Tag: Punting the Pundits

Focus on police bias obscures meaningful debate on structural racism that perpetuates racial injustice and inequality

In the wake of the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager shot by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9, the public has heard quite a bit about the town, its residents and their supposed violence.

But about half an hour drive west of Ferguson, along a highway straddling the Missouri River, you will come to what may seem a planet away: St. Charles County.

St. Charles is a “Whitopia” – a predominantly white county that has posted 6 percent population growth since 2000 and exhibits an ineffable charisma, as well as a pleasant look and feel. An outer-ring suburb of St. Louis, St. Charles is 91 percent non-Hispanic white, visibly whiter than its surroundings. Its metropolitan region is 77 percent non-Hispanic white in a state that is 81 percent Caucasian. Home to about 76,000 residents, St. Charles is the wealthiest and one of the fastest growing counties in Missouri.

Its quiet invisibility stands in stark contrast to the dramatic images we saw during the protests after Brown’s death. As the nation and world gawk at Ferguson, we need to train our eyes on St. Charles County too, for St. Charles’ economic and political realities contextualize the plight of Ferguson. It embodies the severe economic and racial segregation that harmed Brown long before Wilson ever fired a shot.

Robert Reich: Why Ordinary People Bear Economic Risks and Donald Trump Doesn’t

Thirty years ago, on its opening day in 1984, Donald Trump stood in a dark topcoat on the casino floor at Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza, celebrating his new investment as the finest building in Atlantic City and possibly the nation.

Last week, the Trump Plaza folded and the Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy, leaving some 1,000 employees without jobs.

Trump, meanwhile, was on Twitter claiming he had “nothing to do with Atlantic City,” and praising himself for his “great timing” in getting out of the investment.

In America, people with lots of money can easily avoid the consequences of bad bets and big losses by cashing out at the first sign of trouble.

The laws protect them through limited liability and bankruptcy.

But workers who move to a place like Atlantic City for a job, invest in a home there, and build their skills, have no such protection. Jobs vanish, skills are suddenly irrelevant, and home values plummet.

They’re stuck with the mess.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The Mystifying Election

There is something deeply satisfying about the troubles punditry is having in nailing down exactly what’s happening in the 2014 elections.

The careful statistical models keep gyrating on the question of whether Republicans will win control of the Senate this November. The prognosticators who rely on their reporting and their guts as well as the numbers are sometimes at odds with the statisticians.

The obvious reason for the uncertainty is that many of the key Senate races are still very close in the polls. This should encourage a degree of humility among those of us who love to offer opinions about politics. Humility is a useful virtue not always on display in our business. The unsettled nature of the election also sends a salutary signal to the electorate. As Howard Dean might put it: You have the power. Voting will matter this year.

It is not my habit to agree with Karl Rove, but he was on to something in his Wall Street Journal column last Thursday when he wrote that “each passing day provides evidence as to why a GOP Senate majority is still in doubt.”

Joe Conason: American Amnesia: Why the GOP Leads on National Security

If the latest polls are accurate, most voters believe that Republican politicians deserve greater trust on matters of national security. At a moment when Americans feel threatened by rising terrorist movements and authoritarian regimes, that finding is politically salient-and proves that amnesia is the most durable affliction of our democracy.

Every year around this time, ever since 2001, we promise never to forget the victims of 9/11, the courage of the first responders and the sacrifice of the troops sent to avenge them all. Our poignant recollections seem to be faulty, however, obliterating the hardest truths about that terrible event, as well as the long aftermath that continues to this day. The result, attested to by those polls, is that Republicans escape responsibility for the derelictions and bad decisions of their party’s leaders at crucial moments in the recent past.

On the eve of the UN Climate Summit, Desmond Tutu argues that tactics used against firms who did business with South Africa must now be applied to fossil fuels to prevent human suffering

Never before in history have human beings been called on to act collectively in defence of the Earth. As a species, we have endured world wars, epidemics, famine, slavery, apartheid and many other hideous consequences of religious, class, race, gender and ideological intolerance. People are extraordinarily resilient. The Earth has proven pretty resilient, too. It’s managed to absorb most of what’s been thrown at it since the industrial revolution and the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Until now, that is. Because the science is clear: the sponge that cushions and sustains us, our environment, is already saturated with carbon. If we don’t limit global warming to two degrees or less we are doomed to a period of unprecedented instability, insecurity and loss of species. Fossil fuels have powered human endeavour since our ancestors developed the skills to make and manage fire. Coal, gas and oil warm our homes, fuel our industries and enable our movements. We have allowed ourselves to become totally dependent, and are guilty of ignoring the warning signs of pending disaster. It is time to act.

