“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”.
Joseph E Stiglitz: What can save the euro?
Growth is needed in order to save the euro, not sermons and homilies, says Nobel Prize-winning economist.
New York, New York – Just when it seemed that things couldn’t get worse, it appears that they have. Even some of the ostensibly “responsible” members of the eurozone are facing higher interest rates. Economists on both sides of the Atlantic are now discussing not just whether the euro will survive, but how to ensure that its demise causes the least turmoil possible.
It is increasingly evident that Europe’s political leaders, for all their commitment to the euro’s survival, do not have a good grasp of what is required to make the single currency work. The prevailing view when the euro was established was that all that was required was fiscal discipline – no country’s fiscal deficit or public debt, relative to GDP, should be too large. But Ireland and Spain had budget surpluses and low debt before the crisis, which quickly turned into large deficits and high debt. So now, European leaders say that it is the current-account deficits of the eurozone’s member countries that must be kept in check.
New York Times Editorial: Hobbling the Fight Against Terrorism
Lawmakers from the House and Senate are working on provisions in the military budget bill that would take the most experienced and successful antiterrorism agencies – the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors – out of the business of interrogating, charging and trying most terrorism cases, and turn the job over to the military.
These new rules would harm the justice system and national security. They would hinder intelligence-gathering, make it harder to track down terrorists and make other countries less likely to cooperate.
Those are not our conclusions, although we strongly agree. They are the views of James Clapper, the director of national intelligence; Robert Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Lisa Monaco, the assistant attorney general for national security. The defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who used to run the intelligence services, has said that the military doesn’t want this responsibility. Lawmakers are ignoring them.
(emphasis mine)
So is Obama. He requested the language
In traveling to the soft hills of Osawatomie, in eastern Kansas, on Tuesday, to the small town where Theodore Roosevelt laid out an agenda for advancing American civilization through the 20th century, President Obama tried on the words of a Republican president who committed Republican heresy in the same place in 1910. [..]
Consider just one line from the 1910 speech. “There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains,” Roosevelt said. “To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.”
Try getting a member of either party to say such a thing today.
(emphasis mine)
Michael Moore: The Winter of Our Occupation
And now it is winter. Wall Street rejoices, hoping that the change of seasons will mean a change in our spirit, our commitment to stop them.
They couldn’t be more wrong. Have they not heard of Washington and the troops at Valley Forge? The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike in the winter of 1936-37? The Michigan Wolverines crushing Ohio State in the 1950 Blizzard Bowl? When it comes to winter, it is the time historically when the people persevere and the forces of evil make their retreat!
We are not even 12 weeks old, yet Occupy Wall Street has grown so fast, so big, none of us can keep up with the hundreds of towns who have joined the movement, or the thousands of actions — some of them just simple ones in neighborhoods, schools and organizations — that have happened. The national conversation has been irreversibly changed. Now everyone is talking about how the 1% are getting away with all the money while the 99% struggle to make ends meet. People are no longer paralyzed by despair or apathy. Most know that now is the time to reclaim our country from the bankers, the lobbyists — and their gofers: the members of the United States Congress and the 50 state legislatures.
Robert Sheer: Government-Sponsored Sinner
Who would have thought that Republican voters would prove so accepting of sin? At least when its committed by a white guy, like the serial philanderer Newt Gingrich, who betrayed not one but two wives while they were enduring serious medical difficulties.
In the latest New York Times/CBS poll of Iowa Republicans, alleged philanderer Herman Cain’s once impressive support shifts to the new front-runner, Gingrich, whose richer history of marital deceit is not a problem even for the self-described evangelical Christian voters who favor him over Mitt Romney by a ratio of 3-1.
It is the first time that I have felt sympathy for a candidate experiencing the prejudice directed at a practicing Mormon. Clearly the ultimate of “squeaky clean” doesn’t cut it for a presidential contender of that faith among Republican Christian “values voters,” even when he is compared with a sexual roué of Gingrich’s considerable magnitude.
Jim Hightower: The Deep Shallowness of Professor Gingrich
Mea culpa, I misspoke, my bad — I stand corrected.
In past commentaries, I have called Newt Gingrich a lobbyist. Apparently, he hates that tag, even though he has indeed gotten very wealthy by taking big bucks from such special interest outfits as IBM, AstraZeneca, Microsoft and Siemens in exchange for helping them get favors from federal and state governments. But Gingrich, his lawyers and staff adamantly insist that it’s rude and crude to call him a lobbyist. No-no, they bark, The Newt is — ta-da! — “a visionary.”
Major corporations, they explain, pay up to $200,000 a year to the corrupt former-House speaker’s policy center, seeking nothing more from Newt than the sheer privilege of bathing in the soothing enlightenment of his transformative vision. Also, as the man himself constantly reminds everyone, he has a Ph By-God D. So he’s “Dr. Newt,” the (SET ITAL) certified (END ITAL) visionary.
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