“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.
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New York Times Editorial Board: The Racism at the Heart of Flint’s Crisis
An important new report makes clear the principal cause of the water crisis in Flint, Mich.: the state government’s blatant disregard for the lives and health of poor and black residents of a distressed city.
The report released Wednesday by a task force appointed last year by Gov. Rick Snyder to study how Flint’s drinking water became poisoned by lead makes for chilling reading. While it avoids using the word “racism,” it clearly identifies the central role that race and poverty play in this story. “Flint residents, who are majority black or African-American and among the most impoverished of any metropolitan area in the United States, did not enjoy the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards as that provided to other communities,” the report said.
Mr. Snyder, a Republican, and many Republicans in Congress have tried to deflect and minimize the state’s responsibility for the Flint crisis. Mr. Snyder has said the crisis represented a collective failure of local, state and federal governments. And congressional Republicans like Jason Chaffetz of Utah have sought to pin virtually all of the blame on the Environmental Protection Agency, which many of them oppose for ideological reasons.
Paul Krugman: Crazy About Money
In this year of Trump, the land is loud with the wails of political commentators, rending their garments and crying out, “How can this be happening?” But a few brave souls are willing to whisper the awful truth: Many voters support Donald Trump because they actually agree with his ideas.
This is not, however, a column about Mr. Trump. It is, instead, about Ted Cruz, who has emerged as the favored candidate of the G.O.P. elite now that less disagreeable alternatives have imploded.
In a way, that’s quite a remarkable development. For Mr. Cruz has staked out positions on crucial issues that are, not to put too fine a point on it, crazy. How can elite Republicans back him?
The answer is the same for Mr. Cruz and the elite as it is for Mr. Trump and the base: Leading Republicans support Mr. Cruz, not despite his policy positions, but because of them. They may not like his style, but they agree with his substance.
Amanda Marcotte: Not just Trump: Cruz and other conservatives who take umbrage at the billionaire’s misogyny are just as sexist
Most of us had little doubt that Donald Trump sneers at men who marry for love instead to show off to other men the “young and beautiful piece of ass” (his words) that you snagged with money and fame. This week, he thankfully destroyed any need to pretend he’s not the trophy wife guy with his ridiculous attacks on Ted Cruz’s wife. Heidi Cruz has committed the apparent sin of being a perfectly normal woman who married someone her own age that she met through work. My goodness, she probably even lets Ted see her brush her teeth. Trump cannot even imagine the horror.
Retweeting a meme that suggests that a woman is worthless if she makes normal facial expressions is but the latest move Trump has made in an apparent bid to run off every female voter he can. But one of the most unforgivable aspects of this latest round of shenanigans is that Trump’s “gross, your wife is normal!” act has given Cruz the space to front like he’s somehow the defender of women in all of this.Trump being a pig is not news. He doesn’t really hide his belief that women exist to conquer and humiliate, and have no other purpose in his eyes. But that shouldn’t let Cruz off the hook. He is a wretched misogynist in his own right, one who has helped push the Republicans even further to the right than they already were on the issue of women’s rights.
Jack Mirkinson: North Carolina’s repugnant new anti-LGBT law is only the tip of the iceberg
All blatantly bigoted laws are repugnant, but some feel more repugnant than others. So it was with North Carolina, whose legislature just passed a breathtakingly hateful law targeting its LGBT residents.
House Bill 2, also known as the “Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act,” is notable mostly for the sheer breadth of its discriminatory intent. It takes the by-now-familiar tactic of barring trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity and adds to it a blanket ban on any locality’s attempt to craft anti-discrimination laws for LGBT people. (The bill was drafted in response to the institution of just such an ordinance by the city of Charlotte.)
State legislators were so eager to pass the bill that they held a special session for the first time in 35 years. Governor Pat McCrory immediately signed the bill into law.
That the bill, and all others like it, is odious and likely unconstitutional is very clear. It seems inevitable that the Supreme Court will be weighing in on the matter before too long. In a broader sense, though, the new rash of anti-trans and pro-discrimination laws popping up as a timely reminder of the persistent danger posed by bigots who don’t give up.
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan: Horror Persists, From Brussels to Cuba — Guantanamo, Cuba, That Is
Daesh-allied militants attacked a European city this week, setting off three bombs in Brussels that killed 31 and injured 260. In the United States, the response was immediate, first with the outpouring of support from the public, then, unsurprisingly, with a flurry of bellicose pronouncements from most of the remaining major-party presidential candidates.
The violence overshadowed what might well be one of the most enduring and significant accomplishments of the Obama presidency: the reopening of relations with Cuba, cemented when he became the first president in 88 years to visit the island nation.
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