Paul Rosenberg: desmond-tutu-climate-change-is-the-global-enemy  This is how ISIS wins: Repeating the Bush/Cheney/Rove approach just won’t work

The way to battle ISIS long-term is to understand its appeal and retain our humanity. Take Sun Tzu’s word for it!

For all his vaunted love of nuance, President Obama’s recent speech announcing our new war against ISIS (or ISIL, to the White House) denounced them in terms strikingly similar to George W. Bush’s language waging war on “evil doers,” and that’s a development that should trouble us all. Yes, Obama avoided the word ‘war,’ but the rest of his team soon embraced it, and the logic of his address made that move virtually inevitable, whatever he may personally and privately have wished. [..]

No one can doubt that ISIS is murderous – just like Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, last year’s No. 1 candidate for America’s wrath. But it’s simply untrue that ISIS has “no other vision” than slaughter. Their vision of an Islamic state – a new Caliphate – may be many things: delusional, presumptuous, contrary to true Islamic values and obviously cruel. But it certainly is a vision of sorts, and it has some appeal, if only to a tiny, disaffected fragment of the world’s Islamic community.

If we don’t understand that vision – and what people find attractive in it – then we really have very little chance of effectively fighting against it, even though ISIS now commands only a few thousand fighters. We may win lots of battles, but not the war. Even if we defeat ISIS itself, but don’t understand its appeal, it will only a reappear in another, potentially even more deadly form, just as ISIS now appears more malignant than al-Qaida.  This is particularly true if we ignore the multilayered network of historical grievances which ISIS seeks to exploit.

Robert Kuttner: The United Kingdom Nearly Died for Maggie’s Sins

Why on earth did the Scots, largely quiescent as part of Great Britain for three centuries, suddenly become the mouse that roared?

It wasn’t because they became besotted watching re-runs of Braveheart or Rob Roy, or even because they coveted more of a share of North Sea oil revenues. No, the Scots got sick and tired of Thatcherite policies imposed from London.

Thanks to the partial form of federalism known as “devolution” provided by the Labour government of Tony Blair in 1997, Scotland got to keep such progressive policies as free higher education and an intact national health service, while the rest of the U.K. partly privatized the health service and began compelling young people to go into debt to finance college like their American cousins.

The movement for devolution must not be reduced to a party political squabble or an anoraks’ debate

“The state of our union is strong.” Those are the words uttered with ritual regularity by a US president delivering his annual address to the nation. What, though, is the state of our union, nearly a century older than the Americans’ and questioned this week as never before? You could say it has emerged from yesterday’s vote in Scotland with its strength renewed, reaffirmed not by the whisker foreseen by the closing opinion polls but by an unarguable 10-point margin. What’s more, after weeks of speculation over the future of David Cameron, it was the advocate of independence, Alex Salmond, who resigned today. Earlier, one of his lieutenants had admitted that independence would now be shelved for a generation.

But the relief of unionists, like the heartbreak of yes campaigners, should be tempered. For there is another way of looking at the verdict that came as Thursday night turned into Friday morning. Independence used to command the support of a stubborn third of Scots, and no more. Yet yesterday 45% voted to repudiate British sovereignty, to end this arrangement once and for all. When close to half the population of a nation inside a union wants to break away, the state of that union is not strong. It is fragile.

Anne Fleming Taylor: When You Abuse Someone, It’s Never a Private Matter

I finally watched the Ray Rice video, the one of the Baltimore Ravens star running back decking his wife in an elevator. If you haven’t seen it, do, and then decide whether you agree with the victim that this is a private matter between her and her husband. Really? In what universe is knocking someone else out a private matter?

What if he had hit a friend or a stranger? It would have been laughable to suggest the assault deserved a ring of privacy and that the cops shouldn’t be called and justice pursued. But because the woman was his fiancée, now spouse, she was calling her knockout a family matter.

We do a strange dance with the issue of privacy. We have a kind of love-hate relationship with it. We have jettisoned it in so many ways, with our daily tweets and techno-bytes of self-revelation, the constant Instagraming and messaging. Yet we cling to it on some level – like a curtain to draw around ourselves when we wish.

