“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 Reich: The Meagerness of the GOP Debates, the Smallness of the President’s Solutions, and the Need for a Progressive Alternative
Republicans are debating again Tuesday night. And once again, Americans will hear the standard regressive litany: government is bad, Medicare and Medicaid should be cut, “Obamacare” is killing the economy, undocumented immigrants are taking our jobs, the military should get more money, taxes should be lowered on corporations and the rich, and regulations should be gutted. []
Americans are listening more intently this time around because they’re hurting and they want answers. But the answers they’re getting from Republican candidates — tripping over themselves trying to appeal to hard-core regressives — are the wrong ones.
The correct ones aren’t being aired.
Robert Kuttner: Simplify Banks and Bank Regulation
In January 2010, after Scott Brown’s upset victory in the special Massachusetts Senate election, a panicky President Obama managed to sound like a populist for a couple of days. He called for a tax on banking profits and drafted Paul Volcker to appear at a quickie press conference so that the administration could call for something dubbed “The Volcker Rule.”
Volcker, an impeccably conservative former Fed Chair skeptical about the abuses of financial de-regulation, was one of the few elder statesmen in 2010 with any credibility. Though Volcker was an early supporter of Obama and adviser to the campaign, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers managed to marginalize Volcker because the old man turned out to be leery of their schemes to prop up the big banks without cleaning them out. Even worse, Volcker was nostalgic about the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which had staved off big trouble for more than half a century by requiring that federally insured commercial banks stay out of the inherently speculative investment banking business.
“Defend Wall Street” is not likely to be a winning campaign slogan in 2012. For Republicans, this is an obvious problem. For President Obama and the Democrats, it’s a golden-if largely undeserved-opportunity.
The biggest impact of the Occupy Wall Street protests has been to provide a focal point for generalized economic and political discontent. Frustrated voters on the left and the right may disagree on, say, immigration policy or health care reform. But they can agree on a critique of the financial sector-and, potentially, on specific measures to bring about necessary change.
David Swanson: Occupied – What Now?
Thanks in large part to the New York and national corporate media a massive campaign to shift power away from giant corporations and into the hands of the people is now afoot all across this continent. It was inspired by peoples’ nonviolent uprisings in other countries and sparked by courageous nonviolence on Wall Street.
Can we keep it going and growing despite the unreliability of the corporate media? When the television networks created Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, for us — following the courageous stand taken by Cindy Sheehan — they later turned against the movement and against Cindy. Already they are working to depict our occupations as violent, misdirected, undirected, and impotent.
Dave Johnson: Jobs – Still the No. 1 National Emergency
We are in an absolute national jobs emergency and everyone outside of Washington, DC understands this. But if you read the DC-oriented press, you would think that the “issue” of jobs has come and gone. You would read that “each side” has “scored points.” You would read that each side has “offered a plan.” You would read that “Congress is deadlocked” and “neither side is willing to compromise.” This is “horse-race” coverage, where they talk about the politics of who is up and who is down, and not coverage of what is important in the lives of regular Americans.
In this kind of coverage the “side” that is the American People and our needs is not even part of this discussion.. This kind of coverage recognizes that much of what happens in Washington is little more than a propaganda game of scoring points and tricking people into thinking things that are not real… Anyway, out in the real world people still need jobs and it is an emergency, and there is a risk of people taking matters into their own hands.
Richard Eskow: The Nihilist Party: Republicans Who Believe in Nothing
Some people’s only exposure to nihilism comes from the German gang in The Big Lebowski who said things like “We are nihilists, we believe in nothing” and “Tell us where the girl is or we cut off your johnson, Lebowski.” Or the nihilist humor of comedian Brother Theodore, who liked to say things like “I looked at the void, the void looked back – and neither of us liked what we saw.”
That’s exactly how I feel when I watch the Republican Presidential debates.
The void that looks out through their eyes is the absence of any underlying principle, ideology, or ideas, especially on economic issues. It’s not that their beliefs are different than yours or mine. It’s that, as now seems clear, they don’t actually believe in anything – anything, that is, except greater power for themselves and greater wealth for their financial backers.
Jim Hightower: The GOP Loves the Federal Spending It Hates
Sen. McConnell’s tirade about the Solyndra debacle would’ve had a lot more moral punch if it were not for Zap Motors.
Whatever else you think about tea-party-infused Republican leaders in Congress, at least they’re consistent in their opposition to big government intrusion in the economy, right?
Absolutely. Unless you count intrusions of taxpayer funds into corporate projects back in their districts.
For example, President Barack Obama’s effort to accelerate federal-backed loans to job-creating, green-energy projects has been a target of howling Republican ridicule. In particular, they’re now assailing a 2009 loan guarantee to the failed solar-panel maker, Solyndra, holding it up as proof that green energy programs are a waste, driven by raw politics.
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