“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”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
New York Times Editorial: October Term, 2012
On Monday, the Supreme Court opens a new term with a menu of important cases that deal with affirmative action, criminal justice, the right of defendants to effective counsel and more. The court may soon choose to hear a controversial case that could redefine voting-rights law, and, later in the term, one or more cases involving same-sex marriage. [..]
The conservatives, including Mr. Roberts, have regularly, if narrowly, held sway in recent years. Where they come down on this important question of corporate accountability will say something significant about their respect for established international and American law – or their inclination to shape law as they see fit.
Paul Krugman: The Real Referendum
Republicans came into this campaign believing that it would be a referendum on President Obama, and that still-high unemployment would hand them victory on a silver platter. But given the usual caveats – a month can be a long time in politics, it’s not over until the votes are actually counted, and so on – it doesn’t seem to be turning out that way.
Yet there is a sense in which the election is indeed a referendum, but of a different kind. Voters are, in effect, being asked to deliver a verdict on the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, on Social Security, Medicare and, yes, Obamacare, which represents an extension of that legacy. Will they vote for politicians who want to replace Medicare with Vouchercare, who denounce Social Security as “collectivist” (as Paul Ryan once did), who dismiss those who turn to social insurance programs as people unwilling to take responsibility for their lives?
If the polls are any indication, the result of that referendum will be a clear reassertion of support for the safety net, and a clear rejection of politicians who want to return us to the Gilded Age. But here’s the question: Will that election result be honored?
Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., along with retired military officers Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer as well as former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein denounced President Barack Obama at a news conference Sept. 21 for overstepping his authority in wartime and warned that unless war powers are restored to Congress, the country could soon be involved in a battle with Iran.
The resolution comes at a time when tensions among Iran, the United States and Israel have intensified and could lead to what Col. Wilkerson described as an eruption of catastrophic violence in the Middle East.
Resolution HRC107, written by Jones and supported by 13 House members, is the latest attempt to restore one of the fundamental constitutional powers to Congress.
Patrick Cockburn: American Influence on the Middle East Is Past Its Peak – Someone Should Tell Them
Are the days of American predominance in the Middle East coming to an end or is US influence simply taking a new shape? How far is Washington, after refusing to try to keep Hosni Mubarak in power in Egypt, facing the same situation as the Soviet Union in 1989, when the police states it had sustained in Eastern Europe were allowed to collapse?
The US is obviously weaker than it was between 1979, when the then Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, signed the Camp David agreement and allied Egypt with the US, and 2004/05, when it became obvious to the outside world that the Iraq war was a disaster for America. At the time, General William Odom, a former head of the National Security Agency, the biggest US intelligence agency, rightly called it “the greatest strategic disaster in American history”. Since then, the verdict of the Iraq war has been confirmed in Afghanistan, where another vastly expensive US expeditionary force has failed to crush an insurgency. In the last few weeks alone, Taliban fighters have succeeded in storming Camp Bastion in Helmand province and destroying $200m worth of aircraft. So many American and allied soldiers have now been shot by Afghan soldiers and police that US advisers are under orders to wear full body armour when having tea with their local allies.
Simon Johnson: Scott Brown: ATM for the Big Banks
During the Dodd-Frank financial reform debate in early 2010, newly elected Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts was referred to as an ATM for the bankers — meaning that whenever they needed some more cash, they would stop by his office. It was not paper money he was handing out, of course, it was something much more valuable — rule changes that conferred a greater ability to take on reckless risk, damage consumers, and impose higher future costs on the taxpayer.
Mr. Brown had this ability because he represented the final vote needed to pass Dodd-Frank through the Senate. He could have asked for many things — including greater consumer protection, a more thorough investigation into mortgage practices, and reforms that would have cleaned up unscrupulous lenders. He asked for none of those changes — or anything else that would have made the financial system safer and fairer.
Instead, Senator Brown’s requests were designed to undermine the Volcker Rule — i.e., he was opposing sensible attempts to limit the ability of big banks to place highly dangerous bets (and to blow themselves up at great cost to the rest of us). Mr. Brown seems to have been particularly keen to allow big banks to invest in hedge funds of various kinds — and the Boston Globe reported recently that he has continued to push in this direction behind the scenes.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Mitt’s ‘Harvest’ Comments: Typical MBA-Speak … or an Omen of Alien Invasion?
David Corn at Mother Jones has released another Romney video. This one’s from a Bain Capital meeting in 1985 in which Romney says Bain’s business model is to acquire companies and then “harvest them at a significant profit” in five to eight years.
The word “harvest” has a creepy, sci-fi ring to it, which inspired me to make the image you see below. (My more serious policy-minded colleagues were clearly unimpressed.) And it brought back a horrifying scene in a white and sterile laboratory, one I’d seen many years ago and have never been able to forget.
But is this new video important?
On the one hand, that’s how business people talk all the time, which suggests it’s not much of a revelation. On the other hand, that’s how business people talk all the time.
Recent Comments