“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
David Cay Johnston: US economic policies are devastating society
The death rate among white middle-aged Americans is rising at an alarming rate, even as death rates for all other Americans are falling. The increase is concentrated among whites with meager educations and is “largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis,” according to two Princeton University scholars, one of whom was just awarded the Nobel in economics.
Their findings should awaken Americans to the price we pay for pursuing economic policies that enrich the few at the expense of the many.
Drug and alcohol use that results in death from either poisoning or chronic disease, as well as increased self-extermination, point to social pathologies fostered by government policies that favor moving jobs offshore, reducing wages, restricting access to health care and enabling age discrimination in hiring.
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan: It’s Always the Same War
Barack Obama originally ran for president as the anti-war candidate. Now, as his second term winds down, the two George W. Bush/Obama wars are winding up, with a third in Syria. U.S. military forces are deployed elsewhere around the globe, as in drone striking in Yemen and Somalia, adding to the global conflagration. The United States is engaged in endless war.
The crisis of war and the millions fleeing these infernos has reached levels unprecedented since World War II, prompting the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to issue what they called an “unprecedented joint warning” for states to end wars, respect international law and aid the 60 million refugees made homeless from recent conflicts.
Robert Parry: America’s Chalabi Legacy of Lies
Government officials who pushed the Iraq War in 2002-2003 are fond of claiming that they were simply deceived by “bad intelligence,” but the process was not that simple. In reality, there was a mutually reinforcing scheme to flood the U.S. intelligence community with false data and then to pressure the analysts not to show professional skepticism.
In other words, in the capital of the most powerful nation on earth, a system had evolved that was immune to the normal rules of evidence and respect for reality. Propaganda had become the name of the game, a dangerous process that remains in force to this day.
Terrance Heath: Progressive Victories from Maine to Washington Inspire Hope
Off-year elections are almost never good for progressives, and 2015 is no exception. But this off-year election held some surprising victories for progressives in Maine, Ohio, Washington and elsewhere that could lay the foundation for more victories to come.
Earlier this week, I wrote about campaigns in Seattle and in Ohio that had the potential to change how we do politics in America. [..]
Maine voters also took aim at Citizens United with Question 1, a ballot initiative that strengthened the state’s already famous system of publicly funding elections, created by the Maine Clean Elections Act in 1996. Under Question 1, not only will candidates who agree to participate be eligible for public funding, but they will be forced to disclose top donors in their political advertisements.
Jason Jaffey: Defeat of Marijuana Legalization in Ohio Says A Lot About the Kind of Economy People Are Sick and Tired Of
Ohio’s marijuana legalization effort suffered a crushing defeat on November 3rd. In the aftermath, there is much conversation about why Ohioans opposed the measure so strongly. Some have pointed to the bad timing of an off-year election, others to lingering puritanical opposition to drug use. But the strongest and most consistent message is the strong populist resistance to legally establishing a business structure that leaves out every day people.
Leaving aside heated rhetoric about the evils of “Big Pot,” the fact is that, had Issue 3 passed, it would have established a system of elite and most likely absentee ownership, as opposed to community-based family businesses. Voters recognized the need for local, broad-based ownership as the foundation of a thriving, resilient economy.
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