Who is Howard Dean?

“In the Vermont political spectrum, he was a moderate or a centrist,” said Eric L. Davis, a professor of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont. “In the spectrum of Vermont, he was not someone who was a strong supporter of left or progressive causes.”

Not having read much about Howard Dean, I found today’s New York times story “Defying Labels Left or Right, Dean’s ’04 Campaign Makes Gains” interesting. It paints a picture of a moderate, pragmatic politician that has tapped into a rich vein of liberal fury that has catapulted him to the lead position in the race for the Democratic primary. While the New Dems are hand-wringing over a rumor Karl Rove likes Dean because he is “too liberal,” I’m worried for a different reason – that the narrow portion of the electorate that controls the presidential election will be too whipped up into a racist, jingoist, ignorant love-fest over Bush to elect a pragmatic moderate that might actually work to improve government and fight the ‘war on terror’ they love so much – instead re-electing a president too busy war mongering and giving handouts to corporate scoundrels to help them.

“… Vermont now offers the nation’s most generous health benefits to children, low-income adults and elderly residents of modest means. Almost all children in the state have full medical insurance, and more than a third of Vermont residents on Medicare get state help in paying for prescription drugs.

Another U-M Blogger Mike Roth has posted a response to the RIAA’s tactics of attacking individual MP3 file traders, announcing he’s going to resume buying CD’s but do everything he can to keep the record labels from making any money from him.

All good stuff, until I get to the part where he bashes the United Auto Workers (“It’s not that I hate the concept of the recording industry – hell, the UAW plays a part in pretty much every car I’ve ever driven, and I have no problem with it – it’s that I hate their tactics.”) Yikes. I suppose it’s an example of the effects of media and education systems that largely leave out the important historical role unions have played in America that makes an 18-year old feel as if he can dismiss the UAW because of their “tactics,” (which have been mostly nonexistant since they sold out in the 1950s.) Without digressing further I’ll simply refer the visitor to Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, a great book about the radical union movement in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s.

The University of Michigan Hospital was given the green light by the U-M Regents to begin improvements that will total $260 million at their meeting last month. The projects include a new cardiovascular center, expanded laboratories, more operating rooms and procedure rooms, more hospital beds, and hiring more surgeons.

> See “U-M hospitals’ $260M campaign aims at increased revenue”

“Akerlof: “… As of March 2003, the CBO estimated that the surplus for the next decade would approximately reach one trillion dollars. But this projection assumes, among other questionable things, that spending until 2013 is going to be constant in real dollar terms. That has never been the case. And with the current tax cuts, a realistic estimate would be a deficit in excess of six trillion.

Akerlof: For some reason the American people does not yet recognize the dire consequences of our government budgets. It’s my hope that voters are going to see how irresponsible this policy is and are going to respond in 2004 and we’re going to see a reversal. “

> From an interview of George Akerlof, economist at UC-Berkeley and Nobel Prize winner in economics in 2001, in the German magazine Der Spiegel.

The reading room at the Bentley Historical library will be closed for the month of August for construction of a new addition. See official website here.

“Surely, such a threat should be met with intelligence gathering of the highest quality — not by putting the question to individuals betting onan Internet website. …Spending taxpayer dollars to create terrorism betting parlors is as wasteful as it is repugnant,” they added.

> From a letter written by Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to Adm. John Poindexter, who leads the section of DARPA developing the Policy Analysis Market.

Think you know what will happen in the Middle East? The chances Yasser Arafat will be assassinated? How long Saudia Arabia’s monarchy will last? Put your money where your mouth is. Thanks to the Defense Department, you might soon be able to do just that in the Policy Analysis Market: “Pentagon’s futures market plan condemned”

While I predict the plan will not be put into place, there already exist companies that make profits by investing in terrorism, war, and political unrest by selling insurance to U.S. corporations. The man who started one of the largest companies in this “emerging field”? None other than the U.S. civilian ruler of iraq, Paul Bremer.
> See Naomi Klein’s “Downsizing in Disguise” or,
> A policy paper by Paul Bremer titled “New Risks in International Business”