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: On Paying for a Progressive Agenda
Whoever gets the Democratic nomination, she or he will run in part on proposals to increase government spending. And you know what that will mean: There will be demands that the candidate explain how all this will be paid for. Many of those demands will be made in bad faith, from people who never ask the same questions about tax cuts. But there are some real questions about the fiscal side of a progressive agenda.
Well, I have some thoughts about that, inspired in part by looking at Elizabeth Warren’s proposals on both the tax and spending side. By the way, I don’t know whether Warren will or even should get the nomination. But she’s a major intellectual figure, and is pushing her party toward serious policy discussion in a way that will have huge influence whatever her personal trajectory.
In particular, Warren’s latest proposal on child care – and the instant pushback from the usual suspects – has me thinking that we could use a rough typology of spending proposals, classified by how they might be paid for. Specifically, let me suggest that there are three broad categories of progressive expenditure: investment, benefits enhancement, and major system overhaul, which need to be thought about differently from a fiscal point of view.
Jennifer Rubin: Graham sums up how stupid the GOP has become
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in a number of ways epitomizes the Republican Party’s descent into intellectual rot and immoral opportunism. Graham as a candidate called out President Trump as a bigot and “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party.”
As one of the late Sen. John McCain’s closest friends, Graham decried autocrats, stood up for human rights and castigated President Barack Obama for failing to exercise global leadership. He considered himself a defender of the military and our national intelligence community.
He’s now among the worst apologists for Trump — vowing to investigate unsubstantiated smears of the Justice Department and FBI and insisting there was no collusion between the Trump team and the Russians (despite evidence of Paul Manafort’s meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik, the Trump Tower June 2016 meeting and the Roger Stone-WikiLeaks connection.)
Harry Litman: To get Trump’s tax returns, Democrats just need to send a letter
There were widespread expectations when the Democrats took control of the House that an early, if not the first, order of business would be to go after President Trump’s tax returns.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said this month that the House would pursue the returns, something she noted Americans overwhelmingly support. But she added, “We have to be very, very careful as we go forward. It’s not an issue of just sending a letter. You have to do it in a very careful way.”
Actually, it is more or less an issue of just sending a letter. Pelosi, and House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), are being unduly skittish.
Neal has declined even to offer a timeline of when he would seek the returns. He has suggested that the request will provoke a “long and arduous” court case, analogous to the subpoena battles that Congress in recent years has waged to at best checkered results.
But there is a critical difference in the legal authorities governing a request for tax returns and a general congressional subpoena.
Max Boot: Americans’ ignorance of history is a national scandal
Is the study of history becoming, well, history?
According to Benjamin Schmidt of Northeastern University, the number of bachelor’s degrees granted in history declined from 34,642 in 2008 to 24,266 in 2017 even as other majors, such as computer science and engineering, have seen rising enrollments. Today fewer than 2 percent of male undergraduates and fewer than 1 percent of females major in history, compared with more than 6 percent and nearly 5 percent, respectively, in the late 1960s. History departments are cutting courses and curtailing hires because of falling enrollments. The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point may even abolish its entire history department. History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past — and leave just as unenlightened.
A survey by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that “more Americans could identify Michael Jackson as the composer of ‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’ than could identify the Bill of Rights as a body of amendments to the U.S. Constitution,” “more than a third did not know the century in which the American Revolution took place,” and “half of the respondents believed the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation or the War of 1812 were before the American Revolution.” Oh, and “more than 50 percent of respondents attributed the quote, ‘From each according to his ability to each according to his needs’ to either Thomas Paine, George Washington or Barack Obama.” It used to go without saying that this was one of Bernie Sanders’s most famous lines. (Wait. I may be confused.)
Richard Wolffe: Trump’s reaction to McCabe shows he may be the most useless of them all
Unlike love and God, Donald Trump does not work in mysterious ways.
Since Andrew McCabe’s barnburner of a book landed late last week, the 45th president has tweeted more about the ex-acting director of the FBI than he has about his beloved and utterly bonkers wall along the southern border. Talk about a national emergency.
He even commemorated Presidents’ Day by accusing McCabe, along with the leaders of his own justice department (DoJ) and most of western civilization, of acting illegally because they had the temerity to question the loyalties and legalities of one Donald Trump. This is surely what past presidents and Congresses had in mind when they created a national holiday to celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
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