“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.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: A new definition of freedom in America
This weekend, Hillary Clinton will unveil her “vision for the country” at a mass rally at the FDR Four Freedoms Park in New York City. Her campaign indicates that she’ll reveal a fuller picture of her economic policies in what is being billed as her official campaign launch.
But the stunning Louis Kahn memorial to Roosevelt can be more than just a setting for Clinton. It can inspire her to a far broader and bolder mission: to challenge directly, as Roosevelt did, the constrained notion of freedom that has dominated our politics since Ronald Reagan, and to offer a more expansive, empowering view of America’s experiment. [..]
The big unanswered question is whether she is prepared – as FDR was – to take on the economic royalists of this day. Where will she stand on the corporate trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its private corporate court system? Will she favor fair taxes on the rich and corporations to rebuild the United Statesand put people to work? Will she make the case for vital public investments – in new energy, in infrastructure, in education and training – that have been starved for too long? Will she call for breaking up banks that are too big to fail? Will she favor expanding social security, now that corporations have virtually abandoned private pensions?
Lauren Carasik: Revelations on FBI spy fleet cloud surveillance reform
All government monitoring programs need transparency and public debate
On June 2 as President Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act into law, curtailing domestic surveillance, The Associated Press reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been using a fleet of low-flying aircraft over U.S. cities for video and cellphone surveillance. And on June 4 The New York Times reported that the Obama administration secretly expanded the National Security Agency’s role in warrantless domestic cybersecurity in 2012.
While the new law imposes welcome restraints on warrantless intrusions into privacy, the battle to curb unchecked governmental power is far from over. The law contains its share of loopholes and reinforces much of the post-9/11 security state. And the challenges of engaging in robust public debate surrounding privacy and security are compounded by the administration’s unprecedented secrecy.
Martha Burk:
Obama’s Fast Track Attack on Women
The President is asking for “fast track” authority to let the White House be the sole negotiator on the Trans Pacific Partnership, a giant twelve-nation trade agreement between the U.S. and Pacific Rim nations. Fast track passed the Senate in May, and could come up for a House vote as early as this week.
Trouble is, the provisions are secret, and the Obama administration won’t tell Congress or the people what’s in it. But thanks to a few chapters released by Wikileaks online last year, we already know it’s a disaster for U.S. workers-especially women.
According to the Washington Post, around 600 corporations and a couple of labor unions have seen a draft. A few members of Congress have seen parts of it in a “secure soundproof reading room,” where cellphones and note-taking are not allowed. The majority of congressmembers and the public have not, and those members who have been given that extremely limited access are forbidden to discuss it with the public.
Mary Turck: Private prisons, public shame
Prisons should not be profit centers
Last month the state of Washington contracted with the GEO Group, one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the U.S., to move up to 1,000 inmates from the state’s overcrowded prisons to its correctional facility in Michigan, thousands of miles from their homes and families. This makes family visits and connection with the community harder, though studies show that inmates who receive more visits are less likely to re-offend after release.
Prisoners can’t vote in the United States and as a result they don’t have much sway over public policy decisions. But private, for-profit prison companies do, their voices amplified by big campaign contributions and millions spent on lobbying. Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, some of the candidates’ ties to the prison-industrial complex raise a lot of questions. For example, the GEO Group has contributed heavily to campaigns of Florida senator and Republican contender Marco Rubio. And Republican candidate Jeb Bush’s support of for-profit prisons goes back to the 1990s, when he oversaw prison privatization as Florida governor.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is calling for criminal justice reform, which would reduce profits for private prisons and reduce mass incarceration. The election offers voters a choice between candidates who support the current system that allows corporations to profit from the misery of the inmates and those committed to fundamental reform, which includes changing inflexible sentencing laws and ending the for-profit prison system.
Amy B. Dean: Saving the charter school movement from itself
Charter schools are being used as a front for union bashing and privatization, but it doesn’t have to be that way
Advocates of charter schools argue that they are innovative laboratories of experimentation. But the reality is that over the past decade, the policies that led to the creation of these schools have been used to advance a political agenda: putting public resources into private hands, reducing accountability over how those resources are used and scapegoating teachers for the many problems that plague public education.
In doing so, many charter advocates have threatened to transform public education into a resource-scarce system that relies on philanthropy to function. That’s a shame. If charters were reimagined to respect their original objectives – to allow educators to experiment with new ideas, advance teachers’ voice in education and strengthen the public school system as a whole – they could yet live up to their potential.
Laura Finley> Supreme Court Protects Abusers, Fails Victims – Again
The Supreme Court has a very mixed track record when it comes to protecting women. As a domestic violence advocate, Criminologist, and activist for a decade, I am deeply concerned that the U.S still fails to prioritize women’s safety. Given that globally more women ages 15-45 die from men’s violence than of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined, far more needs to be done to protect women and girls. The courts can and should play a far bigger role in doing so.
In 2000, the court overturned part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that allowed women to sue their abusers in federal court. So, we can sue darn near anyone for anything, just not the people who hurt us most deeply. In 2005, the court ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales that a town and its police cannot be sued for failing to enforce a restraining order. [..]
Yet the court screwed up again, although this time on a case not specifically about abuse. On June 1, 2015, in Elonis v. United States it ruled 7-2 that a man’s threats to his wife via Facebook were not such a big deal, as there was no indication that he intended to threaten her. In one of the first cases to address free speech via social media, the court rejected the “reasonable person” standard that is typical in cases of verbal threats.
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