Read These

I’ve read three great pieces from three great writers today. If I take the time to comment on each and tie them together, I’m afraid you won’t take the time to read them. So, just go read them.


Frank Rich has an opinion piece entitled, The Banality of Bush White House Evil .

”Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality. “

Paul Krugman, as almost always, has something important to say.

Money for Nothing

”Remember that the gilded Wall Street of 2007 was a fairly new phenomenon. From the 1930s until around 1980 banking was a staid, rather boring business that paid no better, on average, than other industries, yet kept the economy’s wheels turning.

So why did some bankers suddenly begin making vast fortunes? It was, we were told, a reward for their creativity — for financial innovation. At this point, however, it’s hard to think of any major recent financial innovations that actually aided society, as opposed to being new, improved ways to blow bubbles, evade regulations and implement de facto Ponzi schemes. “

And the last is from Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post

600,000 Bad Hires?
Making Federal Jobs Cool Once Again

We have a wonderful chance to change our country for the better. We can’t do it by ignoring our past sins, repeating history or trying to run a government without good people.

Don Brown
April 27, 2008