“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: Slow but Steady Improvement
The slow pace of the nation’s economic recovery has picked up a bit lately. In the third quarter, the economy grew at an annual rate of 2 percent, beating expectations and the dismal 1.3 percent growth in the second quarter. Over the past year, the growth rate has been 2.3 percent. At that pace, there’s enough momentum to keep unemployment, currently 7.8 percent, from getting much worse, but not enough to spur big job gains.
The growth figures, released on Friday by the Commerce Department, played right into the candidates’ competing themes on the campaign trail, where President Obama has pointed to slow but steady economic recovery relative to the severe recession he inherited, while Mitt Romney has criticized growth of the past few years as unacceptably slow because of Mr. Obama’s policies.
Mr. Obama has the stronger argument. The economy would have been much worse off without Obama administration policies like the stimulus and the auto industry rescue. And it would be much better off today if congressional Republicans had not obstructed subsequent stimulus proposals, most notably the administration’s jobs bill introduced last year, which could have added an estimated 1.9 million jobs – and at least a percentage point to growth, according to many private-sector economic analyses.
Gail Collins: Talk About a Way With Words
Rape is a big issue this election season. Not what we were expecting, but, these days, American voters are prepared to deal with pretty much anything.
This week, all eyes turned to a United States Senate debate in Indiana – also something we were not really planning on doing. Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate, caused a national stir when he defended his across-the-board opposition to abortion by saying that a pregnancy caused by rape “is something that God intended to happen.” [..]
The idea of banning abortion except for rape and incest cases makes anti-choice politicians sound more evenhanded, but it doesn’t actually make much sense. If you believe life begins at conception, then that’s a life, and you should try to convince women not to terminate any pregnancy, no matter what the cause. Our difference of opinion is over whether you can impose your beliefs with the threat of cops and penitentiaries.
Has there ever been a more crazed, cruel, anti-people, corporate-indentured, militaristic and monetized Republican Party in its 154-year history? An about-to-be-released list of some of the actual brutish votes by the House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor, will soon be available to you from the House Democratic Caucus.
Lest you think this is just partisan propaganda, these are real, recorded votes in the House of Representatives. [..]
How do such people get elected? Is it just money and smooth slogans? Is it a lack of competition in rigged districts? Is it a winner-take-all, two-party duopoly where more than half the voters sit out the election? Is it shocking disengagement by the cynical or hopeless public, shorn of any rigorous expectation levels?
For the time being, go to the Democratic House Caucus website. Ponder the fate of our Republic. Ask why we have almost unconditionally given up our enormous sovereign power of “We the People” to those out-of-control, raging members of Congress.
Charles M. Blow: The Company Romney Keeps
The saying goes: A man is known by the company he keeps.
If that is true, what does the company Mitt Romney keeps say about him?
This week Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama again, as he did in 2008. That apparently set John Sununu, a co-chairman of the Romney campaign, on edge. Powell’s endorsement couldn’t possibly be the product of purposeful deliberation over the candidates’ policies. In Sununu’s world of racial reductionism, Powell’s endorsement had a more base explanation: it was a black thing. [..]
I worry that Sununu’s statements intentionally go beyond recognizing racial disparities and seek to exploit them.
What does that say about Romney, and what does it say about his campaign’s tactics?
Remember: A man is known by the company he keeps.
John Nichols: Paul Ryan Takes a Side in the War on Poverty: He’s Against What Works
Paul Ryan has a right to be wrong. He can believe that anti-poverty programs don’t work.
But he does not have a right to foster the fantasy that his opinion is grounded in reality.
Unfortunately, media reports on the Republican vice presidential candidate’s “big” speech on how to address poverty, focused on Ryan’s glib one-liners rather than the fact that his basic premises are false.
Ryan says that: “In this war on poverty, poverty is winning.”
That’s a nice play on words. But there’s a problem. Ryan wants us to believe that the “war on poverty” is what’s causing poverty.
Seriously.
carl Gibson: ‘We Pay More’: US Austerity Well Underway
After I pinned a dollar bill on my jacket lapel with “I PAY MORE” written on it in black marker, I’ve had countless conversations during my travels across the United States that went something like this:
Them: “I pay more? What does that mean?”
Me: “This dollar bill right here is $1 more than General Electric, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and a bunch of other big corporations paid in federal taxes, since 2008, combined.”
Them: “What? That’s not right. I pay my taxes! Too much, actually.”
Me: “But I bet you don’t hire a bunch of lobbyists to make sure Congress keeps writing in more loopholes like they do, right?”
Them: “Well, no. I don’t have that kind of money.”
Me: “So you pay more. Pass it on.”Regardless of political persuasion, there isn’t one person I’ve met who isn’t infuriated by the fact that they pay more in federal taxes than a combined majority of most billion-dollar corporations. But what’s even more infuriating is that under the Budget Control Act that was passed after our austerity- crazed Congress forced it into being during the Summer-long debt negotiations of 2011, budgets for numerous essential social programs will be cut to the bone this January, under the false guise that our country is too broke to pay the bills. [..]
I pay more. So do you. Either as a percentage of our income, as an effective federal tax rate, and even as a dollar amount compared to our corporate counterparts. Let’s put an end to these cuts by illustrating how unjust it is to make us pay for the cunning tax practices of the 1% and their lobbyists on Capitol Hill with a pound of flesh taken from our own future.
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