Times Editorials

GM Steps Back From the Brink
Published: September 27, 2007
The announcement that General Motors and the United Auto Workers have reached a deal to end
a two-day strike and hammer out a new national contract is an encouraging sign that the union
and Detroit’s car manufacturers are serious about grappling with the industry’s huge underlying
problems.
As the U.A.W. puts the agreement to a vote and moves to negotiate similar deals with Ford and
Chrysler, the automakers and their workers need to focus on how to regain a competitive edge
against their Asian rivals. And that’s not the end of their problems. The United States government
must also urgently deal with the mushrooming health-insurance burden that puts not just the
automakers, but so many American companies at a competitive disadvantage.
The pressures on both GM and the union were — and remain — enormous. Steadily losing
market share and trying to recover from losses of more than $12 billion in the last two years,
General Motors needed to be rid of the $50 billion liability of the health care benefits it promised
its retired workers. It also wants to hire a cheaper, more flexible work force and send more work
abroad.
The union was very flexible in negotiations, tentatively agreeing to let the company transfer the
health liability to a union-run trust that the company would fund. Few details of the agreement
have been disclosed. But the U.A.W. obtained in exchange unspecified reassurances about the job
security of GM’s workers. Those numbers have declined to 73,000 today from more than 200,000
10 years ago.
G.M.’s straits are in part of its own making. Its inability to make cars that Americans want to buy
and its reliance on gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s have made it particularly vulnerable as rising gas prices
have led consumers to demand more energy-efficient automobiles.
The company and its workers are also victims of bigger forces. G.M.’s retiree benefit packages
were negotiated 40 years ago when Detroit faced little competition, the future looked as good as
the present, and the government provided tax breaks that made it easy to promise workers
generous retiree benefits.
Globalization and an ever larger pool of retirees left Detroit with an enormous burden just as a
host of nimble foreign companies started setting up shop with fresh, young workers in the union-
free states of the American South. The change pummeled both the car companies and the U.A.W.
This needn’t herald the end of unionized auto-manufacturing, but keeping it alive will require
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to make cars that Americans want to buy. Down the road, the
union might have to deliver more concessions to allow Detroit to remain competitive against
Asian manufacturers that don’t bear the burden of a large retiree population.
Not all the changes need be painful. Weeding out outdated restrictions from G.M.’s union contract
like limits on overtime and worker classifications would provide more flexibility at little cost.
And the problem will never be settled without Washington. The Bush administration, Congress
and presidential candidates from both parties should view Detroit’s troubles as a wake-up call. It
is time for them to start grappling with the swelling cost of health care — for all Americans.
The Hopper Landscape
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
In 1934, Edward Hopper built a small whitewashed house in the empty dunes of South Truro,
Mass. He painted there every summer until his death in 1967. By some miracle, the view north
from Hopper’s house has barely changed in all that time — a subversively unassuming expanse
of hills and a sea-glazed sky. Now that view is threatened by the planned construction of a new
6,500-square-foot house on the adjacent lot, right in the heart of what is called, for better or
worse, the Hopper landscape.
With the next zoning hearing scheduled for Oct. 4, there has been a lot of to and fro about this
house. Suffice it to say that both sides — those who want to protect the view and those who
believe the lot’s owner is well within his rights — are making their very best case.
I find the terms of the debate a little strange, though. I believe in protecting open land on almost
any pretext and surely the dunes of South Truro deserve to be protected because they are part of
the larger ecosystem of the Cape Cod National Seashore. What puzzles me is the idea of the
Hopper landscape. The landscape Hopper saw, as an artist, is already protected. It exists only in
his paintings, nowhere else. What matters, artistically speaking, isn’t the actual view Hopper saw
during his summers in South Truro. What matters is the inner view that resulted in those painted
landscapes.
The history of painting is a history of vanished and altered landscapes. The absence of the
original, real-world landscapes that inspired the paintings has no bearing on their significance or
their aesthetic achievement. The idea of preserving the Hopper landscape somehow implies that a
viewer will need it to make a comparison: looking out over the Truro dunes, then at a Hopper
painting, then back at the dunes as if there were something inherently instructive in that exercise.
Hopper has left us his complete thoughts on the comparison. They’re embodied in his paintings.
By all means, protect the dunes — as seashore, as open land, as habitat, as a place where other
artists and nonartists might come to be moved by their beauty. And protect the Hopper house, too,
when it comes to that. But the idea of protecting the content of the artist’s gaze for itself is
chimerical. VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Political License in New York

When Gov. Eliot Spitzer decided this month to make it easier for immigrants to drive legally, his
critics predicted the sky would fall on anyone with a New York State driver’s license. Even
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, normally a measured voice, warned that New Yorkers might not be
able to use their licenses to get on airplanes if the governor has his way.
That is not so as it turns out. Or certainly, it will not be so for some time yet. If Congress fails to
change the Real ID Act — a clunker of a law passed two years ago — state driver’s licenses will
have to be re-engineered by 2013 to be accepted as federal identification. Until then, New York’s
licenses will be as good in the security lines at the airports as those from the eight other states that
do not require proof of immigration status to drive.
So far, no state licenses comply with the tough Real ID standards. The list of requirements
includes a special paper stock with secret markers, laser engraving, mandatory re-licensing in
person and not by mail, proof of residence and, in most cases, a Social Security card.
Some states have already opted out of Real ID, citing costs that should be — but are not — borne
by Washington, privacy concerns and questions about whether Real ID would actually be more
secure. If the law goes into effect as written and passenger regulations stay the same, residents of
many of these states would need another form of identification, such as a passport, to board a
plane.
Governor Spitzer has not said whether he wants New York to opt out of the Real ID law. He is
expected to ask for more time from the federal authorities to figure out whether and how to offer
a New York driver’s license that complies with the law. One possibility would be a two-tiered
system in which residents who want the more elaborate Real ID pay extra for it after 2013.
Among the problems with such an approach is that the creation of a lesser license could mean
more harassment of anyone who tries to use it.
Republican opposition to Mr. Spitzer’s move has taken a strident anti-immigrant tone that is
unwelcome in this discussion. State Senator Joseph Bruno, New York’s top elected Republican,
got it right initially when he said he could “understand the merits” of Mr. Spitzer’s proposal. Too
bad he soon joined other Republicans and accused the governor of trying to give illegal
immigrants the right to vote. It is a baseless claim since New Yorkers do not need a driver’s
license to vote, and the criminal laws against vote fraud provide ample deterrent to any illegal
immigrant thinking of casting a ballot.
Mr. Spitzer has made the right decision. New York State driver’s licenses should go to residents
who have proved their identity — and their ability to drive safely. There will be plenty of time
between now and 2013 to figure out whether and how New York State should integrate its
driver’s license with federal standards.
Overcoming a Veto and Helping Children
Unless President Bush backs away from his threat to veto a significant expansion of the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program, it will be incumbent on all Republicans in the House who
value health care over ideological warfare to summon the courage and vote to override him.
The Senate approved the legislation with enough votes to overcome a veto. It also passed the
House with a hefty margin but fell 24 votes short of a veto-proof majority. Although it will be an
uphill battle, it may still be possible to bring another two dozen House members to their senses.
Any Republicans courageous enough to defy the president on this issue will find themselves in
good company. The measure, which would increase federal funding for the program by $35
billion over the next five years, is the product of intense bipartisan negotiations that included
prominent Republicans in the Senate, led by Charles Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah. It
has been endorsed by governors from both parties and by a wide array of organizations, including
the American Medical Association and the chief lobbying groups for private insurance plans and
for senior citizens.
The president objects to the size of the proposed funding increase, which is seven times what he
had proposed. But the costs would be fully covered by an increase in tobacco taxes, which would
bring health benefits of its own by discouraging smoking. He complains that the bill would
encourage middle-class children to enroll in a program that was originally designed to cover low-
income youngsters. The main effort and primary impact, however, will still be on low-income
children.
Mr. Bush also warns that a substantial number of middle-class children will simply be switched
from private insurance to the public program, shifting costs to the taxpayer. That will inevitably
occur. But experts have calculated that the president’s preferred approach — tax deductions for
people who buy their own insurance — would provide a much higher proportion of its benefits to
people who already have insurance, thus doing far less than the Congressional measure to reduce
the number of uninsured children.
Mr. Bush seems determined to use the children’s program to take a stand against what he calls “an
incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American.” He would
rather sacrifice the health of uninsured children than yield an inch of ideological ground. House
Republicans ought to take a more humane approach and override the president’s blinkered
obstinacy.
See No Evil, Speak No Truth
After decades of brutal military rule, Myanmar’s people have taken to the streets to demand
democracy, and they are being mowed down. China, India and Russia have the means — but
apparently not the will — to stop Myanmar’s vicious junta from murdering more of its citizens.
The three countries regularly proclaim themselves world powers, yet they refuse to accept the
moral responsibility that must come with that position.
China is Myanmar’s chief trading partner and protector. Many other countries, including the
United States, refuse to do business with the regime, but India and Russia are comfortably
making money off the generals and helping keep them in power, with arms and energy deals. So
far, they all have refused to use that leverage — a shocking demonstration of greed and political
cowardice.
On Wednesday, Beijing ruled out calls for international sanctions and stopped the Security
Council even from condemning the junta’s indiscriminate use of force against pro-democracy
protests. On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed sanctions as premature and said
he “assumed” the violence will stop.
China is an authoritarian state, and Russia is increasingly anti-democratic. Officials in both fear
internal dissent and fear setting a precedent that would allow others to criticize their own
repressive ways. As in the case of North Korea — another client state — Beijing disingenuously
argues its influence with Myanmar only goes so far. And despite that claim, Beijing managed to
persuade the junta to allow a visit by a special United Nations envoy.
The response of India, the democracy on which the United States hopes to build a key security
and economic relationship for the 21st century, also has been weak and pathetic. New Delhi
issued a carefully nuanced call for political reform and said nothing about sanctions.
We are heartened that the normally supercautious Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose
members are Myanmar’s immediate neighbors, expressed revulsion with the junta’s crackdown.
But we fear that so long as the three major regional partners refuse to get tough with the generals,
such outrage will make little difference.
China will host the 2008 Olympics, which it sees as a coming out party for its rising international
power. Beijing’s rulers need to know that the world is watching to see whether it will now use its
influence to stop the killing in Myanmar — or again abdicate the responsibilities that come with
real world leadership.
Still Out in the Cold
President Bush’s two-day summit on global warming this week was not, as some of the European
delegates complained privately, a total bust. Our own expectations weren’t high, but we can note
several positive outcomes.
The meeting brought together 17 nations — the Group of 8 industrialized countries, plus big
developing nations like China, India and Brazil — that are responsible for four-fifths of the
world’s global warming emissions.
It displayed a more open-minded and somewhat chastened George Bush, now in legacy mode and
no longer in deep denial about the existence of global warming or the fact that humans and fossil
fuels are primarily responsible for it.
And it produced a useful discussion about the huge investment in advanced technologies that will
be required to stabilize and reduce these emissions.
But these positives pale in comparison to the negatives, chiefly Mr. Bush’s failure to commit the
United States to anything new or bold or inspiring — exactly what everyone who went to
Washington was looking for.
He talked about major new investments but promised none. He offered to play host to further
talks but showed no appetite for forging a new collective agreement to replace the Kyoto
Protocol. And, most alarmingly, he refused to commit the United States to a sustained, mandatory
program to reduce its own emissions.
He did not, in short, show any inclination to do what a great nation is supposed to do, which is to
lead. And worst of all, he gave the Chinese, who have been using America’s inaction to justify
their own, no reason to change course.
The divide between the United States and its industrial allies in Europe and Japan is easily stated.
They want firm, obligatory targets and a clear timetable for reaching them; Mr. Bush prefers a
country-by-country, voluntary approach. They believe that the necessary efficiencies and
technologies will emerge only when a stiff price is placed on carbon and nations are forced to
meet legally binding commitments; Mr. Bush seems to believe they will spring up magically, as if
from the Tooth Fairy.
Rhetorically, Mr. Bush has moved. In terms of substance, he remains as isolated as ever. In his
absence, it will be up to Congress to take the lead.
The Verizon Warning
Published: October 3, 2007
We have long been concerned about the potential threat to free speech and a free press as
communications migrate from old-fashioned telephone lines, TV broadcasts and printing presses
to digital networks controlled by unregulated private companies. The threat stopped being
theoretical recently when Verizon Wireless censored political speech on one of its mobile
services.
Verizon did the right thing after the problem was disclosed: it promptly dropped a misbegotten
policy and said its new policy is to open its network to any legal communication. But alarm bells
should be ringing on Capitol Hill, where industry lobbying, legislative goldbricking and
Republican aversion to regulations have bottled up much-needed laws on digital communications.
Late last month, Verizon Wireless denied an application from Naral Pro-Choice America, a
reproductive rights group, for a “short code,” a few numbers that a mobile phone user can use to
subscribe to a particular source of text messages. Verizon said its policy was to refuse “issue
oriented” text-messaging programs from any group that “seeks to promote an agenda or distribute
content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users.” The
policy also said political candidates may be granted short codes if the content is, “in VZW’s sole
discretion, not issue-oriented or controversial in nature.”
Leave aside for the moment the sorry spectacle of a major American company aiming to make
campaigns even more substance-free than they already are. The Verizon policy was textbook
censorship. Any government that tried it would be rightly labeled authoritarian. The First
Amendment prohibits the United States government from anything approaching that sort of
restriction.
If Verizon had attempted it on normal phone lines, it would have been violating common carrier
laws that bar interference with voice transmissions. Unfortunately, those laws do not apply to text
messaging.
Given this chilling experience, the Federal Communications Commission should quickly issue
regulations that also bar interference with text messaging. Unfortunately, the F.C.C. is in the thrall
of the carriers, and the Bush administration has an unblemished record of siding with
corporations over the rights and safety of American citizens. That means Congress will have to
take the lead, as it must on other issues affecting the mushrooming world of digital
communications.
Verizon admitted its mistake and pledged not to repeat it, but that’s not enough. As admirable as
Verizon’s retreat was, the company reserved the right to change the rules at any time. Verizon still
says “some well-intentioned employee” got too zealous. If its top executives were not engaged on
this issue, they should have been.
Our democracy is built on basic freedoms not being left to individuals, or individual companies.
And there is special cause for worry in our business. American newspapers can resist government
intimidation because the Constitution is on our side, but also because we control the presses. That
is the real meaning behind “freedom of the press,” and authoritarian societies know it. In the
1980s in the Soviet Union, you had to have a license from the Communist Party to own a Xerox
machine; the Soviets understood that it was a printing press.
If newspapers were delivered over mobile phones, a company could simply cut them off because
it did not like a particular article. This is not the stuff of a futurist essay. Freedom of speech must
be guaranteed, right now, in a digital world just as it has been protected in a world of paper and
ink
Back-Scratching Across the Aisle
There are sly moments when Congressional leaders turn to bipartisanship as the last resort for
railroading a bad idea to approval. That’s the case in the Senate, where a bipartisan fix is in the
works to confirm a truly objectionable appointee to the Federal Election Commission. With its
sorry record for enabling abuses of the campaign laws, this commission needs more fair-minded
professionals. Yet the controversial Republican nominee, Hans von Spakovsky, has an inside
Senate edge despite his service as one of the Bush administration’s most aggressive party hacks at
the Justice Department.
As a voting rights counsel, Mr. Spakovsky pushed shameful G.O.P. stratagems to crimp the
voting power of minorities and the poor and boost pro-Republican redistricting. He was a major
proponent of a noxious Georgia law requiring voters to have photo ID’s, a law that is likely to
prevent many poor and minority voters from casting their ballots.
Appointed to a temporary F.E.C. seat last year by President Bush, Mr. Spakovsky is now up for a
full six-year term. His confirmation would be in serious doubt if only his appointment were put to
a fair vote. But with four commission nominees pending — Republicans and Democrats —
leaders from both parties are reported ready to scratch each other’s backs and vote on the group.
This would amount to smuggling Mr. Spakovsky to a full term under cover of the three less
controversial nominees.
The Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid, who has his own favored nominee in the package,
should spike the patronage low road and opt for separate votes. There is precedent for this, and if
Republicans dared to filibuster, they would be left defending party hackdom over a stronger
election agency
Blackwater’s Rich Contracts
It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration would take any opportunity to reward
its political friends with lavish no-bid contracts. Still, there is something particularly unseemly
about the munificent payments to Blackwater, the State Department’s principal private security
contractor in Iraq.
With many Iraqis still seething after Blackwater guards killed as many as 17 people two weeks
ago, it is evident that Blackwater and other security contractors are undermining the military’s
efforts to win over Iraqis.
Now an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has
underscored the lavish extent of Blackwater’s payments and its relationship to the Bush
administration. The committee, which held hearings on the use of security contractors in Iraq
yesterday, should investigate these links further.
Former Bush administration officials are peppered throughout Blackwater’s highest executive
positions. Erik Prince, the former Navy Seal who founded the company, was a White House
intern under President George H. W. Bush and has been a Republican financier since, with more
than $225,000 in political contributions.
Mr. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and a
“pioneer” who raised $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004. Her husband, the former
Amway chief executive Richard DeVos Jr., was the Republican nominee for governor of
Michigan in 2006.
Mr. Prince denied yesterday that his connections had anything to do with it, but he certainly has
done well under the Bush administration. Federal contracts account for about 90 percent of the
revenue of Prince Group holdings, of which Blackwater is a subsidiary. Since 2001, when it made
less than $1 million in federal contracts, Blackwater has received more than $1 billion in such
contracts — including at least one with the State Department for hundreds of millions of dollars
that was awarded without open, competitive bidding.
The Congressional investigation found that Blackwater charges the government $1,222 per day
for each private military operative — more than six times the wage of an equivalent soldier. And
still it uncovered instances of overcharging. It reported that an audit in 2005 by the State
Department’s inspector general found Blackwater was charging separately for “drivers” and
“security specialists” who were, in fact, the same people.
The fallout from Blackwater’s heavy-handed tactics is a reminder of the folly of using a private
force to perform military missions in a war zone. These jobs need to be brought back into
government hands as soon as practicable, and remaining private contractors placed under the
jurisdiction of military law.
Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the oversight committee, said
yesterday that if private contractors are meant to provide security on the cheap, it’s not working.
“It’s costing us more money,” he said, “and I believe it’s costing us problems.” Blackwater’s
contracts should spur Congress to further investigate the Bush administration’s practice of using
Iraq to slip rich deals to its friends.
A Death at the Phoenix Airport
Carol Gotbaum was a troubled woman seeking treatment for alcohol abuse in Tucson. She was on
her way there last Friday when she missed a flight in Phoenix. That apparently panicked her and
led, mysteriously, abruptly and horribly, to her death in police custody.
Ms. Gotbaum’s tragic encounter with the Phoenix police is getting attention because she came
from a prominent family. Her stepmother-in-law, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, is New York’s
second-highest-ranking elected official. But it raises larger questions about how airport security
officials are doing their jobs.
The details of the death remain murky. Ms. Gotbaum, a 45-year-old weighing 105 pounds, was
described as agitated and screaming when she missed her connection. The police were
summoned. They subdued and handcuffed her, arresting her for disorderly conduct. That should
have been enough, but Ms. Gotbaum was then shackled to a bench in an airport holding cell,
where she was left alone to quiet down — despite having reportedly told police she was a “sick
mom” and needed help. The police say she died of asphyxiation and was found with a shackle
chain at her throat.
“She cried out for help,” Betsy Gotbaum said in a statement, “but her pleas appear to have been
met with mistreatment.”
It is not clear what, if any, mistreatment occurred, but among the questions that need answers are
the cause of her death, and why an obviously troubled woman was not placed under better
supervision. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been widespread reports of airport security officials
mistreating travelers and quickly escalating minor incidents further than they needed to go.
An autopsy may offer some clues, and investigations are under way. They should look not only at
Ms. Gotbaum’s case, but also at what can be done to bring more reason and professionalism to
airport security.
Real Judicial Elections
The United States Supreme Court hears arguments tomorrow in a challenge to New York’s
undemocratic method of electing its Supreme Court judges. A federal appeals court ruled that the
process, a relic of the era of clubhouse politics, infringes on the constitutional rights of voters and
candidates. The Supreme Court should affirm that well-reasoned decision.
New York’s Supreme Court judges — who are trial-level judges, not members of the state’s
highest court, the Court of Appeals — are nominated through an archaic system of judicial
conventions. These conventions are dominated by delegates handpicked by party bosses, who
vote however the bosses tell them.
Independent candidates for judge have virtually no chance of bucking the system. To win the
nomination, a candidate who is not backed by the bosses may need to recruit more than 100
delegate candidates to run in different districts. Those candidates would have to collect thousands
of petition signatures to qualify for the ballot. If they did qualify, they would need to do an
enormous education campaign, because their names appear on the ballot with no identification, so
there is no way for ordinary voters to make an informed choice among them.
The judicial conventions themselves are an empty exercise. More than 96 percent of the
nominations are uncontested. Absentee rates range as high as 69 percent. They often take, from
beginning to end, as little as 20 minutes. When Margarita López Torres, the Brooklyn-based
judge who is challenging the system, asked to attend a convention so she could make her case to
the delegates, she was told that candidates were not allowed.
In other words, the whole process is a sham. It has the trappings of democracy, but it is not
democratic at all. Candidates who want to be elected to a New York State Supreme Court
judgeship have no way, short of being given the nod by the bosses, to compete for the voters’
favor. The voters have no real hope of having their votes make a difference in the election.
The New York-based United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rightly ruled that this
system of non-elections infringed on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of association
because it denied candidates and voters “a realistic opportunity to participate in the nominating
process.”
In defending the system, New York State argues that the role of political parties in elections must
be respected. In this case, however, it is New York State’s law that is trampling on the parties —
unless you consider party membership confined to the back room. The law forces the parties to
choose their judicial nominees through a Byzantine system that ensures that their actual members,
the voters, do no more than rubber-stamp the decisions that are actually left up to the party
bosses.
An expert witness for the defendants in this case conceded that New York’s system of selecting
judges was “designed” so “the political leadership of the party is going to designate the party’s
candidates.” That might work well for the bosses, but it is bad for democracy and inconsistent
with the political rights guaranteed by the First Amendment
Sporting Grief
By now we have all seen photographs of Mets fans mourning the historic collapse of their team.
Perhaps you were there for the final loss of the season on Sunday, weeping with them. The grief
is real. So are the tears.
If you’ve never mourned a sporting loss, it’s easy to assume there’s a kind of sweetness in sadness
like this. The game is immortal, even if the players are not. Spring training will resume about 10
minutes after the final out of the World Series. And what would the joy of winning be without the
grief of losing? Try telling that to Mets fans who had to pull their caps down over their eyes and
choke away tears.
Sweet it may not be, but there’s a lot to be said for sporting grief, especially the long-season
variety. The suffering is collective, no matter how personal the sadness may feel. This year’s
collapse of the Mets is equaled — to the extent that baseball ever equals golf — by Greg
Norman’s self-destruction at the 1996 Masters. But Norman fell to pieces in a couple of hours,
not a couple of weeks, and the loss was utterly personal. It was shattering to watch, but it was less
likely to make you weep than to make you brood about hubris and mortality.
Sunday’s grief was of an utterly different kind. It had about it the futility of tearing up a season’s
worth of scorecards, giving up not only on all the long months since April but on the postseason,
too. It was saying goodbye to an audience that contained yourself and to a team that contained —
to many people, above all — Willie Randolph.
So the world is a complicated place, and in our own lives — if you allow yourself to love or hope
at all — we are going to have real chances to grieve for things that will make this loss feel like
nothing.
But right now it feels like something. Life’s true griefs will eventually make you tougher, more
understanding, more tolerant, more compassionate. If you let them, they’ll teach the proportions
of human happiness. Perhaps that’s the real beauty of sporting grief, even after a season like the
Mets just had. It doesn’t ask you to grow as a human being.
Mr. Putin’s Game

Russians and a lot of Russia watchers have been wondering not if, but how Russia’s president,
Vladimir Putin, would hold on to power. We fear we got our answer yesterday.
Mr. Putin, who must step down as president next year, announced that he will head the election
list of the dominant party, United Russia, in December’s parliamentary election. That will
guarantee him a seat in the lower house, from which he could become prime minister. Mr. Putin
said that it was still too early to think about that, and it would depend on whether the next Russian
president was “a decent, capable and effective person” with whom he could work. Conveniently,
Russia’s Constitution puts the prime minister in direct line to succeed the country’s president,
should that job description prove too much for Mr. Putin’s successor to handle.
Mr. Putin has insisted all along that his goal was to create a Russia that is strong, modern and
internationally respected. This crass political manipulation will have the opposite effect,
weakening Russia in the eyes of the world and eventually its own citizens.
After the chaos of the first post-Communist years, Mr. Putin restored a measure of security and
stability. He has also done serious damage to the country’s fragile democratic institutions,
creating a powerful and secretive presidential bureaucracy, imposing authoritarian controls over
government and the press, and turning the Parliament into a rubber stamp. In effect, he led Russia
back to its historical dependence on one powerful leader, and he did this with the support of a
large majority of the Russian people.
We cannot begrudge the Russians a measure of stability and prosperity after what they have gone
through. But what they need now is to start building a true democracy on the basis of that stability
and prosperity.
We hope Mr. Putin will rethink this cynical game. If he does run for Parliament, he could use his
seat to share his experience and skills with a new political generation — but we doubt it. If his
only intention is to hold on to power, then he will be proclaiming that institutions don’t matter,
only the person manipulating them. Russia’s been there, too long. That is not what it needs now.
Everyone Pays, in Dollars
Since the Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates by half a percentage point two weeks ago,
the already softening dollar has steadily lost value against other major currencies. The morning of
the rate cut, one euro bought $1.38. At day’s end yesterday, one euro bought $1.42 — a level at
which analysts believe it begins to compete with the dollar to be the world’s top currency of
choice.
Americans tend to think of currency exchange rates only when they travel abroad. In today’s
global economy, the implications of a weak dollar go much further than that, threatening
potentially higher costs in the United States for everything from home heating to consumer goods
to mortgages.
The recent rate cut was an effort to cushion investor losses from recent turmoil in the financial
markets and, in the process, to prevent those losses from harming the rest of the economy. Federal
officials become twitchy when such efforts are labeled a “bailout,” asserting among other
objections that the term should apply only when taxpayers directly bear the burden of an
intervention. But the weakening dollar illustrates that government interventions need not be
taxpayer financed to pose risks for all Americans.
Lower interest rates weaken the dollar because they reduce the returns on dollar-based
investments. A weaker dollar, in turn, risks higher prices for imported goods. The rise in the price
of oil to above $80 a barrel is due in part to a declining dollar as foreign oil producers charge
more dollars per barrel to maintain their purchasing power in Europe and elsewhere.
A weaker dollar also risks pushing up interest rates because sooner or later global investors
demand higher yields to offset the weak currency. Of late, long-term rates have only edged up,
but they would be defying gravity to stay down if the dollar continued its decline. Higher long-
term rates would further crimp the already ailing housing market, because the interest rates for
new mortgages are tied to long-term rates.
A falling dollar makes American-made products cheaper abroad, so the downsides of a weakening
dollar could be offset somewhat by a rally in American exports. It’s doubtful, however, that
bolstered exports could significantly overcome the economic drag of higher inflation and steeper
borrowing costs.
Dollar weakness is home-grown. It is rooted in the borrow-and-spend behavior of the United

