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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Zephyr Teachout: I’m Not Convinced Franken Should Quit

I care passionately about #MeToo. Women are routinely demeaned, dismissed, discouraged and assaulted. Too many women’s careers are stymied or ended because of harassment and abuse. In politics, where I have worked much of my adult life, this behavior is rampant.

I also believe in zero tolerance. And yet, a lot of women I know — myself included — were left with a sense that something went wrong last week with the effective ouster of Al Franken from the United States Senate. He resigned after a groundswell of his own Democratic colleagues called for him to step down.

Zero tolerance should go hand in hand with two other things: due process and proportionality. As citizens, we need a way to make sense of accusations that does not depend only on what we read or see in the news or on social media.

Due process means a fair, full investigation, with a chance for the accused to respond. And proportionality means that while all forms of inappropriate sexual behavior should be addressed, the response should be based on the nature of the transgressions.

Both were missing in the hasty call for Senator Franken’s resignation. Some might point out, rightly, that Congress doesn’t have good procedures for dealing with harassment accusations. In fact, the congressional process to date has gone something like this: Lift up the rug and sweep the accusations underneath. It’s delay, deny, pay hush money and avoid the consequences.

Paul Krugman: Steve Mnuchin Pulls a Paul Ryan

On Monday the Treasury Department released a one-page report (pdf) claiming that tax cuts would pay for themselves. The document was a shameless attempt to fool the public — carefully worded to imply that economic experts at Treasury (they’re still in there somewhere, maybe locked in a closet) had actually done an analysis to that effect, without explicitly saying so. In fact, there was no economic analysis; Trump officials just made up numbers that would give them the result they wanted.

Even reporters hardened to Trump administration lies seemed shocked by the brazenness of this bait-and-switch. What made Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, think he could get away with it?

Well, one answer is that similar scams on the part of congressional Republicans, Paul Ryan in particular, have generally received highly respectful treatment from the news media. Why shouldn’t Mnuchin imagine he can pull off the same trick?

Actually, he probably can’t. But the truth is that on economic policy, as in other areas, the Trump administration isn’t much of a departure from recent Republican norms. There’s a fundamental continuity in the con jobs: Mnuchin is basically trying to do a Paul Ryan; he just lacks the acting skills to pull it off.

David M. Schribman: Yes, the Truth Still Matters

Of all the questions that the ascendancy of Donald Trump has raised — on the value of political experience in governing, on the fitness of business executives as government executives or the profile of the Republicans as defenders of the rich and the Democrats as the sentinels of the poor — none is as perplexing as perhaps the central question of the age:

Does the truth still matter?

It emerged again recently when reports surfaced that the president, who had previously acknowledged his presence on the “Access Hollywood” videotape, has suggested that he did not make the comments on the tape. He also resumed questioning whether Barack Obama was born in the United States — despite having said he accepted it as true last year. In a speech, Mr. Trump, contradicting almost every analysis of the tax bill, said the measure would hurt wealthy people, including himself.

For nearly a half-century in journalism, from hometown cub reporter to national political correspondent to metro daily executive editor, I’ve navigated with the aid of a newspaperman’s North Star: the conviction that there is such a thing as objective truth that can be discovered and delivered through dispassionate hard work and passionate good faith, and that the product of that effort, if thoroughly documented, would be accepted as the truth.

Catherine Rampell: The Trump administration’s tax ‘report’ reads like fan fiction

Unable to produce an actual analysis of its tax plan, the Trump administration has resorted to cooking the books.

Again.

White House officials and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly claimed that their tax plan will unleash such tremendous growth that the bill will pay for itself.

Of course, no one remotely credible backs this up. Not the Tax Policy Center, not the Tax Foundation (which uses relatively rosy assumptions about growth), not the Penn-Wharton Budget Model, not Goldman Sachs, not the usual gang of Republican economists.

Not even the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s nonpartisan internal scorekeepers on such matters, has found that the bill would be self-financing. Its most recently available analyses determined that even after accounting for economic effects, both the Senate and House bills would still cost about $1 trillion over the coming decade.

Paul Mason: The prospect of a Roy Moore victory should make your stomach churn with fear

t what point does corporate America start disinvesting in the Republican party? Not any time soon seems to be the answer. Having rushed a tax bill through the Senate that will deliver tens of billions in tax cuts to rich people and corporations, why should it bother the average business owner if the Republicans want to put an Islamophobe into the Senate to represent Alabama?

Roy Moore, who is expected to win Tuesday’s special election, hit the headlines after several women came forward to allege that he had sexually assaulted them in the 1970s while they were in their teens. Moore denies this, saying the accusations are a conspiracy by “lesbians, gays, bisexuals and socialists” – a claim made from the pulpit of an evangelical church. He has refused to debate with his Democratic party opponent on the grounds that he has supported transgender rights. After the allegations surfaced, 37% of white evangelical voters in the state said it made them more likely to support Moore.