Kid Gloves for Romney (Scroll to Feb 7, 2008)

Today's wonderful Wasserman cartoon shows a crowd outside George W. Bush's office, some of whom bear the placard "No More Lies!", yet your columnists deal gently with former Governor Mitt Romney.

Scott Lehigh talks about him as a "newly minted conservative." H.D.S. Greenaway is more forceful in saying that he "coldly and calculatingly made himself over from a moderate to a hard right-winger."

Enough of euphamism: either Romney lied about his most cherished values in 1994 and 2002 when he ran as a moderate for the senate and the governor's office or he is lying now about those values in 2008. Yes, all politicians spin, but surely Romney has gone too far? How the Bay State Republicans came to favor Romney over John McCain (described by Jeff Jacoby as one of the few candidates showing "character"), I do not understand.

Sent to Boston Globe

Obama and Clinton's War Vote

I am a strong supporter of Barak Obama in the Democratic primaries, but he really must get the 2002 Iraq vote right (One on One Democrats, Set Aim at G.O.P., New York Times, February 1, 2008: A1).

The vote was designed to give the President leverage in calling Iraq to account before the United Nations. It exemplified realpolitik at its best. Senator Clinton and the other Senators voting in the affirmative were right to do so.

It is hard to remember the sequence of events from 2001 up to the present day. Until November 2002 (that is until the President had the support of Senate and House to use force) the Iraqis refused to allow UN inspectors to undertake inspections for Weapons of Mass Destruction on Iraqi territory. By the end of November, inspections under the direction of Hans Blix were under way. The vote to grant the President war powers had achieved its purpose, the Iraq regime was being called to account for its actions.

We have forgotten too that Hans Blix called on the US and Britain to give his inspectors the "hard intelligence" that they claimed to possess so that his inspectors could go to check out that information on the ground. The failure of the US and Britain to do so should have roused our suspicions that all was not well with the intelligence -- its invalidity has been amply demonstrated in the past years.

Where we went wrong -- the Senate, and the House, and the country, and all of us -- was the failure to recognize the importance of the inspector's reports in mid February 2003 that there was no evidence of immanent danger from Iraq. That information should have led to a re-evaluation of the war power resolution and and led to its repeal based on the changed situation. We failed to do so and we are reaping the tragic consequences today.

So Barak Obama should stop attacking Senator Clinton for her vote. He can chastise her for not reconsidering the issue in February of 2003.

Sent to New York Times

Dr. Groopman is at Harvard too!

Shouldn't the Book Review also have told us that Dr Groopman was, like the author, a Professor at Harvard University, albeit in a different Faculty?

Should the Book Review have given one Harvard Professor's book to be reviewed by another Harvard Professor? I think not!

Sent to New York Times Book Review

Borrowing against the Future

I don't think Jeff Jacoby is correct that dollars will first be taken out of the US economy and then dumped back in (Remember, there's no free lunch, January 23, 2008). The borrowing will be undertaken offshore so there actually will be new money injected into the US economy.

Of course, the debt will have to be repaid and foreign debt may be more constraining that domestic debt. It is unfortunate that when the economy was booming we did not try to hold back the debt we have incurred to pay for the Iraq war. That debt too will come due. I hope the next President will have a plan to pay it down. It would be unconscionable to pass it on to our children and grandchildren.

Sent to Boston Globe

Experiment on Teachers

I was appalled to read of the experiment that the New York Board of Education was carrying out in 280 schools in New York City (New York Measuring Teachers by Student Progress on Tests, New York Times, January 20, 2008: A1, A15).

In this, teachers in 140 schools are being evaluated on whether or not the pupils in their classrooms improve their test scores, while teachers in another 140 schools are to be used as a comparison group. According to the story you published, many teachers are not being told that they are part of the experiment because the issue is "so contentious." This is a grave ethical breach. For any experiment to be carried out on human subjects, the subjects of the experiment must provide informed consent. In this case, both the teachers and the students in the 280 schools should have been asked to give their permission.

Yes, gaining permission muddies the waters about whether any observed change might have occurred because people knew that they were being observed or whether the recording of progress was the cause of change; but the rule of informed consent must be followed if we are to maintain integrity in social science and educational research.

Sent to New York Times

Make up of Conference Committees in the New Congress

There was one piece of information not included in your otherwise informative comparison between different Congressional sessions (Jan 19 2007: A31).

How do the sessions compare in terms of the make-up of the conference committees where the final bills are drafted and decided on. My understanding is that in the 109th Congress, the committees were dominated by Majority Party (Republican members. Has this changed? Are the Conference Committees now balanced?

Sent to the New York Times

Paying for the Iraq War

One of the issues you avoided mentioning in your editorial is the important question about how the war is to be paid for (Unfinished Debate on Iraq, New York Times Week in Review, January 13, 2008: 11).

It would be unconscionable for us to pass the cost, with interest, on to our children and grandchildren. It would be unwise for us to continue to pass the debt off shore as that puts control of our economy in the hands of foreigners.

We must therefore start paying our way and we must bring the debt on shore. We should have done this three or four years ago when the economy was more robust; but despite the costs we must do it now. We must increase taxes (combine that with a government spending stimulus package) and we must force the richest Americans into a forced savings scheme to bring the debt home.

If we fail to do this we will be letting down the next generation of Americans.

Sent to the New York Times