“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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Eugene Robinson: Trump ‘pivots’ 360 degrees, back into the mud
Donald Trump’s “pivot,” desperately hoped for by sane Republicans, was over before it began. He couldn’t pretend to be inclusive and statesmanlike for two days in a row if his life depended on it.
Anyone who doubts this should only consider Trump’s idea of an appeal to African American voters: “What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose? You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
That’s right, black Americans. The Republican candidate for president says you live Hobbesian lives of misery and despair, with no options, no prospects, no joy, no hope. Oh, and he wants your vote.
Media Benjamin: Congress Must Take Action to Block Weapon Sales to Saudi Arabia
Last week, the Pentagon announced the approval of the sale of an additional $1.15 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. The callousness of this announcement – just days after Saudi Arabia rebooted its devastating bombing campaign in Yemen – is breathtaking. The Saudi-led coalition has used American-made fighter jets, bombs and other munitions in a relentless onslaught against Yemen that has left thousands of innocent civilians dead and created a humanitarian crisis that the United Nations characterizes as a “catastrophe.” In just the last few days, the Saudi-led coalition has killed at least 35 people – most of them women and children – in three airstrikes against a school, a residential neighborhood and a hospital in northern Yemen.
Congress has thirty days to block the sale of these weapons. It is a moral imperative that they do so. [..]
The Saudi aggression is only possible with U.S. weapons and logistical support. The U.S. government has authorized the sale of $20 billion of American-made weapons to the Saudis since their offensive began 18 months ago. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)says this makes the U.S. complicit in a humanitarian crisis. “If you talk to Yemeni Americans, they will tell you in Yemen this isn’t a Saudi bombing campaign, it’s a U.S. bombing campaign,” said Sen. Murphy. “Every single civilian death inside Yemen is attributable to the United States.”
Steven Rosenfeld: Mike Pence Has Pushed Hard for School Privatization With Lousy Results
Mike Pence is a hardcore right-winger playing the long game, especially when it comes to privatizing public schools.
It’s not just that the Republican vice-presidential nominee and Indiana governor last weekend told a roomful of deregulation-obsessed executives and lobbyists in Indianapolis, “You are the model for Washington, DC, after this election. You really are.”
The nation is “at a fork in the road,” Pence said at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual meeting, referring not only to who would be president for the next four years but who would control the Supreme Court for the “next 40 years.” [..]
Pence was no stranger to the stage of ALEC, a corporate-funded behemoth that drafts bills and finds right-wing lawmakers to carry them. He’s been an ALEC fixture for years, touting deregulation, privatization and extreme social conservatism. But he’s best-known for a personal focus on supplanting traditional public education, notably embracing taxpayer-funded vouchers so parents can send kids to K-12 private schools and aggressively expanding privately run charter public schools.
As is typical at ALEC, Pence praised enterprise and deregulation, and said a Trump administration would result in “empowering states with resources and flexibility.” But a closer look at his Indiana record of privatizing education, where the ALEC model has been in play, has shown it to be a brazen and failed experiment.
Robert Reich: Why a Single-Payer Healthcare System is Inevitable
The best argument for a single-payer health plan is the recent decision by giant health insurer Aetna to bail out next year from 11 of the 15 states where it sells Obamacare plans.Aetna’s decision follows similar moves by UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, and by Humana, another one of the giants.
All claim they’re not making enough money because too many people with serious health problems are using the Obamacare exchanges, and not enough healthy people are signing up.
The problem isn’t Obamacare per se. It lies in the structure of private markets for health insurance – which creates powerful incentives to avoid sick people and attract healthy ones. Obamacare is just making this structural problem more obvious.
In a nutshell, the more sick people and the fewer healthy people a private for-profit insurer attracts, the less competitive that insurer becomes relative to other insurers that don’t attract as high a percentage of the sick but a higher percentage of the healthy.
Eventually, insurers that take in too many sick and too few healthy people are driven out of business.
Paul Buchheit: Escalating the War on Low-Income Families
Illinois Governor Rauner recently cut “Meals on Wheels” for seniors and at-risk youth services. Chicago residents were hit with a nearly 13% property tax increase. Some Chicago public schools could face 2017 cutbacks of an incredible 20 percent.
But six of Illinois’ largest corporations together paid ALMOST ZERO state income taxes this year. Full payment of their taxes would have exceeded the $1.1 billion Chicago Public School deficit.
It’s much the same around the nation, as 25 of the largest U.S. corporations, with over $150 billion in U.S. profits last year, paid less than 20% in federal taxes, and barely 1% in the state taxes that are vitally important for K-12 education.
Because of the missing corporate tax revenue, House Republicans have tried to break even by proposing cuts to programs that are essential to mothers and children, such as Centers for Disease Control health programs, family planning, contraception, and—unbelievably, again!—food stamps. It is estimated that almost two-thirds of the proposed cuts would largely impact low- and moderate-income families.
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