Tag: Punting the Pundits

Do you want to live in a country where Internet Service Providers can slow down and censor your internet traffic at will, where the NSA has vastly more power than it does today and where end-to-end encryption may be illegal? Then Jeb Bush is the Republican presidential contender for you: he has positioned himself as the anti-internet candidate in an election where internet rights have never mattered more.

A lot of the White House candidates have made worrying comments about the future of surveillance and the internet – from Chris Christie’s bizarre vow to track 10 million people like FedEx packages, to Hillary Clinton’s waffling on encryption backdoors – but Jeb Bush’s deliberate campaign to roll back internet rights is the perfect storm of awful. {..]

Too often internet and privacy rights get relegated to the end of the table when election season rolls around. But the issues have never been more mainstream – NSA reform and net neutrality rules, unthinkable eight years ago, are all of a sudden inevitable. And the idea that Jeb Bush wants to take those rights away and saddle the internet with yet more corporate control and government surveillance is disturbing, to say the least.

Greg Gonsalves: Martin Shkreli Is Just a Tiny Part of a Huge Problem

Americans were outraged over his 5,000 percent price hike of a life-saving drug. They should see what Big Pharma has in store.

This week, the Internet’s object of hate was Martin Shkreli, the 32-year-old hedge-funder turned CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who jacked up the price of Daraprim, an old drug used to treat parasitic infections in the immunosuppressed, from $13.50 to $750 per pill. At first, Shkreli seemed to relish the controversy, taking to Twitter and various talk shows to defend his actions. But his tone-deaf justifications and brash, antagonistic tweets only fueled the backlash. Shkreli was denounced on Twitter as “human garbage,” “a monster,” and “a sociopath.” Politicians from Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump called him out, and even the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America (PhRMA) disassociated itself from him. Within a few days, Shkreli vowed to reduce the price of the drug-although that did not stop Internet activists from doxing Shkreli by posting his OK Cupid profile, home address, and phone number.

It’s tempting to declare that the Internet triumphed over Shkreli and, in turn, the pharmaceutical industry, but in reality the whole episode is only a tiny skirmish in a long-running battle that drug companies have been waging against the American people. Sadly, the American people are losing the fight-badly-and haven’t paid much attention to the hosing they are getting.

Wenonak Hauter: China Cap-and-Trade Program Not What the Climate Needs

The reported move by China to enact a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions will not begin to solve our climate crisis. Pollution trading signifies a dangerous reliance on the market to address a problem that only a decisive move away from fossil fuels and to renewables can truly solve.

Through a system of ‘credits’ and dubious and unverifiable offsets, cap-and-trade programs essentially create a commodity out of pollution, allowing for financial corporations to profit from polluting industries.

Furthermore, scrutiny of such programs show they don’t work. A recent analysis of the Joint Implementation (JI) program enacted under the Kyoto Protocol in Europe found that only 14 percent of the claimed greenhouse gas reduction offsets under the program were even ‘plausible.’ The offset program resulted in the equivalent of about 600 million additional metric tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.

Hugh McMillan: Private Water and Fracking, a Dubious Duo

Last week, I got to be a fly on the wall at Shale Insight 2015 in Philadelphia, the annual conference of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, which includes companies working at all stages of gas drilling, fracking, processing and distribution As you can imagine, I heard some concerning things I while there, but among the more revealing “break-out sessions” was a love-fest between the oil and gas industry and private water industry, sponsored by American Water, the largest private water company in the country.

American Water has aggressively privatized water systems in Pennsylvania and sees dollar signs in the fracking industry’s relentless thirst for water – up to 10 million gallons of water to frack some wells. [..]

Though this partnership may be great if your goal is to generate profits, it is not in the best interest of Pennsylvania residents, who are concerned with ensuring safe affordable water for generations to come.

