“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.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
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Valerie Strauss: A New Setback for Racial Justice in College Admissions
By upholding Michigan’s ban on the use of racial preferences in college and university admissions, the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday dealt a new blow to racial justice.
Technically the court ruled that Michigan’s Proposal 2, a 2006 ballot initiative that led to a state constitutional ban on race-conscious college admissions, is constitutional (a decision that overruled a lower court). The ballot initiative, challenged by a coalition of organizations supporting affirmative action barred students from lobbying schools to consider race as a factor in admissions. Of course athletes, donors and alumni are not banned from lobbying for special admissions access. That’s why Mark Rosenbaum, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued the case, said in a statement:
“This case is ultimately about whether students of color in Michigan are allowed to compete on the same playing field as all other students. Today, the Supreme Court said they are not.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Elizabeth Warren’s Needed Call for Student Loan Reform
As commencement season approaches, graduating students will soon hear words of wisdom from speakers offering experience, advice and inspiration. One thing they’re not likely to hear about is the $1.08 trillion elephant on the quad – our nation’s student debt crisis. [..]
Enter Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who intuitively understands the urgency and scale of the crisis. Indeed, Warren is not just a longtime student of bankruptcy in the United States, but someone who understands what it means for a family to be at risk of losing everything. As she writes in her new book, “A Fighting Chance,” out today, the rules are such that a sudden event – divorce, illness, unemployment – can pull the rug out from under anyone. “A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too,” she writes.
A few years ago, it would have seemed implausible that a group of Midwestern ranchers and Native Americans would gather on the National Mall in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, as they did on Tuesday. Not because the union is so unlikely, but because the pipeline’s approval seemed all but certain.
“We bring you pickles from the heartland,” said a farmer in a red baseball cap, extending a jar to a Native American elder. At his feet lay other gifts-jewelry, blankets and more homemade preserves-exchanged between members of the Cowboy and Indian Alliance, a coalition of ranchers, farmers and Native American tribes leading a weeklong protest against the Keystone pipeline.
Jessica Valente: The female ‘confidence gap’ is a sham
Women’s lack of confidence could be just a keen understanding of just how little society values them
Despite an ongoing, glaring lack of equality for women in culture and in policy, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman’s new book, The Confidence Code, argues that what’s truly holding women back is their own self-doubt. In fact, Kay and Shipman dismiss the importance of institutional barriers upfront, writing in the introduction that, while there’s truth behind concerns about sexism, the “more profound” issue is women’s “lack of self-belief”. Think Lean In meets The Secret.
Yet, in just the past year, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a woman can be fired if her boss finds her attractive, a New York court decided that unpaid interns can’t sue for sexual harassment, and the Paycheck Fairness Act was defeated by Republicans who claimed women actually prefer lower-paying jobs.
So you’ll have to excuse my guffaw when I hear what American women really need is more “confidence.” It seems to me our insecurity is well-earned!
Leslie Savan: This Is My Brain on Paper Towels
‘ve been using paper towels a lot-a lot-more often lately, and every time I do, I feel a spark of guilt. It’s wasteful, bad for the environment, I know, but I’ve been sick lately, so I need it. I figure that paper is more sanitary than the cloth towel that’s been sitting out for days. (I can understand the woman with sick kids who said on the radio, “Thank god for paper towels.”) [..]
Corporations depend on our rationalizations: it absolves them of doing anything wrong and it creates guilt-free consumers. That’s why they run all the ads that tell us, “What, you worry?” Falling back on wasteful or toxic products not only has its perverse pleasures, but it can seem “natural,” especially if those products are featured in ads with wild animals and awe-inspiring landscapes.
So of course it’s better not to go with the corporate flow. But if you sometimes do, mop up the excess with old rags.
Michelle Chen: Where Have All the Green Jobs Gone?
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is in, reminding us once again that time is running out for governments and industry to decarbonize the economy: within a generation, policymakers must tighten emissions regulations, shift to clean energy sources, promote greener manufacturing and adapt technologies to reverse climate trends and mitigate the ecological impacts. Yet, while the assessment focuses on policy solutions, it leaves open questions about the labor element of climate policy: At the end of the day, the work of transforming how we produce and consume takes human hands. Where are the workers? [..]
oday, the green has begun to wilt. Although the green technology and energy sectors are still expanding, the administration has offered little beyond the short-lived stimulus package and short-term tax breaks for renewable-energy development and corporate-friendly “public-private partnerships.”The drop in political enthusiasm for green jobs is in part the result of sustained conservative attacks coupled with continuing economic stagnation. Yet the fading of the green agenda’s populist buzz also reflects more profound social challenges in the transition to a cleaner, more sustainable economy.
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