“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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Charles M. Blow: This Is a Man Problem
It is impossible to say too often or loudly how important a moment this is, when many women feel brave and empowered enough to speak up about being sexually assaulted or harassed by powerful men.
It feels like a watershed, like something is fundamentally shifting.
But the greatest measure of fundamental change will be when everyday offenses by everyday people are also named and shamed, the trickle down of speaking up.
For most women, the perpetrator is not a Hollywood executive, or a sitting senator or an esteemed journalist. For most, there will be no press conferences if they come forward. There will be no celebrity attorney to sit at their sides and stroke their hands. There will be no morning news shows to praise their courage.
For most, the decision to speak up will still feel fraught and without sufficient benefit to outweigh the possibility of negative repercussions.
John Naughton: How a half-educated tech elite delivered us into chaos
One of the biggest puzzles about our current predicament with fake news and the weaponisation of social media is why the folks who built this technology are so taken aback by what has happened. Exhibit A is the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, whose political education I recently chronicled. But he’s not alone. In fact I’d say he is quite representative of many of the biggest movers and shakers in the tech world. We have a burgeoning genre of “OMG, what have we done?” angst coming from former Facebook and Google employees who have begun to realise that the cool stuff they worked on might have had, well, antisocial consequences.
Put simply, what Google and Facebook have built is a pair of amazingly sophisticated, computer-driven engines for extracting users’ personal information and data trails, refining them for sale to advertisers in high-speed data-trading auctions that are entirely unregulated and opaque to everyone except the companies themselves.
David Callahan: Why is Donald Trump launching a withering attack on nonprofits?
Not so long ago, conservative thinkers and Republican leaders were strong champions of private charity. George HW Bush talked about a “thousand points of light”, while his son created a new White House office to engage nonprofits.
But lately the right’s love affair with philanthropy and civil society has fizzled. Donald Trump – whose claims of generous giving were debunked during the campaign – has shown no interest in forging partnerships between government and philanthropy since taking office. He has wooed a parade of business executives and minor celebrities while largely ignoring leaders from the nonprofit world – save for allies on the religious right such as Jerry Falwell Jr.
The administration’s proposed cuts to agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Arts would choke off billions of dollars in grants that flow to universities, hospitals, museums and community development groups.
Jill Abramson: Have we reached zero tolerance for sexual misconduct?
Have we arrived at a zero tolerance moment for sexual misconduct by powerful men? Al Franken could be the test case.
In 2006, he is alleged to have forcibly kissed a woman. There is also a photo of him posing, like a jackass, appearing to grope her breasts as she slept. The photo, posted by the woman on Twitter, is already a classic of the #MeToo movement.
Still, I see a wide gulf between Harvey Weinstein, facing rape allegations, and Franken’s admitted misconduct. Franken was not yet elected to public office when this photo was taken. He was not the woman’s boss. He has sincerely apologized and called for a Senate ethics investigation of himself.
These are mitigating circumstances.
I worry that zero tolerance does not allow for such distinctions. The immediate calls for Franken to resign, some coming from Democratic progressives and feminist columnists, concerns me.
Bruce Bartlett: Republican tax cuts will hurt Americans. And Democrats will pay the price
I think many Democrats and independent political observers are puzzled by the intensity with which Republicans are pursuing their tax cut. It’s not politically popular and may well lead to the party’s defeat in next year’s congressional elections. So why do it?
The answer is that Republicans are pushing the tax cut at breakneck speed precisely because they know they are probably going to lose next year and in 2020 as well. The tax cut, once enacted, however, will bind the hands of Democrats for years to come, forcing them to essentially follow a Republican agenda of deficit reduction and prevent any action on a positive Democratic program. The result will be a steady erosion of support for Democrats that will put Republicans back in power within a few election cycles.
The theory was laid out almost 30 years ago by two Swedish economists, Torsten Persson and Lars EO Svensson. In a densely written article for the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1989, they explained why a stubborn conservative legislator would intentionally run a big budget deficit.
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