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Must Read Op-Eds for August 30, 2011

KRUEGER V. OBAMA  EDITORIALWALL STREET JOURNALMr. Krueger agrees with Mr.

KRUEGER V. OBAMA  EDITORIALWALL STREET JOURNALMr. Krueger agrees with Mr. Obama on most issues, notably the need for higher taxes (he favors a European-style VAT), cap-and-tax to reduce global warming and a high minimum wage. We're also told he was an architect of cash for clunkers, the $3 billion subsidy that moved car sales from one month to another. Professor Krueger has his work cut out for him as a salesman for Stimulus II—or is IV?—but his confirmation hearing should at the very least be educational.

 


 

MIKE BLOOMBERG AND THE END OF TOLERANCE  BY WILLIAM MCGURNWALL STREET JOURNALThe tolerance that liberalism emphasizes is not the tolerance that operates in our day-to-day lives, but an abstraction based on the incessant assertion of political rights. Back when Mr. Bloomberg was discovering his inner Erasmus, for example, he found himself asked to weigh in on plans by a Florida minister to burn the Quran on 9/11. "In a strange way, I'm here to defend his right to do that," Mr. Bloomberg answered. ... As we approach the anniversary of 9/11, have Mayor Bloomberg's lectures about religious freedom and tolerance really left New York a freer and more tolerant place?

'I DIDN'T CHANGE. THE WORLD CHANGED.'  BY DANIEL HENNINGERWALL STREET JOURNALDick Cheney is a policy guy to his marrow. Ironically, what comes through in his memoir is how often the turns in history, for good or ill, are made by little more than what is inside this or that public official's head at a given moment in time. Dick Cheney spent 40 years in "the business" fighting mindsets he thought were pitching U.S. policy in a wrong or dangerous direction.

'IN MY TIME' BY DICK CHENEY  BY ROBERT KAISERWASHINGTON POSTCheney’s principal preoccupation, in his account of his vice presidency, is Hussein and the war in Iraq. Here, too, he avoids a great deal. For instance, he simply insists that there were important connections between Hussein and al-Qaeda before 9/11 that justified making the invasion of Iraq part of the War on Terror. No intelligence agency has ever endorsed that view, despite Cheney’s personal, herculean efforts to push the CIA into doing so. He never comes to grips with the fact — so frustrating to him, obviously — that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

ON JOBS, TIME TO BE BOLD  BY EUGENE ROBINSONWASHINGTON POSTSo Obama should go big, not small, with his jobs plan. It is hard to overstate how apprehensive most Americans are about the future. Boldness from the president may or may not get the nation’s mojo working again. Timidity surely won’t. ... He can offer voters a choice between a pinched, miserly vision of the country’s prospects on the one hand and an optimistic, expansive view on the other. He needs to demand what’s right, not what the other side is willing to give.NATO'S TEACHABLE MOMENT  EDITORIALNEW YORK TIMESIn June, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointedly told European NATO allies that they risked becoming militarily irrelevant unless they stepped up investment in their forces and equipment. His successor, Leon Panetta, needs to drive that message home. European leaders need to ask themselves a fundamental question: If it was this hard taking on a ragtag army like Khaddafy’s, what would it be like to have to fight a real enemy?

MANUFACTURING A RECOVERY  BY SUSAN HOCKFIELDNEW YORK TIMESThe United States remains a top producer of advanced technology products. But our dominance has eroded. Ten years ago, we enjoyed a trade surplus in advanced technology manufactured goods; today, that category accounts for an $81 billion annual trade deficit. ... Germany and Japan enjoy high wages and run major surpluses in manufactured goods; so can we. Our economy will thrive only when we make what we invent.