The New York Sun

Our Urban Future

Ron Tang — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:45:00 -0400

Half of the world’s population now lives in cities, a number that will climb to 75% by the middle of the century. This development marks a radical break in human history, for humanity has until recently been overwhelmingly rural, concerned first and foremost with brute survival.

In “The Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx referred to “the idiocy of rural life” -- or so the mistranslation goes -- as an enduring problem. In fact, Marx wasn’t talking about “idiocy” at all. Rather, he was referring to the isolation and stasis of rural life, and how it had long stymied creativity and the diffusion… more

New America in The New York Sun | 'Bloomberg Decries Stimulus Plans'

Communications — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:29:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Bloomberg in DC: 'The Jig Is Up': Mayor Decries the Plans for Stimulus (The New York Sun)

"When you need stimulus you cut checks. You've got to get the money out the door," a senior economic adviser to Senator Obama, Austan Goolsbee, said yesterday at a campaign panel organized by the New America Foundation. more

Peter Bergen in The New York Sun | 'Envoy's Slaying in Sudan'

Communications — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:29:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The Bush administration is dispatching a joint Diplomatic Security-Federal Bureau of Investigation team to Khartoum to investigate the murder of an American diplomat working to promote democracy and changes in the electoral process in Sudan, John Granville. ...

A senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Peter Bergen, said he suspected the hand of Al Qaeda in the killing. "Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri have often called for attacks in Sudan in past months," Mr. Bergen said. "They see the Darfur operation in the same lens as Somalia in 1992-1993, not as a humanitarian mission but an attempt by the West to take over Muslim lands." ...

For the complete article, please follow this link.

Rourke O'Brien in New York Sun on Conditional Cash Transfers

Communications — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:13:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Getting a library card, going to the dentist, and keeping a job will soon yield up to $6,000 a year in bonus cash under a test program that New York City is trying as part of Mayor Bloomberg's anti-poverty initiative.

About 13,000 families will be eligible for the payments, part of a $50 million program whose details were announced yesterday by the deputy mayor for health and human services, Linda Gibbs.

The idea is to offer payments to encourage behaviors that have been shown to reduce poverty. A library card for an elementary or middle school student will bring his parents $50; a preventive dental visit brings $100 for each family member; and a steady full-time job pays $150 extra a month.

Conditional cash transfers have become a popular anti-poverty experiment in the developing world, but New York City's will be the first American attempt...

A policy analyst at the New America Foundation, Rourke O'Brien, said the proposal's unique blend of direct cash transfers and a commitment to personal responsibility could be broadly appealing...

For the complete article, please visit The New York Sun website.

New York Sun Quotes Steven Clemons on President Bush, Richard Perle

Communications — Tue, 15 May 2007 10:08:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The Bush administration is beginning to appease rather than confront America's enemies, a former chairman of the Defense Policy Board and leading neoconservative thinker said yesterday, describing the president as "a failure" who is proving powerless to impose his views on his administration.

Richard Perle offered a withering assessment of the president's impotence...saying American foreign policy is being applied by an out-of-control State Department.

Although Mr. Perle said he no longer has access to the president, he said his conversations with those close to the White House led him to a pessimistic view of how foreign policy is currently conducted, with a profound disconnect between President Bush's wishes and how the administration carries out policies in his name...

But the characterization of a divided administration frustrating the president's wishes is inaccurate, according the director of the foreign policy program at the New America Foundation, Steven Clemons, who said he thinks Mr. Bush is allowing Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Rice to play good cop, bad cop with the Iranians.

Mr. Perle said the president has failed to control his administration from the start and that bad appointments have ensured that he is isolated from the rest of the government, aside from close allies such as Ms. Rice and Mr. Cheney...

Mr. Clemons, however, said the apparent contradictions among the president, the vice president, and secretary of state reflect a change in the president's thinking. " George Bush keeps his cards close to his chest. He is, however, allowing Condi Rice more leeway. We know that Bush got fully on board with Rice in changing policy about talking with Iran," he said...

