“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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Dean Baker: Social Security: President Obama’s Biggest Failure in Last Week’s Debate
President Obama definitely had a bad night when he faced Governor Romney in Denver for the first presidential debate. However, for many listeners the worst moment was not due to his atypical inarticulateness. Rather, the worst moment was when he quite clearly told the country that there was not much difference between his position on Social Security and Governor Romney’s. He also expressed his desire to “tweak” Social Security to improve its finances.
This is very bad news to the tens of millions of people who depend on Social Security now or expect to in the near future. It’s also bad news to the hundreds of millions of people who have been counting on the Social Security system to provide a degree of financial security to their retired or disabled family members. [..]
When President Obama links arms with Romney on Social Security, it is not good news for supporters of the program. Nor was the situation made better by the desire to “tweak” the system.
Glenn Greenwald: Election Year Garbage
Whatever is awful about the US political process is magnified in the election season, and increases each day until it’s mercifully over
{..}It’s a bit bizarre, to put that generously, to insist that protecting Social Security is one of the prime reasons to dedicate oneself to Obama’s re-election when he not only worked hard to cut that program substantially, but himself said just last week that he and his opponent have a “somewhat similar position” on that issue.
Whatever is awful about the American political process is magnified in the election season, and exponentially intensifies each day as the election approaches. That would all be perfectly tolerable if not for the fact that the election process is 18 months long, or close to 1/3 of each president’s term. One of the most effective tactics for keeping the electorate distracted and confused is ensuring that the time when they pay the most attention to the political process is exactly the time when political reality is most obscured.
Affirmative action provokes conflicting views about what equal protection means under the law. Does the Constitution permit race-conscious programs that provide minorities with opportunities, even though it prohibits programs that exclude minorities because of their race? [..]
Affirmative action is largely a voluntary commitment by leading institutions that are convinced it is in their self-interest to enlarge opportunities for historically disfavored groups, because it helps fulfill their missions. It would be a travesty for the court’s conservatives to reverse or weaken longstanding legal precedent on this issue. The harm they would inflict in doing so would be felt in education, business, national defense and many areas of American life.
Martha Burk: The Corporate Court’s War on Women
So far, not so good.
When President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, women’s groups mobilized to no avail. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to filibuster either nomination despite personal pleas from feminist leaders. Our main worry was reproductive freedom.
But many of us feared something that has proven to be just as menacing – a strong bias in favor of corporations. Women’s rights at work have been under constant assault since Congress passed the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace in the 1960s.
History has proven that our fears of a Roberts Court were well founded. In 2007, it overruled six lower federal courts by upholding a ban on one abortion procedure with no exception for a woman’s health. The same year, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Court overturned 40 years of precedent when it severely curtailed a woman’s right to sue for sex discrimination in pay. And in 2011 it piled on the punishment with Walmart v. Dukes, cutting the heart out of women’s ability to sue as a class when they’re unfairly denied pay and promotion.
Jim Hightower: The 1 Percent’s Cry for Justice
It’s out! This year’s list of American success stories has just been published, and according to its compiler, it “instills confidence that the American dream is still very much alive.”
Maybe you are one of these success stories. You might be a great public school teacher, for example, who motivated students to achieve new heights or an inventor who came up with an energy-saving device and got it to market at a fair price, generating a profit for yourself, the environment and society generally.
No, no, no. Not that kind of success. We’re talking money – the flow of mammon beyond regular people’s wildest dreams. That’s how Forbes magazine measures not only “success,” but also a person’s value: You are what’s in your Swiss bank account. And, just to rank last on this year’s “Forbes 400” listing of America’s wealthiest people, you need more than a billion dollars in financial wealth. To get into the top 10 requires at least $25 billion. And to be numero uno means you’ve got $66 billion socked away. Who says America is broke?
Gail Collins: Democrats at the Deep End
It’s a tough time to be a Democrat.
When Democrats run into each other in elevators, they exchange glances and sigh. Or make little whimpering sounds. [..]
Things haven’t really gone off the deep end for the Obama campaign. They’ve gone back to normal. You knew that the Obama-is-going-to-win-by-10-points euphoria wasn’t going to last. When did anybody ever win a presidential race by 10 points? Don’t tell me about Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan was president, gas was 90 cents a gallon and I was writing on a Kaypro.
Maybe Democrats should try to be more like the Republicans, and reduce stress by blaming all bad news on incorrect information, cooked up by cabals of political partisans.
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