Tag: Punting the Pundits

The more complex a system is, the more it is at risk of failing in complex ways that were not anticipated by its architects. It would be hard to imagine a more complicated way of expanding health coverage than the Affordable Care Act.

I say that, appreciating that Obamacare will eventually bring health coverage to tens of millions of uninsured people, that it will end the cruelty of denials of coverage based on “pre-existing conditions” (we all have the pre-existing condition of mortality); that it will allow young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance to age 26; and that it will require free preventive care under all insurance plans.

But there was a much simpler way of achieving this. We could have extended Medicare to everyone. Or if that was politically unthinkable, we could have extended Medicare a few years at a time — first to 60 year olds, then to 55 year olds, then to the young, and so on until everyone was covered.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: The Lies That Will Kill America

Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn’t miss it — the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar’s mask. “UNCLE SCAM,” the headline shouted. “US robs bank of $13 billion.”

Say what? Pure whitewash, and Murdoch’s minions know it. That $13 billion dollars is the settlement JPMorgan Chase, the country’s biggest bank, is negotiating with the government to settle its own rip-off of American homeowners and investors — those shady practices that five years ago helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. If anybody’s been robbed it’s not JPMorgan Chase, which can absorb the loss and probably take a tax write-off for at least part of it. No, it’s the American public. In addition to financial heartache we still have been denied the satisfaction of seeing jail time for any of the banksters who put our feet in cement and pushed us off the cliff.

Robert Reich: Why Washington Is Cutting Safety Nets When Most Americans Are Still in the Great Recession

As of November 1 more than 47 million Americans have lost some or all of their food stamp benefits. House Republicans are pushing for further cuts. If the sequester isn’t stopped everything else poor and working-class Americans depend on will be further squeezed.

We’re not talking about a small sliver of America here. Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers — including the nation’s largest, Walmart — now pay so little that food stamps are necessary in order to keep food on the family table, and other forms of assistance are required to keep a roof overhead.

The larger reality is that most Americans are still living in the Great Recession. Median household income continues to drop. In last week’s Washington Post-ABC poll, 75 percent rated the state of the economy as “negative” or “poor.”

Ralph Nader: Why the Silence from the Sponsors of the Superior Full Medicare for All?

With the Tea Partiers relentless attacks on each of the troubles besetting Obamacare since its complicated, computer glitch-ridden startup on October 1, 2013, the compelling question is: Why aren’t the Congressional sponsors of H.R. 676 – full Medicare for all with free choice of physician and hospital – speaking out as strongly on behalf of this far superior universal health care coverage?

There are fifty-one members of the House who openly favor the single-payer solution for many good reasons. Legislators behind H.R. 676, such as Reps. Robert Brady (D-PA), Michael Capuano (D-MA), Donna Christensen (D-VI), Judy Chu (D-CA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Danny Davis (D-IL) know that single-payer insurance with private delivery is by far more efficient, saving $400 billion a year just on administrative simplification.

Fast food workers are often on government assistance. The best solution, despite GOP resistance, is to raise the minimum wage

You’ve got to feel for McDonald’s. Every time the misunderstood corporation tries to offer its’ low-wage employees a hand, it backfires. First the fast food giant was ridiculed this past summer for dispensing helpful budgetary advice to its struggling workers (in a nutshell: get another job). Now the company is in hot water again after a recorded call to its’ McResource helpline, in which an employee who reported not being able to make ends meet was advised to sign up for food stamps and other government assistance programs, went viral online. Strangely though, the very people who ought to be most upset about this state of affairs – small government loving republicans who don’t want anyone relying on federal assistance for anything – have raised little or no objection. [..]

So for now we are stuck with a situation where one set of American workers has to subsidize the wages and benefits of another set of workers just so that certain corporations can keep their low end labor costs down and their profits way up. Fast food workers have actually come up with the most feasible way out of this unsustainable situation. They are asking their employers to raise their wages to $15 an hour, up from the average of $8 an hour. Needless to say McDonald’s and their fast food counterparts will happily stick to the cozy arrangement they have going as long as their enablers in congress allow them to. They may soon find, however, that the American taxpayer is not quite so easily played.

Heidi Moore: Little surprise here: women expected to do more at home – and at work

A new study illuminates how ‘favors’ are expected of women at work, but they often go unacknowledged, keeping women down

No matter what profession a woman works in, she’s actually in the service profession.

