“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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Duncan Black aka Atrios: Expand Social Security
The three legged stool is down to one leg.
According to the Pew Research Center, the median household wealth for those aged 65+ is about $170,000. While that sounds like a significant amount of money, as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research pointed out, this is actually a trivial amount of wealth for people with little or no income other than Social Security benefits. Remember that this figure includes housing wealth. Even if it was a bunch of cash in a bank account, it wouldn’t actually provide for a significant supplement to other retirement income, but the reality is that many people have a house and not much else.
The point is that people with this vast wealth of $170,000, mostly tied up in the house in which they live, face bleak retirement years. As politicians in both parties discuss cutting promised Social Security retirement benefits as a misguided tribute to the austerity gods, the reality is that we desperately need to increase these benefits right now.
Mark S. Mellmann: The G. Gordon Liddy Republicans
One of my favorite Washington stories concerns infamous Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy, who used to entertain party guests by holding his hand in a candle flame for some time. “What’s the trick?” shocked onlookers would ask. He would reply stoically “The trick is, I don’t care.”
That explains Republicans’ unwillingness to compromise on an agreement that would reduce the deficit by both cutting spending and closing tax loopholes, despite the damage their refusal has inflicted on the GOP, which I detailed last week. And we know that Republican legislators are out of touch even with their own partisans, a majority of whom prefer a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases.
In the end, though, whether the source of the Liddy Republicans’ recalcitrance is ideological commitment, fear of primaries or insulation from political tides, we can be certain about two things: It’s damaging the GOP brand and it’s hurting our country.
Don’t tell the Tea Party, but the tag team of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are currently mopping the floor with Barack Obama.
The president convincingly won a second term in November, but since that time, the congressional Republican leadership has outfoxed, outmaneuvered and plain out-strategized him on just about every issue.
Don’t tell the Tea Party, but the tag team of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are currently mopping the floor with Barack Obama.
The president convincingly won a second term in November, but since that time, the congressional Republican leadership has outfoxed, outmaneuvered and plain out-strategized him on just about every issue.
Robert Reich: Why There’s a Bull Market for Stocks and a Bear Market for Workers
Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 14,270 — completely erasing its 54 percent loss between 2007 and 2009.
The stock market is basically back to where it was in 2000, while corporate earnings have doubled since then.
Yet the real median wage is now 8 percent below what it was in 2000, and unemployment remains sky-high.
Why is the stock market doing so well, while most Americans are doing so poorly? Four reasons: [..]
Rarely before in American history have public policies so radically helped the most fortunate among us, so cruelly harmed the least fortunate, and exposed so many average working Americans to such widespread insecurity.
Joe Conason: Hungry Children Will Be Among First to Suffer From Sequestration
The difference between a natural disaster and a disaster caused by politicians is that the latter will almost always hit the poor and the obscure most heavily, while a hurricane or a flood will at least sometimes spread the suffering more evenly.
As the “sequester” unfolds in Washington, we see this same old pattern holding firm: Republican leaders, now hustling to shirk responsibility for the catastrophe they predicted, insist those automated budget axes won’t do any damage at all.
Has anyone felt any pain yet?
Not during the first few days, of course, but when the cuts begin to bite a month or so from now, the first to feel it will be the unemployed and the destitute for whom a few dollars of government support mean so much in their daily survival calculation. A decent policy would seek to spare them the brunt of political mistakes made by other, far more comfortable people, but this process permits no such choices-and the most vulnerable will by definition be hurt most.
George Zornick: Beware Obama’s Dealmaking
As sequestration churns on, President Obama is reaching out to moderate Republican members of the Senate to see if he can still put a deal together. He is coming to the Hill next week for a Republican luncheon, and hosting other members for dinner tonight. The president is also picking up the phone. “He just called me,” Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters yesterday. “What I see from the president is probably the most encouraging engagement on a big issue that I’ve seen since the early years of his presidency. He wants to do the big deal.”
This should, and does, worry progressives inside and outside of Congress. The default position among center-left pundits is that if Obama gets Republicans to agree on a grand deficit reduction package that includes new revenue, he’s “won.” But that assumption really needs to be interrogated, and each concession examined.
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