Rich countries have decided to control Iraq the old-fashioned way.
Commentary
Julie Polter 12-01-2004
Reading passionately isn't about escaping reality, but about plunging further into it.
Marty Jezer 7-01-2004
Advocates of campaign finance reform approach the issue from two different strategic perspectives: Abolitionism and incrementalism. Abolitionists espouse comprehensive reform - full public financing that removes all private money from the electoral process. They see money in politics as a raging river - dam it at one point and it will create a new riverbed elsewhere. Under the name of the Clean Money, Clean Elections (CMCE) reform, public financing is successful law to varying degrees in four states.
A federal "clean elections" bill has been introduced that, like the state bills, gives public financing to qualified candidates who agree not to take campaign contributions from private sources (except for a limited number of small "qualifying" contributions that serve to establish eligibility for the full public stipend). Right now, the federal bill lacks the grassroots support to make it a pressing issue.
The difficulty of passing a comprehensive public financing bill is why many reformers choose the incremental approach. On the assumption that it is better to pass a limited bill than no bill at all, they hope to reform the system in stages. The 2002 McCain-Feingold bill (officially known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act or BCRA), is their primary accomplishment. It is meant to prohibit "soft money," the hundreds of millions of dollars that corporations, labor unions, and wealthy individuals launder through unregulated state parties for use in federal elections.
Many abolitionists predicted that McCain-Feingold would prove to be one big loophole that would spawn new conduits for soft money and dilute efforts to build popular support for comprehensive public financing.
Bethany Spicher Schonberg 7-01-2004
I biked past banners flapping in the breeze outside the Department of Health and Human Services: "Eat more fruits and vegetables!" they said. "Take the stairs instead of the elevator!" The next day I read about it in The Washington Post. Not only had HHS launched a Slim Down America campaign, but Secretary Tommy Thompson himself was on a diet - fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch, no more beers at The Dubliner after work. "It's difficult at the beginning," Thompson told the Post, "but every single one of us has got to take care of ourselves. We can't expect somebody else to do it for us."
From the low-carb craze to the organic food movement, it seems that the whole world is watching what it eats. My own Mennonite Church USA, so fond of cream sauces and jello salads, nevertheless rallied behind a recent health care statement that included among its objectives: "Our potlucks will no longer look like an invitation to a heart attack."
With 64 percent of Americans overweight, and obesity-related health care costs approaching $117 billion annually, calls to shape up and eat right might be warranted if they didn't obscure the fact that not everyone has access to the produce aisle. A 2000 USDA analysis found that low-income women are half as likely as wealthy women to eat salad or fruit on any given day. A 2002 study by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that they're also 50 percent more likely to be obese.