“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: The Middle-Class Agenda
Earlier this month, President Obama delivered his first unabashed 2012 campaign speech. Unlike his opponents, Mr. Obama acknowledged the ravages of income equality, the hollowing out of the American middle class. There is no hyperbole in the urgency he conveyed about “a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.”
The challenge for Mr. Obama is to translate the plight of the middle class into an agenda for broad prosperity. Congress’s inability to cleanly extend even emergency measures though 2012 – including the temporary payroll tax cut and federal unemployment benefits – underscores the difficulty. The alternative is continued decline.
Recent government data show that 100 million Americans, or about one in three, are living in poverty or very close to it. Of 13.3 million unemployed Americans now searching for work, 5.7 million have been looking for more than six months, while millions more have given up altogether. Even a job is no guarantee of middle-class security. The real median income of working-age households has declined, from $61,600 in 2000 to $55,300 in 2010 – the result of abysmally slow job growth even before the onset of the recession.
Joe Nocera: An Inconvenient Truth
There is so much about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that we should be angry about.
In their heyday, these strange hybrids – part corporation, part government agency – were the biggest bullies in Washington, quick to bludgeon critics who dared suggest that their dual missions of maximizing profits while making homeownership affordable for low- and moderate-income Americans were incompatible. They steamrolled their regulator and pushed back at any suggestion that their capital was inadequate.
For years, they essentially wrote most of the legislation that affected them, which they larded with loopholes. In the mid-2000s, they had giant accounting scandals. Eventually, their quest for profits led them to make a belated, disastrous foray into subprime mortgages, which ended with their collapse, and which has cost taxpayers about $150 billion. Tragically, Fannie and Freddie could have led a housing recovery – if they hadn’t become crippled wards of the state instead.
Years ago, members of the elite showed their courage by leading troops into battle. They risked their own lives for the greater good. (Never mind that the wars being fought often did not serve anything resembling the “greater good.”)
Things are different today. In the land of the 1 percent, the way you show your courage is by demonstrating your willingness to beat up on the elderly. That gets you bucketloads of campaign contributions, high praise from The Washington Post in both its news and opinion pages, and could even get you named Person of the Year by Time Magazine.
Last week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) stood up to do the big kick. He decided to join ranks with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) on a proposal to replace Medicare with a voucher-type system. The claim was that with increased competition, we will be able to lower costs.
George Zornick: The Payroll Tax Cut Gets the Fox News Treatment
A now-familiar theme is playing out today in Washington. A grand bargain worked out between leaders from both parties gains significant steam and heads for passage, only to careen off the rails at the last minute when far-right members of the House of Representatives lay down on the tracks. So why does this keep happening?
On Saturday morning, the Senate passed a bill that would extend a payroll tax cut and federal unemployment insurance for two more months, while preventing doctors from losing over a quarter of their annual Medicare payments. It also contained a Republican provision to force President Obama to issue a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline within sixty days.
Democrats wanted more-they originally asked for a year-long payroll tax cut, at a lower rate, and paid for with a surtax on incomes over $1 million. And even if the Keystone provision could kill the project, as the Obama administration is now signaling, Democrats didn’t want that in there, either.
John Nichols: “Occupy Iowa Caucus” Rejects Obama, Urges “Uncommitted” Vote
President Obama faces no serious challenge from an individual on the left in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.
But that does not mean that Obama will get all the votes cast by Democrats on January 3.
Peace and economic justice activists, some of them associated with a newly launched “Occupy Iowa Caucus” campaign, are arguing that caucus goers should reject the president and instead vote for “uncommitted” slates.
“Uncommitted” slates have won Iowa caucuses before. In 1972 and 1976, more Democratic caucus votes were cast for the “uncommitted” option than for any of the announced candidates. As recently as 1992, “uncommitted” beat Bill Clinton.
Neal Peirce: President Obama’s Puzzling Silence on Marijuana Policy
WASHINGTON – “Dance with the One that Brought You” is the title of a well-known song. But the Urban Dictionary offers a deeper meaning: “The principle that someone should pay proper fealty to those who have gone out of their way to look after them.”
Barack Obama should pay attention. In 2008, young voters were enthused and turned out for him by the millions.
But now? The campus/youth enthusiasm factor has declined sharply. The deficiency seriously imperils Obama’s re-election effort.
There’s one issue, though, that might reignite youthful enthusiasm. That issue is marijuana – partly its medical use, but especially Americans’ right to recreational use free of potential arrest and possible prison time.
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