SUNDAY NEWS QUIZ
Artículo de THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN en “The New York Times” del 26/12/2004
Por
su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo
en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)
Con una
CARTA A LOS REYES MAGOS
a pie de título:
Queridos Reyes Magos: quiero pediros un regalo para los hermanos
del otro lado del mar, pues mi amigo Friedman, que no es nada tonto, hace
tiempo que viene avisando de que tienen la línea de flotación demasiado al
descubierto. El dice que intentan ahorrar demasiado y se les va a ir el barco
al fondo. Por eso quiero pediros que, si pasais por allí, les regaleis algo de
sabiduría para dirigir bien su nave, que yo de eso no sé, ni es la mía. Pero me
preocupa su seguridad y felicidad.
Para nosotros querría pediros un gobierno mejor o que le regalarais
una brújula al que tenemos, que anda perdido por el bosque y se lo van a comer
los lobos. Gracias y hasta el año que viene.
Luis.
My wife constantly regales me about her favorite National Public Radio show, "Wait Wait
...Don't Tell Me." The show features three journalists who have to answer
questions about the week's news. Some of the news stories they are quizzed
about seem totally unbelievable, while others are straightforward. Well, this
is my last column for 2004, so let's play a little "Wait Wait ... Don't
Tell Me." I'll give you 10 news stories from the past few weeks and you
tell me what they all have in common.
1. The report that Colin Powell told
President Bush a few weeks ago that we do not have enough troops in Iraq and
that we don't control the terrain. 2. The report that the Pentagon's $10 billion-a-year
effort to build an antimissile shield, and have a basic ground-based version in
place by the end of this year, ran into difficulty two weeks ago when the first
test in almost two years failed because the interceptor missile didn't take
off. 3. The report that the Bush-Republican budget for 2005 contained a $100
million cut in federal funding to the National Science Foundation. 4. The
report that at a time when young Americans are competing head to head with
young Chinese, Indians and Eastern Europeans more than ever, the Bush team is
trimming support for the Pell grant program, which helps poor and working-class
young Americans get a higher education. (The change will save $300 million,
while some 1.3 million students will receive smaller Pell grants.)
5. The report this month that children in
Asian countries once again surpassed U.S. fourth graders and eighth graders in
the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. (U.S. eighth
graders did improve their scores from four years ago, but U.S. fourth graders
remained stagnant.) A week earlier, the Program for International Student
Assessment showed U.S. 15-year-olds scoring below average compared with those
in other countries when asked to apply math skills to real-life tasks, the A.P.
reported. 6. The report this month that the Bush administration has reduced
America's contribution to global food aid programs intended to help the world's
hungry feed themselves. (The Bush team said the cut was necessary to keep our
deficit under control!) 7. The report that U.S. military spending this year is
running at about $450 billion.
Wait, wait, don't go way; there's more:
8. The report that Donald Rumsfeld was confronted by
troops in Iraq about the fact that they did not have enough armor
on their vehicles and were having to scrounge for makeshift armor
to protect themselves. 9. The report that among President Bush's top priorities
in his second term is to simplify the tax code and to make the sweeping tax
cuts from his first term permanent. (The cost to the Treasury for doing so, the
A.P. reported, would be over a trillion.) And finally: 10. The report that the
U.S. dollar continued to hover near record lows against the euro.
So what is the common denominator of all
these news stories? Wait, wait, don't tell me. I want
to tell you. The common denominator is a country with a totally contradictory
and messed-up set of priorities.
We face two gigantic national challenges
today: One is the challenge to protect America in the wake of the new terrorist
threats, which has involved us in three huge military commitments -
Afghanistan, Iraq and missile defense. And the other
is the challenge to strengthen American competitiveness in the wake of an
expanding global economy, where more and more good
jobs require higher levels of education, and those good jobs will increasingly
migrate to those countries with the brainpower to do them. In the face of these
two national challenges, we have an administration committed to radical tax
cuts, which, one can already see, are starting to affect everything from the
number of troops we can deploy in Iraq to the number of students we can
properly educate at our universities. And if we stay on this course, the
trade-offs are only going to get worse.
Something has to give. We can't protect
America with the grand strategy George Bush has embarked on and strengthen our
students with the skills they need and cut taxes, as if we didn't have a care
in the world.
If we were actually having a serious
national debate, this is what we would be discussing, but alas, 9/11 has been
deftly exploited to choke any debate. Which reminds me of my
wife's other favorite NPR radio show. It's
called "Whad'ya Know?" It always opens the
same way. The announcer shouts to the studio audience, "Whad'ya know?" And they shout
back. "Not Much. You?"