With the recent flurry of disappointing reports on employment growth in the U.S. and the increasingly embarrassing wipe out of President Obama’s green jobs initiative, one can hardly help feeling, well, blue.Luckily, this report from blogger (and New America Foundation fellow) Reihan Salam on a study published by the University of Maryland offers a flicker […]

Crashing planes and capsizing ships apparently aren’t enough to convince Russia to seriously reform its transportation and energy infrastructure. Apparently neither is the memory of the Chernobyl disaster. As the WSJ reports, Soviet-era nuclear reactors — just like the one that exploded at Chernobyl — will be repaired and continue to operate for another fifteen […]

President Obama’s budget proposal includes some items that are making farm state representatives see red, but they make sense.  The White House wants to carve more than $30 billion in savings over the next ten years out of a variety of farm subsidy and crop insurance programs.Historically, farm subsidies came into being as a way […]

That’s what we’ve been seeing on world markets since Thursday trading began in Asia; this morning it hit the US with the kind of sickening thud we remember too well from 2008. Amid the general hurricane of bad economic news a few things stand out. Chinese stocks fell almost 5 percent and key real estate […]

Apologies to readers wondering why we have been running fewer posts this week.  My schedule in the Middle East has been packed, with teaching and meetings on both sides of the 1948 armistice lines.  I’ve been dividing my time between Jerusalem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv, and everywhere I go I find people are transfixed by […]

Despite growing dissatisfaction with the Indian bureaucracy’s culture of bribery, attempts to overcome it only reveal how deep it runs. The NYT’s India Ink continues its commendably rich and detailed India coverage with a story that helps Americans understand just what is wrong: Waiting at any government office is usually a hassle – lines are […]

In a heartening bit of good news, a federal government report logged the fourth consecutive year of falling crime rates across the country. The Wall Street Journal reports: U.S. violent-crime rates fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2010, as police agencies across the country reported significant decreases in murders, robberies and property crimes, the […]

The Great Loon may be out of power, but his soldiers continue their acts of violence against civilians.  CNN has the story: Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi are creating a humanitarian disaster in Bani Walid, the National Transitional Council’s military spokesman charged Monday.Col. Ahmed Bani told reporters that Gadhafi forces are robbing food stores, leaving […]

Society is the social science journal superbly edited by Jonathan Imber. In its fall issue it carries an article by Philippe Portier (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris), entitled “Religion and Democracy in the Thought of Juergen Habermas”. Coincidentally, in a recent issue of the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Habermas is on a […]

Most of the eyes that follow the Middle East are focused on the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN this week; that is not the biggest question facing the region or the United States.  Egypt, Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, Palestine, Bahrain, Yemen: for now, these are sideshows.  The main event, the thing that history is […]