“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 Kuttner: Obama Holds the Cards — If He Will Play Them Well
If President Obama were to invoke that emergency authority to prevent the economy from collapsing as money markets began shunning U.S. government bonds, it is hard to imagine Republican leaders suing the president… to demand what? That he let the economy go off a cliff? And it is even harder to imagine the Supreme Court, even a Court as partisan and corrupted as the Roberts Court, voting to tie Obama’s hands in an economic emergency that — keep in mind — is entirely contrived.
Obama, the Great Conciliator, finally showed a bit of irritation and a bit of spine this past week. It would be perverse of him to reward Republican intransigence by agreeing to an 11th hour deal that, by definition, would have to be on almost entirely Republican terms to be approved by the Tea-Party besotted House of Representatives.
Better to show some leadership in an emergency, invoke the 14th Amendment, calm money markets, and leave the Republicans sputtering mad. Obama might even come to enjoy exercising leadership.
New York Times Editorial: Consumers vs. the Banks
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officially opened its doors last week a year after it was established under the financial reform law. Score one for consumers. But the fight to create a bureau strong enough and independent enough to really take on the banks isn’t over.
Federal watchdogs have given the bureau stellar marks for getting up and running in a timely, professional manner. The bureau has already begun to tackle crucial issues, like simplifying mortgage disclosure requirements and handling credit card complaints.
Banks and their Congressional allies are pushing back hard, determined to weaken the bureau. It is not clear how much political capital President Obama is willing to spend to stop that from happening.
At the time of writing, President Obama’s hoped-for “Grand Bargain” with Republicans is apparently dead. And I say good riddance. I’m no more eager than other rational people (a category that fails to include many Congressional Republicans) to see what happens if the debt limit isn’t raised. But what the president was offering to the G.O.P., especially on Medicare, was a very bad deal for America.
Specifically, according to many reports, the president offered both means-testing of Medicare benefits and a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. The first would be bad policy; the second would be terrible policy. And it would almost surely be terrible politics, too
Ari Melber: On the Compromiser-in-Chief and Elizabeth Drew’s Article
“I’ve never won a tough election,” concedes Paul Krugman, “but neither has Obama!”
The Nobel Prize-winning economist is fuming about the White House’s “ludicrous” view of what independents want — a President, apparently, who embraces anti-spending conservatism.
That’s the core thesis in a new article by Elizabeth Drew, which Krugman flagged Sunday and is now roiling the liberal blogosphere. Drew, 76, is one of the good ones – she spent 19 years as the New Yorker’s Washington correspondent, authored 13 books, and has an intimate yet relentlessly independent outlook on Washington. In the New York Review of Books, her political essays are originally reported and exhaustive; this one runs 4,800 words and features some telling anonymous quotes from Democrats in high places.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Why Are Discredited “Agencies” Like S&P Dictating Our Economic Future?
“Who does Standard & Poor’s think it is?” asks Matt Miller, the reasonable and congenial host who represents the “center” on NPR’s “Left, Right, and Center.” Miller’s understandably outraged that this discredited organization still has so much power and influence. But he’s asking the wrong question.
S&P knows exactly what it is, and so should everyone else. It’s the for-profit company which, while masquerading as a credit rating “agency,” bartered its coveted AAA ratings for increased profits. The real question is why? Why does S&P still have the power to cost the government billions of dollars in added interest payments, which is what would happen if they downgraded our credit rating?
The pronouncements of these for-profit “agencies” have no more credibility than the murmured compliments of an overpriced escort in a candlelit hotel room. So why do they still have the power to endanger the financial security of millions of Americans?
Jeffrey Sachs: Budgetary Deceit and America’s Decline
Every part of the budget debate in the U.S. is built on a tissue of willful deceit. Consider the Republican Party’s double-mantra that the deficit results from “runaway spending” and that more tax cuts are the key to economic growth. Republicans claim that the budget deficit, around 10 percent of GDP, has been caused only by a rise in outlays. This is blatantly untrue. The deficit results roughly equally from a fall of tax revenues as a share of GDP and a rise of spending as a share of GDP.
On both sides of the ledger — spending and taxes — part of the shift results from the weak economy (“cyclical factors”) and part from long-term trends. Spending, for example, is higher in part because of unemployment compensation, food stamps, and other federal spending to help the downtrodden in a weak economy. That’s the “cyclical” component. Part of the higher spending reflects long-term patterns, such as rising health care costs and an aging population, as well as America’s chronic addiction to wrongheaded wars and military occupations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Matthew Rothschild: No Wonder Obama Is Losing Support from the Left
CNN has just come out with a poll that shows Obama losing support from his left flank.
“Roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he’s not been liberal enough,” the poll said. “Obama’s approval rating among liberals has dropped to 71 percent, the lowest point in his presidency.”
Overall, the poll had Obama with an approval-disapproval rating at 45%-54%.
For anyone within shouting distance of most progressive communities, this is not a surprise.
The dissatisfaction with Obama has been building steadily over the past three years, and it has grown more audible by the month.
While he spoke progressive on the campaign trail, Obama has, for the most part, governed from the corporate center right.
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