“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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Tammy Duckworth: Congress wants to make Americans with disabilities second-class citizens again
At the signing ceremony, President George H.W. Bush noted that before the ADA, “tragically, for too many Americans, the blessings of liberty have been limited or even denied. The Civil Rights Act of ’64 took a bold step towards righting that wrong. But the stark fact remained that people with disabilities were still victims of segregation and discrimination, and this was intolerable.” Bush declared, “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”
Decades later, the forces of discrimination are working hard to rebuild that wall. Led by the hospitality and retail industries, special interests want to shift the burden of ADA compliance away from business owners and onto individuals with disabilities. They’re backing a bill that has already passed the House Judiciary Committee, the so-called ADA Education and Reform Act, which would reward businesses that fail to comply with the law. The bill would allow businesses to wait until they are notified of their failure to meet legal obligations before they even have to start removing barriers that prevent Americans with disabilities from leading independent lives.
This offensive legislation would segregate the disability community, making it the only protected class under civil rights law that must rely on “education” — rather than strong enforcement — to guarantee access to public spaces. As the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities Rights Task Force and other civil rights organizations wrote in opposing this bill, “We know of no other law that outlaws discrimination but permits entities to discriminate with impunity until victims experience that discrimination and educate the entities perpetrating it about their obligations not to discriminate.”
Richard North Patterson: Protecting America From Its President
At the White House, protecting America from its president is a full-time job
The spectacle is unnerving. On vital issues, the president is at war with key members of his Cabinet.
Donald Trump threatens to abandon the Iran nuclear deal; Secretary of Defense James Mattis tells Congress we should honor the agreement. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson supports maintaining “lines of communication” with North Korea concerning its nuclear threat; Trump tweets that the secretary is “wasting his time.” Now Tillerson is enduring disclosures that he told other senior officials that America’s president is a “moron.” Beneath this injudicious truth lies something without precedent.
President Trump’s enthusiasts imagine a “deep state” — hostile bureaucrats conspiring to thwart his will. Hardly. Our bureaucracy is far too transparent and diffuse to frustrate presidential power. Instead, several of Trump’s key appointees have formed a fragile alliance, striving to check his most damaging behaviors. “I know for a fact,” Senator Bob Corker says flatly, “that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.”
Natalie Nougayrède: Donald Trump is ripping up the alliances that keep the world safe. We must defend them
Five months ago, Donald Trump’s national security adviser HR McMaster penned a column attempting to persuade the world that “America first” did not mean “America alone”. Last week Trump took two decisions that landed the US in a strikingly lonely position: he pulled his country out of Unesco, and took a massive swipe at the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
The two moves were very different, but both demonstrated utter disdain for the mechanisms and principles of multilateralism, as enshrined in the UN-based international order. Unesco was created to promote culture and education as a vehicle for peace. The Iran accord was painstakingly negotiated by Trump’s predecessor, along with America’s allies Russia and China, to thwart the danger of all-out war across the Middle East and possibly beyond. Importantly, it was unanimously endorsed by UN resolution 2231. That kind of consensus does not come easily – and now it is being wrecked.
Dean Baker: Wages Are Growing, Contrary To What You Read In The Papers
There is much to criticize about the U.S. economy. There has been a massive upward redistribution of income over the last four decades. As a result, those at the top have gotten incredibly rich while the middle and bottom have seen almost nothing from the growth over this period.
The recent past has been even worse. Millions of people lost their homes in the collapse of the bubble, pushing the ownership rate to the lowest level in more than 50 years. For African Americans the ownership rate fell to the lowest level on record.
The Great Recession pushed the unemployment rate into the double digits, with the unemployment rate for African Americans exceeding 17 percent at its peak. The recovery has been long and slow. While the unemployment rate has finally fallen back to pre-recession levels, the employment rate for prime age workers (ages 25 to 54) is still 1.5 percentage points below pre-recession peaks and 3.0 percentage points below the peak reached in 2000. The weakness in the labor market led to a sharp falloff in real wages for those at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution.
Lindy West: Yes, This Is a Witch Hunt. I’m a Witch and I’m Hunting You.
It is unclear what possessed Woody Allen, of all people, to comment on the accusations of sexual predation against Harvey Weinstein, when he could have just not said anything, not expressed sympathy for an alleged serial rapist, not accused long-silenced women who said they were sexually assaulted of contributing to “a witch hunt atmosphere” and not felt compelled to issue a pouty follow-up statement in which he didn’t apologize but, in fact, reiterated how “sad” he feels for Weinstein because Weinstein is “sick.”
I’m kidding! It’s totally clear why Allen would issue such a statement — why he wouldn’t hesitate to include the astonishing confession that “no one ever came to me or told me horror stories with any real seriousness,” implying that people did tell him about Weinstein but he, with that odd omniscience native to the very rich, deemed them insufficiently serious. It’s also totally clear why Allen felt untouchable enough to add that even if he had believed the “horror stories,” he wouldn’t have been interested, let alone concerned, because he is a serious man busy making serious man-art. He said people wouldn’t bother coming to him anyway, because, as he described it: “You’re not interested in it. You are interested in making your movie.” (That last bit is fair, actually. If I’d been sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, literally my last instinct would be to go to Woody Allen for help.)
It’s clear because the cultural malfunction that allows Allen to feel comfortable issuing that statement is the same malfunction that gave us Allen and Weinstein in the first place: the smothering, delusional, galactic entitlement of powerful men.
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