“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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Dean Baker: Looking back on the economic collapse
Seven years later, the damage continues to pile up – and it is impressive
The recession officially began seven years ago this month, which makes it a good time to look back and assess the damage. The carnage is impressive.
To start with the top-line numbers, we have already lost almost $10.5 trillion in output because of the downturn. This is the value of the goods and services that could have been produced over the last seven years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), but were not because of all the people thrown out of work by the recession. [..]
The harm from the downturn is compounded by the continuing failure of economic policy. Rather than taking the steps needed to restore full employment (e.g., stimulus spending, a lower-valued dollar and increased use of work sharing) many in policy circles continue to focus on cutting spending to reduce budget deficits, which will throw even more people out of work. There are even some Scrooges who continue to push for cutting Social Security and Medicare, ignoring the millions who are still out of work and the many older workers are already looking at a bleak retirement.
Because of the structure of the country’s politics – in which politicians seek donations from rich people, who favor candidates who talk about cutting Social Security rather than creating jobs, because of the tax implications – we are likely to hear more of the same. But before taking any of the deficit whining from these people too seriously, remember to ask them when they stopped being wrong about the economy.
David Cay Johnston: Cheap oil is a costly holiday present
Falling prices at the pump belie a larger, later bill
This holiday season has brought what seems like a glorious present: cheap gasoline. Fuel at $2 a gallon or so frees up cash for families to spend on gifts or paying down debts.
But by the time this gift is fully unwrapped, it will likely leave people covered with greasy economic residue that will be hard to remove. With oil falling from more than $90 a barrel to under $60, the effects go far beyond how much a tank of gas costs. [..]
Most significant, cheap oil is disrupting the transition to renewable energy, which promises to slow global climate change and save many millions of lives.
Our accounting rules ignore much of the damage from relying on oil and natural gas. Corporate profit and loss statements do not record how the slowly heating atmosphere affects crops, sea levels and weather patterns or how diesel fuel particles spewing out of tailpipes affects people’s asthma.
But they should: Cheap oil comes at a price that shows up not on your credit card statement but on the universal ledger where all costs must be recorded and paid.
When a peaceful protest tips into violence, the state’s case for the legitimacy of its use of suppressive force is validated, instantly. This is counterproductive, obviously, when the reason for protesting in the first place is to end what we see as wrongful use of state force. This is also a large part of why I am a pacifist: for pragmatic reasons. I subscribe to the belief that non-violent means are more effective than violent ones. I cannot assure you that I would subscribe to this same belief if I was black. I do not know that I would.
I have taken part in – and plan to continue to take part in, and encourage others to take part in – the current protests against racist policing in America, but I know and encourage others to remember this: Black people are on the front lines. It is first and foremost a black movement. Black people are risking far more by being out there face-to-face with cops than white people. (Recent history proves this all too convincingly.) White people’s role in protest should be a secondary one – a strictly supportive role, not agitating or bottle-throwing so much as chanting along, marching in time, bearing witness, simply being there to be counted.
Robert Reich: The Republican’s Magical Mystery Tour (Coming Soon)
According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, current director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, because he won’t use “dynamic scoring” for his economic projections.
Dynamic scoring is the magical-mystery math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side “trickle-down” economics.
It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.
Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.
Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it “reality-based scoring,” but it’s actually magical scoring – which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.
Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed.
Mike Gravel: The law will protect any member of Congress who releases the full torture report. Someone needs to step up
I took a risk so that Americans knew what our government did in Vietnam. Today’s elected representatives should do the same for Iraq and Afghanistan
It should be easy to get the entire report on the record: any information held by the Congress is technically already in the record, so no one need read it in its entirety on the floor of either congressional chamber or enter it in the committee or subcommittee record, the way I had to with the Pentagon Papers. A member of Congress may hand out the information to the press or the public, so long as the distribution occurs on property associated with the Senate or House of Representatives: the constitution does not qualify how “Speech and Debate ” is exercised, only that it occur “in either House”.
But why is it necessary? The torture report released to the public was incomplete – and only a full release of the Torture Report and the million or more documents in CIA possession but which the Intelligence Committee still has access can lay bare the full horrors of what the government perpetrated in our names.
Bruce Fischer: In Black Lives Matter Protest, Corporate Rights Trump Free Speech
Minnesotans protesting police violence and institutional racism could face “staggering” fees and criminal charges for a protest at Mall of America, with the City of Bloomington announcing plans to force organizers to pay for the mall’s lost revenue during the exercise of their free speech rights, highlighting important questions about free speech in an era of privatized public spaces. [..]
Can the Mall of America prohibit the exercise of free speech and assembly on its premises? And can it pick-and-choose who it allows to assemble? Last year, for example, the Mall allowed around 7,000 people to gather in the same rotunda to honor a young white man who died of cancer.
The First Amendment protects against government suppression of speech, but not private responses to the exercise of free speech and expression. And the Mall of America is considered private property, despite receiving hundreds of millions in public subsidies since it was built, including an additional $250 million approved last year.
For decades, courts have struggled with how to protect free speech in public forums that have grown increasingly privatized.
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