Slate

Stealth Marketers

Ron Tang — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:11:00 -0400

A few weeks ago, devoted listeners of National Public Radio were treated to an episode of the award-winning radio series The Infinite Mind called "Prozac Nation: Revisited." The segment featured four prestigious medical experts discussing the controversial link between antidepressants and suicide. In their considered opinions, all four said that worries about the drugs have been overblown.

The radio show, which was broadcast nationwide and paid for in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, had the air of quiet, authoritative credibility. Host Dr. Fred Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of… more

The Music Industry's Extortion Scheme

Ron Tang — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:40:00 -0400

What would you do if a bully -- let's call him "Joey Giggles" -- kept snatching your ice-cream cone? OK, now what if Joey Giggles then told you, "If you pay me five bucks a month, I'll stop snatching your ice cream." Depending on how much you hate getting beaten up, and how much you love ice-cream cones, you might decide that caving in is the way to go. This is what's called a protection racket. It's also potentially the new model for how we'll buy and listen to music.

Let's back up for a second. Four companies (Universal Music Group,… more

What High Oil Prices Can Do For a Country

Ron Tang — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:43:00 -0400

From the outside, Effat College doesn't seem like a bellwether of change. The all-girls school in Jeddah, a port city on the coast of the Red Sea, is rimmed by unscalable high walls and an empty parking lot, resembling the scene of a freshly departed circus in Middle America. In many ways, the college's exterior illustrates conventional misperceptions -- closed, drab, and unwelcoming -- of modern Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the only thing less inviting is the bold, red lettering at the top of the form handed to visitors as they enter the kingdom, which reads: "WARNING: Death to Drug Traffickers."

But… more

Blogging In Support Of the Saudi Government

Ron Tang — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:09:00 -0400

In the pre-Internet age, Raed al-Saeed would be punching above his weight. Last month, the 33-year-old Saudi posted a six-minute film on his blog that has thrust him into a millennial debate previously waged by only mullahs and popes: Can religion be evil? "My goal was not to make me or my blog famous," said al-Saeed. His intentions were more subtle: "Don't be brainwashed into judging a religion by one video made by someone who hates that religion." I met al-Saeed last week in the grassy courtyard of a luxury hotel in Riyadh, where we sat around a… more

Steve Clemons in Slate | 'No Country for Old Dictators'

Communications — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:35:00 -0500

New America in the News:

No Country for Old Dictators (Slate.com)

Steve Clemons at the Washington Note, proving that all politics are local, weighs the effects of Castro's actions on the U.S. presidential election. He likes Obama because he promises to end our Cuba policy: "Of all the low cost opportunities to demonstrate a new and different US style of engagement with the world, Cuba is at the top of the list. Opening family travel—and frankly all travel—between Cuba and the US, and ending the economic embargo will provide new encounters, new impressions, and the kind of people-to-people diplomacy that George W. Bush, John Bolton, Richard Cheney, and Jesse Helms run scared of."

Jacob Hacker in Slate Magazine on Health Reform Struggles

Communications — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:02:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Slate Magazine examines the term socialized medicine. This label is known to have slain past health care proposals, and it was used most recently by 2008 GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani to denounce Democratic candidates' plans to fix the healthcare system. The following is an excerpt from "Who's Afraid of Socialized Medicine?":

... In 1994 the term socialized medicine was heard less often than in previous battles. One of the few who used it was Clinton, when he donned Truman's mantle to deride those critics of the former president who had stooped to use what Clinton implied was a shrill and overwroughtcharge. ("What did they say? 'Harry Truman's a radical liberal. He's for socialized medicine.' Well, the truth is, Harry Truman had this old-fashioned notion that people who work hard and play by the rules ought to help one another.") To be sure, Republicans made hay with less archaic-sounding phrases such as the "government takeover of the health care system" (even though Clinton's plan relied more on market mechanisms than on government ukases). Newt Gingrich, then House minority whip, blasted Clinton's plan as a throwback to the kind of "centralized, command bureaucracies" that were dying across Eastern Europe.

But if these attacks ginned up some hostility to Clinton's plan, the real problem was more fundamental. As political scientist Jacob Hacker has argued, the basic obstacle was nothing less than the government's failure to have adopted a comprehensive health insurance plan decades earlier. As a result, the system that emerged by 1994 entailed such a crazy quilt of private interests corporations, small firms, insurers, doctors, unions, HMOs, and so onthat moving all Americans into a new framework without worsening anyone's situation had become virtually impossible. Many of these interest groups (including doctors) actually favored reform in the abstract. But no particular plan was going to please them all.

