January, 2008

With global views of the United States seemingly stuck at historic lows, improving America's image abroad has emerged as a prominent issue of the 2008 presidential campaign. In debates and speeches, candidates acknowledge to varying degrees that everything from the prospects for diplomatic initiatives to America's economic well-being in the global economy hinges in part on how the world views the US.

To be sure, fixing healthcare is a tall order. Even children's healthcare advocates, who would gain tremendously if the talk turns to their cause, seem to understand this. One such advocate said he "just couldn't believe that these guys didn't get this done." He said he still had hopes for a comprehensive reform bill. He seems willing to put his interests aside - at least for a little while - for the greater good. Why can't our elected officials?

Violence in Kenya has reached the point that the rest of the world cannot content itself with simply waiting for events to play out. If "ethnic cleansing" - to use the words of U.S. Undersecretary of State Jendayi Frazer - is indeed occurring, then the U.N. Security Council must be prepared to insert troops to stop it. Sixty-four human-rights groups who met under the umbrella of the National Civil Society Congress have asked that the United Nations send in a peacekeeping force and that a transitional Kenyan government be formed.

In his State of the Union speech Monday, President Bush urged Congress to "fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions." It's a familiar theme for Mr. Bush. He's been touting so-called "FutureGen" clean coal technology since 2003. Last month, an industry group announced it would build a $1.75 billion plant to demonstrate that technology in Mattoon, Ill. Apparently, Samuel W. Bodman, Mr. Bush's energy secretary, missed that part of the president's speech. Mr. Bodman said he's planning to drop support for the plant. The federal government had committed to pay 74 percent of the cost, with the remaining 26 percent coming from a coalition of coal and energy companies.

Nearly three in 10 American households live on yearly incomes of less than $25,000. And more than 40 million Americans live in households that must get by on less than $15,000 per year. Ten million American children live in "food insecure" homes, where finding the means to keep hunger at bay is a constant battle. In the richest country in the history of the world, hunger is still widespread because we allow it to be. Federal anti-poverty programs, inadequate though they are, actually protect many of our fellow citizens from the threat of outright starvation.

Two themes ran through President Bush's final State of the Union address Monday night, as he made the case for his continued relevance: Trust the American people, he said and empower them to run their own lives. But Americans have many troubles, and they are asking their government for help. Healthcare has become unaffordable for millions. Bush hears those woes but rejects sensible solutions for ideological reasons - favoring "consumer choice, not government control." Illegal immigration has inflamed passions and stirred irrationality. To his credit, he tried to win a reform bill last year, but he failed, testament to his ebbing influence. On Monday, he sounded the call again, but with no details or hope of victory.

States have good reasons to aspire to universal preschool, especially high-quality programs with good teachers and low student-to-teacher ratios. Universal preschool can help fill a void: Poor families have access to Head Start. Well-to-do families pay for quality preschools out of their pockets. In between are lower-middle class families whose children badly need the readiness skills that preschool provides.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. But in the long and too often darkened years that followed, the Convention has never prevented a single genocide, even as "prevention" receives pride of place in the ponderous convention title. Despite the many instances in which international action was desperately required, the demanding words of the Convention have always rung hollow.

Today, thanks in part to Pope John Paul II's globetrotting, evangelical papacy, visits by popes to America are occasions for reflection, celebration and souvenir-selling. Benedict XVI's announced trip to the USA is widely viewed as a good thing - the equivalent of a state visit. But it wasn’t always that way. When Roman Catholics were outside the American mainstream, the facts rarely got in the way of a good story. It’s a useful lesson for today.

In his State of the Union address Monday evening, President Bush asked Congress to permanently extend the federal laws permitting religious nonprofit organizations to compete for federal grants. Seven years ago this week, Mr. Bush started his faith-based initiative. He promised to build on these “charitable choice” laws, which were begot by bipartisan compromises between President Bill Clinton and Senator John Ashcroft. “Government cannot be replaced by charities,” Mr. Bush declared, “but it should welcome them as partners, instead of resenting them as rivals.”

Barack Obama is not a Muslim. We know this because he has told us so. We know it despite a campaign of lies and whispers from various bloggers, pundits and head cases. Barack Obama is not a Muslim. But what if he were? Would it matter? Should it? The question bears answering because of the creepy, are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been attitude toward Islam that seems to be seeping into the public dialogue lately.

If polls are right, the American people who heard President Bush deliver his last State of the Union address last night are growing ever more weary of his presidency, more worried about the faltering economy, and more convinced that the war in Iraq was a mistake. Presidential candidates from his own party barely mention his name, so strong is the bipartisan consensus that the country needs change. That is the state of the union seven years after Bush began his presidency.

The intensity of God-talk is already off the charts in this presidential campaign. We could all use some sensible restraint and some reflection on the history of the church-state debate, dating back to the nation's earliest days. This is an old debate in our republic, and it will last as long as the nation does. What we owe to each other in this campaign season, as always, is a decent respect for the civic virtues that we derive from our faith - or even from our lack of faith - and a refusal to pose any religious barriers to those who seek the highest office in the land.

