“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
Dean Baker: Want ‘free trade’? Open the medical and drug industry to competition
Agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership distribute wealth upward. Real ‘free trade’ can lower medical costs for everyone
Free trade is like apple pie, everyone is supposed to like it. Economists have written thousands of books and articles showing how everyone can gain from reducing trade barriers. While there is much merit to this argument, little of it applies to the trade pacts that are sold as “free-trade” agreements.
These deals are about structuring trade to redistribute income upward. In addition these agreements also provide a mechanism for over-riding the democratic process in the countries that are parties to the deals. They are a tool whereby corporate interests can block health, safety, and environmental regulations that might otherwise be implemented by democratically elected officials. This is the story with both the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) now being negotiated by General Electric, Merck and other major corporations who have been invited to the table, as well as the EU-US trade agreement.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Shamelessness of Bankers
It’s not easy to maintain a civil tone while describing the magnitude of the misbehavior among executives at Wall Street’s largest institutions. To criticize bankers is to describe large-scale wrongdoing, mass-produced outrage which leads to widespread misery. It can’t be done without routinely deploying words like “perjury,” “forgery,” “fraud,” “deceit,” “corruption,” and “rapaciousness.”
Unfortunately, the forms of speech which adequately convey big-banker behavior also make it easy for insiders in politics, government, and the media to dismiss that same speech as excessive.
That’s one reason why some recent remarks by William Dudley, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, are so important. He’s no outsider, and he’s no extremist. And yet, after exploring potential solutions to the “too big to fail” problem in a speech to Global Economic Policy Forum last week, Dudley went on to discuss what he called “the apparent lack of respect for law, regulation and the public trust.”
Gene Farley and I shared a deep affection for Tommy Douglas, the Baptist preacher-turned-statesman who as the leader of Saskatchewan’s Cooperative Commonwealth Federation established the framework for what would become Canada’s single-payer national healthcare system. [..]
Paraphrasing Tennyson, Douglas roused Canadians with a promise: “Courage, my friends; ’tis not too late to build a better world.” That line always came to mind when I was with Gene, who died Friday at 86.
Gene was an internationally renowned physician, an originator of family practice residency programs and innovative public-health initiatives who finished a distinguished academic career as chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin. [..]
It is, Gene said, “about morality.”
Canada came to recognize that morality, embracing the vision of Tommy Douglas.
And it is right and necessary to expect that America will come to recognize that morality, embracing the vision of Gene Farley.
Ralph Nader: Target — The Emperor Has No Clothes!
What’s the difference between Target and Walmart? Many liberal-minded people bristle at the name Walmart and think of its well-documented history of low wages, poor employee treatment and its devastating effect on many small businesses and communities across America. Target, on the other hand, has managed to avoid much of the negativity associated with the Walmart brand. Target has instead tried to cultivate an image as the socially-conscious alternative to Walmart’s evil big box retail empire — it perpetuates the notion that it treats its workers better and provides higher quality goods and services, all without sinking to the same harsh lows as its Bentonville-based competitor. Many so-called “blue states” welcome Target with open arms while shunning Walmart for their anti-worker practices.
So this begs the question — is Target really any better? Is this line of thinking justified?
Paul Buchheit: The Stealthy Killer That Is Capitalism
The process is gradual, insidious, lethal. It starts with financial stress in various forms, and then, according to growing evidence, leads to health problems and shorter lives.
Financial stress is brought upon us by the profit motive of capitalism, which offers little incentive to feed hungry children, to treat the sick, to secure us in retirement, to provide job opportunities for middle-class Americans. Some of the steps in the process are becoming more and more familiar to us. [..]
The facts show that we were a relatively healthy people until unregulated free-market capitalism began to disrupt our lives. Now, because of its winner-take-all profit motive, we’re literally fighting for our lives.
Eric Boehlert: CBS News: We’re Sorry, But Not That Sorry
The message from CBS News, following the high-profile implosion of its October 27 Benghazi report? We’re sorry. But we’re not that sorry.
Coming days after CBS News chief Jeff Fager categorized the Benghazi mess as among the worst blunders in the show’s history, the network’s eagerly awaited apology on Sunday’s night’s 60 Minutes turned out to be an extremely tepid and limited effort, with correspondent Lara Logan taking just 90 seconds to walk back what she described as a sourcing error.
Logan’s correction, in which she conceded the program “made a mistake,” failed to capture the scope of the 60 Minutes Benghazi blunder. She also refused to address the pressing questions about how she and her colleagues produced such a flawed report; a report that 60 Minutes reportedly worked on for an entire year. (Logan’s previous apology on CBS This Morning also failed to address those key issues.) The correction was widely derided by critics as being insufficient and misleading.
Recent Comments