“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.
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Richard (RJ) Eskow: Sarkozy’s Footsteps: Will the Democrats Be Next?
And another one bites the dust.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy just became the latest politician to lose his job because he wouldn’t let economic experience — or political common sense — sway him from the path of austerity.
Will Sarkozy’s downfall help Democrats learn what he never could? Democrats should consider Sarkozy’s fate a cautionary tale — and a call to action. If they rally around the cause of growth, jobs, and optimism, the nation will benefit and they’ll rewarded at the polls.
But if they keep pushing their own brand of “austerity lite,” they — and we — will have gained nothing from the lessons of Europe. iI won’t matter how much more extreme the Republicans are. Democrats, who hold the White House and the Senate, will still be seen as the party in charge — the one that presided over a terrible economy and, if the “Grand Bargainers” have their way, the one that cut popular government programs.
They’ll also run the risk of paying the same price Nicolas Sarkozy paid.
Dean Baker: Bernie Sanders Advocates a Free Market in AIDS Drugs
Drugs are cheap. Patent monopolies are expensive. These are simple facts that everyone should know but for some reason few do.
The point here is simple; the vast majority of drugs are cheap to produce. Chain drug stores sell hundreds of generic drugs for $5-$7 per prescription. They can do this profitably because few drugs require expensive chemicals or manufacturing processes.
However, many brand drugs sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars per prescription. This is due to the fact that drug companies have patent monopolies on these drugs. The government will arrest anyone who produces these drugs without the permission of the patent holder. Since drugs can be essential for people’s health and/or life, if they can find a way to pay any price demanded by the drug companies, they will.
Which federal program took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty?
Why, Social Security, of course, which ended 2011 with a $2.7 trillion surplus.
That surplus is almost twice the $1.4 trillion collected in personal and corporate income taxes last year. And it is projected to go on growing until 2021, the year the youngest Baby Boomers turn 67 and qualify for full old-age benefits.
So why all the talk about Social Security “going broke?” That theme filled the news after release of the latest annual report of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, as Social Security is formally called.
The reason is that the people who want to kill Social Security have for years worked hard to persuade the young that the Social Security taxes they pay to support today’s gray hairs will do nothing for them when their own hair turns gray.
Eugene Robinson: Death to Austerity
Economic austerity is a dangerous, self-defeating intellectual fad. Perhaps I should say that’s what it was, given Sunday’s election results in Europe. Perhaps I should also say good riddance.
Voters in France, Greece and even Germany-a hotbed of the austerity cult-told their political leaders, in no uncertain terms, that boosting economic growth is more important than cutting government spending. Here in the United States, I hope that Democrats, at least, were paying attention; I fear that the addled ideologues who control the Republican Party will never get the message.
On Sunday, French voters elected Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande as president, ousting center-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in what amounted to a referendum on Sarkozy’s embrace of austerity.
Michelangelo Signorile: Joe Biden Was for Marriage Equality Before He Was Against It
President Obama previously had the dubious distinction among politicians of being for marriage equality before he was against it. But now he’s not alone: his own vice president shares the honor!
Of course, in the case of Obama, he was for it for perhaps 8 years, depending on when he started saying he was against it (after having said he was for it in a questionaire in 1996, which his aides have spun themselves into a frenzy trying to explain). For Joe Biden it was just about 8 minutes.
Seriously, before Obama could even spend a few days basking in the glory of the Romney campaign’s hideous gay meltdown last week, another idiotic gay panic has gripped his own campaign. And it really makes you wonder, what are these guys thinking?
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