“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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Trevor Timm: Don’t be fooled by clichés: Obama will shape the future of the internet
The president will have to address net neutrality, the Patriot Act and cybersecurity this year. The platitudes in the State of the Union aren’t reassuring
Perhaps more than any other, the internet was the backdrop for much of President Obama’s State of the Union on Tuesday night – from healthcare to hackers, and from infrastructure to education. By and large, however, Obama stuck to empty platitudes that no one could disagree with (“we need to … protect our children’s information” and “I intend to protect a free and open internet”) rather than offering concrete new proposals.
But don’t let the president’s standard State of the Union clichés fool you: in 2015, the Obama administration will almost certainly re-shape the law around net neutrality, cybersecurity and the NSA. In doing so, the president will carve out the rules of the internet for the coming decade, and his choices over the next few months will significantly affect hundreds of millions of Internet users, along with his lasting legacy.
David Cay Johnston: Obama launches tax ploy against GOP
State of the Union address pushes tax reforms to set stage for 2016 electoral fight
The most political law in America is the federal tax code. Far from being grounded in sound economics and the Constitutional duty to promote the general welfare, it’s shaped by influence won with campaign contributions and lobbying. We are about to see just how political tax law is thanks to a savvy move by President Barack Obama to frame the 2016 election in ways that will help Democrats keep the White House.
In his State of the Union address, the president proposed a host of tax ideas Republicans have long advocated in order to force them to choose between Main Street and Wall Street. He believes they will side with the rich, whose campaign donations are increasingly significant in elections and whose companies provide jobs for friends and family of politicians.
But the president’s strategy is not foolproof. There is a clever way for congressional Republicans to turn his proposal into a trap for the Democrats.
Five years after the Supreme Court’s disastrous 5-4 decision in Citizens United, there’s a lot to be angry about.
With election spending out of control, and super PACs empowering giant corporations and billionaires like no time since the Gilded Age, Big Money is not just influencing who’s elected to office in this country, but what elected officials do.
Consider how the new Congress has opened: A House of Representatives leadership effort to skirt normal procedure and rush through a repeal of key Dodd-Frank provisions to rein in Wall Street speculative activities. A House of Representatives vote to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. A House vote to handcuff consumer, health, safety, environmental and other regulatory agencies so that they cannot issue new rules to address corporate abuse and protect the American public. Another House vote to repeal the Dodd-Frank measure, after the initial rush effort failed to garner a needed two-thirds majority. Meanwhile, in the slower-moving Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided Keystone legislation will be the first significant matter taken up.
Joanna Moorehead: So Catholics needn’t breed like rabbits. Then let’s drop the contraception con
Whatever the pope says, the vast majority of us have already voted with our gonads and ignored the church’s nonsense
Clarity has never been a strong point at the Vatican. This is, after all, an institution that has chosen for centuries to communicate with its followers via erudite documents written in Latin, which must be first translated and then interpreted for us, the faithful in the pew.
But even by its own standards, this week’s papal pronouncements have been bewildering. We thought that, whatever else wasn’t clear, one thing we did know was that the church doesn’t approve of contraception. But during his in-flight press conference en route home from his Philippines trip, we hear Pope Francis telling us that we don’t after all have to breed “like rabbits”.
[..]The truth is that the pope – a charismatic and decent-seeming guy whose finger is a good deal closer to the people’s pulse than his predecessor’s was – is tying himself in knots trying to appear “modern” at the same time as adhering to official teaching. And it simply won’t wash. The church has been peddling a nonsense on contraception for almost 50 years. The vast majority of us church-going, “faithful” Catholics have voted with our gonads and ignored it, and at some point (soon, please!) Rome is going to have to admit it has been wrong, and that the “contraceptive culture” is not about a lack of respect for human life, it’s quite simply about a sensible realisation that most couples can raise two, three or four children better, in every way, than they can raise 10, 11 or 12.
Richard Zombeck: Obama Opens Door for GOP to Blow It
President Obama announced some radically redistributive measures during the State of the Union on Tuesday. The Robin-Hood-esque plan proposes raising the taxes and cutting tax breaks on the super-rich and easing the burden on poorer Americans. Needless to say, members of the GOP are not pleased and haven’t been since the plan was announced last Saturday night.
Republicans, as a rule, hate tax increases, especially when they have an adverse effect on the very rich and corporations – such as making them slightly less rich. They also apparently hate tax cuts, especially when it would improve the lives of working families and the poor. [..]
The GOP could see the president’s proposals as an opportunity to work with him to improve the lives of regular Americans and make a real difference in people’s lives. They would get and most likely take credit for all of it.
If the last six years are any indication of what the next two will look like, however, the more likely scenario is that this severely divided and dysfunctional party that is the GOP will spin off into separate camps, subjecting the rest of us to a clown-car demolition derby rife with inane rants about socialism, anti-capitalism, and class warfare. In the meantime, the rich will get richer, the working class will continue to struggle, the middle class will disappear, and more people will be pushed into poverty.
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