“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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Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: In debt deal, Republicans aren’t surrendering anything
The government remains closed. The unimaginable – default on our national debt – looms, with unknown but foreboding consequence. Tea party Republicans remain willing to undermine trust in the full faith and credit of the United States in this unnecessary and manufactured crisis. And for some, the impending calamity seems to increase rather than temper their lunacy. At the right-wing Values Voter Summit this week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) claimed that if Republicans refuse to lift the debt ceiling and the United States defaults, it would be an impeachable offense by the president. Go figure.
In Washington, this folly is measured by poll numbers. Republicans, and particularly the tea party, are “losing” because their public approval numbers have plummeted. Republicans are said to have “surrendered,” since they abandoned their threat to default on U.S. debts unless Democrats agreed to defund or delay Obamacare. Now Senate Republicans are offering to reopen the government and fund it at current levels only until mid-January. Supporters of the deal argue that it would allow for negotiations on a real budget before the next harsh across-the-board sequester cuts kick in, but it means that Republicans will use the threat of the sequester – and the next round of the debt ceiling showdown – to exact longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits.
Surrender? Any more “victories” like this, and Democrats will end up paying annual tribute to Republican party coffers. If Democrats accept these terms, it will only encourage Republicans to hold the country hostage over and over again.
Karin Higgins: Congress and the President: Just Because You Were Bullied, Don’t Take It Out on Our Seniors
Let’s try to remember a lesson we all should have learned as kids. Just because you were picked on by the neighborhood bully is no excuse to go home and kick the dog or punch your little brother.
Maybe some inside the Beltway need a refresher course. Just because a handful on the right have shut down government and threatened default on the debt that’s no excuse to embrace proposals to slash Medicare and Social Security.
But that is exactly what is on the agenda, the “compromise” reward for those who engineered the lunacy of the last two weeks with the attempt to reverse the results of last November’s election by refusing to fund government services or pay the debt unless the Affordable Care Act is defunded or repealed.
The Campaign to Fix the Debt, the $40 million dollar astroturf “supergroup” that CMD exposed on the cover of the Nation magazine, has shifted into high gear in an effort to leverage the debt ceiling crisis into cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Today, the group launched a six figure TV ad buy that reaches new heights of hypocrisy — and that is saying a lot.
Former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson and Morgan Stanley board member Erskine Bowles have long been spokespersons for Fix the Debt. The “folksy” Simpson: “For cryin’ out loud, Erskine, who isn’t fed up with what’s goin’ on in Washington?” The Bowles tsk tsk: “These politicians are playing games jerking our country around from crisis to crisis.”
This is rich from a group that has been hyping a debt and deficit crisis since its launch in July 2012, even though the deficit has been cut in half in recent years. In January 2013 Fix the Debt steering committee member and former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen admitted that Fix the Debt’s strategy was to create an “artificial crisis” to achieve a “grand bargain” on Medicare and Social Security.
Heather Mallick: 2013 Resembles 1927, A Terrifying Year
2013 is looking a lot like 1927, a scary year in American history.
I don’t know why you all seem to think it’s 2013. Clearly it is 1927. I just read Bill Bryson’s book on the American summer of that year – the glorious writer has an astonishing knack for narrative even on sedative subjects like baseball – and it fell from my nerveless fingers when I realized what he was trying to convey.
The world is holding 1927 all over again.
This is soul-chilling. I have had this Twilight Zone sensation before and I always restrain myself from asking total strangers if they notice anything funny about people’s hair and the background music. In London it is always next year. In Zara with its nylon dresses and boxy purses, it is still 1965, but in Topshop it’s 1975, just as it is in downtown Edmonton. In Harry Rosen it is the mid-’90s, the last time men were forced to wear suits, and at work, it is always Grade 7 all over again. Retro is in. I go into people’s homes now and wonder why they are trying to recreate my parents’ rec room.
Heidi Moore: In praise of empiricism: a Nobel prize for everyday economics
Fama, Shiller and Hansen are worthy winners for focusing on the messy reality of market behaviour, rather than abstract theories
This summer, I took a look at my retirement account. It was pathetic.
Scattered across a random group of mutual funds – growth, value, tech, emerging markets, what have you – my retirement dollars were all making skimpy profits, even though the market was good. The stockpickers running those funds had one job – to do better than the S&P 500 – and they were clearly failing.
I moved my entire retirement nest egg into an index fund, which essentially just imitates the S&P 500 with no stockpicking or other funny stuff. The result: my little nest egg ballooned by thousands of dollars in just a few months.
I forgot to thank one man for my move: Eugene Fama. The man who won the Nobel memorial award in economics Monday discovered years ago that stockpicking was a fool’s game; you can’t really beat the market. An entire industry of index funds exists because of Fama’s research.
His two co-winners are also men who care what happens in the real world. Economics has a reputation as wonky, nerdy discipline that loves theories that are pure and distant from humanity, like cottony clouds, and hates to get its hands dirty with real-world concerns. This year’s Nobel prize in economics is finally, a victory for the study of human nature.
Rachael Dunlop: Anti-vaccination activists should not be given a say in the media
99% of experts support the view that childhood vaccinations are safe and effective, whilst 1% do not. Why, then, would the mainstream media give any kind of air time to science deniers?
Imagine this scenario: you’re covering a story on circumnavigating the globe so you interview a geographer to get their views, but for the sake of balance you also get a representative from the Flat Earth Society. Seems absurd right?
Sure. But as a scientist, I see this kind of ridiculous “balance” happening all the time in stories concerning science and medicine. And it’s not just bad because it insults my delicate scientifical sensibilities, research now tells us that it can actually be harmful.
Let’s look at vaccination as an example. Assume that 99% of experts support the view that childhood vaccinations are overwhelmingly safe and effective, whilst 1% do not. Why then would the mainstream media run stories where a doctor or scientist offers a qualified, considered, researched, opinion and then turn to a wing nut who’s spent a couple of hours on Dr Google and has decided vaccines are bad, m’kay?
There’s a term to describe giving more time to opposing view points than the evidence actually supports – false balance.
So okay, my “feelpinions” might get hurt, but does it really matter otherwise? Well yes, it turns out it does.
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