“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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John Nichols: [Doubling the Minimum Wage Is on the Agenda in Seattle-and Nationally]
The dramatic progress of the movement to make the minimum wage a living wage was highlighted on May Day when Seattle Mayor Ed Murray unveiled a plan to double the base pay for workers over the coming decade.
A year ago, President Obama and others saw raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25-an-hour to $9-an-hour as the great leap forward.
This week, the newly elected mayor of one of America’s largest and most prosperous cities proposed a plan that would, in a series of steps over the coming decade, take the base wage as high as $18 an hour. Something big is happening; the activist coalition Working Washington hailed the announcement of the mayor’s plan as “an incredible accomplishment.” Recalling “strikes, marches, boycotts and other mobilizations” by fast-food workers in Seattle that raised the call for a $15-an-hour basic wage, the labor-backed group noted that, “Less than a year later, we are on the verge of achieving a $15 minimum wage that ensures every worker in Seattle can support themselves, afford the basics, and contribute to the economy.”
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: How to Keep the Internet Open and Free
Don’t let net neutrality become another broken promise
Barack Obama told us there would be no compromise on Net neutrality. We heard him say it back in 2007, when he first was running for president. [..]
He said it many more times. And defenders of Net neutrality believed him, that he would preserve Internet access for all, without selling out to providers like Verizon and Comcast who want to charge higher fees for speedier access – hustling more cash from those who can afford to buy a place at the front of the line. On this issue so important to democracy, they believed he would keep his word, would see to it that when private interests set upon the Internet like sharks to blood in the water, its fate would be in the hands of honest brokers who would listen politely to the pleas of the greedy, and then show them the door.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be Washington’s infamous revolving door. Last May, President Obama named Tom Wheeler to be FCC chairman. He had other choices, men or women whose loyalty was to the public, not to rich and powerful corporations. But Tom Wheeler had been one of Obama’s top bundlers of campaign cash – both in 2008 and again in 2012, when he raised at least half a million dollars for the president’s re-election. Like his proposed new rules for the Web, that put him at the front of the line.
The Labor Department released two job surveys Friday morning, and one of them has unambiguously good news: the monthly survey of businesses said the economy added 288,000 jobs in April, beating expectations by a considerable margin and representing one of the highest monthly totals since the 2008 crash. Steve Benen has the chart: [..]
And disturbing fundamentals still abound. The employment rate’s substantial drop from 6.7 percent in March to 6.3 percent in April was due entirely to people leaving the work force, according to the household survey. The overall labor force participation rate fell to its lowest point of the recovery.
While quite a bit of these “missing workers” are baby boomers who retired, about half are of prime working age. In other words, these are people who simply stopped looking for work.
Zoë Carpenter: More Local Law Enforcement Officials Are Refusing to Comply With Obama’s Deportation Policies
At least ten counties in Colorado announced this week that they will stop complying with requests from immigration officials to detain people solely for the purpose of investigating their immigration status.
The announcements follow similar moves made in late April by more than two-dozen counties in Oregon and Washington State, as well as the cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore. The trend illustrates the fraying relationship between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local law enforcement in several states, after recent court rulings challenged the legal foundations of their cooperation. The break presents yet another challenge to the Obama administration, whose immigration enforcement mechanisms lean heavily on the partnership between federal and local agents.
Leslie Savan: Why Is the Right Obsessed With Castration?
Right-wing pols and militia men seen to be thinking about castration an awful lot lately. In speeches and in campaign ads, they’re threatening to cut off their enemies’ balls, and it’s getting weird.
We can only speculate over why some on the right have castration on their minds. Conservative white males, now a minority in a country led by a black president, are losing their demographic cojones. Maybe they’re threatening their foes with what they fear most-or maybe talking like a mohel allows them to sound violent and still be considered vaguely humorous.
Over at Cliven Bundy’s ranch, the folks fighting federal tyranny (that is, refusing to pay for grazing rights on federal land) are still gathering and making speeches.
Dave Zirin: Whitewash: How The NY Times Just Rewrote The History Of Sports
Timothy Egan has an op-ed in the New York Times calling sports “the most progressive force in America.” He points to the ways that Jackie Robinson integrated baseball a decade before the Civil Rights Movement and is honored today as “players throughout the country wear his number, prompting millions of kids to ask their parents what that is all about.” Egan also praises Muhammad Ali, as someone “with a mouth as quick as his jab, [who] forced a conversation about pride and prejudice that went far beyond the boxing ring”. He lauds present-day figures like Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, for calling out racist code words in the media and delivers his most effusive praise to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, writing, “In issuing the sports equivalent of the death penalty – lifetime ban, probable forced sale of his franchise – to the basketball owner Donald Sterling, the N.B.A. showed every other institution that courage is more commendable than dithering.”
Egan could certainly have also mentioned women like Billie Jean King, Donna de Varona, and “Racey” Lacey O’Neil and their efforts to advance women’s rights and Title IX, as well as everyone from Tom Waddell to Martina Navratilova to Kye Allums to Jason Collins for using sports as a way to break open the closet and provide visibility to the very existence of LGBT athletes.
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