“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”.
Amy Goodman: A New Bush Era or a Push Era
Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.” He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph’s demand for civil rights for African-Americans.
While President Obama has made concession after concession to both the corporate-funded tea party and his Wall Street donors, now that he is again in campaign mode, his progressive critics are being warned not to attack him, as that might aid and abet the Republican bid for the White House.
Enter the 99 percenters. The Occupy Wall Street ranks continue to grow, inspiring more than 1,000 solidarity protests around the country and the globe. After weeks, and one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, Obama finally commented: “I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.” But neither he nor his advisers-or the Republicans-know what to do with this burgeoning mass movement.
Bernie Sanders: Six Demands to Make of Wall Street
The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous, and secretive economic and political force in America.
If this country is to break out of the horrendous recession and create the millions of jobs we desperately need, if we are going to create a modicum of financial stability for the future, there is no question but that the American people are going to have to take a very hard look at Wall Street and demand fundamental reforms. I hope these protests are the beginning of that process.
Let us never forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and life savings as the middle class underwent an unprecedented collapse. Sadly, despite all the suffering caused by Wall Street, there is no reason to believe that the major financial institutions have changed their ways, or that future financial disasters and bailouts will not happen again.
The billionaire mayor will “allow” peaceful protesters to remain. What right did he have to remove them?
Despite fawning media coverage of a mayor from whom many elite reporters hope to get a $500,000-a-year job, there remains a simple reason why polls show that a large number of rank-and-file New Yorkers haven’t fallen for the propaganda: It’s because he behaves like he believes he’s a king.
This is a billionaire despot who weekends in Bermuda and doesn’t come home for municipal emergencies; deliberately lands himself recession-blind headlines describing him as “baronial”; makes sure public workers plow his street while the Big Apple’s citizens die; and now, most recently, declares that he has the extra-constitutional power to decide who is “allowed” in New York City and who is not.
Robert Reich: The Seven Biggest Economic Lies
The President’s Jobs Bill doesn’t have a chance in Congress – and the Occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can’t become a national movement for a more equitable society – unless more Americans know the truth about the economy.
Here’s a short (2 minute 30 second) effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take America backwards. The major points:
1. Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else
2.Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth.
3. Shrinking government generates more jobs.
4. Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy.
5. Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits.
6. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
7. It’s unfair that lower-income Americans don’t pay income tax.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The Rise of the Reverse Houdinis
Washington – So let’s see: The solution to large-scale abuses of the financial system, a breakdown of the private sector, extreme economic inequality and the failure of companies and individuals to invest and create jobs is — well, to give even more money and power to very wealthy people, to disable government and to trust those who got us into the mess to get us out of it.
That’s a brief summary of the news from the Republican Party this week. It’s what Republican candidates said during the Washington Post-Bloomberg debate, and it’s the signal Senate Republicans sent in voting as a bloc against President Obama’s jobs bill. Don’t just do something, stand there.
Jules Boykoff: Occupy Wall Street: Reclaiming Public Space, Reclaiming Dignity
As the public-space prairie fire known as Occupy Wall Street spreads across the country from New York to Portland, it’s becoming glaringly apparent activists are pinging the political target. In the face of both predictable right-wing detractors as well as high-profile liberals who want a crisp list of specific demands, activists have rejected top-down, slicker than slick press-release politics in favor of messy, slow, ground-up politics — the essence of radical democracy. Because the movement is leaderless, it has left the media rudderless.
At first many journalists were befuddled, wondering what the movement stood for. This is a bit odd. After all, the movement is called Occupy Wall Street and one of its central slogans is “We are the 99 percent.” People are fed up with the wealthiest 1 percent reaping the economic rewards, with the super-rich stuffing their pockets while the rest of us — the 99 percent — are left holding the bag.
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