On September 26, Academy-award winning director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss authorities. A warrant had been pending against him since 1978, when he fled the United States after being charged with rape and pleading guilty to engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Now, film luminaries are leaping to his defense. Click through this TNR slideshow to see what they're saying.
To the frustration of many a cabinet secretary, the Obama administration is a little behind on its appointments. At this point—with only five weeks to go before the Senate breaks for recess—a little over half of the 514 positions that need filling have been filled. Some jobs are really important: The nominee for the Office of Legal Counsel has been held up for months. Obama’s choice for a USAID director came down just today. U.S. attorney nominations have slowed to a crawl.
Other jobs? Not as important.
Take, for example, the eight-person Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the five media entities—Voice of America foremost among them—tasked with broadcasting American culture and journalism around the globe. In theory, the board is supposed to serve as a “firewall” between the broadcasters’ mission of journalistic objectivity and the political whims of legislators, who would often rather see taxpayer dollars go towards burnishing America’s image abroad. By statute, the president and minority party nominate four governors each to keep a bipartisan mix. But right now, the BBG is only half full. The four currently serving members were all appointed in 2002, and have overstayed their terms by three years—if anyone left, the board would no longer have a quorum to conduct business. Journalistic wise man Walter Isaacson is rumored to be the administration’s choice for the vacant post of chairman, and it’s hard to imagine him being held up for any substantive reason. It’s also hard to imagine the administration nominating him between now and when Congress leaves town in December.
The sad saga of the BBG began almost as soon as it was created in its current form, when the U.S. Information Administration was dissolved in 1999. As this magazine documented in 2005, Bush partisan Kenneth Tomlinson turned the board into an ideological battleground—purging people whom he saw as insufficiently conservative—that hamstrung the broadcasters’ operations and drove morale into the toilet. After Tomlinson was ousted, the well-respected editor James Glassman restored the board to some order, before he was tapped as Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy in the dying days of the Bush administration.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Rembrandt’s J’Accuse
Film Forum
The Maid
Elephant Eye Films
Peter Greenaway, the British director who was educated as a painter, first came to wide attention in 1982 with The Draughtsman’s Contract, a silky comedy about seventeenth-century aristocrats. Greenaway then promptly set out not to build on this success, undertaking one eccentric film project after another. It was almost as if he were determined not to grow cumulatively, as most of the best directors have done. Of the Greenaway works that I have seen, only two of them--quite unlike each other--stand out in memory. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover was a modern comedy that revealed how sex can be achieved in restaurant restrooms. Prospero’s Books, a slanted view of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, put the future in debt to Greenaway by preserving John Gielgud’s exquisite reading of Prospero.
Jacob S. Hacker is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University, author of The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, and an occasional contributor to The Treatment.
Diane Archer is the director of the Health Care Project at the Institute for America's Future and the founder and past president of the Medicare Rights Center.
How short memories are in Washington. A few weeks ago, when it looked possible that Nancy Pelosi could marshal enough Democratic support to create a “robust” public insurance option with rates tied to Medicare’s, everyone was talking about the big savings and reduced premiums that a series of estimates by the CBO showed this option could create. Then, the concern was that the public insurance plan would put private insurers out of business by using the government’s bargaining power to drive too hard a bargain with providers, creating an “un-level” playing field.
Now, however, the punditocracy is abuzz about the latest CBO estimates that show that the public plan eventually embraced by Pelosi--one that would negotiate rates with providers, rather than base them on Medicare’s--might actually charge higher premiums than the average private plan. No matter that the CBO estimates clearly state that the higher projected premiums reflect its expectation that the public plan will disproportionately enroll less healthy Americans--which might be seen as a virtue, since these are folks private insurance tends to serve most poorly. And no matter that a subsequent CBO letter to the House stated that even a public plan with negotiated rates would still place “downward pressure on the premiums of private plans.” Suddenly, in the commentariat, the public plan isn’t a fearsome predator. It’s a complacent kitten. Initially not worth having because it would be too strong, it’s now, according to critics, not worth having because it would be too weak.
In truth, both the initial fears and current dismissals are overblown. The CBO’s declining estimates of savings certainly make a strong case for having the public plan use modified Medicare rates, as we have long argued. It’s a shame the House will not be considering a bill that shows how substantially a public plan can contribute to freeing up federal dollars to help Americans afford coverage. But we should keep in mind that the prime argument for the public plan has never been about a particular payment formula. It has been that a public insurance plan is vital as an institutional check on private plans, its role evolving to reflect the emerging weaknesses (or strengths) of regulated private competition. Put simply, health reform is much more likely to succeed with a public health insurance option, even one with negotiated rates, than if private insurers are left to run the show.
