“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”.
Jonathan Turley: The NDAA’s Historic Assault on American Liberty
By signing into law the NDAA, the president has awarded the military extraordinary powers to detain US citizens without trial
President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country … and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year.
Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely (see the text of the statement here).
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
Jim Hightower: Shoveling America’s Wealth to the Top
As an old country saying puts it, “Money is like manure – it does no good unless you spread it around.”
Yet America’s corporate and political leaders have intentionally been shoveling wealth into an ever-bigger pile for those at the top. They’ve gotten away with this by lying to the great majority, which has seen its share of America’s prosperity steadily disappear. Yes, they’ve told us, the rich are getting richer, but that’s just the natural workings of the new global economy, in which financial elites are rewarded for their exceptional talents, innovation, and bold risk-taking.
The Republicans handed President Obama a nice tactical victory when they caved in just before Christmas and agreed to extend the payroll tax cut on Obama’s terms (with no offsetting program cuts.) But the extension deal is only for two months, which means the battle will be fought all over again in February.
You could say this is double-stupidity on the Republicans’ part, since the public will be treated yet again to a debate in which the Democrats want to tax millionaires in order to spare working people a tax hike, while Republicans defend the very rich and demand further cuts in valued programs as the price of avoiding a tax increase on ordinary Americans.
But maybe it’s Democrats who have set themselves a trap. Some Social Security advocates contend that Obama’s nice partisan victory is hollow if not Pyrrhic.
The New York Times Editorial: The Slush Funds of Iowa
Turning on the television in Iowa recently has meant getting hit by an unrelenting arctic blast of campaign ads stunning in volume and ferocity. Residents here say they have never seen anything like the constant negativity in decades of witnessing the quadrennial combat of the state presidential caucuses. The ads have transformed the Republican race for a simple reason: a new landscape of unlimited contributions to “independent” groups that was created by the Supreme Court.
To influence the small fraction of Iowa voters who will participate in Tuesday’s caucuses, the candidates and their supporters will have spent $12.5 million, an unprecedented amount. Only a third of that was spent by the candidates themselves; the rest comes from the “super PACs” that most of the candidates have allowed to be established. These political action committees are essentially septic tanks into which wealthy individuals and corporations can drop unlimited amounts of money, which is then processed into ads that are theoretically made independently of the candidates.
Simon Johnson: Austerity and the Modern Banker
Washington, DC – Santa Claus came early this year for four former executives of Washington Mutual (WaMu), a large US bank that failed in fall 2008. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) had brought a lawsuit against the four, actions that included taking huge financial risks while “knowing that the real estate market was in a ‘bubble.'” The FDIC sought to recover $900 million, but the executives have just settled for $64 million, almost all of which will be paid by their insurers; their out-of-pockets costs are estimated at just $400,000.
To be sure, the executives lost their jobs and now must drop claims for additional compensation. But, according to the FDIC, the four still earned more than $95 million from January 2005 through September 2008. So they are walking away with a great deal of cash. This is what happens when financial executives are compensated for “return on equity” unadjusted for risk. The executives get the upside when things go well; when the downside risks materialize, they lose nothing (or close to it).
John Nichols: Six Ways Iowa Progressives Will Caucus
But what is the point of progressives caucusing on Tuesday?
Actually, there are a lot of points to be made, even if most of the media is missing them. The Republicans who are competing to be the candidate of the 1 Percent will get 99 Percent of the media attention that is devoted to the Iowa caucuses. But some of the most exciting activity with regard to the caucuses is not on the right, it’s on the left.
Iowa progressives are organizing on a variety of fronts to raise issues, upset expectations and challenge the Republican and Democratic game plans for Tuesday night.
Both the Republican and the Democratic parties will begin their delegate-selection processes in Iowa, although the two party caucuses do not operate according to the same rules. The Republicans hold a straw poll that will get most of the attention once the results are in Tuesday night, especially if a surging Rick Santorum elbows his way into a first- or second-place finish. The Democrats hold more traditional “town-meeting” style caucuses, and in many cases they may be little more than groundwork-laying events for President Obama’s reelection campaigns. But that will not be the case at every Democratic caucus, just as there will be surprises at GOP gatherings.
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