Patriarchy makes good use of the issue of privacy. Behind that curtain – or those elevator doors – it can still swagger and intimidate and hurt. Then, if the victim refuses to press the case, the state is reluctant to intervene. There is a presumption that it is entirely their business – the couple’s – to sort out.

Joe Nocera: Getting It Wrong

Roger Goodell Speaks for the N.F.L. and Says Nothing

I turned on ESPN about 15 minutes before Roger Goodell’s Friday afternoon news conference. There was a round table of analysts and reporters, led by Bob Ley, the journalist who covers the serious side of sports for the network. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought they were prepping for a coming news conference by a politician in trouble rather than the commissioner of the National Football League. [..]

You would have thought that if Goodell were going to hold a news conference he would have something more to say than that he was sorry and that he was going to consult experts – things he has said before. Stunningly, he didn’t, which became even clearer when reporters started asking questions. [..]

The truth is that the N.F.L. has had a domestic violence problem for years, which Goodell and the league have largely tolerated. The Ray Rice video put that tolerance on vivid display. That is the fact that Goodell can’t say out loud – and why instead he says nothing at all.

Could Fighting Global Warming Be Cheap and Free?

This just in: Saving the planet would be cheap; it might even be free. But will anyone believe the good news?

I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary Fund. Both claim that strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth. This may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. These are serious, careful analyses.

But you know that such assessments will be met with claims that it’s impossible to break the link between economic growth and ever-rising emissions of greenhouse gases, a position I think of as “climate despair.” The most dangerous proponents of climate despair are on the anti-environmentalist right. But they receive aid and comfort from other groups, including some on the left, who have their own reasons for getting it wrong.

David Sirota: Too big to punish: Why America’s banks are still above the law

The Obama administration is now reducing sanctions on Credit Suisse. So much for the lessons of the Great Recession

A few months ago, in a press conference about the felony conviction of Credit Suisse, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “This case shows that no financial institution, no matter its size or global reach, is above the law.”

Yet, earlier this month, the Obama administration announced its proposal to waive some of the possible sanctions against Credit Suisse. The little-noticed waiver, which was outlined in the Federal Register, comes amid criticism that the Obama administration has gone too easy on major financial institutions that break the law. [..]

Under existing Department of Labor rules, the conviction could prevent Credit Suisse from being designated a Qualified Professional Asset Manager. That designation exempts firms from other federal laws, giving them the special status required to do business with many pension funds. The Obama administration’s is proposing to waive those anti-criminal sanctions against Credit Suisse, thereby allowing Credit Suisse to get the QPAM designation needed to continue its pension business.

David Dayen: The real Olive Garden scandal: Why greedy hedge funders suddenly care so much about breadsticks

Remember that “hilarious” report last week ripping the chain eatery to pieces? The back story will infuriate you

Last week, you may have noticed a kooky story about a hedge fund named Starboard Value chastising Olive Garden for handing out too many unlimited breadsticks at a time, and failing to salt its pasta water. The snarky 294-page presentation highlighted everything wrong with Olive Garden, along with recommendations to fix it. And there was much laughter. [..]

The story had all the proper elements for our Twitter-fueled “you won’t believe what happened next” media age. Readers could mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs, and the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review.

Except Starboard Value does not spend its time crusading for better mid-market Italian meals for no reason. It owns a bunch of shares in Olive Garden’s parent company, Darden Restaurants, and wants to take control of the company’s board. The scheme it’s concocted to increase its share price has little to do with breadsticks and pasta water. It really wants to steal Olive Garden’s real estate, and make a billion dollars in the process.

Barron H. Lerner: When Medicine Is Futile

MY father would have been thrilled to read “Dying in America,” a new report by the Institute of Medicine that argues that we subject dying patients to too many treatments, denying them a peaceful death. But he would have asked what took us so long. A physician from the late 1950s to the late 1990s, my dad grew increasingly angry at how patients died in this country, too often in hospitals and connected to machines and tubes he knew would not help them.

He placed some of the blame for the situation at the feet of bioethics and patients’ rights, two movements that I, as a young physician, had fiercely advocated. Doctors, he believed, had abrogated their duties in preventing – and, if necessary, thwarting – patients from pursuing inappropriate end-of-life interventions. We should heed my father’s advice. Physicians need to reclaim some of the turf they have ceded to patients and families.

