Pondering the Pundits

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 Wolffe: Donald Trump is the most un-American president in living memory

Since its earliest days, America has prided itself on having a government of laws, not of men.

The driving idea of John Adams was written into the Massachusetts constitution – the model for the United States, Japan, Germany, India and South Africa – as the best way to build a country free from tyranny.

If you can protect freedom, you can create more freedom for everyone. Or as Bono memorably put it more recently: “America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea of opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.”

So where does that great American idea stand today, 17 months into its 45th presidency?

There have been many hyperbolic words said and written about Donald Trump. No, the rule of law has not come to an end in the gruesome Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale.

But in his own words, thoughts and actions, Trump is surely the most un-American president in living memory. It is no small irony that he wraps his un-American activities in the flag.

Richard Eskow: For Immigrant Children, Empathy Is Not Enough

There’s no “civil” way to say it: The Trump administration is torturing immigrant children. A liberal television personality wept openly for these children a few days ago, and I’m glad she did.

But it’s important to remember that these terrible events reflect more than the profoundly amoral nature of the Trump administration. The suffering of these children aren’t an isolated incident. Their fate is shaped by decades of precedents, through forces that were too often shaped by the same government that torments them today.

As I write these words, my family is welcoming its newest member into this world. The joy of a new child’s birth heightens our natural human instinct for empathy. It makes it even more shocking that we now witness the brutality of a government – our government – as takes children, some as young as eighteen months old, from their parents.

Compassion and empathy for the youngest migrants have been awakened in many people. Empathy is a beautiful thing, but empathy is not enough. It’s time to remember that we also bear historical and moral responsibilities for the plight of these children, so we can dedicate ourselves to stopping the violence against them is all its forms.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Trump’s tax-cut scam will only deepen racism and inequality

The six-month anniversary of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed last week with little fanfare. Despite Republicans’ dishonest spin, most Americans recognize that President Trump’s crowning legislative achievement was a plutocratic heist that will do nothing to help working people. Greedy corporations have used their windfalls to reward chief executives and stockholders, while workers’ wages have actually declined. Barely a third of Americans now support the law.

Yet the racial implications of Trump’s tax scam have been radically underreported and remain poorly understood. While fair tax reform could reduce the impact of structural racism in the economy, the law that Republicans passed in December will make it much worse.

That’s the conclusion of an important new report from economists Darrick Hamilton and Michael Linden of the Roosevelt Institute (where I serve on the board). As the institute has documented, the U.S. economy is shaped by informal rules that create disparities that harm people of color in virtually every part of society. Many of these “hidden rules of race” can be found in the federal tax code.

Dean Baker: Trade: It’s About Class, Not Country

There is a fundamental flaw in the way that both Donald Trump and his critics generally talk about trade. They make it an issue of country versus country, raising the question of whether China, Canada and other trading partners are treating the United States fairly as a country.

Trump of course does this more explicitly with his “America First” rhetoric and complaints about other countries cheating us because they run trade surpluses, but his critics also often use similar language. After all, it is common for the adults in the room to make assertions about China’s theft of “our” intellectual property.

Have you had any intellectual property stolen by China?

The economist and policy types who have been pushing the trade agenda of the last four decades often make assertions like “everyone gains from trade.” This is what is known in the economics profession as a “lie.”

Jessica Valenti: Trump officials don’t get to eat dinner in peace – not while kids are in cages

Republicans are very worried about “civility” these days. They’re mad that the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was forced to leave a Washington DC restaurant after being confronted by protesters, upset that Stephen Miller was called a fascist when the White House adviser was eating Mexican food, and horrified that the press secretary, Sarah Sanders, was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant by the establishment’s owner. Some young Trump supporters in DC are even down in the dumps that they can’t seem to get a date.

We’re told that the left is being intolerant at best, and at worst – as one Fox News contributor put it – a “mob” that is “approaching near anarchy”.

They haven’t seemed to consider the simplest answer: that when you do and defend terrible things, people don’t really want to be around you.

There’s a reason that actor Seth Rogen, for example, declined to take a picture with Paul Ryan recently; or why Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi was met by protesters when she left a showing of the Mr Rodgers documentary. Americans are horrified by what Republicans are doing to this country, and most urgently, what they’re doing to children.