“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: The Humane Death Penalty Charade
When the United States at last abandons the abhorrent practice of capital punishment, the early years of the 21st century will stand out as a peculiar period during which otherwise reasonable people hotly debated how to kill other people while inflicting the least amount of constitutionally acceptable pain.
The Supreme Court stepped back into this maelstrom on Friday, when it agreed to hear Warner v. Gross, a lawsuit brought by four Oklahoma death-row inmates alleging that the state’s lethal-injection drug protocol puts them at risk of significant pain and suffering. [..]
It is time to dispense with the pretense of a pain-free death. The act of killing itself is irredeemably brutal and violent. If the men on death row had painlessly killed their victims, that would not make their crimes any more tolerable. When the killing is carried out by a state against its own citizens, it is beneath a people that aspire to call themselves civilized.
Joseph E. Stiglitz: Why Stupid Politics Is the Cause of Our Economic Problems
In 2014, the world economy remained stuck in the same rut that it has been in since emerging from the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite seemingly strong government action in Europe and the United States, both economies suffered deep and prolonged downturns. The gap between where they are and where they most likely would have been had the crisis not erupted is huge. In Europe, it increased over the course of the year.
Developing countries fared better, but even there the news was grim. The most successful of these economies, having based their growth on exports, continued to expand in the wake of the financial crisis, even as their export markets struggled. But their performance, too, began to diminish significantly in 2014. [..]
The near-global stagnation witnessed in 2014 is man-made. It is the result of politics and policies in several major economies — politics and policies that choked off demand. In the absence of demand, investment and jobs will fail to materialize. It is that simple.
Presidential aspirants in both parties are talking about saving the middle class. But the middle class can’t be saved unless Wall Street is tamed.
The Street’s excesses pose a continuing danger to average Americans. And its ongoing use of confidential corporate information is defrauding millions of middle-class investors.
Yet most presidential aspirants don’t want to talk about taming the Street because Wall Street is one of their largest sources of campaign money. [..]
It’s nice that presidential aspirants are talking about rebuilding America’s middle class.
But to be credible, he (or she) has to take clear aim at the Street.
That means proposing to limit the size of the biggest Wall Street banks; resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act (which used to separate investment from commercial banking); define insider trading the way most other countries do – using information any reasonable person would know is unavailable to most investors; and close the revolving door between the Street and the U.S. Treasury.
It also means not depending on the Street to finance their campaigns.
Sarah Laskow: Snow looks pretty. But climate change and the storms it triggers are dangerous
‘Global warming’ doesn’t stop when winter comes – and dramatic cold weather events are exactly what scientists predict will be the result
It isn’t news to anyone that global temperatures are rising. Last month was the warmest December the world has seen in 135 years. Last year was the warmest year on record: according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average combined temperature of land and ocean surfaces was 1.24°F about the 20th century average.
Yet, as you may have noticed or read, it’s been snowing on the east coast of the United States – a lot. And that too is the result of what we call “global warming”.
It seems to be counterintuitive. Aren’t we worried about melting ice? Yes. Isn’t snowpack diminishing high in the mountains, where it matters most? Yes. But it is also true that in some places in the world – and the northern United States is one of them – dramatic winter snowstorms are exactly what scientists expect from climate change.
Robert Kuttner: A Break in the Greek Tragedy
Europe should count itself lucky that a leftwing anti-austerity party won the Greek elections, swept into office by citizens who’ve had enough. Elsewhere in Europe, seven years of stupid, punitive, and self-defeating austerity policies have led to gains by the far right.
If a radical left party is now in power in Athens and sending tremors through Europe’s financial markets, the EU’s smug leaders and their banker allies in Frankfurt, Brussels and Berlin have only themselves to blame.
Alexis Tsipras, leader of the winning Syriza coalition, says he doesn’t want Greece to leave the Euro. He just wants Europe’s leaders to renegotiate Greece’s debt. It’s about time. [..]
This crisis could have ended years ago with far less suffering for ordinary people who had no responsibilities for the offending policies. Greece, after all, has about two percent of the EU’s total economic product — and it has about 25 percent less than it had before the crisis. (That’s how well austerity medicine worked.) Writing off Greece’s debt outright would have cost peanuts, and still would.
The EU should have given Greece serious debt relief in 2009. Now, finally, there is a government in Athens that will demand it. But that will require a very high stakes game of chicken. Tsipras has to be willing to risk a default, and the financial shocks that would set off. He has to gamble that the IMF and the European Commission would institute an emergency damage control plan.
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