While 70 percent of Americans approve of corporal punishment, black Americans have a distinct history with the subject. Beating children has been a depressingly familiar habit in black families since our arrival in the New World. As the black psychiatrists William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs wrote in “Black Rage,” their 1968 examination of psychological black life: “Beating in child-rearing actually has its psychological roots in slavery and even yet black parents will feel that, just as they have suffered beatings as children, so it is right that their children be so treated.”

The lash of the plantation overseer fell heavily on children to whip them into fear of white authority. Terror in the field often gave way to parents beating black children in the shack, or at times in the presence of the slave owner in forced cooperation to break a rebellious child’s spirit. Black parents beat their children to keep them from misbehaving in the eyes of whites who had the power to send black youth to their deaths for the slightest offense. Today, many black parents fear that a loose tongue or flash of temper could get their child killed by a trigger-happy cop. They would rather beat their offspring than bury them. [..]

Equally tragic is that those who are beaten become beaters too. And many black folks are reluctant to seek therapy for their troubles because they may be seen as spiritually or mentally weak. The pathology of beatings festers in the psychic wounds of black people that often go untreated in silence.

Rebecca Solnit: The Wheel Turns, the Boat Rocks, the Sea Rises

There have undoubtedly been stable periods in human history, but you and your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never lived through one, and neither will any children or grandchildren you may have or come to have. Everything has been changing continuously, profoundly — from the role of women to the nature of agriculture. For the past couple of hundred years, change has been accelerating in both magnificent and nightmarish ways.

Yet when we argue for change, notably changing our ways in response to climate change, we’re arguing against people who claim we’re disrupting a stable system.  They insist that we’re rocking the boat unnecessarily.

I say: rock that boat. It’s a lifeboat; maybe the people in it will wake up and start rowing. Those who think they’re hanging onto a stable order are actually clinging to the wreckage of the old order, a ship already sinking, that we need to leave behind.

Oliver Burkeman: Corporations are not people, so don’t let them guilt you into tipping the maid

Gratitude is a very good thing. It makes us happy. But this is what happens when Marriott and the corporate do-gooder police co-opt your feelings

If I still somehow retained any capacity to be surprised by the tone-deafness of corporate America, I imagine I’d be pretty taken aback by the news that Marriott International has joined forces with a nonprofit called A Woman’s Nation to launch The Envelope Please, a campaign to encourage hotel guests to leave “tips and notes of thanks for hotel room attendants” in envelopes that Marriott will graciously provide. (You can contribute to Marriott’s marketing budget – sorry, I meant “donate to A Woman’s Nation”! – here.)

As New York magazine’s Annie Lowery and others have pointed out, tipping is a terrible way to try to improve the lot of hotel housekeepers, whose work is stressful, debilitating, unseen and badly paid. On the one hand, tipping is basically useless as a way of encouraging good work; on the other hand, it’s incredibly useful as an excuse for employers to avoid raising wages. In the words of the National Review – and how often does one quote the National Review approvingly when not under the influence of massive quantities of hallucinogenic drugs? – how about just paying them more?”

Emma Brockes: There is nothing more American than unlimited breadsticks

Forget those classist hedge-funders and their 300-page report on pasta water. What could be more authentically itself than Olive Garden?

I have been thinking about Olive Garden more than usual the past few days – specifically its breadsticks, which were singled out for abuse in a 300-page report written by one of the restaurant chain’s investors, a hedge-fund up in arms at the perceived waste of food (and trying to gain greater control of the parent company’s board).

It’s the breadsticks, along with the bottomless salad bowl, that have of course made the franchise famous, both for its generosity and as a symbol of the gluttony and excess laying waste to America. Olive Garden is the sort of restaurant that one loves as a child and should supposedly outgrow – but that kind of snobbery overlooks a fundamental fact about human nature: no one ever, ever outgrows a good salad bar (or hot breadsticks, for that matter). It would be like outgrowing the need for a hug.

So while debate this week has ostensibly surrounded the restaurant’s commercial efficiency, all anyone has really been wondering is this: is Olive Garden – and by extension a big slice of American restaurant culture in general – gross or not gross?