Thank Martin Shkreli for demonstrating that we can’t depend on the market to deliver the drugs we need

Over the weekend Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli raised the price of the malaria and toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill, an action that outraged people nationwide and made them question why pharmaceutical companies have unilateral power to raise prices on the drugs on which so many of us depend. [..]

n an ironic twist, we can thank Shkreli for illuminating the disconnect between public health’s humane motives and biotech firms’ profit motives. Leaving drug development up to the market puts us at risk of prioritizing the health of people who can afford healthcare over the health of people who cannot. While a few politicians have called for regulations on drug prices, this would be treating the symptoms of the problem instead of the cause.

An increase in public funding for pharmaceutical research would address the cause of these problems. It would ensure that even unprofitable drugs might be developed. And while this would be an expensive undertaking – researchers estimates that each new compound the Food and Drug Administration approves costs $2.6 billion to develop – publically funded pharmaceutical research would ensure that people’s suffering is not judged by their net worth. And it could stop the Martin Shkrelis of the world from harming people’s lives by meddling with their medications.

Dave Johnsom: VW Case Shows Need for More and Bigger Government

Again and again we hear about corporations doing bad things so they can make more money: polluting, selling contaminated food or otherwise harming people’s health, selling products that injure people or just don’t do what they advertise, tricking and scamming people out of their money, selling banned goods or providing financial services for terrorists or drug cartels, and so many other things that are not good for people or society.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were some entity that was more powerful than these corporations, whose purpose is to protect us, reign these corporations in, make and enforce rules, prosecute offenders and put a stop to this stuff? [..]

Our government supposedly exists to protect We the People from wealthy and powerful interests, including other countries. Our revolution against the wealthy British aristocracy and the King’s corporations testify to this. A government that is “of the people, by the people and for the people” should be big enough, strong enough and funded enough to reign in companies and billionaires, and protect We the People from the kind of corporate misbehavior we saw from Volkswagen — long, long, long before it involves 11 million cars all spewing out serious threats to public health.

Judith Solomon: Defunding Planned Parenthood Would Undermine Women’s Care in Medicaid

Barring federal funding for Planned Parenthood, as some in Congress favor, would have a devastating impact on women’s access to health care services through Medicaid — especially family planning services — and put many women’s health at risk.

Nearly 400,000 low-income women would lose access to care under the one-year funding prohibition that the House passed recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates.  Moreover, by making it harder for women to get family planning services, defunding Planned Parenthood would raise state and federal Medicaid costs for unplanned pregnancies. [..]

Eliminating federal funds for Planned Parenthood for even one year would undercut future savings from avoiding unplanned pregnancies, while depriving hundreds of thousands of low-income women of critical family planning and other women’s health services.

Joseph Marguiles: Open the lid on US torture

The public deserves to know what the CIA did in its name

I thought things might be changing earlier this year, but I was wrong.

In January, Barack Obama’s administration announced what seemed to be a major change in policy: Henceforth, former prisoners of the Central Intelligence Agency would be allowed to describe their life in custody. Though they could not identify CIA personnel or disclose where they were tortured, the new rule allowed them to provide “information regarding [their] treatment” and “conditions of confinement.”

That was a big deal, and those of us who represent the men tortured by the CIA welcomed the news. Attorneys for Majid Khan, a former CIA prisoner, promptly sought permission to disclose his description of his torture. Among other abuses, he was subjected to what the CIA euphemistically calls rectal infusions but what prosecutors all over the country call anal rape.

After some back and forth, the government allowed Khan’s lawyers to release his account to the public. Reuters published the account, and for the next 24 hours, the article was one of the most popular stories on Reuters’ 17 websites worldwide, which gives some indication of the public interest in this information.

And that was apparently the end of the administration’s very brief dalliance with transparency.

The Obama administration prosecutes fraud by peanut CEO, but not by car or finance executives

Barely a week after the Justice Department announced it would pursue individual wrongdoers in corporate crimes, a policy mocked as just reheated cabbage in the headline of my last column, Justice served up some reheated cabbage.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates declared that the policy was real reform: “We mean it when we say, ‘You have got to cough up the individuals.’ ”

The next week Justice settled with General Motors over faulty ignition switches that killed more than 120 people who lost control of their vehicles, the airbags failing to deploy. GM will pay $900 million, recall 2.6 million cars and offer some money to survivors and families of the dead, most of which were unable to collect damages because of GM’s 2009 bankruptcy.

