“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: How to Force Prosecutors to Play Fair
When prosecutors cheat and lie repeatedly to win convictions, should their office be held accountable?
When a man spends years, or decades, in prison as a result of such prosecutorial misconduct, should he be compensated?
These are not trick questions.
And yet in a bizarre 2011 ruling, five justices of the Supreme Court managed to answer no to both, essentially closing off (pdf) one of the only ways to hold prosecutors and their offices liable for wrongdoing.
In a new petition (pdf) before the court, two Louisiana men who were exonerated after 27 years behind bars are asking the justices to review their case and allow them to sue the New Orleans prosecutor’s office for money damages for violating their constitutional rights. If the justices agree to hear the petition, they could undo some of the harm they did in 2011 and help cure what one federal appellate judge has called (pdf) an “epidemic” of prosecutorial misconduct across the country
Paul Krugman: Weimar on the Aegean
Try to talk about the policies we need in a depressed world economy, and someone is sure to counter with the specter of Weimar Germany, supposedly an object lesson in the dangers of budget deficits and monetary expansion. But the history of Germany after World War I is almost always cited in a curiously selective way. We hear endlessly about the hyperinflation of 1923, when people carted around wheelbarrows full of cash, but we never hear about the much more relevant deflation of the early 1930s, as the government of Chancellor Brüning – having learned the wrong lessons – tried to defend Germany’s peg to gold with tight money and harsh austerity.
And what about what happened before the hyperinflation, when the victorious Allies tried to force Germany to pay huge reparations? That’s also a tale with a lot of modern relevance, because it has a direct bearing on the crisis now brewing over Greece.
The point is that now, more than ever, it is crucial that Europe’s leaders remember the right history. If they don’t, the European project of peace and democracy through prosperity will not survive.
I am writing this piece on the margins of a crucial negotiation with my country’s creditors – a negotiation the result of which may mark a generation, and even prove a turning point for Europe’s unfolding experiment with monetary union.
Game theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players. Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece’s new finance minister I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
If anything, my game-theory background convinced me that it would be pure folly to think of the current deliberations between Greece and our partners as a bargaining game to be won or lost via bluffs and tactical subterfuge.
Wendall Potter: It’s Clear Now the Public Option Really Was Needed to Keep Insurers Honest
When members of Congress caved to demands from the insurance industry and ditched their plan to establish a “public option” health plan, the lawmakers also ditched one of their favorite talking points, that a government-run plan was necessary to “keep insurers honest.”
Getting rid of a government-run insurance option was the industry’s top objective during the health care reform debate. Private insurers set out to persuade President Obama and Congressional leaders that they were trustworthy. Lawmakers were led to believe, for one thing, that insurers could be trusted to offer policies that would continue to give Americans’ access to the doctors they had developed relationships with and wanted to keep. And they were persuaded that insurers wouldn’t think of engaging in bait-and-switch tactics that would leave folks with less coverage than they thought they were buying.
Robert Kuttner: Can Greece Force a New Deal?
Greece and the European Union could face a showdown in their debt talks as early as this week. And if you had to place odds right now, the likelihood is that the stubbornness of Europe’s senior leaders will create a catastrophe for both Greece and the EU.
Here is the state of play. The new Greek leaders, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, spent most of the past two weeks making the case for relaxed terms. They hit a stone wall.
Under the current agreement, EU financial institutions spoon-feed loans to Greece, 80 percent of which cycle right out of Greece to pay holders of Greek bonds. Greece itself gets little benefit.
In return, Greece is supposed to continue imposing crushing austerity terms. Most onerously, the Greek government is expected to run a “primary” budget surplus (excluding interest payments) equal to 4.5 percent of GDP. Greece is also supposed to keep cutting wages.
Thanks to this medicine, the Greek economy keeps shrinking and debt as a share of Greek GDP keeps increasing. The policy is madness. But Europe’s leaders refuse to relent.
The popularity of the new Greek government has soared at home, because Greece finally has leaders willing to take a stand. But will they prevail?
Mike Weisser: Stop Arguing With Guns: The Importance of Knowing When to Back Down
According to the FBI, less than 15 percent of homicides each year occur during the commission of a serious crime; i.e., robbery, larceny, burglary or rape. On the other hand, at least 4 out of 5 homicides grow out of arguments, and these arguments involve people who know each other. And we aren’t talking about casual acquaintances — we’re talking about people who knew each other on a continuous basis and had been arguing and fighting over a period of time. The personal connection between shooter and victim in domestic disputes accounts for virtually every single killing in which the victim is a female (who are 15 percent of all murder victims each year) and accounts for 100 percent of all suicide victims who, by definition, have allowed their anger at themselves or others to get out of control.
It’s important to remember that even when we are dealing with violence as a criminal offense, more than 1 million violent crimes were reported to the police in 2013, of which only 1 percent involved homicides using a gun. And the fact that someone has a propensity to behave violently doesn’t ipso facto mean that they would ever express this anger by using a gun. But there is no other form of personal behavior that is as dangerous and costly as pulling a trigger at yourself or someone else. And I don’t think we will get very far just by trying to identify the most violent among us and then figuring out how to keep guns out of their hands. Wouldn’t it be much easier to just get rid of the guns?
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