That’s the upshot of an illuminating (and to many, enraging) new Columbia Business School study highlighted this week, showing that co-workers and bosses feel entitled to favors from women – or, in fact, that almost everything a woman does at work is considered “a favor” that is off the clock. To put it another way, when a woman takes on a project no one else will, or does something helpful or thoughtful, it’s seen as something she does for fun. When a man does it, it seen as real work.

The revelation of this structural ingratitude explains a lot. It’s a pivotal point in understanding a key issue in workplaces: why can’t women form lasting alliances, even though they spend more time contributing to their organizations by mentoring?

Ana Marie Cox: Political games: why Democratic senators keep their Hillary support secret

There’s no point to making support for something political private. Hillary should leave the game playing to Bill

The childish behavior of men in Congress has always made “boys’ club” seem less like an epithet and more like something to strive for. Female politicians on the Hill, held to a higher standard in many ways, have had fewer scandals (financial or sexual) than their male counterparts and have a reputation for level-headedness that was thrown into high relief during the shutdown. As Senator John McCain said when the episode wound to a close:

   Leadership, I must fully admit, was provided primarily by women in the Senate.

So male representatives are boys and women are the grown-ups, which is why the revelation that the US Senate’s 17 female Democratic members sent a secret mash note to Hillary Clinton is so puzzling. The letter’s existence came to light on Monday, when Senator Kay Hagan (North Carolina Democrat) made a reference to it during a talk at a political fundraiser; that it was a secret letter – “Ixney on Illaryhay orfay residentpay!” – became clear on Tuesday, when reporters followed up on the remark and there was “a round of apologetic e-mails from [Hagan’s] Senate office to other offices on Capitol Hill”.

John Nichols: Chris Christie’s No Moderate, and Barack Obama Ought to Say That

President Obama will make a campaign swing into the battleground state of Virginia this weekend, on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.

McAuliffe has been consistently ahead in the polls and his chances of winning look reasonably good-as do those of other Virginia Democrats in high-profile races. The Virginia Democrats have two advantages: Republican foes who have gone to extremes on social issues and a broad revulsion in a state with high levels of federal employment at Republican tactics during the government shutdown.

So Obama’s trip to Virginia comes with few risks.

The thing is that, at this point in his tenure, Obama could afford to take some political risks.

For instance, he could travel to the other state that is holding a gubernatorial election this fall: New Jersey.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was unwise to put a stay on the necessary remedies Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered in August in response to the civil rights violations of New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy. And it overreached in taking the extraordinary step of removing Judge Scheindlin from the long-running litigation. [..]

Judge Scheindlin did not strike down the program, which, when properly used, is an important crime-fighting tool. But she sensibly ordered the city to use it in a manner that does not discriminate against minorities and that complied with constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Under the Fourth Amendment, police officers can legally detain people on the street when there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is committing, has committed or is about to commit a crime. In addition to violating people’s rights, the program, as practiced for years in New York, undermined trust in the Police Department in black and Hispanic communities throughout the city.

Given all the damage done by this program, the next mayor should end this saga by withdrawing the city’s appeal and instituting the cogent reforms laid out by Judge Scheindlin.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Confirm Mel Watt Now

The Senate’s role in presidential nominations is usually described as “advise and consent,” not “obstruct and prevent.” And yet, continuing their extreme break with past Senatorial traditions and practice, Senate Republicans rejected another Presidential nomination on Thursday. Even so-called “moderate” Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine turned their back on civility and good government by refusing to break a filibuster against Rep. Mel Watt’s nomination to head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The President has chosen Rep. Watt to replace Bush appointee Edward DeMarco at the FHFA, and Republicans are refusing to even allow a vote on his nomination. The FHFA is responsible for lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the government was forced to bail out after the privatization of these enterprises turned out to be a disaster. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Republicans are afraid that Rep. Watt might “take more aggressive steps to help the housing market, such as reducing principal on mortgages.”

That would cut into Wall Street’s profits. As the old saying goes: Follow the money.

Nan Aron: Republicans’ D.C. Circuit Freak-out Endangers Justice

On Tuesday, I testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing that posed the nonsensical question, “Are More Judges Always the Answer?”

This is a committee whose Republican members include Darrell Issa, Steve King, and Louie Gohmert, so it will come as no shock to anyone that a topic that sounds like a segment on a Fox News show was not designed to dispassionately explore the nuances of judicial nominations and the workloads of federal judges.

So what was this hearing really about?

