The Upside of Opportunism

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/opinion/brooks-the-upside-of-opportunism.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 9:23 AM
Subject: re: The Upside of Opportunism
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    David Brooks sketches two unsatisfactory scenarios. In one, president Obama is re-elected but is hamstrung by a Republican-dominated House. In the other, Mitt Romney is elected and spends his term fighting with a Democrat-dominated Senate.  But of course we, the people aren't constrained to pick from Mr. Brooks' menu. If we were to re-elect president Obama and put Democratic majorities in both houses of congress, we could actually, finally get the CHANGE we voted for four years.

Barry Haskell Levine

Panetta Says Risk Impeded Deployment to Benghazi

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/africa/panetta-tells-of-monitoring-situation-in-benghazi.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 9:54 AM
Subject: re: Panetta Says Risk Impeded Deployment to Benghazi
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   It was never clear what qualifications Leon Panetta brought to the post of Secretary of Defense. Was he the man who would make our CIA serve our military ambitions? Was he the man to subordinate our Military to our CIA? Having protected our CIA from criminal prosecutions over torture, was he going to set our Military above the Law as well? 

   Now he proposes that our military shouldn't be sent into harm's way. Perhaps only our diplomats should risk hostile fire?  If he aspires to running the Swiss Guard, he has the wrong employer.

Barry Haskell Levine

A Sad Green Story

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/opinion/brooks-a-sad-green-story.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 9:44 AM
Subject: re: A Sad Green Story
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   To hear David Brooks tell it, our Congress' hyperpartisan dysfunction is president Obama's fault. I ain't buying it. President Obama labored heroically for years to heal the rancor that has been the culture of Congress since New Gingrich's heyday.  In this, he has not succeeded. GOP strategists have preferred to destroy the planet that we will leave to our children rather than to accept that president Obama--or vice president Gore--was right on anything.

  It's seventeen years since senator Bill Bradley walked away from a congress that had already become "dysfunctional" long before president Obama arrived in Washington. As he puts it "we can all do better".

Barry Haskell Levine

A Grand Experiment to Rein In Climate Change

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/science/earth/in-california-a-grand-experiment-to-rein-in-climate-change.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 12:54 PM
Subject: RE: A Grand Experiment to Rein In Climate Change
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor;

     As important as capturing carbon into woodlands is, it cannot be enough. Even if we were to restore the Earth's forests to their state before the Industrial Revolution, there is still the matter of the gigatons of carbon we have moved from fossil pools to our atmosphere and oceans in the last two centuries. To repair that damage, we must not only capture carbon through photosynthesis, but we must keep that carbon from cycling back into carbon dioxide and methane.  In essence, through biochar, we must rebuild the fossil fuel pool and must refrain from burning it.

Barry Haskell Levine

The Policy Verdict I

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/opinion/brooks-the-policy-verdict-i.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 8:59 AM
Subject: re: The Policy Verdict I
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  If you require a columnist to submit enough words, over time he'll write just about anything, if only as filler. And so David Brooks comes to "replace the fee-for-service system" for healthcare. Nothing else in his column points in this direction. In his hands, it's an empty buzz-phrase to make Paul Ryan's intellectually bankrupt voucher system seem somehow hip. But it is the core of the conversation America needs to have. As long as physicians are "paid to stick in more tubes" we will go on prolonging dying rather than extending life and our healthcare costs will inexorably grow until they consume our entire economy.

Barry Haskell Levine

The Patent, Used as a Sword

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?ref=todayspaper

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When professor Kesan argues that the current patent system works, one must note that he makes his living inside that patent law system. Every megabuck court case is billable hours for him and for the lawyers he trains. But it is a system fundamentally skewed to the powerful, who can afford years and lawyers for these battles. OK for a drug company or a cellphone manufacturer with billions in annual revenues, but wholly prohibitive to a lone innovator who may have the invention that will make life on earth better in the new century.

F.B.I. Agents Scour Ruins of Attacked U.S. Diplomatic Compound in Libya

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/africa/fbi-agents-scour-ruins-of-attacked-us-compound-in-libya.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 1:28 PM
Subject: re: F.B.I. Agents Scour Ruins of Attacked U.S. Diplomatic Compound in Libya
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    What was the nature of this "diplomatic compound" in Benghazi? We have established that it was neither an embassy nor a consulate, and that it had a substantial C.I.A. contingent.  Subtracting those, was there a legitimate diplomatic mission at all? Was our ambassador sent there merely to lend a false veneer of respectability to a nest of spies? While we mourn the loss of ambassador Stevens and his staffers, we mustn't balk at asking why we continue sending Americans into harm's way.

Barry Haskell Levine

Moderate Mitt Returns!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/opinion/brooks-moderate-mitt-returns.html?ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 9:16 AM
Subject: re: Moderate Mitt Returns!
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  Like president Bush gazing into Vladimir Putin's eyes, David Brooks watched the post-Etch-A-Sketch Romney on Wednesday and proclaims it "a more authentic version of himself".  He certainly has had enough versions to choose from. By now, Mitt come down on both sides of almost everything, including the truth. Look for this debate footage to play endlessly in the coming weeks, as team Obama uses clips of it to illustrate Romney's inconsistencies, flip-flops and lies.  "Winning" a couple more debates like that one could cost him dearly.

Barry Haskell Levine

Inquiry Cites Flaws in Counterterrorism Offices

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/us/inquiry-cites-flaws-in-regional-counterterrorism-offices.html?pagewanted=all

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 8:42 AM
Subject: re: Inquiry Cites Flaws in Counterterrorism Offices
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     The Department of Homeland Security and its fusion centers were brought to us by the same wisemen who promoted our National Security Advisor for her failures of 9/11. Anyone who expected them to advance national security rather than the centralization of all power into the fist of a police state is a fool. The scandal is not that they are ineffectual in their stated mission, but that they have been tolerated and funded so long.

Barry Haskell Levine

A.O.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/opinion/aos.html?ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 8:21 AM
Subject: re: A.O.S.
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  We miss Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. Let one example stand for all. In 1971, he defied pressure from the White House and from the Pentagon and the threat of imprisonment to publish the Pentagon Papers.  He saw clearly that the  American electorate needed to go into the presidential election of 1972 with the best information available to make their choice. His successors have not consistently shown as much spine. The story of illegal warrantless wiretapping was quashed under pressure from the White House.  Only after the presidential election of 2004 did the electorate learn that one of the major candidates had been running a vast criminal enterprise. We miss Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, and our democracy is less legitimate for his passing.

Barry Haskell Levine