“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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Paul Krugman: A Game of Chicken
On Wednesday, the European Central Bank announced that it would no longer accept Greek government debt as collateral for loans. This move, it turns out, was more symbolic than substantive. Still, the moment of truth is clearly approaching.
And it’s a moment of truth not just for Greece, but for the whole of Europe – and, in particular, for the central bank, which may soon have to decide whom it really works for.
Basically, the current situation may be summarized with the following dialogue:
Germany to Greece: Nice banking system you got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.
Greece to Germany: Oh, yeah? Well, we’d hate to see your nice, shiny European Union get all banged up.
Or if you want the stuffier version, Germany is demanding that Greece keep trying to pay its debts in full by imposing incredibly harsh austerity. The implied threat if Greece refuses is that the central bank will cut off the support it gives to Greek banks, which is what Wednesday’s move sounded like but wasn’t. And that would wreak havoc with Greece’s already terrible economy.
New York Times Editorial: Courage and Good Sense at the F.C.C.
The Federal Communications Commission will soon put in place regulations designed to prevent cable and phone companies from blocking or slowing down information on the Internet. The companies and their congressional allies are using scare tactics to stop this from happening. [..]
The telecommunications industry and Republicans like Senator John Thune of South Dakota are accusing Mr. Wheeler and President Obama, who called for strong rules in November, of imposing “public utility” regulations on the Internet. This, they say, will stifle the incentive to invest in high-speed networks. Those arguments are preposterous. The commission is not trying to regulate the price of broadband service. Nor is it forcing cable and phone companies to lease access to their networks to competitors, which it could do under a 1996 telecommunications law.
Rep. Paul Ryan values his reputation as a serious policy analyst and a genial soul. But he’s not above name-calling, and he insists that President Obama’s budget is the product of “envy economics.”
Ryan’s label invites a comparable description of his own approach, which would slash taxes on the rich while cutting programs for the poor and many middle-income Americans. If Ryan wants to play the branding game, is it unfair to ask him why “greed economics” isn’t an appropriate tag for his own approach?
Ryan’s opening rhetorical bid is unfortunate because there are signs that at least some conservatives (including, sometimes, Ryan himself) seem open to policies that would redistribute income to Americans who have too little of it.
Jared Bernstein: The Policy Goal Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken
Back in my White House daze, while helping out with an economics speech to be given by a top senior official, I suggested a sentence that had the word “distribution” in it in the context of income or tax policy or something. Not even “redistribution.” Needless to say, editors went ballistic–they didn’t just cross it out, but that warned me to go through and make sure no such socialistic language was anywhere to seen.
I totally saw and see their point, by the way. The word’s a dog whistle that releases the hounds, if not the Foxes. And yet, one of my rules of thumb in this work is that when policy does a lot of something and that something cannot be spoken of, we’re courting dysfunction and distortion.
Tom Steyer: A Bad Deal: TransCanada Can’t Change the Facts About Keystone XL
Someone at TransCanada must be getting nervous.
As approval of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline appears to be resting on extremely thin ice, TransCanada on Wednesday announced they would be entering the oil-by-rail business to help further their tar sands investments.
What about the pipeline? Well, in a transparent attempt to freshen up the company’s tired talking points, TransCanada’s CEO is using this announcement to continue to push flawed arguments on why America should forsake our national interest and allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built. Give us the pipeline, TransCanada argues, or we’ll start using trains — but we’re taking the tar sands out of the ground no matter what.
I beg to differ.
Andrew Reinbach: The Honor of Senator Joni Ernst
When most people hear “combat veteran,” they think firefights with the enemy. But the military defines combat veteran differently — as soldiers who served in a combat area.
Which brings us to Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), one of the GOP’s most recent stars. It was Sen. Ernst who was selected to give the Republican response to President Obama’s recent State of the Union message this year.
Senator Ernst calls herself a combat veteran at every turn — on her Senate web page, in campaign debates, and in her stump speeches. She can say this because she served in a combat zone. [..]
Real combat veterans I spoke to don’t think much of how the Senator talks up her combat duty. Larry Hanft, for instance, who earned the Combat Infantryman’s Badge fighting in Vietnam, says, “By her definition, everybody who stepped off the plan in Kuwait is a combat veteran. Joni Ernst is using her military experience to gain a political edge and pull the wool over the eyes of the American people. She’s a fraud…” Mr. Hanft is one of Sen. Ernst’s constituents.
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