States government and American consumers and in a corollary lack of domestic savings that
necessitates foreign borrowing. That indebtedness was unsustainable, even when the economy
was growing robustly. Now it’s coupled with a weakening economy and lower interest rates,
making foreign lenders increasingly reluctant to hold and accumulate dollars and hastening a
downward slide.
The public and policy makers must realize that the economic vulnerabilities of a weaker dollar
are self- inflicted — and that the responsibility for fixing them lies squarely with Washington.
Insurance for the Next Big One
There is impeccable logic to the argument that taxpayers should not be made to pay for the risks
incurred by people who choose to live along a hurricane-prone coast or atop a major geological
fault.
More than half of all Americans, however, live within 50 miles of a coast. With premiums rising
relentlessly and insurers cutting hundreds of thousands of homeowner policies from the Gulf of
Mexico up the East Coast to Florida and Long Island, there is a real danger that millions might
soon be unable to purchase insurance. That’s a compelling argument for government help.
A well-designed program — one that priced insurance in a way that encouraged homeowners to
think twice about where they build and local governments to think twice about their zoning
policies — could mitigate the so-called “moral hazard” of encouraging people to make riskier
choices than they otherwise would. The alternative of millions of Americans’ going without
insurance is a far worse option.
Since Hurricane Katrina — which caused a record $50 billion in insured losses — private
insurers have jacked up premiums as much as they can and, when barred from raising prices,
dropped coverage of riskier homes.
Many of these companies, which have turned denying valid claims into an art form, deserve little
sympathy and certainly no government subsidies. Still, taxpayers would end up picking up the tab
through federal disaster relief if millions of homeowners lost their insurance or decided to drop it
due to high premiums.
One idea making its way through Congress is to have the government become the sole provider of
hurricane insurance in coastal areas — expanding the National Flood Insurance Program to
include wind damage, too. There are also calls to study letting insurers amass reserves in tax-
deferred accounts, to prepare for future catastrophes.
Another possible approach would be for the government to offer a backstop to private insurers.
The State of Florida has set up a $33 billion catastrophe fund — financed through premiums paid
by insurers — to provide reinsurance that kicks in when claims exceed $4.5 billion.
Representatives Ron Klein and Tim Mahoney, both Florida Democrats, submitted a proposal to
the House last month that would build on this by setting up a federal catastrophe fund where state
funds could pool their risks. A well-designed federal fund would kick in only after claims hit a
fairly high cap and would have to properly tie premiums to risks. If done correctly, this would
protect private insurers from going bankrupt in the case of a Big One — and enable insurers to
provide affordable coverage for homeowners.
Moral hazard, of course, cannot be totally eliminated. There is also the risk that a government
fund would be under political pressure to keep premiums low, meaning that it would always be
underfunded. But there are times when the need for government protection overrides these
concerns. Such is the case with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures
Americans’ bank deposits to reduce the risk of a bank run that could undermine the banking
system.
The tens of millions of Americans who already live in high-risk areas must have access to
insurance, and it is time for Congress and the White House to start thinking about how to make
sure that happens.
Gun Games in the Senate
It is a travesty that the Senate has failed to vote final approval of a law intended to close a gun-
control loophole laid bare by last April’s bloody massacre on the Virginia Tech campus. Despite a
history of mental illness, a deranged student easily bought enough guns and ammunition to take
32 lives and then his own. He was previously deemed dangerous by a judge who ordered him to
undergo health care. But this was outpatient treatment, not in-hospital, so his name was never
placed on a federal watch list that might have barred him from buying guns.
Three months ago, the House voted to close this gap and promptly sent the measure — a rarity,
blessed by both the gun lobby and its critics — to the Senate. But it foundered there in
Democratic infighting as the Judiciary Committee burdened the single-focus bill with 50 pages of
amendments covering such extraneous issues as whether retired police officers should be allowed
to pack concealed weapons wherever they please.
Finally embarrassed, the Democratic leadership moved to bring the simpler, cleaner remedy to the
floor last week for a fast vote of approval. The measure is a noncontroversial carrot-and-stick
approach for states to be more vigilant in providing data and checking the federal watch list. Fast
as you can say stick ’em up, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and premier orator
on the preciousness of the Second Amendment, blocked Senate passage.
The senator previously objected to a suicide prevention bill for troubled veterans, anxious that
government record-keeping might hamper vets’ buying guns. This time, he has unspecified
“privacy concerns” and even worries that the Virginia Tech bill might be a burden on the federal
budget. (As if the senator’s party had a problem with its record deficit spending when it was in
the majority.) Considering the lives lost last April, and the 30,000 gunned to death each year,
there is no forgiving this last-minute mischief. The gun lobby, and his colleagues, should call
Senator Coburn to heel.
Subcontracting the War
There is, conveniently, no official count. But there are an estimated 160,000 private contractors
working in Iraq, and some 50,000 of them are “private security” operatives — that is, fighters.
The dangers of this privatized approach to war became frighteningly clear last month, after
guards from Blackwater USA, assigned to protect American diplomats, were accused of killing at
least eight Iraqis, including an infant.
Iraqis — whose hearts and minds the Bush administration insists it is finally winning — were
infuriated by the killings, telling tales of arrogant and trigger-happy operatives terrorizing
ordinary citizens. The incident provides an irrefutable argument for bringing these mission-
critical jobs, which should be performed by soldiers, back into government hands as quickly as
possible, and for placing any remaining private contractors under the jurisdiction of American
military law.
Blackwater’s 850 operatives in Iraq are not the only problem. The fact that American diplomatic
activity in Iraq nearly came to a halt when Blackwater was grounded for a few days shows how
much American operations have come to depend on mercenaries.
The armed forces have relied on private contractors since the United States opted for an all-
volunteer military after the end of the Vietnam War — mostly for noncritical tasks such as
building or cooking. The Bush administration took it to a whole new level when it decided to
fight a big war with a far too small force — requiring the Pentagon and other agencies to turn to
private security contractors like Blackwater to help make up some of the difference.
Contractors have been in a legal limbo in Iraq since 2004, when the American authorities there
granted them immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. Some of the interrogators involved in
the abuse of prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison were private contractors, yet none of
them have been punished. Indeed, no private contractor has been prosecuted or convicted for any
crime involving an Iraqi victim.
Last November, an amendment was included in the defense authorization bill that put private
contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, exposing the contractors to a court
martial just like any other American soldiers. The Bush administration has been none too eager to
enforce this new law, and the Pentagon has not yet issued guidelines to commanders about its
application.
The lesson here is that such essential jobs cannot be outsourced. War is not a private business.
Watching the Full Moon Rise Over the Northeast Corridor
On Wednesday last week, I made a quick trip to Washington, down on the dawn express, back on
the dusk. Riding on the Acela I was surrounded by the sounds of business—the young women
whose voices ring out like high heels on marble, the false laughter of a young executive talking to
a headhunter on his cellphone. (He makes 175, going up to 200 in December, and is happy to
relocate.) Everyone around me was speaking managese, that strange dialect used among the
shepherds of other humans to communicate an enthusiasm for communication.
The full moon was rising on the ride home. At first there was just the suggestion of a disk low on
the horizon. It might have been a moon painted on old red brick, faded and soot-stained over the
eons, the remnant of an ad for some forgotten nocturnal medicine. I’d been watching the way
Baltimore backs blindly onto the tracks — the toothless old houses, boarded up, beyond despair,
here and there a wall gone entirely so that the houses seem to be leaking their privacy into the
night. And then, when I next looked, we were passing the water’s edge, and there was the moon
just beginning to glow, though the night was too muggy for the water to catch the moon’s
reflection.
It seemed like a very slow moon, perhaps because of the speed with which the landscape shifted
beneath it. I found myself thinking of the ancient notion that the moon’s orbit marks the boundary
between the immutable heavens and the mutability of the sublunary sphere. Against the backdrop
of urban demise and development, this moon seemed impossibly constant. Even along the shore,
where the flat waves seemed to abandon the land over and over again, the moon persisted.
I realized that to really understand the metaphor of the moon’s mutability — the inconstancy of
its path through the sky, its time of rising and setting, and especially its phases — you would have
to live in a much darker world, where you could feel the steadiness of the night sky.
Something about the moon brings to life one metaphor after another. I remembered, long ago,
describing a full moon rising in far northern California as “a fat man climbing a ladder,” which
seemed accurate enough at the time. But this moon was not a fat man climbing. It seemed to hang
over the horizon. Then it slid slowly up the sky, and its color deepened. I tried to name its colors
as it ascended and in doing so remembered how steadily and surprisingly life supplies us with the
right analogies.
For at one point, just as darkness was really taking hold, I let myself say — and it was a cliché, of
course—that this moon was as ripe as a tropical fruit. And yet it really was exactly the color of
the flesh of a tropical fruit I had bought the night before. The fruit was called a mamey sapote,
which comes from Central and South America. Unpeeled, it looks like an oversized and perfectly
oval potato. But under the rind is a deep mahogany seed and the mildly sweet flesh of a ripe
September moon, which is slightly aphrodisiacal they say.
Not only was the moon that night the color of the pulp of a softening mamey. It also wore the
same open-mouthed expression as the woman behind the cash register when she realized that the
mamey she was ringing up on Broadway cost some 500 times more than it did in the markets at
home in Ecuador.
So the train hammered and rocked along, and the business of our rail car went quiet while the
world outside receded. For another few minutes the moon was still the pulp of a singular fruit
imported at great cost to be purchased as a curiosity from a woman who knew exactly how
ordinary it was. But soon it rose into some new analogy, some new association, and by then I had
fallen asleep.
Editorial
The Roberts Court Returns
The Supreme Court begins its new term tomorrow as bitterly divided as it has ever been. There
are three hardened camps: four very conservative justices, four liberals, and a moderate
conservative, Justice Anthony Kennedy, hovering in between. The division into rigid blocs is
unfortunate, because it makes the court seem more like a political body than a legal one. Justice
Kennedy’s tendency to vote with the most conservative justices also means that there is a real
danger the court will do serious damage to important freedoms this term.
At his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice John Roberts told the Senate he had “no agenda,” and
famously compared his role to that of an umpire calling balls and strikes. He has also said he
wants more consensus on the court, and fewer 5-to-4 decisions. Those were fine sound bites, but
in reality Chief Justice Roberts quickly settled into a bloc with his fellow conservatives Samuel
Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The controversial 5-to-4 decisions have kept coming.
It is striking how conservative the court is now. On race, it was for decades a proud force for
racial integration. Last term, it ordered Seattle and Louisville, Ky., to stop their voluntary efforts
to have children of different races attend school together. The court, once an important force for
fairness in American society, now routinely finds dubious legal excuses to deny relief to criminal
defendants, consumers and workers who have been mistreated.
The Roberts bloc has not adhered to any principled theory of judging. Its members are not
reluctant to strike down laws passed by Congress, as critics of “judicial activism” are supposed to
be, or reluctant to overturn the court’s precedents. The best predictor of how they will vote is to
ask: What outcome would a conservative Republican favor as a matter of policy?
The court’s 4-to-4 split means that, on virtually any controversial question, Justice Kennedy
decides what American law is. Last term, he was in the majority in all 24 cases decided by 5-to-4
votes. His opposition to abortion rights and affirmative action has pushed the court further to the
right on those issues.
The court’s hyperpartisan approach to the law is unhealthy. The reason the Bush v. Gore ruling
was so damaging to the court’s reputation was that the justices appeared to be acting as partisans,
tossing aside long-held views to reach the political result they wanted. Today, the justices seem
just as political, wrapping their views on controversial social issues in neutral-sounding legal
doctrines.
The case that will most test the court’s ability to rise above partisanship is a challenge to Indiana’s
voter ID law. Indiana is one of a growing number of states that require voters to present a
government-issued photo ID. Such laws have been billed as anti-vote-fraud measures, but there is
little evidence of vote fraud at the polls. The Republicans who have pushed these laws are trying
to make it hard for poor and minority voters, who are less likely than other groups to have
drivers’ licenses — and more likely to vote Democratic — to cast ballots. The court has
traditionally championed voting rights, but a conservative majority may boost Republican
chances in 2008 by endorsing this disturbing barrier to voting.
On Wednesday, the court will hear arguments in another voting case of particular interest to New
Yorkers, a challenge to the use of judicial conventions, undemocratic institutions dominated by
party hacks, to select state court judges. Lower courts rightly held this highly undemocratic
system to be unconstitutional.
The court has also agreed to hear a challenge to the use of lethal injection to carry out the death
penalty. There is strong evidence that the injections, which use a “cocktail” of drugs to put
prisoners to death, work erratically and are needlessly painful. Justice Kennedy, who is concerned
about death penalty abuses, may provide the fifth vote to hold that these executions violate the
Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The court will again take up civil liberties post-9/11 in a case about whether detainees held at the
naval base in Guantánamo Bay have the right to challenge their confinement through habeas
corpus. In the Military Commissions Act, Congress tried to take that right away from the
prisoners. The court should hold that the Constitution requires that the detainees be given their
day in court.
If the justices act as umpires and call balls and strikes, this term could produce some real victories
in voting rights, the death penalty and civil liberties. It could result in some terrible setbacks in
these areas, however, if — as critics of the Roberts court have said — the court is calling balls
and strikes but has moved the strike zone far to the right.
Things Go Better With Rules

To hear the nation’s top economic officials tell it, the worst effect of the reckless mortgage
lending during the housing bubble is not mass foreclosures, bankruptcies, investor losses or credit
seizures. It is the possibility that the turmoil could lead to new regulation.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. has inveighed against a “rush” to regulation following the
mortgage meltdown, and two Treasury under secretaries, writing recently in The Financial Times,
criticized calls for “immediate” regulation.
There is nothing sudden about the push for regulatory reforms. Consumer advocates have been
warning for years about unfair and deceptive lending that has taken place in plain view of do-
nothing regulators. All along, they have presented detailed analyses and recommendations for
regulatory action. And yet, Mr. Paulson has dismissed even the suggestion that a lack of
regulation may have precipitated today’s financial turmoil, saying that “history says it’s very
difficult for policy to keep up with innovation.” His under secretaries chalked up the current mess
to “benign” market conditions that bred “complacency” and impaired “discipline.”
That’s all way off. Turning a profit by making rotten loans to uncreditworthy borrowers —
ruining families and neighborhoods in the process — requires a lot more creativity than selling
the Brooklyn Bridge to a gullible immigrant. But it is hardly the kind of innovation we want to
encourage. Financial bubbles are not benign. And “undisciplined” is inapt, to put it politely, to
describe lender behavior that ranged from amoral to deceptive, predatory and fraudulent — and
that was enabled by bankers and investors at the other end of the transactions.
During the bubble, regulators allowed financial market participants to run amok. To help ensure
that does not happen again, consumer protections that have languished, like providing loan
disclosures in a borrower’s native language, need to be reinvigorated and violators prosecuted.
Loan-making standards need to be subject to regulatory scrutiny, both at banks and nonbanks.
The system must be rid of perverse incentives that made it profitable for brokers and lenders to
make reckless loans.
And to ensure that market participants have the information they need to make rational decisions
— a crucial underpinning of orderly markets — hedge funds and other secretive investors need to
be held to strict disclosure standards and government monitoring.
The Treasury Department has pledged to work internationally to develop regulatory responses to
the current instability. That rings hollow from a department that has a clear antiregulatory bias
and that has previously blown off multilateral regulatory efforts.
Congress should welcome whatever input the Treasury may offer. But it is clearly up to
lawmakers to set a new course. They should act with due speed and due deliberation, mindful of
the balance between protecting consumers and fostering economic vitality.
Worker Solidarity Doesn’t Have to Stop at the Rio Grande

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Comprehensive immigration reform was supposed to overcome the debate’s dead-end

disagreements — It’s amnesty! No, it’s not! — by tackling multiple problems at once. It failed,
miserably, twice in two years. Congress tiptoed back to the battlefield this month with a modest
attempt to legalize some immigrant children who go to college or serve in the military. That failed
too. Federal agents, meanwhile, have been feverishly raiding immigrants’ homes, taking parents
away in the dead of night. The illegal population has not left the country yet, but it is terrified.
And yet for all that, the country is still no closer to figuring out how to handle the stream of
workers over its borders, or how to be a global fortress when it is already a global magnet. What
we need is a better debate.
Jennifer Gordon, a professor at Fordham Law School who won a MacArthur award for her work
with immigrant laborers, is offering one. In a recent article she presents a compelling way out of
one of immigration’s trickiest riddles: how to manage the immigrant flow in a way that is
realistic, workable and fair to both newcomers and to native-born Americans.
Sealing them all out is impossible, throwing the border open unthinkable. Creating a permanent
underclass of guest workers has a long, nasty history.
The challenge is to build institutions that conform to reality but lessen its ill effects. “We can’t
revert to the fantasy that we can just turn the tap off,” Professor Gordon said. “We have to engage
with the question, not abdicate the debate to restrictionists on the one hand and a corporate-
designed guest worker program on the other.”
In “Transnational Labor Citizenship,” published last spring in the Southern California Law
Review, Professor Gordon offers a new way to structure labor migration.
Her proposal would link the right to immigrate not to a job offer from an employer but to
membership in a cross-border worker organization — a kind of transnational union. Migrants
could work here legally, but only after agreeing not to undercut other workers by accepting
substandard pay or job conditions. The organizations would enforce the agreement and protect
members’ rights here and in their home countries.
The goal, she says, is “to bring up the bottom, not by shutting immigrants out, but by organizing
them before they come.” Workers who follow the rules would become “transnational labor
citizens” — supporting their families and the American economy while offering a powerful check
on under-the-table exploitation.
Professor Gordon readily acknowledges the implausibility of winning that One Big Union on a
continental scale. But persuasive precedents for her approach exist. The Farm Labor Organizing
Committee, an agricultural workers’ union, signed a contract in 2004 to protect thousands of
Mexican guest workers in North Carolina. In 2005, it opened an office in Monterrey, Mexico, to
further its organizing efforts and defend its members from abusive recruiters there.
Last year, the United Farm Workers and Global Horizons, one of the largest suppliers of
agricultural guest workers, signed the first nationwide contract covering immigrants. It provides
employer-paid medical care, a seniority system and a grievance procedure to ensure that
employers comply with the law.
Doubters will insist that it is crazy to expect immigrants to risk their meager paychecks to defend
their rights and abstract notions of worker solidarity.
But they have already shown that they will. Professor Gordon won her genius grant after creating
the Workplace Project, an organization of Latino immigrants on Long Island that uses its
members’ collective power to regain withheld or stolen wages. Worker centers like it around the
country are providing a surge of energy and optimism to the labor movement. Latino day
laborers, organizing themselves at hiring corners around the country, are putting a floor on wages
and thwarting abusive employers.
That’s why John Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., went to the annual convention of the
National Day Laborers Organizing Network in Silver Spring, Md., in August and lauded their
shared struggle.
The heart of Professor Gordon’s proposal is the insight that we can enlist immigrants themselves
in upholding the lawfulness and high standards we hold dear. An immigrant worker who is
unafraid is better than one who is vulnerable and easily abused.
As she sees it, politicians who so bitterly oppose day-laborer hiring sites and other attempts to
regularize the underground economy are unwittingly enabling the exploitation and lawlessness
they profess to oppose. The “transnational labor citizens” Professor Gordon envisions, on the
other hand, would uphold American working standards as they assert and defend their own.
The Royalty Mess
A yearlong investigation has now provided unassailable evidence that the Interior Department
abdicated its responsibility to collect royalties from oil and gas companies that drill on public
lands, chiefly the Gulf of Mexico. The report increases the pressure on Congress to find a way to
recover the money. It also increases the pressure on Dirk Kempthorne, the interior secretary, to
accelerate his reforms of the Minerals Management Service, the agency that failed to collect the
royalties.
The investigation grew out of the discovery that a loophole in leases signed by the Clinton
administration in 1998 and 1999 had allowed oil companies to duck royalties due on oil drilled on
federal lands. Midlevel federal officials found the loophole in 2000, but nothing was done to
close it or collect the lost revenues until 2006. It has already cost taxpayers more than $1.5
billion, a figure that could rise to $10 billion over the course of the leases.
The Interior Department has been hammered by Congress, but the strongest criticism has come
from the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, whose final report was disclosed by
Edmund L. Andrews in The Times on Monday. The report attributed the agency’s failure not so
much to ineptitude as to lazy management, ethical lapses and a culture of secrecy that hid
mistakes.
Top officials at the agency also seemed more concerned about the fortunes of the industry they
were supposed to regulate than those of the federal government. In one case turned up by Mr.
Devaney, officials decided it would impose a “hardship” on oil companies to demand that they
calculate the back interest they owed. Officials were also said to have blocked efforts by four
departmental auditors to recover the unpaid royalties.
Congress is now in a mood to recover the money on its own. A provision in the House energy bill
would charge companies that refuse to amend the flawed leases a separate fee for each barrel of
oil that they produce in the future. A Senate proposal would impose a surtax on new oil pumped
by the companies involved that would be offset by any overdue royalties they were willing to pay.
Mr. Kempthorne has made personnel changes at the top of the Minerals Management Service. But
Mr. Devaney’s report makes it clear that he still has a long way to go to change the agency’s
dysfunctional culture.
The Socialists Are Coming! The Socialists Are Coming!
The epithet of choice these days for Republicans who oppose any expansion of government’s role
in health care programs is “socialized” medicine.
Rudy Giuliani has used the “s-word” to denounce legislation that would enlarge a children’s
health insurance program and to besmirch Hillary Clinton’s health plan. Mitt Romney has added a
xenophobic twist, calling the Clinton plan “European-style socialized medicine,” while ignoring
its similarities to a much-touted health care reform he championed as governor of Massachusetts.
Other conservative critics have wielded the “s-word” to deplore efforts to expand government
health care programs or regulation over the private health care markets.
Our political discourse is so debased that the term is typically applied where it is least appropriate
and never applied where it most fits the case.
No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of “socialized medicine” — the
military and veterans hospitals — for what they are. In both systems, care is not only paid for by
the government but delivered in government facilities by doctors who are government employees.
Even so, a parade of Washington’s political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to
the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without
ideological complaint. Politicians who deplore government-run health care for average Americans
are only too happy to use it themselves.
Nor are they eager to tar the vast array of government hospitals and clinics that serve our nation’s
veterans. For one thing, the veterans’ hospitals, once considered a second-rate backwater, now
lead their private sector competitors in adopting electronic medical records and score well for
delivering high quality care at relatively low cost. Even when the veterans’ hospitals were rightly
criticized this year for their part in the disgraceful failure to care adequately for soldiers injured in
Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no clamor to junk or privatize the system, only demands to make
it better.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg startled most New Yorkers two years ago when he asserted that the
city’s public hospitals are “better than the great teaching hospitals” all around them. Although
some deemed his praise hyperbolic, the city’s billionaire, entrepreneurial, free-market-enriched
mayor thought he knew quality when he saw it, even if it was socialist at its core.
The country’s vast Medicare program is one step less socialized — a “single-payer” program in
which the government pays for the care and sets reimbursement rates, but the actual care is
delivered by private doctors and hospitals. When Medicare was launched in 1965 it was routinely
denounced as socialized medicine, but it has become so popular that politicians deem it the third
rail of American politics, sure to electrocute anyone who tries to cut it or privatize it. No
politician is eager to brand 43 million beneficiaries as socialists at heart.
Meanwhile, the two current butts of the “s-word” are such hybrids of public and private elements
that it is hard to know how to characterize them. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program,
or S-chip, was denigrated by one Republican congressman this week as “a government-run
socialized wolf masquerading in the sheep skin of children’s health.” It might better be thought of
as a “double-payer system” in which the states and the federal government put up the money, the
states take the lead in defining the program and the actual care is typically delivered through
private health plans by private doctors and hospitals.
The “s-word” seems even less appropriate for Senator Clinton’s proposed universal health care
plan, which seeks to bolster employer-provided health benefits and create new purchasing pools
to help individuals buy private policies at low group rates.
True, her plan would expand government regulation, and she wants to make a Medicare-like
option available to compete with private policies. But that would only lead to a socialized, single-
payer system if everybody were to choose the Medicare-like option.
There is no special magic in government-run or government-financed health care. Medicare has

