“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”
Nicholas D Kristof: Tunisia. Egypt. Bahrain?
Manama, Bahrain Tunisia The gleaming banking center of Bahrain, one of those family-run autocratic Arab states that count as American allies, has become the latest reminder that authoritarian regimes are slow learners.
Bahrain is another Middle East domino wobbled by an angry youth – and it has struck back with volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and even buckshot at completely peaceful protesters. In the early-morning hours on Thursday here in the Bahrain capital, it used deadly force to clear the throngs of pro-democracy protesters who had turned Pearl Square in the center of the city into a local version of Tahrir Square in Cairo. This was the last spasm of brutality from a regime that has handled protests with an exceptionally heavy hand – and like the previous crackdowns, this will further undermine the legitimacy of the government.
Robert Reich; Budget Baloney: Why Social Security Isn’t a Problem for 26 Years, and the Best Way to Fix It Permanently
In a former life I was a trustee of the Social Security trust fund. So let me set the record straight.
Social Security isn’t responsible for the federal deficit. Just the opposite. Until last year Social Security took in more payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits. It lent the surpluses to the rest of the government.
Now that Social Security has started to pay out more than it takes in, Social Security can simply collect what the rest of the government owes it. This will keep it fully solvent for the next 26 years. . . . . . .
Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 84 percent of total income.
It went from 90 percent to 84 percent because a larger and larger portion of total income has gone to the top. In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent.
If we want to go back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security tax would need to be raised to $180,000.
Presto. Social Security’s long-term (beyond 26 years from now) problem would be solved.
Yes, it is that simple
Robert Sheer: Home Sweet Wall Street
A most dastardly deed occurred last Friday when the Obama administration issued a 29-page policy statement totally abandoning the federal government’s time-honored role in helping Americans achieve the goal of homeownership. Instead of punishing the banks that sabotaged the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders by “securitizing” our homesteads into poker chips to be gambled away in the Wall Street casino, Barack Obama now proposes to turn over the entire mortgage industry to those same banks.
The proposal, originated by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, involves nothing less than a total “winding down” of the 80-year-old federal housing program, setting instead a new goal of a two-tiered America in which the masses are content to be mere renters of the American Dream. Such a deal for a country where, as the report concedes, “Half of all renters spend more than a third of their income on housing, and a quarter spend more than half.”
Joe Conason: Why Do They Hate Social Security?
Among the mysteries of modern politics in America is why so many of our leading pundits and politicians persistently seek to undermine Social Security, that enduring and successful emblem of active government. In the current atmosphere of budgetary panic, self-proclaimed “centrists” are joining with ideologues of the right in yet another campaign against the program-and yet again they are misinforming the public about its purposes, costs and prospects.
Among the puzzling aspects of the crusade against Social Security is the zeal that animates its enemies, as if the present and future recipients of those monthly checks were somehow fattening themselves at the expense of future generations. Whatever drives these well-fed but poorly informed commentators, it isn’t the facts.
Richard Trumka: This Isn’t Deficit Control. It’s Assault.
No job safety inspections while inspectors are furloughed for up to three months. No food safety inspections while inspectors are off the job for more than a month. Ten thousand teachers and aides cut from struggling schools and 7,000 special education teachers and staff gone. State and local job training and employment services phased out for up to 8 million workers. Medicare and Social Security operations crippled. Fewer local police officers. Wall Street reform stymied. Policing of the financial practices that sank our economy gutted. More than 340,000 transportation jobs killed.
I could go on and on and on for a dozen pages listing the real-world effects of the outrageously unworkable FY 2011 budget cuts House Republicans are trying to pass right now.
This isn’t “fiscal responsibility” or “deficit control.” It’s about the most bald-faced assault on America’s middle class I’ve ever seen — and clear political payback to CEOs who poured millions into the 2010 elections. CEOs don’t like job safety regulations, so the politicians they elected are trying to cut the funding and fire the inspectors. CEOs don’t want environmental safeguards, energy improvements or curbs on health insurance companies, so their politicians are pushing to just defund the programs.
Gail Collins: Mrs. Bush, Abstinence and Texas
Today, let’s discuss choices, starting with Barbara Bush raising an alarm and Gov. Rick Perry’s personal experience with sexual abstinence.
I did throw in the last one to keep you interested. Sue me.
This month, The Houston Chronicle published an opinion piece by the former first lady titled “We Can’t Afford to Cut Education,” in which Mrs. Bush pointed out that students in Texas currently rank 47th in the nation in literacy, 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores.
“In light of these statistics, can we afford to cut the number of teachers, increase class sizes, eliminate scholarships for underprivileged students and close several community colleges?” she asked.
You’d think there’d be an obvious answer. But the Texas State Legislature is looking to cut about $4.8 billion over the next two years from the schools. Budgets are tight everywhere, but Perry, the state’s governor, and his supporters made things much worse by reducing school property taxes by a third in 2006 under the theory that a higher cigarette tax and a new business franchise tax would make up the difference. Which they didn’t.
Robert Dreyfuss: Cutting Defense: Obama, Gates Say No
President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates are defending the indefensible, namely, defense. Against clamor to cut the Pentagon’s bloated budget coming from both the right and the left, from anti-DOD liberals, antiwar activists, ultra-conservative Tea Party types who want to slash all government spending and libertarians who propose cutting defense by 90 percent, the White House and Gates are sounding like, well, reactionaries. Gates, who’d earlier warned that even modest cuts in the 2011 budget for defense could be “catastrophic,” said today that the result of cutting Pentagon spending could be “tragic”:
“We still live in a very dangerous and often unstable world. We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril. Retrenchment brought about by short-sighted cuts could well lead to costlier and more tragic consequences later-indeed as they have in the past.”
Testifying in front of the House Armed Services Committee, Gates-a right-wing Republican held over from the George W. Bush administration-also said:
“We shrink from our global security responsibilities at our peril. Drastic reductions in the size and strength of the US military make armed conflict all the more likely-with an unacceptably high cost in American blood and treasure.”
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