For the complete article, please visit The New York Sun website.

New York Sun Profiles Robert Wright's BloggingHeads.tv

Communications — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 04:43:00 -0500

New America in the News:

With a droll, self-deprecating demeanor, Robert Wright engages a smiling Mickey Kaus each week in a conversation broadcast on their Web site, Bloggingheads.tv. Their running quarrel has attracted a growing number of Web users who want to see rather than merely read bloggers — and who appreciate the efforts to wrestle with the issues of the day.

Mr. Wright, a lean, neatly dressed fellow with a slightly dyspeptic online persona, is more liberal than Mr. Kaus. The founder of the blog Kausfiles is a more lying-in-the-reeds, crocodilian type who describes himself a conservative Democrat. Even this is open to debate, Mr. Wright says: "There's widespread suspicion that his claim to be a conservative Democrat is less than completely forthcoming..."

Popular bloggers, Mr. Wright said, tend to have followings of people who are curious about what they look like. Enter Bloggingheads.tv. The company logo features a stick-figure illustration with a head inside a television monitor walking on two feet.

There are no commercial breaks, allowing the bloggers an in-depth and open-ended coverage of the issues. The subject matter — a mix of politics and some culture — makes the Webcast appear as though employees of the New Republic or the American Prospect had taken over a local news station and set up shop to discuss their differences with the National Review and the American Spectator.

Their Web site grew out of long phone conversations between Messrs. Wright and Kaus. "I found them very productive," Mr. Kaus said. "I always thought the talks were actually more useful than anything I write." They started the site with hopes that nuanced, open-ended discussion could reach a level of analysis beyond that of daily newspapers.

From his home in California, Mr. Kaus appears on a split screen alongside Mr. Wright, who is in New Jersey. They are sometimes informally attired, and in the background one can see such things as bookcases, filing cabinets, and air-conditioners. Mr. Wright's remarks are sometimes punctuated by gulps from a plastic cup or a roll of his eyes at Mr. Kaus's latest point.

At times, the video feed makes it feel like one is watching slow-motion NASA footage. Mr. Wright recalled the time a barking dog was heard in the background. But visitors to the site may be witnessing the beginnings of a new information and entertainment form, a kind of a garage band, so to speak, which could eventually fill a stadium. The Web site already draws about 150,000 visitors a month...

For the complete article, please visit The New York Sun website.

Tuning-In to an Old Tail

Articles — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Just before the turn of the 20th century, a young inventor named Signor Marconi bluffed, guessed, and welded his way into creating the world's first radio. He wasn't sure how it worked, but it did. In 1896, he displayed the future of Howard Stern and Clear Channel, creating an electric charge in one wooden box that rang a bell in another across a West London room.

It didn't take long for Marconi to figure out how to transmit signals much longer distances. Within a few years he was transmitting Morse code across the ocean and winning the acclaim of ship captains,… more

Wherein the Eating Canker Dwells

Articles — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Robert Baer hates the Saudi royal family and Washington's coziness with it -- and his ripping book couldn't be better timed. Just last week Congress released the report of its investigation into the September 11th attacks, with a 28-page section on Saudi Arabia blacked out because we can't embarrass such close friends of ours, even if it might help explain the last attack and prevent the next one.

The House of Saud, argues the former CIA Middle East operative, isn't merely a pack of corrupt philanderers graced by the abundance of black gold under their desert kingdom. They're dangerous… more

Lack of Illumination

Articles — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Sharon Beder has an important and controversial story to tell in "Power Play," her new book on electricity privatization from Edison to Enron.

Her thesis is that electricity privatization has always been a confidence game. Corporations have convinced the public and elected officials that public control of electricity is inefficient, uneconomic, and even un-American. If the public and the government aren't convinced, the electricity companies just buy them. Once in control, the corporations manipulate markets, waste resources, and make a hash of everything.

Ms. Beder begins in the late 19th century, when the Edison Electric Light Company electrocuted dogs in an… more