“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: Scandal in France
I haven’t paid much attention to François Hollande, the president of France, since it became clear that he wasn’t going to break with Europe’s destructive, austerity-minded policy orthodoxy. But now he has done something truly scandalous.
I am not, of course, talking about his alleged affair with an actress, which, even if true, is neither surprising (hey, it’s France) nor disturbing. No, what’s shocking is his embrace of discredited right-wing economic doctrines. It’s a reminder that Europe’s ongoing economic woes can’t be attributed solely to the bad ideas of the right. Yes, callous, wrongheaded conservatives have been driving policy, but they have been abetted and enabled by spineless, muddleheaded politicians on the moderate left.
Mark Weisbrot: Why the European Economy Has Done So Much Worse Than That of the United States
If we compare the economic recovery of the United States since the Great Recession with that of Europe — or more specifically the eurozone countries — the differences are striking, and instructive. The U.S. recession technically lasted about a year and a half — from December 2007 to June 2009. (Of course, for America’s 20.3 million unemployed and underemployed, and millions of others, the recession never ended — but more on that below.) The eurozone had a similar-length recession from about January 2008 to April 2009; but then it fell into a longer recession in the third quarter of 2011 that lasted for about another two years; it may be exiting that recession currently. [..]
All this is not to hold up the U.S. recovery as an example; it is disgraceful that we have fewer people employed than we did six years ago, and a lower proportion of employed workers than we had at any time going back to the 1980s. And unnecessary: The media are filled with nonsense about cutting deficits and debt, and our government is also slowing growth with unnecessary budget cuts. And all this when our federal debt has a net interest burden of less than 1 percent of our national income, about as low as it has been in the post-World War II era. But the eurozone experience shows how much worse it can be when people lose most of their control over their government’s most important economic policies.
When you look too long into the Abyss, said Nietzsche, the Abyss looks into you. “And,” adds comedian Brother Theodore, “neither one of us likes what we see.”
That’s what the economic pronouncements of Republican politicians are like nowadays. Instead of a governing philosophy, all one sees is a yawning intellectual abyss. Their core ideas are so unpopular and discredited that party leaders only express them in passing. But, without them, the party is reduced to a set of rhetorical and ideological tics in search of a host organism.
The newly negotiated budget agreement is a perfect example of this process in action. The GOP got some giveaways to its wealthy patrons. But instead of acting on principle, their other demands were merely a series of poses and stances with no unifying theme.
Amy Goodman: Fukushima Is the World’s Ongoing Warning Against Nuclear Energy
The impact of nuclear disasters can last for generations. Such man-made devastation offers a lesson to all of us
“I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world,” wrote the journalist Wilfred Burchett from Hiroshima. His story, headlined, “The Atomic Plague” appeared in the London Daily Express on 5 September 1945. Burchett violated the US military blockade of Hiroshima, and was the first Western journalist to visit that devastated city. He wrote: “Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence.” [..]
Prime Minister Abe, leading the most conservative Japanese administration since World War II, wants to restart his country’s nuclear power plants, despite overwhelming public opposition. Public protests outside Abe’s official residence in Tokyo continue.
“It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation,” Wilfred Burchett wrote, sitting in the rubble of Hiroshima in 1945. The two US atomic-bomb attacks on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have deeply impacted Japan to this day. Likewise, the triple-edged disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and ongoing nuclear disaster will last for generations. The dangerous trajectory from nuclear weapons to nuclear power is now being challenged by a popular demand for peace and sustainability. It is a lesson for rest of the world as well.
Marjorie Cohn: Will Court Beat Back NSA’s Police State Desires?
Metadata collection as Fourth Amendment violation
Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), that requires Verizon to produce on an “ongoing daily basis … all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
The government has admitted it collects metadata for all of our telephone communications, but says the data collected does not include the content of the calls.
In response to lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the program, two federal judges issued dueling opinions about whether it violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. [..]
This issue is headed to the Court of Appeals. From there, it will likely go the Supreme Court. The high court checked and balanced President George W. Bush when he overstepped his legal authority by establishing military commissions that violated due process, and attempted to deny constitutional habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. It remains to be seen whether the court will likewise refuse to cower before President Barack Obama’s claim of unfettered executive authority to conduct dragnet surveillance. If the court allows the NSA to continue its metadata collection, we will reside in what can only be characterized as a police state.
John Robbins: Is the USDA Really Dumb Enough To Approve Agent Orange Corn?
Could this be the dumbest thing the USDA has ever done?
The Obama administration announced last week that it expects to approve corn and soybeans that have been genetically engineered by Dow Chemical company to tolerate the toxic herbicide – 2,4-D. They are planning this approval despite the fact that use of this herbicide is associated with increased rates of deadly immune system cancers, Parkinson’s disease, endocrine disruption, birth defects, and many other serious kinds of illness and reproductive problems.
Weed ecologists are unanimous in warning that approval of these crops will lead to vast increases in the use of this poisonous chemical. Researchers at Penn State say that in soybeans alone, planting of crops resistant to 2,4-D would increase the amount of 2,4-D sprayed on American fields to 100 million pounds per year – four times the current level. The researchers predict a cascade of negative environmental impacts, and add that the increasing use of the herbicide would actually worsen the epidemic of superweeds it is intended to address, by causing weeds to become resistant to multiple herbicides.
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