| Editorial Board: In the new year, facing up to our fears Jan 1st 2013, 01:33 EIGHTY YEARS AGO on New Year's Day, the country was anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. A crushing economic depression showed no sign of abating. Americans had elected a new president in November but had to wait until early March of 1933 to see what he would, or could, do about it. When Inauguration Day finally came, the new chief got quickly to the point. He proclaimed his "firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Read full article >>   |  | Stop the gun madness Jan 1st 2013, 01:31 Guns do kill people. Our national New Year's resolution must be to stop the madness. It is shameful that gun control only becomes worthy of public debate following an unspeakable massacre such as Newtown — and even more shameful that these mass killings occur so often. What usually happens is that we spend a few weeks pretending to have a "conversation" about guns, then the horror begins to fade and we turn to other issues. Everything goes back to normal. Read full article >>   | | An F for effort on holding down tuition Jan 1st 2013, 01:31 At the University of Minnesota, the number of employees with "human resources" or "personnel" in their job titles has grown from 180 to 272 since the 2004-05 academic year. Since 2006, the university has spent $10 million on consultants for a vast new housing development that is decades from completion. It employs 139 people for marketing, promotions and communications. Some 81 administrators make $200,000 per year or more. Read full article >>   | | Republicans adrift Jan 1st 2013, 01:30 On Nov. 11, a mere five days after the presidential election, the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam pushed off from Fort Lauderdale for a Caribbean jaunt. Aboard were nearly 600 emotionally tattered Republicans, most of whom had been expecting a Republican victory of Rovian proportions — surely they had all read Karl's prediction in the Wall Street Journal — and now were about to cruise 750 miles to nowhere, just like the party they so adored. The Nieuw Amsterdam was 86,000 tons of painful metaphor. Read full article >>   | | Fixing the economy, a new focus for Congress Jan 1st 2013, 01:30 The Perils of Pauline melodrama over the "fiscal cliff" will drag on as Washington heads toward another "debt ceiling" faceoff that will climax over the next eight weeks or so. This farce captivates the media, but no one should be fooled. This is largely a debate about how much damage will be done to the economic recovery and who will bear the pain. There is bipartisan consensus that the tax hikes and spending cuts that Congress and the White House piled up to build the so-called fiscal cliff are too painful and will drive the economy into a recession. So the folderol is about what mix of taxes and spending cuts they can agree on that won't be as harsh. Read full article >>   | | Obama's leadership failure Jan 1st 2013, 01:29 The "fiscal cliff" is a massive failure of presidential leadership. The tedious and technical negotiations are but a subplot in a larger drama. Government can no longer fulfill all the promises it has made to various constituencies. Some promises will be reduced or disavowed. Which ones? Why? Only the president can pose these questions in a way that starts a national conversation over the choices to be made, but doing so requires the president to tell people things they don't want to hear. That's his job: to help Americans face unavoidable, if unpleasant, realities. Barack Obama has refused to play this role. Read full article >>   | | How the fiscal cliff looks from here Dec 31st 2012, 22:58 Rosalind S. Helderman's Dec. 30 front-page story "With no solution in sight, deep cuts are all but certain" included this quote from Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.): "You do need cuts. But sequestration is not the way to go. It's literally a meat ax without any thought behind it." Read full article >>   | | Controlling guns after Newtown Dec 31st 2012, 22:56 Of all the air-headed proposals to prevent another massacre of children and teachers, the idea that takes the cake is the one of arming teachers with guns to outshoot the assassins. It is beset with too many problems, such as the time and expense of training teachers to shoot straight and true, bolstering the psychological framework of teachers to shoot another human being, storing the gun in a secure place where students couldn't find it or open the lock — but where the gun would be easily and quickly accessible to the teacher in an emergency — and opening a school district to fiscal liability over which lawyers would haggle in court about the "negligence" of teachers in a shootout at the O.K. Corral gone bad. Read full article >>   | | Orphans in Russia fare poorly later on Dec 31st 2012, 22:56 The Dec. 26 editorial "Orphans held hostage," regarding American adoption of Russian children, missed the real tragedy. My wife and I adopted two children from different areas of Russia some time ago, and I served on the board of directors of an international adoption agency for years. I visited Russian orphanages, and I believe the children received excellent care. While they're never as good as a home with a family, these are not depressing places to live. And while it is heartbreaking to lose a child you've started to bond with, Americans who adopt from Russia always run the risk of losing a child to a Russian family before the adoption is finalized. But the risk of losing a child at the last minute are higher when adopting in the United States, which is one reason so many families turn to international adoption. Read full article >>   | | Jonathan Bernstein: A deal liberals can live with -- pending part two Dec 31st 2012, 22:20 It looks as if we're going to get a two-part fiscal cliff deal: Congress will finish voting on part one tomorrow or Wednesday, and part two at some point in the near future, although it's possible they'll wind up getting merged. It's important to get all the details on these things, but based on what is being reported so far, it appears to be a deal that liberals should be able to live with -- pending part two. Read full article >> | | Jamelle Bouie: A combative Obama calls, again, for a "balanced" deal Dec 31st 2012, 20:04 It's hard to figure out what President Obama was aiming for in the brief press conference he gave this afternoon. On one hand, he offered a little optimism, "It appears that an agreement to prevent this new year's tax hike is within sight." According to the Huffington Post, Senate lawmakers are crafting a deal that would keep the Bush tax cuts for all income under $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for joint filers—a concession to Republicans—and raise taxes on capital gains and dividends 20 percent. The estate tax rate would rise to 40 percent, with the threshold ostaying at $5 million. In return, Democrats would get a five-year extension of stimulative tax policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, as well as a one year extension of a stimulus related provision for small businesses. Read full article >>   | | Jennifer Rubin: The luxury of distance from D.C. Dec 31st 2012, 18:03 If you are a Republican 2016 presidential aspirant, it is not a good idea to be in the House or Senate. In 2013 and the years to follow, there will be a series of distasteful votes on a series of fiscal showdowns (e.g., the "fiscal cliff," the debt ceiling). These take a familiar pattern for conservatives: The hard right stakes out an all-or-nothing position, views any compromise as betrayal and refuses to support any final deal, no matter what the merits or the alternative. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Small politicians at the cliff's edge Dec 31st 2012, 17:29 HAVE THE NATION'S LEADERS ever seemed smaller? It's hard to remember when. Unable to do what they all understood needed to be done, they created last year a congressional "supercommittee" that was meant to function as Congress had ceased to function. To guarantee its success, they established a fail-safe mechanism: a series of spending cuts that would take effect in event of failure that were so onerous that no patriot could contemplate their realization. Read full article >>   | |
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