“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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Paul Krugman: Moment of Truthiness
We all know how democracy is supposed to work. Politicians are supposed to campaign on the issues, and an informed public is supposed to cast its votes based on those issues, with some allowance for the politicians’ perceived character and competence.
We also all know that the reality falls far short of the ideal. Voters are often misinformed, and politicians aren’t reliably truthful. Still, we like to imagine that voters generally get it right in the end, and that politicians are eventually held accountable for what they do.
But is even this modified, more realistic vision of democracy in action still relevant? Or has our political system been so degraded by misinformation and disinformation that it can no longer function?
New York Times Editorial Board: No Banker Left Behind
The Detroit bankruptcy case has been cast as a contest between bondholders and pensioners that can be resolved only by shared sacrifice.
In principle, we have no problem with that, though in practice, the pensioners’ fair share will have to take into account their extreme vulnerability: Public pensions are not federally insured and many municipal retirees do not receive Social Security.
What we do have a problem with is shared sacrifice that does not seem to apply to the big banks that abetted Detroit’s descent into bankruptcy.
The day before Detroit declared bankruptcy, I found The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman up to his old tricks, extolling the North American Free Trade Agreement and “free trade” in general in a column so foolish and mendacious that his editors would have been well advised to spike it.
There’s no coincidence, I’m sure, that Detroit – the symbol and former center of American industrial power – officially threw in the towel so close to publication of Friedman’s claptrap. But the timing is worth noting as President Obama is now about to give away big chunks of the remaining U.S. manufacturing base to Japan and Vietnam, among other Pacific Rim countries, through a proposed free-trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Richard (RJ) Escow: The ‘Bankization’ of America
The share of our national income which goes to corporate profit is the highest it’s been since they started tracking it in 1929, while the share going to people — as salary and wages — is the lowest. And the percentage of that corporate profit which goes to Wall Street is also the highest on record.
We’re becoming a financialized economy. Never before has the manipulation of money counted for so much and the real-world economy of people and consumer goods counted for so little.
And none of it is an accident.
Robert Naiman: Amend or Repeal the Espionage Act To Protect Journalists and Whistle-blowers
Isn’t it high time to amend or repeal the Espionage Act of 1917 so that it can’t be used to charge whistle-blowers or journalists with “aiding the enemy”?
Note that this demand is completely separable from saying that there should be no consequences for whistle-blowers who leak classified information to the media or journalists who publish classified information that is leaked to them. If I say that I am against the death penalty, it does not mean that I am against consequences for people who are found guilty of committing murder. It means that I don’t think that execution by the state should be one of those consequences. If I say that I am against the use of incarceration to punish nonviolent drug offenses, it does not mean that I am against consequences for people who are found guilty of nonviolent drug offenses. It means that I don’t think that incarceration should be one of those consequences. If I say that I am against a war – or killing Iranian civilians by cutting off their access to essential medicines, in blatant violation of international humanitarian law – to prevent Iran from “acquiring a nuclear weapons capability,” [sic] it does not mean that I think that efforts by Iran to pursue a “nuclear weapons capability” should face no consequences. The question is not whether the conduct being sanctioned should face no sanction. The question is whether “the punishment fits the crime.”
Robert C. Koehler: Stopped and Frisked by an Occupying Army
Stopping crime before it happens is a great idea, but stopping young men for “walking while black” – touted by true believers as the same thing – is a game played by an occupying army.
The tactic is called stop-and-frisk. As practiced by many police departments, including New York’s, it amounts to blatant racial profiling. Stop-and-frisk makes it impossible for young men of color to lead normal lives, to walk outside without fear of preemptive police harassment. The long-term hatred and tension it engenders does far more harm to a community than all the questionable good that proponents ascribe to it. Security based on racism is a sham.
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