“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: Antibiotic Use, and Abuse, on the Farms
The Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to get the voluntary cooperation of drug companies to curb the overuse of antibiotics in animal feed is off to a rousing good start.
The agency announced on Wednesday that 25 of the 26 manufacturers of the antibiotics of greatest concern had agreed to modify their labels to block such usage. They account for almost all sales of these drugs. [..]
The F.D.A. issued new policy guidelines in December that called for drug companies to revise their labels voluntarily to reduce overuse. This week, it announced that 25 companies agreed to remove “growth promotion” as one of the purposes for which their drugs can be used.
That effectively makes it illegal for farmers and ranchers to use the drugs to grow fatter animals faster. Although some skeptics worry that these voluntary steps can be reversed in the future, that appears unlikely.
Jared Bernstein: A Football Slamdunk
Not to mix metaphors, but as I read it, that National Labor Relations Board ruling that footballers at Northwestern are actually employees of the university and thus can form a union looks like a slamdunk.
You’ve got capital and labor. The university owns the franchise, produces football, and captures hundreds of millions in profits. But the owners play not on the gridiron. They neither block nor tackle, pass nor punt. The players do so, according to the NYT, sometimes for 50 hours a week. That’s how they earn their scholarships. That’s “earn”…as in work.
That’s labor, and importantly, labor that generates profit. No one’s saying these players/workers/students/athletes don’t take classes. But this argument by the school makes little sense to me:
In historians’ quest to find the perfect anecdote to summarize this era of unprecedented economic inequality, they confront an embarrassment of riches (pun intended).
There are the stories of billionaires like Tom Perkins, Stephen Schwarzman and Ken Langone insisting that criticism of inequality is akin to Nazism. There are more subtle antics at the local level-for instance, there is news this week that in New York (aka one of the most unequal states in America) Republican legislators are aiming to create a special sales-tax exemption for those buying private jets. And there is, of course, the tale of the billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charles Munger, telling everyone to “thank god” for massive bank bailouts, and then telling the poor to “suck it in and cope” with their own problems.
Each of these makes a good modern-day analogue to the legend of Marie Antoinette’s attitude toward the proles during the 18th century. Yet, none of these examples rise to truly iconic “let them eat cake” status in the way the recent episode involving Warren Buffett does.
I’m referring, of course, to Buffett’s headline-grabbing deal with Quicken Loans to give away $1 billion to anyone who can perfectly predict the outcome of every game in the NCAA basketball tournament.
Eugene Robinson: Tilting at Windbags
I had no idea so many Republicans were nostalgic for the Cold War. President Obama should dust off the zinger he used in a campaign debate against Mitt Romney: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”
Poor Mitt. It seems he never got over Obama’s putdown of his view that Russia is the “number-one geopolitical foe” of the United States. Since Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from neighboring Ukraine, Romney has been crowing “told you so.”
Other hawkish GOP luminaries, either out of ideology or opportunism, are loudly echoing Romney’s criticism. Speaking of hawks, Sen. John McCain of Arizona accused the president of conducting a “feckless” foreign policy. And speaking of opportunists, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said the United States has “receded from leadership” in the world and speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “openly laughing” at Obama.
Joe Conason: Bill Clinton Urges Democrats to Embrace Health Care Reform
Defending the Affordable Care Act in his memorable nominating speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton did as he often advises his party’s elected officials: Don’t run away from the argument; confront it directly instead. During his own political career, the former president has done both.
“When the president asked me to speak for him in North Carolina, I said that I would do it-but that I could only do it and be effective if he let me explain and defend the health care deal,” Clinton recalled this week, speaking not only about the 2012 election but the midterm campaign now underway.
“I thought that Democrats had a tendency to shy away from things they had done that were unpopular, (and) talk about positions they had that were popular. And that my own experience had convinced me-going back to ’94 and even more when I was governor-that that was always a terrible mistake. That you had to turn in toward all controversies and embrace them-even if you said you were wrong or a mistake was made. You couldn’t not deal with it.”
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