“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: Failure Is Good
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a complete turkey! It’s the supercommittee!
By next Wednesday, the so-called supercommittee, a bipartisan group of legislators, is supposed to reach an agreement on how to reduce future deficits. Barring an evil miracle – I’ll explain the evil part later – the committee will fail to meet that deadline.
If this news surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention. If it depresses you, cheer up: In this case, failure is good.
Why was the supercommittee doomed to fail? Mainly because the gulf between our two major political parties is so wide. Republicans and Democrats don’t just have different priorities; they live in different intellectual and moral universes.
Eugene Robinson: Occupy: Out of Zuccotti Park and into the streets
Occupy Wall Street may not occupy Zuccotti Park anymore, but it refuses to surrender its place in the national discourse. Up close, you get the sense that the movement may have only just begun. [..]
The erstwhile occupiers of Zuccotti Park swear that they aren’t going anywhere – that they’ll get back into the park one way or another. But they’ve done something more important: They’ve gotten into people’s heads.
On the eve of some decision by the supercommittee-or no decision and painful automatic cuts-this is a time to remember the other ideas out there for balancing the budget. There are plenty of credible and thoughtful plans out there. Granted, they are not politically viable at the moment, given the Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives, and its ability to stop virtually anything in the Senate-not to mention the six votes it controls on the supercommittee.
But to listen to most media coverage of the deficit debates-and too often, the rhetoric thrown about by Republicans and some Democrats-one comes away thinking the only way to get the fiscal house in order is via “entitlement reform” and deep domestic spending cuts, along with higher taxes and fewer loopholes.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: Dems: Stop caving in
Here is something we all can agree on: Federal deficits are a serious problem.
Here is something few can seriously dispute: Today’s big deficits were caused mainly by big tax cuts for the wealthy, two unpaid-for wars, a horrible recession caused by Wall Street greed and an expensive prescription drug program rigged to favor pharmaceutical companies.
Here is something we should not agree to do: Cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.
There is surprisingly broad consensus among Americans – except inside the corporate-dominated D.C. Beltway – on what to do about deficits. In poll after poll, strong majorities favor making the wealthiest Americans, who, in many cases, have never had it so good, share the sacrifice and pay a little more in taxes.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Privatizing Liberty
As Mayor Bloomberg’s forces swooped down on Occupy Wall Street, news reports described the “hundreds of police and private security guards” who had re-taken Zuccotti Park. Those private guards were used against public citizens who had been exercising their civil liberties in a public area.
That’s not just wrong. It’s un-American.
This incident holds an important lesson for anyone who loves our freedoms: when something public is made private, our liberties are privatized, too. And privatized liberty isn’t liberty at all
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