“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: Stop the Austerity Train Wreck!
The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement.
That’s the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans.
Paul Krugman: Across Europe, All Eyes Fixed on Italy
Might we see Italy go careening off the edge in the next few days? I mean, even more than it has?
The Financial Times suggests that we might, writing of a “danger zone” in an article published Nov. 7: “Italian 10-year bond yields rose to euro-era highs of 6.68 percent at one point, well into territory considered unsustainable by the markets. Traders warned that without [European Central Bank] intervention, the Italian bond markets would have seen leaps in yields that forced Ireland and Portugal to accept emergency bailouts.”
I’m trying to think about this, so a few observations.
Right-wingers somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget.
The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare has been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There were two reports released last week that call this view into question.
[..]
This is the group that the Very Serious People in Washington want to target for their deficit reduction. While the Very Serious People debate whether people who earn $250,000 a year are actually rich when it comes to restoring the tax rates of the 1990s, they somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget. There is a logic here, but it ain’t pretty.
Gail Collins: Republican Financial Plans
Our topic for today is: Where do the Republican candidates for president get their money? The personal finances of the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls are important for two reasons. One is that we’re talking about people who aspire to the most prestigious and important job the nation has to offer. The other is that these folks seem to have done really, really well. Perhaps, they can offer career tips.
Remember when Newt Gingrich claimed that the mortgage giant Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 for his advice “as a historian?” Thousands of young history majors who were resigned to a future in which they would pad out their $2,000-a-semester salaries as part-time adjunct lecturers with fulfilling careers in bartending.
David Sirota: The GOP’s victim-blaming strategy
From Iraq to OWS, Republicans are going to increasingly absurd measures to protect the wealthy.
According to the most reliable counts, the United States’ invasion and occupation of Iraq has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, 650,000 Iraqi civilians or more than 1 million Iraqi civilians. In other words, we’ve vaporized the equivalent of Billings, Mont. (pop. 104,170), Memphis, Tenn. (pop. 646,889) or San Jose, Calif. (pop. 945,942).
Horrifying as these statistics are, imagine how much more disgusted you would be if a foreign power actually did vaporize those cities, and then followed up that annihilation by having its leading politicians and pundits demand that Americans pay reparations for the privilege of experiencing such devastation.
If this seems difficult to fathom, that’s only because we live in a culture defined by a particularly American lack of empathy – the fist-thrusting, crotch-grabbing, middle-finger-extending “USA!”-chanting kind that prevents many of us from seeing the world through any other nation’s eyes. Indeed, if we didn’t suffer from this blinding endemic, it would undoubtedly be considered bigger news – and a bigger outrage – that one of our major political parties is now regularly demanding Iraqis pay us remunerations for the expenses we incurred by invading and occupying their nation and then killing large numbers of their countrymen.
New York Times Editorial: The Inside Man
For months, Newt Gingrich tried to ingratiate himself with the Republican Party’s right wing by tearing down the two government-sponsored mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He joined the counterfactual conservative chorus that prefers to blame the companies for the housing crisis rather than the banks. He lamented their cozy relationship to Washington’s insiders. And he was rewarded with a swell of support from the anybody-but-Mitt-Romney crowd.
The self-styled reform candidate left out a small detail. He made a great deal of money from Freddie Mac for many years, and he was deeply tied to its power structure.
Mark Hertsgaard: The Keystone Victory
Victories against climate change have been rare, so it’s vital to recognize them when they happen. The Obama administration’s decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline is one such victory-arguably the most important achievement in the climate fight in North America in years.
True, the administration’s November 10 statements did not outright kill the 1,700-mile pipeline, which the TransCanada company wants to build to transport highly polluting tar sands from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Texas coast. Yes, President Obama or his successor could try to greenlight the project in 2013, when the State Department’s new review of the project is due. But that’s unlikely, as TransCanada’s CEO, Russ Girling, has acknowledged. The project’s contracts require the pipeline to be completed by 2013, or refineries will be free to look elsewhere for supply, which Girling expects they will.
Recent Comments