Words » Editorials

Accountability Is For Losers

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 22:23:03 +0000

In the same week that a low-ranking Army soldier was swiftly sentenced to 10 years for abuses he committed in a United States-run jail in Iraq, the President’s lawyer, who drafted memos calling the Geneva conventions “quaint” and “obsolete,” was, just as swiftly, all but confirmed as the next attorney general. Ten years ago hypocrisy like this would have been met with public outrage, but today it’s the standard operating procedure in the White House.

The Credit Industry Protection Act

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:19:07 +0000

With bankruptcy reform legislation signed, sealed and delivered into the happy hands of the banking and credit card industries, there remains only one sensible thing to do: pass credit card reform legislation.
For the last 20 years, credit card companies have seen their industry deregulated nearly to the point of lawlessness. Lenders can offer high credit limits to anyone capable of signing their own name. They can advertise interest rates, APRs for short, of 5, 2 and 0 percent, knowing full well that these rates can and will go up at the slightest whim of their all-knowing algorithms.

Manhattan Needs To Step Up To The Waste Plate

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:22:24 +0000

Perhaps the least sexy part of being the mayor of a city with 8 million inhabitants is dealing with the immense amount of waste produced by all those chic restaurants and high-rise office buildings, not to mention what the typical four-person family tosses out in a week. Luckily our mayor isn’t known to fixate on the glamorous. Bloomberg has come up with an ambitious and sustainable plan to dispose of all this waste. And not only that, he has made it a priority that all five boroughs carry their share of the burden, including, (gasp) Manhattan.

The Bankruptcy Of Reform

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:27:30 +0000

Before the current fashion of stark disdain, Europeans had at least one specific cause to admire the United States. It was a place of fresh starts and utter possibility, without the baggage of inherited class distinctions. The notoriously dour philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said he liked looking down the avenues of New York City because they mirrored the possibility inherent in the American way of life. Europe was all narrow forking roads, landing in dead ends. One could see forever down Fifth Avenue.

The Scary Truth About Bush’s “Ownership Society”

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 21:36:21 +0000

President George Bush has been accused of single-mindedly focusing on the war in Iraq while allowing domestic issues, like Social Security, to collect dust. Unfortunately for most of us, this is frighteningly false. Bush is, and has been, pursuing a striking agenda of wealth inequality that threatens to turn the United States into a state akin to economic feudalism.