serious cost-control and financing problems, and the veterans’ hospitals could take a turn for the
worse, as they have in the past, should federal funding shrivel. Private health care systems have
strengths of their own, are favored by many patients and often provide care as good as any.
The take-home message for voters is this: Look behind the labels to judge health care proposals
on their merits. Whenever you hear a candidate denounce something as a step toward socialized
medicine, it probably isn’t. More likely the politician is demagoguing the issue or is abysmally
ignorant of the inner workings — and real, not ideological, failings — of the country’s
multifaceted health care system.
A Step Away From the Imperial Presidency
The Democratic Congress has yet to muster the votes or courage to repeal a series of noxious
measures — rubber-stamped by the previous Republican majority — that pushed presidential
power to dangerous extremes in the name of fighting terrorism. In a disappointing showdown
earlier this month, Senate Republicans blocked an effort to reverse one of the most ignominious
aspects of last year’s Military Commissions Act — the suspension of the right of habeas corpus to
block foreign detainees from challenging their imprisonment in federal courts.
Fortunately, the prospects are better for undoing a lesser-known example of presidential
overreaching. The defense budget bill heading for Senate passage contains a bipartisan measure
to repeal wording that made it easier for a president to override local control of the National
Guard and declare martial law. That language was slipped into last year’s defense bill.
The revision is sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher
Bond, Republican of Missouri, and is backed unanimously by the nation’s governors. It repeals a
major weakening of two protective doctrines of liberty. One of them, called posse comitatus, was
enacted after the Civil War to bar military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from
engaging in domestic law enforcement.
The other, the Insurrection Act of 1807, long contained a limited exception to posse comitatus for
putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or
depriving people of constitutional rights. Under last year’s revision, the exception was
unnecessarily broadened to allow the president to use military troops as a domestic police force in
response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.”
In June, Congress reversed its acquiescence to another sneaky rider designed to bypass Senate
confirmation of the administration’s choices for U.S. attorney jobs. If this defense bill is enacted,
that will make at least two instances where Congress has lived up to its duty to rescind excessive
power grants to the Bush White House.
For democracy’s sake, there will need to be many more.
Runaway (Spending) Train
If, as he says, President Bush is going to start withdrawing troops from Iraq, why on earth does he
need vastly more money from Congress to wage war? The staggering, ever escalating numbers
tell the real story: As long as it’s up to Mr. Bush, the American presence in Iraq will be endless
and ever more costly, diverting resources from other national priorities that are being ignored or
shortchanged.
The administration showed its cards on Wednesday when it asked Congress for an additional
$42.3 billion in “emergency” funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. This comes on top of the original
2008 spending request, which was made before Mr. Bush announced his so-called “new strategy”
of partial withdrawal. It would bring the 2008 war bill to nearly $190 billion, the largest single-
year total for the wars and an increase of 15 percent from 2007.
And here are a few more facts to put the voracious war machine in context: By year’s end, the
cost for both conflicts since Sept. 11, 2001, is projected to reach more than $800 billion. Iraq
alone has cost the United States more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the Gulf War and the
Korean War and will probably surpass the Vietnam War by the end of next year, according to the
nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
For officials and politicians used to dealing with eye-popping numbers, the additional $42.3
billion may just register as a few more zeros on the bottom line of a staggeringly big bill. But it’s
more than enough to cover the five-year $35 billion proposal for children’s health-care coverage
that Mr. Bush has threatened to veto.
This for a war that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said would cost under $50
billion while his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, predicted Iraqi oil revenues would largely pay for Iraq’s
reconstruction.
It’s not that Americans don’t want to pay and equip the courageous men and women who defend
their freedom. In fact, since 9/11, taxpayers have been remarkably stalwart in underwriting
massive war-fighting increases. But the Pentagon budget has to make sense within the larger
context of national security. Mr. Bush seems to be placing no financial check whatsoever on
military spending, most of it devoted to a war in Iraq that is peripheral to the fight against the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, who are most active in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Americans also should ask why the Pentagon should be entrusted with more tax dollars when it
can’t seem to spend what it has wisely. Military officials recently revealed that contracts worth
more than $90 billion are being investigated — $6 billion for possible criminal charges, the rest
for financial irregularities. According to the vague details made public, the new money would pay
for the continued American troop presence in Iraq, the purchase of armored vehicles and training
Iraq’s new army. But it also contains funds for longer-term goals, such as replacing outdated
equipment.
Congress must dissect this request carefully, find out why Mr. Bush suddenly needed to ask for
the extra money and use the chance to reshape the failed strategy in Iraq. In other words,
lawmakers should join Democrat Robert C. Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations
Committee, in pledging there will be “no more blank checks for Iraq.”
Let the Sunshine In
Of all the secretive games of Washington, none was cheesier than the Senate’s honored device of
the “secret hold” — the power of a lawmaker to anonymously block a bill from reaching a floor
vote without stating rhyme or reason or identity. Thus, it was a bit of history Monday night when
the Senate discovered the name of the mystery man who for months has been obstructing a long
overdue step toward campaign finance reform. This is the simple requirement that senators file
fund-raising reports electronically, as House and presidential candidates long have done, rather
than through the hoary, paper-intensive route that has let senators obscure their benefactors and
beholdings.
The secret holder turned out to be Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican. He was smoked
out by a new rule, enacted under the Democratic majority, that mandated an end to secret holds.
The senator happens to run the Republican campaign fund-raising effort which, along with the
Democratic kitty, would prove far more transparent with electronic reporting. Mr. Ensign insists
that he only wanted time to strengthen, not obstruct, disclosure ethics. Time is up. Now the
Senate can celebrate the outing of parliamentary pimpernels by venturing at last into the world of
electronic communication.
Over in the House, new disclosure rules are shedding light on costly “earmarks” — the
customized chunks of budget pork that members jam into spending bills for favored constituents
and donors. This new corrective doesn’t stop abusers, but it might make them squint when voters
find them caught in the sunshine.
One early analysis of House appropriations and federal elections records found that every private
beneficiary of Representative John Murtha’s recent earmarks, dished by way of his powerful
defense appropriations seat, has requited with campaign cash. That’s 26 separate earmarks in
three years costing scores of millions, with $413,250 eventually flowing into the Murtha coffers,
according to the newspaper Roll Call and the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Did someone say quid pro quo? Mr. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, declined to comment to
Roll Call. The disclosure rules confirm him to be hardly alone. Campaign donations are aptly
described as the “cover charge” for contractors hungry for privileged access into the federal
casino. The truths of disclosure can’t come fast enough for taxpayers.
GM Steps Back From the Brink
The announcement that General Motors and the United Auto Workers have reached a deal to end
a two-day strike and hammer out a new national contract is an encouraging sign that the union
and Detroit’s car manufacturers are serious about grappling with the industry’s huge underlying
problems.
As the U.A.W. puts the agreement to a vote and moves to negotiate similar deals with Ford and
Chrysler, the automakers and their workers need to focus on how to regain a competitive edge
against their Asian rivals. And that’s not the end of their problems. The United States government
must also urgently deal with the mushrooming health-insurance burden that puts not just the
automakers, but so many American companies at a competitive disadvantage.
The pressures on both GM and the union were — and remain — enormous. Steadily losing
market share and trying to recover from losses of more than $12 billion in the last two years,
General Motors needed to be rid of the $50 billion liability of the health care benefits it promised
its retired workers. It also wants to hire a cheaper, more flexible work force and send more work
abroad.
The union was very flexible in negotiations, tentatively agreeing to let the company transfer the
health liability to a union-run trust that the company would fund. Few details of the agreement
have been disclosed. But the U.A.W. obtained in exchange unspecified reassurances about the job
security of GM’s workers. Those numbers have declined to 73,000 today from more than 200,000
10 years ago.
G.M.’s straits are in part of its own making. Its inability to make cars that Americans want to buy
and its reliance on gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s have made it particularly vulnerable as rising gas prices
have led consumers to demand more energy-efficient automobiles.
The company and its workers are also victims of bigger forces. G.M.’s retiree benefit packages
the present, and the government provided tax breaks that made it easy to promise workers
generous retiree benefits.
Globalization and an ever larger pool of retirees left Detroit with an enormous burden just as a
host of nimble foreign companies started setting up shop with fresh, young workers in the union-
free states of the American South. The change pummeled both the car companies and the U.A.W.
This needn’t herald the end of unionized auto-manufacturing, but keeping it alive will require
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to make cars that Americans want to buy. Down the road, the
union might have to deliver more concessions to allow Detroit to remain competitive against
Asian manufacturers that don’t bear the burden of a large retiree population.
Not all the changes need be painful. Weeding out outdated restrictions from G.M.’s union contract
like limits on overtime and worker classifications would provide more flexibility at little cost.
And the problem will never be settled without Washington. The Bush administration, Congress
and presidential candidates from both parties should view Detroit’s troubles as a wake-up call. It
is time for them to start grappling with the swelling cost of health care — for all Americans.
The ‘Crazies’ and Iran
Like Mohamed ElBaradei, we want to make sure what he calls the “crazies” don’t start a war with
Iran. We fear his do-it-yourself diplomacy is playing right into the crazies’ hands — in
Washington and Tehran.
Last month, Mr. ElBaradei, the chief nuclear inspector for the United Nations, cut his own deal
with Iran’s government, intended to answer questions about its secretive nuclear past.
Unfortunately, it made no mention of Iran’s ongoing, very public refusal to stop enriching
uranium — usable for nuclear fuel or potentially a nuclear weapon — in defiance of Security
Council orders.
In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, Iran’s president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, wasn’t shy about explaining what a great deal he’d gotten: gloating that the dispute
over his country’s nuclear program is now “closed.” That’s not true, but the deal has given Russia
and China another reason to delay imposing new sanctions on Iran for its continued defiance.
We’d like to hear the answers to a lot of those outstanding questions. Among our favorites: Has
Iran built more sophisticated uranium centrifuges for a clandestine program? And, what were
Iran’s scientists planning to do with designs, acquired from Pakistan, to mold uranium into shapes
that look remarkably like the core of a nuclear weapon?
According to the so-called work plan agreed to by Mr. ElBaradei, Iran will address one set of
questions at a time, and move on to the next set only after his inspectors have closed the file on
the previous set. If, true to form, the Iranians dole out just enough information to keep the
inspectors asking, the process could drag on and on.
That would give Iran more time, cover and confidence to continue mastering enrichment and
producing nuclear fuel. The further along the Iranians get, the greater our fear that President
Bush, and Vice President Dick Cheney, will decide that one more war isn’t going to do their
reputation much harm.
Some critics charge that the Nobel Prize has gone to Mr. ElBaradei’s head and that he’s decided
that international peacemaker (and holding off George Bush) is his true life calling — not nuclear
inspector. The more charitable explanation is that he believes he’s the only one who can stop what
he fears is an imminent war.
We fervently wish that Mr. Bush and the American Congress had listened to Mr. ElBaradei in
2003 when he said there was no evidence that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program.
But the key to Mr. ElBaradei’s credibility then, and what makes the International Atomic Energy
Agency so indispensable, is he was offering his agency’s clear scientific judgment.
Once he started making diplomatic deals, that judgment — essential not only for ensuring that
Iran, but also a half-dozen other states, don’t go nuclear — immediately becomes suspect.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained last week that the I.A.E.A. shouldn’t be in the
business of diplomacy. Yes, that’s her job. And she’s not done nearly enough to try to get the
Iranians to sit down at the table with a credible offer of comprehensive talks. Sanctions alone are
unlikely to restrain Iran’s nuclear program, especially at the rate the Security Council is moving.
We can see why Mr. ElBaradei was tempted. The only way he can recoup now is by insisting that
Iran do what the Security Council has ordered: Suspend enrichment and answer all the questions
about its nuclear past
The Plight of the Loggerhead Turtle
For a while during the 1990s, it looked as though the loggerhead sea turtle might really be making
a comeback. But a new federal report — a 5-year review that was mandated by the Endangered
Species Act — suggests that loggerheads, which are listed as threatened, have begun to decline
again. Their life-pattern makes them doubly vulnerable to humans. They lay their eggs on
beaches, habitat vulnerable to development and disturbance, in places like South Florida and
Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, and they spend their long lives at sea, where they are often
fouled in fishing nets.
It is partly the longevity of these creatures that makes their death as bystanders among the global
fishing fleets feel so tragic, a truly colossal waste of life. A loggerhead reaches sexual maturity at
around 35. Some kinds of fishing, like shrimp trawl fishing, lend themselves to the use of turtle
excluder devices, which help sea turtles escape from nets. But it takes regular enforcement to
ensure that those devices are used, and enforcement is always in short supply when it comes to
the environment. Much of the global fleet, which grows larger and larger, is beyond such
enforcement in any case. For an oceanic species such as the loggerhead, these are incredibly
dangerous times.
Like almost any threatened or endangered species, the loggerhead sea turtle raises a fundamental
question about human will. The loggerhead has benefited from recovery plans, special legal
status, the dedication of scientists and environmentalists and the general good will of the public.
And yet all of this concerted human effort is required simply to restrain human economic activity
— fishing especially — enough to allow this extraordinary species to share the planet with us. As
always, in matters of species preservation, our efforts look as though they’re directed at nature,
when in fact they’re really directed at ourselves.
More Housing Woes in Mississippi
As the poorest state in the country, Mississippi should have no trouble finding low- and moderate-
income homeowners to share in the more than $5 billion in emergency federal aid funneled into
the state after Hurricane Katrina.
But a startling new analysis by a coalition of state and national housing advocates accuses
Mississippi of using loopholes in the law to spend far too much on middle- and upper-income
households and far too little on those most in need of help.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the program, needs to take
a close look at how Mississippi is spending that money.
The aid was channeled through the Community Development Block Grant program, which was
set up by Congress in the 1970s to improve housing for the poor and provide a better quality of
life and more economic opportunities. The law requires states and localities to spend 70 percent
of the money they receive on projects that will clearly benefit low- and moderate-income people.
After Katrina, Congress lowered that requirement to 50 percent for the Gulf Coast states, partly
because people at all income levels had lost their homes. That seemed reasonable, given the
nature of the emergency.
Low-income housing advocates were rightly uneasy about a second provision that allowed the
Gulf Coast states to waive the income test altogether for some projects. They feared that the states
would use waivers to reward cronies and boost pet projects. Indeed, Mississippi’s critics now
claim that only about 20 percent of the money spent so far has gone to help low- and moderate-
income families.
Now Mississippi has floated a proposal that would divert $600 million from the housing recovery
effort to a plan to rebuild the port at Gulfport. State boosters want to redevelop the area as a hub
for casinos and cruise ships.
The state sees this as economic development. Housing advocates see it as an attempt to hijack
money that should rightly be going to build and repair housing for displaced, low-income
Mississippians. They also charge that the state has written the rules for its housing aid program in
a way that denies help to large numbers of low-income homeowners, who would clearly be
eligible under the same post-Katrina program in neighboring Louisiana.
Congress must revisit the waiver process to make sure that states aren’t using it to evade the
income restrictions clearly laid out in federal law. And HUD needs to take a hard look at all
aspects of the Mississippi program, and make sure that the remainder of the emergency aid
money gets to the low-income families who are legally entitled to it and desperately need the
help.
EDITORIAL; Detroit at the Brink
General Motors and the United Automobile Workers union have both been under enormous
pressure to stand tough in their negotiations. It is encouraging that both sides are reportedly
making good progress in hammering out a new national contract. They must come together if
they are to salvage their futures and resolve the huge underlying issues that threaten Detroit's Big
Three automakers.
As negotiations between the U.A.W. and the auto companies continue, the automakers and their
workers need to remain focused on how to regain a competitive edge against their rivals from
Asia. Meanwhile, the United States government must urgently deal with the mushrooming health-
insurance burden that puts many American companies at a competitive disadvantage.
The pressures on both sides are enormous. Steadily losing market share and trying to recover
from losses of more than $12 billion in the last two years, General Motors wants to be rid of the
$50 billion liability of the health care benefits it promised its retired workers. It wants to hire a
cheaper, more flexible work force and send more work abroad. The union has been flexible in
negotiations -- reportedly agreeing to let the company transfer the health benefits to a union-run
fund. Yet after standing by while G.M.'s work force shrunk to some 73,000 workers from more
than 200,000 10 years ago, the U.A.W. feels it must protect the job security of its remaining
members.
The straits G.M. finds itself in are in part of its own making. Its inability to make cars that
American drivers want to buy and its reliance on gas-guzzling S.U.V.'s have made it particularly
vulnerable as rising gas prices have driven consumers toward more energy-efficient automobiles.
But the company and its workers are also victims of bigger forces. G.M.'s retiree benefit packages
the present and the government-provided tax breaks to pay workers with promises rather than
money.
But aging and globalization made this backfire badly, leaving Detroit with an enormous burden
just as a host of nimble foreign companies started setting up shop with fresh, young workers in
the union-free states of the American South. The change pummeled both the car companies and
the U.A.W.
This needn't herald the end of unionized auto-manufacturing, but keeping it alive will require
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to make cars that Americans want to buy. The union will
probably have to deliver more concessions to allow Detroit to remain competitive against Asian
manufacturers that don't bear the burden of a large retiree population.
Not all the changes need be painful. Weeding out outdated restrictions from G.M.'s union contract
-- like limits on overtime and worker classifications -- would provide more flexibility at little
cost.
However, nothing long term can happen without Washington. The Bush administration, Congress
and presidential candidates from both parties should view Detroit's troubles as a wake-up call. It
is time for them to start grappling with the swelling cost of health care -- the one issue that seems
not to be on the table when the political talk turns to health-insurance reform.
EDITORIAL; The Despotism Formerly Known as Burma
By dispatching troops into the streets and imposing a curfew, Myanmar's cruel military junta has
set the stage for a serious clash with pro-democracy activists. A firm and united international
response along the lines outlined by President Bush and the European Union at the United
Nations yesterday offers the best hope of encouraging peaceful change in a nation that has
endured a 19-year reign of fear. The question is whether the countries with the greatest influence
on Myanmar's generals -- China, Russia and India, which all sell weapons to the army, as well as
the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that are Myanmar's immediate
neighbors -- have the good sense to condemn the repression and exert the pressures only they can
wield with any hope of positive effect. It is essential that they step up to the plate, and fast, before
blood is spilled.
Peaceful protests that began last month over dramatically increased fuel prices became seriously
threatening to the junta when Myanmar's highly revered Buddhist monks joined in. The growing
crowds gave voice to pent-up grievances -- and the junta responded in a predictable, entirely
wrongheaded way. It sent troops into the streets, and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the iconic
democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was reported to have been moved to prison from
house arrest.
The United States, which has long had sanctions on Myanmar, including an import ban, will now
expand a visa ban against regime leaders and tighten financial penalties, Mr. Bush told the United
Nations. Although not spelled out, the plan is believed to include going after regime bank
accounts in Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries, a tactic used by Washington with
some effect against North Korea. The European Union also warned the junta that it faced tougher
sanctions if it used force to crush the pro-democracy movement.
These were good and necessary moves, but the greatest leverage to forestall disaster lies with
China, Russia and India, who are making money off the junta and enabling it to stay in power.
China, Myanmar's chief trade partner and the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, has beefed up
arms sales to Yangon, formerly Rangoon, prompting Russia and India to do likewise as a way of
offsetting Beijing's influence.
Moscow has discussed providing the junta with a nuclear research reactor, and India -- the
democracy on which the United States hopes to build a key security and economic relationship
for the 21st century -- had a senior minister in Myanmar for energy talks, even as the democracy
protests were under way.
There are some signs that China has urged restraint, but more must be done, including supporting
U.N. sanctions on Myanmar that Beijing and Moscow have so far blocked. The U.N. envoy
dealing with Myanmar, Ibrahmim Gambari, must aggressively rally these major countries, as well
as the Asean nations, to persuade the generals to stand down.
EDITORIAL; Putting the Census at Risk
The next census is in 2010. But whether the Census Bureau has the means to ensure the accuracy
of the count -- which determines everything from how federal aid is apportioned to how many
Congressional seats are given to each state -- will be decided this week. Right now, the portents
for an accurate count are not good.
By Friday, Congress is expected to pass a stopgap funding measure to keep the government
operating through mid-November. It would hold government spending at last year's levels and
give Congress and the White House more time to try to iron out their differences on the actual
appropriations bills.
Many parts of the government can hold spending flat for a while. But this close to a decennial
census, the Census Bureau cannot -- even for six weeks. The bureau is currently ramping up for a
full dress rehearsal for the next census. If funding is not forthcoming, the rehearsal will have to be
scaled back or canceled.
That would virtually guarantee a flawed census. The rehearsal has been an integral part of the
census since 1970. It tests and fine-tunes every detail of the process, including recruiting census
takers, advertising, mailing questionnaires and coordinating the computer and statistical systems
used to scan, tabulate, analyze and compile the results.
Especially imperiled by a funding delay is a contract for the hand-held computers that the bureau
intends to use for the first time in 2010.
It is still possible to make an exception in the stopgap measure to ensure the necessary funding
for the census. Mr. Bush requested full funding for the bureau's preparatory efforts in his 2008
budget, so there is no disagreement about the money. And at the White House's request, several
other exceptions are in the works, including additional spending for the Department of Homeland
Security to detain illegal immigrants.
President Bush should request the necessary funds to achieve a fair and accurate census. If he
doesn't, Congress should include it anyway. An accurate count is essential to a healthy
democracy.
EDITORIAL NOTEBOOK; The Hopper Landscape

In 1934, Edward Hopper built a small whitewashed house in the empty dunes of South Truro,
Mass. He painted there every summer until his death in 1967. By some miracle, the view north
from Hopper's house has barely changed in all that time -- a subversively unassuming expanse of
hills and a sea-glazed sky. Now that view is threatened by the planned construction of a new
6,500-square-foot house on the adjacent lot, right in the heart of what is called, for better or
worse, the Hopper landscape.
With the next zoning hearing scheduled for Oct. 4, there has been a lot of to and fro about this
house. Suffice it to say that both sides -- those who want to protect the view and those who
believe the lot's owner is well within his rights -- are making their very best case.
I find the terms of the debate a little strange, though. I believe in protecting open land on almost
any pretext and surely the dunes of South Truro deserve to be protected because they are part of
the larger ecosystem of the Cape Cod National Seashore. What puzzles me is the idea of the
Hopper landscape. The landscape Hopper saw, as an artist, is already protected. It exists only in
his paintings, nowhere else. What matters, artistically speaking, isn't the actual view Hopper saw
during his summers in South Truro. What matters is the inner view that resulted in those painted
landscapes.
The history of painting is a history of vanished and altered landscapes. The absence of the
original, real-world landscapes that inspired the paintings has no bearing on their significance or
their aesthetic achievement. The idea of preserving the Hopper landscape somehow implies that a
viewer will need it to make a comparison: looking out over the Truro dunes, then at a Hopper
painting, then back at the dunes as if there were something inherently instructive in that exercise.
Hopper has left us his complete thoughts on the comparison. They're embodied in his paintings.
By all means, protect the dunes -- as seashore, as open land, as habitat, as a place where other
artists and nonartists might come to be moved by their beauty. And protect the Hopper house, too,
when it comes to that. But the idea of protecting the content of the artist's gaze for itself is
chimerical. VERLYN KLINKENBORG
EDITORIAL; Mr. Ahmadinejad Speaks
There are many reasons we find Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies and
pronouncements loathsome. High on that list are his denial of the Holocaust, his call to wipe
Israel off the map and his country's sponsorship of terrorism. Equally loathsome is Iran's denial of
basic civil rights to its citizens, including the right of free speech.
So we are dismayed by the behavior of some of New York's democratically elected

