“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.
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Bryce Covert; Larry Summers Is Out, but the Boys’ Club Is as In as Ever
The thing is, increasing diversity isn’t easy, and it’s not just because the pipeline of talented women pushing for the top sometimes runs dry. It’s because men have dominated the upper echelons of society, be it policymaking or otherwise, for centuries, and therefore bringing in more women means reaching outside the close at hand, the people you already know, those who you might already be friends with.
Obama has a boys’ club problem. Larry Summers was reportedly playing golf with the president while the debate raged about who would get the pick. We can be sure that Yellen didn’t get such access-of the sixteen people who most frequently play golf with the president, not a single one is a woman. Every journalist has given off-the-record access to is a man. And then there’s the famous photo of a nearly all-male group of senior advisers briefing the president, except for the leg of Valerie Jarrett. In some ways it’s understandable that most of the people who surround the president are men. Many of the already powerful and successful in this country are. But a commitment to diversity has to be proactive, going beyond the boundaries of the in club to find those who haven’t been invited yet.
Rebecca Manski: Wall Street’s Long, Occupied History
Today marks the beginning of the third year since Occupy Wall Street activists got off the Internet and began their real-world occupation at Zuccotti Park. Inspired by the home of the Egyptian revolution at Tahrir Square – tahrir means “Liberty” in Arabic – the new occupiers restored the park’s original name, Liberty Plaza. (Some also called it “Liberty Square.”) In the two months of the occupation, many thousands of people came from far and wide to converge on that magnetic, contested space.
Zuccotti Park was first called “Liberty Plaza” for good reason. It’s situated in a neighborhood that has been the site of struggles for liberation ever since European colonists first arrived. Occupy added one more chapter to an area already steeped in a history of resistance.
Exactly five years since the onset of the financial crisis, income data released this morning by the Census Bureau indicates that the spike in poverty triggered by the recession has become the status quo. Middle-class incomes are stagnant, too.
The numbers come as House Republicans move to kick as many as 4 million Americans off food stamps by cutting $40 billion from the program. In their budget proposals, conservatives are also proposing to maintain the deep sequestration reductions that have cut tens of thousands of young children out of Head Start, as well as childcare assistance, Meals On Wheels for seniors, unemployment benefits, and housing assistance.
Roxanne Gay: Reading the Stakes in Syria
The world is a fragile and often incomprehensible place. Syria has been embroiled in a civil conflict since March 2011. According to United Nations estimates, more than 60,000 are dead. There are 1.5 million Syrian refugees who have sought safety in neighboring countries. The Assad regime offers no indication it will cede power and the rebel opposition may not provide a viable alternative if they defeat Assad.
The Syrian conflict is complicated by so much circumstance. World leaders don’t want a repeat of the Iraq war but they also don’t want to sit idly by, bearing silent and impotent witness so that another genocide on the scale of what happened in Bosnia occurs. Syria is, unfortunately, not so much a country in the minds of many. It is a political problem or opportunity and most of the proposed solutions to the Syria problem serve the interests of everyone but the Syrian people.
Ana Marie Cox: All the news that Syria made unfit to print
When one story dominates the news cycle for days on end, it’s not just tedious; we’re also less well-informed on crucial issues
In the past few weeks, the western world has received a crash course about Syria, its sectarian conflicts, and the world’s skittish alignment around those issues. Last week, the Pew Center for People and the Press found that 68% of those polled were following news about Syria either “very closely” or “fairly closely”. (Perhaps we will get better at finding it on a map!”) [..]
And, of course, the newfound interest in this years-old cataclysm has meant that loud but flawed coverage of Syria pushed out of the spotlight other, compelling, and just as important stories. This is perhaps a glass-teat-half-empty point of view. Lord knows, it’s better that people know more about humanitarian crises than less. But it’s also important to know what’s slipped through the cracks, as Americans have been staring into the abyss.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: GOP madness on display
Five years after the onset of the worst financial collapse in our history, we still have not recovered. President Obama used the fifth anniversary of the financial collapse to remind Americans of the “perfect storm” he inherited, and of the steps he took to save the economy from free fall, rescue the auto industry and save the financial system. [..]
Obama used this backdrop to set the terms of the coming debate on the budget. The Republican right is once more gearing up to hold America hostage, threatening to shut down the government or default on our debts to get its way.
The House and Senate Republican leaders want more deep cuts in spending that will cost jobs, and cut investments vital to our future in everything from education to R&D. For the tea-party right led by Texas freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, that’s not sufficient. Backed by deep-pocket outside groups like the Club for Growth, they are calling for shutting down the government unless Obamacare is defunded.
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