“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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Robert Reich: What Tuesday’s Election Results Really Mean
Pundits who are already describing the victories of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey as a “return to the center” of American politics are confusing the “center” with big business and Wall Street.
Both look moderate only by contrast with the Tea Partiers to their extreme right.
The biggest game-changer, though, is Bill de Blasio, the mayor-elect of New York City, who campaigned against the corporatist legacy of Michael Bloomberg — promising to raise taxes on the wealthy and use the revenues for pre-school and after-school programs for the children of New York’s burdened middle class and poor.
Jill Richardson: Big Food Crushes Consumer Rights in Washington State
Corporate foes of a genetic labeling measure outspent grassroots supporters by a 3-1 margin.
When you look at the numbers, how could Washington State’s ballot initiative to require the labeling of foods made with genetically engineered ingredients ever stand a chance?
I’m not talking about poll numbers. I’m talking about money.
Just six weeks ago, voters supported the measure by a 3-to-1 margin. But that was before Big Ag bankrolled a barrage of negative and misleading ads.
Shortly before voters got to weigh in on Initiative 522, polls pointed to a tight race but the consumer-friendly measure still looked like it might pass. Shortly before Election Day, the opposition ponied up nearly $5 million for last-minute ad buys to guarantee a decisive win for Big Food. Corporate America outspent its grassroots foes by a 3-to-1 margin, rapidly skewing public opinion.
Folks who think that (at the very least) we should be allowed to experience a few years of peace before launching the next military adventure are on the cusp of a major victory in Washington. All we have to do to win this historic victory is maintain the “sequester” cuts to the Pentagon budget that are already planned in existing law. And if we win the next round — if we avoid any kind of “grand bargain” one more time — we will likely win forever, because the Pentagon cuts will be an accomplished fact, and when everyone sees that the Earth is still spinning on its axis, we’ll all realize that cutting the Pentagon budget is no big deal. The Pentagon will be smaller, the sun will come up in the morning, and life will go on.
Norman Solomon: Big Brother’s Loyal Sister: How Dianne Feinstein Is Betraying Civil Liberties
Ever since the first big revelations about the National Security Agency five months ago, Dianne Feinstein has been in overdrive to defend the surveillance state. As chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she generates an abundance of fog, weasel words, anti-whistleblower slander and bogus notions of reform — while methodically stabbing civil liberties in the back.
Feinstein’s powerful service to Big Brother, reaching new heights in recent months, is just getting started. She’s hard at work to muddy all the waters of public discourse she can — striving to protect the NSA from real legislative remedies while serving as a key political enabler for President Obama’s shameless abuse of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
Amy Goodman: Election 2013: A Grass-Roots Resurgence
The cable news channels wasted no time before crowing over the landslide re-election victory of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. According to exit polls, Christie won a majority of both women and Latino voters, traditional Democratic voting blocs. The political chattering class is abuzz with Christie as the GOP’s great hope to retake the White House in 2016. But they miss a vital and growing undercurrent in U.S. politics: grass-roots movements at the local and state level that are challenging the establishment, and winning.
Robert Sheer: Pay No Attention to That Imperialist Behind the Curtain
What John Kerry did this week in Egypt and Saudi Arabia is nothing short of despicable. He, and the president who appointed him, managed to honor both a vicious military dictatorship and a totalitarian medieval monarchy as examples of progress toward a more democratic Middle East, as if neither stood in contradiction to professed U.S. objectives for the region.
“Egyptians Following Right Path, Kerry Says,” read the New York Times headline Sunday trumpeting the secretary of state’s homage to ruthless military dictators who the very next day were scheduled to stage a show trial of Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
This was all part of a “road map” to democracy “being carried out to the best of our perception,” Kerry intoned, apparently embracing the calumny that the destruction of representative government in Egypt was always the American plan.
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