representatives who denounced and threatened Columbia University for inviting the Iranian
leader to speak there yesterday. We can imagine no better way to give hope to opponents of Iran's
repressive state than by showcasing America's democracy and commitment to free speech. And
we can imagine no better way to lay bare the bankruptcy of Mr. Ahmadinejad's views than to
have him speak, and be questioned, at a university forum.
Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, defended the event as in the best tradition of America's free
speech, then freely told Mr. Ahmadinejad: ''You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.''
Mr. Ahmadinejad said he would not be ''affected by this unfriendly treatment'' and did a lot of
bobbing and weaving. He showed his colors when, asked about Iran's repression of homosexuals,
he declared: ''We don't have homosexuals like in your country'' -- setting off hoots and derisive
laughter.
Unlike Iran's citizens, Americans have the right to laugh at leaders, as well as protest Mr.
Ahmadinejad's visit and Columbia's decision to schedule his speech. The threats of possible
sanctions against Columbia were an insult to that freedom. In an interview with The New York
Sun, the speaker of New York's Assembly, Sheldon Silver, warned that legislators might now
''take a different view'' of capital support provided to Columbia.
We hope cooler heads prevail once Mr. Ahmadinejad leaves town. And we hope that what
Americans and Iranians will remember is that image of professors and students, in a true
democratic forum, challenging the Iranian president for his Holocaust denial, his threats against
Israel and the repression of Iran's citizens.
EDITORIAL; Of Animal Eggs and Human Embryos
Stem cell research in the United States has been hobbled for years by severe and misguided
restrictions on federal funding. But now a vexing additional problem is slowing even privately
financed research. There are distressingly few women willing to donate their eggs for
experiments at the frontiers of this promising science.
A respected team of stem cell researchers at Harvard spent nearly $100,000 over the course of a
year advertising for egg donors. Hundreds of qualified women were interested enough to call but,
after hearing what was entailed, not one was willing to donate eggs. Many were likely deterred by
the time, effort and pain required -- including daily hormone injections and minor surgery -- to
retrieve the eggs. And they were almost certainly discouraged by the meager compensation.
Although women can be paid thousands of dollars to donate eggs for fertility treatments, ethical
guidelines and some state laws say they cannot be paid much for donating to research. These
restrictions are meant to protect the women against exploitation, but they have created a dearth of
egg donors for stem cell research.
Surplus embryos from fertility clinics can seldom be used to study specific diseases or develop
treatments for them. Scientists need to develop new stem cell lines genetically matched to
patients with diseases like diabetes or Parkinson's. They typically take the nucleus of a patient's
skin cell and inject it into an egg whose nucleus has been removed. If all goes well, the desired
stem cell can be derived from the result.
With few human eggs available, some privately financed stem cell scientists are studying animal
eggs to see if they can work the same magic when injected with a human nucleus. That may send
shivers of apprehension through people who imagine rogue scientists creating grotesque half-
human, half-animal creatures in the laboratory. But a thorough examination of the process by
British regulators should alleviate such fears.
The British have approved, in principle, the creation of ''cybrid embryos,'' produced when
scientists grow human embryos in animal eggs. Although the embryos would be, in some sense,
animal-human hybrids, there would be remarkably little animal -- only about 0.1 percent -- in the
mix. The embryos, and the stem cells derived, would be virtually identical to cells in the patient.
There is little doubt that human eggs would be better for research and ultimately treatment. But
with a shortage of donors, animal eggs could prove a valuable alternative. Meanwhile, many
scientists are hoping that it will be possible, without using eggs at all, to convert human skin cells
directly into embryonic stem cells, as has been shown possible in mice. That would be an elegant
solution to the vexing egg donor problem.
EDITORIAL; An Opportunity for Mr. Schwarzenegger
California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has a laudable record of splitting with
his party's orthodoxy to support pathbreaking state initiatives on global warming and stem cell
research. Now Mr. Schwarzenegger has a chance to make Californians safer, and set a new
national standard, by signing into law the Crime Gun Identification Act of 2007.
The measure would make California the first state to require that all new semiautomatic weapons
be equipped with technology known as microstamping, which imprints microscopic markings as
a gun fires. That would allow police to quickly match bullet casings found at a crime scene to the
weapon that shot them, a valuable new tool for solving gun crimes and for deterring gun
traffickers who supply violent criminals.
The technology is relatively inexpensive. And the new law gives manufacturers until 2010 to
retool. Mike Feuer, the Democratic Assemblyman who is the author of the bill, notes that more
than 40 percent of homicides in California go unsolved yearly for lack of evidence. The national
record is not much better, explaining the bill's broad support from law enforcement. There is no
real explanation, save the fierce opposition of the gun lobby, for why no Republican voted for the
bill.
California's embrace of the innovative crime-fighting tool over reflexive gun lobby opposition
would set an example for other states, and also for Congress, which certainly needs more than a
push. Nearly six months after the massacre at Virginia Tech, a bill to tighten the system for
preventing people with serious mental problems from purchasing guns still languishes.
For California, the new law offers a real chance to save lives and bring more perpetrators of
violent crime to justice. Mr. Schwarzenegger's choice should be easy.
EDITORIAL OBSERVER; Larry Craig's Great Adventure: Suddenly, He's a Civil
Libertarian
Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, will ask a judge this week to reverse his conviction for
soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. He should
prevail. Mr. Craig did nothing illegal, and the law he was convicted under should be held
unconstitutional.
It is hard, though, to be entirely sympathetic. Mr. Craig, who is asking the court to take the
extraordinarily pro-defendant step of undoing his guilty plea, has been a rubber stamp for the
Bush administration's drive to stock the courts with judges who have utter contempt for civil
liberties -- and for claims like his own.
After his arrest, Mr. Craig was called hypocritical for his longstanding opposition to gay rights in
Congress. His legal defense, though, presents a different inconsistency. He joins a long list of
conservatives who believe in a fair legal system only for themselves.
Mr. Craig pleaded guilty to a dubious charge of disorderly conduct after under-the-stall toe-
tapping and shoe-bumping with an undercover police officer. His gestures may have been moving
toward an illegal act -- sexual indecency in a public place or prostitution -- but it is hard to see
what crime he committed by sending coded signals to a seemingly willing participant.
The American Civil Liberties Union has come to Mr. Craig's defense. It says the law he was
convicted under -- criminalizing ''offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct'' that
tends to ''alarm, anger or disturb others'' -- is unconstitutionally vague, and makes a lot of
perfectly harmless speech illegal. It's right. If boisterous conduct that disturbs others is a crime in
Minnesota, the state must be planning mass arrests of the speakers at the 2008 Republican
National Convention, which is being held in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Mr. Craig has a particularly hard case to make because he signed a guilty plea, which he now
wants to withdraw -- something courts rarely allow. He claims he signed in ''a state of intense
anxiety,'' in an attempt to keep news of the arrest from getting out. To succeed, he will have to
show that he suffered a ''manifest injustice.''
It is an odd claim for him to make. Mr. Craig has consistently voted for President Bush's judicial
nominees, helping the far right to fill the federal courts with judges who are strikingly unmoved
by claims of injustice. These Bush judges are not merely legal conservatives -- they have been on
a hard-driving campaign to weaken or undo protections that are basic to the American system of
justice.
The court's remarkable ruling this year in Bowles v. Russell showed how far things have gone. An
Ohio man challenged his criminal conviction by the deadline set by a federal judge. The Supreme
Court ruled that the judge had erred by a few days -- and that the man had therefore lost his right
to have his challenge heard. The four liberal justices rightly said in dissent that ''it is intolerable
for the judicial system to treat people this way.''
Mr. Craig is hardly alone in deciding that he likes defendants' rights after he became a defendant.
Among law-and-order conservatives, it's the norm. Oliver North got his Iran-contra convictions
thrown out, with the A.C.L.U.'s help, on a relative technicality. This year, an official of the
National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, James Tobin, got his conviction for
jamming Democratic Party lines in New Hampshire on Election Day reversed on a fine point
about what his ''purpose'' was.
It would be gratifying if conservatives who saw the legal system's flaws up close were changed
by the experience. After all, as the joke goes, a liberal is just a conservative who has been
arrested. But more often, they carve out an exception to their tough-on-crime philosophy, just for
themselves
EDITORIAL; Cleaning Up China
then the World Bank's chief economist and later Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary -- wrote a memo
suggesting that the bank should encourage the world's dirty industries to move to developing
countries. The forgone earnings of workers sickened or killed by pollution would be lower in
low-wage countries, he noted, while people in poor countries also cared less about a clean
environment. ''The economic logic of dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country
is impeccable,'' he wrote.
Mr. Summers later apologized, saying his words were ''sardonic counterpoint,'' meant to spur new
thinking about the environment and development. In any case, the World Bank's encouragement
wasn't needed. In the 16 years since, a large share of the world's polluting industries have
migrated to the largest low-wage country of all, China, helping to turn big swaths of its landscape
into an environmental disaster zone.
China makes more than a third of the world's steel, half of its cement, about a third of its
aluminum. It also consumes more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. Its
environmental degradation is a match for Dickens at his bleakest: airborne pollution causes more
than 650,000 premature deaths a year.
The problem doesn't stay there. China is about to surpass, or has already surpassed, the United
States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
China's government bears primary responsibility for failing to address the devastating
environmental consequences of its breakneck growth. Industrialized countries, whose companies
and consumers have benefited from China's cheap labor and polluting industries, also bear
responsibility and must work to fix this mess.
Beijing has begun to realize that its current path is not cost-free. A study commissioned by the
government conservatively estimated that costs imposed by environmental degradation added up
to 3 percent of G.D.P. in 2004. The government has since set targets to reduce energy use and cut
emissions. China's authoritarian leaders, however, are fearful of anything that might require
slower growth and have strangled most domestic debate about the environmental disaster. After
the first report they dropped the effort to measure pollution's economic impact, and the targets are
unlikely to be met.
Beijing could start investing some of the hundreds of billions of dollars China earns on exports in
social and environmental programs at home. Foreign companies could help by requiring their
suppliers in China to adopt best environmental practices. Western governments can also help by
explaining how pollution could threaten both China's growth and social stability -- the two things
its authoritarian leaders worry about most.
Perhaps the most important thing the United States could do is to set a strong international
example, by dealing with its own environmental deficit. Instead, the Bush administration has been
hiding behind China's recalcitrance -- allowing China to do the same.
WESTCHESTER; When Nature Intrudes
It's odd, isn't it, that just as people are turning more and more of the region into indoor space,
within the cavernous square footage of suburban McMansions and megamalls, the outdoors
seems to be drawing ever nearer -- uncomfortably near, sometimes.
Never mind the perennial nuisance of deer and geese, which by now are as settled into the
suburban grid as we are. Large, furry predators are expanding their range and moving in.
Coyotes are one such predator, bears another. Researchers from Cornell University are in the
middle of a five-year study tracking coyotes in Westchester. Meanwhile, New York State's
Department of Environmental Conservation, a participant in the coyote study, recently moved up
the bear-hunting season in the Catskills by a couple of days, because there have been too many
bear-human encounters.
The idea is to start hunting black bears and deer on the same opening day, so bears don't get their
usual warning to flee to the hills because of all the gunfire.
One morning last week, a commuter on his way to White Plains spotted a black bear beside the
Taconic State Parkway, where it winds through Clarence Fahnestock State Park. ''It was like he
was stretching in the sun,'' he told The Journal News, which also reported another bear sighting
farther east in Putnam County, in Patterson.
New York's bear population is at a healthy level, about 6,000 to 7,000, according to state wildlife
officials. Scientists won't even venture to guess how many coyotes there are, except to say that
they are firmly established in practically every county in the state, and that families with dogs,
cats and toddlers would do well to use common-sense caution when they go outdoors.
An optimist might look at the proliferation of these wild creatures as comforting proof of the
healthy resilience of nature and our wise management of it. But lots of evidence suggests
otherwise. Animals like deer and coyotes are becoming our ever-closer neighbors because of
increasing encroachment on the wild habitat they might prefer to live in, because predators above
them in the food chain have long since been wiped out, and because human habitations invariably
produce large amounts of tasty, unsecured trash.
It seems inevitable that encounters between domesticated humans and large wild animals will
continue to rise. There is always the potential for peril, of course, in those thrilling, often
worrisome, occasionally dangerous episodes. But there is also the possibility that the human
inhabitants of nature's teeming borderlands will learn something from them.
To see a bear stretching in the sun on your commute, to have that distant world intrude through
your car window, is a gift. It brings the opportunity to question your own place in that world, and
to ponder the realization that while untamed nature is not nearly as natural as it used to be, it is
still -- blessedly -- untamed, and thus to be treated with humility and respect.
EDITORIAL; The Battle Over Health Care
One of the enduring frustrations of presidential elections is that candidates and their parties sound
like Tweedledum and Tweedledee on many issues. In 2008, when it comes to health care, which
is emerging as a defining domestic issue, voters will find stark differences in philosophy and
commitment between Democrats and Republicans.
The three leading Democratic candidates all want to achieve universal or near universal health
insurance coverage. The four leading Republican candidates espouse no such goal and barely
mention the uninsured. The Democrats are willing to put substantial federal money into health
care reform. The Republicans are not. The Democrats would expand government health insurance
programs and give the federal government a greater role in regulating the insurance industry. The
Republicans generally want to shrink federal programs and free the insurance industry from what
they consider regulatory shackles.
Compared with these sharp differences between the two parties, the distinctions between leading
candidates within each party are small, mostly a matter of tactics to achieve comparable goals.
We far prefer the Democrats' approach to health insurance, since at least they want to address an
issue that must be resolved for reasons of economics, public health and fairness. Sadly, none of
the leading candidates, in either party, has the vision or the political courage to propose radical
solutions for the big underlying problem behind America's health care crisis: the inexorably rising
costs.
The Republican Candidates
Two Republican candidates have yet to grapple seriously with health care reform. John McCain,
running largely on Iraq and national security, has not said anything substantial about health care,
nor has he even included it among issues listed on his campaign Web site. Fred Thompson has
only a brief paragraph on his Web site in which he opposes new mandates, higher taxes or a
Washington-controlled program, and calls for free-market solutions. He has also called for
reduced spending on entitlements and says he would have opposed the new Medicare prescription
drug benefit.
Rudolph Giuliani, who leads the Republican field in national polls, has only sketchy plans but has
made it clear that he favors free-market approaches and is strongly opposed to what he mislabels
as the Democrats' push for socialized medicine. Borrowing from President Bush, he proposes a
tax deduction of up to $15,000 to help families buy private health insurance instead of getting it
through their employers. He believes millions of people might choose that option, creating a
market in which insurance companies would rush in with affordable policies to cover them, and
the nation would begin to move away from the employer-based system that the Democrats are
trying to bolster. For the poor, he envisions some combination of vouchers and tax refunds to help
buy policies but has given no indication of how much that program would cost or how he would
pay for it.
His proposals are not likely to make much of a dent in the ranks of the uninsured. Tax deductions
are of little use to low-income people who pay little or no income tax, and insurers are notorious
for refusing individual policies to high-risk or chronically ill people. Given Mr. Giuliani's
eagerness to ease regulation of insurance companies it is hard to see how he could make that
market work better
Mitt Romney has the most developed health plan among the Republicans, as one might expect
given his prominent role in spurring health care reform in Massachusetts. As governor of that left-
leaning state, he helped make Massachusetts a leader in providing universal coverage, mostly by
mandating that everyone must buy health insurance or pay a financial penalty. But as a candidate
in the Republican primaries he has changed course, disavowing any need for mandates and
contending that what was right for Massachusetts would not be right for the country.
Instead of a national reform effort, he wants the 50 states to devise their own plans, but without
much financial help from the federal government. He promises federal incentives to help states
deregulate their health insurance markets to encourage cheaper policies.
His key proposal at the national level centers on tax deductions to help people pay for health care.
He would allow individuals to deduct their out-of-pocket expenditures -- and any premiums paid
for insurance policies they bought on their own rather than through their employer -- from their
taxable income. For those who still cannot afford coverage, he would encourage states to redirect
money now used for charity care to help low-income people buy private health insurance. There
would be no new federal money for this purpose. His advisers estimate the proposals would cost a
modest $10 billion a year in reduced revenues to the United States Treasury.
The problem of relying on tax deductions to increase insurance coverage is that they mostly favor
the better off. The problem with relying on the states to enact the needed reforms is that the plight
of the uninsured would be left to the whims of geography. Few states have the financial resources
that allowed Massachusetts to move to universal coverage, and many states lack the expertise to
mount a sophisticated program.
The Democratic Candidates
Although Republicans routinely lambaste the Democrats for supporting socialized medicine or
government programs in which bureaucrats would dictate your health coverage, the plans put
forth by the three leading Democratic candidates -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John
Edwards -- are all very careful to build on the existing system of employer-based coverage
supplemented by government programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children's Health
Insurance Program.
None of them is proposing a ''single payer'' system run by the government. And all bend over
backward to reassure people that they can maintain their current coverage if they like it. Their
political goal is to head off opposition from those who fear that their own coverage might suffer
in the course of covering some 47 million uninsured people.
The Democratic plans have far more similarities than differences. All three would move toward
universal coverage and would rely heavily on mandates to do so. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards
would require everyone to take out health insurance. That would bring young and healthy people
into the system to help subsidize coverage for the more sickly, and would eliminate the problem
of ''free riders,'' who show up uninsured at the emergency room and get very expensive care
without paying. Mr. Obama would require parents to get insurance for their children but has no
mandate for adults.
All three would require big employers to provide health insurance or contribute to the cost of
covering their employees outside the workplace. But they differ in the treatment of small
businesses, whose opposition helped derail the last big reform effort in 1993. Mr. Edwards is the
toughest. He would require small businesses to provide insurance coverage or help pay for
coverage elsewhere. Mr. Obama would exempt them from any mandate. Mrs. Clinton, in what
looks suspiciously like a bribe to buy small business support, promises them a tax credit for
providing coverage.
The Clinton plan would cost an estimated $110 billion a year, the Edwards plan $90 billion to
$120 billion, the Obama plan $50 billion to $65 billion. All three would finance their programs
partly by rolling back Bush-era tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year and partly
with debatable savings they would get through cost-cutting
All three would require insurers to accept everyone without regard to pre-existing conditions,
would provide tax subsidies to low-income people, and would establish purchasing pools to help
individuals get low group rates.
There would be a menu of options for people dissatisfied with their current policies because of
high costs or limited benefits, including both private health plans and a public program that would
compete alongside them. That would provide an interesting test of whether government or private
plans are more effective and popular, a matchup that critics of ''government-run'' programs seem
determined to avoid.
The Clinton plan has an innovative proposal to limit the premiums that families have to pay to a
certain percentage of their income, as yet undefined. That is a welcome protection for consumers
but could cause problems if medical costs continue to rise far faster than wages.
WHAT'S MISSING
All of the plans, both Republican and Democratic, fail to provide a plausible solution to the
problem that has driven health care reform to the fore as a political issue: the inexorably rising
costs that drive up insurance rates and force employers to cut back on coverage or charge higher
premiums. All of the plans acknowledge the need to restrain costs, but most of the remedies they
offer are not likely to do much.
Electronic medical records to eliminate errors and increase efficiency, more preventive care to
head off serious diseases, and better coordination of patients suffering multiple, chronic illnesses
are all worthy proposals, but there is scant evidence they will reduce costs. Proposals to import
drugs from abroad, allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, restrain malpractice expenses,
increase competition among health plans, and empower consumers to shop more wisely for
medical care might help a bit. But many experts doubt that any of this will truly put the brakes on
escalating health care costs.
No top candidate in either party has broached more drastic remedies, like limiting the use of
expensive new technologies, cutting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals, or forcing people to
use health maintenance organizations. And no one has suggested imposing higher taxes on
everyone, not just the wealthy, to finance universal coverage. These solutions are not even
discussed on the campaign trail lest they alienate voters and interest groups.
At this stage, the various plans should be considered as broad outlines of where the candidates
want to go, with details to be worked out later. Voters who put a high priority on covering all or
most of the uninsured will prefer the Democrats' approach, as we do. The chief danger is that the
Democrats have a tendency to imply that everyone can be covered with good benefit packages
without inconveniencing anyone but the wealthy. Their cost and savings assumptions will need
thorough analysis when more detailed plans emerge.
Voters who put a higher priority on reshaping the health care system along free-market lines than
on achieving universal coverage will prefer the Republican plans. Those plans' likely impact on
costs will also need to be analyzed when more details emerge. The ''magic of the market'' may be
less than magical.
Given the wide split between Republican and Democratic approaches, the polarized politics in
Washington, and the overriding need to find a way out of the morass in Iraq, it will be an uphill
battle to achieve consensus on health care any time soon. But at least voters will have a clear
choice of which way the candidates are headed.
EDITORIAL; Climate Week
The coming week could set a record for the number of high-profile hours spent discussing global
warming and what to do about it. It begins with a special one-day session at the United Nations,
at which Al Gore will press the case for strong collective action to stop the rise of greenhouse
gases. It ends with a two-day White House ''summit'' involving all of the major emitters,
including India and China. Both of those nations have been conspicuously absent from climate
negotiations, but their help in arresting global emissions is essential.
The problem needs all the attention it can get. But if talk is good, it is also cheap. And it will
change nothing unless it leads to a real treaty with real, and enforceable, limits on the production
of greenhouse gases. That means a broader and more inclusive version of the Kyoto Protocol, a
noble but flawed treaty that expires in 2012.
As we know, firm targets are not what President Bush has in mind. Mr. Bush announced this
summit in June at a time when he was under serious pressure from scientists, the Supreme Court,
his Europeans allies and the nation's governors to do something about global warming. He made
it clear even then that he would continue to resist binding targets of the sort envisioned by Kyoto
in favor of voluntary, country-by-country agreements -- ''aspirational'' goals, in the words of his
environmental adviser, James Connaughton, instead of real ones. If this summit legitimizes an
every-nation-for-itself approach, it will have been a failure.
Nor should all the hoopla be allowed to obscure the fact that there are plenty of things that
Washington can do, should do and is still not doing to start slowing the damage from global
warming.
One obvious step is to let California and 13 other states proceed with stiff new rules aimed at
reducing greenhouse gases from cars and light trucks. This month, a federal judge, William K.
Sessions III, ruled that the states should be allowed to proceed. In doing so, he systematically
demolished every technological and economic argument advanced by the automobile industry as
to why it cannot significantly improve automobile efficiency. But the states still need a federal
waiver to proceed. Mr. Bush should grant it.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate should stop inventing endless excuses --
Iraq, a crowded calendar, procedural difficulties -- for why they cannot move swiftly to reconcile
their two energy bills.
One of the big sticking points is a Senate provision requiring meaningful improvements in fuel
economy. Again the automobile companies say they can't do it. History -- and Judge Sessions --
say they can.
Energy bills are almost always controversial. This year's bills are more problematic than most
because they contain some tough provisions requiring serious investment in efficiency and major
changes in the way we create and deliver energy. This is a big test for Democrats. If they cannot
deliver an energy bill, there's little hope they can ever handle the more complex, but essential,
task of producing a comprehensive strategy on climate change.
EDITORIAL; Free the Statue of Liberty
Representative Anthony Weiner is right to keep tilting at the Statue of Liberty -- or at least at
Washington's insistence that the statue's top be closed to the people it is meant to inspire.
Generations of tourists had climbed the 162 steps to Liberty's crown until the site was closed after
the Sept. 11 attacks. The statue was partly reopened three years ago, with visitors ushered through
explosives detecting ''puffer'' machines and other security, and then allowed only up to the statue's
hem. A glass ceiling was installed where the stairs were shut off.
Standing underneath it, visitors can gaze upward into the void, a tremendously unsatisfying
experience, especially for those who remember the exhilaration of the climb and the panoramic
views of water, city and, yes, freedom.
National Park Service officials, testifying before the House this week, said concerns over terror
now have given way to worries that the top of the 121-year-old structure is a potential fire trap.
And they warned the narrow staircases were never meant to handle hundreds of thousands of
visitors a year. They plan to keep the tourists at Liberty's hem. That's unacceptable.
The arm and torch, closed nearly a century ago over structural concerns, should not be reopened.
The body of the statue should be in better condition now than before 9/11: $20 million in mostly
privately raised money was spent to upgrade fire safety and security. If that's not enough, the park
service should explain how much more it needs to make the statue safe.
A little creativity might also help. One idea would be a daily lottery so at least some visitors
would still get the full, glorious experience. The tenacious Mr. Weiner is not likely to relent. For
its part, the federal government needs to start showing some of the can-do spirit that lofted
Liberty's statue on Liberty Island.
EDITORIAL; When Markets Are Too Big to Fail
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. cautioned
lawmakers this week about the pitfalls in one of Congress's key proposals to help defaulting
homeowners.
Several lawmakers want to temporarily expand Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the big
government-sponsored housing agencies, to allow for more mortgage lending and refinancings
for homeowners facing foreclosure. Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson expressed concern that the
economy could be harmed if the agencies took on too much risk and then, by some calamity,
needed a government bailout. Any larger role, they warned, would have to be accompanied by
clear rules and strict oversight.
We support expanding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and don't have a problem with carefully
regulating their activities. What is unacceptable is that neither Mr. Bernanke nor Mr. Paulson has
called for new rules to constrain excessive risk-taking in the financial markets -- activities like
creating and selling securities backed by utterly reckless loans -- even though those risks have
greatly contributed to the markets' instability and have repeatedly required government
intervention.
The worthy goal of the Fed's recent interventions -- including this week's half a percentage point
interest rate cut -- is to prevent disruptions in the financial markets from harming the broader
economy. But they come with considerable risk. The rate cut, for instance, could backfire,
unleashing inflation for reasons not entirely within the Fed's control.
When it comes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the presumed government backing is called an
''implicit guarantee.'' On Wall Street, it has many names -- ex-post insurance, a Greenspan put, or
now, a Bernanke put. Whatever you call it, its existence demands that markets be subject to
adequate rules and oversight.
That's clearly not the case at present. Hedge funds and private equity firms, which are allowed to
operate largely in secret, need to be subject to more official scrutiny so that the Federal Reserve
and the Treasury have a grasp of their activities before big problems occur and so that investors
affected by their actions can better assess the risks they're taking. Regulators must develop and
coordinate a system for staying on top of the overlapping instruments and transactions that fuel
market activity.
Currently, regulators can't even decide if the derivatives at the heart of so much of today's
instability are securities, which would fall under the purview of the securities' regulators, or
futures contracts, the purview of commodities' regulators.
It is possible to strike a balance between monitoring markets and protecting proprietary

