Fareed Zakaria GPS

Fareed’s Take: “Restoring the American Dream”

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Fareed’s Take: “Restoring the American Dream”

Yesterday, Fareed Zakaria GPS began with “Fareed’s Take” on poverty, education and the American Dream.

Here is a description of the commentary:

A recent OECD report points out that the U.S. is one of only three rich countries that spends less on disadvantaged students than others, largely because education funding for elementary and secondary schools in America is tied to local property taxes. So by definition, poor neighborhoods end up with badly funded schools. In general, America spends lots of money on education but most of it is on college education and most is directed towards those already advantaged in various ways.

What’s clear from all this research is that countries that invest more heavily in all their children’s health care, nutrition, and education, well-being more generally end up with a much stronger ladder of opportunity and access than America. Now, that is something we can change and with relatively little money. So if we want to restore the American dream, we now have the beginnings of a path forward.

For more, read the Washington Post column

 

Will Lobbying Destroy the American Empire?

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Will Lobbying Destroy the American Empire?

Recently, Fareed Zakaria began his Sunday show discussing the deleterious influences of lobbyist on American politics.  

Here are the basics of “Fareed’s Take”

The entire political system creates incentives for venality. Consider just one factor – and there are many – the role of money, which has expanded dramatically over the past four decades. Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig has pointed out that Congressmen now spend three of every five workdays raising money. They also vote with extreme attention to their donors’ interests. Lessig cites studies that demonstrate that donors get a big bang for their campaign bucks – sometimes with returns on their “investment” that would make a venture capital firm proud.

Now, taking money out of politics is a mammoth challenge. So perhaps the best one could hope for is to limit instead what Congress can sell. In other words, enact a thorough reform of the tax code, ridding it of the thousands of special exemptions, credits, and deductions, which are, of course, institutionalized, legalized corruption.

The most depressing aspect of This Town, by Mark Leibovich, is how utterly routine all the influence-peddling has become. In 1990 Ramsay MacMullen, the great Yale historian of Rome, published a book that took on the central question of his field: Why did the greatest empire in the history of the world collapse in the fifth century? The root cause, he explained, was political corruption, which had become systemic in the late Roman Empire. What was once immoral had become accepted as standard practice and what was once illegal was celebrated as the new normal. Many decades from now, a historian looking at where America lost its way could use This Town as a primary source.

Watch the video for the full take and read more in the Washington Post

 

Andrew Sullivan on Gay Marriage and SCOTUS Cases

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Andrew Sullivan on Gay Marriage and SCOTUS Cases

Last Sunday, Fareed Zarakia interviewed Anderew Sullivan about the conservative case for gay marriage and the recent same-sex marriage Supreme Court cases. 

Here is a description of the interview: 

Sullivan: We’re part of families. Gay people don’t – they’re not born under a gooseberry bush in San Francisco and then just unleashed on the country to improve your dinner party conversations and interior design. You know, that’s not what happens. They’re born and bred in Texas, in Oklahoma, in Alabama. And they’re in the military and they’re part of this country’s entire diversity. And they want to be a part of their own families. And they’re more traditional than you realize.

So then began the battle you’re still battling, which is with conservatives.

Sullivan: I think the great disappointment, the great disappointment is that this was a really, in some ways, a conservative argument. This was a minority group seeking responsibility, commitment, pooling resources.  If you’re a couple and something happens to one of you, you have someone else to take care of you, not the government. There’s a really powerful conservative case for this. And so many of the Republican Party just never grappled with it until it was too late.

But in Kennedy, you know, Anthony Kennedy, Reagan appointee, I think you see the last strains of that moderate conservatism, which is, we do have this new emergent population. How do we integrate them? How do we make them part? I don’t want us to have a separate but equal institution in civil unions. And that was the big threat. And then Bush, when he actually endorsed a federal marriage amendment, suddenly the entire gay establishment were like, oh, we’re with you.

Fareed Zakaria on Snowden, Civil Disobedience, and Big Data

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTV_UJQerFE]

On Sunday, Fareed Zakaria GPS began with “Fareed’s Take” on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Civil Disobedience, and the civil liberties implications of Big Data.

Here is a description of the commentary:

“One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty.”

That was Martin Luther King Jr.’s definition of civil disobedience. It does not appear to be Edward Snowden’s.

He has tried by every method possible to escape any judgment or punishment for his actions. Snowden has been compared to Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. But Ellsberg did not hop on a plane to Hong Kong or Moscow once he had unloaded his cache of documents. He stood trial and faced the possibility of more than 100 years in prison before the court dismissed the case against him because of the prosecution’s mistakes and abuses of justice.

For more on this read Fareed’s TIME column