“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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Glenn Greenwald: After Feigning Love for Egyptian Democracy, US Back To Openly Supporting Tyranny
It is, of course, very difficult to choose the single most extreme episode of misleading American media propaganda, but if forced to do so, coverage of the February, 2011 Tahrir Square demonstrations in Egypt would be an excellent candidate. For weeks, U.S. media outlets openly positioned themselves on the side of the demonstrators, depicting the upheaval as a Manichean battle between the evil despot Hosni Mubarak’s “three decades of iron rule” and the hordes of ordinary, oppressed Egyptians inspirationally yearning for American-style freedom and democracy.
Almost completely missing from this feel-good morality play was the terribly unpleasant fact that Mubarak was one of the U.S. Government’s longest and closest allies and that his “three decades of iron rule” – featuring murder, torture and indefinite detention for dissidents – were enabled in multiple ways by American support. [..]
During the gushing coverage of the Tahrir protests, Americans were told almost none of this (just as most Arab Spring coverage generally omitted long-standing U.S. support for most of the targeted tyrants in the region). Instead, they were led to believe that the U.S. political class was squarely on the side of democracy and freedom in Egypt, heralding Obama’s statement that Egyptians have made clear that “nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.”
That pro-democracy script is long forgotten, as though it never existed. The U.S. political and media class are right back to openly supporting military autocracy in Egypt as enthusiastically as they supported the Mubarak regime.
Naomi Klein: Yep, the Strawmen Do Keep Coming
Recently, people have been telling me that capitalists are investing lots of money in renewable energy, or that some companies have decided to reduce their environmental impact out of self-interest.
Thanks for the info, guys.
But again, I thought it might be useful to point these people to my book – y’know, since they clearly haven’t read it yet. [..]
It’s one thing to say that forward-thinking businesses can make a positive contribution to solving the climate crisis (surely they can). But it’s quite another thing to say that voluntary initiatives can get us to zero carbon in a couple decades.
If critics of income inequality are wondering why the growing gap between rich and poor hasn’t been a more potent political issue in the upcoming elections, a new study offers some answers: Americans grossly underestimate this inequality. That’s one of the key findings of a survey showing the gap between CEO and average worker pay in America is more than 10 times larger than the typical American perceives.
In the report, Harvard University and Chulalongkorn University researchers analyzed survey data from 40 countries about perceptions of pay gaps between rich and poor. In every country, respondents underestimated the size of the gap between CEO and average worker pay. In the United States, for example, the researchers found the median American respondent estimated that the ratio of CEO to worker income is about 30-to-1. In reality, the gap is more than 350-to-1. [..]
In an interview with the Harvard Business Review, one of the researchers who conducted the study said Americans’ inaccurate beliefs about the pay gap may be the reason economic inequality hasn’t become more of a political issue.
Joe Conason: Those Budget-Busting, Job-Killing GOP Governors
Even as Republicans boast of their chances to take over the United States Senate come November, their party’s governors across the country are facing dimmer prospects. From Georgia to Alaska, right-wing ideological rule imposed by GOP chief executives has left voters disappointed, disillusioned and angry.
The problem isn’t that these governors failed to implement their promised panaceas of tax cutting, union busting and budget slashing, all in the name of economic recovery; some did all three. The problem is that those policies have failed to deliver the improving jobs and incomes that were supposed to flow from “conservative” governance. In fact, too often the result wasn’t at all truly conservative, at least in the traditional sense-as excessive and imbalanced tax cuts, skewed to benefit the wealthy, led to ruined budgets and damaged credit ratings.
Eugene Robinson: Secure the People’s House
Put a taller fence around the White House complex and lock the doors.
Then get rid of the dry rot in the Secret Service bureaucracy, restore staffing to reasonable levels, adopt the latest technology and develop new protocols to replace the ones that didn’t work. But don’t use the recent shocking lapses in presidential security as an excuse to further separate Americans from the symbols of their government.
Actually, “shocking” is an understatement. I still can’t get my mind around the fact a man could climb over the White House fence, run across the North Lawn, barge through the main entrance and make it all the way down the hallway to the ceremonial East Room before being stopped. Minutes earlier, fortunately, President Obama and his family had departed the premises by helicopter.
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