information, between fostering innovation and curbing excessive risk-taking that all Americans
end up on the hook for. Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson should be leading the way. If they won't,
Congress and the next administration have their work cut out for them.
EDITORIAL; New York's Immigrant Drivers
Gov. Eliot Spitzer made a very important if politically hazardous decision yesterday. He decreed
that New York State's Department of Motor Vehicles will award driver's licenses to those who can
prove who they are and pass the tests, not only those in good standing with the federal
immigration authorities. That decision is correct for all who use New York's roads.
Like other governors and mayors, Mr. Spitzer is trying to deal with Washington's failure to
produce a coherent immigration policy that would deal humanely with the 12 million illegal
immigrants who have come to America to work, often in the lowliest of jobs. That lack of resolve
forced states and sometimes local communities to figure out how to cope with reality -- housing,
working conditions, all sorts of local problems. Mr. Spitzer's licensing rules are an attempt to deal
with higher accident rates among unlicensed drivers -- many of whom flee the scene because they
fear immigration authorities.
The new rules would expand the kinds of documents that would be accepted by the state to get a
license. A Social Security card would no longer be required if there are enough other documents,
like an up-to-date passport, a birth certificate or other items. The governor promised new security
measures -- such as making sure state officials are trained in verifying foreign documents and
using photo comparison technology to make certain one person does not get more than one
license.
Mr. Spitzer and his administration argue that licensing more people would not only make the
roads safer, it might result in a lowering of New York's high automobile insurance rates. If that
really does happen -- and it is worth reminding the governor of this promise -- less costly
insurance would be another bonus.
The move drew angry responses from Republicans in the state who charged that the governor was
in danger of giving valid state identification cards to potential terrorists. That argument is absurd
on its face; organized terrorists hardly lack access to forged documents. It also fails to deal with
the need to bring more of the state's immigrant workers out of the shadows so that if they drive --
and they will drive -- they can do it safely. Also, New York State would have a better idea who
many of these residents really are.
With these enlightened changes, New York will join eight other states that do not require
applicants for drivers' licenses to prove their immigration status. Like New York, these states
want a drivers license to achieve what it is supposed to do -- certify a safe driver.
EDITORIAL; Oh, That Past
One of the divertissements and disillusions of the primary season is watching the presidential
contenders double back in denial of their own local political roots as they play to the biases of
their parties' national nominating base. A prime example occurs today when Rudolph Giuliani,
former mayor of New York -- where the murder rate made him a chief advocate of banning
assault weapons on the home front -- seeks the blessing of the National Rifle Association.
As he approaches his speech in Washington before the N.R.A.'s lock-n-load zealots, the Giuliani
campaign denies that its contender is trying to revise and amend his well-documented past as a
fervid City Hall lobbyist for federal gun controls.
''What works in New York doesn't necessarily work in Mississippi or Montana,'' the Giuliani
campaign now declares, presenting the candidate as a true adherent of states' rights when it comes
to the gun mayhem taking 30,000 American lives a year. (We're sure he'd rather not remember
that President Bill Clinton lauded him for helping pass the now-defunct national ban on assault
weapons.)
Better not look for Mr. Giuliani, so sensitized to the red-state G.O.P. base, to repeat any of his
past warnings that 60 percent of the crime-making guns in his city came from southern states
brandishing porous gun controls. In a politically eerie coincidence, the multicity lawsuit
previously led by then-Mayor Giuliani, accusing the gun industry of liability for the runaway gun
culture, is being argued this week in federal court.
The Giuliani campaign is silent on whether he still supports his angry complaint as mayor that the
gun industry ''profits from the suffering of innocent people.''
No surprise, perhaps. But if he truly wants to keep America safe -- like he once promised to keep
New York safe -- Mr. Giuliani should take this day's occasion to tell the N.R.A. the truth about the
gun carnage in America and why gun control is the only way to stop it.
EDITORIAL; Mocking the Powerless and the Powerful
A trail of blood leads from the genocide in Darfur back to the highest levels of government in
Khartoum. So Sudan's announcement earlier this month that it would form its own committee to
investigate human rights violations in Darfur never inspired tremendous hope. Khartoum's choice
to lead the committee, however, was even more cynical than we could have imagined and a
deliberate slap in the face to the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
Ahmad Harun -- whose appointment was announced while the United Nations secretary general,
Ban Ki-moon, was in Sudan for talks on the crisis -- is one of only two people the court has
charged so far with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
As Sudan's interior minister from 2003 to 2005, Mr. Harun recruited, funded and armed the
janjaweed militias, who murdered at least 200,000 people and drove 2.5 million more from their
homes. Now, as minister of humanitarian affairs, he controls the fate of the survivors. He decides
when and where aid organizations can go, and some of these international agencies, on whom
hundreds of thousands of refugees depend for their survival, have accused Mr. Harun of blocking
their work.
The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Mr. Harun's arrest in the spring, but Sudan
denied its jurisdiction and refused to cooperate. The international community must not accept
this. Today, more than 25 countries will meet at the United Nations to discuss the crisis in Darfur.
Britain and France in particular -- as members of both the Security Council and signatories of the
criminal court treaty -- should demand that Sudan arrest Mr. Harun and surrender him to The
Hague. The United States should join them.
Holding government officials responsible for the genocide in Darfur will be a crucial part of any
lasting peace deal. Powerful members of the United Nations and the African Union should stand
behind the court -- which has no means of enforcing its own warrants -- not only as a weapon
against this genocide but as a way to fight the next one.
Gen. Musharraf’s Cynical Win
Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s “election” last weekend as Pakistan’s president was a perversion of
democracy.
The vote was not really a vote since, knowing how badly the deck was stacked, the opposition
parties refused to participate. The results must now be certified by the Supreme Court, which
must decide whether General Musharraf was even eligible to run while still in uniform. We hope
the court will rule fairly and independently — and that General Musharraf’s enablers in
Washington will make clear that he must respect that decision and finally start moving his
country toward the rule of law.
Returning Pakistan to civilian government has been a declared goal of the United States since
General Musharraf seized power in 1999. Time and again he has promised that he would resign
his post as chief of army staff and take off the uniform, but even now he is playing cute about
when — and whether — that might happen.
He has used his power vindictively and squandered his popular support by forcing rivals into
exile and by harassing and intimidating journalists, judges and anyone who has tried to stand up
to him. When confronted with mass protests this summer, General Musharraf threatened to go
even further and suspend the Parliament and impose martial law. It took a 2 a.m. phone call from
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to get him to back down.
Almost all of the time, President Bush has acquiesced in General Musharraf’s many misdeeds —
and provided billions in American aid — as payment for the general’s service in the war on
terrorism. There, too, the general has delivered a lot less than promised, and the Taliban and Al
Qaeda are resurgent along Pakistan’s border.
General Musharraf’s back-room deal with Benazir Bhutto — encouraged by Washington — was
his latest attempt to buy time and stay in office. Under the deal, the flawed former prime minister
and leader of Pakistan’s most popular party gets to return home, escape prosecution on corruption
charges and — if all goes according to plan — stand for another term. And General Musharraf
gets to claim to the Pakistani people and Washington that he’s moving toward civilian rule.
Rather than encourage such cynical deal-making, Mr. Bush should have encouraged a more-
inclusive election process true to his democratic principles and true to what so many Pakistanis
— professionals, ordinary people, even some in the military — want.
If Pakistan’s Supreme Court rules that General Musharraf is ineligible to be president, he must
step down and allow what didn’t happen this weekend — a real free vote. If the court rules for
him, then he must finally take off his uniform. He must ensure that parliamentary elections due
early next year are free and fair, and he must finally lead his country in a credible transition from
military to civilian democratic rule.
Washington has to make clear that its days of buying time for General Musharraf are over. Rather
than waiting until 2 a.m. this time, Ms. Rice and her boss, President Bush, should deliver that
message to the general now
Hobbling the Census
Members of the military and their families are among the Americans who are at risk of being
undercounted in the next census in 2010 unless Congress and the White House act now to secure
adequate funding for the Census Bureau.
The problem grows out of ongoing budget wrangles between Congress and the White House. Last
month, Congress passed a stopgap funding measure that holds most government spending
through mid-November to last year’s levels. Whether by intention or neglect, the Bush
administration omitted the census from a list of several activities that needed to be exempted from
that limit. Congress also failed to press for full funding.
All of the players should know better. The bureau’s activities — and hence, its budget — always
ramp up significantly in the years preceding the decennial count. In other budget crunches, the
bureau was routinely exempted. Holding the budget flat now — even for six weeks — is already
seriously jeopardizing the count.
The most immediate result is that the bureau has had to revise key aspects of the census’s dress
rehearsal, which is scheduled for 2008 and tests every detail of the process. On the chopping
block are tests of the bureau’s plans and procedures for counting people on military bases, which
was to have been part of the dress rehearsal at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. And with no
additional funds coming in, the bureau has already had to advise the federal contractor working
on the hand-held computers for the next census that it will not be able to pay for the personnel it
has contracted for, necessitating layoffs. Any glitch in the computerization increases the chances
for inaccuracy.
An accurate count is essential for a fair and functioning government. Census data determine
everything from how federal aid is allocated to how many Congressional seats are given to each
state. And inevitably, it is the poor and underrepresented who suffer most from an inaccurate
count. Mistakes in a census tend to overcount easy-to-count suburbanites and undercount urban
dwellers and minorities, who are generally less rooted and more diverse.
The total underfunding for the census through mid- November comes to $59 million. The
secretary of commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, whose department houses the bureau, has the authority
to allocate some $7 million from the department’s budget to the census on an emergency basis.
He should do so.
The census oversight committees in Congress should call hearings immediately to air the dangers
of a delayed census ramp-up and to demand that the White House work with lawmakers to
approve the necessary funding.
The Public’s Right to Know
Efforts to enact a federal shield law for journalists have passed a critical milestone in the Senate.
By a 15-to-2 vote, the Judiciary Committee approved legislation sponsored by Senators Arlen
Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, to grant
reporters limited protection against being forced to reveal confidential sources in federal court.
The measure, the Free Flow of Information Act, offers reporters and their confidential sources
weaker protection in the broad realm of national security than a bill approved by the House
Judiciary Committee in August — weaker than we would have liked.
But some compromise was necessary to reassure wavering senators that a journalist’s pledge of
confidentiality would not be allowed to trump public safety and to give the measure a realistic
chance of passage.
Senator Schumer deserves particular credit for his advocacy on behalf of the bill during the
committee’s deliberations. Thanks largely to his efforts, the measure emerged from the committee
without further watering down its principled protection of robust reporting and Americans’ right
to know about the doings of their government. His continued leadership will be essential as the
measure moves to being considered by the full Senate and House.
The next showdown could come soon. Buoyed by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote last
week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says she aims to have the House take up the shield bill
by the end of the year.
Supported by dozens of news organizations, including The New York Times Company, this
measure is no threat to national security or law enforcement. It is an antidote to undue
government secrecy and misplaced prosecutorial zeal in targeting reporters. The fact is that
whistle-blowers and other insiders with valuable information to impart tend to clam up when
faced with the spectacle of reporters getting subpoenaed by the government — or even jailed —
in legal battles over demands to disclose their sources.
What the press is seeking, and what the Senate Judiciary Committee has now endorsed in
compromised form, is not a blank check or an absolute protection against ever revealing a source.
It is a balancing of interests that seeks to avoid harm to news gathering but allows disclosure of
sources when found to be truly necessary to protect the country.
End of an Era in Arts Funding
Philip Morris — a diverse corporation now known as Altria — is one of the big tobacco
companies and the maker of Marlboro cigarettes. For some 40 years, it has also generously
supported the arts in New York, support that is now coming to an end. Altria is decentralizing its
operations and moving its headquarters out of New York, and it has spun off its international
tobacco division so that it can create new smokers elsewhere.
We’ve always hated the basic product that Philip Morris sells, which has harmed millions of
smokers and nonsmokers at immense cost. We’ve also admired its diverse and relatively unfearful
support of the arts. There is no disputing its generosity, even though we shuddered at how easily
large amounts of cash can buy neutrality and, eventually, respectability in a very influential part
of the community.
The New York art world now has a very large hole to fill in its budget, a hole it is used to filling
with a single check from a single donor. This will create serious problems unless other
corporations — less ethically compromised, we hope — make up the difference. There is never a
shortage of funding opportunities in the arts, of course. But it would be a wise corporation that
saw the chance now to step in and take the place of a company whose support for the arts has
become a byword.
The loss of Altria gives the art world a chance to shake its addiction to what has, in fact, always
been tobacco money. Yes, that money was spent in the public interest, supporting institutions and
programs and exhibitions that have greatly enriched us all culturally. But it’s also worth
wondering about the real costs of that funding — the fact that for so many institutions Philip
Morris ceased to mean tobacco and came to mean mainly a reliable check.
The Reality in Iraq? Depends on Who’s Counting
Welcome to the confusing world of statistics from Iraq, where news organizations disagree with
one another, the news pages of The Times have disagreed with its Op-Ed page, and the Pentagon
has appeared to disagree with its own top commander in Baghdad.
Even the most careful reader is left to wonder what the truth is — whether violence in Iraq is
really decreasing and whether President Bush's surge of added American troops is working.
A debate over the numbers — and what they mean — has intensified since Gen. David H.
Petraeus, the United States commander in Iraq, testified to Congress on Sept. 10 that civilian
deaths had fallen by more than 45 percent since December. Civilian deaths are an especially
important barometer, because when Bush announced the surge in January, he said it would reduce
violence against ordinary Iraqis so that the country could begin to work out its political problems
in relative security.
But even before Petraeus went to Capitol Hill, his statistics were challenged. The Post reported
that experts inside and outside the government questioned the military's numbers and how they
were compiled. The article famously quoted an anonymous "senior intelligence official" as saying
that the military counted people shot in the back of the head as victims of sectarian violence, but
not those shot in the front of the head. The Los Angeles Times said that deaths from car bombings
were not counted as sectarian violence.
Paul Krugman, a Times Op-Ed columnist, cited both reports in a column published the Friday
before the general testified. Mocking the Pentagon's "double super secret formula" for counting
sectarian killings, Krugman said, "No independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq
is down."
The very next morning, on the front page, Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent of The
Times, reported that two independent groups, Iraq Body Count and the Iraq Index compiled by
the Brookings Institution, agreed that there has been a downward trend in civilian deaths since
late last year.
Gordon also reported that the military counts only certain car bombings as sectarian violence, but
that all victims of car bombings are included in overall civilian casualty statistics.
On the morning that Petraeus testified, The Times published that MoveOn.org ad with the
"General Betray Us" headline. Without distinguishing between an opinion piece and a news
report, the ad said that, "according to The New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre
formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, car bombs don't count. The Washington Post
reported that assassinations only count if you're shot in the back of the head — not the front."
After a week of looking into these conflicting reports, interviewing government officials, policy
experts and keepers of independent databases on Iraq, here is what I have found:
¶Back-of-the-head, front-of-the-head is not a distinction the military uses to count victims of

sectarian violence. The military's manual for measuring sectarian violence, declassified the day
after Krugman's column ran, says that civilians "shot anywhere in the head" are counted. On Sept.
25, in a detailed account of how the military counts victims of sectarian violence, The Post quoted
an Army chief warrant officer as saying that "a single shot to the head" is a sign of sectarian
violence.
¶Car bombings do count. The unclassified manual, "MNF-I Ethno-Sectarian Violence

Methodology," says car bombings at such places as mosques or markets are to be counted.
Civilians killed in car bombings not deemed sectarian, like an attack on a U.S. convoy, are still
counted in the overall casualty numbers.
¶Petraeus's claim of a 45 percent reduction in civilian deaths since the start of the surge should be
treated with skepticism, as should any single number or month-to-month comparison. Every
source probably understates the number of deaths because the statistics are gathered amid the
chaos of war, bodies are sometimes hidden and then dumped, and Muslims are customarily buried
quickly.
Page 2 of 2)
But there is plenty of evidence that civilian deaths from war-related violence have gone down
since the end of last year — although the cause of the decline is the subject of fierce argument.
John Sloboda, a founder of Iraq Body Count and an opponent of the war, says the decrease has
been "slight." Michael O'Hanlon, who is in charge of Brookings's Iraq Index and supports the
surge, calls the decrease "significant." Civilian deaths are still running higher than at any time
from 2004 through the first half of last year.
Petraeus came up with his "over 45 percent" decline by comparing December 2006 and this past
August. The December number, in particular, stands out as questionable. For almost all of 2006,
the U.S. military count of civilian deaths ran lower than Iraq Body Count's numbers. But the
Petraeus number for December, the starting point for measuring the impact of the surge, suddenly
leaped 12 percent above the group's, before plunging back well below it.
Col. Steven Boylan, Petraeus's spokesman, said of December's number: "Do we have 100 percent
confidence in it? No. But it is the best data we have available." The number may have included
some double counting by the Iraqi government, which has since improved its methods, he said.
The military uses data from Iraqi sources, he said, because "we are not physically in every
location in Iraq."
Stephen Biddle, a scholar at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations, said Petraeus's
December number was "very high" but was likely the result of "statistical noise" — the tendency
of Iraq numbers to jump all over the place. Biddle was an adviser to Petraeus last spring but
believes the general's testimony was "potentially misleading" because it didn't discuss all the
reasons why the numbers might have improved.
He said the best way to analyze statistics from Iraq is to gather all the numbers from all sources
and look for broad trends instead of picking isolated points, as Petraeus did. Biddle examined
data from nine sources on Iraqi civilian deaths, including the U.S. military, independent
organizations like Brookings and Iraq Body Count and four news organizations. Although the
specific monthly numbers varied widely, he said they all showed declines since late 2006.
Biddle was challenged by Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress
and a former top Defense Department official in the Reagan administration. Korb said there has
been no decrease in violence in Iraq. He noted that August's death toll was higher than July's and
pointed to several reports, including a Government Accountability Office study that found no
decrease in violence through July. Finally, Korb cited little-reported numbers released by the
Pentagon a week after Petraeus testified, which Korb said showed an increase in civilian
casualties since the surge began.
He was referring to the Pentagon's quarterly report to Congress, which had a chart combining
civilians, U.S. and coalition troops, and Iraqi security force personnel killed and wounded,
expressed as a daily average. Petraeus had presented monthly totals for civilians killed. At first
glance, the chart seemed to support Korb's assertion.
But Biddle analyzed the civilian part of the chart, expressed it as a monthly total and found a
decline since late 2006.
Much of the raw material for this debate over numbers and the causes for any decline in violence
is on the Times's Web site. To find it, go to topic.nytimes.com/iraq and
nytimes.com/iraqprogressreports.
More telling than the numbers, I believe, was a special report by 18 Times reporters published the
day before Petraeus testified. Fanning out across Baghdad to get a ground-level assessment of the
surge, the reporters talked with more than 150 residents, in addition to U.S. soldiers on patrol,
members of sectarian militias and Iraqi government officials. You'll find their report and an
interactive map with video of some of their interviews on the same Topics page.
Whatever the numbers say, it isn't a pretty picture.
High-Stakes Flimflam
By BOB HERBERT
Politicians and others have promoted high-stakes testing as a panacea that would bring
accountability to teaching and substantially boost the classroom performance of students.
“Measuring,” said President Bush, in a discussion of his No Child Left Behind law, “is the
gateway to success.”
Not only has high-stakes testing largely failed to magically swing open the gates to successful
learning, it is questionable in many cases whether the tests themselves are anything more than a
shell game.
Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, told me in a recent

interview that it’s important to ask “whether you can trust improvements in test scores when you
are holding people accountable for the tests.”
The short answer, he said, is no.
If teachers, administrators, politicians and others have a stake in raising the test scores of students
— as opposed to improving student learning, which is not the same thing — there are all kinds of
incentives to raise those scores by any means necessary.
“We’ve now had four or five different waves of educational reform,” said Dr. Koretz, “that were
based on the idea that if we can just get a good test in place and beat people up to raise scores,
kids will learn more. That’s really what No Child Left Behind is.”
The problem is that you can raise scores the hard way by teaching more effectively and getting
the students to work harder, or you can take shortcuts and start figuring out ways, as Dr. Koretz
put it, to “game” the system.
Guess what’s been happening?
“We’ve had high-stakes testing, really, since the 1970s in some states,” said Dr. Koretz. “We’ve
had maybe six good studies that ask: ‘If the scores go up, can we believe them? Or are people
taking shortcuts?’ And all of those studies found really substantial inflation of test scores.
“In some cases where there were huge increases in test scores, the kids didn’t actually learn more
at all. If you gave them another test, you saw no improvement.”
There is not enough data available to determine how widespread this problem is. “We know it
doesn’t always happen,” said Dr. Koretz. “But we know it often does.”
He said his big concern is where this might be happening. “There are a lot of us in the field,” he
said, “who think that if we ever really looked under the covers, what we’d find is that the
shortcuts are particularly prevalent in lower-achieving schools, just because the pressure is
greater, the community supports are less and the kids have more difficulties. But we don’t know.”
One aspect of the No Child Left Behind law that doesn’t get enough attention is that while it
requires states to make progress toward student proficiency in reading and math, it leaves it up to
the states themselves to define “proficiency” and to create the tests that determine what
constitutes progress.
That’s absurd. With no guiding standard, the states’ tests are measurements without meaning.
A study released last week by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation
Association found that “improvements in passing rates on state tests can largely be explained by
declines in the difficulty of those tests.”
The people in charge of most school districts would rather jump from the roof of a tall building
than allow an unfettered study of their test practices. But that kind of analysis is exactly what’s
needed if we’re to get any real sense of how well students are doing.
Five years ago, President Bush and many others who had little understanding of the best ways to
educate children were crowing about the prospects of No Child Left Behind. They were warned
then about the dangers of relying too much on test scores.
But those warnings didn’t matter in an era in which reality was left behind.
“No longer is it acceptable to hide poor performance,” said Mr. Bush, as if those who were
genuinely concerned about the flaws in his approach were in favor of poor performance.
During my interview with Dr. Koretz, he noted that by not rigorously analyzing the phenomenon
of high-stakes testing, “we’re creating an illusion of success that is really nice for everybody in
the system except the kids.”
That was a few days before the release of the Fordham Institute Study, which used language
strikingly similar to Dr. Koretz’s. The study asserted that the tests used by states to measure
student progress under No Child Left Behind were creating “a false impression of success.”
The study was titled, “The Proficiency Illusion.”
In Africa, Prosperity From Seeds Falls Short
HERMAKONO, Guinea — The seeds are a marvel, producing bountiful, aromatic rice crops
resistant to drought, pests and disease. But a decade after their introduction, they have spread to
only a tiny fraction of the land here in West Africa where they could help millions of farming
families escape poverty.
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James Hill for The New York Times
Women return from work in the rice fields to their village of Kamara in the Faranah province of
Guinea.
Multimedia
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New Rices for Africa
At a time when philanthropists like Bill Gates have become entranced by the possibility of a
Green Revolution for Africa, the New Rices for Africa, as scientists call the wonder seeds, offer a
clear warning. Even the most promising new crop varieties will not by themselves bring the
plentiful harvests that can end poverty. New ways to get seeds into the hands of farmers are
needed, as well as broader investment in the basic ingredients of a farm economy: roads, credit
and farmer education, among others.
Developed with financing from wealthy countries and private foundations, the New Rices for
Africa, or Nericas, are unpatented and may be grown by anyone. Yet there is a severe shortage of
them in a region where both the private and the agricultural sectors are woefully undeveloped.
“This is a story repeated thousands of times all over Africa,” said Joseph Devries, who is the head
of seed development for a joint effort by the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations
to jump-start farm productivity in Africa.
“You have farmers who are very willing adopters of new technologies and want to raise yields,”
he added, “but are not getting access to seed, fertilizer and small-scale irrigation.” Finding a
sustainable way to supply them with seed, he said, “is emerging as the holy grail for agricultural
development.”
Here in West Africa, where rice is a staple crop, the African Development Bank is financing a $34
million program in seven countries to spur wider use of the new rice seeds. But the obstacles are
daunting.
Farmers typically lack credit to buy seed and fertilizer. And the agricultural economy itself suffers
from a lack of investment. Foreign aid for agriculture has plunged over the past two decades. And
African governments — some, like Guinea, endowed with natural resources and cursed with
corruption — have too often spent less of that wealth than they might have on rural development.
Decent roads to move crops to market are scarce. So are storage facilities to preserve harvests and
crop insurance to protect farmers from drought, flood or bumper yields that perversely cause
prices to collapse. All can wipe out the income farmers need to provide reliable demand to seed
companies, making sale and distribution of the improved seeds a high-risk venture.
Across the region, a handful of private companies in Nigeria and Benin have begun to multiply
and market the new rice varieties. Here in Guinea, where there is not a single seed company, the
government is now working with farmers to expand the supply of Nericas seed.
Villagers here in Hermakono first enviously spotted the new rices growing in a neighboring
community’s field. In 2006, after writing to Guinea’s Agriculture Ministry, they got their first
small store of the seeds.
So precious were they that as the first crop grew heavy with grain, the villagers took turns
standing watch in the fields. “We divided into small groups to guard it so nobody would steal
even one stalk,” said Goulou Camara, a farmer.
Early one morning last year, a dozen farmers threshed their first harvest. They swirled in a circle,
kicking golden sheaves of rice into the air with their bare feet, then beating them with sticks to
shake loose the grains. They were determined not to eat any of it, but to save it to plant as seed.
Only about 200,000 African farmers are sowing the new rices on just 5 percent of the land where
they could thrive, according to the Africa Rice Center, an international research institution based
in Benin that developed the new rices in the mid-1990s.
In contrast to Africa, India had a stronger foundation when new wheat varieties set off a Green
Revolution there in the 1960s and 1970s, allowing the nation to feed hundreds of millions of
people. India had a public seed company to take the marketing risks, far more irrigated farmland
and a better road system.
Supreme Disgrace

The Supreme Court exerts leadership over the nation’s justice system, not just through its rulings,
but also by its choice of cases — the ones it agrees to hear and the ones it declines. On Tuesday, it
led in exactly the wrong direction.
Somehow, the court could not muster the four votes needed to grant review in the case of an
innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a
secret overseas prison as part of the Bush administration’s morally, physically and legally abusive
anti-terrorism program. The victim, Khaled el-Masri, was denied justice by lower federal courts,
which dismissed his civil suit in a reflexive bow to a flimsy government claim that allowing the
case to go forward would put national security secrets at risk.
Those rulings, Mr. Masri’s lawyers correctly argued, represented a major distortion of the state
secrets doctrine, a rule created by the federal courts that was originally intended to shield specific
evidence in a lawsuit filed against the government. It was never designed to dictate dismissal of
an entire case before any evidence is produced.
It may well be that one or more justices sensitive to the breathtaking violation of Mr. Masri’s
rights, and the evident breaking of American law, refrained from voting to accept his case as a
matter of strategy. They may have feared a majority ruling by the Roberts court approving the
dangerously expansive view of executive authority inherent in the Bush team’s habitual
invocation of the state secrets privilege. In that case, the justices at least could have commented,
or offered a dissent, as has happened when the court abdicated its responsibility to hear at least
two other recent cases involving national security issues of this kind.
Mr. Masri says he was picked up while vacationing in Macedonia in late 2003 and flown to a
squalid prison in Afghanistan. He says he was questioned there about ties to terrorist groups and
was beaten by his captors, some of whom were Americans. At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri
was released in a remote part of Albania without having been charged with a crime. Investigations
in Europe and news reports in this country have supported his version of events, and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged
privately to her that Mr. Masri’s abduction was a mistake, an admission that aides to Ms. Rice
have denied. The Masri case, in other words, is being actively discussed all over the world. The
only place it cannot be discussed, it seems, is in a United States courtroom.
In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting Mr. Masri to
“extraordinary rendition,” the morally and legally unsupportable United States practice of
transporting foreign nationals to be interrogated in other countries known to use torture and
lacking basic legal protections. It’s hard to imagine what, at this point, needs to be kept secret,
other than the ways in which the administration behaved irresponsibly, and quite possibly
illegally, in the Masri case. And Mr. Masri is not the only innocent man kidnapped by American
agents and subjected to abuse and torture in a foreign country. He’s just the only one whose
lawsuit got this far.
This unsatisfactory outcome gives rise to new worries about the current Supreme Court’s resolve
to perform its crucial oversight role — particularly with other cases related to terrorism in the
pipeline and last week’s disclosure of secret 2005 Justice Department memos authorizing the use
of inhumane interrogation methods that just about everyone except the Bush White House thinks
of as torture. Instead of a rejection, the Masri case should have occasioned a frank revisiting of
the Supreme Court’s 1953 ruling in United States v. Reynolds. That case enshrined the state
secrets doctrine that this administration has repeatedly relied upon to avoid judicial scrutiny of its
lawless actions.
Indeed, the Reynolds case itself is an object lesson in why courts need to apply a healthy degree
of skepticism to state secrets claims. The court denied the widows of three civilians, who had died
in the crash of a military aircraft, access to the official accident report, blindly accepting the
government’s assertion that sharing the report would hurt national security. When the documents
finally became public just a few years ago, it became clear that the government had lied. The
papers contained information embarrassing to the government but nothing to warrant top secret
treatment or denying American citizens honest adjudication of their lawsuit.
In refusing to consider Mr. Masri’s appeal, the Supreme Court has left an innocent person without
any remedy for his wrongful imprisonment and torture. It has damaged America’s standing in the
world and established the nation as Supreme Enabler of the Bush administration’s efforts to avoid
accountability for its actions. These are not accomplishments to be proud of
Homeless Families in New York Lose a Loophole
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Jocelyn Vasquez, right, with her son Jay, waiting for emergency shelter in the Bronx as she has
done repeatedly since August.
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
Beginning tomorrow night, the city will stop giving emergency shelter to families who are
reapplying for a place to stay after being ruled ineligible, officials said yesterday.
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Grisel Rivera, 26, says she and her 6-year-old daughter, Jayda, have used emergency overnight
shelter, intended to be a one-day solution, since July.
The decision means that families who apply for benefits but are turned down — usually because
the city believes they can stay with a friend or a relative — will find themselves without shelter as
they reapply one or two more times.
The toughening of the policy, which follows a rise during the summer in the number of families
given emergency shelter in free public apartments, was criticized as cruel by advocates for the
homeless and by some of the people it will affect. But it was defended by officials as a necessary
tightening of a munificent policy that was being repeatedly abused by a few families.
The city had allowed families who had been ruled ineligible to be given shelter for one night if
they reapplied after 5 p.m. Some families using this emergency provision would keep their
belongings with them and repeat the process, moving to a new shelter the next day, often late at
night, the city said.
“Families began to realize if they came in after 5 they could evade that accountability,” said
Linda I. Gibbs, the city’s deputy mayor for health and human services. “What we are doing now
is closing the loophole.”
The number of families using emergency overnight shelter had remained small for a long time,
most likely because moving from place to place at night entailed such a harsh existence. Families
checked in for emergency overnight stays fewer than 75 times a month for most of 2006, but the
number erupted this summer, climbing to nearly 800 stays in July. In August, that number
increased slightly.
City officials and advocates for the homeless estimated that a core group of families, perhaps
dozens, has stayed in this cycle for weeks or longer. Some families have been in the cycle for
months.
“The actions of a few are threatening the culture for the many,” Ms. Gibbs said. “We have to stop
it now.”
Officials said a vast majority of the families seeking shelter from the city accepted the outcome of
their 10-day eligibility review. But the score or more families who remain in the system using
emergency shelter night after night, they said, are setting a corrupting example for everyone else.
(Entering shelter is thought to be desirable for those who are not necessarily homeless because it
is a way to get subsidized housing.)
Some advocates for homeless families reacted strongly to news of the policy. Several said the city
made too many errors in its reviews, and cited the hundreds of families that have been found
eligible for shelter on second, third and even fourth applications.
“It is a system that is rife with errors, and children and their families will certainly be harmed,”
said Steven Banks, attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, who filed a court complaint about
the accuracy of the eligibility rulings. “Based on the past record, there is no doubt that children
and families will again end up sleeping in public spaces and hospital waiting rooms and
subways.”
For its part, the city says the error rate is less than 10 percent.
Several families waiting at the city’s main shelter intake center in the Bronx yesterday said that
they had been in overnight placement for weeks, and that they were completely unprepared for
the change in policy and had no idea what they would do next.
Grisel Rivera, 26, who says she has been using the emergency overnight system with her 6-year-
old daughter, Jayda, since July, says the city has her case all wrong. The city says she can return
to the one-bedroom apartment of a friend. She says the friend, who has a boyfriend and a child of
her own, does not want her and has sent a notarized letter saying as much.
“Most of us can’t go to the last place we were,” she said. “If we could we’d be there already.”
Asked what she would do tomorrow night, she said: “I’ll have nowhere to sleep. My daughter
will have nowhere to sleep.”
The city’s decision is the latest turn in the Bloomberg administration’s long-running efforts to
reduce homelessness in the city. In 2004, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pledged to reduce
homelessness by two-thirds. While the number of single homeless people has decreased, the
number of homeless families is at a record high of more than 9,500.
As part of efforts to revamp policies and services for the homeless, the city opened a new family
intake center in the Bronx at the end of 2004, with new procedures for applying. The new system,
city officials say, is fair and more humane: Long processing times were reduced by three-fourths,
and social services assistance was offered for families found ineligible for shelter, including
counseling and one-time rent aid.
But the city says the fairer, swifter process comes with responsibilities for clients as well. That is
why in 2005 it won the explicit right from a state appeals court and from the state to deny shelter
to families who had been through the application process and found to have a suitable alternative.
The city has been cautious in exercising the new right, recognizing that it might not sit well with
the public if families were turned away with no place to go.
Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
Next Article in New York Region (5 of 19) »
Too Timid for Tax Increases
Someday, Americans who earn millions upon millions of dollars each year will no longer pay
taxes at a lower rate than the middle class and the merely affluent. Someday. But not this year,
and with 2008 being an election year, probably not then either.
The Washington Post reported this week that the Senate will not advance a proposal this year to
raise taxes on private equity partners, the deal makers who have become multimillionaires and
billionaires mainly via debt-driven buyouts of public companies. The partners pay a flat tax rate
of 15 percent on most of their earnings, compared with rates as high as 35 percent for most
everyone else — say, firefighters, nurses, doctors, teachers and soldiers. A spokesman for the
Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, told The Post that time appeared to have run out to act this
year and that, in any event, the issue needs more study.
That decision has all the signs of a delaying tactic to avoid raising taxes on an industry that is a
heavy campaign contributor. Mr. Reid controls the Senate calendar, so he could make time if he
wanted. And several Congressional hearings have made it clear that there is no justification for
private equity’s low tax rate. Its legality rests on outdated provisions of the tax code that should
be changed. It is morally indefensible. And it is illogical from a tax perspective.
The law rewards investors for taking risks with their money by allowing them to pay taxes on
their profits at a special low rate of 15 percent. But private equity partners are, by and large,
managing other people’s money. As money managers earning performance fees, they don’t
deserve an investor’s low tax rate.
To avoid looking craven, Congressional Democrats may move forward with a bill to raise taxes
on publicly traded partnerships. They may also try to end a dubious practice whereby private
equity partners convert the relatively small share of their pay that is taxed as ordinary income, at
35 percent, to investment profit taxable at 15 percent.
These sorts of baby steps would be better than nothing, but they are not nearly enough. Fairness
demands that the very richest among us should not enjoy a lower tax rate than most everyone
else. Necessity demands that the United States collect more tax revenue. The nation does not take
in nearly enough for the spending to which it is already committed, let alone for what it needs to
add, like health care, infrastructure repair, environmental protection and so on — nevermind
paying the bill for President Bush’s war in Iraq.
It does not bode well that today’s leaders can’t even see their way to raising the obviously too low
taxes on private equity partners
How China Got Religion
THE Western liberal media had a laugh in August when China’s State Administration of
Religious Affairs announced Order No. 5, a law covering “the management measures for the
reincarnation of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism.” This “important move to institutionalize
management on reincarnation” basically prohibits Buddhist monks from returning from the dead
without government permission: no one outside China can influence the reincarnation process;
only monasteries in China can apply for permission.
Before we explode in rage that Chinese Communist totalitarianism now wants to control even the
lives of its subjects after their deaths, we should remember that such measures are not unknown
to European history. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the first step toward the Peace of Westphalia
in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years’ War, declared the local prince’s religion to be the official
faith of a region or country (“cuius regio, eius religio”). The goal was to end violence between
German Catholics and Lutherans, but it also meant that when a new ruler of a different religion
took power, large groups had to convert. Thus the first big institutional move toward religious
tolerance in modern Europe involved a paradox of the same type as that of Order No. 5: your
religious belief, a matter of your innermost spiritual experience, is regulated by the whims of your
secular leader.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Chinese government is not antireligious. Its stated
worry is social “harmony” — the political dimension of religion. In order to curb the excess of
social disintegration caused by the capitalist explosion, officials now celebrate religions that
sustain social stability, from Buddhism to Confucianism — the very ideologies that were the
target of the Cultural Revolution. Last year, Ye Xiaowen, China’s top religious official, told
Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, that “religion is one of the important forces from which
China draws strength,” and he singled out Buddhism for its “unique role in promoting a
harmonious society.”
What bothers Chinese authorities are sects like Falun Gong that insist on independence from state
control. In the same vein, the problem with Tibetan Buddhism resides in an obvious fact that
many Western enthusiasts conveniently forget: the traditional political structure of Tibet is
theocracy, with the Dalai Lama at the center. He unites religious and secular power — so when
we are talking about the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, we are taking about choosing a head of
state. It is strange to hear self-described democracy advocates who denounce Chinese persecution
of followers of the Dalai Lama — a non-democratically elected leader if there ever was one.
In recent years, the Chinese have changed their strategy in Tibet: in addition to military coercion,
they increasingly rely on ethnic and economic colonization. Lhasa is transforming into a Chinese
version of the capitalist Wild West, with karaoke bars and Disney-like Buddhist theme parks.
In short, the media image of brutal Chinese soldiers terrorizing Buddhist monks conceals a much
more effective American-style socioeconomic transformation: in a decade or two, Tibetans will
be reduced to the status of the Native Americans in the United States. Beijing finally learned the
lesson: what is the oppressive power of secret police forces, camps and Red Guards destroying
ancient monuments compared to the power of unbridled capitalism to undermine all traditional
social relations?
It is all too easy to laugh at the idea of an atheist power regulating something that, in its eyes,
doesn’t exist. However, do we believe in it? When in 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed
the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, many Westerners were outraged — but how many of
them actually believed in the divinity of the Buddha? Rather, we were angered because the
Taliban did not show appropriate respect for the “cultural heritage” of their country. Unlike us
sophisticates, they really believed in their own religion, and thus had no great respect for the
cultural value of the monuments of other religions.
The significant issue for the West here is not Buddhas and lamas, but what we mean when we
refer to “culture.” All human sciences are turning into a branch of cultural studies. While there are
of course many religious believers in the West, especially in the United States, vast numbers of
our societal elite follow (some of the) religious rituals and mores of our tradition only out of
respect for the “lifestyle” of the community to which we belong: Christmas trees in shopping
centers every December; neighborhood Easter egg hunts; Passover dinners celebrated by
nonbelieving Jews.
“Culture” has commonly become the name for all those things we practice without really taking
seriously. And this is why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as “barbarians” with a “medieval
mindset”: they dare to take their beliefs seriously. Today, we seem to see the ultimate threat to
culture as coming from those who live immediately in their culture, who lack the proper distance.
Perhaps we find China’s reincarnation laws so outrageous not because they are alien to our
sensibility, but because they spill the secret of what we have done for so long: respectfully
tolerating what we don’t take quite seriously, and trying to contain its political consequences
through the law.
Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, is the author,
most recently, of “The Parallax View.”
After Years of Being Out, the Necktie Is In

