“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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Jimmy Carter: A Cruel and Unusual Record
THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.
Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues. [..]
At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.
Paul Krugman: The Great Abdication
Among economists who know their history, the mere mention of certain years evokes shivers. For example, three years ago Christina Romer, then the head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned politicians not to re-enact 1937 – the year F.D.R. shifted, far too soon, from fiscal stimulus to austerity, plunging the recovering economy back into recession. Unfortunately, this advice was ignored.
But now I’m hearing more and more about an even more fateful year. Suddenly normally calm economists are talking about 1931, the year everything fell apart. [..]
The really crucial lesson of 1931, however, was about the dangers of policy abdication. Stronger European governments could have helped Austria manage its problems. Central banks, notably the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve, could have done much more to limit the damage. But nobody with the power to contain the crisis stepped up to the plate; everyone who could and should have acted declared that it was someone else’s responsibility.
And it’s happening again, both in Europe and in America.
There is a well-funded effort in this country to try to distract the public’s attention from the massive upward redistribution of income over the last three decades by trying to claim that the issue is one of generational conflict rather than class conflict. Billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson is the most well-known funder of this effort, having kicked in a billion dollars of his own money for the cause.
However, he is far from the only generational warrior. The Washington Post has often gone into near hysterics screaming about retirees living on their $1,100 a month Social Security benefits and getting most of their health care paid for through Medicare. And, there is no shortage of politicians in Washington who like think themselves brave because they will cut these benefits for seniors will protecting the income and wealth of the richest people in the country.
David Leonhardt flirted with this disreputable group in a column that focused on the gap between the old and the young. While much of the piece is devoted to political attitudes, it delves into utter nonsense in trying to contrast a “wealthy” group of seniors with a poor group of young people.
Brian Moench: America: A Fire Sale to Foreign Corporations
This maybe one of the most important stories ever ignored by the “lame stream, liberal” media. It’s unlikely you’re losing sleep over US trade negotiations, but the unfolding business agreement between the US and eight Pacific nations –the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — should cause every US citizen, from the Sierra Club to the Tea Party to get their pitch forks and torches out of the closet and prepare to “storm the Bastille.”
The TPP negotiations have been going on for two years under extreme secrecy, no information has been made available to either the press or Congress about the US position. But on June 12th a document was leaked to the watchdog group, Public Citizen, revealing the current US position and the reason for the secrecy. The contents are surreal and shocking, and prima facia evidence for how corporations have become the master puppeteers of our government.
Mona Eltahawy: Egyptians Don’t Care about Hosni Mubarak’s Health Scares
Mubarak might be on his back but his regime is very much on its legs, upright and determined to crush our revolution
Hosni Mubarak, our 84-year old ousted dictator, has spent another night outside the prison cell where he’s been sentenced to spend whatever remains of his life. A health scare that began as a stroke, according to state-controlled media, but ended up being attributed by his lawyer to a “slip in the bathroom“, ensured that he was moved into the welcoming environs of a military hospital.
It was not the first time that Mubarak has supposedly suffered a stroke, fallen into a coma, been on life support or all of the above. Ever since street protests forced the ruling military junta to put him on trial last year, he has been on the verge of death so many times that once he actually does die it is easy to imagine that the news will be greeted in much the same way as this latest health scare: we don’t care.
Christopher Brauchli: Mitch McConnell’s Meanderings
The mark of a great politician is the ability to change his/her mind. Mitch McConnell is a great politician. (So is Mitt Romney but that is a subject for another day.) Mitch McConnell’s acknowledgement that he has been wrong for more than 20 years was made without reference to his earlier positions. It was made when he gave a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on June 15th. It showed how a mature and thoughtful senator had come to see the error of his earlier ways. It all had to do with a piece of legislation introduced in 2010 convolutedly known as “Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act” or in a less tortured form, the “Disclose Act.”
The Act would require groups that are self-identified as “social welfare organizations” that spend $10,000 or more on election related ads, to report the expenditures and would require the groups to disclose the names of donors who give them more than $10,000. As matters now stand, donors can anonymously give unlimited amounts to those organizations that, in turn, buy advertising that pertains to the campaigns but is not coordinated with them. Had it not been for Mr. McConnell’s speech you would have thought he would enthusiastically support such legislation.
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