“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: Will President Obama Stand up to the Drug Thugs?
It takes a lot of courage to defy the folks who make tens of billions a year selling drugs. We will find out soon whether President Obama has the backbone to stand up to Merck, Pfizer, and the other major drug companies in order to protect the health and lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the world’s poorest countries.
The immediate issue is an extension of the period until the poorest countries must adopt U.S.-type patent protections for drugs under the World Trade Organizations (WTO) rules. In 1994, the Clinton administration inserted the trade-related trade aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS, provisions into the agreement that established the WTO. The TRIPS provisions effectively required all WTO members to adopt U.S.-type patent and copyright laws. [..]
The reality is that patent monopolies are a relic of the feudal guild system. They are poorly suited as a mechanism to finance research in a 21st-century economy. If it were not for the enormous political power of the drug industry we would be looking at developing modern alternatives.
It may be too much to expect President Obama to actually talk about reforming our mechanisms for subsidizing research, but it shouldn’t be too much to ask him to join the EU in supporting the indefinite extension for developing countries. It may not be as much fun as flying around the world with billionaires for charity, but it will do much more to help poor people.
Richard Eskow: “Sowers of Change”: The Pope Arrives At a Critical Moment
Pope Francis’ first visit to the United States begins with his arrival in Washington D.C. on Tuesday afternoon. From the nation’s capital he goes to its economic capital, New York City, before concluding his trip with a visit to the nation’s birthplace in Philadelphia.
That itinerary seems to suit the Pope’s message: that political institutions must respond to the needs of the people, that the economy is a tool for human betterment rather than an end in itself, and that it is just as possible to remake society today as it was when this country was founded.
You don’t have to agree with all of the Catholic Church’s doctrines to recognize that the Pope’s message has a timeliness and urgency. New data underscores his call to reduce economic inequality. The ongoing deaths of African Americans in police confrontations highlight his message of social justice. And the planet itself is in peril.
European authorities have chosen to prolong Greek depression
What are we to make of Syriza’s victory in the Greek elections on Sunday? As in January, Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras will be able to form a parliamentary majority in coalition with the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party. On the other hand, they are now committed to implementing a harsh, deeply unpopular austerity program that even its advocates among the European authorities acknowledge will keep the Greek economy in depression through the end of this year and next.
Does this mean that the battle for Greece’s future is over, and that those who claimed that there was no alternative to prolonged depression, mass unemployment and a more unequal and frankly, uglier society have won?
There is no question that the European authorities – the European Central Bank, the European Commission and eurogroup of finance ministers (led by Germany) – and the International Monetary Fund have for now succeeded in imposing their will on Greece. On July 5, the vast majority of Greeks voted to reject their economic plan, including further austerity. But the ECB did something that perhaps no central bank had ever done: It forced a shutdown of the Greek banking system. This caused economic havoc that pushed the economy back into recession, and threated to prolong and deepen the depression that Greeks had already suffered for six years. This act of financial terrorism worked: Syriza made a U-turn following the referendum, accepting the European officials’ plan, and told the Greek people that there was no choice.
Eugene Robinson: Trump, Carson, Rand Paul and Other GOP Candidates Defy the Constitution with Anti-Muslim Bigotry
The founders of this nation recognized Islam as one of the world’s great faiths. Incredibly and disgracefully, much of today’s Republican Party disagrees.
Thomas Jefferson, whose well-worn copy of the Quran is in the Library of Congress, fought to ensure that the American concept of religious freedom encompassed Islam. John Adams wrote that Muhammad was a “sober inquirer after truth.” Benjamin Franklin asserted that even a Muslim missionary sent by “the Mufti of Constantinople” would find there was “a pulpit at his service” in this country.
Indeed, the Constitution states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Some of the GOP candidates for president, however, simply do not care. [..]
On the campaign trail, GOP candidates are touting their own Christian faith in what can only be described as a literal attempt to be holier than thou. They should reread the Constitution, which says “no religious test”-not “only the religious test that I can pass.”
Jeb Lund: The Trump juggernaut took out Scott Walker. But he may live to run again
The experiment in seeing if Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker could be elected president, which began with energetic music and a decorated hall packed with supporters waving signs is over after only about 70 days. Walker held its eulogy in the sort of dismal hotel meeting room you see at conventions for dental certification in a new kind of gum gauze. [..]
But that final moment, in which he could have said anything he wanted, was as bereft of ideas as the campaign necessitating it. Walker began by citing Ronald Reagan’s optimism, ignoring that Reagan campaigned on optimism after the deserved negativity of the nation after Nixon’s resignation and the Church Committee. (Ignore, too, that Reagan campaigned on a rejection of Jimmy Carter’s call for the embrace of the values of work, anti-materialism and sacrifice, offering Americans instead a buy-now/pay-never consumptive celebration that a generation of Boomers embraced the moment they had to pay the bills for a safety net their parents built and for which everyone else has been paying for 35 years and counting. That’s Scott Walker’s lodestar.)
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