“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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Kofi Anan: Climate Crisis: Who Will Act?
Geneva – The last-minute deal at the United Nations Climate Conference in Warsaw keeps hopes for a comprehensive successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto protocol alive. But let us be clear: Much more decisive action will be needed if we are to stand any chance at fending off the dangers of climate change.
We now have just one more shot, next year in Peru, to make more substantive progress toward a successor agreement before the crucial 2015 Paris conference. Even before then, it will be crucial for governments to put aside narrow national interests in order to ensure that the pledges made at the 2009 Copenhagen conference – to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to pre-industrial levels – are met.
Paul Krugman: California, Here We Come?
It goes without saying that the rollout of Obamacare was an epic disaster. But what kind of disaster was it? Was it a failure of management, messing up the initial implementation of a fundamentally sound policy? Or was it a demonstration that the Affordable Care Act is inherently unworkable?
We know what each side of the partisan divide wants you to believe. The Obama administration is telling the public that everything will eventually be fixed, and urging Congressional Democrats to keep their nerve. Republicans, on the other hand, are declaring the program an irredeemable failure, which must be scrapped and replaced with … well, they don’t really want to replace it with anything.
At a time like this, you really want a controlled experiment. What would happen if we unveiled a program that looked like Obamacare, in a place that looked like America, but with competent project management that produced a working website?
Well, your wish is granted. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you California.
Hmmm… you’ve got Bernanke saying the U.S. economy is getting better and, as per incoming data, the Fed will at some point slowly start to pull back support. And you’ve got the OECD doing what all forecasters do these days: marking down their estimates for future growth and warning of various headwinds.
Meanwhile, mixed in with all this near-term analysis, many in my world are mulling over Larry Summers’ warning that whatever the cycle is doing, the underlying problem is one of structural slog.
What does it all mean? With the mild caveat that no one knows, I’ll take a stab.
Paul Rieckhoff: Broken Senate Delays Military Sexual Assault Reform
Senate gridlock and dysfunction has reared its ugly head again — and this time it’s survivors of military sexual assault who will pay the price.
There is an unclear path forward for the critical Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA), legislation that would support survivors of military sexual assault and strengthen our military. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is stalled in the U.S. Senate. After parliamentary tricks, the Senate left for its Thanksgiving vacation Thursday night after Senate leaders failed to reach an agreement to move forward with the defense bill, a vehicle for the MJIA.
So far, 53 senators have signed on to support the Military Justice Improvement Act. It’s a group of Senators that rarely join together. How often do you see Senators Rand Paul and Al Franken supporting the same bill? Or Senators Ted Cruz and Senator Dick Durbin? The historic nature of this bi-partisan coalition underscores the growing momentum for the change we need in the military justice system.
Robert Kuttner: Filibuster Reform: The Stakes for 2014
The Senate Democrats’ lond-deferred success in reforming the filibuster rule for executive branch and judicial appointments will have reverberations that are only gradually being appreciated. Not only will 76 long-blocked appointments — a record — now go forward in short order. Obama, if he chooses, will be able to appoint more robust progressives.
In the past, especially on court appointments, prospective Obama nominees were pre-cleared with Republicans to make confirmation more likely. The result of this White House strategy was not only to slow the process of nominations but to place a premium in coming up with centrists rather than liberals. [..]
Filibuster reform has restored a measure of democracy to the Senate. To make that reform durable and meaningful, it’s necessary to restore democracy to the process of exercising the even more fundamental right to vote.
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