It turns out it was actually about President Obama’s nomination of three highly qualified individuals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the court right below the Supreme Court in importance. You might ask why the House of Representatives is conducting a hearing on a subject that is the constitutional purview of the Senate, but the future of the D.C. Circuit is so important that it’s getting the full right-wing, high-volume Sturm und Drang treatment, even in places it doesn’t belong.

William Pfaff: Spying Scandal Makes Clear That Europe Must Declare Independence

The crisis caused in Europe by American intelligence interceptions of its allies’ electronic communications derives from a problem Europeans have known and put up with since the Second World War. The time has come to call a halt.

It can only be solved with drastic actions that assert European sovereignty and a salutary shock of defiance to longstanding American presumptions of international impunity and repeated acts in disregard of international law, as well as of commercial and diplomatic convention and tradition.

This problem is America’s asserted domination-active or implicit/potential-over West European affairs.

Now we know that even the president needs leaks from Edward Snowden to be fully informed about the dastardly acts of his own top spy agency. It was Snowden’s recent revelations that led Obama to order an investigation into spying on private communications of 35 world leaders, including our closest allies, a clear betrayal of the trust needed to establish a more peaceful world.

According to a Wall Street Journal account from senior U.S. officials, the president had been kept in the dark as to the extent of the NSA spy program: “President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them. They added that the president was briefed on and approved of broader intelligence-collection ‘priorities,’ but that those below him make decisions about specific intelligence targets.” Huh?  

Ana Marie Cox: Dick Cheney, one-man zombie apocalypse

The former VP has returned from the shadows – weirdly, to court the Tea Party for daughter Liz’s Senate run. Happy Halloween!

Rationally, I realize that the reappearance of Dick Cheney in the media landscape is tied to his promoting his new book, Heart: An American Medical Odyssey. And, with equal clear-mindedness, I know that his publisher no doubt timed the book’s debut to capitalize on the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act – Cheney has gravely insisted in interviews that the ACA would limit the technological innovations that allow his own survival.

A more primal part of me simply sees “Cheney”, “heart” and “Halloween” and I clutch my own chest in fear. [..]

‘m as eager a student of horror novels as politics, but I don’t usually get a chance to bring the wisdom of one field into the other. By way of wishing you a happy Halloween, let me also issue a reminder: the risk of bringing someone back from the dead is that they turn on you. When people play God, they only create monsters … boo!

Eugene Robinson: The Out-of-Control NSA

Let’s get this straight: The National Security Agency snooped on the cellphone conversations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel? Perhaps for as long as a decade? And President Obama didn’t know a thing about it?

Either somebody’s lying or Obama needs to acknowledge that the NSA, in its quest for omniscience beyond anything Orwell could have imagined, is simply out of control.

The White House has not denied news reports-courtesy of disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden-that the spy agency eavesdropped on Merkel’s phone calls. Press secretary Jay Carney said that “the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor,” which sure sounds like an admission that such “monitoring” took place in the past.

Karen Higgins: Targeting Wall Street, Robin Hood Tax Comes to Washington

With Congress about to begin the next cycle of budget battles – mostly focused on how much more pain to inflict on Main Street communities across America – a far different message is bubbling up across the land.

Activists from across the land gathered in Washington October 29 to step up what has become an increasingly vocal demand for a change of priorities and tone – with a call to expand the revenue pie with a tax on Wall Street speculation, the Robin Hood tax.

“The fire in this room will light up the sky for a lot of people,” said Larry Hanley, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union surveying the room in the closing session of an action conference for the Robin Hood Tax campaign.

For the past two years, a movement has been building in the U.S., now endorsed by more than 160 local and national organizations who are calling for a sharp turn away from policies of austerity and more budget cuts with a financial transaction tax on stocks, bonds, derivatives and other financial instruments, paid by those very same banks, investment houses, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street traders who created the latest financial crisis.

Or as Hanley put it, “There’s been a 40 year crime wave and we’ve been the victims.”

It’s not yet Halloween, and Julianne Hough is already apologizing for her decision to don blackface at Mike Meldman’s annual party. She attended the festivities with a group of friends who dressed up as the cast of Orange Is the New Black-with Hough as the character known as Crazy Eyes. Unfortunately, Hough wasn’t the only adult who made the choice to wear blackface this year.

