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.

Robert Reich: Wall Street’s Global Race to the Bottom

Wonder what’s happening with bank reform? Watch your wallets.

Having created giant loopholes in the Dodd-Frank law recently passed by Congress (keeping “customized” derivatives underground, for example), fighting off attempts to cap the size of the biggest banks, and keeping capital requirements relatively modest, Wall Street is now busily whittling back the rest through regulations.

Squadrons of lawyers and lobbyists are now pressing the Treasury, Comptroller of the Currency, SEC, and the Fed to go even easier on the Street.

Their main argument is if regulations are too tight, the big banks will be less competitive internationally. Translated: They’ll move more of their business to London and Frankfurt, where regulations will be looser.

Eugene Robinson Midterm campaigns, brought to you by . . . ?

The Republican grab for Congress is being funded by a pack of wolves masquerading as a herd of sheep.

How sweet and innocent they seem, these mysterious organizations with names like Americans for Job Security. Who could argue with that? Who wants job insecurity?

It turns out, according to The Post, that an entity called Americans for Job Security has made nearly $7.5 million in “independent” campaign expenditures this year, with 88 percent going to support Republican candidates. Who’s putting up all that money? You’ll never know, because Americans for Job Security — which calls itself a “business association” — doesn’t have to disclose the source of its funding.

Likewise, the American Future Fund has spent $6.8 million on campaigns this year, with every penny of that money benefiting Republicans. The patriotically named group — and, really, who doesn’t want America to have a future? — is based in Iowa and has never before been a big player in the Great Game of campaign finance. Now, suddenly, it has a king’s ransom to throw around.

The following article is a “must read the whole thing”

Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick: Watch as We Make This Law Disappear

How the Roberts Court disguises its conservatism.

t’s dark and silent. Reporters trickle into the grand ceremonial room from a door on the left; like everyone, they’ve been instructed that no recording devices of any sort are allowed. A clutch of spectators, some of whom have been waiting for hours, enters at the rear. At 10 a.m. on the dot, never earlier and never later, the marshal utters her incantation: “The honorable, the chief justice and the associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.” Then they file, from behind the velvet curtain, wearing long black robes; they sit behind a tall dais, sipping water from silver cups. Silent footmen glide back and forth bearing thick books. For the justices, it’s a typical oral argument day, but if you didn’t know better, you’d think you were watching the initiation into Harry Potter’s school for wizards, Hogwarts; or, better yet, the Penn and Teller show at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Magic, mystery, and hush everywhere you look.

The metaphor is more than apt. There’s another, newer, layer of illusion at work at the highest court of the land. Under the stewardship of its boyish chief justice, John Roberts, the court has taken the law for a sharp turn to the ideological right, while at the same time masterfully concealing it. Virtually every empirical study confirms this rightward turn. Yet recent public opinion polls indicate Americans continue to see a bench that is, if anything, a wee bit too liberal.

Joan Walsh: Meg Whitman’s meltdown

The GOP candidate’s hypocrisy is helping to hand the California governor’s office back to Jerry Brown

Like a lot of California Democrats, I’ve been waiting for Jerry Brown to start his campaign for governor. Sure, he began running ads last month — terrible ads, in my opinion, featuring Brown as a talking head, that mostly serve to remind people he was already governor, a long, long time ago, whatever his accomplishments.

I’ve always assumed Brown would win anyway, though, because he’s got one key asset: He’s not Meg Whitman. And during Saturday’s Univision debate, I spotted another Brown asset: He knows how to make a moral and emotional appeal to our sense of justice, that California used to be a better place, and can be one again.

Whoever is behind the sudden emergence of Whitman’s former maid, Nicky Diaz — the woman the former eBay CEO says deceived her about having legal immigration status, going so far as to steal a letter from the federal government notifying Whitman about her illegal status (that turned out not to be true), but whom Whitman fired immediately upon “learning” the truth — it’s a defining story for Whitman, and not in a good way. I am sensitive to all the ways women are held to a different and higher standard than men in politics, and I search for descriptors that capture Whitman that are not somehow stereotypical.

E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Health Care’s Second Wind

Here is another piece of conventional wisdom about this year’s election that is being rendered patently false. It’s been said over and over that no Democrats are running on the health care bill. Actually, more and more of them are proudly campaigning on what the plan has achieved-and they should.

In a fight for his political life in Wisconsin, Sen. Russ Feingold went on the air last week with an advertisement that explicitly defends provisions in the bill and attacks his opponent, Republican Ron Johnson, for wanting to repeal it.

The ad portrays two different Wisconsin citizens telling Johnson: “Hands off my health care.” Their message is that repealing the health care law would, as another voter says, “put insurance companies back in control.”

Feingold’s is one of the more powerful ads about the bill, but the senator is not alone. In an ad that focuses on holding corporations accountable, Rep. Steve Israel of New York touts the bill for stopping insurance companies from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions. In Nevada, Rep. Dina Titus has a TV ad praising the same provision.

And in his effort to win back a traditionally Democratic congressional seat in New Orleans, state Rep. Cedric Richmond has made incumbent Republican Joseph Cao’s vote against the health care bill a central issue in the campaign.

Paul Loeb: Don’t Let the Russ Feingolds Go Down For the Sins of the Blanche Lincolns

In trying to get one-time Obama supporters to volunteer for the November election, I often hear this refrain: “The Democrats have sold us out. I’m tired of their spinelessness, their subservience to corporate interests. I’m staying home to teach them a lesson.” Not everyone responds this way, but enough do to make me worry, because if these people don’t show up and work to get others to vote, it could make the difference in race after neck-and-neck race, as a similar withdrawal of Democratic volunteers and voters did in 1994. As I’ve written, we either get past our broken hearts to help elect the best possible candidates between now and November, or cede even more power to the most destructive interests in America.

But suppose you simply can’t stomach your local Democratic candidates? Suppose you’re simply too furious at their compromises and retreats? Then make phone calls or donate to those you do respect, but don’t abdicate entirely. Maybe it’s Russ Feingold, narrowly trailing in the latest Wisconsin polls. Or Jack Conway, challenging Rand Paul in Kentucky. Or Barbara Boxer, with the slimmest of leads in California. Or Congressman Alan Grayson, a powerful progressive voice being hammered by outside money in a swing district of Florida. Or anyone else you might choose. But unless you’re as purist as the Republican fundamentalists, I can’t imagine you want to see candidates who’ve stood for strong humane values be defeated by opponents who have nothing but contempt for democracy, justice, and even the barest stewardship of the planet. To shift our country’s direction, we’re going to have to elect and reelect some less than stellar candidates as well, but making sure the best of them win is a critical task.

Dean Baker: Sleazy Xenophobia in Pursuit of Social Security Cuts

When Barry Goldwater ran for president as a genuine conservative back in 1964 he was often labeled as an “extremist.” His campaign responded to this criticism with the slogan: “extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.”

Goldwater’s descendants are swarming the political playing field these days in their efforts to attack Social Security and Medicare. They have no qualms about making assertions that are deceptive and inaccurate. And they are not above appeals to nationalistic/racist sentiments to advance their case. The slogan for the current crew could be “xenophobia in pursuit of Social Security cuts is no vice.”

This xenophobia comes out most directly in their stories that tie the budget deficit to borrowing from foreigners, with China always being mentioned as the big lender to raise fears. This presumably scores well in the fear factor with focus groups, but it has nothing to do with economic reality.