The administration’s dishonest trash
February 6th, 2006
Intimidating and threatening people who expose wrongdoing and illegality are the hallmarks of street gangs and military juntas. The idea that anything meaningful was disclosed when we learned that our Government is eavesdropping without judicial oversight and approval (rather than with it) has always been frivolous on its face. But the statement from Cheney that this disclosure caused ”enormous damage to our national security” is dishonest trash, transparently intended — on the eve of the NSA hearings — to stir up populist rage against anyone who blows the whistle on misconduct by the Administration and to intimidate other potential whistle-blowers with threats of criminal prosecution and treason accusations from the highest levels of our government.
Throw out European business models
February 6th, 2006
Wolfgang Munchau in the Financial Times:
The hostile takeover bid by Mittal Steel, the world’s largest steelmaker, for its rival Arcelor has given us an object lesson in the failure of European economic policy. Its paradigm has been that we can preserve our consensus-based economic model as long as we reform our welfare systems. I would argue that we should do the exact opposite: we should throw our business model on to the scrap heap and try to preserve our diverse welfare systems instead.
The xenophobia being shown by French and Luxembourgeois political leaders in defence of Arcelor is embarrassing.