“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.
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Paul Krugman: We Don’t Need No Education
Hope springs eternal. For a few hours I was ready to applaud Mitt Romney for speaking honestly about what his calls for smaller government actually mean.
Never mind. Soon the candidate was being his normal self, denying having said what he said and serving up a bunch of self-contradictory excuses. But let’s talk about his accidental truth-telling, and what it reveals.
In the remarks Mr. Romney later tried to deny, he derided President Obama: “He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers.” Then he declared, “It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
Bill Boyarsky: Who’s Not Putting Americans Back to Work
The Federal Reserve report on Americans’ finances documents the terrible damage the Great Recession has inflicted on the nation, a toll that has been clear to its victims since the collapse began. The report’s dry language doesn’t begin to describe how bad things really are, and it stops short of blaming those who perpetuate the misery.
In pursuing this story since 2007, I and other journalists have seen foreclosed homes and visited unemployment offices, free food distributions, community health centers and mental health counselors. Former donors were now coming to free health clinics and food banks to get help themselves, an experience that will be forever remembered by their families. Lost homes, jobs and hopes are the legacy of this period.
It had to happen sooner or later: Jamie Dimon, the bank CEO who’s become the public face for our greedy and corrupt banking system, is openly backing the austerity plan pushed by former Senator Alan Simpson, the arrogant and abusive voice of our country’s bought-and-sold elite “bipartisan” consensus. Will the Democratic Party led by Barack Obama stand up to that corporate consensus, or submit to it?
The “Simpson Bowles” plan is designed to force the American people to pay for the wealth, greed, and criminality of the banking class that Jamie Dimon has chosen to represent. The day after Dimon’s testimony another institution announced that it was planning to impose the Simpson Bowles austerity plan on us: the Presidential Administration of Barack Obama, as represented by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
Sahar Aziz: Selective Counterterrorism Practices Threaten Social Mobility of American Muslims
At the Brookings’ U.S. Islamic World Forum in Doha, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough was asked whether President Obama would implement his Cairo speech commitment to stop government discrimination against American Muslims. Because Bush’s counterterrorism practices had stigmatized Muslims as the most distrusted minority in America, Obama’s pledge was particularly salient.
But instead of vowing to stop Obama’s continuation of Bush’s policies, McDonough pointed to American Muslims’ success in business and the professions. Rather than address the merits of legitimate grievances, McDonough diverted attention with a generic talking point that disregards the impediments to Muslims’ success as a result of profiling, selective prosecution, and discrimination in the post-9/11 era.
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Campaign Cash Is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
If you’re visiting a candidate this summer and looking for a thoughtful house gift, might we suggest a nice Super PAC? Thanks to the Supreme Court and Citizens United, they’re all the rage among the mega-wealthy. All it takes is a little paperwork and a wad of cash and presto, you can have, as The Washington Post describes it, a “highly customized, highly personalized” political action committee.
It’s easy — Super PACs come in all amounts and party affiliations. You don’t have to spend millions, although a gift that size certainly won’t be turned aside. Cable TV tycoon Marc Nathanson got a Super PAC for his friend, longtime Democratic Congressman Howard Berman from California, and all it cost was $100,000. Down in North Carolina, Republican congressional candidate George Holding received a handsome Super PAC that includes $100,000 each from an aunt and uncle and a quarter of a million from a bunch of his cousins. Yes, nothing says family like a great big, homemade batch of campaign contributions.
Ari Melber: Exposing Obama’s Not-So-Secret War
Washington has many “secrets,” but few secrets. The Obama administration will face a test on the difference this month, in a case probing a major national security program.
The administration is defending a federal court challenge to one of its most significant operations in the war against Al Qaeda: the drone program of targeted killings. President Barack Obama’s lawyers insist the entire program is a “secret” – so it can’t even be hauled into court in the first place.
We know the program exists, however – thanks to the president’s own statements. We even know a little about how it works, based on the many leaks that drove detailed coverage of the drone killings, including that big New York Times exposé on how the “kill list” is made. Whether those leaks were illegal disclosures or acceptable protocol – often a political distinction – took on a new urgency Friday, when the Justice Department announced an investigation into the administration’s endangered secrets.
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