Before the first car with a faulty ignition switch was sold more than decade ago, GM knew that the ignition switches were prone to fail, court papers show.

Yet despite knowing there would be deadly consequences, GM neither changed the design nor warned motorists, a callous disregard for the lives not just of customers but also of everyone else on the road.

Were there individuals named in the GM settlement with Justice? No. Were criminal charges filed for this deadly and long-running conspiracy? No.

Steven W. Thrasher: Disaster capitalism is a permanent state of life for too many Americans

In the United States, disaster has become our most common mode of life. Proof that our daily existence was something other than a simmering, smoldering disaster has been historically held somewhat at bay by the myth that hard work equals some kind of subsistence living. For the more deluded amongst us, this ‘American dream’ even got us to believe we could be something called ‘middle class’. We were deceived.

For those not yet woke, I don’t see how y’all can stay asleep when story after story proves how screwed we are.

The New York Post, no bastion of bleeding heart liberalism, reported on Monday that “Hundreds of full-time city workers are homeless”. These are people who clean our trash and make our city, the heart of American capitalism, safe and livable, including for those who plunder the globe from Wall Street. These are men and women, living in shelters and out of their cars, who have government jobs – the kind of workers conservatives love to paint as greedy, gluttonous pigs.

Sen Bernie Sanders: We Must End For-Profit Prisons

The United States is experiencing a major human tragedy. We have more people in jail than any other country on earth, including Communist China, an authoritarian country four times our size.  The U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate about a quarter of its prisoners — some 2.2 million people.

There are many ways that we must go forward to address this tragedy.  One of them is to end the existence of the private for-profit prison industry which now makes millions from the incarceration of Americans.  These private prisons interfere with the administration of justice. And they’re driving inmate populations skyward by corrupting the political process.

No one, in my view, should be allowed to profit from putting more people behind bars — whether they’re inmates in jail or immigrants held in detention centers. In fact, I believe that private prisons shouldn’t be allowed to exist at all, which is why I’ve introduced legislation to eliminate them.

Jeffrey Sachs: Rational Drug Pricing

Drug pricing has taken center stage in U.S. politics, and it’s high time that it should. The soaring prices for drugs like Sovaldi ($1,000 a pill) and the recent hike of Deraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill after the supplier was bought by a shady hedge-fund manager, have caused white-hot fury in the public. Corporate lobbyists and their friends in the media spout free-market platitudes about why the sky-high prices are necessary to promote innovation. It’s time for a serious understanding of the policy issues.

Drug pricing is not like the pricing of apples and oranges, clothing, or furniture that well and good should be left to the marketplace. There are two major reasons. First, the main cost of drug production is not the cost of manufacturing the tablet but the cost of producing the knowledge embedded in the tablet. Second, there is often a life-and-death stake in access to the drug, so society should take steps to ensure that the drug is affordable and accessible. [..]

Second, the government grants patent rights for drug discovery. A patent gives a 20-year exclusive right to make, use, or sell an invention, effectively a 20-year monopoly. This allows companies to boost their prices, earn monopoly profits, and thereby recoup the costs of the R&D that went into the drug discovery.

European authorities have chosen to prolong Greek depression

What are we to make of Syriza’s victory in the Greek elections on Sunday? As in January, Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras will be able to form a parliamentary majority in coalition with the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party. On the other hand, they are now committed to implementing a harsh, deeply unpopular austerity program that even its advocates among the European authorities acknowledge will keep the Greek economy in depression through the end of this year and next.

Does this mean that the battle for Greece’s future is over, and that those who claimed that there was no alternative to prolonged depression, mass unemployment and a more unequal and frankly, uglier society have won?

