“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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Dean Baker: The Federal Reserve Board’s Payroll Tax on our Children
The deficit hawks appear to be making a comeback, at least in the media, if not among the public at large. This isn’t surprising since we have billionaires prepared to spend large chunks of their money to scare people about the deficit, regardless of how unimportant it might be as an economic concern.
The latest storyline is that the deficit may not be a problem now, but it is projected to grow in size over the next decade. In particular, as interest rates rise we will be forced to divert an increasing portion of government spending to interest payments and away from things we might really care about like improving infrastructure and education.
There are many things wrong with this analysis, most obviously that even if interest payments rise as projected, relative to the size of the economy they will still be less in 2025 than they were in the early 1990s. And the interest burden in 1990s didn’t prevent us from having a decade that ended with four years of broadly shared wage growth and low unemployment. So the horror story here doesn’t look quite so frightening.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Is Jeb’s Social Security Flub the Worst Bush Gaffe Yet?
George W. Bush: His policies brought untold harm, but at least his gaffes offered some occasional lighthearted moments. Now his brother Jeb may have outdone him in the faux pas department — but there’s nothing funny about it.
The former Florida governor has been running on a platform which includes cutting Social Security benefits, so he’s been talking about raising the retirement age. But, as it happens, he doesn’t even know what the retirement age is.
When he was asked about it, Jeb responded in the tortured syntax characteristic of his clan: “We need to look over the horizon and begin to phase in, over an extended period of time, going from 65 to 68 or 70.”
Except that the retirement age isn’t 65, and hasn’t been for some time. The current retirement age is 66, and it will continue to rise. People born in 1959 won’t be able to retire until they are 67 years old.
If you’re going to cut a program which affects the lives of most Americans, the least you can do is get the facts right. Jeb didn’t. That’s worse than a candidate getting the price of bread or milk wrong, or a president’s wonderment at the fact that grocery stores have scanners.
The fish rots from the head, and this is undoubtedly the case with FIFA and its leader, Sepp Blatter.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s indictment of 14 senior FIFA officials confirms what we all knew. FIFA is a deeply corrupt organization. Lynch, who collaborated with the police in Switzerland to arrest seven FIFA officials, detailed at least $150 million in corrupt payments over 24 years. At week’s end, Justice Department officials said they were preparing additional indictments. [..]
Leaders are responsible for creating a moral climate in their organizations, and ensuring that its business affairs are carried out with integrity. Of course, there will always be individuals who deviate from company policy, in which case high integrity leaders move swiftly to terminate them and take appropriate follow-up action to prevent repeat incidents.
The vast majority of today’s business leaders do precisely that. The exceptions, such as Blatter, give a poor name to all who view leadership as a higher calling. High integrity leaders must support firm action against those who destroy important enterprises like world soccer.
C. Robert Gibson: The Democratic Party needs a swift kick in the ass
The Democratic Party’s official symbol is a jackass – and that’s exactly how the party is perceived by the American electorate right now. Only 18 states have Democratic governors, and Democrats hold a majority in both legislative houses in just 11 states. As the New York Times noted, the party hasn’t had this little power since Herbert Hoover was president. And Democrats will continue to get their asses kicked in every election until grass-roots movements organize to oust the party’s corporate-backed incumbents, make a mockery of state party bosses and take the helm once they’ve all been driven out.
Of America’s two major political parties, the Republicans have become the party of extremists determined to privatize the commons, neuter the government’s ability to police polluters and corporate tax avoiders and redistribute wealth to the rich. The Democrats, on the other hand, have simply failed to stand for anything other than a watered-down version of what Republicans are proposing. State Democratic Party chairpeople, committee members, top-level elected officials and check writers have made it clear they have no interest in changing course in their embrace of policies that disenfranchise the middle class, nor are they listening to the grass-roots movements demanding economic, environmental and racial justice. Even as the country moves further to the left, Democrats continue to lose. The 2014 midterm election cycle was a perfect example.
Bill Boyarsky: Undercutting the Patriot Act Is a Major Win for Rand Paul and Edward Snowden
While its successor may be full of ways for intelligence agents and law enforcement to invade privacy, the demise of the Patriot Act’s bulk collection of phone records is a major accomplishment for Sen. Rand Paul, for Americans suspicious of government intrusion and, above all, for Edward J. Snowden.
It is Snowden who deserves most of the credit for the expiration of the act’s most onerous provisions, which went out of effect at midnight Sunday. Now in self-exile in Russia and facing espionage charges at home, Snowden revealed how the National Security Administration was scooping up enormous masses of the private records of ordinary citizens under the guise of fighting terrorism. President Barack Obama and many other politicians, along with intelligence officials, denounced that courageous act by the onetime NSA contractor, but the disclosure resonated strongly with Americans who harbor a suspicion of government that dates back to before the American Revolution.
E.J.Dionne, Jr.: Understanding the Importance of Bernie Sanders’ Candidacy Requires Revisiting Santa Claus Politics
How is it that Democrats forgot about the joys Santa Claus can bring? How is it that Republicans managed to steal the Santa idea from the party of FDR and never let go?
Understanding why Bernie Sanders’ presidential candidacy is important requires revisiting the politics of St. Nick. The senator from Vermont has little chance of defeating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. But he is reminding his party of something it often forgets: Government was once popular because it provided tangible benefits to large numbers of Americans.
At a time of rising inequality and short-circuited social mobility, Sanders is unapologetic about taking some wealth and income away from those who have a lot of both to ease the path upward for those who don’t. He has proudly called himself a democratic socialist, but he doesn’t spin abstract Marxist theories. He wants government to do stuff, and the sort of stuff he has in mind is potentially quite popular.
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