“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”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: Why Corruption Matters
Remember all the news reports suggesting, without evidence, that the Clinton Foundation’s fund-raising created conflicts of interest? Well, now the man who benefited from all that innuendo is on his way to the White House. And he’s already giving us an object lesson in what real conflicts of interest look like, as authoritarian governments around the world shower favors on his business empire.
Of course, Donald Trump could be rejecting these favors and separating himself and his family from his hotels and so on. But he isn’t. In fact, he’s openly using his position to drum up business. And his early appointments suggest that he won’t be the only player using political power to build personal wealth. Self-dealing will be the norm throughout this administration. America has just entered an era of unprecedented corruption at the top.
The question you need to ask is why this matters. Hint: It’s not the money, it’s the incentives.
Dean Baker The Slow, Painful Death of the TPP
In spite of the hopes of many elite types for a last-minute resurrection, it appears that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is finally dead. This is good news, but it took a long time to kill the deal, and the country is likely to pay a huge price for the execution. [..]
If our trade deals were actually about free trade instead of increasing profits for the pharmaceutical, software and entertainment industries, this is the direction trade negotiators would be looking. But given the fealty of our politicians to major corporate interests, they don’t even want to see alternatives to government-granted monopolies discussed. There’s no time for real free trade in these people’s minds.
If the politicians want to get serious about real free trade agreements, it is easy to come up with progressive directions for such deals. In the meantime, we can celebrate the well-deserved death of the TPP, which has proved to be enormously costly for the country.
The decision by proponents of the TPP to push ahead with their deal almost certainly cost Hillary Clinton the election. Trade was a big issue in swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the people who cared about trade overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. So the TPP might be dead, but we will have to deal with its legacy in the form of President Trump.
E.J. Dionne, Jr.: An ethical double standard for Trump — and the GOP?
Republicans are deeply concerned about ethics in government and the vast potential for corruption stemming from conflicts of interest. We know this because of the acute worries they expressed over how these issues could have cast a shadow over a Hillary Clinton presidency.
“If Hillary Clinton wins this election and they don’t shut down the Clinton Foundation and come clean with all of its past activities, then there’s no telling the kind of corruption that you might see out of the Clinton White House,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
Presumably Cotton will take the lead in advising Donald Trump to “shut down” his business activities and “come clean” on what came before. Surely Cotton wants to be consistent. [..]
If Trump wasn’t ready to put his business life behind him, he should not have run for president. And if Republicans — after all of their ethical sermons about Clinton — do not now demand that the incoming president unequivocally cut all of his and his family’s ties to his companies, they will be fully implicated in any Trump scandal that results from a shameful and partisan double standard.
Bruce Fein: History Overrules Odious Supreme Court Precedent
Carl Higbie, former Navy SEAL and spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America PAC, insinuated on Fox News with Megyn Kelly that the president-elect might legally target Muslims for adverse treatment in reliance on the Supreme Court’s World War II precedent in Korematsu v. United States (1944). That reliance would be misplaced.
Korematsu upheld racist concentration camps for 120,000 “not-yet-guilty” Japanese American citizens or permanent resident aliens. Although the Court has never overruled Korematsu, history has done so — just as Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 overruled the racist decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) declaring that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Korematsu was procured by government fraud. The United States falsely avowed to the Supreme Court that the urgency of time foreclosed individualized determinations of whether Japanese Americans posed a national security risk justifying internment. The genuine reason was quite different.
s. e. smith: The First Amendment Defense Act Will Be Back
Remember the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), the “right to discriminate against LGBQT people” bill? Introduced last summer, it’s been festering away in the back corners of Congress, but in 2017, it’s likely to roar back onto the agenda — and, moreover, it’s likely to pass. If it does, president-elect Donald Trump has already pledged to sign it into law, and it will change the American landscape forever.
To understand why this bill is worrying so many LGBQT Americans, and some religious officiants too, we have to take a little walk deep into the bowels of Congress, conservative Christianity and the culture wars dominating the American landscape.
On the surface, a First Amendment Defense Act sounds nice, right? We’re all big fans of the First Amendment. The unique protections it offers, and freedom of speech, religion and the press should lie at the core of American values. But the intent of this bill, and the problem, are bound up right in the summary line: “To prevent discriminatory treatment of any person on the basis of views held with respect to marriage.” [..]
In other words, FADA argues that freedom of religion isn’t just about the freedom to believe, and talk about your beliefs. It also requires the imposition of your values on other people — even if that infringes upon their own rights.
Recent Comments