Salon

Three Anniversaries

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:32:00 -0500

Three calendar dates. Three anniversaries. Three eras in the history of the United States and the world.

Wall Street's Bailout Gives Me Déjà Vu

Erin Drankoski — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:27:00 -0500

On the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall I think back to the electrified atmosphere on the streets of Berlin. I was there, watching throngs of East Germans swarm through border crossings. A Fulbright scholar and social anthropologist based in Warsaw in November 1989, I drove with a friend through gas-rationed Poland and East Germany to bear witness. Back then many of the excited East Germans I interviewed -- even some border guards -- looked to the United States as a beacon of democracy.

Why Dilbert Is Doomed

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:51:00 -0500

Where are tomorrow's jobs going to come from? The question is more urgent than ever, with official unemployment hovering around 10 percent and with nearly one in five Americans unemployed, if you count part-time workers who want full-time jobs and people so desperate that they have given up looking for work entirely.

The Tax Breaks That Ate America

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:55:00 -0400

Here's the latest bold new idea for reconciling the costs of national defense with the need to avoid adding to federal deficits or raising taxes. A bipartisan coalition of "New Democrats" and moderate Republicans has proposed buying weapons for the U.S. military through the IRS rather than the Pentagon. Here's how it would work. Instead of being paid to deliver planes, missiles and tanks, defense contractors would receive "weapon supply tax credits" (WSTC). The defense contractors would be

That Sound You Hear is the Social Fabric About to Snap

Erin Drankoski — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:49:00 -0400

According to official statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States is now 9.8 percent. But those statistics understate the severity of the jobs crisis. The official statistics do not include the 875,000 Americans who have given up looking for work, even though they want jobs. When these "marginally attached" workers and part-time workers are added to the officially unemployed, the result, according to another, broader governement measure of unemployment known as "U-6," is shocking. The United States has an unemployment rate of 17 percent.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Live with the Bomb

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:23:00 -0400

President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize has been justified by some because it draws attention to the goal he endorses of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. I share that goal, but not because nuclear weapons are uniquely horrible -- if you're a victim, it makes little difference whether you're killed or maimed by nuclear weapons or conventional weapons, which sometimes can create lingering illnesses and poison the landscape, too. I support the abolition of nuclear weapons because, if it were successful, it would lock in the advantages of the small number

Salon Interviews the Late Adam Smith

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:15:00 -0400

Our guest today is Adam Smith, a major figure of the Enlightenment who is widely considered to be the father of modern economic theory. He is a former professor at the University of Glasgow and the author of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) and "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776), his best-known book. Professor Smith joins us from Scotland.

Climate Change | Salon

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:19:00 -0400

In a meeting held Wednesday at the New America Foundation, European Parliament members Claude Turmes and Reinhard Bütikofer discussed, from the perspective ...

The End of the Pax Americana?

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:26:00 -0400

While the economic crisis continues to overshadow other topics, world politics is undergoing rapid and dramatic changes. In areas from national security policy to trade, the Obama administration has repudiated Bush-era precedents significantly, if not rapidly enough for some critics on the left. The pressures on the administration to continue in the path followed by U.S. administrations since the fall of the Berlin Wall are intense, particularly in light of the victory of the hard-liners in Iran and new revelations about Iran's nuclear program. Even so,

Intellectual Conservatism, RIP

Erin Drankoski — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:00:00 -0400

On Sept. 18, Irving Kristol died. On Feb. 27, 2008, William F. Buckley Jr. passed away. Kristol was known as "the godfather of neoconservatism," while Buckley was the founder of the "movement conservatism" of Goldwater and Reagan. The intellectual conservatism that they, in different ways, sought to foster had passed from the scene before they did.