“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”
Robert Reich: The Coming Shutdowns and Showdowns: What’s Really at Stake
Wisconsin is in a showdown. Washington is headed for a government shutdown.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker won’t budge. He insists on delivering a knockout blow to public unions in his state (except for those, like the police, who supported his election).
In DC, House Republicans won’t budge on the $61 billion cut they pushed through last week, saying they’ll okay a temporary resolution to keep things running in Washington beyond March 4 only if it includes many of their steep cuts – among which are several that the middle class and poor depend on.
Republicans say “we’ve” been spending too much, and they’re determined to end the spending with a scorched-earth policies in the states (Republican governors in Ohio, Indiana, and New Jersey are reading similar plans to decimate public unions) and shutdowns in Washington.
There’s no doubt that government budgets are in trouble. The big lie is that the reason is excessive spending.
New York Times Editorial: The Dirty Energy Party
President Obama has decided that the failure of last year’s comprehensive climate bill does not have to mean the death of climate policy. Instead of imposing a mandatory cap and stiff price on carbon emissions, as the bill would have done, the president is offering a more modest approach involving sharply targeted and well-financed research into breakthrough technologies, cleaner fuels and more efficient cars and trucks.
This is all part of a broader investment-for-the-future strategy that he outlined in his State of the Union address, and it all makes sense as a way of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, creating more green jobs and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Bob Herbert: At Grave Risk
Buried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock market surge and the economy’s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who, economically, are going down for the count.
A 46-year-old teacher in Charlotte, Vt., who has been unable to find a full-time job and is weighed down with debt, wrote to his U.S. senator, Bernie Sanders:
“I am financially ruined. I find myself depressed and demoralized and my confidence is shattered. Worst of all, as I hear more and more talk about deficit reduction and further layoffs, I have the agonizing feeling that the worst may not be behind us.”
Ari Melber: Can Egypt’s Internet Movement Be Exported?
“Official Washington had no appetite for regime change in Egypt,” notes Evgeny Morozov, a leading skeptic of the power of digital uprisings, “while Silicon Valley managed to contribute to undermining Mubarak.”
As the world has now seen, the resilient protestors who gathered in Cairo were continuously broadcast, and often organized, through social networks built in Palo Alto. Yet Morozov, an author and agitator who has met with democracy activists in Cairo, cautions against downloading the wrong lessons from Egypt, as he recently explained in an interview with The Nation.
Egypt’s transformation does not illuminate our understanding of how most dictators combat web uprisings, he argues, because Egypt did not really fight the web in the first place.
Dean Baker: Greenspan’s Incompetence Badgers Wisconsin’s Workers
Alan Greenspan has been strangely missing from the fierce battle over the future of public-sector unions in Wisconsin and other states. His absence is strange because he bears more responsibility for the current conflict than anyone else alive.
The reason is simple. Mr. Greenspan’s incredible incompetence in allowing the $8 trillion housing bubble to grow unchecked created the fiscal crisis that is gripping Wisconsin and most other states.
To be clear, states always face financial stress in economic downturns. Most states had to struggle to balance their budgets in 2001-2002 and earlier in the earlier 1990-1991 recession. During a recession tax revenues fall. Consumers buy less, which means less sales tax revenue. Workers earn less money, which means less income tax. And property values fall, leading to less property tax revenue.
John Nichhols: Wisconsin’s Political Crisis Is A Good Deal More Serious Than Its Fiscal Crisis
Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau was created in 1968 by a Republican governor, Warren Knowles, and a Republican-controlled state legislature.
The purpose was to establish a non-partisan agency that would provide honest fiscal analysis and information for Wisconsin Legislators. Across more than four decades, the bureau has done just that, earning the respect of legislators from both parties, including a young Scott Walker, who frequently cited the bureau when he served in the state Assembly.
Less than a month ago, a Fiscal Bureau memo reported that the state had a $121.4 million surplus through the remainder of the current fiscal year.
That is a fact that is now under attack by Governor Walker, who the conservative publication Human Events refers to as the “new hero” of the Republican right. Walker argues– as Republicans and Democrats have acknowledged for some time — that the state’s fiscal house is not in order and that unsettled issues relating to a payment due Minnesota after the canceling of a tax agreement, as well as rising health care and prison costs, could well create a shortfall before the end of the year.
Peter Neill: Lest We Forget: Re-Calculating the True Cost of Deepwater Horizon
Just one more look back, please, lest we forget. The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico provides a telling example of how to calculate the true cost of “progress.” As economists join with scientists, we are moving from observation and study to predictable measurement and advance calculation of the true value of natural resources — the cost of their development, of their loss, of the mitigation and adaptation required by their consequence, and of their implementation without first taking into consideration the broader and deeper financial implications for the community, immediately and downstream.
Historically, the conventional corporate argument, typically made to local communities, regulators, and state and federal legislators, has been that the presence of an offshore drilling industry be valued in terms of jobs created, taxes and royalties paid, and value added to the overall financial health of the local, national, and indeed global economy. Given the quarterly financial reports of the oil companies, this evaluation adds up to substantial profit. But so much is left out of the calculation.
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