“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: Magical Thinking on Migrants
Libya’s decent into lawlessness since the toppling of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 has spawned a terrible enterprise: smuggling people from Africa and the Middle East across the Mediterranean to Europe. In response, at Europe’s urging, the United Nations Security Council is going to be asked to consider a draft resolution authorizing military intervention in Libya against the smugglers.
Military intervention would be a grave mistake. It could sabotage negotiations for a power-sharing deal between Libya’s warring factions, thus killing chances of a political solution to the chaos in Libya. It is, in fact, a cynical strategy, born of Europe’s panic over a tide of foreign migrants. Smugglers have lured hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Eritreans and others fleeing conflict and misery, while selling a pack of lies to sub-Saharan Africans about the wonderful opportunities that await them in Europe.
Dean Baker: The arguments for the TPP are transparently weak
President Obama and other supporters of the trade deal are showing desperation
President Barack Obama must be having difficulty rounding up the necessary votes in Congress to pass fast-track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Otherwise we would not be seeing President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff Thomas McClarty, Secretary of State John Kerry and many other prominent people saying such silly things about the trade deal. While more arguments may be invented in the weeks ahead, it’s worth a quick review of the ones produced to date. [..]
If the economic arguments for TPP can’t sell the deal, lately we have seen people pushing it for geo-political reasons. I won’t attempt to assess the geo-political merits of the TPP, but it reasonable to ask about the expertise of those who say we need the TPP for geo-political reasons. Did these geo-political experts support the Iraq War? If so, is there reason to believe that their understanding of world politics has improved in the last 13 years?
Last year the vampires of finance bought themselves a Congress. I know it’s not nice to call them that, but I have my reasons, which I’ll explain in a bit. For now, however, let’s just note that these days Wall Street, which used to split its support between the parties, overwhelmingly favors the G.O.P. And the Republicans who came to power this year are returning the favor by trying to kill Dodd-Frank, the financial reform enacted in 2010.
And why must Dodd-Frank die? Because it’s working.
This statement may surprise progressives who believe that nothing significant has been done to rein in runaway bankers. And it’s true both that reform fell well short of what we really should have done and that it hasn’t yielded obvious, measurable triumphs like the gains in insurance thanks to Obamacare.
But Wall Street hates reform for a reason, and a closer look shows why.
Alexander Abdo and Jameel Jaffer: The courts stood up to NSA mass surveillance. Now Congress must act
One of the documents that Edward Snowden delivered to American journalists two years ago was a now-infamous NSA slide titled “New Collection Posture.” The slide summarizes, in surprisingly candid terms, the objective of the largest, most powerful surveillance agency on the face of the earth. ‘Collect it all’, it says. [..]
But perhaps the more immediate effect of Thursday’s decision will be on the debate now unfolding in Washington. The Patriot Act provision that underlies the call-records program is scheduled to sunset on 1 June, and over the next three weeks Congress must decide whether to reauthorize the provision, scale it back or allow it to expire. The appeals court’s decision should strengthen the hand of advocates who believe the revisions currently being considered by Congress don’t go far enough, and it should strengthen the resolve of legislators who have been pushing for more comprehensive reforms.
If Congress can’t coalesce around more comprehensive reform, the best course would be to let Section 215 expire. The intelligence community hasn’t even attempted to make a serious case that this authority is actually necessary. And as the recent ruling reminds us, it’s an authority that’s been grossly abused already and that could readily be abused again.
The court has done its part. Now it’s Congress’s turn.
Leo W. Gerard: Trade Abuse
America is in an abusive relationship with trade-obsessed politicians and corporations.
Despite their long history of battering the U.S. middle class with bad trade deal after bad trade deal, these lawmakers and CEOs contend workers should believe that their new proposal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will be different. President Obama and the CEO of Nike, a company that doesn’t manufacture one shoe in the United States, got together in Oregon on Friday to urge Americans to fall once again for a trade deal.
The trade fanatics say everything will be different under the TPP – even though it is based on deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that lured American factories across the border, destroyed good-paying jobs and devastated communities. They plead: “Just come back for one more deal and see how great it will be this time!” And, like all batterers, they say: “Sorry about the terrible past; trust me about the future.”
This is trade abuse.
Dave Hohnson: Senate Fast Track Vote Tuesday — Where Is Clinton?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled the voting process for trade promotion authority, commonly known as “fast track,” to begin as early as Tuesday. If passed, fast track prohibits Congress from amending trade agreements, no matter what problems might show up, and it requires that these agreements be voted on within 90 days, limiting the debate Congress is allowed to have while also prohibiting filibusters.
Passing fast track will essentially pre-approve the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “trade” agreement before the public gets a chance to know what is in it, as well as future trade deals, regardless of who is president or what the rigged, corporate-dominated negotiating process produces.
With a vote coming as soon as Tuesday, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has not yet spoken out for or against fast track.
Geoffrey R. Stone: Intelligence Gathering, Secrecy and the Congress Problem
In an important decision, a federal court of appeals held yesterday that the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata could not be squared with the legislation that was said to authorize it. [..]
But that left open the question, which is still unresolved, of how Congress itself can authorize programs that must be kept secret from our enemies and, therefore, from the American people. One answer, of course, is that the government should never have any foreign intelligence programs that have not been discussed openly and approved by the American people. The problem with that answer is that that “solution” would automatically render eliminate all sorts of surveillance programs that require secrecy in order to be effective.
Another answer is to figure out some way that Congress can have a meaningful role in deciding whether to approve secret foreign intelligence programs without at the same time destroying their effectiveness. That, of course, was the reason for creating the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. But, if their approval is not sufficient to reflect congressional approval, then another way must be found to enable the Congress itself to discuss, debate, review and evaluate secret foreign intelligence programs without destroying them in the process.
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