“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”.
The New York Times Editorial: Keeping Students From the Polls
Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote.
Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal.
John Nichols: ‘Politico’ Is Right (and Wrong) About the Edgiest Electoral Test of 2012
‘Tis the season for lists. And so it should come as no surprise that the Politico, the Washington-insider journal that covers every aspect of national politics, has offered up a Boxing Day analysis of “2012’s Top Unanswered Questions.”
What is surprising, and significant, is that the first item on the Politico list does not involve a Congressional or presidential race.
Rather, it focuses on a fight in the states, where the direction of the nation is being determined by pitched battles between right-wing Republican governors and defenders of public education and public services.
Politico’s top unanswered question for 2012 was: “Can Democrats claim a scalp in Wisconsin?”
Putting aside the clichéd and offensive “get a scalp” language, the analysis turns attention to what will indeed be one of the great political battles of the coming year.
The president could have rescued the economy by pushing for more stimulus. Not doing so was an error of epic proportions
The economy badly needs stimulus. The collapse of the housing bubble caused us to lose more than $1.2tn in annual demand. Residential construction collapsed when the bubble burst, falling by more than 4 percentage points of GDP, which translates into approximately $600bn a year in lost annual demand.
The collapse of the bubble also led to the destruction of close to $8tn of bubble-generated housing equity. The wealth effect of this equity on consumption generated close to $500bn in annual consumption demand. This also was lost when the bubble burst.
Eugene Robinson: A Brainpower Revolution
This is a moment when policymakers should be thinking big, not small. History will little note nor long remember that the payroll tax holiday was extended for two months rather than 12. The complex and difficult questions we’re avoiding, however, may haunt us through the century.
Let me be clear that I applaud President Obama and the Democrats for the political victory they won last week. The impact was to weaken the influence of the most reactionary and clueless faction in Congress-the tea party Republicans-and strengthen the hand of both progressives and pragmatic conservatives. This can only be a good thing.
Melvin A. Goodman: The Bush/Obama War Against Truth
The campaign to intimidate potential whistleblowers or dissidents within the government is consistent with the national security state that the Bush and Obama administrations have created over the past decade. [..]
This trend is particularly regrettable because government oversight processes have been severely weakened during the Bush and Obama administrations. The Offices of Inspector General, particularly at the CIA and the Department of Defense, have been downgraded and significantly weakened. The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are unwilling to investigate illegal conduct in the intelligence community.
President Obama, who endorsed protection for courageous whistleblowers during his campaign, has been both unwilling to investigate crimes of the Bush administration and most willing to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917 to harass genuine whistleblowers.
We expected a Bush/Cheney administration to bend the law in their direction. But who would have expected Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer and a teacher of constitutional law, to follow suit?
Wendell Potter: When Medicare Isn’t Medicare
Let’s say you have a Ford and decide to replace everything under the hood with Hyundai parts, including the engine and transmission. Could you still honestly market your car as a Ford?
That question gets at the heart of the controversy over who is being more forthright about GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to “save” Medicare, Republicans or Democrats.
If you overhaul the Medicare system like you did your Ford and tell the public it’s still Medicare, are you doing so honestly? [..]
PolitiFact’s Washington-based editor defended the choice by contending that Ryan’s proposal to restructure Medicare by providing beneficiaries subsidies to buy private insurance would not “end” the program. It would still be Medicare, he reasoned.
What he’s missing is that Ryan’s proposal would change the program so fundamentally as to represent the equivalent of replacing the engine and transmission.
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