“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: The Mellon Doctrine
“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.” That, according to Herbert Hoover, was the advice he received from Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary, as America plunged into depression. To be fair, there’s some question about whether Mellon actually said that; all we have is Hoover’s version, written many years later.
But one thing is clear: Mellon-style liquidationism is now the official doctrine of the G.O.P.
Two weeks ago, Republican staff at the Congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report, “Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy,” that argued that slashing government spending and employment in the face of a deeply depressed economy would actually create jobs. In part, they invoked the aid of the confidence fairy; more on that in a minute. But the leading argument was pure Mellon.
Robert Reich: The Awful, Unsaid Truth: We’re Heading Back Toward a Double Dip
Why aren’t Americans being told the truth about the economy? We’re heading in the direction of a double dip – but you’d never know it if you listened to the upbeat messages coming out of Wall Street and Washington.
Consumers are 70 percent of the American economy, and consumer confidence is plummeting. It’s weaker today on average than at the lowest point of the Great Recession.
The Reuters/University of Michigan survey shows a 10 point decline in March – the tenth largest drop on record. Part of that drop is attributable to rising fuel and food prices. A separate Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence, just released, shows consumer confidence at a five-month low – and a large part is due to expectations of fewer jobs and lower wages in the months ahead.
Pessimistic consumers buy less. And fewer sales spells economic trouble ahead.
Laura Flanders: Bringing the Budget Protests to New York
From Wisconsin to Indiana to right here in New York-the state capitol in Albany Wednesday night echoed as well with chants of “This is what democracy looks like” as protesters occupied the halls to protest budget cuts to education.
This time, it’s a Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, in the driver’s seat, and while he’s not threatening to take away union negotiating rights, the budget pushed through at 1 am contains steep cuts to primary education spending, the State University of New York, and job creation. It also allows the millionaires’ tax to expire-that’s a surtax on incomes over $1 million.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Time for Fair Share Politics
The lunatics are running the asylum that is Congress.
At a moment when nearly two-thirds of US corporations don’t pay any federal income taxes, and companies are sitting on trillions in cash while refusing to hire new workers, the only thing we hear when it comes to tax reform is that we need to cut the corporate tax rate.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Yet it’s par for the course in this take-no-prisoners, slashonomics budget debate, where fighting to protect programs that help people get basic needs like housing, healthcare and heat is derided, but no corporate loophole is left unprotected. The debate in Washington has almost always been out of touch with the realities of people’s lives, but that gap has now widened into a gulf-perhaps greater than we’ve seen in generations.
John Nichols: Obama’s CEO-in-Chief, GE’s Immelt, Must Go
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt is President Obama’s point person of job creation and economic growth.
That may be the problem.
While Obama says he wants to encourage the creation of family-supporting jobs and to grow the middle class, Immelt is all about enriching himself and growing the gap between rich and poor.
Immelt, the chair of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, heads America’s largest corporation. General Electric made $14,200,000,000 in profits last year, yet it paid $0 in taxes-as in “zero,” “nothing,” “not a penny.”
With all that extra money, Immelt enjoyed a doubling of his personal compensation. Yet, he was not interested in spreading the prosperity. In fact, GE is expected to ask 15,000 of the company’s unionized workers to agree to sweeping cuts in pay and benefits.
Jeff Biggers: Nation Celebrates Arizona Cesar Chavez, As AZ Launches Air Posse
On the eve of Arizona’s most famous native son’s celebrated birthday, Phoenix-area Sheriff Joe Arpaio unveiled his latest media stunt, the war-time invoking Operation Desert Sky–a 30-plane air posse of armed volunteers to track Mexican smugglers. Only days before, Arpaio rolled his department’s private tank into a quiet west Phoenix neighborhood to apprehend a flock of chickens and their unarmed cock-fighting enthusiast.
It’s not enough to question the logic of Arpaio’s extremist follies, or the cost to taxpayers while Arizona continues to witness the deaths of denied transplant patients and deal with draconian cuts to education. Or the fact that the Tea Party-controlled state legislature openly refused to fund enforcement efforts for the level-headed Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, whose Pima County actually runs along the Mexican border (unlike Arpaio’s Maricopa County).
Richard (RJ) Escow: By the Time You Read This: Why the Mortgage Crisis Dwarfs Almost Everything
The mortgage crisis in this country doesn’t get much attention in Washington these days, but it’s huge. It’s so huge, in fact, that it dwarfs most of the economic issues that have Washington in their grip. It’s so huge that it’s dragging down our entire economy. It’s so huge that the numbers can be difficult to picture.
The scale of the crisis is, in a word, staggering.
Here are seven charts (and another that was borrowed from the Wall Street Journal) along with some facts and figures that will help sketch out the scope of the problem. The numbers that follow are most likely understated, if anything, because we’ve left out some forms of reduced spending (like that which takes place when homeowners who have paid off their mortgages lose home value.)
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