“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”
Dean Baker: The Imaginary World in Which Washington Lives
It is a beautiful spring day in Washington. This is a nice respite from the horrors taking place in Japan and the ever-growing nuttiness of D.C. politics. Enjoying the weather provides a nice alternative to listening to the news or reading the newspaper.
The flood of nonsense in the traditional news outlets just continues to grow. At the top of the list is the steady stream of senators or members of Congress whose response to higher gas prices is to insist on drilling in every square inch of environmentally sensitive territory in the country. This is supposed to reduce our dependence on imported oil and lower the price of gas. Both sides of this assertion are absurd.
Glen Greenwald: The Manipulative Pro-War Argument in Libya
Advocating for the U.S.’s military action in Libya, The New Republic‘s John Judis lays out the argument which many of his fellow war advocates are making: that those who oppose the intervention are guilty of indifference to the plight of the rebels and to Gadaffi’s tyranny
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Note how, in Judis’ moral world, there are only two possibilities: one can either support the American military action in Libya or be guilty of a “who cares?” attitude toward Gadaffi’s butchery. At least as far as this specific line of pro-war argumentation goes, this is just 2003 all over again. Back then, those opposed to the war in Iraq were deemed pro-Saddam: indifferent to the repression and brutalities suffered by the Iraqi people at his hands and willing to protect his power. Now, those opposed to U.S. involvement in the civil war in Libya are deemed indifferent to the repression and brutalities suffered by the Libyan people from Gadaffi and willing to protect his power. This rationale is as flawed logically as it is morally.
Harold Meyerson: The mind-set that survived the Triangle Shirtwaist fire
The seamstresses were just getting off work that Saturday, some of them singing a new popular song, “Every Little Movement (Has a Meaning of Its Own),” when they heard shouts from the eighth floor just below. They saw smoke outside the windows, and then fire. As David Von Drehle recounts the ensuing catastrophe, in his award-winning book “Triangle,” just a couple minutes later the ninth floor was fully ablaze.
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Businesses reacted as if the revolution had arrived. The changes to the fire code, said a spokesman for the Associated Industries of New York, would lead to “the wiping out of industry in this state.” The regulations, wrote George Olvany, special counsel to the Real Estate Board of New York City, would force expenditures on precautions that were “absolutely needless and useless.”
“The best government is the least possible government,” said Laurence McGuire, president of the Real Estate Board. “To my mind, this [the post-Triangle regulations] is all wrong.”
Such complaints, of course, are with us still. We hear them from mine operators after fatal explosions, from bankers after they’ve crashed the economy, from energy moguls after their rig explodes or their plant starts leaking radiation. We hear them from politicians who take their money. We hear them from Republican members of Congress and from some Democrats, too. A century after Triangle, greed encased in libertarianism remains a fixture of – and danger to – American life.
Dana Milbank: Rep. Weiner sinks meat hooks into health-care law’s attackers
Democrats would be better off if more of them acted like Weiners.
As the first anniversary of the health-care law approached this week, many Democratic lawmakers went to ground, leaving unanswered Republican accusations that the legislation is socialist, unconstitutional, bankrupting the country, destroying the medical system and generally bringing about the apocalypse. But not Anthony Weiner.
The New York congressman, a Brooklyn-born streetfighter, held six events Wednesday to defend the law. His message was, predictably, a collection of snappy comebacks to Republican accusations. But he also delivered a call to arms to his Democratic colleagues, who have been passive to the point of wimpy as Republicans press for repeal.
“If Democrats believe it’s going to go away, they’re wrong,” the fast-talking Weiner said. “I don’t represent the hide-under-the-desk wing of the Democratic Party. I believe we’ve got to lean into this fight.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The GOP’s ever-shifting stance on Obama’s leadership
Leaders do not operate in a vacuum. When they make strategic adjustments, their opponents do, too. President Obama has prompted just such a pivot by Republicans.
They’re criticizing him not for the decisions he’s made but for the ones he hasn’t, and the ones he delayed. They are attacking him not as a liberal ideologue but as a man in full flight from any ideological definition. If they once said his plans were too big, they are now asking if he has any plans at all.
The immediate focus for the new GOP approach is the president’s extended deliberations over Libya, with criticism raining down from various points on the GOP spectrum.
Jon Walker: Are Those in Washington Simply ‘Bored’ with Job Creation?
By Greater than Two-to-One, Americans Want Jobs, Not Spending Cuts
CBS News has released a new poll and, not surprisingly, with official unemployment around nine percent, it found that an overwhelming 51 percent of Americans said jobs/economy is the most important problem facing the country. By comparison, the national debt comes in second with a mere seven percent of Americans saying it is the most important problem, followed by health care with five percent.
When asked to choose what should be a higher priority between just cutting government spending or creating jobs, by a greater than two-to-one margin, Americans choose job creations. A full 63 percent think job creation should be the higher priority, while only 26 percent choose spending cuts, with 11 percent choosing both.
Yet our politicians seem to have either not have gotten the memo or simply don’t care. Washington has fallen deep into the grips of a full blown wave of deficit hysteria to justify domestic spending cuts. (Although the hysteria does always temporarily vanish when more money is needed for more wars)
Amy Goodman: Aristide’s Return to Haiti: A Long Night’s Journey Into Day
Late at night on March 17, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide boarded a small plane with his family in Johannesburg. The following morning, he arrived in Haiti. It was just over seven years after he was kidnapped from his home in a U.S.-backed coup d’etat. Haiti has been ravaged by a massive earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and left a million and a half homeless. A cholera epidemic carried in by United Nations occupation forces could sicken almost 800,000. A majority of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Now, Aristide, by far the most popular figure in Haiti today and the first democratically elected president of the first black republic in the world, has returned home.
“Bon Retou Titid” (good return, Titid, the affectionate term for Aristide) read the signs in Port-au-Prince as thousands flocked to accompany Aristide from the Toussaint L’Ouverture Airport to his home. L’Ouverture led the slave uprising that established Haiti in 1804. I was able to travel with Aristide, his wife, Mildred, and their two daughters from Johannesburg to Haiti on the small jet provided by the government of South Africa. It was my second flight with them. In March 2004, the Aristides attempted to return from forced exile in the Central African Republic, but never made it back to Haiti. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials warned Aristide to stay away from the Western Hemisphere. Defying such pressure, the Aristides stopped in Jamaica before traveling to South Africa, where they remained until last weekend.
Robert Sheer: Be Consistent-Invade Saudi Arabia
It’s the black gold that drives nations mad and inevitably raises the question of whether America and the former European colonial powers give a damn about human rights as the basis for military intervention. If Libya didn’t have more oil than any other nation in Africa would the West be unleashing high-tech military mayhem to contain what is essentially a tribal-based civil war? Once again an American president summons the passions of a human rights crusade against a reprehensible ruler whose crimes, while considerable, are not significantly different from those of dictators the U.S routinely protects.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Moammar Gadhafi must now go not because his human rights record is egregious but rather because his erratic hold on power seems spent. After all, from the London School of Economics to Harvard, influential foreign policy experts were all too happy until quite recently to accept Libyan payoffs in exchange for a more benign view of Gadhafi’s prospects for change under the gentle guidance of what Harvard’s Joseph Nye celebrated as “soft power.”
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