“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: A Terrible Precedent for Press Freedom
An egregious appeals court ruling on Friday has dealt a major setback to press freedoms by requiring the author of a 2006 book to testify in the criminal trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official charged with leaking classified information. The ruling and the Justice Department’s misplaced zeal in subpoenaing James Risen, the book’s author and a reporter for The Times, carry costs for robust journalism and government accountability that should alarm all Americans. [..]
It was dismaying that the Justice Department issued a statement approving of the court’s wrongheaded legal conclusion barely a week after Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. announced new guidelines that are supposedly designed to better protect the news media from federal investigators in leak cases. But the department also said it was “examining the next steps in the prosecution of this case.” That should include withdrawing its demand that Mr. Risen testify about his sources.
This issue tests the new guidelines and their promise not to threaten journalists with jail for doing their jobs, except in “extraordinary” circumstances. If he has any intention to live up to that pledge, Mr. Holder should reopen the question of Mr. Risen’s subpoena.
Dean Baker: Edward Snowden and Financial Speculation Taxes
In the last few weeks Edward Snowden has been holed in Moscow’s airport trying to negotiate terms of asylum with various countries around the world. Thus far it doesn’t seem that Snowden has been able to find any acceptable offers.
Part of the reason is that the United States government has been openly threatening governments that are considering offering asylum, warning of dire consequences. Governments throughout the world take these threats seriously. [..]
This is important background for understanding the effort in Washington to block financial speculation taxes. The basic argument for such taxes is that we have a vast amount of high-speed trading that serves no productive purpose. Much of this trading uses sophisticated computers to get ahead of major orders and siphon off much of the profits for themselves. It’s a high-tech version of insider trading.
Does anyone seriously doubt that, if Detroit were a “too big to fail” bank, it would have been bailed out long ago? Or that its pensioners, rather than facing the threat of cruel cuts as part of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s scheme to steer the city into brutal bankruptcy proceedings, would instead have pocketed hefty bonuses?
To ask the question is to answer it.
If the 2008 bailout of the biggest players in the financial sector-and policy-making over the ensuing years-tells us anything, it is that Congress and the Federal Reserve take care of Wall Street.
America’s great cities? Not so much.
Norman Solomon: Obama’s Escalating War on Freedom of the Press
The part of the First Amendment that prohibits “abridging the freedom … of the press” is now up against the wall, as the Obama administration continues to assault the kind of journalism that can expose government secrets.
Last Friday the administration got what it wanted-an ice-cold chilling effect-from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on the case of New York Times reporter James Risen. The court “delivered a blow to investigative journalism in America by ruling that reporters have no First Amendment protection that would safeguard the confidentiality of their sources in the event of a criminal trial,” the Guardian reported. [..]
At the Freedom of the Press Foundation, co-founder Trevor Timm calls the court ruling “the most significant reporter’s privilege decision in decades” and asserts that the court “eviscerated that privilege.” He’s not exaggerating. Press freedom is at stake.
Paul Buccheit: The Insanity of Not Having a Financial Transaction Tax
The logic for the tax is indisputable:
1. Financial industry speculation devastated middle-class homeowner wealth.
2. U.S. investors pay zero tax on their speculative transactions.
3. The tax is easy to implement, and is very successful in other countries.The emotional appeal reaches most of America:
Why should the rest of us pay up to 10% on the necessities of life while risky derivative purchases aren’t taxed at all?
Why should kids around the country lose their arts programs while trillions of dollars flow, untaxed, to Wall Street?
Ted Kaufman: Happy Birthday to Dodd-Frank, a Law That Isn’t Working
Today marks the third anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. Sadly, except for a recent promising development that might increase capital requirements for megabanks, the act has not delivered on its promise to fix the problems that caused the financial meltdown of 2008-09.
Failure was built into Dodd-Frank from the beginning. Instead of writing laws that addressed the abuses that led to the crisis, it nearly always kicked the can down to agencies, instructing them to write new regulations. By and large, those regulatory agencies have been overwhelmed by a combination of congressional underfunding and a massive lobbying effort by the megabanks that increasingly seem to control Washington. The Davis Polk law firm’s latest count says that only 155 of the 398 rule makings required by Dodd-Frank have been finalized
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