“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: The Blackmail Caucus, a.k.a. the Republican Party
John Boehner was a terrible, very bad, no good speaker of the House. Under his leadership, Republicans pursued an unprecedented strategy of scorched-earth obstructionism, which did immense damage to the economy and undermined America’s credibility around the world.
Still, things could have been worse. And under his successor they almost surely will be worse. Bad as Mr. Boehner was, he was just a symptom of the underlying malady, the madness that has consumed his party. [..]
John Boehner was a terrible, very bad, no good speaker of the House. Under his leadership, Republicans pursued an unprecedented strategy of scorched-earth obstructionism, which did immense damage to the economy and undermined America’s credibility around the world.
Still, things could have been worse. And under his successor they almost surely will be worse. Bad as Mr. Boehner was, he was just a symptom of the underlying malady, the madness that has consumed his party.
For me, Mr. Boehner’s defining moment remains what he said and did as House minority leader in early 2009, when a newly inaugurated President Obama was trying to cope with the disastrous recession that began under his predecessor.
Dean Baker: The ongoing epidemic of corporate crime
Volkswagen is just the latest scandal from an epic decade of white-collar criminality
Even those who have little respect for the state of corporate ethics must have been surprised by the news from Volkswagen. It turns out that the largest car company in world deliberately designed software to allow its cars to deceive emissions testing in the United States. [..]
We may never know the details of how the top brass at Volkswagen thought it would be a good idea to cheat on emissions tests, but they obviously decided that the savings from going this route was worth the risk of detection and the potential punishment. And if the only punishment is a stretch of unemployment for people who have spent years in high-paying jobs, they are probably right.
The fate of the Volkswagen executives responsible for this fraud is likely to rest largely in the hands of the German legal system, but it is unlikely that they would face serious consequences if they were in the U.S. legal system. Corporate crime is rarely taken seriously, even when it results in avoidable deaths, whether they are caused by excess emissions because of Volkswagen’s decision to circumvent the law or by GM’s cover-up of faulty ignition switches or by Toyota’s cover-up of faulty floor mats that made cars accelerate.
If the US is to return to a ‘fact-based world,’ reporters need to recommit to objective reality
After the second prime-time Republican presidential debate on Sept. 16, The New York Times published an astonishing editorial. It said the candidates must be “no longer living in a fact-based world” and described what they said as “a collection of assertions so untrue, so bizarre that they form a vision as surreal as the Ronald Reagan jet looming behind the candidates’ lecterns.”
It was about time that someone as authoritative as The New York Times editorial board said it as bluntly as that.
One of the things that made the editorial so striking is that the news coverage of the same events, in the same paper as well as in the rest of the media, treated what the candidates said as almost entirely unremarkable.
That prompts interesting questions. Why was this only an editorial? Why wasn’t it in the news? Shouldn’t it be newsworthy that the leading contenders for the Republican nomination are “no longer living in a fact-based world” and that what they say is “untrue … bizarre … surreal”?
Robert Kuttner: Et Tu, Janet Yellen?
Barely a week after Fed Chair Janet Yellen cheered her many admirers by fending off pressures to raise interest rates in a weak recovery, Yellen reversed course. In a long, dense, technical lecture at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on Thursday, Yellen concluded by indicating that the Fed is likely to raise rates by the end of 2015 after all.
So what’s at work here? Obviously, economic conditions did not change between September 17 and September 24. Workers’ wages continue to be flat, despite a gradual reduction in the official unemployment rate. The inflation rate continues to be well below the Fed’s official target of 2 percent, with indications that it will go lower. Economic conditions outside the United States continued to be soft and getting softer in Europe, China, and much of South America, suggesting a drag on growth.
Why, then, does it make sense not to raise rates in September but to hike them in December, when a rate increase three months from now is just as likely to slow the recovery?
Robert Reich: Why We Must End Upward Pre-Distributions to the Rich
You often hear inequality has widened because globalization and technological change have made most people less competitive, while making the best educated more competitive.
There’s some truth to this. The tasks most people used to do can now be done more cheaply by lower-paid workers abroad or by computer-driven machines.
But this common explanation overlooks a critically important phenomenon: the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite that has been able to influence the rules by which the economy runs.
Charles M. Blow: Jeb Bush, ‘Free Stuff’ and Black Folks
At a campaign event in South Carolina on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was asked how he planned to include black people in his campaign and get them to vote for him.
Bush responded, “Our message is one of hope and aspiration.” But he didn’t stop there. He continued: “It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting – that says you can achieve earned success.” [..]
The problem isn’t refusal to work, but inability to find work that is stable and pays a living wage, thereby pushing them out of need and eligibility.
Bush’s comment also hints at the role of black men without acknowledging the disastrous toll racially skewed patterns of mass incarceration have taken on the fortunes of black families by disproportionately ensnaring black men.
All history and context are cast aside in support of a specious argument: That the black community is plagued by pathological dependence and a chronic, self-defeating posture of victimization.
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