Pre-Thanksgiving opinion.
NY Times:
For decades, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has gathered a trove of complaints about potentially dangerous products, from cribs to Chinese-made drywall. But for the most part, the information has not been made public because of a federal law that requires a manufacturer’s approval before it can be release
On Wednesday, the commission is scheduled to vote to create a new, publicly accessible database of safety complaints that is intended to make it easier for consumers to learn about problems with a product.
But even as the vote looms, the proposal remains mired in a partisan rift among the five members of the commission.
Republicans want to be fair to manufacturers. So do Democrats, but they also want to be fair to consumers.
Maureen Dowd:
And we wonder why we haven’t found Osama bin Laden.
Though we’re pouring billions into intelligence in Afghanistan, we can’t even tell the difference between a no-name faker and a senior member of the Taliban. The tragedy of Afghanistan has descended into farce.
Robert Wright:
Is Afghanistan, as some people say, America’s second Vietnam? Actually, a point-by-point comparison of the two wars suggests that it’s worse than that.
Katrina vanden Heuvel:
Thanksgiving may be a time to give thanks for our blessings, but in Washington, the resurgent Republican conservatives want needy Americans to have fewer of them. The new Republicans have the same old leaders - and their passion hasn't changed. It isn't about offering a hand up to the afflicted - it's about handouts to the connected.
Harold Meyerson:
But then, Germans have something to honk about. Germany's economy is the strongest in the world. Its trade balance - the value of its exports over its imports - is second only to China's, which is all the more remarkable since Germany is home to just 82 million people. Its 7.5 percent unemployment rate - two percentage points below ours - is lower than at any time since right after reunification. Growth is robust, and real wages are rising.
It's quite a turnabout for an economy that American and British bankers and economists derided for years as the sick man of Europe. German banks, they insisted, were too cautious and locally focused, while the German economy needed to slim down its manufacturing sector and beef up finance.
Wisely, the Germans declined the advice.
Nicole Gelinas on NOLA:
Yet the city has come back more vigorously than most imagined possible, even fumbling its way toward becoming, maybe, an urban success story. With about 365,000 residents, the City That Care Forgot has recovered more than 80 percent of its pre-Katrina population, and its post-storm economy has done well, too: in July, unemployment in the city and surrounding suburbs was 7.5 percent, two points below the recession-battered national figure, while per-capita income is up more than 20 percent since 2004, even as traditional government-aid payments, such as welfare and Medicaid, remain lower. Visit New Orleans today, and you’ll see a busy construction site, not a city laid waste by flooding.
The shock of Katrina, it turns out, produced a surprising renaissance in citizen initiative, one result of which was widespread recognition among New Orleanians that all that federal cash wasn’t going to solve the city’s long-standing problems on its own. Instead, engaged residents have kept local politicians on their toes, making sure that they use the recovery funds to transform and rejuvenate the city. They have taught the rest of the country, still reeling from the financial and economic crisis, a lesson: how to do recovery right.