“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: A Global Economic Malaise
Large parts of the world seem to be on the verge of a recession. In many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, economic growth has already stalled.
Yet many finance ministers and central bankers who are meeting in Washington this week are unwilling or ill prepared to respond. In Europe, for example, officials from Germany continue to insist that countries that use the euro meet restrictive fiscal rules, and they are trying to prevent the European Central Bank from buying government bonds. Officials in Japan, meanwhile, have hurt that economy by raising a sales tax too fast.
Some countries, including the United States and Britain, are growing modestly, for now. But even these economies are not enjoying the kind of robust recovery that creates millions of jobs for the unemployed. And growth in the United States and Britain could slow down, too, if a lot of their major trading partners in Europe and Asia fall into a recession.
Paul Krugman: Secret Deficit Lovers
What if they balanced the budget and nobody knew or cared?
O.K., the federal budget hasn’t actually been balanced. But the Congressional Budget Office has tallied up the totals for fiscal 2014, which ran through the end of September, and reports that the deficit plunge of the past several years continues. You still hear politicians ranting about “trillion dollar deficits,” but last year’s deficit was less than half-a-trillion dollars – or, a more meaningful number, just 2.8 percent of G.D.P. – and it’s still falling.
So where are the ticker-tape parades? For that matter, where are the front-page news reports? After all, talk about the evils of deficits and the grave fiscal danger facing America dominated Washington for years. Shouldn’t we be making a big deal of the fact that the alleged crisis is over?
Well, we aren’t, and once you understand why, you also understand what fiscal hysteria was really about.
The clergy gathered in the second-floor conference room at the First Baptist Church here were pondering whether this midterm election might be different from other midterm elections.
The five African-American pastors and bishops represented diverse theological traditions, but all were profoundly unhappy over what North Carolina’s ultra-conservative state government in Raleigh had done to reduce access to the ballot box, cut education spending, and turn back money to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
The irony, said the Rev. Dray Bland, pastor of First Baptist on Apple-the street location distinguishes it from the predominantly white First Baptist Church downtown-is that measures designed to make it harder for voters to cast ballots may actually inspire a larger number to do so.
Joe Conason: What Ebola Can Teach Us
Even if Africa’s Ebola emergency never mutates into a global catastrophe, those of us who live in the world’s most fortunate country ought to consider what this fearsome virus can teach us. The lessons are quite obvious at this point-and contain implications that are political in the most urgent sense.
The tea party mania for shrinking federal budgets and rejecting international organizations-both of which are bedrock policy among the current Republican leadership-is not only bad for our national prestige but also exceptionally dangerous to our health. At the insistence of House leaders, whose answer to every problem has been cutting government and reducing taxes, the United States has steadily starved the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
The disturbing consequence is that in both this country and the world, humanity lacks the full arsenal of weapons needed to combat Ebola and other potentially devastating outbreaks of tropical disease.
John Nichols: Chris Christie Defends The ‘Great American’ Koch Brothers
The Koch brothers like to meet in secret with their political minions. And, for the most part, the minions prefer to keep their interactions with the billionaire campaign donors on the down low.
But not Chris Christie.
The governor of New Jersey, who currently chairs that Koch-tied Republican Governors Association, and who well understands that a steady flow of dark money will be required to light up his 2016 presidential prospects, is elbowing everyone else aside in his mad rush to defend the billionaire brothers.
A Koch favorite who has appeared at secret summits organized in the past by the major donors to conservative causes and the RGA, Christie has been among their most vocal defenders in recent months. At the the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference, for instance, he hailed brothers Charles and David Koch as “great Americans who are creating great things in our country.”
Now, as the 2014 midterm elections approach, no one is championing the Kochs more aggressively than Christie-even if that means he has to grab the spotlight from candidates the embattled New Jerseyan is supposed to be assisting.
George Zornick: The Elephant in the Room With Leon Panetta
In his widely read blog of Beltway goings-on, Chris Cillizza made the following fairly obvious point about former defense Ssecretary Leon Panetta’s Obama-bashing media tour:
What’s fascinating about this gripe with Obama is how much it plays into a) the argument that Hillary Clinton made against him in the 2008 presidential primary and b) the argument Hillary Clinton will likely make when (sorry, if) she runs for president in 2016. That argument, in short: I have been there and done that. I know what it takes to move the levers of power in Washington-and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make them move.
In addition, Panetta’s criticisms mainly involve Obama’s reluctance to use military force-also a fault line between Clinton and Obama, particularly on the matter of arming the Syrian rebels.
But the Beltway press shouldn’t be afraid to explicitly ask if Panetta is serving as an agent of Clinton’s official-but-not-yet-official presidential campaign. It’s not just that his criticisms dovetail with Clinton’s and are no doubt politically convenient for her as she attempts to draw a difference with the Obama administration-there are explicit ties to the shadow Clinton campaign that should make this question fair game.
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