For anyone who fears he or she may hold Hollywood studio executives in insufficiently low esteem, the Wall Street Journal offers this trend story:
Soon to be starring in his own feature-length film with Universal Pictures: Stretch Armstrong, the pliant, muscle-bound doll whose roots go back to the 1970s. Big Wheel, the plastic tricycle, has its own TV show in the works. Even the board game Risk has a deal for a film, to be co-produced by star Will Smith....
I don't usually re-publish emails straight from political parties, but this collection of quotes following the 2001 elections, emailed by the DNC, is pretty telling.
Now Google is in. In compelling testimony to the Energy and Public Works Committee last week, the director of climate change and energy initiatives for the company's philanthropy (Google.org), Dan Reicher, mounted a powerful argument that the federal government should invest at least $15 billion a year of climate bill revenues in clean energy research and development. Declared Reicher:
Putting a price on carbon, while absolutely necessary, is not sufficient to address the climate problem and importantly, will not put the U.S. in the position to seize the extraordinary opportunities that will come with rebuilding to global energy economy.
And he continued:
Unfortunately, no matter how you measure it, U.S. government investment in clear energy R&D is woefully inadequate… Chairman Boxer, it is essential that Congress address this serious energy R&D short-fall by incorporating President Obama’s goal of $15 billion per year in federal energy R&D spending in final climate legislation.
Someone, somewhere, has surely commented that you can tell a lot about a person from what he or she happens to find funny. For this reason, I have always thought that the roars of approval which greeted P.J. O'Rourke's jokes about homeless people said it all about the 80s. But now let's turn to O'Rourke's heir, Jonah Goldberg, who managed to write a book that is (unintentionally!) funnier than any of O'Rourke's efforts.
Tea partiers, townhall protesters, Texas secessionists--for the past few months, grassroots organizing has seemed to be mostly the domain of the right. And for a period this summer, they (okay, not the Texas secessionists, but the others) appeared to be successfully tugging the national debate in their direction.
Topic number one in health care reform right now is the public option--and, in particular, Senator Harry Reid's decision to push a bill that includes an "opt-out" proposal. But Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, had relatively little to say about it on Tuesday, when she appeared at TNR's health reform conference.
Her keynote address barely touched upon the subject. When, during a subsequent question-and-answer session, I asked her to respond to progressives unhappy with the administration's ambivalence towards Reid, she gave a generic response about how far the health reform debate has come--and a generic restatement of the president's preference for a strong public plan.
Of course, all of this was by design. DeParle wasn't there to make news on the public plan controversy. Instead, she was there to address the conference topic--"Will Reform Work?" And she chose to answer it by reminding people about some of the other benefits reform would bring.
Click here to read Jonathan Cohn's take on the comments made by Nancy-Ann Deparle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, about the public option at today's TNR health care conference.
What good can the public option do if not enough people can access it? That’s the question that Senator Ron Wyden has been raising a lot lately. And he did it again this morning, at TNR's health care reform event. It's part of his campaign to pass what he's called the "free choice" amendment, which would allow people with access to employer-sponsored insurance to reject those plans, redirect their employer contributions, and buy coverage instead through the new insurance exchanges.
The odds are still against the amendment's passage. But Wyden's crusade has been generating media attention and, more recently, generating some enthusiasm on the left--where Wyden has had some trouble over the last year. Why the sudden surge of interest? With some form of a public option seeming more likely, supporters are wondering why it shouldn't be available to everybody. A case in point is Representative Anthony Weiner, who sat to Wyden's left during the event. If the public option is available only to people without access to employer-sponsored coverage, Weiner warned, relatively few people could use it. It'd be, as he described it, "a sliver of a sliver."
Now, everybody who reads me knows that I am not a big supporter of administration policy on the Middle East. But, then, I am not a big supporter of its foreign policy almost anywhere. No, let me correct that. Not "almost anywhere." But "anywhere."
That said, I don't believe that President Obama is trying to weaken the United States or its allies. What we do disagree about (but it's I who am here doing the disagreeing) is what strengthens America and what debilitates it.
Actually, the Obama crowd seems to be reconnoitering a bit after the string of rebuffs it has experienced from those who it has been trying to court. In any case, it has surely registered on them that Israel is amenable to a quite generous compromise ... but it is the Palestinians, riven though they may be, who are insisting on "loser take all." Strange world, theirs, no? And just in case you need a reminder: This is not the first time that the Palestinians have rioted on Al Haram al-Sharif (in their vocabulary) and the Temple Mount (in the West's) to preclude negotiations. It's an old tactic, alas.
