“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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Daphne Eviatar: The Trial of Bin Laden’s Son-in-Law and Why Not to Torture a Terrorist
Sniping between lawmakers and the CIA over a report on the U.S. torture of terror suspects reached a fever pitch this week, as Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the CIA of spying on her intelligence committee as it was investigating the agency’s activities. But even as the infamous Senate torture report remains classified, a story unfolded in a U.S. federal court this week that provides a powerful example of why the Bush administration’s torture tactics were such a bad idea.
For the last two weeks, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti imam and alleged “spokesman” for al Qaeda, has been on trial in a New York courtroom. A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Abu Ghaith is allegedly the most senior leader of al Qaeda ever to face charges in the United States. When he was arrested last year, administration critics such as Senator Mitch McConnell complained Abu Ghaith was “an enemy combatant and should be held in military custody,” where he could have been “fulsomely and continuously interrogated without having to overcome the objections of his civilian lawyers.”
This week, we heard testimony that demonstrates exactly why the Obama administration was absolutely right not to do that.
Robert C. Koehler: Poster City of Abandonment
White flight, corporate flight . .
I grew up just outside Detroit and have felt an ache in my heart for this bleeding city for so many years now. It’s long been one of the country’s designated loser cities, beginning in the 1960s, when change hit it hard. The phrase at the time was “urban blight,” a social cancer with unexamined causes that, in the ensuing years, has gotten progressively worse.
A year ago this week, the city, which is predominantly African-American, lost its self-governance when the Republican governor of Michigan appointed an emergency financial manager, an overboss with powers superseding that of all elected officials – including the ability to rewrite laws, break contracts, privatize services and much more – on the premise that only an autocrat could straighten out the city’s disastrous finances. Four months later, Detroit made headlines as the largest city to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, but of course it wasn’t “the city” that did so; it was the emergency manager.
The city, in all its soul and complexity, had been reduced to a single voice: the voice of austerity and, of course, corporate interests.
The echoes of Adolph Reed’s critique of the left in Harper’s magazine continue to reverberate. At its fringes, where the heat’s generated, it’s an argument about the relationship between the progressive movement and the Democratic Party. At its center, where there have been occasional glimpses of light, the talk is about building an independent populist movement that can affect real change.
That’s where the conversation should have been all along.
My initial assessment of Reed’s essay hasn’t changed. It started an important conversation — this one — and makes some telling points, but it’s diluted by score-settling and needless divisiveness. Unfortunately those flaws are also reflected in many of the responses to it.
There’s an element of vehement agreement in all this. Reed doesn’t dismiss electoral politics, and his left critics uniformly agree on the need for a strong independent left. So what are we really arguing about? People seem to have brought years of smoldering resentment to this conversation. It’s turning into a debate, not among people, but among peoples’ shadows.
Jill Richardson: Why California’s Drought Affects Us All
With so much of the nation’s food supply concentrated in the “Shake and Bake” state, its good weather is bad news for us all.
As a Californian, I have not gotten too much sympathy from friends and family about our rotten weather this winter. Yes, I said rotten weather. It’s been incredibly pleasant- except for a few times when the temperature crept up to 90 – but we’ve hardly had any rain.
Cry me a river, you might think. Especially if you live in a part of the country where the term “polar vortex” was added to your vocabulary in the past few months. Boo-hoo. It was too sunny and perfect every day.
California’s climate problems have nothing to do with human comfort – but they have everything to do with human food. And not just for California.
Unfortunately for the rest of the country, Californians provide a huge share of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. If we can’t grow crops because we have no water, everybody misses out.
Robert Reich: The ‘Paid-What-You’re-Worth’ Myth
It’s often assumed that people are paid what they’re worth. According to this logic, minimum wage workers aren’t worth more than the $7.25 an hour they now receive. If they were worth more, they’d earn more. Any attempt to force employers to pay them more will only kill jobs.
According to this same logic, CEOs of big companies are worth their giant compensation packages, now averaging 300 times pay of the typical American worker. They must be worth it or they wouldn’t be paid this much. Any attempt to limit their pay is fruitless because their pay will only take some other form.
“Paid-what-you’re-worth” is a dangerous myth. [..]
The “paid-what-you’re-worth” argument is fundamentally misleading because it ignores power, overlooks institutions, and disregards politics. As such, it lures the unsuspecting into thinking nothing whatever should be done to change what people are paid, because nothing can be done.
Don’t buy it.
Ralph Nader: What a Destructive Wall Street Owes Young Americans
Wall Street’s big banks and their financial networks that collapsed the U.S. economy in 2008-2009 were saved with huge bailouts by the taxpayers, but these Wall Street gamblers are still paid huge money, and are again creeping toward reckless misbehavior. Their corporate crime wave strip-mined the economy for young workers, threw them on the unemployment rolls and helped make possible a low-wage economy that is draining away their ability to afford basic housing, goods and services. Meanwhile, Wall Street is declaring huge bonuses for their executive plutocrats, none of whom have been prosecuted and sent to jail for these systemic devastations of other peoples’ money, the looting of pensions and destruction of jobs.
Just what did they do? Peter Eavis of the New York Times provided a partial summary:
Money laundering, market rigging, tax dodging, selling faulty financial products, trampling homeowner rights and rampant risk-taking — these are some of the sins that big banks have committed in recent years.
Mr. Eavis then reported that “regulators are starting to ask: Is there something rotten in bank culture?”
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