“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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New York Times Editorial: Stuck in Place
With 163,000 new jobs created, July’s employment growth topped both analysts’ expectations and the meager job gains in May and June. While that growth was not enough to reduce the jobless rate – now 8.3 percent – it was enough to boost the stock market. For investors, the job tally was just high enough to be a pleasant surprise and low enough to give them hope that the Federal Reserve would soon intervene to juice the economy.
The market’s reaction aside, the report actually shows how bad things are and highlights what needs to be done to improve conditions. [..]
Responding to the latest employment report, the White House noted correctly that major areas of job weakness – including positions in construction and teaching – are precisely those that would have been the subject of the jobs bill proposed in 2011 by President Obama. That legislation was blocked by Congressional Republicans.
Mitt Romney responded to the July report by saying that the numbers reflect the failure of Mr. Obama’s policies when, in reality, they reflect the success of the Republican obstructionism.
Joe Nocera: Frankenstein Takes Over the Market
This week, yet another Wall Street firm most people have never heard of, relying on a computerized trading program that they can’t possibly understand, shook investors’ faith in the market. This is happening a little too frequently, don’t you think?
What makes this particularly painful is that over the last four decades, we have built a society that has become deeply reliant on the stock market. It is how we are supposed to finance our children’s college education and our retirement. With the bursting of the housing bubble, the stock market, in some ways, is all we’ve got left. It is difficult to depend on something that seems so frequently unreliable.
One wonders if Wall Street itself is beginning to question if it can rely on the monster it has created – and which it no longer seems able to control. In the immortal words of the screenwriter William Goldman, “Nobody knows anything.” He was talking about Hollywood. But the same could be said today for Wall Street and its fixation with computerized trading.
Just this week, Congress failed to protect the Postal Service from tumbling, and the service defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment for future retiree health benefits. It was the first time that the U.S. mail system failed to meet a financial obligation since Benjamin Franklin invented it.
The Postal Service has multiple financial problems, and, earlier this year, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to deal with them. It would not have fixed everything, or even resolved the question of whether the strapped agency would be allowed to discontinue Saturday mail delivery as a cost-savings measure. “It’s not perfect,” admitted Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, one of the sponsors.
At this point, the American public has been so beaten down by Congressional gridlock that “it’s not perfect” sounds fine. In fact, we’d generally be willing to settle for “it’s pretty terrible, but at least it’s something.”
Eugene Robinson: The Emerging ‘Drone’ Culture
The age of the drones has arrived. It’s not possible to uninvent these Orwellian devices, but we can-and must-restrain their use.
As instruments of war, pilotless aircraft have already become essential. The Washington Post reported last year that more than 50 countries had developed or purchased drones to use in surveillance-and that many of those nations were working to weaponize the aircraft. Deadly missiles fired from drones are among the most effective U.S. weapons against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
There has been far too little discussion of the moral calculus involved in using flying robots as tools of assassination. At the very least, the whole thing should leave us uneasy. Collateral damage-the killing of innocents-can be minimized but not eliminated. And even if only “bad” people are killed, this isn’t war as we’ve traditionally understood it. Drone attacks are more like state-sponsored homicide.
Richard Reeves: Train Doctors and Nurses, Not Soldiers
Some days, I feel I have seen it all. Other days, I just don’t want to get out of bed. Over eight years my family has been hit with lung cancer, brain cancer, strokes and various other medical calamities. My wife has had eight operations, in the United States and in France. [..]
American medical care is still getting by with Medicare, machines built by General Electric, and doctors and nurses from India and the Philippines. And with the blind faith of Americans that we have the best medical care in the world. A myth.
As you know, we have national academies to train soldiers, sailors and airmen, probably the best in the world. No tuition.
Why not medical academies? The U.S. social welfare and medical system was built on the assumption that people, on average, would live to 65. No longer. People are now living well into their 80s in relatively good health. That’s why Social Security will face crisis after crisis. That is why Medicare and Medicaid will eventually collapse. Our “safety net” was designed in the 1930s. Different time. Different problems.
David Sirota: Congressional Carnivores Rage Over ‘Meatless Monday’
To understand how utterly broken our society is, how hostile to sacrifice we are and how willfully ignorant we have become, you need only look at the historic drought hammering the heartland-and how our elected officials are responding to that cataclysm.
As you likely know from this arid summer, America is suffering through the worst drought since 1950. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, half of all counties in the nation are officially disaster areas-a situation that has devastated the country’s supply of agriculture commodities. Consequently, food prices are expected to skyrocket, and eventually, water-dependent power plants may be forced to shut down.
This is a full-on emergency, and USDA, a key agency involved in the national security issues surrounding our food and water supply, last week responded with a minor non-binding recommendation. In its inter-office newsletter to agency employees, it suggested that those who want to conserve water could simply refrain from eating meat on Mondays.
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