“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 Board: The Mayor and the Unions
On Feb. 12, the mayor is scheduled to present his first budget, a preliminary document that will say a lot about his priorities for the coming fiscal year. Looming over it, a horizon’s worth of storm clouds ready to burst, is the challenge he warned of last week in Albany: negotiating new contracts with nearly all the city’s labor unions.
Mr. de Blasio likes to talk about the city’s yawning “chasm” of social and economic inequality, which he has pledged his mayoralty to closing. But there is another chasm close at hand. In one of his last acts as mayor, Michael Bloomberg declared that he was leaving a balanced budget. That sketchy assertion relied heavily on one-shot revenues and overlooked uncertainty about cuts in federal aid, the recovery from Hurricane Sandy and, most of all, more than 150 bargaining units, representing about 300,000 city employees, that are working on expired contracts, some for five or six years. [..]
Still, his job demands more than affability. Now is the time for Mr. de Blasio to be bold to the point of confrontational, to endure name-calling, resentment and lower poll numbers. The rap on him is that he hasn’t run anything; the rap on liberal Democrats is that they can’t run this unruly city. Mr. Bloomberg, for all his efficiency and tough talk, never hammered out a deal to put the city and its labor costs on a sound footing. Now is Mr. de Blasio’s chance to achieve that goal and upend the widely held, if unfair, expectations of what a Democrat can do.
Robert Redford: Reality Check on Keystone XL: Despite Industry Spin, New Environmental Report Lays Ground for Denial
The more people learn about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the less they like it. Despite what we might be hearing in industry spin, the environmental report released by the State Department Friday confirms that tar sands crude means a dirtier, more dangerous future for our children all so that the oil industry can reach the higher prices of overseas markets. That’s right, overseas markets, which is where the majority of this processed oil will end up. This dirty energy project is all risk and no reward for the American people.
You’ll remember that the president said he won’t greenlight a project that raises the dangers of climate change. The State Department report makes it clear that this is exactly what Keystone XL would do. Bottom line: the tar sands pipeline fails the president’s climate test. It’s a bad idea. It needs to be denied.
Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman is yet another victim of the war on drugs. Prohibition is not working. It is time to try something new. [..]
Why would a man held in such high esteem, a man with so much going for him and so much to live for, risk it all by buying illegal drugs from a criminal on the street and then injecting them into his veins? For the same reason any addict uses drugs: to get high.
Perhaps this desire was a moral failing on Hoffman’s part. Perhaps its origin lies buried in his personal history, with some trauma having triggered it. Perhaps it is written in his genetic code. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.
What we do know is that this need to get high is beyond some people’s control. Our drug policy of prohibition and interdiction makes it difficult and dangerous for people like Hoffman to get high, but not impossible-and makes these tragic overdose deaths more common than they have to be.
Dean Baker: The Attack of the Robots: Economists’ Silly Fantasies
Economists are not very good at economics. We know this because we had a huge housing bubble that collapsed, which almost none of them saw. The pre-crash projections from the Congressional Budget Office imply that this downturn has already cost us more than $7.6 trillion, or $25,000 per person. This could have been prevented if we had economists in policy positions who understood how the economy worked.
But even if economists aren’t very good at dealing with the economy, they still can provide value to society. In particular they can be a great source of entertainment. That’s how we should view the story that robots will take all of our jobs and leave most of the population unemployed.
This story has become a popular theme lately among Washington policy types. There are important people from across the political spectrum running around town wringing their hands over the prospect that the economy may not provide jobs for large segments of the labor force.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Populist Moment
Of all the myths that circulate in Washington, perhaps none is more prevalent or intractable than the one that says that the United States is a “moderate” nation — and that the “center” of public opinion lies somewhere between the views of conservative Democrats and those of less extreme Republicans (a relative term at best).
The polling data shows conclusively that this is wrong, but the mythology refuses to die.
According to the myth, the rise of populism is to be condemned as “polarization,” a situation that the capital’s insider subculture routinely laments — even when it involves something that in other historical moments would be described as “a debate.”
In this worldview, “populists” are as extreme as Tea Party radicals and are to be treated with equal disdain. At best they’re useful naïfs who can be trotted out to stir up the base at election time, then to be conveniently sidelined again for the next four years. And that worst they’re childlike ideologues, to be condescended to and dismissed.
Cenk Uygur: The Sniveling Apologizers at MSNBC Don’t Represent Progressives
First, let me be clear that this is not intended for the hosts on MSNBC. It’s management that’s the issue. The way Phil Griffin has his hosts trot out for one apology after another is revolting. At least, he included himself in the genuflecting to the right-wing last time around. The whole display is pathetic.
Let’s also be clear about another thing. Phil Griffin, who happens to be the head of MSNBC, is not a liberal or progressive. I worked at MSNBC, I talked to Phil Griffin many times, I know Phil Griffin. He is not remotely progressive. All he cares about is success in his own career. He even basically admitted in this recent interview that he would head a conservative network if it made more money. The idea that he represents progressives as he keeps groveling to conservatives is absurd and sickening.
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