“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”.
New York Times Editorial: No Holiday
Big business has clearly decided that the economic crisis is too important to waste. While Washington debates how to create jobs and cut the budget deficit, major corporations – read major campaign contributors – are pushing Congress for an enormous tax cut on corporate profits. Lawmakers seem all too eager to grant their wish.
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These days, corporations are flush with $2 trillion in cash that is not being used for hiring. As long as the economy is weak and consumers aren’t spending, tax cuts will add to the cash pile, not create jobs. A tax holiday also would add to the deficit, in part because companies rush to bring money home, rather than repatriating the earnings over time at the usual rate. According to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, another tax holiday at 5.25 percent would increase the deficit by nearly $80 billion over 10 years; a rate of 10.5 percent would cost $42 billion.
E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Perry, Cain and Flat Earth Government
It’s one of the strangest things in our politics: The only “big” ideas Republicans and conservatives seem to offer these days revolve around novel and sometimes bizarre ways of cutting taxes on rich people.
Given all the attention that Herman Cain’s nonsensical and regressive “9-9-9 tax plan” has received, the Republican debates should have as their soundtrack that old Beatles song that droned on about the number nine.
Now, Texas Gov. Rick Perry hopes to pump up his campaign with a supposedly bold proposal to institute a flat tax, which would also deliver more money to the well-off. Perry plans to outline his proposal this week, but has already touted it as a surefire way of “scrapping the 3 million words of the current tax code.”
The New York Times used an article on Rhode Island’s pension system to denounce “the nation’s profligate ways,” which it warns will catch up with us. Newspapers are supposed to leave such editorializing to the opinion pages.
In fact there is good reason to believe that the nation’s obsession with frugality is now catching up with us. The country lost close to $1.4 trillion in annual demand due to the collapse of the housing bubble. In the short term this can only be replaced by larger government deficits. However, because politicians in Washington do not want larger deficits, the economy is operating at close 6 percent below its potential GDP and millions of workers are needlessly unemployed or underemployed. Since there is very limited support for the unemployed in the United States, this situation is a disaster for the millions of people facing it.
The article also gets some of the facts on state and local pensions wrong.
Ray McGovern: The Military Industrial Complex at 50: Activism
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Ray McGovern on Activism and the Military Industrial ComplexBy davidswanson – Posted on 24 October 2011
The Military Industrial Complex at 50: Activism
By Ray McGovern, for MIC50.orgThe past 50 years have shown that President Eisenhower was spot on, as we would say today, about the Military Industrial Complex and what to expect if Americans were not vigilant, which, of course, we have not been – until maybe now.
An endless train of outrages and indignities can be traced to the inordinate influence of the MIC. And a truly formidable challenge awaits those of us determined not to let our democracy be taken away from us by the greed of a small minority.
So here we are, cooped up, by choice, indoors, talking about these dismal matters on a glorious late-summer afternoon. Don’t know about you, but I found myself sorely tempted to channel today’s activism into a brisk swim in that beautiful little lake just outside.
Joe Conason: What Romney’s Religion Reveals About His Politics
Recent expressions of political and religious prejudice against Mormons and the Church of Latter-day Saints have offered Mitt Romney a chance to play the bullied underdog-and to explain, as he did with clarity and dignity during the Vegas debate, the meaning of the constitutional prohibition against any religious test for public office.
That won’t discourage Baptist conservatives or atheist entertainers like Bill Maher from making fun of Mormons and their faith, whose history and tenets certainly sound strange to outsiders.
But is there any real reason to be troubled by Romney’s religion? What does the career of the former Massachusetts governor tell us about the ideology of the LDS church-and what his personal beliefs may portend if he becomes the first Mormon in the Oval Office?
John Nichols: Big Money, Bad Media, Secret Agendas: Welcome to America’s Wildest School Board Race
School board elections are supposed to be quintessential America contests. Moms and Main Street small-business owners and retired teachers campaign by knocking on doors, writing letters to the editor and debating at elementary schools. Then friends and neighbors troop to the polls and make their choices.
But what happens when all the pathologies of national politics-over-the-top spending by wealthy elites and corporate interests, partisan consultants jetting in to shape big-lie messaging, media outlets that cover spin rather than substance-are visited on a local school board contest?
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