As military leaders make the case for deepening military engagement in Syria and Iraq to Congress on Tuesday, more than two dozen groups are calling on lawmakers to seek answers to a number of questions about the mission that the Obama administration has so far failed to address.

“If the past decade of war in the Middle East has taught us anything, it’s that we must demand answers to hard questions before launching into war,” Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, said in a statement. “That’s why, today, groups representing millions of Americans are calling on Congress to debate and be held accountable for America’s next steps in Syria and Iraq-so we don’t make the same mistakes we’ve made in the past.”

Congress has signaled it’s disinclined to have that debate by pushing any real consideration of military action until after the midterm elections. Though a number of lawmakers have called on the president to ask Congress for authorization, many are not looking for a chance to deliberate so much as to show off their hawk bona fides. Tuesday’s campaign, which includes phone calls to lawmakers, social media asks (using the hashtag #AmericaMustKnow) and petition signatures, is intended to point out the serious gaps and inconsistencies in the president’s strategy that Congress (and until recently, the media) have largely failed to take on.

Shirley Willaims: How Scotland could lead the way towards a federal UK

England and Wales need to harness the civic spirit seen in the Scottish independence referendum and devolve powers to the regions

The Scottish independence referendum, whichever side one is on, has demonstrated the civic spirit of this country. Engaging in a mobile debate on the main street of Dunfermline or Inverness, hearing a heartfelt plea for the union from a 15-year-old schoolboy speaker at the town hall of Kirkwall, in Orkney, forceful comments on trains and trams, are testimony to the rebirth of democratic politics. Turnout at this passionate election may well exceed 80%, a figure not reached in general elections for over five decades.

The referendum decision will come at the culmination of a long period of disillusionment with politicians. The SNP, like the other mainstream parties, has attracted its own share of public frustration about centralisation and the excessive rule of Edinburgh over other regions of Scotland. Nationally, the disillusionment began with the poll tax, the decline of manufacturing in Scotland, Wales, the Midlands and the north of England during the Thatcher years, the failure of our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis in 2008 which loaded on taxpayers the huge costs of bailing out the banks. The referendum debate is not fuelled only by controversy between unionists and nationalists. It reflects also the underlying anger and resentment among members of the public in England and Wales.

Jessica Valenti: The Texas abortion clinic battle is about more than politics. It’s about women’s lives

Reproductive rights are more than a shouting match. They’re about the ability of women to access life-changing health care

Imagine you are a young woman who has just found out she is pregnant. You already have children and you’re only employed part-time. Maybe you’re in a violent relationship. Maybe you’ve been assaulted. Whatever your motivation, you know you cannot continue the pregnancy. But when you try to make an appointment at the nearest clinic – which is a hundred miles away – you’re told that there is a long waiting list. It’ll be a month-long wait for the abortion you should, medically-speaking, have right away, making it a more complicated and expensive procedure. You can’t afford that, so you start to think about going to another country with fewer regulations, where you heard about cheap drugs that will end the pregnancy.

That is not a story that should happen in America – where abortion is legal – but it’s an increasingly common reality for many women. And, after today’s hearing from the 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in which the judges appeared to support Texas’ restrictive abortion laws, it’s potentially a daily reality for many more women in Texas.

But in the midst of court decisions, a national debate over choice and lawmakers’ efforts to limit abortion rights, we cannot afford to forget that there are real people affected by these laws.

Letting the investment banks collapse would not have caused a second Great Depression

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The investment bank’s bankruptcy accelerated the financial meltdown that began with the near collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns in March 2008 (saved by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan) and picked up steam with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going under the week before Lehman’s demise. The day after Lehman failed, the giant insurer AIG was set to collapse, only to be rescued by the Fed.

With the other Wall Street behemoths also on shaky ground, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ran to Capitol Hill, accompanied by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner. Their message was clear: The apocalypse was nigh. They demanded Congress make an open-ended commitment to bail out the banks. In a message repeated endlessly by the punditocracy ever since, the failure to cough up the money would have led to a second Great Depression.

The claim was nonsense then, and it’s even greater nonsense now.

