“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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Trevor Timm: The ‘Athens Affair’ shows why we need encryption without backdoors
Revelations about the hack that allowed Greek politicians to be spied on in 2004 come at a time when the White House is set to announce its encryption policy
Just as it seems the White House is close to finally announcing its policy on encryption – the FBI has been pushing for tech companies like Apple and Google to insert backdoors into their phones so the US government can always access users’ data – new Snowden revelations and an investigation by a legendary journalist show exactly why the FBI’s plans are so dangerous.
One of the biggest arguments against mandating backdoors in encryption is the fact that, even if you trust the United States government never to abuse that power (and who does?), other criminal hackers and foreign governments will be able to exploit the backdoor to use it themselves. A backdoor is an inherent vulnerability that other actors will attempt to find and try to use it for their own nefarious purposes as soon as they know it exists, putting all of our cybersecurity at risk.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Sanders vs. Clinton: Who Has the Best Plan for America’s College Students?
The differences between the college financing plans offered by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are important – both for their impact on the middle class, and for what they tell us about the candidates and their governing philosophies. [..]
We know that our current system is broken. It has left more than 41 million Americans owing more than $1.3 trillion in student debt. That burden is holding back an entire generation of Americans and is harming the economy as a whole.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have had fundamentally different responses to this crisis. While those differences have been papered over by some in the media, as well as some progressive groups, they are real – and they are significant.
Such obvious deceptions and bogus thinking would get him fired on ‘The Apprentice’
If you believe that the $18.1 trillion federal debt should be much bigger, that the rich don’t have nearly enough, and that corporations need a tax-rate cut of 57 percent, then Donald Trump has just what you are looking for.
The real estate mogul and reality TV star who wants to be president put out a document he called a tax plan. Like many of his business deals, it is long on boastfulness and short on money to pay the inevitable bills.
Trump told “60 Minutes” that his plan will work because “overall, it’s going to be a tremendous incentive to grow the economy and we’re going to take in the same or more money … We’re gonna grow the economy so much.”
He would cut the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, cut the corporate rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and eliminate the estate tax so the children of billionaires inherit tax-free. (Most of the estate tax falls on economic gains that have never been taxed, as I showed in my book “Perfectly Legal”.) That sounds like more of the tried and failed Republican tax policies of the past 35 years.
Chandra Bozelko: A criminal justice reform bill that doesn’t end mandatory minimums isn’t enough
Too often we forget that our judicial branch is supposed to be a criminal justice system, not a criminal sentencing system: sometimes convictions do not have to be made and sometimes punishments do not have to be severe (depending on the particular facts of the case) in order to achieve justice. But, though we might be moving away from the War on Drugs, it seems that we will continue our war on justice.
On Thursday, the US Senate announced the results of its agreement on a comprehensive reform bill called the Criminal Justice Reform and Corrections Act of 2015. Despite its name, and the growing consensus that such provisions impede rather than improve justice, the bill allows many mandatory minimum sentences to remain in effect – and even adds mandatory minimums for other crimes. But the backstory of a crime can contain complexities, and mandatory minimums don’t allow sentences to be tailored to the circumstances of the situation.
Terry O’Neill: Why the Attacks on Planned Parenthood Keep Failing
When Republican leaders in Washington don’t feel like governing, they attack women’s health care and abortion rights. That’s what happened this week, as a focus on defunding Planned Parenthood jumped to the head of the line in legislative priorities for the House of Representatives. That, and launching vicious personal attacks on Cecile Richards, the organization’s CEO.
But Planned Parenthood is not going down, far from it. In fact, I predict the organization will be both better understood and more admired over the coming months. It’s already starting: a new poll shows not only Planned Parenthood enjoying widespread and deep support, but also politicians who support the organization. [..]
In 1969, during the debate over the law that became Title X, which expanded federal government funding for family-planning services for low-income women, President Nixon said,
It is clear that the domestic family planning services supported by the Federal Government should be expanded and better integrated. It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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