My wondering the planet is done for now. The blog will now return to somewhat regular postings. I hope
“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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Trevor Timm: America’s voting system is broken. It’s time to overhaul it
There’s no debate at this point that Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote and the delegate count to win the Democratic primary. But even Clinton supporters should agree that our supposedly “democratic” system for picking nominees for president is terribly broken and should be dramatically overhauled.
It’s not just Bernie Sanders’ campaign that should (and has) argued that the voting system in this country is “rigged”. Virtually every major campaign in both parties griped about how the other was winning at some point during this campaign, and along the way almost all of them were right. [..]
Voting doesn’t have to be complicated. Just look at Oregon. As Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson reported, Oregon has one of the best voting set-ups in the nation: everyone is automatically registered, there are no voter ID laws, you can vote by mail – no lines, no hassles. Ron Wyden has introduced a bill in the US Senate to make those rules national.
Naturally, it has no chance of passing.
Robert Reich: A Public Note to My Friend, Bernie Sanders
Dear Bernie:
I don’t know what you’re going to do from here on, and I’m not going to advise you. You’ve earned the right to figure out the next steps for your campaign and the movement you have launched.
But let me tell you this: You’ve already succeeded. [..]
Regardless of what you decide to do now, you have ignited a movement that will fight onward. We will fight to put more progressives into the House and Senate. We will fight at the state level. We will organize for the 2020 presidential election.
We will not succumb to cynicism. We are in it for the long haul. We will never give up.
Thank you, Bernie.
Bob
Lynn Parramore: Stop Bankers From Robbing Taxpayers
Does the question of morality have a place in the realm of banking and regulation? That it feels awkward to even raise the issue is convenient for bankers who engage in reckless and harmful activities every day without fear of punishment.
Ed Kane, Professor of Finance at Boston College, believes it’s vital to discuss moral questions, in plain English, without abstractions. Following his own advice, he is blunt in characterizing some of the behavior in the banking industry in recent years: “Theft is a forced taking of other people’s resources,” he says. ‘That’s what’s going on here.” Kane urges a deep inquiry into our culture to understand why bankers so commonly get away with crimes in the United States.
In 2007, just before the housing bubble burst, Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein wrote to a colleague to discuss how the bank could deal with toxic mortgages — “ cats and dogs“ as he called them — on the books. Blankfein’s bank went on to sell the toxic junk to unwitting investors who were told they were sound, while taking short positions on the very same securities. As the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report noted, one structured finance expert compared Goldman’s practices to “buying fire insurance on someone’s house and then committing arson.”
Still, Blankfein and his fellow bankers later pocketed billions of dollars from the American people in the form of a bailout. They profited at the expense of their clients and society. Nobody went to jail.
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan:
Cases of rape and lynching were in the courts of California, and in the news around the world, this week. In one case, a student convicted of sexual assault was given a light sentence, while the statement that his victim read to the court went viral, read by millions of people around the globe. In another case, a young African-American woman who founded a local branch of Black Lives Matter and had been charged with “felony lynching” was found guilty and sent to jail. The two cases could not be more starkly different, nor could they, together, better illustrate the vast disparities across race and class lines in our system of justice. [..]
Jasmine Richards was sentenced to 90 days and three years’ probation. Brock Turner, despite his multiple felony convictions for sexual assault, will likely get credit for good behavior and serve about the same amount of time as Jasmine. As for Brock Turner’s victim, her sentence is ongoing. As she said to Turner in court, reading her victim’s statement describing the impact of his attack, “It stays with me, it’s part of my identity, it has forever changed the way I carry myself, the way I live the rest of my life.”
Stephen W. Thrasher: Paul Ryan’s right: Donald Trump’s comments are racism, pure and simple
Maybe you’ve been holding back from calling out that uncle who keeps flaming your Facebook wall with pro-Trump comments, under the guise that he’s really just pro-business and totally not a racist. But now you’ve been given permission to call him out as a racist by no lesser authority than the Republican speaker of the house.
We’ve known for some time now that Trump is as racist against black, Mexican and Muslim people as he is ableist and sexist. When Trump said to “look at my African American over here”, he might as well have said “look at my [n-word]”.
However, when Trump went on a rant about how American judges of Mexican heritage or the Muslim faith could not be fair to him, he achieved what would have seemed impossible just a couple weeks ago: he got journalists with access to him to call out this racism and even got Ryan to call it the “textbook definition of a racist comment”.
But if Trump deploys language that fulfils the textbook definition of racism, if he is racist, then that label extends to his supporters, too. And that’s why you must call them out for racism whenever they reveal themselves, be they your representatives in Congress, your frat brother or Facebook friend – or your mama’s baby brother at the family BBQ.
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