I'd bet also that the White House laments the fact that, when it summoned Jewish leaders for a meeting with the president months ago, it sent an invitation to J Street and omitted the Zionist Organization of America, which, for all its troublesomeness, is an institution with many real members and real ongoing work in Israel. Moreover, it is an historically significant body, Louis Dembitz Brandeis having been its president for many years. I can imagine some smart-assed staffer coming up with the idea. "Let's leave out the ZOA and invite J Street instead."
Well, they did invite J Street, and now they are stuck with the damage. The J Streeters went around identifying themselves as Obama's people in the crowd. I suppose that was good for them. But it was not good for Obama. The fact is that, by this past weekend, when J-Street launched its D.C. fest, it was already seen in the public mind as a bunch of nut cases and very much anti-Israel in the very substantive sense. It was callous about Iran's nuclear threat to Israel, was against sanctions, supported negotiations with Hamas, which even the E.U. disdained. Moreover, it refuses to recognize that one obstacle to a two-state solution is that neither the Palestinians nor the other Arabs can even contemplate security guarantees to Israel.
Mr. President: You courted a friend. Now you have him. Woe is you.
Anyway, here are some links to the J Street saga…
Politico (Ben Smith): Frontiers of Pro-Israel
Ha’aretz: Poet booted from J Street meet for comparing Guantanamo to Auschwitz
The Jerusalem Post: Ambassador Michael Oren declines J Street conference invite
The Washington Times: Upstart Israel lobby draws controversy
The Washington Post: Israel conference to open amid controversy
The Guardian (Isi Leibler): J Street's 'pro-Israel' stance is phoney
And, from Lenny Ben-David over at Pajamas Media, an important set of questions for J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami...
The House is still deliberating between two versions of the public option, as Cohn laid out earlier: a stronger version that would tie public option pay rates to Medicare “plus 5” percentage points, and a weaker version that would have negotiated rates, but also separately raise Medicaid eligibility from 133% to 150% percent above the poverty line to save money. (It’d be cheaper to cover Medicaid patients than in the public plan.)
Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford, where he is the co-director of the Iran Democracy Project. His latest book is Eminent Persian: The Men and Women who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979 (Syracuse University Press).
There has been much debate about where Iran’s democratic protesters stand on the country’s nuclear program. In the past weeks, there have been many new indications that the green movement rejects the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The following fatwa by the Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri is another significant piece of evidence suggesting the movement’s repudiation.
Even as Neil Patrick Harris's star continues to ascend--and polls capture the ongoing sea-change in public acceptance of homosexuality--putatively pro-gay Hollywood continues to maintain the celluloid closet. In a fascinating piece on the subject, LA Weekly reports:
Only a year ago most of Hollywood was publicly appalled by Proposition 8, the anti–gay marriage ballot measure that passed in November. Heavy-hitter Pitt and Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg contributed $100,000 checks to the “No on 8” campaign, and dozens of Hollywood big shots, like Rob Reiner and Barbra Streisand, attended an A-list “No on 8” fundraiser at the Beverly Hills home of billionaire grocery magnate Ron Burkle. Yet the big studios and their mostly male chiefs — and the scores of socially liberal men and women who play key roles as casting directors and agents — have together created a kind of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which places enormous pressure on gay, male actors to remain in the closet....
The dichotomy between Hollywood’s claimed social benevolence and its actual practices was seen starkly in July, when prominent gay TV director Todd Holland publicly revealed a practice of his own, which is probably common in the L.A. and New York film and TV industries: He advises gay actors who want to succeed to “stay in the closet.”
Publicist Howard Bragman, by contrast, describes himself as "the guy people tend to come to when they want to come out of the closet," a role he's played since at least 1991, when he helped Dick Sargent (the second Darrin on Bewitched) come out publicly. And Bragman thinks it's only a matter of time before the dam breaks:
With all the focus on a handful of high-profile items, many important features in the House and Senate health reform proposals are being overlooked.
When the world last left Wesley Clark in early 2004, he was a streaking meteor of a presidential candidate. Still fresh from leading NATO in the Kosovo war, he arrived as a savior for the left, who saw a bulletproof patriot that the rest of America could believe in; hero of the netroots, beloved by Michael Moore and Madonna; hope of the Clintonites, delighted by such a clean ideological slate.
Editors's Note: Timothy Jost is a professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. He posts regularly on the Politico health reform arena and on Georgetown University’s Legal Issues in Health Reform blog.
