Magazine

But this one had a twist. The 125 donors were all from the broadcast industry, a special-interest group that finds itself in the rare and enviable position of not having to wait until after the election to draw a return on its political capital. In fact, the checks they cast upon Lazio that night have […]

It’s a shopping spree a defense contractor might love. But this time the Pentagon is not involved; nor any other part of the government, for that matter. Instead the strange prices are the work of multinational corporations, and one of the biggest tax avoidance scams this country has ever seen. The ideological Right makes a […]

Now, teleport yourself across the country to a vault under the streets of Manhattan. Here the U.S. Federal Reserve holds more than 8,000 tons of gold–around four times annual global production and more gold than is thought to be in all the mines of the United States. Most of this gold belongs to the Federal […]

“Canada’s Burning! Media myths about universal health coverage, ” by Theodore Marmor and Kip Sullivan, falsely assume that what works for Canadian health care consumers is relevant in the U.S. and that bashing the media messenger will disprove the facts and opinions that journalists report. And they downplay and deny the well known but inconvenient […]

The three major reports on Canada, by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and ABC News, used the overcrowding problem as evidence that Canada’s universal health insurance program was critically flawed. The problems of Canadian emergency rooms, in short, indicted Canada’s medicare. The two major reports on the problem in the United States, by […]

Translation: national government is corrupt largely because of soft money and by clamping down on soft money, political corruption will shrivel. It’s a simple and appealing formula. As with most such formulas, however, it misreads reality and promises more than it can deliver. Though we do need to address any possible corruption resulting from campaign […]

We spent the rest of the night talking and playing music together next to a pile of beer bottles and a pool table. He looked about 21 years old and wore black. He said he had grown up in Canada, someplace near Toronto that I’d never heard of. He had sex with lots of people, […]

And what if you don’t get it all sorted out before your views are broadcast into 20 million homes? You won’t be the first. “I don’t want to embarrass anybody, but sometimes people come in here and they’re not quite ready,” talk-show host Diane Rehm says carefully. Walk into the “communication room” minutes before Rehm […]

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Ms. Adorador, a counselor and administrator at the Oakland Charter Academy, was not counseling any students. She was alone in her office gripping a cordless phone, trying to transform herself into a tax expert. Her middle school, which serves 175 mostly Spanish-speaking students, was one of America’s first charter schools. […]

To his opponents, Bill Clinton is Don Liddle. The economy is booming on his watch, but only because of the work of others. Larry Lindsay, George Bush’s chief economic adviser, suggests that Ronald Reagan is the real Willie Mays. Conservative pundit Robert Novak thanks entrepreneurs and says that giving credit for the boom to Clinton […]