“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”.
Wednesday is Ladies Day
Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Morally Corrupt GOP
Republicans Are Causing a Moral Crisis in America
There is moral crisis afoot! So say the Republican candidates for president, their pals in Congress and in state houses. Abortion, gay marriage, contraception – contraception, for Pete’s sake – things that so shock the conscience that it’s a wonder The Washington Post can even print the words!
Here’s something I bet you wouldn’t think I’d say: They’re right. There is a moral crisis in the United States. The only thing is – they’re wrong about what it is and who is causing it.
The real crisis of public morality in the United Statesdoesn’t lie in the private decisions Americans make in their lives or their bedrooms; it lies at the heart of an ideology – and a set of policies – that the right-wing has used to batter and browbeat their fellow Americans.
Michele Chen: Isolated Incidents: A Hijab, a Hoodie, and an Iraqi American’s Death
As reporters clamored for breaking news about the vicious attack on Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi American mother of five in El Cajon, California, her teenage daughter Fatima turned to the interviewer with a question of her own
“‘Why did you take my mother away from me? You took my best friend away from me,’ she said, choking with tears, in an interview with CNN affiliate KUSI. ‘Why? Why did you do it? I want to know. Answer me that.‘”
So far, neither the grieving family’s pleas, nor CNN, nor the police have been able to provide any answers. Issuing the standard platitude about the ongoing investigation, the authorities described it as evidently “an isolated incident.” The grim circumstances of Alwadi’s death, however, point to a pattern of hate crime that’s devastatingly familiar to many Muslim and Arab communities.
It may not be the revolution’s dawn, but it’s certainly a glint in the darkness. On Monday, this country’s largest industrial labor union teamed up with the world’s largest worker-cooperative to present a plan that would put people to work in labor-driven enterprises that build worker power and communities, too.
Titled “Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Communities: The Union Co-op Model,” the organizational proposal released at a press conference on March 26 in Pittsburgh, draws on the fifty-five year experience of the Basque-based Mondragon worker cooperatives. To quote the document:
“In contrast to a Machiavellian economic system in which the ends justify any means, the union co-op model embraces the idea that both the ends and means are equally important, meaning that treating workers well and with dignity and sustaining communities are just as important as business growth and profitability.”
Bryce Covert: The Fast Pace of Change for Women Workers Can’t Distract From the Work Left to Do
“You’ve come a long way, baby.” That was Virginia Slims’ opening salvo to the professional woman when it launched a brand aimed solely at her less than a half century ago. That half-century has seen radical changes in the American workforce, women’s roles and the shape of our families.
In that time the birth control pill became widely available, helping to triple the number of working women from the 50s to the aughts. The latest generation of women workers has the most positive outlook on their careers and the labor force than any in history. Almost 40 percent of today’s working wives outearn their husbands. And women who have children are much more likely to stay in the workforce when their kids are young than they were in the past.
Yet for all these steps forward, there are some steps we’ve yet to take-and ones that have taken us backward. Women still make only eighty-one cents for every dollar men earn, which ends up costing them $431,000 in pay over a forty-year career. That’s on top of all of the other expenses they have to shell out money for that men don’t have to worry about. That wage gap also leads some women to drop out of the labor force later in life when they see their husbands making so much more money, and while the youngest generation of women are optimistic about their career prospects, they still feel more slowed down by parenting than men. And we may have made up ground in the office, but we are still faltering on Capitol Hill: women make up half of the country’s population but only 16 percent of Congressional seats.
Patricia J. Williams: Eggs Are People Too!
It’s an interesting time to ponder the meaning of life and death in the eyes of the law. On one hand, Christian conservatives increasingly seek to sacralize embryos from the moment of conception. On the other, the Supreme Court just heard a case that, among other things, considers the extent to which the corporeal death of a parent is really the “end of the line” with regard to “survivor” benefits for children conceived by artificial insemination from the frozen sperm of a deceased father. On one hand, Citizens United granted First Amendment rights to corporations that are identical to-and some would say exceed-those of natural persons; on the other, the Second Circuit recently ruled that individuals, but not corporations, can be sued for human rights abuses.
It’s interesting to consider the larger social anxieties at play when it comes to the “right to life” debates. Rick Santorum recently made a great show for personhood amendments, declaring, “Personhood is defined as an entity that is genetically human and alive.” But unfertilized eggs are “genetically human.” And sperm swim, so technically they’re “alive.” (Or, as an irreverent friend suggested: fellatio must therefore be a form of cannibalism.) If egg and sperm are sacralized even before they meet, it goes a long way to explaining why the evils of contraception are back on the table.
Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste
Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.
Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.
Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.
Sue Sturgis: Fracking’s Air Pollution Threat
North Carolina regulators will hold the second of two planned public hearings in Chapel Hill today to gather comments on a recently released draft report that calls for lifting the state’s ban on the controversial gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”
The first hearing, held last week in Sanford, N.C., brought out many opponents of fracking who focused on the documented threat such drilling presents to local water quality. Fracking opponents who attend tonight’s hearing plan to wear blue to show support for clean water.
But a growing body of science also raises concerns about fracking’s public-health impacts from air pollution.
A recent study by scientists with the Colorado School of Public Health found that air pollution from gas-drilling operations may cause acute and chronic health problems for nearby residents, with the greatest risk for people living closest to the wells. The study will be published in an upcoming edition of Science of the Total Environment.
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