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: Bonuses and Bogosity
On Feb. 19 Walmart, America’s largest employer, announced broad-based pay hikes. In fact, it announced that it would be raising wages for half a million workers. The Trump tax cut is working!
Oh, wait. That announcement was three years ago – it came on Feb. 19, 2015. And as far as I can tell, nobody gave the Obama administration credit for the move.
Why did Walmart raise wages? Partly because the labor market was tightening: unemployment had fallen more than 40 percent from its peak in 2009 (a decline for which the Obama administration’s stimulus and other policies actually do deserve some credit.) This tightening labor market meant that Walmart was having trouble attracting workers.
Walmart was also in the midst of a change in business strategy. Its policy of always low wages, always, was starting to look problematic: low pay meant high turnover and low morale, and management believed that moving at least partway to the Costco strategy of paying more and getting better performance as a result made sense.
Charles Pierce: How Do You Deal with This Much Nonsense?
This simply can’t go on. I say this to myself every day when I first open the doors to the shebeen and take stock of what’s going on down at Camp Runamuck on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Republic was built to withstand a lot of things, but it was not designed to be run by the likes of President* Trump and his family of grifters, freeloaders, and silver-spoon incompetents. It is not structured to withstand simultaneous avalanches of greed, dishonesty, and rank idiocy. Its immune system is not set up to handle this many different poisons and infections at once. Jesus H. Christ on a morphine drip, can’t we have one day of remission?
Apparently not. The Washington Post fairly well teed up Senior Presidential Adviser and obvious White House merit hire Jared Kushner as both a threat to national security and as a sucker that various satraps and oligarchs can see coming from a mile off.
E. J. Dionne Jr: Conservatives are using the Supreme Court to destroy unions
Many conservatives believe in the untrammeled rights of employers. Consequently, they despise unions. They also can’t stand that organized labor usually backs Democrats, and they especially detest public employee unions which, by their very nature, advocate for government.
For decades, these same conservatives criticized the politicization of the courts, accusing liberals of “inventing rights,” “making new law” and indulging in “judicial activism.”
And one more thing: Conservatives of late have charged that liberals refuse to acknowledge the importance of allowing revered and useful social institutions to thrive and maintain their organizational integrity. So, for example, the right insists that organizations affiliated with religious groups opposed to contraception must, under no circumstances, be required to cover birth control in their health plans.
This bundle of contradictions is on open display in the case of Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees . Argued this week before the Supreme Court, the suit is an effort to overturn 41 years of settled precedent for the purpose of crippling the American labor movement.
Jay Michaelson: It’s Not Just Trump: The Law Is Designed to Deny Immigrants Their Basic Rights
The stories, by now, are legion, and they all have one theme: Immigrants do not have the same due process rights as the rest of us. [..]
How is any of this possible? Well, long before the Trump administration’s crackdown, American law has treated immigrants, legal and illegal, as less than equal. There are three ways this inequality plays out.
First, in no other area of law are law enforcement officers granted so much discretion. The way our immigration laws are written, ICE and the Department of Justice can choose at random who stays and who goes. [..]
Second, the judicial processes that immigrants face—again, whether their status is legal, illegal, or uncertain—take place outside the normal judicial system. In the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Congress severely limited judicial review of immigration decisions and placed all but final determinations in the hands of special immigration courts, which themselves are under the authority of the Department of Justice, not the judiciary. It’s an entirely different system, without many of the features and protections most Americans take for granted. [..]
Finally, the entire conceptual edifice of U.S. immigration law regards “aliens” as not entitled to the same rights as citizens. Generally speaking, the Constitution applies to “all persons within the territory of the United States,” not just citizens. The court has ruled in 1896, 1973, 1982, and 2001 that that specifically includes those whose residence here is “unlawful, involuntary or transitory.”
But in practice, the extent of those rights is often limited.
Catherine Rampell: A video Steven Mnuchin doesn’t want you to see
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin participated in a discussion at the University of California at Los Angeles with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal. The event was open to the public, and some of the attendees heckled and hissed at him. Demonstrators outside dressed up as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, serving cake.
As the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, Mnuchin subsequently asked the university not to post its official video or audio. UCLA spokeswoman Peggy McInerny emailed the Journal that Mnuchin “has retracted his permission for the Burkle Center to post its video and podcast of yesterday’s event on its website, so we are unable to share either recording with you.”
This is an interesting move for a Cabinet member who (at least occasionally) claims to value transparency, given that this event was — once again — open to the public.
Because it was open to the public, however, some of the other people present also captured video. One sent me a short clip from the event, showing a sixth-grader asking the secretary a tough question about taxes.
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