By DAVID COLMAN
GEORGE McCRACKEN doesn’t have to wear a tie. A 25-year-old painter in Manhattan who
works in store design and display to pay the bills, Mr. McCracken is a member of that lucky
group who can wear just about anything they please to work.
But George McCracken does wear a tie. “I don’t ever wear a collared shirt without one,” he said.
“It started when I had a job where I had to wear a jacket and tie, but after I left, I started wearing
it anyway, out with friends, as an informal thing. It just felt comfortable.”
And Mr. McCracken is not alone. Check out any art gallery, advertising agency or downtown bar
where the cool kids hang. Look at Justin Timberlake, Adam Brody, Elijah Wood or any other
young actor who presumably is not also holding down a desk job.
Necktie sales may have foundered in the decade or more since the words “casual Friday” entered
men’s vocabularies, but in the last year or two, stylish men in their 20s and early 30s have
embraced the old four-in-hand as a style statement — that is, as long as it is an optional one. Even
with tie sales among older age groups uniformly down, sales to men 18 to 34 were up more than
13 percent, to $343 million from $303 million, between March 2006 and March 2007, according
to NPD Group, which tracks clothing sales and trends.
“There’s no question that there has been a dramatic increase among younger guys, who are age 18
to 34, expressing themselves by dressing up,” said Marshal Cohen, the chief retail analyst at
NPD. “He’s not hesitating, given the option, to grab a tie, and a fancy tie at that.”
This is a news flash that will either amuse or dismay men in their 40s and 50s, who after years of
wearing a tie to work, finally won the right to hang up the old choke chain.
But this is no ordinary necktie. A far cry from the storied “power ties” in aggressively colored and
printed silk twill that defined the power corridors of the 1980s, the defiantly low-key tie of today
is destined for dress-up Thursday as well as casual Friday.
It may be made of wool, cashmere, silk knit or glove leather; cut a pointedly skinny two-and-a-
half inches wide; woven in plaid or printed with an unorthodox pattern of skulls with bunny ears.
It may boast a trendy label like Alexander Olch or Band of Outsiders. Slightly offbeat in a laid-
back way — the Wes Anderson of the accessory world — the youthful tie is giving the old dress
code a much-needed shot in the neck.
“It’s a uniform that doesn’t look like a uniform,” said Daniel Pipski, 31, a senior vice president at
LivePlanet, the Los Angeles production company whose founders include Ben Affleck and Matt
Damon. In Hollywood, where the open-collar dress shirt is king, the necktie is largely held to be a
benighted relic of East Coast business style. But that has not deterred Mr. Pipski, who sees the tie
as a kind of style passkey, especially the slender wool 1950s-style ties created by the Los Angeles
label Band of Outsiders. (He owns about 60 of them.) To him, ties manage to be both a bit of self-
expression and a concession to business dress.
“Wearing a tie is a kind of style,” he said. “It’s a thing you’re doing. It’s seen as ‘creative.’ So you
can go from meetings with the creative side and then go meet the head of a studio.”
Labeling these ties creative may seem odd considering how restrained they are compared with the
wincingly gimmicky “creative” ties of the mid-1990s, which were decked out with cartoon
characters, beer logos and the like. Lighthearted as they were, they did little to keep the necktie
close to any man’s heart.
Then the combination of casual Friday and the dot-com explosion appeared to condemn the
necktie to the style gallows. The number of ties sold in the United States, which reached a peak of
110 million in the early 1990s, fell to 60 million in 2001, according to Gerald Andersen, the
director of the Men’s Dress Furnishings Association (which until 2001 was called the Neckwear
Association of America). The change of name, and focus, makes some sense: NPD reports that
for the year ending March 2007, tie sales were down to 44 million.
The tie’s renaissance among the hipster set had its roots in fashion, sparked by designers like
Thom Browne and Hedi Slimane, who made it a part of their collections. It was not long before
bands like the Strokes were casting off that late-1990s frayed indie-rock look for sharp black suits
and matching skinny ties. In keeping with the trend, sportswear lines like Theory and Club
Monaco now offer ties, a break from the casual ethos on which they were founded.
Tie sales have definitely edged up at Bloomingdale’s, and Kevin Harter, the men’s wear director,
credits the increase to younger men. “They’re using them as fashion statements, with suits or with
jeans,” he said. He added that he now displays ties with denim and sportswear instead of just in
the tie department.

Multimedia
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Role Models | Men in Ties
At Saks Fifth Avenue, sales have increased in the low double digits in the last year, said Michael
Macko, the men’s fashion director, who similarly attributes the rise to the young men buying ties
from the likes of Alexander Olch or Jil Sander.
Even a few men outside the 18-to-34-year-old demographic have taken a shine to the tie. “It’s
been a while since I actually wanted to wear a tie,” said Trey Laird, 43, the president of Laird +
Partners, a New York advertising firm. “But I’ve been feeling it myself as well as seeing it on a
lot of the younger guys in the office. It wasn’t any one thing that did it. You get bored of the same
look, and as much as I like jeans and a blazer, it gets boring after a few years.”
Or as Mr. McCracken, the painter, put it: “Just like you could point to a time, like when Tom Ford
was at Gucci, that it became uncool to wear a tie, now it just feels like wearing a tie is the more
punk thing to do.”
Indeed, with Mr. Ford up to his old chest-hair-baring tricks in the ad campaign for his new
cologne, it does seem time for a new look. Would a necktie kill the guy?
At least Mr. Ford, with his shirt unbuttoned down to the Netherlands, miraculously never suffers
from the great blight that affects so many tieless men: collar wilt — that is, its gradual collapse
(or migration underneath the jacket collar) as the day wears on. Any man who derides the necktie
as solely a decorative accessory would do well to remember that it serves an important function in
holding a look together.
It’s too soon to tell if the tie will come back as a mandatory presence, or if its new allure will be
transitory. But while it is a smart and easy way to look both cool and professional, there is at least
one rub.
Sean Safford, 34, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of
Business, has rediscovered the tie’s allure and has even mastered the Windsor knot. “The problem
is that all the dress shirts I got over the years to wear without ties don’t really work with them,”
he said. “Buying new shirts to go with the new ties gets expensive.”
Welcome to the Fashion School of Economics, Mr. Safford.
Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press
Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature, outside her home in London today.
Doris Lessing, the Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist whose deeply
autobiographical writing has swept across continents and reflects her engagement with the social
and political issues of her time, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.
Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy described her as “that epicist of the
female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided
civilization to scrutiny.” The award comes with a 10 million Swedish crown honorarium, about
$1.6 million.
Ms. Lessing, who turns 88 later this month, never finished high school and largely educated
herself through voracious reading. She has written dozens of books of fiction, as well as plays,
nonfiction and two volumes of autobiography. She is the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
Ms. Lessing learned of the news from a group of reporters camped on her doorstep as she
returned from a visit to the hospital with her son. “I was a bit surprised because I had forgotten
about it actually,” she said. “My name has been on the short list for such a long time.”
As the persistent sound of her phone ringing came from inside the house, Ms. Lessing said that on
second thought, she was not as surprised “because this has been going on for something like 40
years,” referring to the number of times she has been mentioned as a likely honoree. “Either they
were going to give it to me sometime before I popped off or not at all.”
After a few moments, Ms. Lessing, who is stout, sharp and a bit hard of hearing, excused herself
to go inside. “Now I’m going to go in to answer my telephone,” she said. “I swear I’m going
upstairs to find some suitable sentences, which I will be using from now on.”
Although Ms. Lessing is passionate about social and political issues, she is unlikely to be as
controversial as the previous two winners, Orhan Pamuk of Turkey or Harold Pinter of Britain,
whose views on current political situations led commentators to suspect that the Swedish
Academy was choosing its winners in part for nonliterary reasons.
Ms. Lessing’s strongest legacy may be that she inspired a generation of feminists with her
breakthrough novel, “The Golden Notebook.” In its citation, the Swedish Academy said: “The
burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of
books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.”
Ms. Lessing wrote candidly about the inner lives of women and rejected the notion that they
should abandon their lives to marriage and children. “The Golden Notebook,” published in 1962,
tracked the story of Anna Wulf, a woman who wanted to live freely and was, in some ways, Ms.
Lessing’s alter ego.
Because she frankly described anger and aggression in women, she was attacked as
“unfeminine.” In response, Ms. Lessing wrote, “Apparently what many women were thinking,
feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise.”
Although she has been held up as an early heroine of feminism, Ms. Lessing later disavowed that
she herself was a feminist, for which she received the ire of some British critics and academics.
Ms. Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in 1919 in what is now Iran. Her father was a bank clerk,
and her mother was trained as a nurse. Lured by the promise of farming riches, the family moved
to what is now Zimbabwe, where Ms. Lessing had what she has called a painful childhood.
She left home when she was 15, and in 1937 she moved to Salisbury (now Harare) in Southern
Rhodesia, where she took jobs as a telephone operator and nursemaid. She married at 19 and had
two children. A few years later, feeling imprisoned, she abandoned her family. She later married
Gottfried Lessing, a central member of the Left Book Club, a left-wing organization, and they had
a son.
Ms. Lessing, who joined the Communist Party in Africa, repudiated Marxist theory during the
Hungarian crisis of 1956, a view for which she was criticized by some British academics.
When she divorced Mr. Lessing, she and her young son, Peter, moved to London, where she
began her literary career. Her debut novel, published in Britain in 1949, was “The Grass Is
Singing,” which chronicled the relationship between a white farmer’s wife and her black servant.
In her earliest work Ms. Lessing drew upon her childhood experiences in colonial Rhodesia to
write about the collision of white and black cultures and racial injustice.
Because of her outspoken views, the governments of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa
declared her a “prohibited alien” in 1956.
When “The Golden Notebook” was first published in the United States, Ms. Lessing was still
unknown. Robert Gottlieb, then her editor at Simon & Schuster and later at Alfred A. Knopf, said
it sold only 6,000 copies. “But they were the right 6,000 copies,” Mr. Gottlieb said by telephone
from his home in New York. “The people who read it were galvanized by it, and it made her a
famous writer in America.”
Speaking from Frankfurt during its annual international book fair, Jane Friedman, president and
chief executive of HarperCollins, which has published Ms. Lessing in the United States and
Britain for the last 20 years, said that “for women and for literature, Doris Lessing is a mother to
us all.”
Ms. Lessing’s other novels include “The Good Terrorist” and “Martha Quest.” Her latest novel is
“The Cleft,” published by HarperCollins in July. She has dabbled in science fiction, and some of
her later works bear the imprint of her interest in Sufi mysticism, which she has interpreted as
stressing a link between the fates of individuals and society.
Lynn Bryan, a friend of Ms. Lessing, spent some time at the author’s home on Thursday as
flowers arrived, Champagne was served and the phone rang off the hook. Ms. Bryan said she
asked Ms. Lessing why she thinks she won the prize this year.
“‘I don’t know,’” Ms. Bryan said the author replied. “‘I am genuinely surprised because they
rejected me all those years ago.’”
The phone rang again, Ms. Bryan said. It was another friend, whom Ms. Lessing was to meet that
evening at a Chinese restaurant. She apologized and told him she couldn’t. She had just won the
Nobel Prize.
Nice Shot
By JESSICA SNYDER SACHS

Maplewood, N.J.

Enlarge This Image
Gary Taxali
IT’S flu season, and health agencies have expanded their flu shot recommendations to include all
children ages 6 months to 5 years in addition to adults over age 50, and anyone, child or adult,
with a chronic condition like severe allergies, asthma or diabetes.
More parents than ever before — nearly 65 percent — intend to vaccinate their young children
this year, according to a poll by the University of Michigan. But that leaves more than a third
unenthusiastic about doing so. Their reluctance may reflect not only weariness with the increasing
number of childhood immunizations but also the widespread sentiment that colds and flus are a
“natural” part of childhood, even vital for toughening up a developing immune system.
Some parents have come to embrace colds and flus, and in recent years we’ve seen a resurgence
of the chickenpox party, where parents deliberately expose their preschoolers to infected
playmates on the theory that it’s better to get the disease than to have the vaccine.
But the idea that illness is good for children — or anyone else — is wrong. In part, the idea of
“good sickness” is a throwback to a now disproved version of the “hygiene hypothesis.”
In 1989, an epidemiologist in Britain, David Strachan, observed that babies born into households
with lots of siblings were less likely than other babies to develop allergies and asthma. The same
proved true of babies who spent significant time in day care. Dr. Strachan hypothesized that the
protection came from experiencing an abundance of childhood illnesses.
Dr. Strachan’s original hygiene hypothesis got a lot of press, not only in the news media but in
serious medical journals. Less publicized was the decade-long string of follow-up studies that
disproved a link between illnesses and protection from inflammatory disorders like allergies and
asthma. If anything, studies showed, early illness made matters worse.
Moreover, studies now show that the more infections a person has during childhood, the greater
his or her chance of premature death from scourges of old age like heart disease and cancer. The
link appears to be chronic inflammation, a kind of lingering collateral damage from the body’s
disease-fighting response.
Still, Dr. Strachan’s original observation was confirmed — as a group, babies in large families
and day care are less likely to develop allergies and asthma than are children born into smaller
families and kept at home. The same protective effect can be seen in children born on farms and
in areas without public sanitation.
But the link isn’t disease-causing germs. It’s early and ample exposure to harmless bacteria —
especially the kinds encountered living close to the land and around livestock and other young
children. In other words, dirt, dung and diapers. Just as disease-causing microbes clearly bring on
inflammation, harmless microorganisms appear to exert a calming effect on the immune system.
A second misconception common among vaccine-shunning parents is that there’s something

“natural” about the 6 to 10 respiratory infections the typical American child gets every year (or
even the two to four we adults experience). Common, yes; natural no, not if “natural” represents
the forces that shaped the human immune system during all but the last sliver of our 250,000
years as Homo sapiens. Colds, flus and most other contagious diseases found a central place in
our lives only after we and our domestic animals began crowding together in large settlements
some 5,000 years ago.
Yet the most compelling reason to get a flu shot this year is a new and deadly threat —
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a dangerous kind of staph that has been
causing outbreaks of deadly pneumonia among the otherwise young and healthy, typically on the
heels of the flu.
Unfortunately, we have no practical way to eradicate MRSA. About a third of us silently carry
staph at any given time, and trying to eradicate MRSA or any other staph strain from a
community of symptom-free carriers is difficult to impossible. Worse, the experts conclude, any
widespread effort to do so is certain to breed greater drug resistance.
Flu shots don’t guarantee protection from MRSA pneumonia. It can piggyback on other kinds of
viral respiratory infections. But protecting yourself and your children from the flu may be the best
way to reduce your family’s risk.
Whether dealing with the flu, other “routine” infections or even the chickenpox, the message is
the same: In a world abounding in harmless, even beneficial microbes, don’t embrace the tiny
fraction that can make you ill.
The United States Attorneys Scandal Comes to Mississippi
By ADAM COHEN
Paul Minor is the son of Bill Minor, a legendary Mississippi journalist and chronicler of the civil
rights movement. He is also a wealthy trial lawyer and a mainstay of Mississippi’s embattled
Democratic Party. Mr. Minor has contributed $500,000 to Democrats over the years, including
more than $100,000 to John Edwards, a fellow trial lawyer. He fought hard to stop the Mississippi
Supreme Court from being taken over by pro-business Republicans.
Mr. Minor’s political activity may have cost him dearly. He is serving an 11-year sentence,
convicted of a crime that does not look much like a crime at all. The case is one of several new
ones coming to light that suggest that the department’s use of criminal prosecutions to help
Republicans win elections may go farther than anyone realizes.
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold hearings shortly on whether the Justice
Department engaged in selective prosecution in two other cases: when it went after Alabama Gov.
Don Siegelman, who is serving more than seven years in prison on dubious charges, and Georgia
Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant who was freed after serving four months on baseless
corruption charges.
Mr. Minor, whose firm made more than $70 million in fees in his state’s tobacco settlement,
suspects it was his role in the 2000 Mississippi Supreme Court elections that put a target on his
back. The United States Chamber of Commerce spent heavily to secure a Republican, pro-
business majority, while Mr. Minor contributed heavily to the other side.
The chamber was especially eager to unseat Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., a former trial lawyer. He was
re-elected after a hard-fought, high-spending campaign. Then the prosecutions came from the
politicized Bush Justice Department.
Mississippi’s loose campaign finance laws allow lawyers and companies to contribute heavily to
the judges they appear before. That is terrible for justice, since the courts are teeming with
perfectly legal conflicts of interest. It also creates an ideal climate for partisan selective
prosecution. Since everyone is making contributions and nurturing friendships that look
questionable, a prosecutor can haul any lawyer and judge he doesn’t like before a grand jury and
charge corruption.
The Justice Department indicted Justice Diaz and Mr. Minor on an array of unconvincing bribery
and fraud charges. Justice Diaz was acquitted of all of them. The federal prosecutors then brought
tax evasion charges against him. Justice Diaz was acquitted again and still sits on the Mississippi
Supreme Court.
Mr. Minor was not as lucky. He beat many of the charges in the first trial, but the jury failed to
reach a verdict on others. Federal prosecutors went after him again, and this time Mr. Minor was
convicted on vague allegations of trying to get “an unfair advantage” from judges — the very
thing Mississippi’s lax campaign finance laws are set up to allow.
The case fits a familiar pattern. The corruption Mr. Minor was charged with was disturbingly
vague, as it was with Ms. Thompson, whose only “crime” was awarding a contract to the lowest
bidder, and Mr. Siegelman, who was convicted for fairly routine political behavior.
Mr. Minor’s prosecution, like the others in this scandal, gave a big boost to the Republican Party.
The case intimidated trial lawyers into stopping their political activity. “The disappearance of the
trial-lawyer money all but wiped out the Democratic Party in Mississippi,” Stephanie Mencimer
reports in her book, “Blocking the Courthouse Door.”
There also appears to have been pro-Republican favoritism. Mr. Minor’s lawyers say prosecutors
were not interested in going after similar activity by trial lawyers who contributed to Republicans.
Time magazine recently reported that in Alabama, one of the main witnesses against Mr.
Siegelman also told prosecutors of possible corruption involving Jeff Sessions, a Republican
senator from Alabama, but they did not pursue it.
And there is the matter of timing. The prosecution of Mr. Minor and Justice Diaz came just as
Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat, was running for re-election against Republican Haley
Barbour. The Republicans spent heavily to tie Mr. Musgrove to Mr. Minor, and Mr. Musgrove
was defeated.
In Wisconsin, Ms. Thompson’s trial coincided perfectly with Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s re-
election campaign, and Republicans tried to link Doyle to Thompson. Mr. Siegelman’s
prosecution looks like it was timed to prevent him from becoming governor again. It may be that
all three of these cases were simply attempts to use the Justice Department to get Republican
governors elected.
Ms. Thompson was fortunate to get a good federal appeals court panel, which ordered her
released. Mr. Minor and Mr. Siegelman may not be so lucky. Former Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales and many other key players in the United States attorneys scandal are gone, but
Congress has a lot more work to do in uncovering the damage they have done to the justice
system.
You Virtually Had to Be There
By MICHELLE SLATALLA
EVER since she went off to college I’ve come to think of my daughter as Virtual Zoe. In many
ways, there’s not that much difference between my glimpses of her now and the brief physical
sightings in the years after she earned her driver’s license.
Hadley Hooper
But these days, I never know where she will turn up. It could be in the form of an e-mail message
— “Check out this sweet car I saw for sale on Craigslist” — or when I’m trying to work and an
instant message pops up: Oh, come on, it’s sooooo cheappppp (for a car). Or she might write a
blog post about her most recent purchase, a long-handled “claw” that extends her arm reach by
nearly three feet so she can grab her phone without getting off her bed or (if later than noon) the
common-room couch.
She still exhibits the same sense of humor, the same late-night hours and presumably the same
baggy gray sweat pants.
Or does she? It’s the last part — wondering about what I can’t see — that has been the hardest for
me since she went away. I try to ignore the longing, but sometimes it sneaks up when I’m doing
the most ordinary thing like folding laundry. I begin to wonder: Is that all I get? I put 18 years of
hard work into this person, and now she disappears?
As her mother, I needed to lay eyes on her. It was still a long time until Thanksgiving break. Last
week I asked her in an e-mail message, “Can we video chat tonight?”
It was a big step, because I’ve always thought of video chats as something enjoyed mainly by
connoisseurs of pornography and my husband (not to my knowledge a connoisseur of
pornography). More than a decade ago, he brought home a program called CU-SeeMe, and we
crowded around his Powerbook as if it were the first color television in town, transmitting herky-
jerky images.
I know that video chats have become much more common because practically every time I walk
into the kitchen these days, I inadvertently appear in the background of a broadcast and prompt
my 10-year-old daughter, Clementine, to say to her laptop, “Don’t worry, my mom isn’t angry,
she always looks like that.” But I had yet to experience the magic myself.
At the appointed hour, we phoned Zoe, knowing that she could reach her computer without
leaving her seat (“My claw has suction cups to help grip things,” she reassured us). Clementine
fired up the iChat connection.
Would Zoe look the same? Did she still write on her hand in indelible Sharpie all the things she
didn’t want to forget? Did her stuffed zebra still lie on her pillow, with a paw thrown across his
rheumy plastic eyes to block the sunlight?
We all crowded around the screen.
Blackness.
“It says there was a communication error,” Clem said.
We tried again. And again. But we couldn’t conjure Zoe onscreen. My husband looked up the
error codes on Google. Zoe changed her iChat bandwidth preferences and, after that didn’t work,
her Quicktime preferences.
Only I was not experienced enough with video chats to remain calm. But I felt the familiar
despondency of the technology neophyte creep over me. I said into the phone, “At least tell us,
are you wearing the sweat pants?”
“Hang on,” Zoe said. Then she actually got off her bed and walked to the dorm’s common room
— where she said the signal was stronger — and tried to evict her dorm mates. “You guys, I have
to video chat in here with my parents,” she said, adding: “Shut up. It’s not creepy.”
Still nothing.
As a last resort, we decided to abandon iChat for Skype. She started to download the video
conferencing program, but unfortunately at a speed roughly equivalent to the Dark Ages. “It says
it’s going to take me 2 hours and 24 minutes,” she said, yawning.
Despairing, we gave up.
At 7:30 a.m. Pacific time the next day, the phone rang. It was Zoe, calling at the crack of 10:30
a.m. Eastern time.
“You guys, try Skype again,” she said.
And just like that, there was Virtual Zoe, incarnate. Same hair, same glasses, same smile. At 30
frames a second, my husband claimed.
“Zoe!” I said.
“Mom!” she said. “Is that my shirt you’re wearing?”
“No,” I lied, realizing too late that in my zeal to see her, I had forgotten to consider the full
implications of her seeing me.
“It is, and she’s been wearing it constantly,” said Ella, my 16-year-old daughter, elbowing me
aside to start gossiping with her older sister.
“You’re wearing one of my sweaters, Ella,” Zoe said.
“Want to talk to the dogs?” Ella asked, deftly angling the laptop to show Sticky, our eight-pound
Papillon. The little dog dragged across the floor a nine-pound bone that she had stolen from Otto,
our Labrador retriever.
“Look at Little Man,” Zoe kvelled. “Sticky, if you had a claw like me, you wouldn’t have to drag
things.”
“Show us your claw,” Clem said to Zoe.
Zoe held it up. “Look, I’m holding a water bottle,” she said. “Want to see it pick up a shoe?”
My husband, squinting at Virtual Zoe, said, “Hold up your arm and show us what you wrote on
your hand.”
The hand said, “Claire’s birthday,” “Return Nip/Tuck” and “Go to library” (crossed out).
I asked, “Can you angle the computer so we can see what’s on the floor in your room?”
But instead, without warning the picture started to break up. Now it looked like a transmission
from outer space, with jerky slow-motion images of Zoe floating across the screen.
“Goodbye, Angels,” Zoe said, and from very far away we saw the claw wave erratically as her
voice faded out.
Finished 14:29, the screen displayed.
It was the fastest 14 minutes 29 seconds I could remember.
I missed her already.
My cellphone rang.
“Can you stop wearing my shirt?” Zoe asked.
“If I remember,” I said.

