“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”.
New York Times Editorial Board: The Fallacy of the Latest Contraception Case
Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of insurance coverage for birth control, it is worth reiterating what the conflict at the core of these cases is really about. [..]
This should not be a difficult case. In a secular society, religious freedom demands respect and accommodation, not a veto over government action that benefits others who believe differently. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote after the Hobby Lobby decision, thinking that “one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened — no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be — doesn’t make it so.” Even in the warped Hobby Lobby opinion itself, the court seemed to suggest that the simple process of refusal “achieves all of the government’s aims while providing greater respect for religious liberty.”
Paul Krugman: Austerity’s Grim Legacy
When economic crisis struck in 2008, policy makers by and large did the right thing. The Federal Reserve and other central banks realized that supporting the financial system took priority over conventional notions of monetary prudence. The Obama administration and its counterparts realized that in a slumping economy budget deficits were helpful, not harmful. And the money-printing and borrowing worked: A repeat of the Great Depression, which seemed all too possible at the time, was avoided.
Then it all went wrong. And the consequences of the wrong turn we took look worse now than the harshest critics of conventional wisdom ever imagined.
Trevor Timm: The ‘Ferguson effect’ is just a ploy to reduce scrutiny of the police
Without a shred of hard evidence, first FBI chief Jim Comey and now the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration are publicly claiming increased scrutiny of police officers from the public – essentially Black Lives Matter and other protesters – are the cause of a fictitious crime wave in the United States. Not only are their comments insulting and ignorant, the entire premise of their argument is false.
The DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg said on Wednesday he thinks Comey “is spot on” in remarks the FBI director made on 23 October, when he said “viral videos” and criticism of police officers are creating a “chilling effect” on police work and leading to more crime – what some have dubiously called the “Ferguson effect”. [..]
To be fair, there are many police chiefs who embrace the added scrutiny and clearly disagree with Comey and Rosenberg’s remarks. But to those who don’t: yes, police do risk their lives to protect others. However, they are also given extraordinary powers not afforded to regular citizens, and for the past decades they’ve largely been handed virtual immunity in all but the most egregious cases of abuse – and many times, even then, they get off. If the police can’t handle being held more accountable, then we need new police.
Robert L. Borosage: Who Stands with Workers?
Senate cafeteria workers serve food to the most august politicians, to their staffers, their Gucci-shoed lobbyists and to Senate visitors. Yet they don’t earn close to a living wage. Those who work full time still live in poverty.
Over the past months, these workers have walked out on the job, risking the work they need in order to demand decent wages and the right to organize. Last month, over two dozen Senate staffers, joined by Senator Sherrod Brown, held a brown bag lunch protest in solidarity with those workers. The employer — the Compass Group, ironically a British-based corporation and its managing subsidiary the Restaurant Associates — has ignored the workers’ pleas and trampled their right to organize. The U.S. National Labor Relations Board has upheld charges regarding discriminatory and intimidating violations committed by managers at Restaurant Associates.
Ralph Nader: CEO Richard Master Masterminds Full Medicare for All
Just when the prospects for single-payer or full Medicare for everyone, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, appear to be going nowhere, from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley comes a stirring that could go national and make single-payer a reality.
Throwing down the gauntlet on the grounds of efficiency and humanness, businessman Richard Master, CEO of MCS Industries Inc., the nation’s leading supplier of wall and poster frames, is bent on arousing the nation’s business leaders to back single-payer – the efficient full Medicare for all – solution. [..]
Mr. Master’s first step is now complete. He has produced a short movie called “Fix It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point” which makes a powerful business case for replacing the current wasteful multi-payer system with a single payer one. He traveled with his award-winning filmmakers to Canada, where he interviewed doctors, nurses and conservative business people. The latter were aghast over why their fellow conservatives in the U.S. are not seeing the light.
Steven W. Thrasher: Learning while black: the latest offense that the police will get you for
How do black children make it through school in the United States? That’s what I wondered when I watched the horrifying video, which was widely circulated on Monday, of a young black child being forcefully arrested by a white South Carolina sheriff’s deputy. How is it, in a society as vile and racist as this – where white America has been utilizing the armed subjugation of black children and women for several hundred years now – that any of us get through school alive?
I have little interest in the context of the video. There are no circumstances in which such a display of force could ever be justifiable. Most people seeking the “context” in such a scenario are just trolling those who are sympathetic to child abuse, trying their hardest to find any justification for white supremacy and the debasement of black children and black women.
And when I read judgments on Facebook chastising the other students in the class for not coming to the girls’ aid, I have little interest in those, either. Who are any of us to pass judgments on those other children? In what world is it children’s responsibility to turn themselves into human shields to protect one of their peers from a raging (and likely armed) authority figure who could inflict physical harm on them?
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