Pondering the Pundits

“Pondering 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: The Unfreeing of American Workers

American conservatives love to talk about freedom. Milton Friedman’s famous pro-capitalist book and TV series were titled “Free to Choose.” And the hard-liners in the House pushing for a complete dismantling of Obamacare call themselves the Freedom Caucus.

Well, why not? After all, America is an open society, in which everyone is free to make his or her own choices about where to work and how to live.

Everyone, that is, except the 30 million workers now covered by noncompete agreements, who may find themselves all but unemployable if they quit their current jobs; the 52 million Americans with pre-existing conditions who will be effectively unable to buy individual health insurance, and hence stuck with their current employers, if the Freedom Caucus gets its way; and the millions of Americans burdened down by heavy student and other debt.

The reality is that Americans, especially American workers, don’t feel all that free. The Gallup World Survey asks residents of many countries whether they feel that they have “freedom to make life choices”; the U.S. doesn’t come out looking too good, especially compared with the high freedom grades of European nations with strong social safety nets.

Charles M. Blow: Blood in the Water

Donald Trump has left the country for his first foreign trip as president and what he has left behind is a brewing crisis that appears to deepen by the day, and even the hour.

There is a sense that blood is in the water, that Trump’s erratic, self-destructive behavior, aversion to honesty and authoritarian desire for absolute control may in some way, at some point, lead to his undoing and that the pace of that undoing is quickening.

Last week Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein took the extraordinary step of naming former F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

This was a significant ratcheting up. This is a criminal inquiry, by an independent operator who is well respected. The investigation is now largely insulated from politics. This investigation must now run its course, whether that takes months or years, and go wherever the facts may lead.

Jared Bernstein: Trump’s first budget: Why attention must be paid to it

The Trump administration is delivering its first budget tomorrow. That raises at least two questions.

First, we need to cut through the partisan noise and figure out what all these numbers are telling us about the administration’s priorities. Are the fiscal plans intended to make America great again or just to give rich Americans a big tax cut again? What do they cut and what do they leave alone? Are the assumptions about future growth plausible?

I’ll get to all that, but as portentous as these priorities are, the second challenge is more important: What does this budget, which almost certainly won’t be enacted (one top Republican appropriator called the budget purely symbolic, “aspirational … messaging points”), actually mean to the 320 million Americans (et al.) trying to get on with their lives?

Paul Waldman: Trump’s Big Mouth Got Him Elected President. Now It’s His Undoing.

No one ever accused Donald Trump of being a silver-tongued devil. While some politicians can beguile you with their eloquence and turn you around with their persuasive logic, Trump relies on simple declarative statements blurped out using his alarmingly limited vocabulary.

Yet Trump’s presidency is being undone by his big mouth. [..]

Let’s not kid ourselves: It was Trump’s ugly, undisciplined mouth that got him to the Oval Office. We expect politicians to be good talkers—after all, that’s a big part of their jobs—but we don’t want them to be too polished, too practiced, too careful about what they say. We want “authenticity,” the sense that the things the politician says aren’t something he’s practiced a dozen times before, but the spontaneous product of an admirable mind. Trump gave the voters a funhouse-mirror version of that ideal: a guy who’d say anything, no matter how stupid or offensive, because he either couldn’t help himself, didn’t know any better, or just didn’t care.

Against all odds, it worked, at least enough to get him an Electoral College victory. But now there could be actual legal consequences to what comes out of his mouth, even including impeachment. Trump’s supporters, we were told what seems like eons ago, took him seriously, but not literally. That’s what his defenders still want us to do. But it’s getting too late for that.

Harold Meyerson: The Poor Die Younger

Income and wealth don’t trickle down. Neither do health and longevity.

Last week, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report on the life expectancy of Americans, and what that means for Social Security. What the CRS reported is that just as economic inequality is increasing, so is lifespan inequality.

For men born in 1930, for instance, 50-year-old individuals in the highest income quintile (the wealthiest 20 percent) could expect to live 5.1 years longer than men in the lowest quintile. For men born in 1960, however, 50-year-olds in the highest quintile could expect to live 12.7 years longer than men in the lowest.

Apparently, all the advances in medical science and healthy living that occurred during this rolling 30-year interval were visited upon the rich a lot more than on the poor.