s recently published book about “creating a community of conversation” around that question. [Patheos] US Representative and Democratic Senate contender Tammy Baldwin is the most liberal congressperson in recent Wisconsin history, while her opponent Mark Neumann is the most conservative. We start in Wisconsin today, where that state’s storied partisan divide is likely only to be exacerbated by the current candidates for Senate. On the Republican side, we have Mark Neumann, who represented Rep. Paul Ryan’s suburban Chicago and Milwaukee district in the 1990’s, while the only declared Democrat is Tammy Baldwin, a 7th term congresswoman from the left-wing bastion of Madison. A comparison of their voting records shows Neumann to be the most conservative Wisconsin congressperson in years and Baldwin the most liberal. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel] The Legislature isn’t even in session and New York State Senators are already debating the implementation of that state’s federally-mandated healthcare exchange. One of the few loose ends left at the end of the most recent legislative session, the exchange has only been approved in the Assembly, where a plan favored by Senate Republicans was passed. [Albany Times Union] At a speech in San Francisco, California Governor Jerry Brown assailed Republicans for an “unconstitutional delegation of power,” saying that they have ceded governing to anti-tax groups, namely the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Reeling from the defeat of his bipartisan tax plan the previous week, Brown accused Assembly Republicans of extreme fealty to absolutist anti-tax agencies. [Sacramento Bee] Florida governor Rick Scott has been drawing criticism over his plans to model that state’s public universities after those in Texas, including changes in professor pay and tenure policies. His critics point out that Texas’s public education system is among the weakest in the nation, an assertion that has become more common (and indeed more loaded) since Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the Presidential race last month. [The Buzz] Ohio Republicans have released their proposed Congressional district map, and it is already receiving criticism, especially from the left. Following the 2010 Census, Ohio will be losing two seats, and, as expected, the Republican-controlled state government has crafted a map that is disadvantageous to Democrats. [Columbus Dispatch] In Los Angeles for its fall convention, the California Republican Party rejected a more moderate platform that de-emphasized socially conservative policies, a move that supporters said would emphasize the fiscal aspects of the platform while attracting more voters. The plan’s detractors, who got it killed in committee, refused to compromise on any level and accused the moderate forces of trying to win the platform through money. [Sacramento Bee] Following an FBI raid of one of his aide’s homes, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker claims to know nothing about the matter. The raid on Cynthia Archer’s Milwaukee County home was the result of longstanding accusations that Walker aides had used taxpayer money and government time to stump for the current governor while he was the Milwaukee County Executive. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel] Taking Wisconsin’s teacher union fight to the Southeast, the Florida Education Association has filed a suit in Leon County, home to the state capital of Tallahassee, alleging that a bill currently in the State Senate is unconstitutional by Florida law. They claim a provision tying teacher pay to performance, and more specifically test scores, is an abrogation of a constitutional right to collective bargaining rights. [The Buzz] Troublingly, the New York State General Fund is some $0.7 million lower than anticipated on weak tax revenues which, while $3.3 billion ahead of where they were last year, are substantially lower than expected. Additionally, New York State Controller Thomas DiNapoli has warned that much of this relative surplus has resulted from large settlements that are unlikely to be repeated over the remainder of the fiscal year. [NY Daily News]
Scott Brown is clearly charismatic and formidable. But Warren’s no Coakley, too good to shake hands with the common folk. She’s a gritty working-class girl made good. And having lived through Coakley she has a playbook of what not to do. I think that the toughness, candor, and populist passion that turned off (Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)
Last week, the RP began a new “Weekly Web Gem,” The Politics of Beauty. While we may occasionally opine on the relative attractiveness of certain current Republican candidates (declared and undeclared, male and female) for the presidency, the primary focus will be on the politics of art, literature, music and culture. Really, anything is game. As always, we welcome your feedback! Check out this (quick) story from COLORS Magazine about a British bloke’s political memorabilia collection. Martin Parr always “hated Mrs. Thatcher and couldn’t believe anyone would collect things about her, so [he] did.” The RP loves the Saddam Hussein watch collection. COLORS Magazine consistently challenges notions of beauty, politics, art and culture. Check it out here. Ordinary Israelis, ordinary Palestinians. Two photo booths and a roaming photo truck. 7,000 individual portraits. The large black-and-white portraits have been appearing in Bethlehem and Ramallah as part of an international project to allow people to make art and/or political statements. Learn more and view some of the photographs from The Washington Post. If there are any of you left out there that still eat Freedom Fries and refuse to say “rendezvous,” “ménage à trois”or “café au lait,” the incomparable David McCullough’s latest book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, is for you. The American experiment owes more to France and the French than most Americans even remotely understand. In fact, we would not, McCullough argues, even “have a country without the French, who have permanently and profoundly shaped us.” Read the review from The New York Times. Of course, you could just read the new, um, “non-fiction” reflections of Dick Cheney instead.
Why do foreign languages sound like they are being spoken a million miles per hour to untrained ears? New research has the answer. [Time]
Fifty-seven years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the standard of “separate but equal” in our education system was one that is fundamentally unequal — and, moreover, is un-American, unconstitutional and immoral. In the nearly 60 years since the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, we have seen incredible progress. But we have also witnessed a steady decline in the performance and self-esteem of our children as they grapple with a cumbersome and often myopic educational system. Sadly, far too many students entering classrooms this fall have already been taken hostage by the politics of the moment and a zero-sum mentality in education that serves no purpose. The truth is, there remain inherent disparities in our education system that have eaten away at the very spirit of the Brown decision. For too long, federal and state bureaucrats have talked about what they want to do for education without an appreciation for what they have already done to education: made it harder to bring our education system into the 21st century. In my 2005 report on the state of education in Maryland during my term as lieutenant governor, I noted, “The most important work of a free society, other than defending its very existence, is the education of its population. For Maryland to be serious about preparing all of its children to succeed in tomorrow’s America, it must provide for consistent, high quality instruction and stable, effective leadership in all of its schools. “In the fast-changing world that future generations will inhabit, the highest quality education can no longer be viewed as a privilege of the few. It must be the norm for every child. Any other course of action will doom our future generations in Maryland and our nation to a second-class status.” Legislation Alone Doesn’t Work Such clarion calls for reforms and the creation of realistic standards have largely been met with a mixed response from educational professionals and parents. From Maryland to California, we’ve applauded every form of experimental methodology there is, but somehow we’ve forgotten how to do the basics.
Read the rest of…
How Texas Governor Rick Perry supplemented his wealth with profitable (and perhaps political) deals. [Associated Press] Business news highlights for this week. [New York Times] Fortune Magazine releases their list of the 100 fastest growing companies. [Fortune] This blackberry is starting to taste sour: RIM’s quarterly profits turn out to be even lower than analysts’ paltry predictions thought. [Forbes] |
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I know academics. I’ve worked with academics. And Elizabeth Warren is no typical academic. She’s grounded where many academics are theoretically-oriented, direct where most academics are wordy and circuitous, unpretentious where many academics are impressed with themselves and their own pedigree.
some D.C. elites will play quite well with independent Massachusetts voters. It will be a great race to watch.
