If you have a long enough lever, you can move the world. That's an old saying attributed to Archimedes. But what Archimedes didn't add is that a long enough lever may splinter in your hands if the material is not strong enough. You may end up not moving the world where you wanted it to go and finding yourself in a position you didn't want to be in.
The election of America's first black president has been widely hailed as an historic event. However, much less attention has been paid to the demographic trends which made that event possible and which will continue to affect elections and politics in the United States far into the future. In this article I examine those trends and their consequences for the American party system.
In the 1990s, the Math Wars pitted two philosophies against each other. One side argued for content-based standards -- that elementary school students must memorize multiplication tables by third grade. The other side argued for students to discover math, unfettered by "drill and kill" exercises.
Seems a lifetime ago that the price of crude approached $150 a barrel, but it was only last summer. Remember how people went nuts? Santa Barbara County voted for oil drilling off California's spectacular coast. Santa Barbara of all places, epicenter of the 1969 oil spill that ravaged beaches from Pismo to Oxnard -- and launched the modern environmental movement.
Corruption is a bad thing wherever you find it, and no profession or institution, from churches on Main Street to banks on Wall Street, is immune. You've got people who abuse the trust of shareholders and people who abuse the trust of voters; you've got cops who abuse their badges and professors who abuse their tenure. But in my book there is a special place by the devil's side for corrupt prosecutors.
Of all President Barack Obama's transformative domestic policy proposals, none is more far-reaching and less transparent than health care. What most Washington policy people mean when they talk about his health care proposal was described in the first two paragraphs of Robert Pear's meticulous article in The New York Times on April 1:
Two very rich Republicans -- former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner -- are lining up to run for governor in 2010. The most money that a third Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Campbell, ever earned was as the dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley -- about $300,000 per year. That would make him the pauper in the primary.
A neighbor in her 30s, a very fine woman, recently had a child with her boyfriend. They live together.
On April 2, 2009, the work of July 4, 1776 was nullified at the meeting of the G-20 in London. The joint communiqué essentially announces a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States.
Voters opposed bailouts for both the auto industry and the financial industry, but the federal government provided support for both. Some critics—particularly those who favor the auto industry—have noted that the terms and tone of the bailouts were markedly different, however.
When Barack Obama first met his Auntie Zeituni at an airport in Kenya in 1988, his late father's sister told him, "Welcome home," and kissed him on both cheeks. Obama was on a pilgrimage to the land where his African father lived apart from Obama's American mother.
Barack Obama's foreign policy is beginning to take shape. Semantically, it's a sharp repudiation of the policies of the George W. Bush administration. In reality, it's something like a continuation of Bush policies. Or, if you want to distinguish between the allegedly confrontation-minded policies of Bush's first term and the more accommodationist policies of his second term -- a distinction that I think is exaggerated but has something to it -- then it's something like the second Bush term. With, of course, some differences.
California may be the Golden State, but it has been a while since people have called it that without a trace of sarcasm. With its double digit unemployment rate, difficult to balance budget, and crumbling infrastructure, California these days is anything but golden.
American voters want -- and President Obama campaigned on a platform of -- European-style government at American tax rates.
There's trouble around the Democratic campfire. The party has the White House and solid congressional majorities. But what it doesn't have is everyone on the same page, strumming the same chords, singing the same tune.
Team Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner Sunday afternoon, just a short time after Treasury man Tim Geithner told the television talk shows that some banks will need large amounts of new TARP-money government assistance -- even though the bankers don't want it.
While the leaders of the world's largest economies debate stimulus and regulation in London, let us hope they do not forget about crime and punishment.
The tombstone for General Motors really should have read 1908-2008.
He might be nervous and insecure. After all, he's got the biggest, hardest job in the world. It's not like he's been preparing for it all his life; nine years ago he was commuting between Chicago and Springfield, Ill. It's not like he inherited peace and prosperity; he inherited recession, misery and war. It's not like there are any easy victories; getting us out of the various messes we find ourselves in will, at best, be a long, painful and uneven journey.
