Share the View: Islamic State's Foreign Recruits

Share The View

THE LATEST OPINIONS FROM BLOOMBERG VIEW

FEBRUARY 12, 2015 bloombergview.com

IMMIGRATION The Editors: "President Barack Obama is right to propose tripling U.S. aid to Central America -- to help El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras do their part to stem the flow of unaccompanied minors to the U.S. Now, it's up to Congress and those countries to see that the $1 billion package is effectively spent." Read more... HEALTH-CARE REFORM Christopher Flavelle: "For all but the most generous Obamacare plans, out-of-pocket payments are usually higher than for employer-based insurance -- in some cases, drastically so." Read more... UKRAINE CRISIS Marc Champion: Three charts in the latest Military Balance "lend some much-needed realism to the ongoing debate over whether the U.S. should become directly involved in arming Ukraine." Read more... Noah Feldman: "Should the U.S. arm Ukraine for its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin? Before you say 'Duh,' consider this: Arms shipments alone are almost never enough to enable a smaller, weaker actor to defeat a big-time power." Read more... DECLASSIFIED Eli Lake: "Aspiring jihadists looking to join the Islamic State army are often lured to the front lines with promises of changing the course of history and reclaiming a lost Islamic empire. But at least for the less-skilled foreign recruits, the experience of fighting for the new caliphate is often brief and bloody." Read more... TECH Katie Benner: "If you want to get a deeper understanding of the fraught relationship between the technology industry and American schools, I can recommend two recent articles that might help." Read more... EUROPE @Bershidsky (Leonid Bershidsky): Strauss-Kahn's naivete defense is no defense at all. Read more... MEDIA Clive Crook: "According to the Boston Globe, Jon Stewart shaped the cultural attitudes of a generation. ... There's something wrong with a generation whose involvement with politics is mostly confined to laughing at it." Read more... Zara Kessler: A television landscape without Brian Williams is a less sunny place; "without Stewart it's a troubling one." Read more... Margaret Carlson: "There had been signs. He had become a factory of satire and social commentary, attracting and developing talent that often bid fair to surpass the master." Read more... WALL STREET Matt Levine: "Here's a great story from the Wall Street Journal about how Bank of America used its insured bank to finance tax avoidance trades for hedge funds." Read more... CONGRESS Jonathan Bernstein: "Funding for the Department of Homeland Security is about to expire, and Republicans are bickering about what to do next. It's time for a quick course in Shutdown Showdown 101." Read more... LAW Megan McArdle: "We don't get a lot of feel-good stories around these parts. So here's your daily smile: In the St. Louis area, a group of folks started an urban farm on land owned by someone else." Read more... U.S. ECONOMY Justin Fox: "The labor struggle brewing at the West Coast's ports feels like an episode from another time." Read more... Noah Smith: "Modern macroeconomists think that recessions and booms are random fluctuations around a trend." What if this model is wrong?Read more...