Blog Post by: The Century Foundation, on May 21, 2013
This winner of this week’s #TCFBest is from The Atlantic, How to Make the U.S. a Better Place for Caregivers, by Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM.) Last year, Slaughter wrote another Atlantic piece Why Women Still Can’t Have It All that sparked a national debate about women, work and families. In this follow-up piece she offers a summary of what the country needs for employment to work for women and families.
Blog Post by: Neil Bhatiya, on May 20, 2013
A recent poll conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the Australia India Institute suggests that Indians view climate change and its related effects as a bigger threat than potential conflicts with either of its regional rivals, China or Pakistan. Energy shortages and water shortages also beat out worries about other regional powers in South Asia.
Blog Post by: The Century Foundation, on May 20, 2013
When I was preparing to graduate high school, I was faced with several offers from four-year universities, including scholarships and grants that would cover 100 percent of my tuition. I looked closely at the numbers: I could either begin my college experience at a highly ranked UC school with classrooms as large as 500, or I get a more personal education at my local two year school in a classroom of 25. I chose the latter. I figured that I could always transfer to the university later; I might as well pick up a two-year degree on the way.
Not only did Grossmont College help prepare me for my future career, they offered specialized technical courses that weren't offered at any four year university. Getting into classes that I needed for my transfer wasn't a struggle. The instructors were passionate and always had time to assist every student. While I was taking lower-division courses for a transfer degree, it gave me an opportunity to choose what I was most interested in before committing to a major.
I've become such an advocate of community colleges that, over a decade after I first enrolled at one, I began working at one. Today, I am the social media marketing specialist for Clackamas Community College and I have the honor of watching students' lives get changed by the community college experience every single day.
Blog Post by: Thanassis Cambanis, on May 20, 2013
The Century Foundation’s Beirut-based fellow, Thanassis Cambanis joins the BBC’s Newshour to discuss Hezbollah’s growing role in Syria’s ongoing civil war. You can listen to the full podcast below.
Blog Post by: Edward D. Kleinbard, on May 17, 2013
This paper uses Starbucks Corporation, the premier roaster, marketer and retailer of specialty coffee in the world, as an example of stateless income tax planning in action. “Stateless income” comprises income derived for tax purposes by a multinational group from business activities in a country other than the domicile of the group’s ultimate parent company, but which is subject to tax only in a jurisdiction that is neither the source of the factors of production through which the income was derived, nor the domicile of the group’s parent company.
Blog Post by: Jeffrey Laurenti, on May 16, 2013
As pressures mount in Washington for a more aggressive American involvement on behalf of at least some rebel groups in Syria, President Obama has seemed intent on proving the Nobel committee was farsighted in awarding him its peace prize four years ago.
He sent Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow this month with an initiative to re-engage diplomatically with Russia to end the war, through an international conference in June. It could not come soon enough. The Syrian government has, by all accounts, begun to win back some of its lost ground, worries are mounting about an increasing dominance of rebel militias by Islamic extremists, and a United Nations vote yesterday shows eroding support for the rebel side in notable quarters of the international community.
Today, after meeting with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the White House, Obama turned aside calls for arming Syrian rebels, noting, "There is no magic formula for dealing with an extraordinary violent and difficult situation like Syria's." His view was echoed during the day by Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, normally a conservative darling. "I would urge on the president extraordinary caution," Harper told a New York audience at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Arming unnamed people is extremely risky."
Blog Post by: Peter Osnos, on May 15, 2013
This week's revelation that the Department of Justice has secretly obtained Associated Press telephone records from 2012 reaffirms the argument made by venerable First Amendment lawyer James C. Goodale last month: that "the fight for freedom of the press never ends even under a president previously thought to be friendly to the cause." In fact, Goodale has been increasingly critical of the Obama administration's pursuit of whistleblowers.
Goodale, with a career spanning over fifty years, is unusually well-placed to make this case. He, after all, was the general counsel at the New York Times when that paper published the Pentagon Papers in June 1971. His memoir Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles (CUNY Journalism Press), published last month, provides an inside account of the intense struggle inside the publication of one of the most famous classified-document leaks in history.
Blog Post by: Richard C. Leone, on May 14, 2013
In Washington and in most state capitals, fierce political battles are underway challenging once broadly accepted public policies. Underlying the current sharp divisions over fundamental questions is the widening fissure between the two parties. It's fashionable to describe this development as the result of a more or less symmetrical shift—with Democrats moving to the left while Republicans move to the right. I guess this approach is intended to make the whole thing look reasonable and any analysis of the shift appear nonpartisan. But whatever the reasoning at work, the conclusion is just plain wrong. Democrats have not moved to the left, if anything they have moved to the right—but not so fast or as far as Republicans.
Blog Post by: Moshe Marvit, on May 14, 2013
In April, the Obama administration finally filed an appeal with the Supreme Court over the D.C. Circuit’s Noel Canning decision which invalidated Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB).
That’s the legal.
The political is that no matter how the court case is resolved the most recent era of the NLRB is likely over. But if history is any guide, then Democrats will continue to act as if the old rules still apply, while Republicans forge ahead with a new set of rules.
Blog Post by: Thérèse Postel, on May 14, 2013
Yesterday in Foreign Policy, Thanassis Cambanis discussed the possibility that the civil war in Syria may become Iran’s Vietnam.
Cambanis’ argument is twofold. Iran, already suffering from sanctions, is spending untold millions propping up the al-Assad regime. Outside of monetary concerns, and its loss of an IRGC member in mid-February, Iran has squandered much of its influence in the region. Arab allies, like Hamas, have distanced themselves from Tehran while Hezbollah, Iran’s most potent ally in the region, is losing some of its credibility as a resistance force and is becoming viewed more and more as a Shia sectarian outfit.
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Thanassis Cambanis is a journalist specializing in the Middle East and American foreign policy.
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