“Write it on your hand,” she recommended.
A Mock Columnist, Amok
By MAUREEN DOWD
I was in my office, writing a column on the injustice of relative marginal tax rates for hedge fund
managers, when I saw Stephen Colbert on TV.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Maureen Dowd
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He was sneering that Times columns make good “kindling.” He was ranting that after you throw
away the paper, “it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade.” He was observing,
approvingly, that “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into The New York
Times while drinking crude oil out of Keith Olbermann’s skull.”
I called Colbert with a dare: if he thought it was so easy to be a Times Op-Ed pundit, he should
try it. He came right over. In a moment of weakness, I had staged a coup d’moi. I just hope he
leaves at some point. He’s typing and drinking and threatening to “shave Paul Krugman with a
broken bottle.”
I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
By STEPHEN COLBERT
Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I
don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to
the written word, and if you disagree :(
I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type
this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty
Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of
business:
Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s
fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.
There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.
So why I am writing Miss Dowd’s column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election,
unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current
crop of presidential candidates.
For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats
will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be
scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.
Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can
beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately
scary.
And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the
Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.
Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don’t mean Al Gore (though he’s a
world-class loomer). First of all, I don’t think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next
to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be
commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t
need to care about science, literature or peace.
While my hat is not presently in the ring, I should also point out that it is not on my head. So
where’s that hat? (Hint: John McCain was seen passing one at a gas station to fuel up the Straight
Talk Express.)
Others point to my new bestseller, “I Am America (And So Can You!)” noting that many
candidates test the waters with a book first. Just look at Barack Obama, John Edwards or O. J.
Simpson.
Look at the moral guidance I offer. On faith: “After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically
became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.” On gender: “The sooner we
accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it
and start having sex.” On race: “While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is
good, race cleansing is bad.” On the elderly: “They look like lizards.”
Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say,
“Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were
forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America
where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.
Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’
nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry
hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich
did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for
15 million. Cash.
Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are
desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.
What do I offer? Hope for the common man. Because I am not the Anointed or the Inevitable. I
am just an Average Joe like you — if you have a TV show.
The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us
By FRANK RICH
“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to
ourselves.

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Barry Blitt
Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos
countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not
torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of
these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing
torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu
Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last
weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a
grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the
exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left
no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”
Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad
apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.
There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes
committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week
about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than
another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.
As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by
contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent.
That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were
killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200
other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department,
Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its
investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which
have deemed the killings criminal.
The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company
managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American
contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of
“Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by
the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its
current form.
We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul
Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his
efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his
disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous
acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one
that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.
I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during
the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda
campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press
— the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of
the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have
raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to
notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor
fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting
in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor
procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s
first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the
shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center and other military hospitals.
We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were
strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu
Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in
Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our
postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are
kept off the books.
It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of
this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the
prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive
complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free
lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.
Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing
the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of
contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a
small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free
to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.
We ignored the contractor scandal to our own peril. Ever since Falluja this auxiliary army has
been a leading indicator of every element of the war’s failure: not only our inadequate troop
strength but also our alienation of Iraqi hearts and minds and our rampant outsourcing to
contractors rife with Bush-Cheney cronies and campaign contributors. Contractors remain a
bellwether of the war’s progress today. When Blackwater was briefly suspended after the Nisour
Square catastrophe, American diplomats were flatly forbidden from leaving the fortified Green
Zone. So much for the surge’s great “success” in bringing security to Baghdad.
Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans
of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors,
not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go
home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and
beans.”
This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq
policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The
extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly
support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass
death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our
battle plan.
Similarly, it took until December 2005, two and a half years after “Mission Accomplished,” for
Mr. Bush to feel sufficient public pressure to acknowledge the large number of Iraqi casualties in
the war. Even now, despite his repeated declaration that “America will not abandon the Iraqi
people,” he has yet to address or intervene decisively in the tragedy of four million-plus Iraqi
refugees, a disproportionate number of them children. He feels no pressure from the American
public to do so, but hey, he pays lip service to Darfur.
Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion
of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were
participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now,
they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.
“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they
do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of
Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he
“never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never
compromised my humanity.”
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we
stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed
ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge
administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to.
There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Who Will Succeed Al Gore?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Seeing Al Gore so deservedly share the Nobel Peace Prize, it is impossible not to note the contrast
in his leadership and that of George W. Bush.
Thomas L. Friedman
Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush each faced a crucible moment. For Mr. Gore, it was winning the popular
vote and having the election taken away from him by a Republican-dominated Supreme Court.
For Mr. Bush, it was the shocking terrorist attack on 9/11.
Mr. Gore lost the presidency, but in the dignity and grace with which he gave up his legal fight,
he united America. Then, faced with what to do with the rest of his life, he took up a personal
crusade to combat climate change, even though the odds were stacked against him, his soapbox
was small, his audiences were measured in hundreds, and his critics were legion. Nevertheless,
Mr. Gore stuck with it and over time has played a central role in building a global consensus for
action on this issue.
“No matter what happens, sooner or later character in leadership is revealed,” said David
Rothkopf, author of the upcoming “Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are
Making.” “Gore lost the election and had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He took
the initiative to get the country and the world to focus on a common threat — climate change.
Bush won the election and for the first year really didn’t know what to do with it. When, on 9/11,
we and the world were suddenly faced with a common threat — terrorism and Al Qaeda — the
whole world was ready to line up behind him, but time and again he just divided us at home and
abroad.”
Indeed, Mr. Bush, rather than taking all that unity and using it to rebuild America for the 21st
century, took all that unity and used it to push the narrow agenda of his “base.” He used all that
unity to take a far-right agenda on taxes and social issues that was going nowhere on 9/10 and
drive it into a 9/12 world.
Never has so much national unity — which could have been used to develop a real energy policy,
reverse our coming Social Security deficit, assemble a lasting coalition to deal with Afghanistan
and Iraq, maybe even get a national health care program — been used to build so little. That is
what historians will note most about Mr. Bush’s tenure — the sheer wasted opportunity of it all.
Yes, Iraq was always going to be hugely difficult, but the potential payoff of erecting a decent,
democratizing government in the heart of the Arab world was also enormous. Yet Mr. Bush, in his
signature issue, never mobilized the country, never punished incompetence, never made the bad
guys “fight all of us,” as Bill Maher put it, by at least pushing through a real energy policy to
reduce the resources of the very people we were fighting. He thought he could change the world
with 50.1 percent of the country, and he couldn’t.
“Gore, even without the presidency, used all the modern tools of communication, the Internet,
video and globalization to reach out and galvanize a global movement,” Mr. Rothkopf said.
“Bush took the greatest platform in the world and dug himself a policy grave.”
Now Mr. Bush is a spent force and Mr. Gore is, apparently, not running. So we still need a
president who can unify the country around meaningful action on energy and climate. Most of the
Democratic candidates mouth the right words, but I don’t sense much real passion. Most of the
Republican candidates seem to be brain-dead on the energy/climate challenge. And it is amazing
to me how flat-out wrong some conservatives, like Rush Limbaugh, can be on this issue.
They can’t see what is staring us in the face — that in pushing American companies to become
greener, we are pushing them to become more productive, more innovative, more efficient and
more competitive.
You can’t make a product greener without making it smarter and more in demand — whether it is
a refrigerator or a microchip. Just ask G.E. or Wal-Mart or Sun Microsystems. You can’t make an
army greener without making it more secure. Just ask the U.S. Army officers who are desperate
for distributed solar power, so they won’t have to depend on diesel fuel to power their bases in
Iraq — fuel that has to be trucked all across that country, only to get blown up by insurgents. In
pushing our companies to go green we are spurring them to take the lead in the next great global
industry — clean power.
In sum, Al Gore has been justly honored for highlighting — like no one else — the climate
challenge. But we still need a vision, a strategy, an army and a commander in the White House
who can inspire young and old — not only to meet that challenge but to see in it the opportunity
to make America a better, stronger and more productive nation. This is our crucible moment.
A New Approach to Housing
The House took an important step toward easing the affordable housing crisis when it passed a
bill that establishes a National Housing Trust Fund. A companion bill, which is expected to be
introduced in the Senate soon, deserves to pass speedily into law.
The trust fund comes at a time when nearly half of the country’s lowest-income families are at
risk of homelessness. These families often live doubled up with friends or relatives and must
spend more than half of their pretax incomes on rent. They house themselves only by cutting back
on food, clothing and medical care.
Modeled on systems long employed by the states, the trust fund would be used to construct,
rehabilitate and preserve 1.5 million units of housing over the next 10 years. Three-quarters of the
money would be directed at extremely low-income families. The funds would be distributed to
local jurisdictions that would award grants to entities that build and rehabilitate housing.
The developing parties who receive the money would be required to set aside a proportionate
number of units for low-income families. The idea is to create vibrant, mixed-income
communities — instead of segregating the poor in isolated developments, as was often done in
the past.
The fund would require no new taxes. It would run on contributions made by the government-
backed mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and with money generated by the Federal
Housing Administration, which insures mortgages.
The trust fund bill passed with broad, bipartisan support in the House and deserves the same kind
of support in the Senate
Politeness and Authority at a Hilltop College in Minnesota
Last week I spent a couple of days in western Minnesota, giving a talk and visiting some classes
at Gustavus Adolphus College. The campus covers a hill above the small town of St. Peter, and
the wind cuts across it like old news from the west. Gustavus Adolphus is a Lutheran college. I
asked a couple of students how it differs from St. Olaf College — another Lutheran institution in
a small Minnesota town, where I once taught — and they said, “They’re Norwegian. We’re
Swedish.”
Once, a town like St. Peter would have seemed like destination enough. After all, small farm
towns with good colleges are not that common. But now, more and more of the faculty live in the
Twin Cities, an hour and a half away, and, as one professor told me, the college describes itself to
new recruits in terms of its distance from a city, not its presence in a town.
I sat in on four classes, which were marred only by politeness — the deep-keeled Minnesotan
politeness that states, as a life proposition, that you should not put yourself forward, not even to
the raising of a hand in class.
Things always warmed up, but those first lingering notes of hesitation were something to behold.
I tried to think of it as modesty, consideration for others and reluctance in the presence of a guest
— from New York nonetheless. And yet I kept wondering just how such bright, personable
students had become acculturated to their own silence. I had grown up in a similar place and
knew a little how they felt, but that was a long time ago.
Midway through lunch one day a young woman asked me if I noticed a difference between the
writing of men and the writing of women. The answer is no, but it’s a good question. A writer’s
fundamental problem, once her prose is under control, is shaping and understanding her own
authority. I’ve often noticed a habit of polite self-negation among my female students, a self-
deprecatory way of talking that is meant, I suppose, to help create a sense of shared space, a
shared social connection. It sounds like the language of constant apology, and the form I often
hear is the sentence that begins, “My problem is ...”
Even though this way of talking is conventional, and perhaps socially placating, it has a way of
defining a young writer — a young woman — in negative terms, as if she were basically
incapable and always giving offense. You simply cannot pretend that the words you use about
yourself have no meaning. Why not, I asked, be as smart and perceptive as you really are? Why
not accept what you’re capable of? Why not believe that what you notice matters?
Another young woman at the table asked — this is a bald translation — won’t that make us seem
too tough, too masculine? I could see the subtext in her face: who will love us if we’re like that?
I’ve heard other young women, with more experience, ask this question in a way that means,
Won’t the world punish us for being too sure of ourselves? This is the kind of thing that happens
when you talk about writing. You always end up talking about life.
These are poignant questions, and they always give me pause, because they allow me to see, as
nothing else does, the cultural frame these young women have grown up in. I can hear them
questioning the very nature of their perceptions, doubting the evidence of their senses, distrusting
the clarity of their thoughts.
And yet that is the writer’s work — to notice and question the act of noticing, to clarify again and
again, to sift one’s perceptions. I’m always struck by how well fitted these young women are to
be writers, if only there weren’t also something within them saying, Who cares what you notice?
Who authorized you? Don’t you owe someone an apology?
Every young writer, male or female, Minnesotan or otherwise, faces questions like these at first.
It’s a delicate thing, coming to the moment when you realize that your perceptions do count and
that your writing can encompass them. You begin to understand how quiet, how subtle the
writer’s authority really is, how little it has to do with “authority” as we usually use the word.
Young men have a way of coasting right past that point of realization without even noticing it,
which is one of the reasons the world is full of male writers. But for young women, it often means
a real transposition of self, a new knowledge of who they are and, in some cases, a forbidding
understanding of whom they’ve been taught to be.
Perhaps the world will punish them for this confidence. Perhaps their self-possession will chase
away everyone who can’t accept it for what it is, which may not be a terrible thing. But whenever
I see this transformation — a young woman suddenly understanding the power of her
perceptions, ready to look at the world unapologetically — I realize how much has been lost
because of the culture of polite, self-negating silence in which they were raised.
Temporary Victory on Clean Air
Last week’s record-breaking consent decree requiring American Electric Power, the nation’s
largest utility, to pay $4.6 billion to clean up its act represents a satisfying, if delayed victory for
the Clinton administration and other plaintiffs who brought the suit eight years ago. More than
anything, though, it is a victory for millions of people downwind of the company’s plants who
have been forced to breathe dirty air.
But before people start jumping for joy, they should know that the Bush administration, while
claiming some credit for this settlement, is still actively trying to undermine the very law on
which it was based.
The law in question is a key provision in the Clean Air Act called “new source review.” It says
that companies that significantly upgrade a plant in order to generate more power must also
install state-of-the-art controls to deal with the increased pollution. The utilities have long
resented this law, which requires costly investments, and Vice President Dick Cheney targeted it
for extinction in his infamous energy report in 2001.
Various courts, including the Supreme Court, have upheld the law. Even so, the administration
has paid little attention and is still doing everything it can to torpedo the law by administrative
means. The most recent assault is a proposed rule that would exempt plants from having to install
new controls as long as their hourly rate of emissions does not increase as a result of any plant
upgrade — even if total emissions skyrocket because the upgrades enable a plant to run longer
and harder.
The A.E.P. settlement stems from an enforcement action brought in 1999 by the Clinton
administration and nine state attorneys general, including New York’s Eliot Spitzer, against A.E.P.
and six other utilities in the Midwest and South. The case was joined by 13 advocacy groups.
Under the settlement, the company, which bitterly resisted the original suit, has agreed to install
$4.6 billion in new pollution-control measures at 16 existing plants. The investments will sharply
reduce the company’s emissions of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, and nitrogen oxide,
which contributes to urban smog.
A.E.P. can well afford the settlement, which gives the company a generous time frame in which to
meet its responsibilities. Indeed, the company had already committed much of the money in
anticipation of the settlement as well as investments that will be required under other clean air
laws.
The agreement also includes a covenant that effectively shields the company from further
government action while it installs the new controls. Some environmental groups warn that this
covenant, which the Clinton administration inserted in similar agreements, only creates more
room for mischief-making by the company.
But far more worrisome are the proposed changes to the underlying new source review provision.
These changes would have made it almost impossible to bring the case against A.E.P. in the first
place, much less win it.
Iraqi Oil Spoils
The quickening pace of oil deals between Kurdish regional leaders and foreign companies is
another sign that Iraq is spinning out of control and the Bush administration has no idea how to
stop it.
President Bush set enactment of a national oil law that centralizes development and ensures an
equitable division of the profits as a key benchmark of progress. Iraq’s leaders, who have little
interest in equity or reconciliation, have blithely ignored it. So the Kurds have taken matters into
their own hands, signing nine legally questionable exploration deals with foreign companies.
The administration has complained that the deals “needlessly elevated tensions” between the
Kurds and the central government. But it apparently hasn’t leaned very hard on the one American
oil company involved, Hunt Oil of Dallas, which has close ties to the White House. Iraq’s oil
ministry, meanwhile, has warned that the contracts will be either ignored or considered illegal.
We cannot blame the Kurds for wanting to get on with exploiting their region’s lucrative oil
deposits for energy and for profit. While the rest of Iraq is convulsed in violence and politically
paralyzed, the Kurdish-administered northeast is the one relatively peaceful region, with
functioning schools and government, a separate army and booming business.
The oil contracts, however, are a dangerous attempt to establish facts on the ground, fanning even
more distrust and resentment. The Sunnis, many of whom live in areas without any oil resources,
fear they will get shut out completely from the country’s oil wealth. The Shiite-dominated
government suspects that the Kurds are looking for the resources to secede from Iraq. Any sign
that Iraq is about to break up will encourage even more dangerous meddling by neighboring
Turkey and Iran.
The Kurds agreed to a carefully constructed compromise national draft oil law last February and
insist they remain committed to sharing oil revenues with the rest of the country. But as The
Times’s James Glanz reported last month, the compromise appears to have collapsed in an ever
more bitter struggle among the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and the Sunnis — who both
insist on a strong central government role in letting contracts and running the oil fields — and the
Kurds, who demand more regional control.
Foreign oil companies are so eager for profits that they don’t seem worried about whether the
deals are legally binding or how they may contribute to Iraq’s chaos.
The White House needs to send a clearer warning to these companies — American and foreign —
about the dangers of their course. It should also urge the companies to bring their own pressure on
Iraqi officials to adopt a law that ensures that whatever system emerges is transparent,
accountable and profitable for all Iraqis. Ignoring that is a recipe for continued chaos.
Protecting Farmworkers
The continuing national purge of illegal immigrants has, as expected, caused a shortage in the
supply of immigrant labor. Industries that depend on cheap foreign workers are feeling
withdrawal pains. Crops have rotted and fields have gone to weeds.
The Bush administration is doing its part, raiding homes and annoying federal courts with crude
and destructive workplace enforcement tactics. But now it is also quietly looking for ways to
minimize the damage it has done, and keep its business friends happy, by overhauling a visa
program to bring in more farmworkers. This is not necessarily a good thing.
The main legal route for agricultural guest workers — the H-2A visa program — has serious
problems that need fixing. But the government, which has solicited recommendations from farm
groups on how to streamline the program, must not let industry lobbyists dictate the changes.
Doing so could erode an already thin layer of protections for workers who do some of the
country’s most punishing, backbreaking jobs.
Farm lobbyists have sent the administration a wish list of regulatory and administrative changes
that they say will lift unduly cumbersome barriers to participating in and expanding the H-2A
program. That program now hires about 50,000 people a year, about 2 percent of the agricultural
work force. But the barriers are there for good reasons. They require farmers to give guest
workers free housing and decent wages, and to take certain steps — like running newspaper ads
— to prove they have tried to hire Americans first. The industry wants to relax those hiring
requirements, to charge workers for housing, to pay them less and to widen the range of jobs they
do to include poultry processing and meatpacking.
Labor advocates who have spent years fighting for basic protections for farmworkers believe,
with good reason, that the industry is looking to exploit the immigration crisis. There is a better
way.
Congress should pass a bill known as AgJobs, a bipartisan measure with broad support in the
farm industry and among farmworker organizations. It streamlines the H-2A program, but also
includes a path to earned citizenship for farmworkers, an important step to curb exploitation in an
industry overwhelmingly made up of easily fired, easily abused undocumented workers. Its
carefully negotiated compromises are just the kind of approach to immigration reform the country
needs — not the heavy-handed half-measures that make up the current shambles of federal policy.
Radiohead’s Warm Glow
By EDUARDO PORTER
I didn’t pay anything to download Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” last Wednesday. When the
checkout page on the band’s Web site allowed me to type in whatever price I wanted, I put 0.00,
the lowest I could go. My economist friends say this makes me a rational being.
Apparently not everybody is this lucid, at least not in matters related to their favorite British rock
band. After Radiohead announced it would allow fans to download its album for whatever price
they chose, about a third of the first million or so downloads paid nothing, according to a British
survey. But many paid more than $20. The average price was about $8. That is, people paid for
something they could get for free.
This phenomenon is not new. It’s called tipping. We do it when we go to the restaurant or the
barber, or when we ride in a taxi. Though one could argue there are real tangible reasons for this
payment — like not losing an ear the next time we get a haircut — the practice of paying more
money than we are legally bound to do is still mystifying in an economic sense. For instance, why
tip a cabdriver you will probably never see again?
“Since we economists don’t understand tipping, we can’t really say whether this new scheme will
work,” Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor of economics, said in an entry on his blog. He is not
the only economist who is fascinated by the phenomenon. His Harvard colleague, Dani Rodrik,
asked his blog readers, “Has Radiohead gone bonkers?” He concluded, “Not at all.” Radiohead
will make money. But those who are paying for the download may truly be nuts.
One could argue that rationality isn’t everything. Radiohead fans might just be altruistic beings
who out of the goodness of their hearts would like to give some money to a spectacularly
successful and probably stinking rich rock band. But somehow, that doesn’t work as an
explanation.
Or does it? Some economists suspect that what is going on is that people get a kick from the act
of giving the band money for the album rather than taking it for free. It could take many forms,
like pleasure at being able to bypass the record labels, which many see as only slightly worse than
the military-industrial complex. It could come from the notion that the $8 helps keep Radiohead
in business. Or it could make fans feel that they are helping create a new art form — or a new
economy. People who study philanthropy call it the “warm glow” that comes from doing
something that we, and others, believe to be good.
Mr. Rodrik tested some of this with an experiment of his own. He offered his blog readers the
opportunity to get a copy of his new book on globalization and economic growth for whatever
price they wanted to pay, and said proceeds would go to the charity Save the Children.
The response suggested that “warm glow” is in demand. A third of the people offered nothing.
But the average bid was $21, and he received bids for as much as $145, more than four times the
list price. The most interesting part was to hear bidders explain themselves. Those who bid little
felt it necessary to provide a reason, like being a poor student. But those who bid high justified it
too: many said they liked saving children.
This is all good news for Radiohead, which has boosted its indie credibility, while all the attention
might actually boost its revenues. The band also offered online a package of two CDs, two vinyl
records and a booklet for about $80, and it plans to release “In Rainbows” as a single CD in
January for fans who would rather hear the music with a better resolution than the medium-
quality MP3 file available for download.
It is also potentially comforting news for the recording business. The industry has been struggling
to find a business plan that will work in an online market in which — despite billions invested in
antipiracy measures — fans can pretty much get their music for free if they want to.
Today, music lovers are left but two options: pay list price for an album, or perform what a fan
might call a free download and a record company would call theft. Radiohead’s experiment
suggests a third way out: let fans pay what they want and give them lots of touchy-feely reasons
to want to give as much money as they can.
Spies, Lies and FISA
As Democratic lawmakers try to repair a deeply flawed bill on electronic eavesdropping, the
White House is pumping out the same fog of fear and disinformation it used to push the bill
through Congress this summer. President Bush has been telling Americans that any change would
deny the government critical information, make it easier for terrorists to infiltrate, expose state
secrets, and make it harder “to save American lives.”
There is no truth to any of those claims. No matter how often Mr. Bush says otherwise, there is
also no disagreement from the Democrats about the need to provide adequate tools to fight
terrorists. The debate is over whether this should be done constitutionally, or at the whim of the
president.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, requires a warrant to intercept
international communications involving anyone in the United States. A secret court has granted
these warrants quickly nearly every time it has been asked. After 9/11, the Patriot Act made it
even easier to conduct surveillance, especially in hot pursuit of terrorists.
But that was not good enough for the Bush team, which was determined to use the nation’s
tragedy to grab ever more power for its vision of an imperial presidency. Mr. Bush ignored the
FISA law and ordered the National Security Agency to intercept phone calls and e-mail between
people abroad and people in the United States without a warrant, as long as “the target” was not
in this country.
The president did not announce his decision. He allowed a few lawmakers to be briefed but
withheld key documents. The special intelligence court was in the dark until The Times disclosed
the spying in December 2005.
Mr. Bush still refused to stop. He claimed that FISA was too limiting for the Internet-speed war
against terror. But he never explained those limits and rebuffed lawmakers’ offers to legally
accommodate his concerns.
This year, the administration found an actual problem with FISA: It requires a warrant to
eavesdrop on communications between foreigners that go through computers in the United States.
It was a problem that did not exist in 1978, and it had an easy fix. But Mr. Bush’s lawyers tacked
dangerous additions onto a bill being rushed through Congress before the recess. When the smoke
cleared, Congress had fixed the real loophole, but also endorsed the idea of spying without court
approval. It gave legal cover to more than five years of illegal spying.
Fortunately, the law is to expire in February, and some Democratic legislators are trying to fix it.
House members have drafted a bill, which is a big improvement but still needs work. The Senate
is working on its bill, and we hope it will show the courage this time to restore the rule of law to
American surveillance programs.
There are some red lines, starting with the absolute need for court supervision of any surveillance
that can involve American citizens or others in the United States. The bill passed in August
allowed the administration to inform the FISA court about its methods and then issue blanket
demands for data to communications companies without any further court approval or review.
The House bill would permit the government to conduct surveillance for 45 days before
submitting it to court review and approval. (Mr. Bush is wrong when he says the bill would slow
down intelligence gathering.) After that, ideally, the law would require a real warrant. If Congress
will not do that, at a minimum it must require spying programs to undergo periodic audits by the
court and Congress. The administration wants no reviews.
Mr. Bush and his team say they have safeguards to protect civil liberties, meaning surveillance
will be reviewed by the attorney general, the director of national intelligence and the inspectors
general of the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. There are two enormous
flaws in that. The Constitution is based on the rule of law, not individuals; giving such power to
any president would be un-American. And this one long ago showed he cannot be trusted.
Last week, The Times reported that the C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, is investigating
the office of his agency’s inspector general after it inquired into policies on detention and
interrogation. This improper, perhaps illegal investigation sends a clear message of intimidation.
We also know that the F.B.I. has abused expanded powers it was granted after 9/11 and that the
former attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, systematically covered up the president’s actions with
deliberately misleading testimony.
Mr. Bush says the law should give immunity to communications companies that gave data to the
government over the last five years without a court order. He says they should not be punished for
helping to protect America, but what Mr. Bush really wants is to avoid lawsuits that could
uncover the extent of the illegal spying he authorized after 9/11.
It may be possible to shield these companies from liability, since the government lied to them
about the legality of its requests. But the law should allow suits aimed at forcing disclosure of Mr.
Bush’s actions. It should also require a full accounting to Congress of all surveillance conducted
since 9/11. And it should have an expiration date, which the White House does not want.
Ever since 9/11, we have watched Republican lawmakers help Mr. Bush shred the Constitution in
the name of fighting terrorism. We have seen Democrats acquiesce or retreat in fear. It is time for
that to stop.
A Prize for Mr. Gore and Science
One can generate a lot of heartburn thinking about all of the things that would be better about this
country and the world if the Supreme Court had done the right thing and ruled for Al Gore instead
of George W. Bush in 2000. Mr. Gore certainly hasn’t let his disappointment stop him from
putting the time since to very good use.
Yesterday, the Nobel committee celebrated that persistence and awarded the Peace Prize to Mr.
Gore and a panel of United Nations scientists for their efforts to raise awareness of the clear and
present danger of global warming.
The committee said that the former vice president “is probably the single individual who has done
most” to create worldwide understanding of what needs to be done to halt the damage caused by
greenhouse gas emissions. It credited the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change for creating “an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human
activities and global warming.”
What the citation didn’t mention but needs to be said is that it shouldn’t have to be left to a
private citizen — even one so well known as Mr. Gore — or a panel of scientists to raise that
alarm or prove what is now clearly an undeniable link or champion solutions to a problem that
endangers the entire planet.
That should be, and must be the job of governments. And governments — above all the Bush
administration — have failed miserably.
There will be skeptics who ask what the Peace Prize has to do with global warming. The
committee answered that unhesitatingly with its warning that climate change, if unchecked, could
unleash massive migrations, violent competitions for resources and, ultimately, threaten the
“security of mankind.”
There will also be those who complain that this prize — like the committee’s earlier awards to
Jimmy Carter and the chief United Nations nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei — is an
intentional slap at President Bush. It should be. We only wish that it would finally wake up the
president.
While other leaders are beginning to recognize the urgency of climate change and the need for
ambitious and costly solutions, Mr. Bush and his administration still drag behind: conceding the
obvious only when there is no remaining choice, boycotting any initiative that is not their own
and rejecting any action that might cut into the immediate profits of industry.
All this was on depressing display last month at Mr. Bush’s summit on global warming, where he
again refused to accept the necessity of obligatory targets for reducing greenhouse emissions. His
refusal to lead has made it far easier for China and others to refuse to act.
Having squandered the last seven years, Mr. Bush is unlikely to change. Mr. Gore and the United
Nations panel of scientists have shown how much citizens with courage and determination can
do.
Now it’s up to Congress, the presidential candidates and other world leaders to take up their
challenge and the challenge of the Nobel committee. We cannot afford to squander any more
time.
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Campaigning on Pension Gold
Almost 20 years ago, investigators began looking into how New York’s comptroller invested a
huge and growing public pension fund. They came across a memo from an aide to Edward Regan,
who then was the comptroller, explaining the connection between campaign donations and
contracts with his office. “Those who give,” it said, “will get.”
No charges were filed back then, but the real scandal is how little seems to have changed in two
decades, while the size of New York’s pension fund has soared from $38 billion to $154 billion.
That makes it one of the biggest pools of investment assets in the world — one that is,
remarkably, controlled by a single person, the New York State comptroller.
Thomas DiNapoli, the current comptroller, took over the job this year, succeeding Alan Hevesi,
who resigned after pleading guilty to misusing state resources. Mr. DiNapoli has tightened up
some of the rules governing his singularly powerful job, but not enough of them. Most crucially,
he has not been willing to push for having his pension investments vetted by an independent
board of experts, as is the case in most states and in New York City.
Now, Mr. DiNapoli has a new reason to reconsider. The Securities and Exchange Commission is
reportedly investigating the last administration’s methods. The S.E.C.’s interest is good news. It is
joining two state investigations now under way. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and
Albany District Attorney David Soares earlier this year began looking into whether investment
firms paid millions of dollars to Mr. Hevesi’s friends and relatives in exchange for pension
business.
Mr. Hevesi has said that he did not do anything wrong and that New York’s pension fund fared
extremely well under his trusteeship. Yet when investigators began asking for documents about
fees awarded to those who brokered investments, they found that a key piece of evidence was
missing — the list of who received the placement fees. There were no copies, which itself seems
like an irregularity. Investigators may have to go back and interview everyone who has invested
state pension funds, a labor-intensive process.
In the meantime, Mr. DiNapoli and his mentor, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, continue to
argue that a sole trustee works better than a board because if anything goes wrong one person
would be held responsible.
A less noble reason for holding onto the sole trustee model is that the comptroller’s office can be
used to bring in a flood of campaign contributions. The fees on a $154 billion fund are so
lucrative for investment firms, banks, hedge funds and lawyers that enormous campaign
contributions to a comptroller or his political allies would be just a small cost of doing business.
The sole trustee system is good for the politicians who control it, but it is terrible for the integrity
of the political system and for the workers whose pensions are at stake. It’s time to end a system
that can too easily deteriorate into “those who give will get.”
Homeland Bunkers and Alien Litterbugs
It’s taken five years, but the White House has finally updated the nation’s homeland security
strategy, belatedly conceding that natural catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina deserve the same
sort of high-level brain storming as the threat of terrorism. The 53-page policy can be read as a
valedictory for a fading administration’s mishaps as much as an all-points bulletin on future
threats. It’s a reminder of what a muddle the massive homeland superagency remains.
Galvanizing the department with effective leadership should be high on the national agenda for
the roaming throng of presidential candidates.
The current homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, was memorably overwhelmed by
Katrina, and he has since been too often a study in executive whimsy. Recall the eerie statement
of his own “gut feeling” that a terrorist attack could occur perchance last summer. More recently,
Mr. Chertoff defended the administration’s fence along the Mexican border as an environmental
boon because illegal migrants are such litterbugs as they skulk toward opportunity. “I’ve seen
pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas,” he
rued.
Statements like that should make Americans look up in wonder at what sort of expert insights
their taxes are subsidizing. Congress already has had to head off the homeland department’s plan
to create its own spy satellite program for tracking threats from nature, terrorists and illegal
intruders. Lawmakers were rightly wary that it was yet another way for this administration to
invade citizens’ privacy and mangle civil liberties.
Homeland security is a vital but amorphous concept that demands dedicated experts, not
patronage loyalists.
Under this administration, it can veer from the Wild Bunch immigration raids lately terrifying
innocent citizens, to the bizarre plan of Huntsville, Ala., for a mammoth fallout shelter for 20,000
people. The city figures why not tap one of those easy homeland security grants of $70,000 to
indulge their cold war nostalgia?
That money should be directed toward more realistic terrorist targets, of course, but that would
require a no-nonsense homeland security strategy in the hands of serious leaders.
Russian Reservations
Vladimir Putin is a master at bluster and hyperbole, but his latest comments on Iran were
especially counterproductive. This week, Mr. Putin asserted that “we have no real data to claim
that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, which makes us believe the country has no such plans.” In
fact, there is no concrete proof of weapons development. But there is enough credible
circumstantial evidence to be seriously worried.
There’s also no excuse for Iran’s continued defiance of a Security Council order to halt
production of enriched uranium, usable for nuclear fuel or a weapon. Mr. Putin’s comments —
and his opposition to tougher sanctions — will only feed that defiance and lessen the chances for
the diplomatic settlement that Mr. Putin says he wants.
The Bush administration and Britain — their credibility after Iraq is shaky to say the least —
aren’t the only ones who believe that Tehran wants to do a lot more than generate electricity.
France, which strongly opposed the Iraq war, is also raising alarms. The United Nations nuclear
watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is the source of much of the data — and the
questions — about Iran’s program.
Russia, meanwhile, has been all over the lot — one day siding with Washington and Europe on
the need to contain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and the next one denying the threat. Russia’s
geographical proximity to Iran makes at least some Kremlin aides nervous, but most of the time
they seem more interested in Iran’s oil riches and its willingness to spend a chunk of that cash on
Russian made weapons and other technology.
Such deals will likely be high on Mr. Putin’s agenda when he visits Tehran next week. But he
should not let them blind him to the very real threat that would be posed by a nuclear-armed Iran.
He could do a lot more good for Russia — and his own credibility — if he told the Iranians that
they must halt enrichment and accept Europe’s and Washington’s offers of economic and
diplomatic payoffs if they do.
Still Waiting in Florida
Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida was right when he called for tearing down the barriers that prevent
as many as 950,000 ex-offenders from voting in his state. But the new rules that were put in place
to help former inmates reclaim their rights have fallen far short of what’s needed to bring
democracy back to Florida.
The number of petitioners seeking to restore their rights has increased, but the process is
excruciatingly slow and strewn with unnecessary hurdles. Unless the rules are further refined and
the process speeded up, many ex-offenders will go to their graves without being permitted to
vote. And until their voting rights are restored, many of these people will remain locked out of
scores of state-regulated occupations for which restoration is listed as a condition of employment.
As a first step, the state needs to sever that connection, as was recommended by the ex-offender
task force appointed by Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor. No reasonable person would want
to see a sex offender working in a school or a career embezzler employed in a bank. But the
practice of barring convicted felons from a whole range of jobs that have nothing to do with their
offenses shuts them out of the economy and makes it more likely that they will return to jail.
The state should also end the practice of generally denying restoration to people who owe
restitution to their victims. Restitution is, of course, important and should be paid. But it’s
illogical to limit these ex-offenders’ employment opportunities and their ability to pay the
compensation they owe.
Governor Crist served an important public service when he raised this issue. To ensure that ex-
offenders get back their rights, the Legislature and he will have to do a lot more. What’s needed is
for Florida to bring its policies into line with those of 39 other states that automatically restore
voting rights once former inmates are released from prison or when they finish probation or
parole. Only then will democracy return to Florida.
What, Me Worry?

