Tag: Punting the Pundits

As we move toward the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.

But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future. [..]

The basic story is very simple. Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security. That is why President Obama is working to protect the former and cut benefits for the latter.

John Nichols: Dems to DOJ: ‘Very Troubled,’ ‘Inexcusable,’ ‘No Way to Justify This’

When John Lindsay was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1958, the Republican lawyer from Manhattan arrived on Capitol Hill as a man on a mission. “Often alone on the House floor,” recalled Nat Hentoff, “Lindsay wielded the Bill of Rights against its enemies.” [..]

Around the time that Lindsay was elected mayor of New York, California Democrat Don Edwards, a former FBI agent, arrived to take up the fight. For three decades, Edwards checked and balanced not just Republicans but Democrats who failed to recognize the rights of citizens and the essential role of a watchdog press. [..]

We remember Lindsay and Edwards because of the standard they set. They understood that the defense of the Bill of Rights in general, and freedom of the press in particular, must never be compromised by partisanship.

That’s why it was so very important when, after it was revealed that the Department of Justice had obtained the phone records of Associated Press journalists, both Patrick Leahy and Bob Goodlatte spoke up.

Robert Sheer; Elizabeth Warren, a Great Investment

Elizabeth Warren does great email. One payoff of my pittance of a contribution to her grass-roots funded campaign — I regret not contributing more — is that I am regularly alerted by the new Massachusetts senator to the favoritism of our Congress toward Wall Street.

That’s how I was reminded this week that Congress is about to let the interest rate charged for new student loans double to 6.8 percent at a time when the too-big-to-fail banks that caused the Great Recession continue to be bailed out at the rate of 0.75 percent. Yes, the banks pay less than 1 percent for money that we the taxpayers lend them. I know that such statistics are thought to be boring, but as Warren explained, the rate that students will have to pay “is nine times higher than the rate at which the government loans money to the big banks.”

Dave Johnson: News Media Should Clearly Inform Public About Obstruction, Filibuster

A NY Times editorial says Republicans need public pressure to get them to stop obstructing … everything. Meanwhile NY Times and other news coverage tends to obscure the source and extent of the problem and the damage it is doing to the country. Just months after a decisive election the country is paralyzed, the will of the people is thwarted and the information required to mobilize the pubic to take needed action is not forthcoming.

On Sunday, May 12, the NY Times ran an editorial, Who Can Take Republicans Seriously? The editorial concluded: “Only when the Republican Party feels public pressure to become a serious partner can the real work of governing begin.”

But news reports, even in the NY Times, tend to obscure the source of the obstruction, often even omitting the very words “filibuster” and “obstruction.”

Congress has a long road ahead on immigration reform. The Senate Judiciary Committee has started to consider some 300 amendments challenging the nearly 900-page bill crafted by the Gang of Eight. Lawmakers are hopeful that legislation will pass both houses by the end of summer. But from now until then, the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants may continue full force. A group of advocates is now making a renewed call on President Obama to suspend deportations of those people who would gain status in the bill’s final version later this year. [..]

Obama met with representatives from more than a dozen progressive unions and business leaders in February, and declined a similar request to halt deportations at that time. Advocates point out that this time is different, because the bipartisan Gang of Eight has moved forward, and the move to suspend deportations would work around the current proposal. In February, Obama stated that he didn’t want to start a controversy that could derail the bill in Congress. But by his not heeding the voices of the families whose loved ones have been removed, the controversy of record high deportations continues.

Jenny Brown and Stephanie Seguin: We Won’t Stop Until the Morning After Pill Is Available to All, Regardless of Age

For a decade, we have protested and battled in court for Plan B access. Enough with the Obama administration’s delays

We have been fighting for a decade for something so basic: for women in America to have easy access to safe and affordable birth control, including the “morning-after pill” (sometimes referred to by the specific drug name of Plan B).

We won a key victory when a federal judge ordered the Obama administration to make the morning-after pill available other over-the-counter – in other words, to make it available without a prescription. Unfortunately, our fight didn’t end there as the administration tried to delay, but last week the courts again ruled on the side of women’s access to birth control, regardless of age.

