“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: America’s Un-Greek Tragedies in Puerto Rico and Appalachia
On Friday the government of Puerto Rico announced that it was about to miss a bond payment. It claimed that for technical legal reasons this wouldn’t be a default, but that’s a distinction without a difference.
So is Puerto Rico America’s Greece? No, it isn’t, and it’s important to understand why.
Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis is basically the byproduct of a severe economic downturn. The commonwealth’s government was slow to adjust to the worsening fundamentals, papering over the problem with borrowing. And now it has hit the wall.
What went wrong? There was a time when the island did quite well as a manufacturing center, boosted in part by a special federal tax break. But that tax break expired in 2006, and in any case changes in the world economy have worked against Puerto Rico.
Robert Kuttner: The German Menace
At the end of World War II, a bloody horror that cost 80 million lives worldwide, American leaders were determined that Germany must never again rise to massacre its neighbors. So the allies created a plan to strip Germany of its industrial might and turn it into a “pastoral” economy with a GDP well below its level of 1938.
In addition, the reparations from the previous damage created by Germany during World War I, which were levied at the Versailles peace conference but never paid, were made due and payable over ten years.
The combined cost of the reparations and the loss of its industry were deemed a fitting punishment for the Germans, who pretended not to know what was going on but were fully culpable for the rise and the grotesque atrocities of the Hitler regime.
Germany, economically crushed, never did pay back its debts but at least the Germans were taught a lesson — and Germany never again became a world power.
Oops — that’s not what happened.
“He can’t possibly win the nomination,” is the phrase heard most often when Washington insiders mention either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
Yet as enthusiasm for the bombastic billionaire and the socialist senior continues to build within each party, the political establishment is mystified.
They don’t understand that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the “ruling class” of insiders that have dominated Washington for more than three decades.
In two very different ways, Trump and Sanders are agents of this revolt. I’ll explain the two ways in a moment.
Don’t confuse this for the public’s typical attraction to candidates posing as political outsiders who’ll clean up the mess, even when they’re really insiders who contributed to the mess.
What’s new is the degree of anger now focused on those who have had power over our economic and political system since the start of the 1980s.
Paul Buchheit: Great Embarrassments of an Unequal Society
America has experienced “gush-up” rather than “trickle-down.” The shame is on the adherents of unregulated free-market capitalism, who have assaulted us with the message of “winner-take-all” wealth over the common good. George Willperpetuates the neoliberal myth by quoting one of his idols, John Tamny: “Income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful…it provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas..”
But in the realm of reality, there are many reasons for embarrassment: [..]
The Greatest Embarrassment
That would be Congress itself: Allowing Americans to go without health care. Blowing off jobs bills. Ignoring infrastructure. Privatizing education and other public needs. Doing nothing about student debt. Cutting the IRS even though every hour of auditing returns $9,000 from large corporations. And on and on and on.
Terrell Jermaine Starr: Body Cams Can Capture Abuse, But Can They End Police Brutality?
The swift first-degree murder charge filed against a former University of Cincinnati police officer after his body camera captured him shooting an unarmed black man to death reflects how crucial video is in proving police misconduct.
When Ray Tensing pulled Samuel Dubose over on July 19, his body camera captured the entire stop. After Dubose was unable to produce a license and prevented Tensing from opening the driver door of his vehicle, the former cop shot him in the head. Tensing claimed he was being dragged by the car, which was proven untrue. A police report of the incident also shows officers on the scene lied about seeing Dubose’s car “dragging” Tensing. [..]
As critical as body cameras are in exposing police abuses, law enforcement experts told AlterNet that policymakers at the local and national levels need to do much more to curtail police brutality. Tensing wore a body camera, but still ended up abusing his power and shooting Dubose to death for no reason.
Reynard Loki: People Are Dying from Contaminated Food, but Obama and Congress Don’t Seem to Care
In 2010, after thousands of Americans were sickened by tainted spinach, peanut butter and eggs, Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a sweeping reform bill that gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) new powers to help ensure the safety of the nation’s food system. It was the nation’s first major food policy legislation since FDR signed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act in 1938. But now, five years later, according to a recent POLITICO investigation, not a single one of the new rules has been implemented and the entire mission has a $276-million funding gap. So what happened?
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