“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 Deficit Hawks Target Nurses and Firefighters
Many people might think that the country’s problems stem from the fact that too much money has been going to the very rich. Over the last three decades, the richest one percent of the population has increased its share of national income by almost 10 percentage points (Excel spreadsheet). This comes to $1.5 trillion a year, or as the deficit hawks are fond of saying, $90 trillion over the next 75 years.
To put this in context, the size of this upward redistribution to the richest one percent over the last three decades is roughly large enough to double the income of all the households in the bottom half of the income distribution. The upward redistribution amounts to an average of more than 1.2 million dollars a year for each of the families in the richest one percent of the population.
Eugene Robinson: Newt Gingrich on Libya policy: Firing in every direction
If you don’t like Newt Gingrich’s carefully considered and passionately argued position on the U.S. intervention in Libya, just wait. Recent history suggests that within days he’ll be saying the opposite of whatever he’s saying now.
My best guess is that for the moment, at least, Gingrich kind of supports President Obama’s decision to use military force against Libyan despot Moammar Gaddafi, or at least that he hopes it succeeds. But it’s hard to be certain. On Libya, the former House speaker has shown the ability to be both pro and con with equal moral certainty and intellectual arrogance.
Dana Milbank: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
The National Defense University at Fort McNair was a favorite backdrop of President George W. Bush as he laid out his Bush doctrine of preemptive war.
Five times during his presidency, Bush visited the military installation in Southwest D.C., serving up such memorable soundbites as “we’re at war with cold-blooded killers who despise freedom,” and “we will keep the terrorists on the run until they have nowhere left to hide,” and “our immediate strategy is to eliminate terrorist threats abroad so we do not have to face them here at home.”
So it was noteworthy that Obama chose the same location for his speech to the nation justifying the U.S. military action in Libya. After ten days of confusion about America’s role in Libya – and in the world – Obama finally was prepared to articulate his “doctrine.”
Christian Science Monitor: Bernard-Henri Levy: War in Iraq was detestable. War in Libya was inevitable.
Bernard-Henri Levy, the French author and philosopher (his latest book is “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism”), has played a high-profile role in convincing French President Nicolas Sarkozy to take the lead in recognizing the rebels in Libya and establishing the no-fly zone. He spoke with Global Viewpoint Network editor Nathan Gardels on Thursday.
Juan Cole: An Open Letter to the Left on Libya
As I expected, now that Qaddafi’s advantage in armor and heavy weapons is being neutralized by the UN allies’ air campaign, the liberation movement is regaining lost territory. Liberators took back Ajdabiya and Brega (Marsa al-Burayqa), key oil towns, on Saturday into Sunday morning, and seemed set to head further West. This rapid advance is almost certainly made possible in part by the hatred of Qaddafi among the majority of the people of these cities. The Buraiqa Basin contains much of Libya’s oil wealth, and the Transitional Government in Benghazi will soon again control 80 percent of this resource, an advantage in their struggle with Qaddafi.
I am unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on, and glad that the UNSC-authorized intervention has saved them from being crushed. I can still remember when I was a teenager how disappointed I was that Soviet tanks were allowed to put down the Prague Spring and extirpate socialism with a human face. Our multilateral world has more spaces in it for successful change and defiance of totalitarianism than did the old bipolar world of the Cold War, where the US and the USSR often deferred to each other’s sphere of influence.
Glen Greenwald: Billionaire Self-Pity and the Koch Brothers
Since the financial crisis of 2008, one of the most revealing spectacles has been the parade of financial elites who petulantly insist that they are the victims of societal hostility: political officials heap too much blame on them, public policy burdens them so unfairly, the public resents them, and — most amazingly of all — President Obama is a radical egalitarian who is unprecedentedly hostile to business interests. One particularly illustrative example was the whiny little multi-millionaire hedge fund manager (and CNBC contributor), Anthony Scaramucci, who stood up at an October, 201o, town hall meeting and demanded to know: “when are we going to stop whacking at the Wall Street pinata?”
The Weekly Standard now has a very lengthy defense of — including rare interviews with — Charles and David Koch, the libertarian billionaires who fund everything from right-wing economic policy, union-busting, and anti-climate-change advocacy to civil liberties and liberalized social policies — though far more the former goals than the latter. In this article one finds the purest and most instructive expression of billionaire self-pity that I think I’ve ever seen — one that is as self-absorbed and detached from reality as it destructive. It’s really worth examining their revealed mindset to see how those who wield the greatest financial power (and thus the greatest political power) think of themselves and those who are outside of their class.
Robert Kuttner: An American Industrial Renaissance?
In the sorting out of the wreckage after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, many Americans have begun paying more attention to a phrase they had barely known — “supply chains.”
American manufacturing companies no longer make most of the parts that they use in production. Rather, both U.S. companies and foreign ones that produce for the U.S. market have long and complex chains of suppliers the world over, many of them in Japan. Now, a lot of that production is temporarily idle, while Japan digs out.In the sorting out of the wreckage after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, many Americans have begun paying more attention to a phrase they had barely known — “supply chains.”
Harvey Wasserman: Radiation is a Lethal Three Mile Island Lie
There is no safe dose of radiation.
We do not x-ray pregnant women.
Any detectable fallout can kill.
With erratic radiation spikes, major air and water emissions and at least three reactors and waste pools in serious danger at Fukushima, we must prepare for the worst.
When you hear the terms “safe” and “insignificant” in reference to radioactive fallout, ask yourself: “Safe for whom?” “Insignificant to which of us?”
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