Here are excerpts from four Op-Eds to chew on until the sandman comes.
From The New York Times:
Where’s My Trickle?
By Paul Krugman
Four years ago the Bush administration, exploiting the political bounce it got from the illusion of success in Iraq, pushed a cut in capital-gains and dividend taxes through Congress. It was an extremely elitist tax cut even by Bush-era standards: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that more than half of the tax breaks went to Americans with incomes of more than $1 million a year.
Needless to say, administration economists produced various misleading statistics designed to convey the opposite impression, that the tax cut mainly went to ordinary, middle-class Americans. But they also insisted that the benefits of the tax cut would trickle down — that lower tax rates on the rich would do great things for the economy, helping everyone.
Well, Friday’s dismal jobs report showed that the Bush boom, such as it was, has run its course. And working Americans have a right to ask, "Where’s my trickle?"
From the Washington Post:
The Bottom-Up Partition
By Jackson Diehl
What's really happening is that Iraqis are slowly moving toward the solution their politicians first outlined in their constitution two years ago despite stiff American resistance. This is a loose confederation of at least three self-governing regions, each with its own government, courts and security forces; and a weak federal government whose main function will be redistributing oil revenue so that each region gets a share based roughly on its proportion of the population.
This is not the best outcome from the American point of view. It's possible that one of the regional mini-states, in the oil-rich Shiite south, will become an Iranian client, while Sunnis in the West may be ruled by the same toxic Arab national socialism championed by Saddam Hussein. A look back at the past eight months nevertheless provides plenty of evidence of Iraqi "progress" toward that political settlement.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Thong politics
By Jill Fields
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem, "Underwear," begins, "I didn't get much sleep last night thinking about underwear." The recent statutes outlawing public display of undergarments passed by several Louisiana towns (and being considered in Georgia, New Jersey and Connecticut) show that Ferlinghetti is not alone.
City officials are especially concerned about young men whose sagging trousers expose their boxers because, the lawmakers claim, the style originated in prison, where belts are not permitted. The ACLU opposes such laws as violations of the 1st Amendment; others object because the laws tend to single out young black men, a group already subjected to considerable cultural suspicion and state scrutiny; and still others think dress codes are just plain silly and unenforceable.
Whether or not those who wear sagging pants are celebrating crime and headed for trouble, one thing is certain: American teenagers love to bug their elders, and clothing has long been a great way to do that. State attempts to control who wears what also have a long history. Kings issued edicts to prevent the rising bourgeoisie from wearing the silks and furs only those of noble birth previously had the wealth to display. (We all know how that turned out.)
From the Guardian:
Undermining peace
By Jimmy Carter
By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the United States has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran, and other nations with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons. Currently proposed agreements with India compound this quagmire and further undermine the global pact for peace represented by the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
At the same time, no significant steps are being taken to reduce the worldwide arsenal of almost 30,000 nuclear weapons now possessed by the United States, Russia, China, France, Israel, Britain, India, Pakistan, and perhaps North Korea. A global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the cold war. ...
Nuclear powers must show leadership, by restraining themselves and by curtailing further departures from the NPT's international restraints. One-by-one, the choices they make today will create a legacy - deadly or peaceful - for the future.