“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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Richard Trumka: Don’t Let Trump Speak for Workers
“I am your voice,” President-elect Donald J. Trump declared at the Republican National Convention. In another campaign speech, he told his supporters, “I alone can fix it.”
Before he has even taken office, Mr. Trump has tried that go-it-alone strategy on behalf of American workers. He has browbeaten Carrier into reversing a decision to move some jobs from Indiana to Mexico, and he attempted — unsuccessfully — to do the same with Rexnord, which owns a neighboring manufacturing plant. But publicity stunts and Twitter rants are no substitute for a comprehensive, coherent economic strategy that invests in America and lifts up the voices and the power of working people.
Working people do not want a savior to speak for us. We want to raise our own voices through our unions — and those voices are more essential than ever. The share of income going to the middle class has fallen in almost perfect correlation with the declining percentage of people working in jobs where they enjoy a union. Collective, democratic representation in the workplace is essential to shared and durable economic prosperity.
Leon Friedman: Donald Trump And The Constitution
One of Donald Trump’s plans when he becomes president is to strike back at the press for the negative stories they print about him. During the primary season, he made these comments about our libel laws. “One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading. I’m going to open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.” He repeated these remarks in October after he won the Republican nomination: “Well, in England they have a system where you can actually sue if someone says something wrong. Our press is allowed to say whatever they want and get away with it. And I think we should go to a system where if they do something wrong . . . . then yes, I think you should have the ability to sue them.”
Presumably Trump is concerned that once he becomes president, the press will examine each and every word and act of his presidency and comment adversely on what he does. There are at least three problems with his plan to “open up” the libel laws. [..]
The First Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, outweighs any act of Congress. Libel, defamation or slander involve acts of speech or of the press. Thus they are protected by the First Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Sullivan. Regardless of what Trump can persuade Congress to do, the current Court is not likely to overrule one of its greatest and most important precedents.
Jim Hightower: Crony Capitalism Made Rick Perry Our Energy Secretary
Rick Perry has taken quite a tumble since being governor of Texas. He was a twice-failed GOP presidential wannabe and then ended up being a rejected contestant on Dancing with the Stars, the television show for has-been celebrities.
But now, having kissed the ring of Donald Trump, Perry is being lifted from the lowly role of twinkle-toed TV hoofer to — get this — taking charge of our government’s nuclear arsenal.
That’s a position that usually requires some scientific knowledge and experience. But as we’re learning from Trump’s other cabinet picks, the key qualification that Trump wants his public servants to have is a commitment to serve the private interests of corporate power.
That’s why Perry — a devoted practitioner of crony capitalism and a champion of oligarchy — has been rewarded with this position.
Steven Strauss: ‘Why Is Trump So Militantly Against An Investigation Into Putin’s Meddling In Our Elections?’
The American intelligence community’s consensus is that Russia launched significant cyber attacks on the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign, that these attacks were authorized by Putin, and they were intended to aid Trump’s presidential chances, by damaging Clinton’s.
Oddly, a glaring holdout about Russia’s culpability is President-elect Trump. Without any evidence or basis whatsoever, Trump angrily dismissed claims of Russian interference as ridiculous, and launched “a blistering attack“ on the American intelligence community for raising these issues.
Trump’s supporters claim he’s resisting an investigation because he considers it a plot to undermine his legitimacy. This stance, however, seems, at best, misguided and, at worst, not believable. If Trump had announced that – although convinced they hadn’t influenced the election, he was outraged by these attacks on his fellow citizens and our election process, and stood with President Obama in getting to the bottom of this – he’d likely be getting applause from everyone.
Miklos Haraszti: I watched a populist leader rise in my country. That’s why I’m genuinely worried for America.
Hungary, my country, has in the past half-decade morphed from an exemplary post-Cold War democracy into a populist autocracy. Here are a few eerie parallels that have made it easy for Hungarians to put Donald Trump on their political map: Prime Minister Viktor Orban has depicted migrants as rapists, job-stealers, terrorists and “poison” for the nation, and built a vast fence along Hungary’s southern border. The popularity of his nativist agitation has allowed him to easily debunk as unpatriotic or partisan any resistance to his self-styled “illiberal democracy,” which he said he modeled after “successful states” such as Russia and Turkey.
No wonder Orban feted Trump’s victory as ending the era of “liberal non-democracy,” “the dictatorship of political correctness” and “democracy export.” The two consummated their political kinship in a recent phone conversation; Orban is invited to Washington, where, they agreed, both had been treated as “black sheep.”
When friends encouraged me to share my views on the U.S. election, they may have looked for heartening insights from a member of the European generation that managed a successful transition from Communist autocracy to liberal constitutionalism. Alas, right now I find it hard to squeeze hope from our past experiences, because halting elected post-truthers in countries split by partisan fighting is much more difficult than achieving freedom where it is desired by virtually everyone.
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