Stephen Marche: Why Canada wants Scotland to vote ‘yes’

Tea and biscuits, James Bond, the queen – Britishness is a cover for ruthless conquest. And the end of Britishness can’t arrive soon enough

The Union Jack currently occupies space on three of Canada’s provincial flags – by Friday all may be historical artifacts. The Scottish referendum is currently too close to call, but even if Scotland votes to stay, Britishness – as an idea and a way of being – has died in the process of debating it. Should the United Kingdom survive, it will survive out of economic fear. The lie that Britain deserves to survive as anything other than a bad arrangement handed down from history has been called out. And it brings me hope: if Scotland has the guts to reject the fundamental hypocrisy, vulgar classism and demand for self-contempt that Britishness demands, maybe Canada can work up the courage to do the same.

Scots built Canada under the banner of Britain. Sir John A MacDonald, the father of Confederation, rejected Chinese citizenship exactly because, as he said, the Chinese immigrant “has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations, and therefore ought not to have a vote.” Canada is its own country, of course, but British instincts and feelings and aspirations have been steeped into Canada, to the point where in some regards we are more British than the British. My nation’s motto is “peace, order and good government” – and each of those three principles is applied with the utmost sincerity. We really believe in those values.

Angel Gurria and Nicholas Stern: We can avoid climate change, and boost the world’s economy – if we act now

Reversing the damage is within our grasp, but it will hinge on a strong international climate agreement and policies that make polluters pay

The global economy is undergoing a remarkable transformation which is altering our ability to deal with climate change. The growth of emerging economies, rapid urbanisation and new technological advances are making possible a new path of low-carbon growth in ways that were not apparent even five years ago.

We know that if left unchecked, greenhouse gas emissions will cause devastating climate change. What is now becoming clear is that reducing emissions is not only compatible with economic growth and development; if done well, it can actually generate better growth than the old high-carbon model. [..]

The prize before us is huge. We can build a strong, inclusive and resilient global economy which can also avoid dangerous climate change. But the time for decision is now.

Eugene Robinson: Why Does Hillary Clinton Want to Run For President?

Judging by her weekend appearance in Iowa, it looks as if Hillary Clinton is indeed running for president. Now she has to answer one simple question: Why?

“It is true, I am thinking about it,” she said Sunday at the final Harkin Steak Fry, an annual cholesterol-boosting fundraiser that retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin has hosted for the past 37 years. Given the context, this was pretty close to an announcement of the Clinton 2016 campaign. [..]

Now Clinton begins another campaign-perhaps-in which she is seen as the inevitable winner. She has said she will make a firm decision “probably after the first of the year.” But if she has reached the point of dropping broad hints, she needs to begin telling the nation how and why she proposes to lead.

President Obama has committed the United States to another open-ended Middle East war in which the potential for doing harm rivals the possibility of doing good.

That’s the bottom line from Obama’s sober address to the nation. The president made his decision cautiously, reluctantly, even painfully. But make no mistake: The pledge to “destroy” the Islamic State is a long-term commitment, and success will depend on a host of partners that may be unreliable. [..]

To ask the even more obvious: Once you get involved in the Syrian civil war, how on earth do you get out?

David Sirota: Shareholders’ Quest for More Transparency

If you own a share of a company, how much information about the company are you entitled to? That is the question embedded in the debate over a proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would force publicly traded companies to disclose their political spending to their shareholders.

As of this month, a 2011 petition to the SEC proposing the rule has received more than 1 million comments-most of them in favor of the mandate. Supporters of the rule, some of whom demonstrated outside the SEC last week, say that’s the highest number of public comments ever submitted in response to a petition for a SEC rule. That level of public engagement, the proponents say, means the agency must stop delaying and implement the proposal. They also say that as hundreds of millions of dollars flood into politics through anonymous “dark money” sources, the rule is more needed than ever.

Joe Conason: Republicans’ Reaction to Obama Speech Reveals Much-About Them

Minutes after President Barack Obama concluded his strong and sensible address explaining how he intends to destroy the terrorist organization the Islamic State, Republicans popped up on television like political snipers. He should have kept a “residual force” in Iraq, complained Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and he is to blame for the Islamic State’s advances. He sounds just like George W. Bush, gloated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and he is reluctantly enacting the advice of Dick Cheney.

None of those remarks was accurate, but the falsehoods revealed once more the irrepressible Republican impulse to slur a Democratic president-even when the nation faces a serious security threat. In this instance, as the president attempts to unite us and bring together a broad coalition of allies, their behavior is worse than inappropriate. Indeed, were the roles reversed, the Republicans would surely describe such conduct as unpatriotic.