“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: Democrats Take on Wall Street With Financial Transactions Tax
There has long been interest in financial transactions taxes among progressive Democrats. The list of people who have proposed financial transactions taxes over the years includes Representatives Peter DeFazio and Keith Ellison, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders.
But the proposal last week came from Representative Chris Van Hollen, who is part of the party’s leadership. And Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi indicated that she also supports the proposal. This means that financial transactions taxes are now part of the national debate on tax and financial policy. [..]
The Democrats deserve a lot of credit for adopting this proposal. The financial industry is enormously powerful and will do everything it can to bury Van Hollen’s plan before it gains any traction. Look for a slew of economic studies showing that a tax of 0.1 percent on stock trades will be the end of the economy as we know it. The reality is that it just means the end of speculative finance as they know it, and this is a very good thing.
Trevor Timm: Obama and Cameron’s ‘solutions’ for cybersecurity will make the internet worse
Drafting policies to imprison people who share an HBO GO password? Eliminating end-to-end data encryption? They can’t be serious
The current state of the US and UK governments’ ass-backwards approach to cybersecurity was on full display this week – culminating with British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Obama meeting to discuss the issue at the White House on Friday. When it comes to cybersecurity, it seems the UK and US want to embrace every crazy idea except what we know actually works. [..]
But just because Cameron’s been proven to be technically illiterate and may be attempting to publicly back away from his most radical proposal, that doesn’t mean that he won’t later push forward. FBI director Jim Comey proposed similar legislation to Cameron’s just a few months ago, and Cameron used eerily similar talking points in Washington on Friday as Comey did in late 2014. Plus, the rest of Cameron’s plan is downright scary for Internet privacy even without a formal encryption ban.
And then there’s the White House’s so-called solution to the cybersecurity problem, which they unveiled earlier this week. President Obama introduced it saying we had to do something about incidents like the headline-grabbing Sony hack, or the juvenile hijacking of US Central Command’s twitter account – but what he didn’t say was that those proposals wouldn’t have stopped those attacks at all.
The president should use the political theatre of this address to focus American’s attention squarely on the loss of human life when police kill black civilians
Tuesday at President Obama’s penultimate State of the Union address, when Obama points for effect at someone sitting with the First Lady as her guest, every single guest around her should be a family member of someone killed by a police officer. [..]
This of course will never happen, but it’s what I want.
President Obama should use the political theatre of his “Skutniks” – the humans used to give a face to presidential pet problems since Ronald Reagan invited Lenny Skutnik to the State of the Union in 1982 – to focus American’s attention squarely on the loss of human life when cops kill black civilians. If President Obama wants us to believe that he thinks black life matters, it’s not enough for him to form a task force on 21 century policing: task forces and commissions are where serious reforms go to be forgotten.
Robert Reich: The New Compassionate Conservatism and Trickle-Down Economics
Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are zeroing in on inequality as America’s fundamental economic problem.
Bush’s new Political Action Committee, called “The Right to Rise,” declares “the income gap is real” but that “only conservative principles can solve it.”
Mitt Romney likewise promised last week that if he runs for president he’ll change the strategy that led to his 2012 loss to President Obama (remember the “makers” versus the “takers?”) and focus instead on income inequality, poverty, and “opportunity for all people.”
The Republican establishment’s leading presidential hopefuls know the current upbeat economy isn’t trickling down to most Americans.
But they’ve got a whopping credibility problem, starting with trickle-down economics.
Nick Turse: The Golden Age of Black Ops
Special Ops Missions Already in 105 Countries in 2015
In the dead of night, they swept in aboard V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Landing in a remote region of one of the most volatile countries on the planet, they raided a village and soon found themselves in a life-or-death firefight. It was the second time in two weeks that elite U.S. Navy SEALs had attempted to rescue American photojournalist Luke Somers. And it was the second time they failed. [..]
Despite its massive scale and scope, this secret global war across much of the planet is unknown to most Americans. Unlike the December debacle in Yemen, the vast majority of special ops missions remain completely in the shadows, hidden from external oversight or press scrutiny. In fact, aside from modest amounts of information disclosed through highly-selective coverage by military media, official White House leaks, SEALs with something to sell, and a few cherry-picked journalists reporting on cherry-picked opportunities, much of what America’s special operators do is never subjected to meaningful examination, which only increases the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.
Ronald Weitzer: Diversity among police officers is key, but it won’t solve the problems with policing
Shared training and on-the-job socialization results in many similarities among officers regardless of race – including in how they treat non-white citizens
In Ferguson, Missouri, 50 of the 53 police officers are white in a city that is two-thirds African American. In Connecticut’s state capital, Hartford, 66% of the police department is white but only 16% of the residents are. And these are just two examples: despite progress over the past 50 years, many police departments remain predominantly white in cities and towns where the majority of the population is nonwhite. [..]
Why does this matter? Do police officers of different racial and ethnic backgrounds act differently while on the job? Do they have different kinds of relationships with minority communities? Aren’t all officers trained to do their jobs similarly and to treat all civilians the same regardless of race?
Research shows that, in general in the US, there is not a strong correlation, let alone a causal relationship, between an officer’s race and how officers treat members of the public when they respond to calls from civilians or stop and question them on the streets Statistics are, of course, not predictive of individual behavior, and studies of specific departments or communities vary. A 2004 study in Indianapolis (Indiana) and St. Petersburg (Florida) by Ivan Sun and Brian Payne, for example, found that black officers were more likely than white officers working in black neighborhoods to provide information, referrals to other agencies, and to treat residents respectfully, although the black officers were also more likely to use physical force against citizens in conflict situations. But, again, most studies find similarities overall in police behavior irrespective of officers’ racial background.
On this day in 1801, 
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