“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”.
Paul Krugman: Broccoli and Bad Faith
Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will decide with regard to the Affordable Care Act. But, after this week’s hearings, it seems quite possible that the court will strike down the “mandate” – the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance – and maybe the whole law. Removing the mandate would make the law much less workable, while striking down the whole thing would mean denying health coverage to 30 million or more Americans.
Given the stakes, one might have expected all the court’s members to be very careful in speaking about both health care realities and legal precedents. In reality, however, the second day of hearings suggested that the justices most hostile to the law don’t understand, or choose not to understand, how insurance works. And the third day was, in a way, even worse, as antireform justices appeared to embrace any argument, no matter how flimsy, that they could use to kill reform.
New York Times Editorial: Big Oil’s Bogus Campaign
President Obama and the Senate Democrats have again fallen short in their quest to eliminate billions of dollars in unnecessary tax breaks for an oil industry that is rolling in enormous profits. A big reason for that failure is that some of those profits are being continuously recycled to win the support of pliable legislators, underwrite misleading advertising campaigns and advance an energy policy defined solely by more oil and gas production.
Despite pleading by Mr. Obama, the Senate on Thursday could not produce the 60 votes necessary to pass a bill eliminating $2.5 billion a year of these subsidies. This is a minuscule amount for an industry whose top three companies in the United States alone earned more than $80 billion in profits last year. Nevertheless, in the days leading up to the vote, the American Petroleum Institute spent several million dollars on an ad campaign calling the bill “another bad idea from Washington – higher taxes that could lead to higher prices.”
On March 31 the current funding for the nation’s authority to spend money on our transportation needs will run out. This means major roadway and transit improvement projects will be stalled for the foreseeable future and billions of dollars in potential job-creation will be jeopardized, according to transportation officials. Republicans, obsessed with their anti-government ideology, can’t even agree among themselves, and it is costing everyone else. Sadly, it ain’t the first time.
The Republican leadership could have decided to take up Senate legislation which would extend transportation funding for two years. Instead, the House had planned to consider a three-month extension that transportation advocates say could endanger capital improvement programs because transportation agencies won’t be able to plan lo ng-term budgets. As of Wednesday morning they were no closer to a solution.
Andrew Rosenthal: Liberty and Justice for Non-Muslims
Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, genuine concerns about national security as well as politicking and fear have led to a shift in the balance between civil liberties and law enforcement. That much is indisputable, and widely discussed. Yet it’s rarely acknowledged that the attacks have also led to what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims.
In this system, the principle of due process is twisted and selectively applied, if it is applied at all.
Examples of the Muslims-only legal system abound, even though politicians and the press shy away from calling it that: Special detention centers for Muslims (Guantanamo Bay and the network of secret C.I.A. lockups, now said to be closed, where prisoners were almost routinely tortured); special trial procedures for Muslim prisoners (military tribunals); special allowances for agents dealing with Muslim suspects (extraordinary rendition, i.e. officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreigners).
John Nichols: Renewed Civil Rights Coalition Targets ‘Ghostwriters’ of ‘License to Kill’ Laws
The killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin has raised old concerns about everything from racial profiling to gun violence. That’s frustrating, as so many Americans had hoped that their country might have bent the arc of history a bit more toward progress.
But the shooting in Sanford, Florida, has done something else. It has focused new attention on the structural supports for legislating on behalf of special-interest, and on the way in which the American Legislative Exchange Council turns bad ideas into bad law.
That has created a new clarity with regard to the need for a pushback against ALEC and its corporate sponsors. And that clarity has renewed a civil rights coalition that will be needed if there is to be any hope for breaking the grip of one-size-fits-all lawmaking and renewing small “d” democracy and sound governance in the states.
Eugene Robison: Health Care: Conservatives Are Their Own Worst Enemies
In arguments before the Supreme Court this week, the Obama administration might have done just enough to keep the Affordable Care Act from being ruled unconstitutional. Those who believe in limited government had better hope so, at least.
If Obamacare is struck down, the short-term implications are uncertain. Conservatives may be buoyed by an election-year victory; progressives may be energized by a ruling that looks more political than substantive. The long-term consequences, however, are obvious: Sooner or later, a much more far-reaching overhaul of the health care system will be inevitable.
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