“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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Paul Krugman: Robber Baron Recessions
When Verizon workers went on strike last week, they were mainly protesting efforts to outsource work to low-wage, non-union contractors. But they were also angry about the company’s unwillingness to invest in its own business. In particular, Verizon has shown a remarkable lack of interest in expanding its Fios high-speed Internet network, despite strong demand.
But why doesn’t Verizon want to invest? Probably because it doesn’t have to: many customers have no place else to go, so the company can treat its broadband business as a cash cow, with no need to spend money on providing better service (or, speaking from personal experience, on maintaining existing service).
And Verizon’s case isn’t unique. In recent years many economists, including people like Larry Summers and yours truly, have come to the conclusion that growing monopoly power is a big problem for the U.S. economy — and not just because it raises profits at the expense of wages. Verizon-type stories, in which lack of competition reduces the incentive to invest, may contribute to persistent economic weakness.
Jonathan Capehsrt: Democrats aren’t good at the political revolution thing — and Sanders won’t be any different
A familiar and self-defeating pattern among Democrats is emerging for a fourth consecutive presidential election cycle. It goes something like this: The favored establishment candidate faces a challenge from the left fueled by grass-roots fervor, money and media attention. Whether that challenger wins the nomination (Barack Obama in 2008) or loses (Howard Dean in 2004), there is always talk about how their following is the start of a movement that can no longer be ignored.
That is, until the presidential election is over. After that great day at the polls, despite all the heady talk of political revolution, those fired-up folks go home — and stay there for the next four years. The campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) swears this time will be different. Sorry to be the skunk at the garden party, but it won’t. [..]
Democrats always forget that political revolutions are not quadrennial affairs. They are as consistent as they are persistent in making the dreamed-of revolution a reality. That means showing up at the polls in off-election years, enthusiasm for which Democrats always fail to muster. And the consequences have been dire.
Kristen Breitweiser: Heck, What’s a Little Extortion Among Friends? U.S.-Saudi Relations
On Saturday, Mark Mazzetti wrote an article that appears on the front page of the New York Times called, “Saudis Tell U.S. To Back Off Bill On 9/11 Lawsuits.”
The shocking title alone should make American citizens sit up and take notice. When did the U.S. government start taking orders from foreign nations? Did I miss something? Have we become a foreign territory of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Did Saudi Arabia somehow become a branch of the U.S. government with sway over the President, Congress, and the Judiciary?
Mazzetti documents disturbing details that reveal a U.S. government not just taking and carrying out Saudi orders, but a U.S. President being brought to his knees by Saudi extortion.
Mazzetti also summarizes the Obama Administration’s decision to support the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 families’ right for justice and accountability for the 9/11 attacks.
Adam Clymer; The GOP Mess
The mess the Republicans have got themselves into leaves them facing a likely landslide defeat regardless of whom they nominate for president. So while television, the press and party leaders focus on whether Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or a Sir Galahad to be named later emerges as their candidate, there is a greater, related question lurking. Does about the Republican Party have a future? Or is the Party founded in 1856 no longer Grand, just Old, falling apart, on its way to dissolution?
In its 2016 campaign, the G.O.P. is squandering the political advantages of the recent tradition of changing parties in the White House after eight years and two seriously flawed Democratic contenders. As a result Republicans no longer have a best course of action. Between now and the July convention in Cleveland — a city that suitably once boasted a flammable mayor and a flammable river — they can only choose the least worst course of action. It is months and years too late for a best course, only a least worst.
Neil Gabler: GOP’s greatest outrage of all: The Republican Party is systematically screwing its own voters
Donald Trump has been cranky this week, and the mainstream media don’t seem terribly sympathetic. Apoplectic over the way rival Ted Cruz has managed to pluck delegates from state conventions in Colorado and Louisiana, Trump has called the Republican Party “crooked,” “corrupt,” “rigged” and “dirty.” [..]
This is a scandal of gigantic proportions. The Republican Party has done a plethora of heinous things over the years to the poor and powerless, but to actively prevent people from voting may be their cruelest and most shameful achievement yet.
In no way should this be a partisan issue. It strikes at the very heart of our democracy where, it should go without saying, every effort must be taken to make voting easier. And yet the media don’t seem to be particularly exercised about voter suppression. Why? I think it is because it doesn’t fit the template of scandal the media love to report.
E.J. Dionne, Jr.,: What Clinton and Sanders owe progressives
Compared with the ferocious fractiousness of the Republican campaign, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are operating by rules inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, the gentle, animal-loving holy man whom Pat Buchanan once derided as “the pacifist with the pigeons.”
But with the GOP setting a very high standard for political brutality, that’s not saying much.
Any doubt that Clinton and Sanders are fed up with each other was put to rest in Thursday’s debate. In big block type, the New York Daily News proclaimed them “Brooklyn Brawlers.” They went at each other as if there would be no tomorrow after New York voted. That’s pretty much true.
You sensed from Sanders’s aggressiveness that he knows he’s on the edge of effective elimination. If he does win on Tuesday, he’d throw the Democratic race into turmoil and make Clinton’s path to the nomination much rockier. A Clinton victory in New York, which polls suggest is more likely, would all but seal the deal for her.
So it’s time to ask: Will both candidates now acknowledge that the differences between them are minor compared with the philosophical chasm that separates them from any of their potential Republican foes?
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