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MR. PETRAS: Well, good afternoon, everyone. If I could have your attention, we will--we are going to start the afternoon program now. I have one question, David Terry, if you [...]

The article presents various hypothetical political platforms offered by a variety of people in the United States. The United States Democratic Party platform to be presented at the upcoming convention of 2004 has been tailored to suit the positions of the presidential nominee and to raise as few contentious issues as possible. That may be good strategy as defined by political pollsters and strategists, but to our mind it represents a missed opportunity to put forward and debate some fresh, possibly unconventional ideas. So we have asked a disparate group of people--ranging from retired newsman Walter Cronkite to hip-hop activist Bakari Kitwana--what platform each of them would like to propose. Their answers were by turns provocative, quirky and unexpected. We offer them in the hope that voters will be stirred to come up with their own "planks" and then try to turn them into reality.

The U.S. government was threatening to undermine perhaps the best chance in a generation for a cooperative relationship with Russia that would make the world safer. The U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons reduction agreement, announced May 13 and scheduled to be signed when U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Moscow on May 24, confirms our worst fears. The treaty calls for each side to reduce its strategic warheads from about 6,000 to between 2,200 and 1,700. On the surface, those cuts may seem to be historic, as the White House is claiming.

The article focuses on world politics. The 13-million-member AFL-CIO had much to celebrate at its biennial convention in Los Angeles in mid-October. The two-decade hemorrhaging of union membership has been stanched. Labor has placed trade policy on the national agenda. And the cold war-era break between Big Labor and leftish social movements has mended, as unions once again reach out to religious, community and political-activist groups. Palestinian and Israeli negotiators at last began final-status negotiations on Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders and water rights. Of all the issues at stake, the fate of the refugees seems the least amenable to compromise. Israel's consensus is that there can be no Palestinian right of return to any territory within its pre-1967 borders.

Presents speech by the United States Congressman from the state of Ohio, given before The City Club of Cleveland in Cleveland, Ohio, dealing with the issue of international trade and investment, dated January 9, 1998.

The article discusses some of the socio-political updates related to the U.S. When U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan delivered a reform package instead of slash-and-burn cuts, the Congressional grinches attacked it with their usual gracelessness. Annan's plan aims at increasing administrative efficiency but would direct the savings to development efforts. The crisis in Medicare is not its purported impending bankruptcy. One-sixth of Medicare beneficiaries-generally the healthiest and youngest-are currently enrolled in health maintenance organizations run mostly by private insurance companies. The most expensive 10 percent of Medicare beneficiaries cost the U.S. government an average of $37,000 per person per year.

As a Russian studies major at Yale in the 1970s, I observed Soviet 'elections' that were conducted more fairly than the 2002 Yale Corporation's board of trustees election. Why is [...]

Even in the face of constant media and elite support, the people have grave reservations about U.S. trade policy. No issue in front of the American public gets more one-sided [...]

Last July, I went to Nicaragua and visited with a young woman named Cristina Sanchez. She lives in a crowded, rundown colonia called Tipitapa. Six miles outside Managua, Tipitapa is [...]

Well, you've outdone yourselves. When a majority of Americans believe Congress should establish a prescription drug benefit for Medicare beneficiaries to buy your products, you protest because you're afraid you [...]

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to articles from the June 9, 2008, issue of "Time," including "In Carter's Shadow," "Eating Bugs," and "What (Not) to Wear to Work."

The crisis in Medicare is not its purported impending bankruptcy. The real crisis is the Gingrich-Lott-Archer plan to privatize the best government program in American history. One-sixth of Medicare beneficiaries [...]