“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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The Guardian Editorial Board: The Double Life of Dianne Feinstein
Senator Dianne Feinstein is frequently exasperating. The Democratic senator from California is one day ultra-liberal, in the lead in calling for gun reform. The next she is ultra-conservative, one of the staunchest defenders of the embattled National Security Agency.
The senator’s contradictory nature was on show for all to see on Tuesday, when she delivered an extraordinary speech from the Senate floor. It amounted to the biggest and most public rift between Congress and the spy community since the 9/11 attacks. Ms Feinstein, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, which has oversight of America’s myriad spy agencies, accused the CIA of breaking into the committee’s computers. It is an extremely serious charge: a breach of the constitution, the executive branch tampering with the elected branch. She described it as “a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence community”. [..]
It is about time Ms Feinstein used her powers as the democratically elected head of the intelligence committee to question the NSA with the same vigour – or even a small part of it – that she is displaying towards the CIA. That would, indeed, be a defining moment for the oversight of the US intelligence community: all of it.
Paul Krugman: Fear of Wages
Four years ago, some of us watched with a mixture of incredulity and horror as elite discussion of economic policy went completely off the rails. Over the course of just a few months, influential people all over the Western world convinced themselves and each other that budget deficits were an existential threat, trumping any and all concern about mass unemployment. The result was a turn to fiscal austerity that deepened and prolonged the economic crisis, inflicting immense suffering.
And now it’s happening again. Suddenly, it seems as if all the serious people are telling each other that despite high unemployment there’s hardly any “slack” in labor markets – as evidenced by a supposed surge in wages – and that the Federal Reserve needs to start raising interest rates very soon to head off the danger of inflation.
Like all DC infighting, this will blow over, But we’ve already lost sight of the lives that have been ruined by interrogation
“What keeps me up at night, candidly, is another attack against the United States,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said last month in what was, then, her routine defense of the mass global surveillance being conducted by the National Security Agency and other US intelligence agencies.
All that has changed now that she believes that the staff of the committee she chairs – the powerful, secretive Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – was spied on and lied to by the CIA. [..]
This week’s public spat between CIA-loyalist Feinstein and that agency might briefly upset the status quo, but they will make up. Sadly, it obscures a graver problem: the untold story of the United States’ secret policy of torture and rendition (the latter is White House lingo for “kidnapping”).
Ana Marie Cox: Paul Ryan’s ‘inner city’ comment might mean he’s racist, but he sure is classist
Does he think black people are lazy? He definitely thinks poor people are. And laws reinforce lawmakers with logic like that.
Poor Paul Ryan, in trouble again for saying something stupid about poverty. If only Paul Ryan knew more actual poor people.
Yesterday, in an interview on Bill Bennett’s radio show, Ryan unselfconsciously asserted the insight that conservatives seem to believe is theirs alone: work offers people dignity. Ryan, with an equal lack of thoughtfulness, went onto diagnose “generations of men” in the “inner cities” as “not even thinking about working or learning the value and culture of work”.
It’s this last bit that’s gotten Ryan in the most trouble, stirring up accusations of intentional (if subtle) racism. The logic is transitive and not direct: by “inner cities” Ryan meant black; by describing black men as not “learning” the “value and culture of work” – and since Charles Murray has called poor people “lazy” – Ryan was saying black men were lazy. So: “inner cities” = black people; “inner cities” = not valuing work; not valuing work = “lazy”; therefore what Paul Ryan really meant is “black people = lazy”.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: The White House Budget: A View From the Left
Republican House Speaker John Boehner calls President Obama’s new budget “irresponsible.” A New York Times headline calls it a “populist wish list.” But it’s neither of those things. The White House’s fiscal proposal is a cautious foray out of the president’s reflexive “compromise” mode.
Unfortunately, it also repeats and reinforces the deficit-reduction rhetoric which has misdirected the political debate for the last four years. It is limited in its scope and overly cautious in its sweep.
The nation is still in an economic crisis – a crisis of jobs, social mobility, wages and growth. We need to start focusing more on the lives that are being devastated by this crisis, and less on the artificial crisis of “debt reduction.” President Obama’s budget does too little, both rhetorically and economically, to address this crisis. At the same time, it contains changes that demonstrate populism’s growing power and influence, and it’s good to see that the President finally recognizes that the GOP will reject anything he proposes – even their own ideas.
How should the independent left respond? Unaligned populists and progressives must not lose sight of the need for a more transformative economic vision. The Democratic Party, and especially President Obama’s wing of it, must not define the leftmost boundary of political debate. If we are to see a “dream budget,” we need to dream bigger than this.
Jeff Bryant: Mayor De Blasio Has It Right On Charter Schools
It was Monday morning, and the folks at Morning Joe were already steamed. Joe Scarborough had his Very Serious scowl face on while Mika Brzezinski’s eyes were flashing with poised rage.
Their target: newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio who had arrived for the ritual grilling now so popular on broadcast television. And the topic: first, a softball lob about expanding pre-k education (“Who would be against that?”) with some polite back-and-forth about “how are we going to pay for it.”
But the real matter at hand was the subject of charter schools (starting around the 9:00 minute mark in a 28-minute segment). After a brief video clip of Governor Andrew Cuomo speaking at a rally of charter school fans in Albany, Brzezinski started the accusations toward de Blasio, “Are you against charter schools?” Doesn’t your position seem “personal?” And from Scarborough, “Doesn’t it look like your targeting Eva Moskowitz … What don’t you like about Eva Moskowitz?” [..]
Regarding new charter school applications, “of 17 charter schools that applied, 14 were approved,” and the charter chain operated by Moskowitz, Success Academy, won five out of the eight new schools it wanted.
Does that sound anti-charter to you?
This is what the debate about education policy – and charter schools in particular – so often comes to: So much sturm and drang about a favored trinket from the “education reform” tool box while matters of way more importance get neglected or even abused.
What could be more important than charter schools?
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