“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 Board: Surveillance: A Threat to Democracy
A new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans are untroubled by revelations about the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of the phone records of millions of citizens, without any individual suspicion and regardless of any connection to a counterterrorism investigation. [..]
But Americans should not be fooled by political leaders putting forward a false choice. The issue is not whether the government should vigorously pursue terrorists. The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights. Far too little has been said on this question by the White House or Congress in their defense of the N.S.A.’s dragnet.
Dean Baker: The Trade Deal Scam
As part of its overall economic strategy, the Obama administration is rushing full speed ahead with two major trade deals. On the one hand it has the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes Japan and Australia and several other countries in East Asia and Latin America. On the other side there is an effort to craft a U.S.-EU trade agreement.
There are two key facts people should know about these proposed trade deals. First, they are mostly not about trade. Second, they are not intended to boost the economy in a way that will help most of us. In fact, it is reasonable to say that these deals will likely be bad news for most people in the United States. Most of the people living in our partner countries are likely to be losers too.
As long as we’re opening a discussion about data mining, might we consider the fact that it’s not just the government that’s paying attention to our digital entanglements?
There’s a reason the National Security Agency was interested in accessing the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. When you’re mining, you go where the precious resources are, and technology companies have got the gold.
Data is digital gold. Corporations know that. They’re big into data mining.
But it’s not just profits that data can yield.
Data is also mined by those who seek power.
Thomas Drake; Snowden Saw What I Saw: Surveillance Criminally Subverting the Constitution
So we refused to be part of the NSA’s dark blanket. That is why whistleblowers pay the price for being the backstop of democracy
What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.
Like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution. [..]
The NSA is wiring the world; they want to own internet. I didn’t want to be part of the dark blanket that covers the world, and Edward Snowden didn’t either.
Leighton Woodhouse: NSA Surveillance Is Legal, and That’s the Worst Thing About It
One of the most disturbing realities that the surveillance revelations have brought into relief is that in its drive to safeguard national security, the Obama Administration has concocted policies and tactics that draw a sharp line of division between the state and the general public that tend to cast the latter in the role of potential conspirator. The problem isn’t the government’s assumption that there are those among us who may wittingly or unwittingly enable terrorists (or be terrorists ourselves), which is both credible and impossible to dispute. It’s that in the Administration’s view, our very understanding of what the government is doing and how it does it is deemed a priori an unacceptable security risk. It’s not only the secrecy around the NSA’s databanks of phone records: it’s the AP spying, the Stasi-like investigation of James Rosen, the merciless pursuit of leakers and whistleblowers — it’s the Administration’s entire attitude toward public scrutiny of its conduct.
Robert Reich; What We Need Now: A National Economic Strategy For Better Jobs
Jobs are returning with depressing slowness, and most of the new jobs pay less than the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession.
Economic determinists — fatalists, really — assume that globalization and technological change must now condemn a large portion of the American workforce to under-employment and stagnant wages, while rewarding those with the best eductions and connections with ever higher wages and wealth. And therefore that the only way to get good jobs back and avoid widening inequality is to withdraw from the global economy and become neo-Luddites, destroying the new labor-saving technologies.
That’s dead wrong. Economic isolationism and neo-Ludditism would reduce everyone’s living standards. Most importantly, there are many ways to create good jobs and reduce inequality.
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