There is no question that the European authorities – the European Central Bank, the European Commission and eurogroup of finance ministers (led by Germany) – and the International Monetary Fund have for now succeeded in imposing their will on Greece. On July 5, the vast majority of Greeks voted to reject their economic plan, including further austerity. But the ECB did something that perhaps no central bank had ever done: It forced a shutdown of the Greek banking system. This caused economic havoc that pushed the economy back into recession, and threated to prolong and deepen the depression that Greeks had already suffered for six years. This act of financial terrorism worked: Syriza made a U-turn following the referendum, accepting the European officials’ plan, and told the Greek people that there was no choice.

Eugene Robinson: Trump, Carson, Rand Paul and Other GOP Candidates Defy the Constitution with Anti-Muslim Bigotry

The founders of this nation recognized Islam as one of the world’s great faiths. Incredibly and disgracefully, much of today’s Republican Party disagrees.

Thomas Jefferson, whose well-worn copy of the Quran is in the Library of Congress, fought to ensure that the American concept of religious freedom encompassed Islam. John Adams wrote that Muhammad was a “sober inquirer after truth.” Benjamin Franklin asserted that even a Muslim missionary sent by “the Mufti of Constantinople” would find there was “a pulpit at his service” in this country.

Indeed, the Constitution states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Some of the GOP candidates for president, however, simply do not care. [..]

On the campaign trail, GOP candidates are touting their own Christian faith in what can only be described as a literal attempt to be holier than thou. They should reread the Constitution, which says “no religious test”-not “only the religious test that I can pass.”

Jeb Lund: The Trump juggernaut took out Scott Walker. But he may live to run again

The experiment in seeing if Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker could be elected president, which began with energetic music and a decorated hall packed with supporters waving signs is over after only about 70 days. Walker held its eulogy in the sort of dismal hotel meeting room you see at conventions for dental certification in a new kind of gum gauze. [..]

But that final moment, in which he could have said anything he wanted, was as bereft of ideas as the campaign necessitating it. Walker began by citing Ronald Reagan’s optimism, ignoring that Reagan campaigned on optimism after the deserved negativity of the nation after Nixon’s resignation and the Church Committee. (Ignore, too, that Reagan campaigned on a rejection of Jimmy Carter’s call for the embrace of the values of work, anti-materialism and sacrifice, offering Americans instead a buy-now/pay-never consumptive celebration that a generation of Boomers embraced the moment they had to pay the bills for a safety net their parents built and for which everyone else has been paying for 35 years and counting. That’s Scott Walker’s lodestar.)

The Republican assault on Planned Parenthood is filled with lies and distortions, and may even lead to a government shutdown.

The only thing we can say for sure about it is it’s already harming women’s health.

For distortions, start with presidential candidate Carly Fiorina’s contention at last week’s Republican debate that a video shows  “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’ ”

Wrong. In fact, the anti-abortion group that made that shock video added stock footage of a fully-formed fetus in order to make it seem as if that’s what Planned Parenthood intended.

But as Donald Trump has demonstrated with cunning bravado, presidential candidates can say anything these days regardless of the truth and get away with it.

Robert Kuttner: America’s Collapsing Trade Initiatives

Chinese president Xi Jinping will be in Washington this week on an official state visit. President Obama had hoped to impress Xi with an all but sealed trade deal with major Pacific nations called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to demonstrate that America is still a force to be reckoned with in China’s backyard.

But Obama’s trade policy is in tatters. The grand design, created by Obama’s old friend and former Wall Street deal-maker, trade chief Mike Froman, comes in two parts — a grand bargain with Pacific nations aimed at building a U.S.-led trading bloc to contain the influence of China, and an Atlantic agreement to cement economic relations with the European Union.

Both are on the verge of collapse from their own contradictory goals and incoherent logic.

James Powell: If Congress won’t listen to exploited workers, will they listen to the pope?

The pope has denounced the “structurally perverse” global economic system that exploits the poor. His message is about workers like me. I’m the chef at the Senate dining room inside the US Capitol. I work for a UK-based multinational conglomerate that makes billions in profit yet leaves workers around the globe destitute.

I prepare breakfast and lunch for the US senators, several of whom are running to be the next president of the United States. When the pope comes to deliver his message to Congress on 24 September, I hope his words encourage the senators to open their hearts to the suffering of the working poor who serve them every day.

