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.

Joe Conanson: “No new taxes” for GOP — except a national sales tax

Republicans swear they won’t raise taxes — but Rand Paul and Paul Ryan want to tax everything you buy

Can you guess which tax is bad, bad, bad when suggested by Democrats but perfectly acceptable when proposed by Republicans? Listening to Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, among others, the answer is a national sales tax or value-added tax, known in Europe as a VAT. While Republicans argue ferociously to preserve the Bush tax cuts for America’s wealthiest families, the notion of a new federal tax on goods and services – which would disproportionately penalize working consumers — is becoming fashionable among their party’s most prominent figures.

The Kentucky Republican Senate candidate made headlines yesterday when he proposed a national sales tax to replace the income tax, but Paul is scarcely alone in preferring a tax that falls most heavily on the middle class, workers and the poor. Rep. Ryan’s budget “roadmap,” released earlier this year to much fanfare in the conservative and mainstream media, relies on an 8.5 percent “business consumption” tax — yet another name for what Europeans call a VAT. From Arizona to  Maine, Republican candidates seem increasingly eager to impose a national sales tax — and although they usually say this new tax would “replace” the income tax and abolish the IRS, such fantasies aren’t contemplated by Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee.

Robert Sheer: Invasion of the Robot Home Snatchers

The Titanic that is the U.S. housing market has just sprung its biggest leak, and even some of the largest banks responsible for this mess, like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, are now imposing a temporary moratorium on foreclosures. They have done so very reluctantly and only after courts throughout the nation, and the attorneys general of 40 states, questioned the legality of a securitized system of homeownership that has impoverished tens of millions.

How do you foreclose on a home when you can’t figure out who owns it because the original mortgage is part of a derivatives package that has been sliced and diced so many ways that its legal ownership is often unrecognizable? You cannot get much help from those who signed off on the process because they turn out to be robot signers acting on automatic pilot. Fully 65 million homes in question are tied to a computerized program, the national Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS), that is often identified in foreclosure proceedings as the owner of record.  

Teddy Partridge: Obama WH Aide Valerie Jarrett: 15-Year Old Justin Aarberg “Made a Lifestyle Choice”

If the closest adviser to the President on LGBT issues – the one he sent to make nice with the Human Rights Campaign’s black-tie supporters last Saturday – describes a 15-year-old suicide as having “made a lifestyle choice” we are absolutely doomed. . . . .

If a presidential adviser had made such a boneheaded remark about any other American minority group – let alone an incredibly loyal group that has provided the Democratic Party its margin of victory in any number of tight races across the nation – would that presidential adviser still have a job?

Does Valerie Jarrett live in the early 1990s? Does she really believe that being LGBT is a ‘choice’ and a ‘lifestyle’ – and will she really get away with insulting the memory of a dead gay teen with this horrifying out-of-touch language?

Amy Goodman: John le Carré: Calling Out the Traitors

John le Carré, the former British spy turned spy novelist, has some grave words for Tony Blair. More than seven years after the invasion of Iraq, the former British prime minister, now out of office and touring the world pushing his political memoir, is encountering serious protests at his book signings.

“I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretenses has committed the ultimate sin,” he told me when I sat down with le Carré recently in London. “We’ve caused irreparable damage in the Middle East. I think we shall pay for it for a long time.”

We sat in a television studio across the River Thames overlooking two of his former places of employment: MI5, the domestic security service, and MI6, the secret intelligence service, which operates internationally (the equivalents of the U.S.’s FBI and CIA). John le Carré is the pen name of David Cornwell, who was a spy from the late 1950s into the early 1960s. He began to write novels and had to assume a pen name due to his work as a spy. He was stationed in Germany when, in 1961, he saw the Berlin Wall go up, motivating him to write his third novel, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.”

Deepak Bhargava and Gara LaMarche: The Road Ahead for Progressives: Back to Basics

Twenty-one months after Barack Obama was inaugurated on a wave of hope for change in America’s politics and policies, at least two important and seemingly contradictory things can be said.

First, there has been a series of significant progressive reforms: an economic stimulus bill that contained far-reaching antipoverty, infrastructure, green jobs and conservation measures, and that is widely credited with pulling the economy from the brink; comprehensive healthcare reform that has eluded presidents of both parties for a century; and financial regulatory reform.

For progressives, each of these accomplishments are flawed-the stimulus could have been bigger, there could have been a public option in healthcare and more teeth in financial regulation-but they are long strides in the right direction, and given the near-total opposition of Republicans and the conservatism of key Democrats, this is an impressive substantive record that has made and will make a big difference in people’s lives.

Second, the nation’s politics are more toxic than ever. The president’s approval ratings have fallen steadily, even if they may have bottomed out. Independents are said to be disillusioned, many Democrats are demoralized and Republicans are in the grip of an increasingly-there is no other way to say it but-crazy “base,” ousting very conservative officeholders in favor of extremist Tea Party candidates who oppose virtually every role government plays.

Rev. Jesse Jackson: GOP Runs on the “Big Lie”

As we head into the final weeks before the election, it is time for closing arguments. Democrats run largely as defenders of working and middle class families, fighting against the entrenched special interests that have stood in the way of the changes we need. They are pushing for jobs programs, for health care reform, for curbing Wall Street, for moving to renewable energy.

By contrast, Republicans are marching in virtual lockstep with banks and corporations in resisting reform. Republicans pushed to weaken the recovery plan, and now pledge to repeal what is left of it. They opposed extending unemployment insurance. They opposed curbing Wall Street. They opposed health care reforms that would stop insurance companies from cutting off your coverage if you get sick. Now, they are holding the extension of tax cuts to middle class families hostage unless the richest Americans get an additional tax cut, demanding that the government borrow another $700 billion over 10 years to pay for an extra tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.

So what do they run on? They run mostly against — seeking to harvest votes cast in protest against the lousy economy. But former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a different idea: He wants them to run on the big lie. In a memo to Republicans, he urges them to contrast Republicans as the party of “paychecks” against Democrats as the party of “food stamps.” The only problem with this formulation is that it is simply a lie.