I was disappointed, though not too surprised, when I saw that Hough wore blackface. Racist costumes are a sad staple of each year’s Halloween. I also wasn’t too surprised that someone reappropriated a character of color from Orange Is the New Black this Halloween. Although some have argued that the show provides its audience with a humanizing view of prison life and reveals the horrors of the prison industrial complex, many of us have also argued otherwise. The characters are often written as caricatures rather than anything else-and are easily digested as such. A Netflix series that leans on racist tropes becomes a problematic inspiration for someone who seems unable to heed numerous advisories against blackface. Let the nightmare begin.

Laura Flanders: Anyone for a Real Inform Act?

It was early and I hadn’t downed my coffee yet, but for a moment I thought I was reading something important in one of those tightly printed full-page ads that appear from time to time in the The New York Times.

Headlined “Enact the Inform Act,” the ad called on Congress and the president to pass a, quote, “bipartisan bill to reveal the full size and inter-generational consequences of our country’s fiscal imbalance.”

As I said, it was early but my mind was off. Finally, I thought to myself, someone is taking seriously our country’s teetering imbalance. [..]

But then, I hold the paper a little closer. The INFORM Act is not about any of those things. It’s about the deficit. The phony fiscal gap, not the flesh-and-blood one of inequality. The ad is signed by the 1 percent who want to do what? Cut taxes and shrink government. Who else can afford one of those one page ads?

Pity. Sometimes it’s good not to look too closely. Anyone interested in a genuine Inform Act?

Zoë Carpenter: Privacy Advocates Turn Up the Heat on the ‘Business-as-Usual Brigade’

On Saturday, thousands of people are expected to rally in Washington, DC, to protest the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs that, according to documents released by Edward Snowden, collect data from American citizens. Saturday’s rally comes at a key moment, as the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to take up legislation to revise the NSA’s spying authority next week.

It’s clear that reform is needed-but less so that it will come out of the Intelligence Committee. Instead, committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein wants to make the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records permanent. In an op-ed published in USA Today on Monday, the California senator called the program “legal,” “effective in helping to prevent terrorist plots,” and claimed it was “not surveillance.” She argued that the metadata program should continue, and said her bill would “codify existing procedures into law.”

Bryce Covert: Don’t Be Fooled: Flexible Scheduling Is No Cure for the Workplace Gender Divide

The city of San Francisco just passed a little-noticed policy in an attempt to address the work and family conflict increasingly experienced by today’s workers: a “right-to-request” law that requires all employers to set up a process so that workers can negotiate flexible schedules. That means that starting January 1, city residents will be able to ask their employers about whether they can change their start and end times, telecommute or go part-time and the boss will have to prove “undue hardship” if he refuses. Vermont passed a similar statewide policy in May. These are the only places in the United States to take up such a law, although the UK, New Zealand and Australia have countrywide ones.

Supporters tout such laws as a way to help resolve the conflict of work and family for all. And for those who feel torn between these two worlds, this streamlined path to changing schedules will likely come as a relief. But if the goal of resolving the work/family conflict with policy is to level the playing field for mothers who work and to allow women to catch up to men, flexible scheduling, at least for now, falls short. It cures a symptom without touching the disease.

Frankly, it is time that Congress started listening to the ordinary people. Recently, the Republican Party learned a hard lesson when the American people stated loudly and clearly that it was wrong to shut down the government and not pay our bills because some extreme right-wing members of Congress do not like the Affordable Care Act. Well, there’s another lesson that my Republican colleagues are going to have to absorb. Poll after poll make it very clear that the American people overwhelmingly do not want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, according to a recent National Journal poll, 81 percent of the American people do not want to cut Medicare at all; 76 percent of the American people do not want to cut Social Security at all; and 60 percent of the American people do not want to cut Medicaid at all. Meanwhile, other polls have made it very clear that at a time of growing income and wealth inequality, Americans believe that the wealthiest among us and large corporations must pay their fair share in taxes.

It is time to develop a federal budget which is moral and which makes good economic sense. It is time to develop a budget which invests in our future by creating jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure improvement and expanding educational opportunities. It is time for those who have so much to help us with deficit reduction. It is time that we listen to what the American people want, and not just respond to the billionaire class and major campaign contributors.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: A Four-Point “Scorecard” for the Budget Talks

The House-Senate budget negotiations, scheduled to begin on Wednesday, are an opportunity for our leaders to finally have a meaningful discussion about healing our damaged economy. That’s the discussion Washington should have been having all along, but which it hasn’t had yet. How will we know whether that’s finally changed, or which politicians are genuinely looking out for the public’s interests?

