“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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New York Times Editorial Page: Schoolkids in Handcuffs
The video that went viral last month showing a white sheriff’s deputy in a Columbia, S.C., classroom throwing and dragging an African-American student across the floor may well be indicative of a deeper problem with the security program in that school district. [..]
These police-driven policies have not made schools safer. But they do make children more likely to drop out and become entangled with the justice system. And they disproportionately affect minority and disabled children, who are more likely to be singled out for the harshest forms of discipline.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Is There Such a Thing as a Progressive Bank?
“Bankers are not the most popular figures in America right now,” says Keith Mestrich, chief executive of Amalgamated Bank. “The industry has lost consumer trust and has done very little to earn it back.” With respect to the banking industry in general, that’s probably an understatement. Earlier this year, a Harris Poll showed that America’s three largest banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup — enjoyed “poor” reputations among the public at large. A fourth, Goldman Sachs, flirted with “very poor,” but, alas, could not make the superlative stick.
But Amalgamated is a different story. It has done — and is doing — quite a bit to demonstrate that Americans can again trust their banking system. Amalgamated Bank is alone among financial institutions in greeting visitors to its Web site with a call to action: “Join us as we fight to raise the minimum wage. Sign the petition.” It’s the same message exhorted by the bank’s ads on the New York City Subway — ads that were recently removed by the transportation authority for being “political.”
John Nichols: Why Grassroots Democrats Don’t Have a Problem With Democratic Socialism
“Do I think Bernie Sanders should talk about democratic socialism? Yes, I do,” says Iowan Mary Clark. “I want him to explain everything in detail—give people a really good explanation. People who like Bernie are probably going to like him a little more if he does that. And people who aren’t supporting Bernie now might just say, ‘It sounds like he’s got some ideas that would actually solve our problems.’”
Clark isn’t a pundit or a pollster; nor does she sell herself as an expert on economics or presidential politics. She’s a rural Iowan who worries a lot about whether her neighbors will have clean water, decent housing, and fair pay. She’s worked a few minimum-wage jobs herself, and she knows a lot of folks who are struggling to get by along the rural routes that pass through her corner of Iowa’s Polk County. She talks to them about politics, and she always talks up Sanders. People like what they hear, she says. “But then they hear these guys on television saying, ‘Bernie Sanders can’t get elected because he’s a democratic socialist.’ So Bernie has to talk about it. But he doesn’t have to apologize for anything. He should say, ‘You’re wrong—I can get elected as a democratic socialist, and here’s why.’”
Trevor Timm: Obama claims he wants drone strike transparency. But he’s said that before
Spurred on by worries about his legacy, Barack Obama is reportedly looking for ways to reduce government secrecy barriers he created that have made drone strikes and other prominent “counter-terrorism” programs so unaccountable to the public before he leaves office in 14 months.
He “wants to make available to the public as much information as possible about US counter-terrorism operations and the use of force overseas,” the White House said in a statement to The Hill this week, which originally reported the story about the latest potential policy change.
If that’s true, then the White House should stop fighting tooth and nail about virtually every tiny disclosure of the drone program in court, which the ACLU and news organizations like the New York Times have been suing over for almost the entire length of the Obama administration.
Dean Baker: Monopoly patent protections endanger middle class jobs
A widely held view of the economy is that technology is destroying middle class jobs. The argument is that we used to have all these relatively high paying jobs in manufacturing and other sectors requiring routinized work, which are now being displaced by machines or, in the near future, robots. Pretty soon robots will also be driving our cars, buses and trucks, as the technology for self-driving vehicles becomes cost efficient.
The loss of these jobs is supposed to result in a shortage for workers without sophisticated skills. This means that more workers will be fighting for a rapidly shrinking number of jobs, leading to more unemployment and underemployment and lower pay. On the other hand, the folks who develop and therefore own the technology will be getting rich.
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