If anybody had a doubt about Republicans’ detachment from the economic reality of most
Americans, Fred Thompson, the former United States senator, set them straight as he opened
Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate: the economy, he declared, “is rosy.”
He wasn’t the only one in rose-colored denial or out of touch. Despite entreaties from their hosts,
all the leading Republican candidates neatly overlooked Americans’ fear of recession and the
fallout from the meltdown in the housing market.
Watching the debate, it felt as if these candidates, or at least the front-runners, were living in an
alternate universe. It’s one where nothing but taxes can stop the ever upward growth of the
American economy and where a problem hasn’t been invented — millions of uninsured,
America’s dependency on Middle Eastern oil — that can’t be dealt with through tax cuts, slashing
government spending and regular, stiff doses of deregulation.
Forget a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade regime for carbon emissions — not that anybody
mentioned global warming as a big problem. Forget expensive incentives to develop alternative
energy sources. With everybody calling for lower taxes, Republicans were left with no way to
address any problem except exhorting the private industry to show its resourcefulness.
The best brawl was over who had done more harm to his constituents: Rudolph Giuliani, who
according to Mitt Romney increased spending by 2.8 percent a year when he was mayor of New
York City, or Mr. Romney, who according to Mr. Giuliani raised taxes by 11 percent per capita
when he was governor of Massachusetts.
All this bowing before the tax-slashing idol could be understood as a matter of political survival.
But the economic arguments are nonsense, none more so than the claim — trumpeted by Mr.
Giuliani and a revered tenet of his party — that lower tax rates will inevitably generate more tax
revenues. That theory has been tested and failed, leading to enormous deficits during the
administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Two years ago, the Congressional Budget Office published an analysis of the effect of a tax cut
on economic growth and tax revenues. It found that even under the rosiest of assumptions, cutting
taxes led, inevitably, to lower revenues and a bigger deficit. But perhaps those assumptions were
not rosy enough for the Republican presidential candidates.
A Crackdown on Hold
A federal judge has halted a reckless plan by the Bush administration to use Social Security
records for immigration enforcement. This is good news, not just for the American economy,
which would have been crippled by the attempt to force millions of undocumented workers off
the books, but also for the untold numbers of innocent citizens and legal residents who also would
have been victims of the purge.
The judge, Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District of California, ruled that the Department of
Homeland Security could not enforce a new rule requiring employers to fire workers if their
Social Security numbers could not be verified within 90 days. The assumption behind the rule
was that workers whose numbers did not match the Social Security Administration’s database
were illegal immigrants using fake or stolen identities.
Judge Breyer recognized that assumption as deeply flawed and the new rule as an unlawfully
crude enforcement tool. The Social Security database is riddled with errors not related to
immigration status. Many of the “no-match” letters — which call attention to database
discrepancies — involve legal residents.
“There is a strong likelihood that employers may simply fire employees who are unable to resolve
the discrepancy within 90 days,” the judge wrote, even if the problem was caused by data-entry
mistakes, misspellings or name changes. He warned that the rule would cause “irreparable harm
to innocent workers and employers.” The A.F.L.-C.I.O, a party to the lawsuit that led to the
ruling, had estimated that about 600,000 of its members could receive the letters and be
vulnerable to firing.
Judge Breyer also scolded the administration for imposing a policy change with “massive
ramifications” for employers without a legal explanation or a required survey of the costs and
impact to small businesses.
It is not the case — though infuriated hard-liners will insist otherwise — that millions of
undocumented workers are now being let off the hook by a soft-headed judge. If the no-match
crackdown had proceeded, many workers without papers would still have found jobs in the
underground economy, perhaps worse ones or with better-forged papers. Identity theft would have
risen.
The shadow economy would have adapted, as always. The world of on-the-books employment
would have suffered greatly.
The federal government has embarked on a disastrously one-sided immigration strategy —

pulling out one harsh enforcement tool after another without having repaired the broken system.
We have already seen the results of runaway enforcement on the agricultural industry — a
shortage of workers leading to rotting crops and farmers relocating south of the border. The
trouble with crackdowns, like the foolish one involving “no-match” letters, is that they cause
oceans of pain and havoc — not just for undocumented immigrants, but also for legal residents
and the economy — without actually solving anything.
Five Shortsighted Legislators
When the House votes next week on whether to override President Bush’s veto of a children’s
health insurance bill, any legislators from New York or New Jersey who fail to support this
essential program will be sabotaging their own state’s program and, far worse, punishing their
own state’s children.
Most of those members recognized that and voted for the bill, except for a small band of
Republicans. If they refuse to switch sides — out of ideology or misplaced loyalty to the White
House — any who have the nerve to run for re-election deserve to be punished at the polls.
There are compelling reasons for all members of Congress to support expansion of the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip. The bill would provide coverage to an additional
3.8 million children who would otherwise be uninsured. The president’s own skimpy funding
proposals wouldn’t even maintain current enrollment levels. Several hundred thousand children
would probably fall off the rolls.
Legislators from New York and New Jersey have an added reason to vote for override. Their
states — where health care costs are especially high — have been the most aggressive in trying to
expand coverage to middle-income children, not just the near-poor who are the chief targets of S-
chip. If the president’s veto is sustained, both would see their efforts thwarted.
The Bush administration arbitrarily imposed onerous new requirements two months ago that
made it virtually impossible for New York to raise its eligibility level or for New Jersey to
maintain its current level.
Under the bill approved by Congress, these unfair barriers would be replaced with more realistic
requirements. What’s more, New York and New Jersey would receive enhanced matching funds
to the higher eligibility levels, at least until 2010. Any legislators from either state who voted to
sustain the president’s veto next week would be voting to undermine their own state’s program.
The bill passed the Senate with a veto-proof margin. The crunch will come in the House, where as
many as 24 more votes will be needed to override the veto.
In New Jersey, three Republicans — Rodney Frelinghuysen, Scott Garrett and Jim Saxton —
voted no the first time. In New York, Republicans Randy Kuhl and Thomas Reynolds voted
against the bill. To ensure that the children in their states get the needed health coverage, the
legislators will now have to switch sides. The three Republicans in the New Jersey delegation and
the four Republicans from New York who voted for expanding S-chip will need to hold firm and
support an override. So will the Democrats in both delegations who voted unanimously for the
bill.
New Jersey and New York have taken responsible steps to cover middle-class children who need
insurance. Even members who may share Mr. Bush’s philosophical objections to expanding a
government program should recognize the importance of S-chip to America’s children and
especially to the children in their own states.
Republican Government
CHAPTER 4
Introduction
The republicanism of the Founders' Constitution might seem to be a matter of course. According
to Article 4, section 4, the United States shall guarantee to every state in the Union a republican
form of government, but nothing is said to add specificity and clarification to the critical term. If
that clause evoked little alarm or comment when the Constitution was being drafted, debated, and
ratified, that was owing more to general agreement about the clause's intent than to any general
agreement about the meaning of republicanism. In fact the usage of the word "republican" was as
amorphous as it was common.
At the core of the notion of republican government appears to be the principle that the many
should rule, and that the body politic "should move that way whither the greater force carries it,
which is the consent of the majority" (Locke, no. 1). Which way that greater force moved was for
the people to determine, consulting their interests and their better second thoughts. In that sense a
variety of forms of institutional arrangements might all deserve the name "republican," with the
greater fitness of one or the other form turning on the particular, even peculiar, circumstances of
people, time, and place. What was critical, John Adams insisted (Novanglus, no. 7, 6 Mar. 1775),
was that the government be "bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and
a right to defend."
Throughout his long lifetime Adams was to refine and enlarge and qualify this early effort at
defining republicanism, but even at this stage he was sharply at odds with others for whom
republic meant minimally and irreducibly, no king. Thus, for his friend and fellow revolutionary
Benjamin Rush, there were hard-and-fast lines between "absolute republicanism and absolute
monarchy." Titles of nobility were suspect (Art. 1, sec. 9, cl. 8; Art. 1, sec. 10, cl. 1), and the
study of the classical languages as well. Rush detected in them devices whereby some contrived
to separate themselves from their fellow creatures, the better to abuse and enslave them (no. 30).
And thus, too, for Adams's bête noire and fellow revolutionary Tom Paine, it was a travesty to
honor England with the name "republic" (no. 4). Its freedom depended on "the virtue of the
House of Commons (the republican part in the Constitution)," and with that part corrupted and
"eaten out," nothing was left but the remains of monarchical and aristocratical tyranny. Moreover,
the hereditary principle, with which the English were so infatuated, provided a basis of power
independent of the people and hence "in a constitutional sense" contributed nothing toward the
freedom of the state. In rejecting both monarchy and hereditary rule, Americans would be
rejecting an otherwise endless legacy of "blood and ashes."
Thomas Jefferson's republicanism was less flamboyant than Paine's, but not less radically
opposed to monarchical and hereditary rule. It was evident to him in 1776 (he recollected in
1821) that independence demanded a consistent republicanism, and hence a sloughing off of
monarchic, aristocratic, and other incompatible vestiges of prerepublican rule. To some extent his
collaborators in the revision of Virginia's laws shared his belief, though none would match his
devotion and assiduity in that project. With no royal negatives "to restrain us from doing right, it
should be corrected, in all it's parts, with a single eye to reason, & the good of those for whose
government it was framed" (no. 7). Jefferson considered four of 126 proposed bills "as forming a
system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a
foundation laid for a government truly republican." His singling out of bills repealing entail and
abolishing primogeniture helps cast some light on the otherwise incongruous inclusion of a law of
inheritance in the Northwest Ordinance (see ch. 1, no. 8). The third bill would relieve the people
from "taxation for the support of a religion not theirs." The fourth would provide for a general
education of the people so as to qualify them for self-government by teaching them how to
understand and maintain their rights. Among Jefferson's many fine epitomes of his republicanism,
this autobiographical passage may stand first.
The Problem of Balance
Reading from Jefferson's Autobiography it is easy to forget that the case for republicanism had
still to be made. Yet according to John Adams's account, a large body of contemporary opinion
expressed itself in "the sneers of modern Englishmen" who contemned the principles, reasoning,
and very memories and names of those whom they dismissed as regicides, commonwealthmen,
and radical Whigs. "No small fortitude is necessary to confess that one has read them." In so
confessing, Adams meant also to prepare "any candid mind" for a pro-republican argument in the
form of a definition: "there is no good government but what is Republican ... because the very
definition of a Republic, is 'an Empire of Laws, and not of men.'" (no. 5). On these Harringtonian
foundations Adams proceeded to develop his thoughts, culminating in 1787 with the "true and
only true definition of a republic": "a government, in which all men, rich and poor, magistrates
and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally
subject to the laws" (no. 10). The implications were liberty for all, not only for a majority; the
protection of persons as well as of the acquisition, use, and transfer of property at the individual's
discretion; and the contrivance of devices to engage the political interests of "the real middling
people" and to secure their predominance in the state.
Principled republican that he was, Adams resisted the simplistic dichotomies adopted by both
friends and foes of republican government. That seeker of royal and republican loans was "no
king-killer, king-hater, or king-despiser" (Letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 21 May 1782). In an
advanced stage of popular corruption and civil conflict, a desperate people might well be driven
to institute hereditary offices, the very lineaments of Paine's detested British polity. So prudence
might dictate muffling the antimo-narchical and antiaristocratical drums for the present, even
while laboring to contrive popular elective embodiments of monarchical and aristocratical
principles. The truly challenging problem for Adams was to embed in republican institutions and
procedures the self-sustaining elements of his cherished notion of a balanced government. From
that point of view he thought he could already discern a major weakness in the new American
Constitution: the monarchical element in it required enlargement and bolstering against the all-
engrossing aristocratical power (no. 29).
It was, however, reserved for the two principal authors of the Federalist to recast the terms of the
public discussion of republicanism by insisting on treating a republic as a species of popular
government and distinguishing it from the other species, democracy, by the use of representation.
Rule by popular majorities was not enough. The good name of popular self-government would be
redeemed by a republic properly constructed (no. 12; see also ch. 17, no. 22). Among other things
this entailed rejecting in the name of majority rule the right of equal suffrage in the national
legislature enjoyed by the small states under the Articles of Confederation (see ch. 5, no. 23), and
reconsidering how much dependence and popular derivation were necessary to proclaim a
constitution in conformity with the true principles of republican government (nos. 24, 26).
The Problem of Size
The Federalist's great vindication of republicanism called forth Hamilton's intense efforts and
Madison's truly original contribution to political thought. No small part of their task was to
convert a widely held objection to the proposed Constitution into a matter of rightful relief and
pride. Montesquieu had taught moderns an ancient lesson (but for modern purposes), that
republics would thrive only in fairly compact territories. The contiguity of private and public
good would be more visible, more intelligible, more attainable, more actual, in a small state of
relatively homogeneous free men. The Anti-Federalist dread of consolidated government turned
largely on this Montesquieuan premise (nos. 14, 16). Hamilton's riposte was to claim that the
dread was ill placed. Not largeness but smallness lay at the root of the domestic turmoil and
sedition that made "the petty Republics of Greece and Italy" horrible and disgusting to
contemplate, and the recent doings in western Massachusetts and Rhode Island even more vivid.
A literal reading of Montesquieu would bode ill for America, for when Montesquieu said "small"
he meant small, not a Virginia of 125,525 square miles (according to Jefferson's calculation in
Notes on the State of Virginia). By this token Americans would be reduced to the alternative
"either of taking refuge at once in the arms of monarchy, or of spliting ourselves into an infinity
of little jealous, clashing, tumultuous commonwealths, the wretched nurseries of unceasing
discord and the miserable objects of universal pity or contempt." Happily, modern improvements
now made it possible for "the enlightened friends to liberty" to stand forth as republicans (no. 18).
Of those progressive developments in political science, none was more critical than the discovery
that "the enlargement of the sphere is found to lessen the insecurity of private rights" (see
Madison, ch. 5, no. 16). In part this lessening would come about in a large republic almost as a
matter of course thanks to the barriers to easy collusion posed by distance, time, and
heterogeneity. In part it might come about through a properly devised "process of elections as will
most certainly extract from the mass of the Society the purest and noblest characters which it
contains." In and of itself, however, the extended republic might well favor protracted
misrepresentation rather than the refinement and enlargement of popular views (nos. 19, 27).
Nature had still to be perfected by political art. With cool self-assurance the proponents of the
Constitution would point to that document as an unparalleled exemplar of the art that was needed.
The Problem of Commerce
Even with the extended republic temporarily secure and orthodox republican leaders in office,
there still was cause for concern. Would the Americans' zeal for a commercial republic prove the
undoing of both republic and republicans? It is tempting, but unhistorical, to treat this concern as
a quaint or irrelevant atavism in a people as zealously commercial as the Americans. It was one
thing to recognize the inevitable prominence of commerce in American life, as did Jefferson
(Letter to George Washington, 15 Mar. 1784), Adams (Letter to John Jay, 6 Dec. 1785), and
Hamilton (see ch. 7, nos. 13, 14). It was another matter to assess accurately the benefits and costs
of that development. Following Montesquieu (no. 2) and Hume (no. 3), some Americans could
recognize and welcome the ways in which commerce would soften men's harshness and hatred,
creating bonds within and among states (no. 32; see also Agrippa, no. 1, 23 Nov. 1787, and ch.
18, no. 30). Hamilton was loath to credit such pacific expectations (see ch. 7, no. 10), though of
course this in no way diminished his ardor for the promotion of commerce and manufacturing
(no. 31).
Much more vexing were the probable effects of those developments upon the habits, tastes, and
concerns of a self-governing people. Republicanism presupposes a people who care about the res
publica, the public thing. Commerce changes the focus of individuals' vision; manufacturing
permits, while encouraging, the indulgence of private gratifications; and a life cut off from the
soil is, to that extent, a life of increased dependency on the wills of other men. Could one still
speak of republican citizens when contemplating merchants, for which the "mere spot they stand
on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains"?
(Jefferson to Horatio Gates Spafford, 17 Mar. 1817, cited in Papers 14:221). Would the avarice
that set men in motion leave them the taste or energy for pursuing the public's concerns?
Recognizing those problems was a first step toward trying to cope with them, and there were,
among the American founders of republican government, those who were intent on facing that
challenge (see ch. 18).

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