“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: Lethal Liquid Nicotine
As little as a teaspoon of liquid nicotine – the key ingredient in electronic cigarettes – can kill a small child and less than a tablespoon, at high concentrations, can kill an adult. Yet some vendors are offering to sell the lethal product over the Internet by the gallon or barrel, with little control over how it is handled, as reported by Matt Richtel in The Times on Monday.
The Obama administration remains asleep at the switch while makers of electronic cigarettes and liquid nicotine, which is extracted from tobacco, are expanding rapidly with no meaningful regulatory oversight. [..]
It’s time that the Obama administration allowed the F.D.A. to propose rules and begin taking public comment. The F.D.A. should limit the amount of liquid nicotine in any container sold to consumers, stop sales on the Internet, require childproof packaging and ban labels and flavorings that appeal to children. It will be crucial to prohibit the sale of liquid nicotine in very high concentrations; 10 percent and 7.2 percent solutions are widely available on the Internet and are lethal even in small quantities.
With evidence of this public health hazard mounting, the administration needs to get moving before more people are harmed.
Dean Baker: The Texas-California Job Growth Derby
In recent months conservatives have been boasting about the strong job growth of red state Texas compared to the much weaker job growth of blue state California. They use this comparison to promote their line that low taxes and pro-business regulations are the key to low unemployment and prosperity. It’s worth taking a closer look.
First, the story is not simply one of Texas growth being driven by oil and gas, although its abundance of energy is clearly a factor. Using the business cycle peak in December of 1981 as a start point, employment has grown by 77.9 percent in Texas compared to just 59.0 percent in California.
The 1981 start point is a good base of comparison because it was also a period when high energy prices were helping to drive the Texas economy. This means that we are picking up the growth between two energy booms. If instead we looked at the growth between the 1981 business cycle peak the 2000 business cycle peak, a period of low energy prices, California narrowly wins the job growth prize, 48.6 percent to 47.1 percent.
In this sense Texas is a bit like an OPEC country, clearly energy prices are an extremely important factor to its economy. But energy prices are not the whole story, and neither are low taxes and pro-business regulations.
Here on our whimsical island off the coast of the Eastern Seaboard, we have a company called Manhattan Mini Storage that is as famous for the semi-snarky wit of its billboards and subway posters as it is for the spaces it rents to we New Yorkers who live in apartments so small the mice are stoop-shouldered. [..]
But their current ad really catches the eye:
“The French aristocracy never saw it coming either.”
“It,” of course, is a revolt of the 99 percent, the thought of which seems to have elements of the one percent so freaked out they can barely choke down their Salon Blanc de Blanc. But apparently, whenever the American elite contemplate the possibility of open rebellion against income inequality it’s not peasants storming the Bastille at the start of the French Revolution that they see — it’s Nazis jackbooting into mansions and searching the premises for yacht owners.
Trevor Timm: The House’s NSA bill could allow more spying than ever. You call this reform?
Congress’ serial fabricator has the audacity to call his new law the ‘End Bulk Collection Act’. Obama’s proposal isn’t much better
The White House and the House Intelligence Committee leaked dueling proposals last night that are supposedly aimed at ending the mass collection of all Americans’ phone records. But the devil is in the details, and when it comes to the National Security Agency’s unique ability to twist and distort the English language, the devil tends to wrap his horns around every word. [..]
Rep James Sensenbrenner’s bill, the USA Freedom Act, would make a much stronger and more comprehensive bill than either new proposal – at least for those interested in real NSA reform. Sensenbrenner, who originally wrote the Patriot Act provision that the NSA re-interpreted in secret, called the House Intelligence proposal “a convoluted bill that accepts the administration’s deliberate misinterpretations of the law”. Although, even his bill could be strengthened to ensure bulk collection of Americans’ records is no longer an option for the NSA, or any other government agency.
In the end, there’s a simple way to stop all forms of bulk collection and mass surveillance: write a law expressly prohibiting it.
David Byrne: The NSA is burning down the web, but what if we rebuilt a spy-proof internet?
To realize what we’ve given away, imagine going totally offline. Better yet, believe in what a truly secure online life might look like
What will life be like after the internet? Thanks to the mass surveillance undertaken by the National Security Agency and the general creepiness of companies like Google and Facebook, I’ve found myself considering this question. I mean, nothing lasts forever, right?
There’s a broad tech backlash going on right now; I wonder just how deep the disillusionment runs. I get the feeling that there are folks out there who would relish putting the internet behind us sooner rather than later. Imagine that: even the internet could be a thing of the past one day. What would that be like? No Facebook. No Google. No government nerds looking through your webcam.
Michael Wolff: Joe Scarborough + 2016 – any chance = the new math of running for president
The Morning Joe host has a book to sell, so he’s got speculation to feed. So does Rand Paul – and everyone else who won’t win
There’s a new calculus about running for president.
Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC host of Morning Joe, may be making it. He isn’t someone who under any circumstance might actually ever be elected president, but he is nevertheless being touted as a candidate, plausible or otherwise. Most recently, he denied this. But that followed a set of speeches and public appearances in New Hampshire, which encouraged speculation that he is.
The new calculus is not about electability – or even, as Rand Paul, another implausible but likely contender, might maintain, about ideological clarity and purpose. It’s about your own personal marketing and branding advantage. It’s a publicity stunt.
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