Yes, you read it right. Here is the essence: If the Saudis (and other OPEC producers) export fewer hydrocarbons, the buyers should still pay as if they were purchasing the old amount. They should pay what the Saudis could charge when the market was tight and the demand high, and the arrangements should not made in the Arab bazaar, but by treaty. It's a nice world that Riyadh lives in. Perhaps this is King Abdullah's gracious response to President Obama's servile bow.
"Less global warming would be good, right?" ask Jad Mouawad and Andrew C. Revkin in a report in Tuesday's Times. No, they answer themselves: "Not to an oil giant."
This comes up now because of the upcoming Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The fact is that the Saudis (as well as the Iranians, the Venezuelans, the emirates, and other big producers) are frightened that their incomes will fall if the attendees commit themselves to "improvements in fuel economy and rising mandates for alternative fuels in the transportation sector." Yes, it could be happening ... and it could be happening this year.
Jake Schmidt, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has a very apt--in fact, devastating--analogy: "It is like the tobacco industry asking for compensation for lost revenues as a part of a settlement to address the health risks of smoking." In fact, if a smoker stops smoking, why don't we oblige him to pay for his cigarettes anyway?
Robert Altman: The Oral Biography
By Mitchell Zuckoff
(Knopf, 592 pp., $35)
Here is your exam question: who is the last American movie director who made thirty-nine films but never won the Oscar for best director? Name the film by that director that cost the most money, and name the film of his that earned the most. Clue: The Departed, which must have been around Martin Scorsese’s thirtieth picture, and did win the directing Oscar, cost $90 million (four times as much as any of this man’s films cost)--so don’t go that way. Background info: Gosford Park cost $15 million; Nashville cost $2.2 million; M.A.S.H. cost about $3.5 million, and earned around $70 million; Popeye cost $20 million (in 1980). Here is your assignment: assess and reconcile these allegations in an essay of approximately 3,000 words. (Note: banish from your mind any insinuation that nowadays a director who makes thirty-nine films has to be given a best director Oscar--though it is not easy to think of many that fecund who don’t have a bronze fetish to nurse at night.)
On Friday morning, Diana Farrell--a senior White House official--made a significant statement on NPR’s Morning Edition, with regard to whether our largest banks are too big and should be broken up.
“Ms. DIANA FARRELL (Deputy Assistant for Economy Policy): We understand Simon Johnson’s views on this, and I guess the response is the following….
“Ms. FARRELL: We have created them [our biggest banks], and we’re sort of past that point, and I think that in some sense, the genie’s out of the bottle and what we need to do is to manage them and to oversee them, as opposed to hark back to a time that we’re unlikely to ever come back to or want to come back to.” (full transcript)
Ms. Farrell is Larry Summers’s deputy on the National Economic Council and the former director of McKinsey Global Institute, and she has a strong background on banking issues--based on extensive professional experience with global financial institutions.
Her statement contains three remarkable points.
Disgrace
Paladin
The Other Man
Image Entertainment
J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace has been made into a film that, in good measure, is faithful to it. Along with the admiration that obviously drew them to the book, the film-makers had to deal with some heavy data. Coetzee is a Nobel laureate; Disgrace won a lofty British award called the Booker Prize; an English newspaper poll lately named Disgrace as the best novel of the last twenty-five years. Aesthetically dubious though such tags are, nonetheless the book has been a favorite of many good readers over many years.
Since late summer, several states have passed into law resolutions to release thousands of prisoners before they've completed their sentences. The goal is to help make up for immense budget shortfalls. The states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, and Oregon, have targeted their bloated prison systems in their quest to save hundreds of millions and make up for immense budget shortfalls. (Some have balanced budget amendments that require them to work out immediate savings.) But how exactly would such a plan work? With former prisoners hitting the streets this month in several states, we though it would be helpful to explain just what you need to know:
Who is eligible for early release?
While the specifics may vary from state to state, the eligible inmates are those who are deemed “low risk." Typically, this means non-violent or non-person offenders, petty thieves, drug offenders, or those who are medically incapacitated.
In Colorado, for instance, “low-risk” applies to prisoners who are within six months of their mandatory release dates. According to Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, releasing "low-risk" inmates could be dangerous. “If you have six months to go before mandatory release date, one of two things has happened--neither of which are good for public safety," explained Suthers, who also used to be the director of Colorado's prison system. "One, you’ve been passed over for discretionary parole because you’ve been deemed a risk. Or, two, you’ve waived discretionary parole because you don’t think you have a chance. So this group of inmates we’re talking about is a relatively high risk one.”
