“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 Children Left Behind After Mass Shootings
Since no amount of dead bodies seems enough to spur lawmakers to rein in access to guns, let’s focus on the living — the children gun violence leaves behind.
Start with the little boy and girl belonging to Jennifer Markovsky, a 35-year-old mother who was one of three people murdered last Friday during the latest mass shooting of 2015 — this time, a lone gunman’s hourslong siege of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. For the crime of accompanying her friend to an appointment at the clinic, Ms. Markovsky lost her life in the most brutal and pointless, yet entirely American, manner. [..]
But rather than taking action to address the full measure of destruction America’s gun violence inflicts, many politicians appear more comfortable offering rote words of shallow sympathy to the victims’ families, then jumping quickly behind distractions like the state of mental-health care in America. Was Robert L. Dear Jr., the suspect in last week’s shooting, mentally ill? Did he oppose abortion? Or was he just extremely angry?
Dean Baker: The Federal Reserve Board’s Eight Percentage Point Hike in the Social Security Tax
In the last couple of weeks the prospect of a 0.2 percentage point increase in the payroll tax has become a major issue separating the two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed an increase of this size to pay for system of paid family leave that is part of his platform. While former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also supports paid family leave, she opposes any tax increase on middle class workers, and insists she can get the money elsewhere.
The intensity of this debate over a tax increase of 0.2 percentage points (at $70 a year for a typical worker), should have people wondering why the candidates aren’t talking about the prospect of a much larger tax increase imposed by the Federal Reserve Board. The Fed’s tax increase could easily exceed 8 percent of the wages for ordinary workers, yet it is not drawing any attention from the presidential candidates.
Robert Reich: Why Hate Speech by Presidential Candidates Is Despicable
Hate crimes will never be eliminated entirely. A small number of angry, deranged people inevitably will vent their rage at groups they find threatening. Some will do so violently.
But this doesn’t absolve politicians who have been fueling such hatefulness.
Perpetrators of hate crimes often take their cues from what they hear in the media. And the recent inclination of some politicians to use inflammatory rhetoric is contributing to a climate of hate and fear. [..]
I’m not suggesting Trump, Carson, Fiorina, or any other presidential candidate is directly to blame for hate crimes erupting across America.
But by virtue of their standing as presidential candidates, their words carry particular weight. They have a responsibility to calm people with the truth rather than stir them up with lies.
In suggesting that the staff of Planned Parenthood, Muslims, Black Lives Matter protesters, and Mexican immigrants are guilty of venal acts, these candidates are fanning the flames of hate.
This itself is despicable.
Eugene Robinson: In Paris, clean energy gathers steam
As the Paris climate talks begin, the die is already cast: The world is going to move toward cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy. The question for U.S. policymakers is whether the world’s biggest economy gets left behind.
President Obama is trying his best to ensure this doesn’t happen. He told the world leaders assembled in Paris that he saw the effects of global warming firsthand on a recent trip to Alaska. He wanted to make clear, he said, “that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.”
Obama has set a target of reducing U.S. carbon emissions, over the next decade, to a level at least 26 percent below what they were in 2005. Republicans in Congress — and on the presidential campaign trail — vow to do everything they can to sabotage this effort, claiming it will be bad for the economy. But if the naysayers succeed, they will guarantee only that the other great industrial powers, China and Europe, dominate the new energy landscape.
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