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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Krugman: Willie Sutton Wept

There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents – and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting.

About the fraudulence: Last month, Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center described the president as the “anti-Willie Sutton,” after the holdup artist who reputedly said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. Indeed, Mr. Obama has lately been going where the money isn’t, making a big deal out of a freeze on nonsecurity discretionary spending, which accounts for only 12 percent of the budget.

But that’s what everyone does. House Republicans talk big about spending cuts – but focus solely on that same small budget sliver.

Glen Ford: Obamaland, Where Right Meets Center-Right

The First Black President just gave birth to an unmistakably Republican budget – and everybody knows who that ugly baby’s daddy is. For the past two years, Barack Obama has been making out quite publicly with George Bush’s corporate friends. But that shouldn’t be a scandal; after all, Obama has always told everyone in range of his voice that his main goal in life is to forge a grand consensus with the GOP, a bipartisan understanding between the Right and the Center Right.

The result is an Obama budget that is all sliced up, like the loser in a knife fight – only, Obama and his corporate executives-on-loan at the White House did all the cutting, themselves. Obama is showing such extraordinary talent for obliterating poor and working class programs across the board, he’s making Republicans look redundant and obsolete.

Eugene Robinson: Haley Barbour’s silence speaks volumes

The Mississippi governor continues to display ignorance on issues of race

Does Haley Barbour really have a warped and offensive view of America’s racial history? Or is he just playing a dangerous game?

Perhaps both. . . . . .

The latest outrage – and I don’t use that word lightly – came Tuesday, when Barbour was asked to comment on a proposal for a state license plate honoring one of the most notorious figures of the Civil War era, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. I question whether any Confederate officer is worthy of such recognition, given that they were all committing treason. But even for the Sons of Confederate Veterans – the group proposing the license plate – Forrest should be an embarrassment.

Harold Meyerson: Workers toppled a dictator in Egypt, but might be silenced in Wisconsin

In Egypt, workers are having a revolutionary February. In the United States, by contrast, February is shaping up as the cruelest month workers have known in decades. . . . . .

But even as workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one state government in particular was moving to topple workers’ organizations here in the United States. Last Friday, Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s new Republican governor, proposed taking away most collective bargaining rights of public employees. Under his legislation, which has moved so swiftly through the newly Republican state legislature that it might come to a vote Thursday, the unions representing teachers, sanitation workers, doctors and nurses at public hospitals, and a host of other public employees, would lose the right to bargain over health coverage, pensions and other benefits. (To make his proposal more politically palatable, the governor exempted from his hit list the unions representing firefighters and police.) The only thing all other public-sector workers could bargain over would be their base wages, and given the fiscal restraints plaguing the states, that’s hardly anything to bargain over at all.

Richrad (RJ) EskowHank Paulson: Ex-Goldman Sachs CEO, Ex-Bush Treasury Secretary, and Ex-actly Right

Somebody said that regulators need real power in order to be tough and effective. He said a strong, independent consumer protection agency is needed to help prevent the next financial crisis. And that we should help the millions of “responsible” homeowners hurt by the crash, instead of demonizing them.

This guy described Fannie and Freddie’s assets as “bullsh*t capital” — $5.4 trillion of it, with taxpayers on the hook and potential debtors that included China and France. He also said this about the whole notion of privatizing a government activity: “To me, if there’s a guarantee, they should be a (government) utility (rather than a private company) — why should people get wealthy off of a government guarantee?”

So who is this socialist — Noam Chomsky? He’s Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush’s Treasury Secretary during the 2008 meltdown. Paulson’s interview with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission may leave you wishing he was still in Washington. The clarity of his comments highlight the absurdity of those politicians who claim that the FCIC reached a “partisan” conclusion. Here’s a Wall Street powerhouse and GOP stalwart who’s saying the same things — and more.

David Sirota: The Submerged State

The Great Paradox-that is what future generations will likely call this era, and rightly so. Our children’s children will look back and see that just a few years after the deregulatory agenda of anti-government ideologues resulted in a horrific recession, American politics somehow became even more dominated by anti-government zealotry than ever before.

Logic-wise, the situation seems to make about as much sense as the alcoholic drinking more to cure his addiction. Politics, though, is no longer even mildly related to logic. It’s all about perception. And with so many media outlets using scare and scandal to chase audience share, “government” is now presented in almost exclusively headline-grabbing-and therefore negative-terms. Think: wasteful bank bailouts, never-ending wars, outrageous sexual escapades and any other government-themed stories that entice you to read, listen, watch, click and loathe.

Jim Hightower: Ethics, Health Care, Guns and Congress Critters

This new Republican-run House of Representatives is looking a lot like the old ethics-be-damned House run just a few years ago by the convicted money-launderer, Tom DeLay — only more so.

Back when DeLay was the GOP’s corrupt majority leader, he got caught hustling campaign funds from an energy corporation whose legislation he then helped pass. This flagrant exchange of corporate cash for legislative favors was so stinky that even DeLay’s pals on the ethics committee had to slap his wrist, ruling in 2004 that a Congress critter should not engage in fundraising “that gives even an appearance that donors will receive … special treatment.”

Now, fast forward to last year, when the independent investigative arm of the House ethics committee charged two Republicans (Tom Price of Georgia and John Campbell of California) and one Democrat (Joe Crowley of New York) with DeLay-style money hustles.