Subject: Share the View -- on the Battle for Detroit and Balance of Diversity
From: "Bloomberg View -- Tobin Harshaw" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:41:45 -0500

_Share the View_
   _Bloomberg View _

A Quick Look at Bloomberg News's Opinion Section for Feb. 28,  2012

   Michigan threatens to be Mitt Romney's Waterloo, largely because of his
   controversial stance against the auto bailouts. And, even if he survives,
   won't President Obama have a general-election ace up his sleeve with the
   issue? "Truth is, there’s less distance between Obama and Romney on this
   than either cares to admit," respond the View editors. "Obama praises the
   role played by the United Automobile Workers and celebrates that he went to
   great lengths to rescue an iconic American industry from profligate
   management. It was, he boasts, taxpayer money well spent, with nary a word
   about union demands for unaffordable pension and health-care benefits in
   exchange for labor peace. This preferred line papers over a lot of what
   caused Detroit’s descent. Romney, on the other hand, cannot decide whether
   to attack the intervention as an improper use of public funds or praise it
   as a managed bankruptcy of the very kind he favored all along. Not the
   deftest of candidates, he does both." So, who's right? "The rescues,
   including the money spent by the outgoing President George W. Bush, came to
   $80 billion, about $17 billion of which taxpayers are unlikely to ever get
   back," admit the editors. "The bankruptcies also forced big concessions on
   all stakeholders in return for government support. Essentially, this was the
   right outcome -- one that the companies’ managers and the UAW (Obama’s
   praise for its role notwithstanding) both resisted ... The concessions
   demanded of shareholders, management, creditors and the UAW were severe.
   Obama has chosen not to mention the role the union played in bringing the
   industry so low in the first place, and likes to portray the terms extracted
   from it as a kind of noble sacrifice." [2]Link.
     Links:
       2. http://bloom.bg/z98SC6

   "The Supreme Court’s decision to hear a major case challenging
   affirmative-action policies at the University of Texas is widely seen as a
   sign that the five conservative justices in the majority are ready to do
   away with racial preferences in higher education," writes op-ed contributor
   Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. "The prevailing legal view is that such a ruling
   will reduce the number of black and Latino students at almost every
   selective college and graduate school. But why does that have to be the
   case?" It's a good question, and Trachtenberg, a former president of George
   Washington University, answers it himself: "For generations colleges were
   most inventive in finding ways to keep Jews and blacks out. Now they may
   have an opportunity to use their wits to find the legal means to admit and
   enroll multicultural classes without the use of affirmative action. My money
   is on the universities, which were, after all, open for business before the
   Constitution was drafted. Schools will work within the law, as they have in
   the past, and they will be creative in responding to any court ruling as
   they continue to fulfill their mission. After all, colleges are known for
   their creative interpretation of the classics -- whether they are by
   Shakespeare or the chief justice."[3] Link.
     Links:
       3. http://bloom.bg/x6Bp4F

   "This week, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government will host a
   conference called 'Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution,' whose goal
   is to 'educate ourselves and others about the possible contours of a
   one-state solution and the challenges that stand in the way of its
   realization.' ” reports View columnist Jeffrey Goldberg. "The conference
   will feature speakers such as Ali Abunimah, a veteran anti-Israel agitator,
   and Harvard’s own Stephen M. Walt, co-author with John Mearsheimer of the
   scapegoating Ur-text of anti-Israel argumentation, 'The Israel Lobby.' The
   one-staters posit that they ... don’t seek the expulsion of Jews from
   Palestine, they say, but instead the creation of a unified parliament that
   would represent all Arabs and Jews between the river and the sea. Instead of
   two ethnic-based states, they say, there would be one harmonious,
   pluralistic democracy." Easy for Harvard, not so much for Israel, says
   Goldberg: "In the best case, this new dystopia by the sea would be paralyzed
   by endless argument ... There are people, perhaps including some of the
   Harvard students organizing the conference, who advocate 'one-statism' out
   of naivete. But the leaders of the movement are not naive. They understand
   their project shares a goal with Hamas: the elimination of Israel as a
   homeland and haven for Jews." [4]Link.
     Links:
       4. http://bloom.bg/A5IeQJ

   Also, the View editors try to kick Puerto Rico's increasing drug habit;
   columnist Edward Glaeser argues that cash aid is better for the poor than
   food stamps; and columnist Ramesh Ponnuru says that small businesses
   are getting left out of the tax-reform discussion.

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