“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: Business Fears the Fiscal Cliff
So it turns out that federal spending is important to the economy after all.
As Nelson Schwartz reported in The Times on Monday, a number of manufacturers say they are canceling plans for investing and hiring, in part, because they fear that some $100 billion in budget cuts will take effect in 2013. In all, the law currently calls for $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over 10 years, starting Jan. 1, divided between nondefense programs and defense projects.
Republican lawmakers demanded the cuts last year as part of their brinkmanship over the debt ceiling, and business lobbies have generally supported slashing the deficit. But now that the cuts are imminent, corporate executives seem to have realized that the last thing the economy needs is a large budget cut across the board.
Gore Vidal: Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead
The following was first published March 20, 2008 at Truthdig
I can recall that day in the 1930s when a “news” (sic) magazine appeared in Washington, D.C.; it was called Newsweek: meant to be a counterbalance to Time Magazine’s uncontrollable malice. In due course the two became sadly alike as Vincent Astor morphed into Henry Luce: Was it something in the water? I once asked Henry Luce why he called Time a news magazine when it was simply Uncle Harry’s means of venting his rage (this was 1960 or so) at liberals, and “degenerate art” like the plays of Tennessee Williams-he had no answer. At Newsweek Vincent Astor was far too stupid to answer any such complaint. Now here we are in the Newsweek of 2008, and it’s still lousy. There have been a few decent writers in between that were less nutty than today’s Newsweek hacks. [..]
The unique mess that our republic is in can be, in part, attributed to a corrupt press whose roots are in mendacious news (sic) magazines like Time and Newsweek, aided by tabloids that manufacture fictional stories about actual people. This mingling of opinion and fiction has undone a media never devoted to truth. Hence, the ease with which the Republican smear-machine goes into action when they realize that yet again the party’s permanent unpopularity with the American people will cause them defeat unless they smear individually those who question the junk that the media has put into so many heads. Anyone who says “We gotta fight ’em over there or we’re gonna have to fight ’em over here.” This absurdity has been pronounced by every Republican seeking high office. The habit of lying is now a national style that started with “news” magazines that was further developed by pathological liars that proved to be “good” Entertainment on TV. But a diet of poison that has done none of us any good.
I speak ex cathedra now, ad urbe et orbe, with a warning that no society so marinated in falsity can long survive in a real world.
Let’s take a trip deep into the magic kingdom of “Laissez Fairyland” and prostrate ourselves before the infallible and inscrutable force known as the free market.
While this awesome deity cannot be seen, the high priests of free-market fundamentalism insist that we mere mortals must simply have faith that its mysterious workings are always in our best interest. Yeah, sure, your holiness. We saw how well that worked out for us wandering pilgrims after you true believers deregulated Wall Street, which then crashed on our streets.
Well, get ready. Free-market purists want us to have another ungodly religious encounter with their omnipotent deity. Looking at America’s trillion-dollar student debt crisis, these spiritualists had a burning-bush revelation.
The crisis can be healed by letting the magic market (aka Wall Street) lay its hands on the funding of college education. Get the government out of the student loan business, they preach, and let global speculators invest directly in students by covering their tuition. In other words, turn students into just another Wall Street commodity to be purchased by the wealthy.
George Zornick: Media Help Advance Romney’s Lies About Ohio Early Voting
This weekend, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched on attack an the Obama campaign that is unambiguously based on a lie. On his Facebook page, Romney posted a note directly accusing the re-election effort of working to undermine the voting rights of military members in Ohio: [..]
The background is that, while all Ohio voters used to enjoy in-person early voting privileges for three days, Republicans in the state legislature this year restricted that right to military members only. The Obama campaign subsequently filed a lawsuit asking that the privileges be extended to all voters: [..]
Yet many mainstream political reporters are unable or unwilling to discern that a lie has been told, and say so in their reporting. Eric Alterman recently described the pernicious so-called “even-handedness” of much of the political press, and it’s on display in no clearer fashion than in this case-there is zero room for interpretation about what the Obama campaign lawsuit seeks.
John Nichols: Shootings at Sikh Temple Test the Founding Faith of America
As Americans mourn the killings at the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, it is vital to remember the real history of religious freedom in America.
And to embrace it.
This is about something very different from the cheap sloganeering of those who would blur lines of separation between church and state and use the promise of freedom to worship as an excuse to discriminate against others. The vision advanced today by right-wing politicians-who cloak themselves in a Constitution they do not seem to have read very closely-often imagines America as “a Christian nation.” But that characterization is at odds with the ideal of the founders, who enacted religious freedom protections “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of [their] protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.” Jefferson was fascinated by the great religions of the world. He was not just aware of them. He searched out copies of the holy texts of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and other religions, and he consulted them when preparing core documents of the American experiment. He and the most enlightened of his comrades wanted America to protect and welcome the practitioners of those faiths.
Of course, Jefferson wanted future American presidents and political leaders to share his recognition that the “wall of separation” between church and state was designed to prevent favoritism for one doctrine or faith over another.
But he also wanted America to be a welcoming place for the followers of all faiths. And he wanted the believers in Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Christians and, yes, Sikhs to be safe from threats and violence.
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