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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Paul Krugman: The Great Snake Oil Slump
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A G.O.P. presidential candidate loses the popular vote, but somehow ends up in the White House anyway. Despite his dubious legitimacy, his allies in Congress take advantage of his election to ram through a huge tax cut that blows up the budget deficit while disproportionately benefiting the wealthy. While the big bucks go to the big incomes, however, the tax bill does throw some crumbs at the middle class, and Republicans try to sell the bill as a boon to working families.
So far this account applies equally to George W. Bush and Donald Trump. But then the story takes a turn. The Bush sales job was effective: While the 2001 tax cut wasn’t overwhelmingly popular, more people approved than disapproved, and it provided the G.O.P. with at least a modest political boost. But the Trump tax cut was unpopular from the start — in fact, less popular than past tax hikes.
And this tax cut doesn’t seem to be winning more support over time. Most Americans say they don’t see any positive effect on their paychecks. Public approval of the tax cut seems, if anything, to be falling rather than rising. And Republicans have pretty much stopped even mentioning the bill on the campaign trail.
Which raises the question: Why doesn’t snake oil sell like it used to?
Vincent M. Southerland and Johanna B. Steinberg: Boehner Benefits From Weed. Blacks Are in Prison for Using It.
If you want to see an example of staggering hypocrisy in the criminal justice system, consider the contrast between Fate Vincent Winslow, a prisoner in Louisiana, and John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is a former speaker of the House of Representatives.
A decade ago, an undercover police officer approached Mr. Winslow, a homeless black man, and asked for help buying marijuana. Mr. Winslow desperately needed the money, so he helped the officer buy two dime bags for a $5 profit. For that, he is serving life without parole for distribution of marijuana in the infamous Angola prison.
Last week, Mr. Boehner announced that he will join the board of Acreage Holdings, a marijuana cultivation and distribution company, citing the drug’s therapeutic benefits for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. This is the same John Boehner who declared himself “unalterably opposed” to legalization in 2011 and who voted to prohibit medical marijuana in the District of Columbia in 1999. [..]
The problem here is not Mr. Boehner’s evolution in thinking on marijuana. Drug policies should be informed by science, and Mr. Boehner’s shift on marijuana mirrors that of a majority of Americans who now support legalization.
The problem is with race. As white people exploit the changing tide on marijuana, the racism that drove its prohibition is ignored. So are the consequences for black communities, where the war on drugs is most heavily waged.
Eugene Robinson: Trump is smashingly successful — at sowing utter confusion
The Trump administration is succeeding wildly at one thing: sowing utter confusion about its foreign policy.
Perhaps “foreign policy” is the wrong term. “International lurchings” might be more apt. Allies and adversaries alike are having to learn which pronouncements to take seriously, which to ignore and which are likely to be countermanded by presidential tweet.
President Trump announces he has accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, whose nuclear arms and ballistic missiles have provoked a dangerous crisis. No groundwork for such a meeting has been laid, so the president dispatches an envoy on a secret mission to Pyongyang — not a diplomat but CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump couldn’t send his secretary of state because, at the moment, he doesn’t have one. Pompeo is his nominee for the job.
On Wednesday, the president says he really, truly intends to go through with the meeting — unless it seems the encounter will not be productive, in which case he won’t meet with Kim after all. If there is a meeting, but it doesn’t seem sufficiently “fruitful,” Trump says, “I will respectfully leave the meeting, and we’ll continue what we’re doing or whatever it is that we’ll continue, but something will happen.”
Got that? “Something will happen.” The possible outcomes range from hurt feelings to nuclear war.
Catherine Rampell: The United States is mortgaging its future
American exceptionalism has meant many things over the years, often referring to our spirit and commitment to individual liberty.
Today it could refer to our exceptional fiscal recklessness.
In its newly released April 2018 Fiscal Monitor, the International Monetary Fund projected that the United States is the only — yes, only — advanced economy in the world expected to have its debt burden get worse over the next five years.
Every other rich country, including perennial fiscal basket cases such as Greece and Italy, is projected to lower its debt as a share of its economy. That is thanks in large part to the global economic recovery, which is bringing in more tax revenue and reducing the need for expensive automatic stabilizers such as unemployment benefits.
Here in the United States, though, we’ve taken our economic recovery and squandered it.
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