President Bush’s threat to veto a bill intended to improve health care for the nation’s American Indians is both cruel and grossly unfair. Five years ago, the United States Commission on Civil Rights examined the government’s centuries-old treaty obligations for the welfare of Native Americans and found Washington spending 50 percent less per capita on their health care than is devoted to felons in prison and the poor on Medicaid.

If voters elect a Democrat next fall, this country will have a new chance to secure universal health coverage. Let's not make it a rerun of the 1994 debacle. Those of us who joined the struggle to achieve that goal in the early 1990s must hope that this time we succeed. The story of that effort is a cautionary tale, worth recalling, in order to prevent the unhappy past from becoming a prologue.

In July, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services increased naturalization and visa fees across the board by an average of 66 percent. One fee more than septupled: the application to change from temporary to permanent residency, which went from $180 to $1,370. Immigration advocacy groups and other critics decried the ghastly expenses immigrants faced. Still, USCIS pledged that the increases would benefit applicants by allowing the agency to reduce processing times from six months to four months for permanent residency visas, and from seven months to five months for naturalization applications.

One of the most lawless places on Earth is eastern Congo. It's also one of its most tragic – in Holocaust proportions. More than 5 million people have died there as a result of a decade-long conflict. This week, though, this little-noticed tragedy of horrors saw a hopeful turn of events. A peace agreement was finalized Wednesday between the Democratic Republic of Congo and various rebel groups. The pact now needs money and delicate diplomacy to succeed, with the European Union already promising $150 million. The United States needs to do more, and perhaps the Pentagon's new focus on the continent, with the setting up of an Africa Command, can help bring American "soft power" to the deal.

President Bush and Congress came up with a welcome example of bipartisanship yesterday by reaching a deal to give the U.S. economy a financial booster shot. The tentative agreement calls for most American workers to receive rebate checks of $300 to $600 by late spring or early summer. Couples with children would get an extra $300 per child. The swiftness with which lawmakers struck a compromise underscores the seriousness of the credit crisis and the anxiety level of Congress in an election year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the $150 billion package is "the fastest way to get the money into the hands of the American people.".

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has risen to Dr. King's challenge by investing in those less fortunate. He has raised more than $40 million - much of it his own money - for Opportunity NYC. Under the two-year pilot program, high school students who graduate can collect a $400 bonus. Parents can get $25 each time they show up for teacher conferences and $150 a month for keeping a full-time job. The goal is to mold better, more involved, parents. A better education isn't the only goal here. An average family of three whose $22,000 annual income falls above the federal poverty rate is sometimes forced to decide between groceries or a doctor's visit. This program also aims to address such daily dilemmas.

In an incident reminiscent of the Scopes Monkey Trial, the little town of Chouteau, Mont., is now a laughingstock for its intolerance of ideas accepted by the great majority of the scientific community. Steve Running, an ecology professor and climate scientist who served on the United Nations panel on global climate change that shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, was to give a talk on global warming. Superintendent Kevin St. John canceled Running's talk because of pressure from the school board. He called his action "a reasonable response" to contrarian contentions that global warming is an unproven theory and that Running's speech could be critical of agriculture, the economic lifeblood of the community.

The Beijing Olympics this summer were supposed to be China’s coming-out party, celebrating the end of nearly two centuries of weakness, poverty and humiliation. Instead, China’s leaders are tarnishing their own Olympiad by abetting genocide in Darfur and in effect undermining the U.N. military deployment there. The result is a growing international campaign to brand these “The Genocide Olympics.”

There's nothing wrong with a group of people historically at odds sitting down to find common ground. Or is there? But now, "collaboration" is all the rage. In collaboration, diverse stakeholders (as they invariably tag themselves) - environmentalists, developers, off-roaders, timber companies, county officials - hash out an agreement on how to manage their local public lands and then submit it to Congress for approval. But these collaborations are troublesome, particularly for environmentalists, who risk undermining their mission as well as the very laws that are the basis of their power, effectiveness and legitimacy.

The American dream is founded on the belief that people who work hard and play by the rules will be able to earn a good living, raise a family in comfort and retire with dignity. But that dream is harder to achieve for millions of Americans because they spend too much of their hard-earned money on fees to cash their paychecks or pay off high-priced loans meant to carry them over until they get paid at work.

The European Commission said it aims to tighten the provisions of its three-year-old Emissions Trading Scheme. That would enable Europe to reach its goal of reducing carbon emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The plan will also nearly triple electricity generated by renewable sources (wind, solar, etc.) from 8.5 percent today to 20 percent and mandate that biofuels (made from corn, sugar cane, etc.) make up 10 percent of vehicle fuels by 2020. By raising the cost of polluting, the theory goes, industries will be forced to become more efficient and will seek out alternative energy sources. Europe deserves credit for taking serious action. The onus now is squarely on the US: Just what is it willing to do?

For months leading up to the presidential primaries, anti-immigrant extremists sought to make political hay with immigrant-bashing. Pundits joined them with firm assertions that presidential candidates could gain votes by talking tough on immigration. But the extremists and the pundits are proving to be wrong. Leading Republican candidates have tied themselves into knots over immigration, filling voter mailboxes with loaded images and packing the airwaves with messages about "leaky borders" and "insufficient vigilance." The only problem is, the public isn't buying it.