“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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Heidi Mooore: Janet Yellen is the Wolf of Main Street
At her press conference, the Fed chair declared a view of the economy with a human face – a view that Wall Street hates
Wall Street is finally being forced to think for itself.
Today marked the first press conference for Janet Yellen, the first female chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Fed holds these press conferences regularly to let the public know how the nation’s central bank is delivering on its two major tasks: lowering the unemployment rate so that nearly all Americans have jobs; and controlling inflation, to make sure you’re not paying too much at the supermarket.
It was historic enough to see a woman deliver the official diagnosis on the US economy: the economy is growing, but slowly. Unemployment is still too high. Millennials are living at home.
Yet Yellen’s first policy statement was historic for another major reason: she showed she is running a very different kind of Federal Reserve than the one Ben Bernanke ran. Unlike Bernanke, who often catered to Wall Street’s fears, this new Federal Reserve appears reluctant to play the usual reindeer games.
The Fed is stepping away from its reputation as a bunch of economics nerds eager to please the cool frat boys on the trading floors.
Dean Baker: Money in Hyping the Generational War Story
At the same time that we are seeing growing support for proposals to increase Social Security benefits it appears that we are witnessing another set of calls for generational warfare. The argument of the generational warriors is that the Social Security and Medicare benefits received by our parents and grandparents pose a threat to the living standards of our children and grandchildren.
The generational warfare argument may not make much sense, but many people with money stand behind it. Therefore we are likely to hear it frequently in the months ahead.
The basic facts are simple. The country will see an increase in the ratio of retirees to workers over the next two decades, but it is not qualitatively different than the increase in the ratio that we have been seeing for many decades.
The acrimony that erupted last week between Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) and CIA Director John Brennan has been called a “constitutional crisis” over the oversight responsibilities of Congress versus the prerogatives of the executive branch. Commentators suggest it is a struggle over “checks and balances” and “separation of powers.” But there is much more at stake. [..]
The life-blood of democracy is limited government, rule of law, and transparency. If lawless government security agencies cannot be held accountable, democracy rots from the inside. The same can be said about presidents who use the CIA–or the NSA– for unlawful purposes. “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon notoriously proclaimed. If presidential “findings” (authorizations) for vast secret programs of questionable legality continue to be kept secret, accountability becomes a fiction.
Let’s not neglect what this conflict is about: torture. A government that tortures and then gets away with it is exercising power beyond all moral and legal constraint. Torture is a system crime, condemned by all civilized governments including our own. Torture is Exhibit A in the perverse logic of “by any means necessary,” a repudiation of law as such.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Free Higher Education Is a Human Right
Social progress is never a straightforward, linear process. Sometimes society struggles to recognize moral questions that in retrospect should have seemed obvious. Then, in a historical moment, something crystallizes. Slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, marriage equality: each of these moral challenges arose in the national conscience before becoming the subject of a fight for justice (some of which have yet to be won).
I believe the moment will come, perhaps very soon, when we as a society will ask ourselves: How can we deny a higher education to any young person in this country just because she or he can’t afford it?
The numbers show that barriers to higher education are an economic burden for both students and society. They also show that the solution — free higher education for all those who would benefit from it — is a practical goal.
But, in the end, the fundamental argument isn’t economic. It’s moral.
David Cole: The CIA’s Poisonous Tree
The old Washington adage that the cover-up is worse than the crime may not apply when it comes to the revelations this week that the Central Intelligence Agency interfered with a Senate torture investigation. It’s not that the cover-up isn’t serious. It is extremely serious-as Senator Dianne Feinstein said, the CIA may have violated the separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment, and a prohibition on spying inside the United States. It’s just that in this case, the underlying crimes are still worse: the dispute arises because the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, has written an as-yet-secret 6,300 page report on the CIA’s use of torture and disappearance-among [..]
But the crime that we must never lose sight of is the conduct that led to the investigation in the first place. To recall: in 2002, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration authorized the CIA to establish a series of secret prisons, or “black sites,” into which it disappeared “high-value” al-Qaeda suspects, often for years at a time, without any public acknowledgment, without charges, and cut off from any access to the outside world. The CIA was further authorized to use a range of coercive tactics-borrowed from those used by the Chinese to torture American soldiers during the Korean War-to try to break the suspects’ will. These included depriving suspects of sleep for up to ten days, slamming them against walls, forcing them into painful stress positions, and waterboarding them.
Eugene Robinson: A Midterm Imperative
Here is what Democrats should learn from their party’s loss in a special House election in Florida last week: Wishy-washy won’t work.
Republicans are obviously going to make opposition to the Affordable Care Act the main theme of their campaigns this fall. Democrats will be better off if they push back hard-really hard-rather than seek some nonexistent middle ground.
The contest between Democrat Alex Sink and Republican David Jolly in Florida’s 13th Congressional District was almost like a laboratory experiment. The House seat was held for decades by the late C.W. “Bill” Young, a Republican, but voters are evenly balanced between the two parties. Sink was better known, having narrowly lost a race for governor in 2010; Jolly had deeper roots in the community. Neither displayed an overabundance of charisma.
Jolly’s narrow victory-he won by about 3,500 votes out of about 184,000 cast-is not a death knell for the Democratic Party’s prospects come autumn. But it does suggest how Democrats should not run in close races. Jolly has to run again in November, and if Sink gets another shot at him, I’d suggest she do things a bit differently.
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