New America in the News: 2007

...The new health coverage numbers [from the U.S. Census Bureau] disappointed experts across the political spectrum.

"I'm disheartened by this report," said economist Joseph Antos, of the business-oriented American Enterprise Institute. "There is nothing that has happened in the economy or in the health insurance world that would have made me think we would have this large an increase" in the number of uninsured.

Civil liberties advocates and Democrats hailed U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' resignation on Monday as a major victory, while most Republicans kept their comments to a minimum.

President George W. Bush likened the U.S. presence in Iraq to the Vietnam War last Wednesday, unexpectedly embracing a historical parallel that his administration has downplayed for five years.

Some left-leaning analysts have been drawing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam for years as part of their critiques of the Iraq War. Anew book by a prominent Middle East scholar, however, has suggested that even more important lessons may be learned from looking back even further, to the time of Napoleon.

Carl Levin, probably the most influential Senate Democrat on Iraq policy, just returned from a "visit to Iraq." In a joint statement with GOP Sen. John Warner, he pronounced that "the military aspects of President Bush's new strategy in Iraq, as articulated by him on January 10, 2007, appear to have produced some credible and positive results."

New America's report on infrastructure funding, highlighted in this Washington Post editorial, was written by Sherle R. Schwenniger, director of the Economic Growth Program, and is part of Ten Big Ideas for a New America. To view Schwenninger's proposal online, please click here.

...Some drug industry critics are not so surprised that advertising oversight has slackened. "The question is whether the industry has gotten better at complying with the rules or the FDA has gotten worse at enforcing them. It's probably a combination of the two," says Shannon Brownlee, author of the new book Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer...

...To clarify; neither myself, nor I imagine other advocates of engagement, are Hamas enthusiasts or sympathisers. Let’s call it the realist school of Zionism and contrast it with say, apocalyptic Zionism — characterised by scare-mongering, paranoia, and “gewalt-style” hysteria.

In 1913, a young Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote in a private letter that a war among the major European powers would be so deadly and destructive that it could not be imagined. In 1914, he learned differently.

There are so many historic examples of war being so unlikely, so terrible in its prospect that it just "could not" happen. And yet it did.

That is why, in the large sweep of history, people who want to see peace should never underestimate the potential for war. Even those, like the mistaken Roosevelt, who feel rising prosperity is an antidote to conflict.

The collapse of the Minnesota interstate bridge, coupled with the explosion of a steam tunnel in Manhattan, should arouse the country to the need for massive infrastructure investment -- and reform of the way it’s financed.

It’s a miracle that more people weren’t killed and injured in the two instances...

Urgent attention will be paid for a few weeks to America’s highway bridges -- 15 percent to 25 percent of which are believed to be structurally deficient -- because of the collapse in Minneapolis.