Generations of Americans have worked to build a country that is second to none. But now, foreign governments are using billions in oil profits to buy into U.S. companies responsible for our defense, energy and homeland security. And they are using high-powered lobbyists and private buyout firms who don’t have to reveal their role in our national security. Tell Congress that we have a right to know when foreign countries buy into American companies vital to our economic prosperity and national defense.
The federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees is $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008. The federal minimum wage provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Many states also have minimum wage laws. In cases where an employee is subject to both the state and federal minimum wage laws, the employee is entitled to the higher of the two minimum wages.
The FLSA does not provide wage payment or collection procedures for an employee’s usual or promised wages or commissions in excess of those required by the FLSA. However, some states do have laws under which such claims (sometimes including fringe benefits) may be filed.
In an interview on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) asserted that the 2007 troop surge in Iraq “began the Anbar awakening,” the process by which Sunni tribal leaders allied with U.S. force and turned against al Qaeda in Iraq. McCain also suggested that to disagree with his version of history “does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed” in Iraq. In fact, it is McCain himself who has done a disservice to history. The Anbar awakening began in the late summer and early fall of 2006, months before the surge was announced in January 2007. While the Anbar awakening is an important contributor to the drop in violence in Iraq, it is only one of several factors. Meanwhile, the stated goal of the surge — Iraqi political reconciliation — remains unmet.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: The awakening began in the town of Ramadi in Anbar province in September 2006, under the command of Army Col. Sean MacFarland. MacFarland sought to build ties to local leaders to draw their support away from the insurgency. In his account of the events in Ramadi, MacFarland wrote: “A growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made those younger leaders open to our overtures.” Eventually U.S. forces were able to establish credibility with local leaders, who turned against the insurgents. The new approach eventually spread outward to other Iraqi provinces. A second important factor in the decreased violence was the decision by Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to declare a “freeze” of his Jaysh al-Mahdi militia in the wake of violent clashes in the shrine city of Karbala in late August 2007. The Jaysh al-Mahdi had been regarded by the U.S. military as a threat equal to, if not greater than, al Qaeda in Iraq by virtue of their being an indigenous, nationalist movement with strong political support among poor Iraqis. Gen. David Petraeus himself recognized Sadr’s cooperation as an essential component in the drop in violence in and around Baghdad. A third factor was the separation of Sunni and Shi’a Iraqis into protected enclaves as a result of a massive and terrifying campaign of sectarian cleansing by Sunni and Shi’a militias in Baghdad, and the construction of concrete barriers around these enclaves. The addition of 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq encouraged, supported, and consolidated each of these phenomena, but very likely could not have worked without them. Read the rest of this entry »
AS BARACK OBAMA travels abroad this week, he is finding a world that still wants America to be engaged, but no longer necessarily waits for America to take the lead. The challenge for the next president is to understand how much has changed and how America can best pursue its national interests in such a different international environment.
It isn’t just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have changed the world, nor other aspects of the Bush legacy that have weakened America’s power and position. The world itself has changed. Ours is the era of global interconnectedness. The fate of the average American is increasingly connected to the fate of people around the world creating unparalleled opportunities but also great dangers from which no nation can be immune. Ours is also an era of increasingly diffuse power, as more powers rise to demand influence and a say over global affairs and more actors of many different kinds affect the course of global politics.
Such a world requires a new kind of leadership – one that is clear on how, when, and with whom America leads. Call it strategic leadership. A leadership that understands that while much of the world still believes that international peace and prosperity are most likely to be achieved if Washington plays a significant and constructive role, key actors no longer simply defer to or automatically prefer what America wants. A leadership that focuses on effective action rather than who is in the lead. A leadership that relies on clear judgment as much as demonstrating resolve. A leadership that grasps that however great our power, America cannot meet today’s challenges all on its own.
Strategic leadership requires a commitment to statecraft as both an alternative and a complement to military force. Although diplomacy has its limitations, US strategic interests are often best served by leveraging its potential for enhancing security, reducing tensions, resolving conflicts, achieving peace, and transforming adversarial relationships. Read the rest of this entry »
The homeowners started lining up at 4 a.m. yesterday, some, like Patricia Ephraim, coming for a second or third day.
Ephraim, who lives in Silver Spring, was among the thousands of distressed borrowers drawn to downtown Washington yesterday by a promise of help from the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. The Boston housing advocacy group set up tables and offices staffed with about 300 housing counselors at the Capitol Hilton. They worked with the homeowners to prepare budgets and submit proposals to their lenders for lower mortgage payments. A line of people clutching folders of their financial documents snaked around the outside of the hotel.
After attending Monday and working with a housing counselor until 11 p.m. Tuesday, Ephraim learned yesterday afternoon that her mortgage payments would be cut by more than $500 a month. Still, the 25-year-old remained perched by the side of her counselor, waiting for confirmation in “black and white.”
“This is going to let me go back to school, get my master’s degree,” she said. “I can definitely save some money. It opens up a lot for me.”
After contacting more than 1 million homeowners in the Northeast who have subprime or adjustable-rate mortgages, NACA estimated that it attracted 20,000 people from as far away as Boston and Miami. Counselors submitted workout plans for 10,000 homeowners during the five-day event and by yesterday had secured 700 loan modifications that lowered interest rates and monthly payments, said Bruce Marks, the group’s chief executive. Those figures could not be independently verified. Lenders agree to such modifications because they can be less expensive than foreclosure. Read the rest of this entry »
So a bunch of academics decides to revisit one of the defining books of modern American politics, a 1960 tome on the electorate. They spend years comparing interviews with voting-age Americans from 2000 and 2004 to what Americans said during elections in the 1950s. The academics’ question: How much has the American voter changed over the past 50 years?
Their conclusion — that the voter is pretty much the same dismally ill-informed creature he was back then — continues a decades-long debate about whether Americans are as clueless as they sound.
Reader, before you send that outraged e-mail, consider that you may be an exception. You, of course, are endlessly fascinated by the debate over domestic wiretapping, but it’s possible your neighbors think FISA is a hybrid vehicle. In fact, it’s quite possible your neighbors are Republicans only because that’s what their parents were, and ditto for the Democrats across the street. They couldn’t even mumble a passable definition of “liberal” or “conservative.”
“You could get depressed,” says the University of Iowa’s Michael Lewis-Beck, one of the political scientists who wrote “The American Voter Revisited,” released last month and inspired by 1960’s “The American Voter.” Read the rest of this entry »
