“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: Mr. Obama’s Wise Immigration Plan
President Obama’s speech Thursday night on immigration ended on a high, hopeful note. Mr. Obama, quoting Scripture’s admonition to welcome and protect the stranger, told millions who have lived and worked here for years, many of them Americans in all but name: We cannot fix your situation yet, but for now we will not expel you, because we have better hopes for you here.
A speech is not a solution, of course, and now that it is over, the hard work begins. Efforts over the last decade to repair immigration have repeatedly ended in failure, leaving the meanness of the broken status quo. [..]
The reality of the status quo is paralysis, in which nobody is ever legalized and most people are never deported. That is another form of amnesty – the amnesty of inaction – though none on the right who oppose reform would ever admit it. The White House is beginning a campaign to defend its action by stressing the economic and law enforcement benefits of bringing millions in from outside the law. The most immediate and profound benefit is the lifting of fear in immigrant communities, even though perhaps half of the undocumented population will still be left out. Many parents will be excluded, and many families will be broken. Their struggle will continue.
Alan Grayson: The Womb Lottery
I’m happy that President Obama finally has moved forward with immigration reform. But the six-year-long White House Bad Messaging Plague (WHBMP) continues unabated. We’re in danger of losing the public on this issue even before the first work permit is issued.
President Obama’s executive order removes the loaded guns pointed at the temples of five million human beings, who also happen to be undocumented U.S. immigrants. It is an act of compassion and mercy that has eluded House Speaker John Boehner for years, his utterly hypocritical nattering about the urgent need for immigration reform notwithstanding. If Boehner had ever looked up from his shot glass, he might have seen their sad eyes and felt some urge to confer simple dignity on them. [..]
Think of it this way: for whatever reason — lax enforcement of immigration laws, oppression in other countries, the need to survive, whatever — these five million people are our new sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law. polite thing to do is to welcome them. Repeat after me: “Welcome to the American Family, and thank you for contributing to the American Experience.”
Darren Wilson will probably get let off.
It’s an outcome that will appall many Americans, sparking outrage not only in Ferguson but throughout the country. And despite all of that, it’s an outcome that will not surprise any black person, including yours truly. [..]
This isn’t knee-jerk pessimism at work here. To the black community, a non-indictment for Brown would be predictable. It would be as predictable as the verdict in the trial over the shooting death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a verdict that acquitted defendant George Zimmerman, allowing him to continue doing stupid things. Or as predictable as the involuntary manslaughter verdict handed down in the shooting death of restrained, unarmed, 23-year-old Oscar Grant in Oakland. Or as predictable as the acquittal of police officers charged with killing unarmed Sean Bell in Queens, New York by firing 50 shots into his vehicle. As predictable as the acquittal of the police officers who fatally shot unarmed Amadou Diallo 19 times, killing him. As predictable as the acquittals in the infamous police beating of Rodney King. And so on, back to Emmett Till and before.
David Cay Johnston: Top incomes soared as tax rates fell
New IRS data show that just 400 households captured 6 percent of the entire nation’s income growth in 2010
For those at the very top 2010 will be remembered as a very good year. While most Americans struggled to recover from the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, top incomes soared while tax burdens for those incomes fell.
The 400 tax returns for those with the highest reported incomes showed 31 percent more income in 2010 than in 2009, when the recession officially ended at midyear. Soaring stock prices fueled the increase at the top.
On average incomes of $265.1 million the top 400 paid 18 percent in federal income taxes, down from 19.9 percent in 2009. The lowest tax on the top 400 was 16.6 percent in 2007.
Each of the top 400 paid tax at the same rate as a single worker making $80,000 in 2010. Assuming a 40-hour workweek, it took each of the top 400 about 40 minutes to earn that much.
These figures from an IRS report released Friday show how much government policy has helped those at the top amass even larger fortunes thanks to lower tax rates. It also shows how far the United States has moved away from the ancient principle of progressive taxation, born in Athens nearly 2,500 years ago and endorsed by political thinkers and economists from Aristotle and Adam Smith to Alfred Marshall and Milton Friedman
Ray McGovern: CIA’s Torturous Maneuvers on Torture
“CIA may revamp how it is organized” announced a front-page Washington Post headline leading into an article based on remarks by unnamed “U.S intelligence officials” to the Post’s Greg Miller. The anonymous officials were authorized to share some of the contents of a Sept. 24 letter from CIA Director John Brennan to CIA staff, in which Brennan says, “The time has come to take a fresh look at how we are organized as an agency.”
On Brennan’s orders, senior agency officials were put to work on what Miller reported would be “among the most ambitious [reorganizations] in CIA history.” But Miller’s sources emphasized that the activity was in its preliminary stages and that no final decisions had been made; the proposed changes might be scaled back or even discarded.
But the reorganization story on Thursday – with its suggestion of CIA “reform” – came at an opportune time to possibly distract attention from another behind-the-scenes battle that is raging over how – and indeed whether – to release the findings of a five-year Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA’s use of torture during George W. Bush’s administration and how the agency lied to Congress about the efficacy of torture techniques – and their humaneness.
Deborah Orr: Mike Nichols made films about women – sadly a rarity in Hollywood
If you count success in Oscar nominations, then Mike Nichols certainly didn’t fulfil his early promise. His 1966 debut film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, got 13 nominations and won five. His second, The Graduate, got a mere seven nominations and one win. The 20 other films he went on to make managed 22 nominations and one Oscar between them, for best song.
Nichols died this week, at 83, and the obituaries have been full of praise. But an Observer piece 10 years ago summed up, I think, the general feeling about his career as a film director: “Nichols is now regarded as a safe pair of hands in Hollywood, a mainstream, middle-brow director who is wonderful with stars.”
“Wonderful with stars.” Talk about being damned with faint praise. Nichols, actually, was wonderful at making films that offered realistic portrayals of women. Perhaps this went unnoticed because it has not, historically, been a Hollywood priority. But it was the outstanding feature of those two early films, and of many of his films since.
Quite a few of his movies have been about women or written by women. Silkwood starred Meryl Steep as a nuclear power whistleblower, and was written by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. Postcards from the Edge starred Streep again, as a drug-addicted actress, and was based on Carrie Fisher’s screenplay. Gilda Live was a film of Gilda Radner’s one-woman Broadway show. Two of his films, Primary Colors and 1996’s The Birdcage, were written by his former comedy partner of several decades earlier, Elaine May. Even the fact that the guy had a female comedy partner in the 1950s suggests that his view of women was notably progressive for its time.
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