Perhaps, then, the socialized medicine scare tactic really has run its course. The Republicans' decision to dust it off for one more battle may say more about their party's continued sprint to the right-wing extreme than about any intrinsic public hostility to government social programs. If this is the case, then Democrats might be wise to offer health-care proposals that don't upend the status quo, while brushing off the socialized medicine attacks as atavistic Cold War-era alarmism. Which seems to be, for the moment, precisely what they're doing.

Jacob Hacker is a Fellow with New America Foundation. For the direct link to this article, please visit Slate.com.

Slate Quotes Maya MacGuineas on Alternative Minimum Tax

Communications — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:41:00 -0400

New America in the News:

It's the middle of April, which means it's time to wring our hands about the Alternative Minimum Tax. This parallel tax system, first created to make sure really rich people couldn't avoid paying taxes by notching huge deductions, has slowly expanded its reach. If you live in a state where incomes, property taxes, and state income taxes are comparatively high i.e., the coasts you're in greater danger of paying the AMT. That's why I've dubbed it a secret tax on Democrats, and that's also why the AMT could become a powerful political weapon for Democratic candidates in 2008...

When the crisis peaks, Democrats can offer their alternative: fix the AMT, which would then be hitting millions of middle-class voters by rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the very rich. That's a political argument they will win. What they shouldn't do is try to repair the AMT problem too soon, before the catastrophe next April. Fixing it before taxpayers feel the sting would be better fiscal policy but lousy politics.

In fact, the potential of the AMT to strike a great many people in the future is the reason it has never been fixed. It's not just that the AMT raises lots of money in the current year. Given Congress' failure to fix it permanently, it always seems as if the AMT is poised to raise huge sums of money in the coming years, which allows federal budgeters to project soaring revenues in the future. "It promises the revenues that make everybody's fiscally responsible projections look realistic," said Maya MacGuineas, director of the fiscal policy program at the New America Foundation....

For the complete article, please visit the Slate website.

American Strategy Program Salon Dinner with Saudi Ambassador Featured in Slate

Communications — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 05:25:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Saudi Arabian Ambassador Turki al-Faisal's remarks Monday night were as carefully tailored as his gray suit. He called for peace in the Middle East and a face-saving solution for all parties involved in the violence. Speaking in a measured tone, as if a baby were sleeping in the next room, he quoted Robert Frost and Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. But beneath the diplomat's even manner was a sharp message for President Bush: If you keep failing to act in the Middle East, the region will be irrevocably damaged.

Prince Turki spoke to a few dozen scholars, journalists, administration officials, and foreign-service officers clustered in the dimly lit upstairs room of a Washington, D.C., restaurant. The dinner was hosted by Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, who directs timely salons with newsmakers brave enough to endure follow-up questions and durable enough to be onstage from the tomato salad to the tiramisu. (Monday night, ambassador Turki talked for more than two hours.)

The Bush administration has been faulted for not acting quickly enough after the recent violence started, but Prince Turki criticized Bush for not acting to solve the tension long before the recent flare up began. Two months ago, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, brought a letter to Bush from King Abdullah advocating the steps necessary for implementing Middle East peace. "The president expressed excitement and willingness," said the ambassador, "but, alas, there was no follow through." The inactivity contributed to the current crisis: "The decisions made yesterday bear their bitter fruit today."

To read the complete article, visit the Slate website.

Rent-a-Researcher

Articles — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Earlier this month, Sheffield University in Britain offered $252,000 to one of its senior medical professors, Aubrey Blumsohn. According to a copy of a proposed settlement released by Blumsohn, the university promised to pay him if he would agree to leave his post and not make any detrimental or derogatory statements about Sheffield or its employees. For several years, Blumsohn had been complaining of scientific misconduct. His concerns primarily revolved around a $250,000 research contract between Sheffield and the Ohio-based Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals. Blumsohn claimed that the company had denied him access to key data and then tried to… more

Truth Is Stranger Than Phiction

Articles — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

The pharmaceutical industry long ago perfected the art of getting its marketing message into other people's mouths. Amgen quietly paid Rob Lowe to appear on a CNN talk show to chat up the company's cancer drug; antidepressant manufacturers routinely underwrite patient advocacy organizations, like the National Alliance on Mental Illness,that pump up their drugs. But third-party strategy, as it's known in the advertising world, has recently had its perils for PhRMA, the major lobbying group that represents drug manufacturers. The plan was to commission a fictional thriller to hype the dangers of buying prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies. But now… more