Pondering the Pundits

“Pondering 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 “Pondering the Pundits”.

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Dean Baker: Fools or Liars On the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

Given the recent flood of opeds and editorials on the wonders of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Obama administration must be about to present the deal to Congress for approval. Otherwise, it’s hard to see why so many pieces would spontaneously appear on the TPP. Since there is real money at stake, we can expect the debate to get pretty low and nasty, with the pro-TPP forces liberally substituting ad hominems and claims to expertise for serious arguments.

My favorite on the lack of argument side is the exciting news that if the TPP is approved it will eliminate 18,000 tariffs on U.S. exports to the countries in the deal. That sounds like a huge boon to trade, right? Public Citizen looked up the 18,000 tariffs that would be eliminated. If found that the United States is not currently exporting in more than half of the categories in which these tariffs apply. Included in the list of tariffs to be removed are Malaysia’s shark fin tariffs, Vietnam’s whale meat tariffs, and Japan’s ivory tariffs.

The overwhelming majority of these tariffs are of little consequence in very narrow product categories, like Brunei’s tariff on ski boots. So when the proponents of the TPP tout the 18,000 tariffs is this because they have no clue what they are talking about, or are they deliberately trying to deceive the public?

New York Times Editorial Board: A Partisan Prescription for Paralysis

The refusal by Senate Republicans to consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court vacancy has rightly prompted indignation. But it is only the most glaring example of unreasonable intransigence by lawmakers who have turned the process of appointing senior federal officials into a political game.

The nominations of many of the 143 people awaiting confirmation for nonjudicial federal jobs are stalled in the Senate as committee heads and the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, dither and delay. The result is a federal bureaucracy with an ever-growing number of corners subject to paralysis and indecision. It’s clear that for Republican lawmakers, carrying out political vendettas and thwarting the president’s prerogatives are more important than having a functioning government.

Cindy Casares: There’s no good reason voting remains so inaccessible for so many Americans

President Barack Obama has said that the reason Texas doesn’t allow online voter registration isn’t because of security issues, but because state elected officials don’t want more people involved in the election process.

“It is much easier to order pizza or a trip than it is for you to exercise the single most important task in a Democracy and that is for you to select who is going to represent you in government,” the president said at SXSW. “It’s done because the folks who are currently governing the good state of Texas aren’t interested in having more people participate.”

It’s true. There’s simply no good reason, in this day and age, for us not to be utilizing web technology to make voting accessible to as many eligible Americans as possible – especially in a state like Texas, where voter turnout rate is abysmal. So far, Texas has the second lowest voter turnout during the presidential primary season, with just 21.5% of Texas residents 18 years or older showing up at the polls. And that’s our best turnout yet! (Louisiana has the worst turnout rate this season so far, with just 18% voter participation.)

Mike Lux: Human Rights Abuses Arriving at Boston Logan, Courtesy of Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways began daily service from Boston last week, and its arrival brings some pretty heavy baggage. The “luxury” airline is owned by the State of Qatar, an oil-rich dictatorship in the Middle East on the border of Saudi Arabia, where migrant workers are dying by the thousands in deplorable working conditions akin to slavery. It’s estimated by independent human rights groups that 4,000 workers will die building the 2022 FIFA World Cup soccer stadiums in Doha.

At the Alliance for Workers Against Repression Everywhere (AWARE), we are working to expose U.S. trade relations with companies like Qatar Airways and countries like its namesake that abuse their workers and deny their human rights. That’s why we’re calling for a boycott.

Dave johnson: Fact-Check This: Arrogance of Elites Helps Drive the Trump Phenomenon

For some time now, most of the people in this country have been under economic pressure. Pay is not going up very much or at all, while living costs keep rising. One recent statistic stands out — 63 percent of Americans would have difficulty raising $500 to cover an emergency, like a sudden need for car repair so they can get to work. Around them the community’s roads and schools and services are in decline.

Most of the public can see this clearly, yet so many elites can’t see at all, and see it or not, they do little or nothing to make things better. This arrogance of our blind, well-fixed elites is helping drive the Donald Trump phenomenon.

Among the “establishment” — the people “in charge” of our “system,” including the news and opinion elites who serve as gatekeepers of information — there is willful blindness to how things have been getting worse for millions of Americans and their communities. They tell the voters they are wrong, that our trade policies are actually good for them.

Robert Reich: How the Peoples Party Prevailed in 2020

Third parties have rarely taken over from the dominant two in American history. So how did the People’s Party win the U.S. presidency and a majority of both houses of Congress in 2020? [.]

Politics abhors a vacuum. In 2019, the People’s Party filled it.

Its platform called for getting big money out of politics, ending “crony capitalism,” abolishing corporate welfare, stopping the revolving door between government and the private sector, and busting up the big Wall Street banks and corporate monopolies.

The People’s Party also pledged to revoke the Trans Pacific Partnership, hike taxes on the rich to pay for a wage subsidy (a vastly expanded Earned Income Tax Credit) for everyone earning below the median, and raise taxes on corporations that outsource jobs abroad or pay their executives more than 100 times the pay of typical Americans.

Americans rallied to the cause. Millions who called themselves conservatives and Tea Partiers joined with millions who called themselves liberals and progressives against a political establishment that had shown itself incapable of hearing what they had been demanding for years.

The rest, as they say, is history.