“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: Janet Yellen Shows the Need for a 4 Percent Unemployment Target
In a speech last week, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen inadvertently told us why Congress should set a 4 percent unemployment target for the Fed in its conduct of monetary policy, as is proposed in a new bill put forward by Michigan Representative John Conyers. The context was Yellen’s dismissal of such a target. [..]
The 4.0 percent target was not pulled out of the air. The United States, in fact, had a 4.0 percent unemployment rate as a year-round average in 2000, following two and a half years in which the unemployment rate was less than 5.0 percent. There is little evidence of any increase in the inflation rate as a result of this prolonged period of low unemployment. The increase in bargaining power from a strong labor market did allow tens of millions of workers at the middle and the bottom of the wage ladder to achieve strong gains for the only time in the last 40 years.
This is why low unemployment matters so much. It is not just about getting people jobs, as important as that is. It is also about allowing tens of millions to be able to share in the benefits of economic growth.
David Dayen: John Boehner’s ouster: The Trans-Pacific Partnership is in danger
We have heard so little about the Trans-Pacific Partnership over the past couple of months that you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Obama administration simply abandoned it. But tomorrow, representatives from the 12 TPP nations assemble in Atlanta for a two-day meeting designed to produce a final agreement.
Previous “final” talks in Maui revealed multiple hurdles, from dairy markets to auto parts manufacturing to the length of prescription drug patents. But this Atlanta meeting was abruptly put together, suggesting progress on the sidelines. While nobody thought TPP could conclude before Canada’s parliamentary campaign ends Oct. 19, the New Zealand prime minister said Canada is “negotiating as if there’s no election.”
But even if negotiators work out a tentative agreement this week, the biggest announcement on TPP may have already happened. That would be last Friday’s resignation of House Speaker John Boehner.
Jeb Bush may not be very good at running for president. But he has a remarkable talent for wedging his foot in his mouth.
The former front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination-who struggles to get above single digits in the polls-has frequently played the fool on the 2016 campaign trail.
But he will have a hard time topping his argument against accepting Pope Francis’ counsel on the need to fight climate change. After the pontiff urged members of Congress to engage with the rest of the world in “courageous actions and strategies” to combat global warming, Bush declared that the pope’s call should be disregarded.
Why? Because, Bush announced, “He’s not a scientist, he’s a religious leader.”
Bush, who is Catholic and who has attended mass with Pope Francis, needs to study up on the pontiff’s background in science. And on the rigorous research that underpins the pope’s advocacy on climate-change issues.
David Swanson: Bernie Sanders Gets a Foreign Policy
After 25,000 people asked, Senator Bernie Sanders added a few words to his presidential campaign website about the 96% of humanity he’d been ignoring.
He did not, as his spoken comments heretofore might have suggested, make this statement entirely or at all about fraud and waste in the military. He did not even mention Saudi Arabia, much less declare that it should “take the lead” or “get its hands dirty” as he had been doing in interviews, even as Saudi Arabia bombs Yemeni families with U.S. cluster bombs. While he mentioned veterans and called them brave, he also did not turn the focus of his statement toward glorification of troops, as he very well might have.
All that to the good, the statement does lack some key ingredients. Should the United States be spending a trillion dollars a year and over half of discretionary spending on militarism? Should it cut that by 50%, increase it by 30%, trim it by 3%? [..]
And which of today’s battles would Sanders like to end? Drones are not mentioned. Special forces are not mentioned. Foreign bases are not mentioned. The only hint he gives about future action in Iraq or Syria suggests that he would continue to use the military to make things worse while simultaneously trying other approaches to make things better:
E. J. Dionne: John Boehner’s Impossible Task
John Boehner was a deal-maker who took over the House speakership at a moment when making deals had, for many Republicans, become a mortal sin.
He was thoroughly conservative in a Republican Party that had moved the goal posts on what constituted conservatism. He could never be conservative enough for his critics on the right.
His tea party antagonists call themselves “constitutionalists,” but they seem to ignore the part of the Constitution that provides the president-in this case, a president from the other party-with veto power.
The GOP’s most ardent conservatives thought they had won the right to run the country when they took control of the House in 2010. They felt this even more strongly after gaining a Senate majority in 2014. Democrats who controlled one or both houses of Congress when Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were in the Oval Office never presumed they had such power. But the standards Boehner was held to were more exacting.
Eugene Robinson: Carly Fiorina Is Too Mad to See Straight
How angry is Carly Fiorina? So angry she can’t see straight. That’s the only explanation for the yawning gulf between what she says and the plainly visible facts.
Fiorina stands out among the Republican presidential candidates not just because she is a woman but also because she has adopted a strategy of breathing fire. She presents herself as mad about everything, and she never gives an inch on anything she says, no matter how demonstrably untrue. Unhappily for our democracy, this approach has vaulted her into the upper tier of the multitudinous GOP field. [..]
Is she really, truly so filled with rage? Probably not. When she ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., in 2010, she was a moderate, pro-business Republican. That erstwhile profile would get her nowhere in this year’s presidential race, however, when everyone is scrambling to get to the right of everyone else and “moderate” is a dirty word.
One has to wonder if the showy posture of ultraconservative anger isn’t the biggest lie of all.
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