Punting the Pundits

“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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Robin Broad: Obama’s Keystone Decision Shows Why We Should Reject TPP

Earlier this month, President Obama announced that his administration had decided against the Keystone XL pipeline that the TransCanada Corp. proposed to build between Canada and the United States. He did so explicitly citing environmental concerns, notably the need for the U.S. to be “a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change.” Obama’s decision, and the reasoning behind it, are to be celebrated.

What should not be celebrated is that just a day earlier, the U.S. government released the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade and investment agreement among 12 countries that will now go to Congress for consideration.

These seemingly unconnected events are in fact connected. Indeed, the Keystone experience should give Congress even more pause about passing the TPP.

Why? Well, Obama’s Keystone decision is something that could be found to be counter to what is allowed under the “investor state dispute settlement” (ISDS) chapter of the TPP.

Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan: This Thanksgiving, No Place for Refugees at the American Table

In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, there has been a crushing backlash against refugees from the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. A cartoon has been circulating on social media showing a Native American man greeting a Pilgrim, saying, “Sorry, but we’re not accepting refugees.” As Americans prepare for one of the most popular national holidays, Thanksgiving, which commemorates the support and nourishment provided by the indigenous people to English refugees seeking a better life free from religious persecution, a wave of xenophobia is sweeping the country. [..]

It has been almost 400 years since that first, fateful Thanksgiving feast in Massachusetts. Xenophobic policies like those threatening to shut out refugees from these wars, if allowed to stand, should serve as a shameful centerpiece at every Thanksgiving table this year.

Jim Hightower: Let’s Get on Board With High-Speed Rail

Practically every wealthy nation today is making major investments in building high-speed rail networks to transport their people: Japan, Canada, France, Russia, India, England, Morocco, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Italy, China, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Brazil, Germany, South Africa, Turkey and more. But not us, the wealthiest nation, with dozens of cities dotted across a continent with millions of people who need fast, convenient rail connection.

Why are we stuck in traffic on roadways and runways and left with a pokey, out-of-date rail system while nations with a small fraction of our resources — such as Morocco, Poland and Turkey — are cruising on HSR networks? Because our leaders sold us out to corporate hucksters who fed us ideological lies. Their fairy tale was that mass transit is creaky, inherently inefficient, and socialist — and that Americans deserve the independence that comes from a one-person-one-car doctrine.

Joshua Kopstein: Governments exploit Paris attacks to push for more power

The events following the ghastly terror attacks in Paris and Beirut last week have followed a tragically predictable formula. Once again, acts of senseless violence have left scores of innocents dead and millions around the world in mourning. Once again, we have watched these horrors unfold in real time on TV and social media, zigzagging through the maze of misinformation, anxiety and anger.

And once again, Western government officials are shamelessly exploiting tragedy to justify more surveillance, more reactionary military interventions and more draconian security policies at home. Their pitch is the same as it was after the last major attack, and the one before that, and as far back as anyone can remember: Give us just a little more power — surrender a few more civil liberties and a bit more privacy — and next time we will truly keep you safe. [..]

It’s only natural to be scared and angry in light of horrifying and senseless violence. It’s normal to feel compelled to do something, anything — however rash or hasty it might seem — to try and prevent these horrors from happening again. But we must resist this urge and recognize that terrorism makes us to feel this way because it is, at least in the Western world, a rare event. We are still orders of magnitude more likely to be killed by police, car crashes, falling furniture or slippery bathroom floors than by terrorists.

Instead of trying to prevent every bad thing from ever occurring, we can be resilient. We can prepare for the worst and respond to violence by offering humanitarian aid, solidarity and support instead of being consumed by fear. And if we must be afraid, we should fear those in power who claim they can keep us safe by waging wars, eroding our liberties and crippling our ability to have control over our private lives.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: What Science Is — and How and Why It Works

If you cherry-pick scientific truths to serve cultural, economic, religious or political objectives, you undermine the foundations of an informed democracy.

Science distinguishes itself from all other branches of human pursuit by its power to probe and understand the behavior of nature on a level that allows us to predict with accuracy, if not control, the outcomes of events in the natural world. Science especially enhances our health, wealth and security, which is greater today for more people on Earth than at any other time in human history.

The scientific method, which underpins these achievements, can be summarized in one sentence, which is all about objectivity:

Do whatever it takes to avoid fooling yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not true that is.

Marisa Franco and Paromita Shah: The Department of Homeland Security: the largest police force nobody monitors

More than 55,000 armed law enforcement officers operate inside of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the foot soldiers of the mass deportation system. They work as you would expect any police force to operate but without even the semblance of oversight.

With an annual budget line item of $18bn solely for immigration enforcement the federal government spends more on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (BPE) than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. Yet the systems to monitor the vast network of field directors, detention officers and arresting officers under its purview are either non-existent or wracked with the same corruption they’re intended to prevent.

When Terrence Kullom was killed at his doorstep in Detroit, it was an ICE agent serving a warrant that pulled the trigger. In immigration detention centers, over 150 people have died since 2003. A recent report highlighted not just a lack of transparency at the agency, but ICE’s outright refusal to cooperate or answer questions related to the deaths. CBS News reported that CBP agents allegedly sexually assaulted women or children immigrant detainees at least 35 times between 2012 and 2014, taking advantage of what an ousted CBP official characterized as a “culture of impunity”.