“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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Trevor Timm: Why the Panama Papers should be a US election issue
The massive fallout from the Panama Papers investigation – the largest leak of documents in history, which has exposed the tax affairs of the world’s most powerful people – is being felt globally. (The investigation has already captured its first head of government, in the prime minister of Iceland, who resigned on Tuesday.) Yet, so far, the reaction in the US has been muted.
It shouldn’t be. While the investigation has not named any well-known US citizens – though “just wait for what is coming next”, as one of the lead editors said – the scandal should be a critical issue in US presidential election. This is especially true in the Democratic primary, where the story once again calls into question free trade agreements which the party’s elite have been pushing on its rank-and-file for years.
What makes this story particularly relevant is that it was partly predicted by Bernie Sanders when the Obama administration signed the Panama free trade agreement in 2011.
Jill Abramson: Sanders is bad on detail, but he has what Hillary lacks: the spirit of protest
What does Bernie Sanders stand for? Beyond stirring speeches, a candidate must have a plan for policy implementation, a clear programme. But at a recent meeting with the editorial board of the New York Daily News Sanders could not put forth any coherent specifics on how he would go about breaking up the big banks – one of the demands he’s most associated with in the public consciousness. He wasn’t sure whether the Fed had the power do it or Congress, where the legal authority resided. He was shaky on Israel-Palestinian relations. He was fuzzy on a lot else. Then he absurdly called Hillary Clinton “unqualified” to be president.
The Sanders campaign soon realised its mistake. On Friday morning the candidate was busy in television interviews explaining the precise section of the Dodd-Frank legislation that would apply. But this was too little, too late.
Not that the fuzziness mattered to Sanders supporters. His devoted following, mostly white and young, will remain steadfast to the end. Their loyalty to him is reminiscent of the Donald Trump supporters who don’t seem to care whether anything that comes out of his mouth is based on fact.
This is because both of their campaigns are rooted in the narrative of protest. Sanders has erected a big social justice tent that can fit in just about everyone on the left who responds to a call for revolution. But the Daily News session revealed that the revolution may be as impractical and unachievable as Trump’s promise to Make America Great Again.
David Dinielli: Mississippi’s anti-LGBT law defends Christians from imaginary problems
Many people are living in peril in Mississippi right now. I have represented some of them: a lesbian business owner run out of town by small-minded aldermen and a schoolgirl bullied by teachers and a principal because she looked too masculine. I have spoken with a 13-year-old whose father makes him eat out of a dog bowl on the floor because he is gay.
But there is one group of people in Mississippi who are decidedly not under attack. Despite last summer’s monumental US supreme court decision authorizing same-sex marriage, religious conservatives in Mississippi who oppose marriage equality or otherwise disapprove of LGBT people still can attend and worship at the church of their choice. They can go to work without fear of being fired. They can run for and be elected to public office. They can receive appropriate medical care from doctors without being turned away. They can even use public restrooms whenever needed, including in public buildings like courthouses and schools.
This illustrates the great irony of House Bill 1523, the so-called “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” just signed into law by the Republican governor, Phil Bryant. The government doesn’t currently “discriminate” against people because of their religious beliefs about LGBT people; doing so would violate the US constitution and Mississippi law.
Rebecca Solnit: We don’t need self-driving cars – we need to ditch our vehicles entirely
I am rich beyond Google’s wildest driverless-car dreams; I own a fleet of swift and reliable driverless cars that take me where I’m going while I read or stare out the window or watch beautifully limber kids turf dancing in the aisles for my entertainment. I have been riding these liberating transportation marvels for many decades; I have seen the future; it is all of us in these driverless cars we already own together.
OK, by driverless cars I mean vehicles that get me there while I am not driving them, brilliantly efficient vehicles that get by with maybe one human driver per 50 or 500 people. You own them too. We call them buses, streetcars, trains, ferries. I own a car, I take taxis, but I make extensive use of my feet, my bike, and public transit, and the mix works very nicely for this city dweller.
Jan Schakowsky: If you’re rich, you can avoid paying taxes. That’s got to change
The world’s rich, well-connected elite play by a different set of rules from everyone else. The Panama Papers are the latest evidence of this, and the behavior they expose should come as a surprise to no one.
The real scandal here is not the rules people broke, but rather how the richest segment of the world population legally maneuvers to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. They avoid tax liabilities through dodgy offshore accounts and shell companies set up in countries that sell themselves as tax havens.
And these practices extend into the world’s political elite. If the prime minister of Iceland and his wife were holding millions of dollars in an offshore shell company while he was responding to Iceland’s financial crisis, we have to wonder in whose interest he was making those decisions.
It should also come as no surprise that efforts to limit the flow of money to tax havens have been consistently thwarted. If those in positions of power are themselves hiding money overseas, why would they work to stop this practice?
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