“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: As Evidence Mounts, DC Insiders Worry About Holder’s Inaction on Wall Street Crime
More and more Washington insiders are asking a question that was considered off-limits in the nation’s capital just a few months ago: Who, exactly, is Attorney General Eric Holder representing? As scandal after scandal erupts on Wall Street, involving everything from global lending manipulation to cocaine and prostitution, more and more people are worrying about Holder’s seeming inaction — or worse — in the face of mounting evidence.
Confidential sources say that the President’s much-touted Mortgage Fraud Task Force is being starved for vital resources by the Holder Justice Department. Political insiders are fearful that this obstruction will threaten Democrats’ chances at the polls. Investigators and prosecutors from other agencies are expressing their frustration as the ever-rowing list of documented crimes by individual Wall Street bankers continues to be ignored.
Robert Reich: The Truth About Obama’s Tax Proposal (and the Lies the Regressives are Telling About It)
To hear the media report it, President Obama is proposing a tax increase on wealthy Americans. That’s misleading at best. He’s proposing that everyone receive a continuation of the Bush tax cuts on the first $250,000 of their incomes. Any dollars they earn in excess of $250,000 will be taxed at the old Clinton-era rates.
Get it? Everyone is treated exactly the same. Everyone gets a one-year extension of the Bush tax cut on the first $250,000 of income. No “class warfare.” [..]
In sum: Don’t fall for these big lies – Obama wants to extend the Bush tax cut “only for some people,” small businesses will be badly hit, businesses won’t hire because of uncertainty this proposal would create, or the Clinton-era tax levels crippled the economy,
A ton of corporate and billionaire money is behind these lies and others like them, as well as formidable mouthpieces of the regressive right such as Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal editorial page.
The truth is already a casualty of this election year. That’s why it’s so important for you to spread it.
Well, here we are, slouching toward another national garage sale in which corporations bid on and buy candidates the way futures traders bid on commodities – or as our founders used to call it: an election.
As we go to the polls, it might be wise to remember the song Sixteen Tons. {..]
It is a song about the truck system, and debt bondage. Under this economic model, workers lived in houses owned by the company, shopped in stores owned by the company, and got paid in scrip minted by the company. And no matter how hard they worked, they remained indebted to the company. [..]
Thanks to thirty years of Republican policies and Democratic complicity, we’re in the process of reopening the company store, only as with all things 21st Century, it’s a national chain.
Today, we shop with credit cards owned by “the company,” live in houses financed by “the company” – often owing more than the value of the home – and get our news and information from sources controlled by “the company.” In short, the company store is back in business.
Paul Krugman: For Europe’s Leaders, the Solution Remains Elusive
The European Union summit in June was clearly an upside surprise: in effect, the Latin bloc forced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to bend, at least slightly. But was it good enough?
In an online article for Vox, the economist Charles Wyplosz argued, sensibly, that it was nowhere close. “At the end of the day, the summit was a little move in the right direction on bank supervision, but keep watching; we still don’t know what will actually be put in place,” he wrote on June 30. “There was nothing on collapsing Greece, nothing on unsustainable public debts in several countries, and no end in sight to recession in an increasing number of countries.”
Jim Hightower: Agribusiness Genetically Tampering With Our Food
Some people are too smart for your own good.
Food geneticists, for example. These technicians have the smarts to tinker with the inner workings of Momma Nature’s own good foods – but not the smarts to leave well enough alone.
In fairness, much of their scientific tinkering has been beneficial. But during the past half-century, too much of their work devolved from tinkering into outright tampering with our food. This is mostly the result of money flowing to both private and public centers from big agribusiness corporations that want nature’s design altered in ways that fatten their bottom lines. Never mind that the alterations created by these smart people are frequently not good for you and me.
Bill Boyarsky: Job by Job
[..] Progress is measured in what amounts to inches-a job gained or a small plant coming to town. A manufacturer of campers for heavy trucks keeping up with trends by producing travel trailers light enough to be towed by small SUVs is a move that could save and even add jobs, but it’s not a story hot enough for cable TV and that medium’s obsession with the latest political chatter. Yet these small stories give a more realistic look at the difficulty of dropping the national unemployment rate below its present 8.2 percent. [..]
But the game won’t be changed for most of the country unless the federal government does much more. When Franklin D. Roosevelt pulled back from pump-priming measures in 1937, recovery from the Depression stopped, only to revive with preparations for World War II.
Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republicans oppose such federal intervention. Their program is simple: Cut taxes for the rich and wipe out most regulation of business.
As history shows, that doesn’t work. Whether it is the City Council in conservative Lancaster providing roads for the new Morton Manufacturing plant or the federal government building bridges, highways and rail lines across the United States, unemployment won’t be reduced without help from the government, no matter how distasteful that idea is to the Republicans.
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