“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: Cutting Government, Blindfolded
Mitt Romney has been rousing military-minded voters with warnings of giant defense cuts in January, but he’s only telling half the story. An alarming White House report issued Friday shows that the full impact of next year’s ham-handed budget cuts would affect virtually every government function, not just the Pentagon. [..]
These cuts, known as the sequester, were the result of the debt-limit crisis created by House Republicans last year, when they threatened to throw the government into default if the deficit were not reduced. President Obama and the Democrats tried to respond with a balanced package of spending reductions and tax increases on the rich. But when Republicans refused the deal, the two sides agreed on a different incentive: $100 billion a year in indiscriminate cuts to programs that each side holds dear.
So far, though, it hasn’t produced any serious negotiation on the deficit. The House, as recently as Thursday, has made several attempts to cancel only the defense sequester and double the size of the domestic cuts. That won’t fly with the Senate or the White House.
Robert Reich: The Wrong Way to Save Money on Health Care
Employer outlays for workers’ health insurance slowed from a 9 percent jump last year to less than half that – 4 percent – this year, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Foundation. Good news?
Our political class believes it is. The Obama administration attributes the drop to the new Affordable Care Act, which, among other things, gives states funding to review insurance rate increases.
Republicans agree it’s good news but blame Obamacare for the fact that employer health-care costs continue to rise faster than inflation. “The new mandates contained in the health care law are significantly increasing the cost of insurance” says Wyoming senator Mike Enzi, top Republican on the Senate health committee.
Deficit hawks have tried to enlist the Fed chair in the austerity game, but he isn’t playing along.
Ben Bernanke’s announcement Thursday that the Fed would keep easing money sent the stock market soaring, but more important was his declaration that there is only so much the Federal Reserve can do.
The Fed’s latest move, approved by the policy-setting Open Market Committee, will buy a total of $85 billion in bonds every month, including $40 billion per month of mortgage-backed securities. This pumps vast sums into the economy. It is the equivalent of printing money. Bernanke’s hope is to drive down interest rates generally, especially on home mortgages. [..]
The usual script calls for a Fed chair to demand fiscal tightening in exchange for liberal interest-rate policy. It’s what Alan Greenspan did in his 1993 deal with Bill Clinton. But Bernanke refuses to play that role. At a high-profile speech at the Fed’s Jackson Hole conference August 31, the Fed chair warned against too much fiscal tightening. He has refused to be the instrument of the party of deficit hawks.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Fat Pythons And Hungry Humans: Last Week’s Real Economic Story
Last week the Federal Reserve announced another round of qualitative easing to increase employment. That’s like stuffing rats down a python’s throat and hoping it excretes enough white meat to feed everybody else. Sure, there’ll be a little more food for a minute, but it won’t be very appealing. And all you’ll get in the end is a lot of fat pythons. [..]
But the media and the politicians missed the point altogether. Whether they were discussing last week’s jobs numbers, this week’s census data, or the latest announcement by the Federal Reserve, nobody on the evening news seemed to be addressing the subject that is casting a shadow over 100 million dining room tables: the jobs that can’t be found, the pay raises that never come, or the bills that can’t be paid.
When you turn on the TV, what you hear isn’t nearly as important as what you don’t hear.
Henry A. Giroux: On the Significance of the Chicago Teachers Strike: Challenging Democracy’s Demise
What the world is witnessing in Chicago as thousands of teachers, staff and support personnel strike is the emergence of a revolutionary ideal.
This is an ideal rooted in the promise of democracy – one that challenges corrupt neo-liberal practices, such as giving corporations and markets the right to define the purpose and meaning of public education; opposes policies that systemically defund public education by shifting the burden of low tax rates for the rich, and the cost of bloated military expenditures, to teachers and other public servants; and refuses to support educational reforms that debase educational leadership and teaching in order to undermine public education as a bulwark of democracy.
Vandana Shiva: The Global Food System Casino
Food is our nourishment. It is the source of life. Growing food, processing, transforming and distributing it involves 70 per cent of humanity. Eating food involves all of us. Yet, it is not the culture or human rights that are shaping today’s dominant food economy. Rather speculation and profits are designing food production and distribution. Putting food on the global financial casino is a design for hunger.
After the US subprime crisis and the Wall Street crash, investors rushed to commodity markets, especially oil and agricultural commodities. While real production did not increase between 2005-2007, commodity speculation in food increased 160 per cent. Speculation pushed up prices and high prices pushed an additional 100 million to hunger. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan are all playing on the global food casino.
A 2008 advertisement of Deutsche Bank stated, “Do you enjoy rising prices? Everybody talks about commodities – with the Agriculture Euro Fund you can benefit from the increase in the value of the seven most important agricultural commodities.”
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