Punting the Pundits

“Punting 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.

Robert Reich Why the Unfolding Disaster in Pakistan Should Concern You

The human tragedy unfolding in Pakistan right now demands our full attention.

Flooding there has already stranded 20 million people, more than 10 percent of the population. A fifth of the nation is underwater. More than 3.5 million children are in imminent danger of contracting cholera and acute diarrhea; millions more are in danger of starving if they don’t get help soon. More than 1,500 have already been killed by the floods.

This is a human disaster.

It’s also a frightening opening for the Taliban.

Yet so far only a trickle of aid has gotten through. As of today (Thursday), the U.S. has pledged $150 million, along with 12 helicopters to take food and material to the victims. (Other rich nations have offered even less – the U.K., $48.5 million; Japan, $10 million, and France, a measly $1 million. Today (Thursday), Hillary Clinton is speaking at the UN, seeking more.)

This is bizarre and shameful. We’re spending over $100 billion this year on military maneuvers to defeat the Taliban in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. Over 200 helicopters are deployed in that effort. And we’re spending $2 billion in military aid to Pakistan.

More must be done for flood victims, immediately.

Paul Krugman: Appeasing the Bond Gods

As I look at what passes for responsible economic policy these days, there’s an analogy that keeps passing through my mind. I know it’s over the top, but here it is anyway: the policy elite – central bankers, finance ministers, politicians who pose as defenders of fiscal virtue – are acting like the priests of some ancient cult, demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods.

Hey, I told you it was over the top. But bear with me for a minute.

Late last year the conventional wisdom on economic policy took a hard right turn. Even though the world’s major economies had barely begun to recover, even though unemployment remained disastrously high across much of America and Europe, creating jobs was no longer on the agenda. Instead, we were told, governments had to turn all their attention to reducing budget deficits.

Bob Herbert: Too Long Ignored

A tragic crisis of enormous magnitude is facing black boys and men in America.

Parental neglect, racial discrimination and an orgy of self-destructive behavior have left an extraordinary portion of the black male population in an ever-deepening pit of social and economic degradation.

The Schott Foundation for Public Education tells us in a new report that the on-time high school graduation rate for black males in 2008 was an abysmal 47 percent, and even worse in several major urban areas – for example, 28 percent in New York City.

The astronomical jobless rates for black men in inner-city neighborhoods are both mind-boggling and heartbreaking. There are many areas where virtually no one has a legitimate job.

More than 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. And I’ve been hearing more and more lately from community leaders in poor areas that moms are absent for one reason or another and the children are being raised by a grandparent or some other relative – or they end up in foster care.

Rep. Alan Grayson: Verizon-Google: There’s a Hard Rain Coming

“(Barry) Diller asserted that the Google-Verizon proposal “doesn’t preserve ‘net neutrality,’ full stop, or anything like it.” Asked if other media executives were staying quiet because they stand to gain from a less open Internet, he said simply, “Yes.” New York Times, August 12, 2010

The Verizon-Google Net Neutrality Proposal begins by stating that “Google and Verizon have been working together to find ways to preserve the open Internet.” Well, that’s nice. Imagine what they would have come up with if they had been trying to kill off the open Internet.

Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. Because that’s what this is. An effort to kill off the open Internet.

Much of the coverage of the Verizon-Google Proposal has focused on only one of the proposal’s many problems: the fact that the proposal allows wireless broadband carriers — like, say, Verizon, for instance — to discriminate in handling Internet traffic in any manner they choose. They can charge content providers, they can block content providers, and they can slow down content providers, just as they please. That sure doesn’t sound “neutral.”

We’ve already seen examples of political censorship over mobile networks. In 2007, Verizon refused to run a pro-choice text message from advocacy group NARAL, due to its supposedly ‘unsavory’ nature. Yes, this happened; yes, this kind of censorship would be continue to be legal under the Google-Verizon deal; and yes, Google, this is evil.

Judith S. Kaye, former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals: Judging the Judge: A Matter of Rights and Wrongs

Every day, judges are called upon to resolve issues profoundly affecting the lives of our citizenry. Despite their diverse backgrounds and life experiences, men and women of good character are united in their commitment to decide each case fairly and impartially, consistent with their oaths of office.

No one would today argue that women judges cannot fairly preside over claims of sexual harassment, or that African-American judges should be disqualified from race discrimination cases. Yet word is now being circulated that the judge who presided over the federal trial regarding the constitutionality of Proposition 8 is gay and therefore should have recused himself from the case.

On August 4, 2010, United States District Court Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker held in a 136-page opinion that “Plaintiffs have demonstrated by overwhelming evidence that Proposition 8 violates their due process and equal protection rights” under the United States Constitution and struck down that law. Proposition 8 is the California ballot initiative that eliminated the right of same-sex couples to marry.

In the interest of full disclosure, I mention that in 2006, as Chief Judge of New York State’s highest court, I dissented from the decision that the New York Constitution does not guarantee same-sex marriage rights. I write, however, not to address the merits of the constitutional issue but to challenge the attacks on Chief Judge Walker designed to influence the outcome of the California case as it enters into the appellate stage and feed the insidious fiction that judging is a political process in which judges decide cases based on personal agendas or political or religious beliefs.

Joe Conanson: Why Rick Lazio wants to debate mosques, not money

For the New York GOP candidate, no topic is as sensitive as his dubious career in bank lobbying and deal making

No Republican politician has sought to inflame concerns about a Muslim community center in lower Manhattan so long, so loudly and so persistently as New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio. Best known until now for losing the 2000 Senate race to Hillary Clinton despite spending $45 million, Lazio has talked about almost nothing but the so-called “ground zero mosque” for the past month.

During the past few weeks he has demanded a probe of the Park51 project’s finances by Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and he then challenged Cuomo to a debate focused solely on the mosque. Admirably, Cuomo has brushed aside such crap by observing that the Constitution guarantees all Americans freedom of religion and that the government cannot forbid the construction of a church, temple or mosque by American citizens on private property.