“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: Raise That Wage
President Obama laid out a number of good ideas in his State of the Union address. Unfortunately, almost all of them would require spending money – and given Republican control of the House of Representatives, it’s hard to imagine that happening.
One major proposal, however, wouldn’t involve budget outlays: the president’s call for a rise in the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9, with subsequent increases in line with inflation. The question we need to ask is: Would this be good policy? And the answer, perhaps surprisingly, is a clear yes. [..]
So Mr. Obama’s wage proposal is good economics. It’s also good politics: a wage increase is supported by an overwhelming majority of voters, including a strong majority of self-identified Republican women (but not men). Yet G.O.P. leaders in Congress are opposed to any rise. Why? They say that they’re concerned about the people who might lose their jobs, never mind the evidence that this won’t actually happen. But this isn’t credible.
New York Times Editorial: About Those Black Sites
The details of American antiterrorism policies, put in place after 9/11, are still largely hidden, but more pieces of this sordid history are dribbling out.
A valuable new report issued this month by the Open Society Justice Initiative documents the extent of the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of extraordinary rendition – the practice of abducting suspected terrorists and transferring them to countries with reputations for torturing prisoners during interrogations.
If you want to appreciate just how conservative the fiscal conventional wisdom is, consider that hotbed of Bolshevism, the Federal Reserve. Yes, the central bank that progressives love to hate is today the most expansionist outfit in town.
Although they are arguing about the details, both President Obama and the Republican Congress have committed to another $1.5 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade, just about guaranteeing a prolonged period of high unemployment, an under-performing economy, and flat or declining wages for most working people.
Consider this thoughtful speech by the Fed’s vice chairman, Janet Yellen, delivered last week at an event jointly sponsored by the AFL-CIO (!) and the German Social Democratic (!) Friedrich Ebert Foundation, titled “A Trans-Atlantic Agenda for Shared Prosperity.” It was light years more progressive than the sort of fiscal summits that the White House has blessed.
Dean Baker: Why Are Proponents of the Chained CPI So Scared of Data?
Like the global warming deniers, proponents of basing the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) on a chained CPI are scared to death of data. They are all anxious to assert that the chained CPI is a more accurate measure of the cost of living and therefore it should provide the basis for the COLA. However, they have no research on which to base this assertion. [..]
While no one knows what a full elderly CPI will show, we do know that switching the COLA to a chained CPI will reduce lifetime Social Security benefits by an average of about 3 percent. This doesn’t raise a huge amount of money, but it would be a big hit to seniors, 70 percent of whom rely on Social Security for more than half of their income.
George Zornick? ‘Forward on Climate’ Rally Sends a Message to Obama: No Keystone
Over 35,000 people descended on the National Mall in Washington on Sunday, huddled together against a stinging cold wind to deliver a message of opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Their audience was really just one man, the only one with the power to stop the project: Barack Obama.
“This movement has been building for a long time. And one of the things that’s built it is everybody’s desire to give the president the support he needs to block this Keystone pipeline,” Bill McKibben, president of 350.org, told reporters just before the rally began. “The time for him to stand up now. He’s been saying good things about climate change, but the easiest, simplest, purest action he could take is to not build this long fuse to one of the biggest carbon bombs on earth.”
Peter Hart: Are Iranian Magnets the New Aluminum Tubes?
In the run up to the Iraq War, the New York Times (9/8/02) famously reported on an Iraqi scheme to procure special aluminum tubes that could only have one purpose: Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein was attempting to “buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes,” and the “diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq’s nuclear program.” The claims were false-Iraq, as it turned out, had no nuclear program-but still hugely influential
Yesterday, on the front page of the Washington Post (2/14/13), reporter Joby Warrick has the scoop on what Iran is evidently up to: [..]
It’s worth noting that back in 2002 there was one newspaper that poured cold water on the Iraq tubes story. It was the Washington Post. The reporter? The same Joby Warrick who wrote this story about Iranian magnets. And whose expertise did he rely on? David Albright of ISIS-the very same person pushing the Iran story now.
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