“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: The US Should Grow the Deficit, Not Shrink It
The US economy is too fragile to reduce spending and raise taxes. Fiscal austerity is a recipe for worse pain.
There is an astounding level of confusion surrounding the current US deficit. There are three irrefutable facts about the deficits:
First, the United States has large deficits because the collapse of the housing bubble sank the economy
Second, if we had smaller deficits the main result would slower growth and higher unemployment.
Third, large projected long-term deficits are the result of a broken health care system, not reckless government “entitlement” programs.
Robert Sheer: America’s Global Torture Network
The title, “Globalizing Torture,” says it all. This meticulous accounting of the network of torture chambers that the United States has authorized in more than 54 nations is a damning indictment that should make all of us in this country cringe with shame. [..]
When it comes to torture in the post 9/11 era, the record of the United States is so appalling that one must question our claimed abhorrence of the barbarism of other nations. In fact, the essence of our rendition program has been to outsource torture to those countries most sadistic in their use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” That is flattery of a most twisted sort.
New York Times Editorial:
Improper Efforts to Limit Competitive Drugs
Two big biotechnology companies, Amgen and Genentech, are lobbying state legislatures to limit competition to their biological drugs that will lose patent protection in the next several years. Before taking any action, lawmakers should wait for guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, the agency that reviews all drugs and their generic versions for safety and effectiveness. [..]
American consumers, insurers and health care providers could potentially save billions of dollars a year by using cheaper versions of brand-name biologicals that now cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year per patient. States should not move to limit access to biosimilar drugs before the F.D.A. has issued final guidelines on how to ensure their safety. In their lobbying campaign, revealed by Andrew Pollack in The Times recently, the two companies have persuaded legislators to introduce bills that would restrict the ability of pharmacists to substitute cheaper biosimilars in filling prescriptions.
Matthew Rothschild: Brennan’s Obscene Testimony at Confirmation Hearing
John Brennan tried to elude his questioners at his confirmation hearing as CIA director.
On one question after another, he excreted octopus ink to dodge or obfuscate. [..]
While he denounced and renounced waterboarding, he refused to call it torture.
And he confirmed that “foreign partners” were holding most of the people the U.S. has under interrogation today, and that the CIA is involved in those interrogations, sometimes directly. “The CIA should be able to lend its full expertise,” he said.
That “full expertise” includes all sorts of techniques that are banned by the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Dave Johnson: Fix the Trade Deficit, Fix the Economy
Yet another report is out showing how the trade deficit is costing us millions of jobs and hurting our economy. This report has specific numbers: between 2.2 million and 4.7 million U.S. jobs, between 1 percent and 2.1 percent of the unemployment rate and a gross domestic product increase of between 1.4 percent and 3.1 percent.
These are real numbers that were carefully calculated. This is a real problem that is hurting people, hurting small and mid-sized companies, hurting communities, hurting our tax base and hurting our ability to make a living in the future. And there are real solutions available to fix the problem.
If you saw the movie Roger & Me, you saw what happened to Flint, Mich. when GM’s executives moved the jobs out of the country. That movie showed what a trade deficit does. Roger & Me came out in 1989 and was really only a small, local look at what was coming to much of the country. In the decades since then, the problem spread to entire regions. This is not some economic dislocation due to changes in the economy; this is regional and even national devastation that doesn’t have to happen and that no country should tolerate.
Mike Lux: TBTF, TBTJ: Too Big to Exist
I am really excited that the long overdue battle over immigration reform and a path to citizenship has finally begun in earnest. While I am heartsick at the reason, it is good news that common-sense gun safety laws are once again being discussed in this country almost two decades after we finally passed the Brady Bill. And the ongoing, never-ending budget fights remain urgently important in terms of stopping more damage to middle class and poor people in America. I know I will be engaging daily in the vitally important battles over all these issues, and I expect my progressive allies all over the country will be as well. [..]
And looming over these economic problems is quite literally the elephant in the room: these gargantuan Too Big To Fail, and apparently Too Big To Jail, Wall Street financial conglomerates. Because of their massive economic and political power, the financial sector swallows up more than 40 percent of the economy in this country, and because they can make more money doing speculative high-speed trading than by investing in manufacturing or infrastructure or making loans to small businesses, those sectors get starved for capital. Because of Wall Street’s obsession with short term profit, workers are not invested in and wages keep getting driven down. Because these banks’ accountants have figured out that their short-term stock prices will stay higher if they continue to show inflated housing assets on their books, they have been unwilling to work with homeowners to write down underwater debt. Because of tax policies such as low capital gains and the carried interest loophole that favor the financial sector, the federal budget is starved for resources, and because Wall Street wants to be able to speculate with senior citizens’ money, the pressure keeps building to cut or privatize Social Security, as well as state and local government workers’ pensions.
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes. 
On this day in 1950,
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