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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
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Dean Baker: Why Do the Media Provide Cover for Austerity Cranks, Like the Folks Running the EU?
It’s not uncommon to read new stories that quite explicitly identify economic mismanagement. For example, news reports on the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe routinely (and correctly) attribute the cause to the poor economic management by its leaders. We will see similar attributions of mismanagement to a wide range of developing countries.
One place we will never see the term mismanagement, or any equivalent term, applied is in reference to the austerity imposed on the euro zone countries by the European Commission, acting largely at the direction of the German government. In fact, major news outlets, like the New York Times, seem to go out of their way to deny the incredible harm done to euro zone economies and to the lives of tens of millions of people in these countries, as a result of needless austerity. [..]
In short, the NYT and other media outlets have been engaged in a great exercise in misdirection. While the blame for Europe’s economic problems over the last decade can very clearly be laid at the doorstep of its leaders who have insisted on austerity, the media consistently ignore evidence that is as clear as day. They instead treat the problems facing Europe’s workers as being mysterious in origin or due primarily to an overly generous welfare state and excessive regulations that protect workers. This is some seriously biased and/or misinformed reporting.
Robert Reich: ‘You’re fired!’ America has already terminated Trump
Robert Mueller’s soon-to-be-delivered report will begin months of congressional investigations, subpoenas, court challenges, partisan slugfests, media revelations, and more desperate conspiracy claims by Donald Trump, all against the backdrop of the burning questions: Will he be impeached by the House? Will he be convicted by the Senate? Will he pull a Richard Nixon and resign?
In other words, will America fire Trump?
I have news for you. America has already fired him.
When the public fires a president before election day, as it did Jimmy Carter, Nixon and Herbert Hoover, they don’t send him a letter telling him he’s fired.
They just make him irrelevant. Politics happens around him, despite him. He’s not literally gone but he might as well be.
It has happened to Trump. The courts and House Democrats are moving against him. Senate Republicans are quietly subverting him. Even Mitch McConnell told him to end the shutdown.
The Fed is running economic policy. Top-level civil servants are managing day-to-day work of the agencies.
Isolated in the White House, distrustful of aides, at odds with intelligence agencies, distant from his cabinet heads, Trump has no system to make or implement decisions.
Reverend William Barber and Dr Liz Theoharis: America faces many emergencies. The ‘border crisis’ isn’t one of them
In declaring a national emergency to fund an unnecessary border wall this month, Donald Trump has provoked a conversation about what the word “emergency” actually means.
Forget the manufactured border crisis, let’s talk about the real emergencies facing the nation today. Right now in America, there are 140 million people living in poverty or just one paycheck or emergency away from poverty. Thirty-seven million people live without healthcare and 62 million are paid less than a living wage. Fourteen million families cannot afford water and millions are living with poisoned water and without sanitation services. We suffer under an impoverished democracy that has less voting rights today than it did after the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.
In other words, there is a national emergency of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the war economy. And it didn’t start with President Trump, though he is certainly making things worse. The truth is, neither party has done what we need to address this real emergency, despite the fact that our deepest religious and constitutional values compel us to care for the vulnerable, welcome the immigrant, pay workers what they deserve, and organize society around the needs of the poor.
Cliff Albright: The real national emergency is the US’s damaged electoral process
Ever since Donald Trump declared a national emergency last week, many elected officials and pundits have highlighted a wide range of issues which are far more deserving of emergency status. From climate change to gun violence, there is no shortage of policy issues that are quite literally matters of life or death.
Of all the emergencies that this country currently faces, the electoral process and the overall health of US democracy may be the most daunting. I say “may be” only because the crisis of US democracy is itself a symptom of the country’s original sin: racism.
Nevertheless, the damaged electoral process is the emergency which determines whether other emergencies can be successfully addressed. Without fair and free elections, the county cannot adequately deal with the threat of climate change, massive student debt, crumbling infrastructure or healthcare for all.
Bill McKibben: The Hard Lessons of Dianne Feinstein’s Encounter with the Young Green New Deal Activists
One imagines that Senator Dianne Feinstein would like a do-over of her colloquy with some young people on Friday afternoon. A group of school students, at least one as young as seven, went to the senator’s San Francisco office to ask her to support the Green New Deal climate legislation. In a video posted online by the Sunrise Movement, she tells them that the resolution isn’t a good one, because it can’t be paid for, and the Republicans in the Senate won’t support it. She adds that she is at work on her own resolution, which she thinks could pass. Then, when the group persists in supporting the Green New Deal, which was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Feinstein responds, “You know what’s interesting about this group? I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that. I’ve gotten elected, I just ran, I was elected by almost a million-vote plurality,” she continued. “And I know what I’m doing. So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit.”
Well, maybe. But Feinstein was, in fact, demonstrating why climate change exemplifies an issue on which older people should listen to the young. Because—to put it bluntly—older generations will be dead before the worst of it hits. The kids whom Feinstein was talking to are going to be dealing with climate chaos for the rest of their lives, as any Californian who has lived through the past few years of drought, flood, and fire must recognize.
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