“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”.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Stop the Big Bank Payday Predators
While Occupy Wall Street has brought needed attention to inequality and downward social mobility-long ignored by the mainstream media and the political establishment-there are also groups that have been in the trenches for years, struggling day in and day out, doing the tough organizing that is needed if OWS’s vision is to be achieved.
One such group is National People’s Action (NPA), a network of community organizations in cities, towns and rural communities across the country working to advance a national economic and racial justice agenda. NPA-along with unions and community and faith-based groups, and coalitions like The New Bottom Line-has long played a leading role in the fight to hold banks accountable, stop foreclosures, promote housing rights and protect immigrant and workers’ rights, among other vital campaigns.
Frances Fox PrivenThe War Against the Poor
We’ve been at war for decades now-not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed-until now.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.
More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House. They succeeded, just weeks after 1,253 people were arrested in a series of protests at the same spot. These thousands, as well as those arrested, were unified in their opposition to the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. A broad, international coalition against the pipeline has formed since President Barack Obama took office, and now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.
Bill McKibben, founder of the global movement against climate change 350.org, told me: “This has become not only the biggest environmental flash point in many, many years, but maybe the issue in recent times in the Obama administration when he’s been most directly confronted by people in the street. In this case, people willing, hopeful, almost dying for him to be the Barack Obama of 2008.”
Kim Knowlton: The Staggering Health Costs of Climate Change
The extreme weather just won’t seem to leave people alone this year.
I’m talking to an arborist to find replacements for beloved lilac bushes and one magnolia tree that just got tall enough to lend some nice summer shade, now snapped off in its prime by last weekend’s wet October snowfall that’s being called “Snowtober” by some.
My sense of humor about the year has worn thin. Neighbors across much of upstate NY and Vermont are still reeling in very serious ways from the flooding and water damage of Irene: farms and fields that were underwater, homes upended, village main streets still mending from cascades of debris and mud, all at a time when the regional and national economy is limping, at best. The preliminary tally of damages from 2011’s weather disasters already “exceed $45 billion”, according to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And we have nearly two months to go.
Adil Shamoo: Bahrain’s Courageous Doctors
The United States continues to ignore the thwarted Arab Spring in Bahrain. Recently, a quasi-military court in the small Gulf state sentenced 20 doctors and nurses to up to 15 years in jail. The charge against them? Treating injured demonstrators opposing the regime.
Doctors and nurses in the Middle East have a long and proud tradition of treating the ill, regardless of the situation. In ninth-century Baghdad, for example, Hunayn ibn Ishaq was the Caliph’s physician. The Caliph asked this physician to prepare a poison to kill his enemies. The physician refused, risking his life, and was eventually jailed for one year. After serving his sentence, the Caliph inquired as to why he refused. The physician replied, “My profession is instituted for the benefit of humanity and limited to their relief and cure.”
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