“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: A Fraction of a Tax Cut
If you looked quickly at what the Senate did on Saturday, it seemed as if it agreed to President Obama’s proposal for short-term middle-class relief by extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. In fact, that’s not quite what happened.
The two programs were approved in a severely diminished form. Because Republicans rejected a millionaire’s tax surcharge to pay for the extension, negotiators could not reach agreement on a full year’s offset, and instead settled for a measly two more months.
In exchange for those eight short weeks of stimulus, Republicans won a provision that forces the president to make a decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada in the next 60 days, instead of waiting until after the election. In a sense, the provision liberates Mr. Obama to do the right thing and immediately reject the pipeline, an environmentally treacherous proposal that would create few jobs. The State Department will not have enough information to approve the pipeline in such a short period.
Paul Krugman: Will China Break?
Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit – with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated “shadow banking” neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting – and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.
Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I’m talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn’t need this right now.
A well-funded, faux-reformist group known as Americans Elect is promoting a third party presidential candidacy and anticipates qualifying its candidate to be on the ballot in nearly all states. It is doing this by collecting millions of petition signatures, over 2.2 million so far, taking advantage of voter frustration with political blockage in Washington. The actual candidate will be decided later, by Internet Convention.
Despite the superficial populism, just about everything about this exercise is misguided.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Newt Gingrich and the revenge of the base
It is one of the true delights of a bizarrely entertaining Republican presidential contest to watch the apoplectic fear and loathing of so many GOP establishmentarians toward Newt Gingrich. They treat him as an alien body whose approach to politics they have always rejected.
In fact, Gingrich’s rise is the revenge of a Republican base that takes seriously the intense hostility to President Obama, the incendiary accusations against liberals and the Manichaean division of the world between an “us” and a “them” that his party has been peddling in the interest of electoral success.
Ben Adler: Caucuses Will Still Lack Absentee Voting
Amid all the concern over Republican efforts to impose onerous requirements on voting such as photo identification laws, it’s worth remembering that the biggest impediment to voting in primaries has existed for decades, without any signs of correction: caucuses. Caucuses are anti-democratic and one of the worst infringement of voting rights in our current electoral system.
Unlike in a normal election or primary, where you can stop by any time during the day and vote by absentee ballot, caucuses require that you arrive within a very narrow window of time, typically in the early evening, and stay for the duration, which can last several hours. Anyone unable to do so is disenfranchised. If you have to stay to take care of children or an elderly parent, or if you’re the babysitter or home health aide hired to do so, you cannot vote. If you are disabled or a night shift worker, you cannot vote. If you are out of town for any reason, including active-duty military personnel, you cannot vote. That’s why caucuses have much lower turnout than primaries. For example, according to the Century Foundation, 30 percent of eligible New Hampshire citizens voted in the 2004 primary but only 6 percent of eligible Iowans caucused. In 2008 turnout in the Iowa caucus was 16.1 percent, compared to 53.6 percent in New Hampshire. As this chart demonstrates, other caucus states had abysmal turnout in 2008, always under 10 percent and usually closer to 5 percent, while primary states typically got at least 20 percent turnout.
Ian Ayers and Aaron S. Edlin: Don’t Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself.
THE progressive reformer and eminent jurist Louis D. Brandeis once said, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” Brandeis lived at a time when enormous disparities between the rich and the poor led to violent labor unrest and ultimately to a reform movement.
Over the last three decades, income inequality has again soared to the sort of levels that alarmed Brandeis. In 1980, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans made 9.1 percent of our nation’s pre-tax income; by 2006 that share had risen to 18.8 percent – slightly higher than when Brandeis joined the Supreme Court in 1916.
Congress might have countered this increased concentration but, instead, tax changes have exacerbated the trend: in after-tax dollars, our wealthiest 1 percent over this same period went from receiving 7.7 percent to 16.3 percent of our nation’s income.
Thoma B. Edsall: The Trouble With That Revolving Door
Last week, an inside-the-Beltway newsletter, First Street, published a unique top-ten list. It reveals which former members of Congress are among the most important Washington lobbyists. [..]
For Obama and Democratic leaders who are trying to set an election agenda focused on income inequality, wage stagnation, and downward mobility for the middle and lower class, the prominence of Democratic lobbyists has become problematic.
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