“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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Dean Baker: A Trade Deal for the 21st Century: An Alternative to the TPP
It looks like the major media outlets are doing their full court press to lay the groundwork for the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In recent weeks the news and opinion pages have been filled with articles and columns on the wonders of trade and why all good people should support trade deals like the TPP.
In fact, some of what these pieces say about the wonders of trade is true, there can be large benefits to countries from trading and there is no doubt that the United States is enormously richer as a result of international trade. But that hardly means that everyone was benefitted by the patterns of trade over the last three decades, nor is it a reason to support the TPP.
But let’s be positive about trade. It is possible to envision a different pattern of trade which will offer benefits for the bulk of the population of the United States and also for our trading partners in the developing world.
New York Times Editorial Board: Republicans and Voter Suppression
It’s become an accepted truth of modern politics that Republican electoral prospects go up as the number of voters goes down. Conservatives have known this for a long time, which helps explain their intensifying efforts to make it harder to vote, or to eliminate large numbers of people from political representation entirely.
On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected one of the more extreme attempts — a lawsuit from Texas that aimed to reverse longstanding practice and require that only eligible voters be counted in the drawing of state legislative districts.
Texas, like virtually everywhere else in the country, applies the court’s “one person, one vote” rule by counting all people living in a district, regardless of whether they can vote. The legal challenge to that practical approach came from white conservatives living in Republican-leaning rural areas. They said this diminished their political power and increased the political power of Texas’ urban areas, where more minorities — particularly Latinos, who are disproportionately not citizens — tend to live.
Paul Krugman: Cities for Everyone\
Remember when Ted Cruz tried to take Donald Trump down by accusing him of having “New York values”? It didn’t work, of course, mainly because it addressed the wrong form of hatred. Mr. Cruz was trying to associate his rival with social liberalism — but among Republican voters distaste for, say, gay marriage runs a distant second to racial enmity, which the Trump campaign is catering to quite nicely, thank you.
But there was another reason associating Mr. Trump with New York was ineffective: Old-fashioned anti-urban rants don’t fit with the realities of modern American urbanism. Time was when big cities could be portrayed as arenas of dystopian social collapse, of rampant crime and drug addiction. These days, however, we’re experiencing an urban renaissance. New York, in particular, has arguably never been a more desirable place to live – if you can afford it.
Unfortunately, ever fewer people can. That’s the bad news. The good news is that New York’s government is trying to do something about it.
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Richard North Patterson: The Reckoning of 2016: The Supreme Court and Reproductive Rights
Whether you support Bernie or Hillary, how many of you want Republicans to abolish freedom of reproductive choice?
I thought so. But here’s the kicker — in much of the country, the GOP already has.
For millions of American women, freedom of choice is writ on water. And if you abandon your party’s nominee, whoever that may be, millions more may suffer.
By musing aloud about punishing women once the GOP completes its relentless drive to stamp out abortion rights, Donald Trump has reminded us yet again of the stakes in this election. On the issue of choice, as with so much else, our national reckoning is now at hand and cannot be wished away.
Put simply, the president who selects Antonin Scalia’s successor will determine the future of reproductive rights. That is not hyperbole — it is already graven on the American landscape.
Andrew Bacevich: Writing a Blank Check on War for the President
Let’s face it: in times of war, the Constitution tends to take a beating. With the safety or survival of the nation said to be at risk, the basic law of the land — otherwise considered sacrosanct — becomes nonbinding, subject to being waived at the whim of government authorities who are impatient, scared, panicky, or just plain pissed off.
The examples are legion. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln arbitrarily suspended the writ of habeas corpus and ignored court orders that took issue with his authority to do so. After U.S. entry into World War I, the administration of Woodrow Wilson mounted a comprehensive effort to crush dissent, shutting down anti-war publications in complete disregard of the First Amendment. Amid the hysteria triggered by Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order consigning to concentration camps more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, many of them native-born citizens. Asked in 1944 to review this gross violation of due process, the Supreme Court endorsed the government’s action by a 6-3 vote.
More often than not, the passing of the emergency induces second thoughts and even remorse. The further into the past a particular war recedes, the more dubious the wartime arguments for violating the Constitution appear. Americans thereby take comfort in the “lessons learned” that will presumably prohibit any future recurrence of such folly.
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