In recent months, my co-workers and I have walked off our jobs several times to protest poverty pay and shared our stories of struggle in these pages. Despite our strikes and our heart-breaking stories, the Senate has not taken any action to help us win living wages and a union. Even worse, the Senate has allowed our company to threaten and try to intimidate us into silence.

John Nichols:  Bernie Sanders Offers GOP Debaters a Tutorial on Democratic Socialism

 Bernie Sanders earned quite a few mentions in the second round of Republican debates, which at the very least offers a measure of the extent to which the senator from Vermont has become a factor in the 2016 presidential race.

Sanders was not generally referred to by name, but his democratic socialism came up frequently enough.

Republicans in both debates on Wednesday night noted the fact the Democratic presidential race has been shaken up by “a socialist”-employing a term that at the Reagan Presidential Library is still considered a choice epithet.

Before turning on the Republican debate on Wednesday night, I had begun writing an article on Hillary Clinton’s alarmingly bellicose foreign policy ideas. But Hillary’s hawkish stance is a portrait of restraint in contrast to the adolescent muscle flexing and locker room taunts that mark the foreign policy exchanges of the Republican presidential contenders in their most recent debate.

The competitive bluster got so fierce that Donald “I am the most militaristic person” Trump turned out to be one of the least unhinged in the claque. After 14 years of costly, destabilizing war in the Middle East, these candidates pledge, you ain’t seen nothing yet. [..]

If you want a president to lead us into constant wars “anywhere in the world,” Republicans have your man.

America, of course, must lead this effort. Republicans disagree about how many troops are needed, or whether we can simply train and arm our surrogates while raining bombs from drones across various regions.  [..]

There is a dangerous vacuum on foreign policy – a vacuum caused by the withdrawal of common sense and prudence, and filled with unhinged bluster and blind belief in the military. Listening to Republicans, one can only shudder at the fate of our country.

Ralph Nader: General Motors: Homicidal Fugitive from Justice

Yes, it’s official. General Motors engaged in criminal wrongdoing for long knowing about the lethal defect in its ignition switch that took at least 174 lives and counting, plus serious injuries. At least 1.6 million GM cars – Chevrolet Cobalt and other models – hid this danger to trusting drivers, according to the Center for Auto Safety (http://www.autosafety.org/).  Corporation executives who lie to or mislead the federal government violate Title 18 of the federal code, and risk criminal penalties.

But, the long-mismanaged automaker was not required by the Justice Department to plead guilty at all. Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney from New York, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch did not bring an indictment against either General Motors or known culpable officials in GM, including top GM lawyers and safety directors, who participated in the cover-up year after year, while lying to federal officials and not reporting these defects.

Eric Margolis: Russian Mouse Threatens US Elephant

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”  So echoed the cry this week from the Pentagon, the US media and  Republican candidates for president.

How silly.  It seems the Russians have sent six tanks to Syria, some medium artillery and a bunch of military technicians to two bases on Syria’s coast near Latakia.   According to Republican warmongers, the wicked Soviets…ooops, sorry, Russians…are intervening militarily in the five-year old Syrian War and planning new bases in the strategic Mideast nation.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.  The United States has about 800 bases and military installations around the globe. Russia has only a handful of small bases near its borders.

The exception is in Syria where Russia has had a small naval supply/repair facility in Tartus and an electronic listening post for almost 50 years.  Moscow has long been Syria’s principal foreign ally and arms supplier.

While the US ruled almost the entire Mideast – what I call the American Raj – Syria was regarded as a limited  Soviet/Russian sphere of influence.   No more.

John Nichols: Debaters a Tutorial on Democratic Socialism

The Republican candidates had a lot to say about the senator, and he has something to say to them.

Bernie Sanders earned quite a few mentions in the second round of Republican debates, which at the very least offers a measure of the extent to which the senator from Vermont has become a factor in the 2016 presidential race.

Sanders was not generally referred to by name, but his democratic socialism came up frequently enough.

Republicans in both debates on Wednesday night noted the fact the Democratic presidential race has been shaken up by “a socialist” – employing a term that at the Reagan Presidential Library is still considered a choice epithet.  [..]

