The American Prospect

Across the political spectrum, alarm bells are ringing about Medicare, America's giant health program for the aged and disabled. To conservatives, Medicare is a huge, Kremlin-esque bureaucracy destined to soak up more and more of the American economy. To critics on the left, it's an inadequate program that nonetheless siphons off increasingly limited funds that could be used to broaden coverage for children and working families.

The White House

The recent history of American politics can be told as the story of two alliances -- one made and unmade by the Democrats, one made and kept by the Republicans. The Democrats' alliance was with socialism, or at least social democracy. The Republicans' alliance was with conservative religion. In the last decade, the Democrats, out of necessity, broke their left-economic alliance and benefited at the ballot box; at the same time, the Republicans seem to have cemented their right-religion alliance,… more

When Robert Mao describes the fantastic manufacturing opportunities his company sees in China, he speaks with mixed feelings. "For the first time in the modern era," he marvels, "we have an inexhaustible reservoir of good, trainable labor." But Mao, who as president and CEO of Nortel Networks China has worked in the region for 20 years, also worries about what that means for China's neighbors. For the foreseeable future, he says, almost all new investment by Nortel suppliers will go… more

Paul Veryser's steel-parts company, Stampings Inc., is in big trouble. Tariffs on steel imports, imposed by President George W. Bush in March, have pushed the cost of steel up by more than half on the American spot market, and this has added a whopping 25 percent to the cost of the air-bag, seat-belt and steering-wheel assembly parts his company makes.

The higher costs wouldn't be so bad if the Fraser, Mich.-based company could pass them on to its customers,… more

Frank Hardin may finally get his chance to dig up the 18 million tons of gravel beneath his land in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains. For nearly a decade, Oregon's Jackson County has denied him mining permits in order to keep scores of double-length mining trucks from rumbling through the tiny town of Jacksonville each day. The first town in the United States to be designated a national historic landmark, Jacksonville has more than 80 buildings on the National… more

In some ways it's hard to think of anything more American than Linux. A Finnish computer programmer named Linus Torvalds created the operating system, but Thomas Jefferson would have loved it. When Torvalds finished, he simply posted the code online and asked other people to download it (for free), use it and improve it. Torvalds even registered the code under something called "copyleft," which legally precludes anyone from owning or controlling it. His idea, long nurtured by pockets of programmers… more

The so-called Tauzin-Dingell Act, slated for a House vote this Wednesday, has seemingly spawned more drive-time radio ads than "Hooked on Phonics." The bill would allow the "Baby Bell" phone companies to offer long-distance data services without first abandoning their local monopolies, thus nixing a key regulatory provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Because interstate broadband is worth billions, the four titans of regional telecom -- Verizon, SBC, Qwest, and BellSouth -- have spent months saturating the airwaves with… more

One sunny day in June of 1979, President Jimmy Carter installed solar water heaters on the roof of the White House. This symbolic act would mark the height of a mini-boom in solar energy in the U.S. It was accompanied by the creation of the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory), the introduction of incentives and subsidies for renewable energy, and a major call for energy independence -- what Carter called "the moral equivalent of war."… more

Vision is a favorite topic of Dr. Garth W. Coonce, a minor Christian-broadcasting magnate from Marion, Illinois. In his monthly newsletter, Partnership, he often muses on the sacred visions that have inspired him to amass 16 television stations, creating a 24-hour network that beams charismatic preachers like Creflo Dollar and Benny Hinn into devout homes. Coonce also likes to share the communiques he still receives from the Almighty, who occasionally instructs him to expand his media holdings into, say,… more

The hardcore fans of Aibo, a popular robotic pet, are a creative, if geeky, bunch. Since 1999, when the lifelike toys first appeared beneath Christmas trees, hundreds of Aibo enthusiasts have programmed their charges to perform tricks unimagined in the boardrooms of Sony, the robot's creator. By expertly tweaking Aibo's code, hobbyists have enabled the robobeast to boogie to Madonna's "Vogue," double as a breadbox-sized surveillance camera, or growl "Bite my shiny metal robot ass!" All these behaviors are infinitely… more