This four-point document, “Principles for Debate on the Budget in the Economy,” is an excellent place to start. It provides a baseline for reasonable negotiations, and represents the interests of the millions of Americans who belong to the organizations which signed it. We’ve adapted its four points to serve as a scorecard for grading your representatives during these budget talks.

Juan Cole: America’s Secret 4th Branch of Government: Did the NSA Keep Even Obama in the Dark?

Secrecy is anathema to a democratic republic. If we ever had one, it is long gone. The only real question left is what the unelected fourth branch of government, created inadvertently by Harry Truman, is really up to. It is clearly involved in a great deal of industrial espionage, but how are its discoveries transferred to US corporations? Who do the mostly right wing NSA bureaucrats really report to if not to Obama? And, what are they really doing with our cell phone records, which reveal to whom we speak, how often, and where exactly we are? How are these being data-mined and for what purposes?

How much of our society and politics are shaped by selective leaks about individuals gained from this surveillance? Did the 2008 Wall Street Crash occur in part because the Bush administration had removed pro-regulation New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, using information gathered from his bank accounts, cell phone and personal computer? How many Iraq War critics were, like myself, targeted for surveillance? How many seemingly minor scandals that force decision-makers from office are actually a conspiracy of shadowy intelligence operatives? How many of the vocal defenders of the NSA, or of those politicians too timid to demand reform, fear revelation of personal secrets? Do we have a government or a Mafia extortion racket? These questions may seem outlandish, but they are evidence of the corrosive impact of covert government on a Republic? One can never know what politics is legitimate and what is the result of manipulation. NSA denials that they are using this material gathered on US citizens are not very credible given their officials’ repeated lies and also given their hiding of their activities from the President of the United States.

Joe Conason: Will the Christie Juggernaut Roll Over Ted Cruz and Rand Paul?

With his impending re-election in “Blue Jersey” evidently assured and his national profile rising, Chris Christie is a formidable presidential hopeful. If not always a voice of reason, the blustering governor usually sounds sane in a Republican Party where conspiracy, paranoia and extremism reign. His decision to abandon the state’s legal appeal against gay marriage exemplified the canny pragmatism that worries Democratic strategists looking forward to 2016.

But for those enjoying the current civil war within the GOP as a spectator sport, the prospect of a Christie presidential candidacy is promising indeed. Moving toward the center, he is plainly preparing for combat with the herd of politicians-mostly legislators like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan-whose aspirations depend on mobilizing the tea party base. And there will be nothing “moderate” about Christie when he sets to work taking those opponents apart.

President Obama urged Congress on Thursday to revive immigration reform, which is not dead but not moving, either. He was talking mostly to House Republicans, though he also urged business, labor and religious groups to “keep putting the pressure on all of us to get this done.”

It’s good that Mr. Obama said “us.” It acknowledges his own role in this continuing disaster.

Much of the responsibility to fix what Mr. Obama calls the “broken immigration system” lies within his own administration. He can’t rewrite immigration laws, but he can control how well – or disastrously – they are enforced. He can begin by undoing the damage done by his Homeland Security Department. Mr. Obama has just nominated Jeh Johnson, a former Defense Department general counsel, to replace homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano, who resigned in July. It’s the perfect opportunity for a fresh start.

Cliff Shecter; Senator Durbin: Don’t sell us short on Social Security

Visiting the issue of Social Security is fraught with misadventure, especially as Midterm elections approach.

To: Majority Whip, Dick Durbin, US Senate

From: Your pal, Cliff

Dear Dick,

I must have been a bit hard of hearing while watching you this past week on FoxNews Sunday-the hard of hearing being the key Fox demographic, after all-but I think I heard you say that Social Security in the United States “is going to run out of money in 20 years,” so you want to “fix it now.” I couldn’t have heard that right, could I have? Let me try “The Google,” as wily former President W. Bush once counseled.

Ok, Dick, I just consulted the transcript, and, sadly, I didn’t hear it wrong. So it seems we need to have a bit of an awkward conversation.

First, my friend (I still like to think of you this way, as you’re usually such a staunch supporter of common-sense positions on key issues), surely you must be aware that you misspoke?

Robert Reich: Obamacare is a Republican Construct (So Why Are They So Upset?)

The Democrat’s version of health insurance would have been cheaper, simpler, and more popular

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says Republicans will seek to delay a requirement of the 2010 Affordable Care Act that all Americans obtain health insurance or face a tax penalty. “With so many unanswered questions and the problems arising around this rollout, it doesn’t make any sense to impose this one percent mandate tax on the American people.”