Sanders followed the debate on social media. His humorous, mildly-sarcastic tweeting of the main Republican debate went viral. And his Facebook post on the debate “garnered over 176,000 likes and 35,000 shares,” which according to The Hill newspaper was better than for any of the Republican contenders.

“The evening was really pretty sad. This country and our planet face enormous problems. And the Republican candidates barely touched upon them tonight. And when they did, they were dead wrong on virtually every position they took. The Republican Party cannot be allowed to lead this country,” observed Sanders on Facebook. “That’s why we need a political revolution.”

The best way to help kids like Ahmed Mohamed is to reject the suspicious mindset that has gripped Americans since 9/11

Fourteen years after 9/11, the United States remains in an artificially sustained state of emergency best encapsulated by the oft-repeated Orwellian catchphrase: “If You See Something, Say Something™.”  This ubiquitous edict and its variants still appear in transportation hubs and public buildings across the country, nudging us to never take anything at face value, treating every perceived oddity and fleeting discomfort as a potential threat.

It was this poisonous mentality that was at work Monday, when school administrators in Irving, Texas, had a Muslim teenager arrested for bringing a homemade digital clock to school after a teacher said it looked like a bomb. Ahmed Mohamed, a talented 14-year-old with a well-known aptitude for electronic tinkering, told the Dallas Morning News that he built the clock in 20 minutes the previous night to impress his engineering instructor. By 3 p.m., Ahmed was suspended from school and being escorted out of McArthur High School in handcuffs.

Robert Sheer: Fools, Fascists and Cold Warriors: Take Your Pick

Are they fools or fascists? Probably the former, but there was a disturbing cast to the second GOP debate, a vituperative jingoism reminiscent of the xenophobia that periodically scars western capitalist societies in moments of disarray.

While the entire world is riveted by the sight of millions of refugees in terrifying exodus attempting to save drowning and starving children, we were treated to the darkly peculiar spectacle of scorn for the children of undocumented immigrants and celebration of the sanctity of the unborn fetus.

Marching to the beat of that mad drummer Donald Trump, the GOP candidates have taken to scapegoating undocumented immigrants, particular the young, blaming them for all that ails us. Most of the GOP contenders appeared as a shrill echo of the neo-fascist European movements of late, adopting the traditional tactic of blaming the most vulnerable for economic problems the most powerful have caused.

Robert Creamer: Why the Republicans Secretly Hate the Assimilation of Legal Immigrants

Well the debate is over and, if the Trump spectacle were not so dangerous, watching the Republicans devour each other in the shark tank would be fun. But America is more than a reality show, and the stakes are too high for pure enjoyment.

Wednesday night, in the “children’s table” warm up debate, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal joined the anti-immigrant fray with the memorable statement that “immigration without assimilation is an invasion.”

In fact, of course, the immigrant rights community has been organizing to make legal immigrants citizens for a long time. [..]

You’d think the “immigration without assimilation is an invasion” crowd would just love the push for legal permanent residents to become full fledged American citizens, but don’t bet on it.

That’s because citizens can vote.

And there is a growing movement brewing out there that is worth watching, enjoying, and actively supporting. That is the work being done in the immigrant communities through naturalization and voter registration that may teach the Republicans a lesson.

Dave Johnson: Still No Democratic Debates. What’s Going On?

The second Republican Presidential candidate debate is tonight. The ratings for the first one were through the roof and tonight’s is also expected to be a ratings blockbuster. People are interested and tuning in to the campaign and the Republicans are getting all the “eyeballs.”

Meanwhile there hasn’t been even a hint of a Democratic candidate debate. What’s going on? Why are the Democrats letting Republicans have the attention? Do they feel the party has nothing to offer – or something to hide?

“Just spell my name right.” It is basic marketing that any publicity is good publicity. [..]

Overall the entire Democratic Party would benefit from having many, many more televised debates. This time the Democrats have a strong message that resonates with the majority of the public. (Click here to see for yourself.) This time they have strong candidates. This timethey have the moral high ground.

