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”

Robert Sheer: No Nukes Is Good Nukes

When it comes to the safety of nuclear power plants, I am biased. And I’ll bet that if President Barack Obama had been with me on that trip to Chernobyl 24 years ago he wouldn’t be as sanguine about the future of nuclear power as he was Tuesday in an interview with a Pittsburgh television station: “Obviously, all energy sources have their downside. I mean, we saw that with the Gulf spill last summer.”

Sorry, Mr. President, but there is a dimension of fear properly associated with the word nuclear that is not matched by any oil spill.

Even 11 months after what has become known simply as “Chernobyl” I sensed a terror of the darkest unknown as I donned the requisite protective gear and checked Geiger counter readings before entering the surviving turbine room adjoining plant No. 4, where the explosion had occurred.  

John Nichols: Wisconsin Senators “Sell Out” to Corporate Interests as DC Crowds Pick Up the Chant: “Recall!”

Wisconsin Republican state Senators, fresh from passing draconian anti-labor and privatization legislation, jetted into Washington, D.C., Wednesday night to collect tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from the one constuency group that approves of what Governor Scott Walker and his GOP allies are doing: corporate lobbyists.

But if Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Joint Finance Committee co-chair Alberta Darling thought they could get away from the mounting campaign to remove Republican state senators and shift control of the chamber to the Democrats, creating a check and balance on Walker, they were mistaken.

Outside the offices of the BGR Group, “B” stands for Barbour, as in Mississippi Governor and potential GOP presidential candidate Haley, as many as 1,000 workers, students, union activists and allies filled the streets of downtown Washington. Many surged into the building where the senators met with lobbyists who paid as much a $5,000 to “host” the gathering to thank the Wisconsin Republicans.

They DC protesters chanted many of the same unions slogans that have been heard at mass protests in Wisconsin. And they picked up a political slogan as well: “Recall!”

Eartha Jane Melzer : Michigan’s ‘Emergency Manager Law’ Epitomizes State-Level ‘Shock Doctrine’

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to get Emergency Manager powers this week

Public workers in Michigan lost job security yesterday as the state House signed off on a bill that allows the governor to appoint people to take over financially troubled local governments and schools and cancel labor contracts.

Less than two months after Gov. Rick Snyder asked the Legislature to expand the state’s ability to intervene in communities facing budget problems, the Republican-controlled House and Senate have finalized a bill that gives unprecedented power to appointed Emergency Managers.

The Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act creates a range of triggers for state involvement in local communities and allows the governor to appoint managers to fire local elected officials, break labor agreements, suspend collective bargaining rights for five years, order millage elections, take over pension funds and even dissolve local governments.

Medea Benjamin: Activists Stand Up for Bradley Manning – and PJ Crowley

When we heard on Sunday that P.J. Crowley had resigned as spokesman for the State Department after criticizing the Pentagon’s treatment of suspected whistleblower Army private Bradley Manning, my CODEPINK colleagues and I knew we had to respond. How outrageous that yet another person gets punished for simply telling the truth–Crowley called Manning’s treatment “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid”–while the war criminals go free. I can think of a lot stronger words to use for the way the Pentagon is holding Manning in solitary confinement for 10 months now, before he has even had a trial or been convicted of anything.

We quickly put out a call for activists to meet us at the State Department at noon and then walk to the White House. About 24 people showed up on short notice, in the middle of a workday. Some donned black and white prison suits, others put on orange Guantanamo jumpsuits, and three brave men–Tighe, Jay and Logan–stripped down to jock straps to symbolize the fact that the prison guards take away Manning’s clothing at night, including his underwear. (They justify this because of sarcastic comments Manning had made about using his underwear to commit suicide, but it’s really to further intimidate and humiliate him.)

Jim Hightower: America’s True Crisis: Zero Vision, Zero Leadership

The greatest problem our nation faces can be summed up in one word: leadership. OK, make that three words: lack of leadership.

America’s corporate, political, media, academic and other leaders aren’t. They’re not leaders – because they refuse to stand tall, be bold, offer vision, inspire and … well, lead. We’ve got too many 5-watt bulbs sitting in 100-watt sockets. They’re squishing the historic can-do spirit of the American people, reducing it to a dispiriting ethic of surrender that says we-shouldn’t-even-try.

Start with our leaders’ willful abdication of the American dream. They’ve given up on the notion of producing a shared prosperity that creates a broad middle class. For more than a decade now, Wall Street and Washington have let millions of jobs disappear and pushed wages down. They now yawn at the entrenched jobs crisis that is eating the middle class, and rather than responding to the plight of millions of hard-hit families, they’re trying to bust unions and kill minimum-wage laws.

Peter Rothberg: Rockefeller Bill Would Gut the EPA

This morning the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the Upton-Inhofe bill (H.R. 910) on a largely party line vote of 34 to 19. The legislation attempts to overturn the EPA’s scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases endanger public health and welfare and thus require regulation. The NRDC’s Pete Altman live blogged most of the markup. It will go to a full House vote some time in the next few weeks, where it is expected to pass easily. Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered the same bill as an amendment to an unrelated small business bill.

Now Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller has an alternate proposal which would delay EPA regulations for two years.The problem: his bill would have the same result as Inhofe’s: it would kill EPA climate rules, as the eminent climate blogger Dave Roberts detailed at Grist.

The Senate is likely to vote down Inhofe’s bill, Roberts explained. But Rockefeller’s bill could get enough votes to pass. Obama would probably veto Inhofe’s bill. But he might let Rockefeller’s pass as a rider. So Rockefeller’s bill has a better chance of getting through and is thus a far greater threat.

Sarah van Gelder and Brooke Jarvis: Wisconsin Awakens a Sleeping Giant

As Wisconsin’s attack on workers spreads to other states, so does the historic uprising that began in Madison.

In one sense, the struggle over union rights in Wisconsin is over. It took some breathtaking, possibly even illegal, shenanigans (click here for details), but the union-busting “Budget Repair Bill” has been passed, signed, and celebrated. In other ways, though, the weeks of historic protests in and around Wisconsin’s capitol were just the first act of what may prove to be a far longer-and larger-struggle.

Around the country, state governments are targeting union rights, workplace protection, social services, and the ability of middle-class and working poor to have a voice. But, in large part thanks to the momentum of the Wisconsin protests, they’re finding it difficult to do so quietly. In state after state, the Americans whose rights and services are being cut are rising up against the decades-long shift of wealth and power to corporations and the very wealthy.