“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: Democrats Being Democrats
On Friday, House Democrats shocked almost everyone by rejecting key provisions needed to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement the White House wants but much of the party doesn’t. On Saturday Hillary Clinton formally began her campaign for president, and surprised most observers with an unapologetically liberal and populist speech.
These are, of course, related events. The Democratic Party is becoming more assertive about its traditional values, a point driven home by Mrs. Clinton’s decision to speak on Roosevelt Island. You could say that Democrats are moving left. But the story is more complicated and interesting than this simple statement can convey.
You see, ever since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Democrats have been on the ideological defensive. Even when they won elections they seemed afraid to endorse clearly progressive positions, eager to demonstrate their centrism by supporting policies like cuts to Social Security that their base hated. But that era appears to be over. Why?
David Cay Johnson: The top .001 percent are different from you and me
New IRS report reveals new details that will anger almost everyone, including those in the top 1 percent
A new IRS report (pdf) examines incomes and tax burdens of all Americans. Its story of stagnation should be familiar to all. For 80 percent of Americans, average incomes fell between 2003 and 2012. That’s every taxpayer with income of less than $85,440 in 2012.
As depressing as that news is, the real story from the report concerns the very top level of income earners. The biggest income gap in America is not between the top 1 percent of earners and the 99 percent below them, but rather within the top 1 percent, where the split between the have-mores and the have-a-lot-mores is a fast-widening chasm.
Nearly 1.4 million households are in the top 1 percent income group, a statistical cohort whose members change somewhat from year to year.
But for the first time ever, the IRS offers a close look at the top .001 percent of taxpayers. It shows that incomes in this rarefied air – the top 1,361 households – are soaring while their tax burdens are falling
The Fast Track trade authority package was rejected Friday because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the White House and GOP leaders — and weeks of deals swapped for yes votes — could not assuage a majority in the House of Representatives facing constituents’ concerns that more of the same trade policy would kill more jobs, push down wages and open a Pandora’s box of other damaging consequences.
Proponents of Fast Tracking the almost-completed, controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) say they are coming back this week for another try. And the White House was on full tilt this weekend trying to pressure House Democrats to flip their votes.
But the path to enactment of Fast Track remains unclear, even as the corporate coalition, White House and GOP leaders remain hell bent on finding it.
To understand what comes next, it’s worth unpacking what exactly happened on Friday and how we got there.
Robert Kuttner: The Real Meaning of Obama’s Trade Defeat
The proposed TPP was the latest in a series of deals that are mostly about the use of “trade” agreements to allow corporations to do end runs around national regulation. This is basically special interest legislation for elites. TPP, like NAFTA, included measures, such as sweetheart patent deals, that never could have won passage as separate legislation. The real interest group here is the corporate elite.
TPP is part of a broad ideology and set of ploys that reflects corporate dominance of the agenda. Public employees, such as those represented by SEIU, care about this, not just out of solidarity (though that’s important), but because “trade” deals have been used to promote privatization schemes and weaken financial regulation and create corporate hegemony sponsored by presidents from both parties. TPP is emblematic of the political domination by the one percent.
The labor movement is not motivated just by the loss of factory jobs but by the entire ideological assault on the security of ordinary wage earners and consumers. The picture of labor as a narrow interest group makes sense only if you buy the propaganda that TPP is mainly a trade deal.
Mark Weibrot: Germany is bluffing on Greece
Berlin is not going to force Athens out of the eurozone anytime soon
You can ignore all the talk of a “Grexit,” the bluff and bluster of right-wing German ideologues such as Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble who would celebrate it, and repetitive, stubbornly dire warnings that time is running out. Did you notice that the much-hyped June 5 deadline for the Greece’s payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came and went, Greece didn’t pay and nobody fell off a cliff? Trust me, this is not a cliffhanger.
Although there have been numerous references to game theory in the ongoing commentary, it’s really not necessary if you look at the revealed preferences of those whom the Syriza government is polite and diplomatic enough to call its European partners. Take partner-in-chief German Chancellor Angela Merkel: If there’s one thing she doesn’t want to be remembered as, it’s the politician who destroyed the eurozone.
John Nicholss: The Magna Carta Said No Man Is Above the Law, But What About Corporations?
The Magna Carta reminds us that no man is above the law.
And it should be celebrated for that.
But it should not be imagined that the Magna Carta established democracy, or anything akin to it.
The great British parliamentarian Tony Benn put it well several years ago when he noted, as this 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta approached, that we still do not have democracy. [..]
If we respect the notion that the rule of law must apply to all-the most generous interpretation of the premises handed down across the centuries from those who on June 15, 1215 forced “the Great Charter of the Liberties” upon King John of England at Runnymede-then surely it must apply to corporations.
And, surely, the best celebration of those premises in the United States must be the extension of the movement to amend the US Constitution to declare that corporations are not people, money is not speech, and citizens and their elected representatives have the authority to organize elections-and systems of governance-where our votes matter more than their dollars.
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