And this time they aren’t letting the public know these things.

Why is the Democratic Party being so undemocratic? Why are they limiting the number of debates? Why are they trying to keep their candidates hidden from the public and letting the Republicans set the narrative?

Even if Donald Trump goes away, the Republican Party isn’t climbing out of the fever swamps anytime soon.

Luckily for the GOP, most people had probably tuned out by the time last night’s interminable Republican debate hit the two hour and 50 minute mark, when it reached peak craziness. That was when Donald Trump repeated his claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, invoking an employee’s child who “went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”

This would have been a good time for someone on the stage to stand up for reality, on an issue where they could count on some degree of conservative support. After all, in a recent poll,

After all, in a recent poll, 57 percent of self-described conservatives said that kids whose parents refuse vaccination shouldn’t be allowed to attend public school. One would think there would be ideological space for someone to whack Trump for parroting left-leaning B-list entertainers like Jenny McCarthy. Instead, the exchange left viewers with the sense that everyone on stage thought Trump had a point. [..]

What is clear, however, is that even if Trump goes away, the Republican Party isn’t climbing out of the fever swamps anytime soon. There were two figures on stage who made occasional gestures towards rationality. Rand Paul criticized militarism and the war on drugs. John Kasich came out against shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood, and insisted that it’s not realistic to promise to tear up the Iran nuclear agreement on day one of a new administration. In a CNN poll taken shortly before the debate, their combined support was 5%. Nothing that happened last night seems likely to change that.

Amy B. Dean: Universal pre-K is the next great public policy crusade

High-quality pre-kindergarten should concern everyone – not just liberals

A clear majority of Americans agree: high-quality preschool should be guaranteed by the public, just as our primary and secondary schools are. It’s an idea that Democrats are hoping to add to their legacy – something to stand along aside Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and the Earned Income Tax Credit as lasting institutions in American life. But it’s also a policy that even business-minded Republicans have reason to support. Not only does it provide a cost-effective educational intervention for our kids; it also gives their parents the freedom to participate in the job market.

On July 7, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania introduced legislation to Congress proposing state-run pre-kindergarten programs that would be freely available to families earning less than $48,000 a year. Unfortunately, Casey’s bill, which was an amendment to No Child Left Behind, has stalled on Capitol Hill. However, at the state level, several Republican governors have already gotten behind their own proposals, creating bipartisan support for an issue whose time has come.

Robert Reich: Why We Must Fight the Attack on Planned Parenthood

On Thursday, right-wing extremists in the U.S. House of Representatives will vote to try to defund Planned Parenthood, one of the nation’s largest providers of women’s health care and family planning services.

Planned Parenthood is under attack and it’s up to all of us to fight back. Any society that respects women must respect their right to control their own bodies. There is a strong moral case to be made for this — but this video isn’t about that. This is about the economics of family planning — which are one more reason it’s important for all of us to stand up and defend Planned Parenthood. [..]

Public investments in family planning — enabling women to plan, delay, or avoid pregnancy — make economic sense, because reproductive rights are also productive rights. When women have control over their lives, they can contribute even more to the economy, better break the glass ceiling, equalize the pay gap, and much more.

Jeb Lund: Donald Trump owns this election. All we can do is lean into the weirdness

If the 2012 presidential election was the first real internet election, this one seems destined to be the first viral one. The viral plane is one of pseudo-real, pseudo-crowdsourced, pseudo-communication, in which some “content” takes control of everyone’s consciousness despite the fact that few if any of us overtly care for or respect the thing. Virality is housed in a place beyond our objections, and saturates us all.

All of this is to say that this is the Trump election, whether he wins or not. Our politics is now simply a reality television show and a clickbait article mashed together, and it may be better for all of us, psychologically, if we just play along.

The structure of Wednesday’s debates reveals the truth of this thesis: it was a two-tiered phenomenon of pseudo-elimination created by the pseudo-metrics of polling, which is dependent less on any rigor about the subjects’ engagement with policy and far more on their reactive engagement with whatever’s flared up and infected us all digitally.