While Republicans plot new ways to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, it’s easy to forget that for years they’ve been arguing that any comprehensive health insurance system be designed exactly like the one that officially began October 1st, glitches and all.

For as many years Democrats tried to graft healthcare onto Social Security and Medicare, and pay for it through the payroll tax. But Republicans countered that any system must be based on private insurance and paid for with a combination of subsidies for low-income purchasers and a requirement that the younger and healthier sign up.

Kevin Gosztola: The Banal Justification for Directing the US Surveillance State at World Leaders

All countries spy on each other. Countries like Brazil, France, Germany and Mexico would not be so upset that they had been spied on by the United States if it had not been made public by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. In fact, countries have learned to look the other way and accept that they are being spied on regularly by American intelligence agencies so there really is no reasonable justification for all this outrage from world leaders.

As The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius declared on CNN, “Everybody does do this kind of thing. The US, through the NSA, does it more aggressively because it’s just better at it. It’s got more capabilities.”

The above has been the typical reaction in the US. It aims to suppress debate or conversation about the operations, which US intelligence is engaged in around the world. It seeks to paint outraged officials as simply jealous. If they could spy on all the world’s people at all levels of society, wouldn’t they be doing it, too?

The nature of this response from officials and commentators, from within a country that has built a massive surveillance state for spying on the entire world of which no other country has matched, is truly imperial.

President Obama spent this week trying to persuade America’s close allies, France and Germany, that the National Security Agency’s extensive eavesdropping in those countries is under adequate control. He was not entirely successful. His efforts to reassure President François Hollande of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany seem to have been as incomplete as the explanations the administration has given to the American public about the agency’s excessive domestic surveillance. [..]

Such surveillance undermines the trust of allies and their willingness to share the kind of confidential information needed to thwart terrorism and other threats. When the N.S.A. violates French or German law, law enforcement agencies in those nations cooperate with the agency at their own risk. There is also the more subtle damage done by the feeling that the United States plays by its own rules and respects neither the sovereignty nor the political sensibilities of some of its closest democratic allies.

Gail Collins: Roll Out the Health Care

If you’re a citizen who tries to keep up with current affairs, your latest responsibility is having a strong opinion about the troubled rollout of the health insurance marketplace.

Really makes you miss the government shutdown, doesn’t it? Try leading a lively dinner table conversation on software coding errors.

The Democrats are depressed. The Republicans enjoy pointing out that the Obamacare rollout has been a mess. But they obviously can’t pretend to be upset that people are finding it hard to sign up for a program their party wanted to kill, eviscerate and stomp into tiny pieces, which would then be fed to a tank of ravenous eels.

Well, actually, they can.

Eugene Robinson: Hail to the Washingtons

I’m a bit late to the topic, but the Washington, D.C., professional football team really ought to change its name. As encouragement for the franchise’s stubborn owner, we should just stop saying the offensive word.

The term “redskins”-it’s hard to write a column about a word without using it, I’m afraid-is a racial slur. Fans of the team, myself included, have pretended not to notice this uncomfortable fact for many years. Now we’re beginning to confront it.

The name fails the most basic tests of acceptability. Can you imagine employing it to address someone? Would you use it to describe anyone not associated with the team? If you overheard someone using the term in a non-football context, would you think more of that person or less?

The answers are obvious. To be honest, they always were.

Ralph Nader: Opting Out From the Corporate State of Surveillance

America was founded on the ideals of personal liberty, freedom and democracy. Unfortunately, mass spying, surveillance and the unending collection of personal data threaten to undermine civil liberties and our privacy rights. What started as a necessary means of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering during World War II has escalated into an out-of-control snoop state where entities both governmental and commercial are desperate for as much data as they can grab. We find ourselves in the midst of an all-out invasion on what’s-none-of-their-business and its coming from both government and corporate sources. Snooping and data collection have become big business. Nothing is out of their bounds anymore. [..]

It’s time for citizens to stand up and demand their right to privacy, which is a personal property. Mass surveillance and rampant data collection are not acceptable and should not be the status quo. Recall that there was once a time when the federal government could defend our nation without limitless access to computer records, emails, online search histories and wiretapping phone calls without open judicial authorization. Businesses could be successful without tracking and saving your shopping habits and student records were not commodities to be traded away. Why do they now do what they do? Because they can.