Punting the Pundits

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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Dean Baker: Why Do Coal-mining Jobs Matter So Much More Than Jobs Lost to Trade?

When President Obama announced plans to curtail the use of coal over the next 15 years, major news outlets like National Public Radio and the New York Times rushed to do pieces on the prospective loss of jobs in coal-mining areas. There are a bit less than 80,000 workers directly employed in the coal industry. A large percentage of these jobs will be lost in the next 15 years due to these regulations.

While it is good to see the media paying attention to this job loss and its implications for families and communities, this concern is a striking departure from normal practice. This was demonstrated clearly last week when the Commerce Department reported a large jump in the trade deficit for April. The report, and the implied job loss, received almost no attention from the media.

Jonathan Turley: Edward Snowden: Whistleblower or traitor?

Whatever he may be, Snowden remains fascinating precisely because he proved to be the malfunctioning cog in the system.

It is hard to imagine that just one year ago, Edward Snowden famously walked away. He was a low-level employee of Dell contractor at a nondescript National Security Agency site. A non-entity by design. Just one of hundreds of thousands of people working in the burgeoning national security complex in the United States – the ultimate faceless cog. Now, one year later, he is a household name but the world remains divided on who Edward Snowden is. Is he a whistleblower or a traitor? It turns out that question is often answered not by how people view Snowden but how they view their government. [..]

So there you have it: hero or traitor. Take your pick. What is clear is that Snowden pulled back the curtain on new reality of living within a fishbowl of constant surveillance. People clearly don’t like it, even if they don’t like Snowden. They are left however with the same sense of frustration and isolation when it comes to their government. Snowden stepped outside of a system that many Americans now view as impenetrable and unchanging. Whatever he may be, Snowden remains fascinating precisely because he proved to be the malfunctioning cog, the one who walked away.

Ralph Nader: Minimum Wage Support Grows

During a recent talk at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson indicated his support for legislation in Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. “I will tell you we will support legislation that moves forward,” he said. Later in the talk, Mr. Thompson continued, “McDonald’s will be fine. We’ll manage through whatever the additional cost implications are.” It turns out that, contrary to the stale Republican talking points, one of the largest low-wage employers in the country does not have a problem with a higher minimum wage.

We have been vigorously advocating for a raise in the federal minimum wage for several years now. Much progress has been made in that time. Unfortunately, little of this progress has come in the halls of Congress, leaving cities and states across the country to do the work that our national leaders won’t do.

Juan Cole: Top 3 White Terrorist Attacks in America this Week

Our capitalist class may be becoming an absolute danger to ordinary Americans.  By promoting a doctrine of absolute right to gun ownership (which rather helps gun manufacturers) and at the same time encouraging people to hate the Federal government and resent paying taxes, they are creating a whole class of alienated far right shooters.

The American far Right, with its white supremacism, fascination with guns and explosives, profound hatred for the Federal government, poses the biggest terrorism threat in the country by far.  Worse, they receive support from right wing media in the U.S. because they hate taxes just the way the ultra-conservative media moguls doe.  Although their attacks are ideological, directed at civilian victims and violent, they are seldom categorized as ‘terrorists.’  Rather what they do is “mass shootings.”  In the meantime, plots hatched by Muslims in the U.S. during the past few years appear almost always to be a form of entrapment by the FBI.

John Nichols: Getting Married ‘Where We Live’: Why Each Marriage Equality Ruling Is Historic

Marriage equality is not a new premise. The barriers are falling rapidly. Since the US Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, it has, in fact, become inevitable. Following on the Supreme Court ruling of last summer, the group Freedom to Marry says twenty consecutive rulings by state and federal judges have found state marriage bans unconstitutional-and more will do so.

Yet each state’s embrace of freedom and fairness matters. That was so very obvious on Friday night in Madison, a city that has for decades embraced and celebrated LGBT rights. Indeed, among the many jurists performing marriages Friday night was Dane County Judge Shelley Gaylord, who was first elected two decades ago to a municipal judgeship as an LGBT activist and lawyer.

Wisconsin should have been the first state in the nation to embrace marriage equality.

Joe Muto: Bowe Bergdahl is Fox News’ perfect villain for the propaganda machine

As Bill O’Reilly used to tell me, the only thing that drives more viewers than a hero … is a villain. Especially if you arrange to have ‘experts’ call him that on purpose

Booking guests for cable news can be a taxing job. You’re underpaid, overworked and constantly on deadline. It’s no surprise, then, that most bookers form a symbiotic relationship with PR people, “fixers” who specialize in connecting producers with the right expert, in possession of the right point-of-view, right away. The pitfall, of course, is that when someone is desperate to go on television, it’s usually a safe bet that they have an axe to grind. Ideally, the booking producer acts as a gatekeeper, to filter out those who are pushing an agenda.

There’s no such filter at Fox News Channel, where pundits are not only allowed to push an agenda but are very much expected to do so. Guests at Fox are booked specifically to advance the latest anti-government narrative – be it Obamacare or Benghazi, the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy or now the released Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl … or on some nights, all of the above.