Lauren Carsick: As the UN Evades Responsibility for the Cholera Epidemic, Haitians Continue to Suffer

Advocates for over 5,000 victims of cholera in Haiti put the UN on notice that they intend to file suit in a national court if the UN continues its refusal to provide compensation for its negligence in introducing cholera to the country. Haiti’s first cholera epidemic in over a century compounded the misery in a country reeling from the devastating 2010 earthquake that ravaged its already vulnerable health and sanitation system. As of this month, the epidemic has caused incalculable suffering – the death toll from cholera exceeds 8,100, and over 654,000 Haitians have been sickened.  Despite multiple scientific studies that have consistently attributed the cause of the outbreak of cholera in Haiti to UN troops from Nepal and the UN’s negligent waste disposal system, the UN is claiming that it is immune from claims.The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and theBureau des Avocats Internationauxsubmitted a claim on behalf of cholera victims for relief and reparations to the UN on November 3, 2011,requesting that the UN upgrade the national water and sanitation infrastructure, provide compensation to victims for their losses, and issue a public apology

Suzanne York: Koalas: The Canary in Australia’s Coal Mine?

The news of late out of Australia has not been the most encouraging.  

For starters, the country continues to mine coal at a rapid pace, upping its exports of the dirty fuel.  It is the world’s biggest coal exporter.  A recent report found that if the expected expansions of Australia’s coal exports continue as planned, global carbon dioxide emissions could increase by 1.2 billion metric tons a year. [..]

And one last news item of note has been the worsening plight of koalas, the unofficial symbol of Australia. Climate change is amongst the many concerns facing the marsupials, where more occurrences of extremes in weather pose a threat to the koala population.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made a point of emphasizing during the Bush v. Gore arguments in December 2000 that there is no federal constitutional guarantee of a right to vote for president. Scalia was right. Indeed, as the reform group FairVote reminds us, “Because there is no right to vote in the U.S. Constitution, individual states set their own electoral policies and procedures. This leads to confusing and sometimes contradictory policies regarding ballot design, polling hours, voting equipment, voter registration requirements, and ex-felon voting rights. As a result, our electoral system is divided into 50 states, more than 3,000 counties and approximately 13,000 voting districts, all separate and unequal.”

Mark Pocan and Keith Ellison want to do something about that.

The two congressmen, both former state legislators with long histories of engagement with voting-rights issues, on Monday unveiled a proposal to explicitly guarantee the right to vote in the Constitution.

John Aravosis: When 3 Gunmen Shoot 19 at a Mother’s Day Parade, It’s Not “Terrorism”

No terrorism please, we’re gunmen.  A bizarre story out of New Orleans, where two or three gunmen opened fire on a Mother’s Day parade, injuring 19 people, including two children.

Sure sounds awfully familiar, almost like a redux of the Boston Marathon bombing.  But you’d be wrong.

You see, when two guys use bombs to hurt people en masse at a marathon, it’s instantly “terrorism.”  But when two to three people use guns to hurt people en masse at a parade, it’s simply “the relentless drumbeat of street violence.”

What’s the difference?

A homemade bomb versus a gun, by the looks of it.

Pauk Buchheit: Atlas Shrugged Off Taxes

Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” fantasizes a world in which anti-government citizens reject taxes and regulations, and “stop the motor” by withdrawing themselves from the system of production. In a perverse twist on the writer’s theme the prediction is coming true. But instead of productive people rejecting taxes, rejected taxes are shutting down productive people.

Perhaps Ayn Rand never anticipated the impact of unregulated greed on a productive middle class. Perhaps she never understood the fairness of tax money for public research and infrastructure and security, all of which have contributed to the success of big business. She must have known about the inequality of the pre-Depression years. But she couldn’t have foreseen the concurrent rise in technology and globalization that allowed inequality to surge again, more quickly, in a manner that threatens to put the greediest offenders out of our reach.

Nick Turse: Nuclear Terror in the Middle East

Lethality Beyond the Pale

In those first minutes, they’ll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They’ll just stand there. Soon, you’ll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and you’ll think you mind is playing tricks. But it won’t be. Their fingers will start to resemble stalactites, seeming to melt toward the ground. And it won’t be long until the screaming begins. Shrieking. Moaning. Tens of thousands of victims at once. They’ll be standing amid a sea of shattered concrete and glass, a wasteland punctuated by the shells of buildings, orphaned walls, stairways leading nowhere.

This could be Tehran, or what’s left of it, just after an Israeli nuclear strike.

Republicans in both Houses of Congress are becoming more and more flagrant in their strategy of holding the governing process hostage for far-right demands not shared by most voters. And the pity is that the strategy is mostly working.

The more that the Obama Administration tries to meet the Republicans half way, the more extreme and implacable their demands become. [..]

Obama’s term still has more than three and a half years to run and Democrats still have a 55-45 majority in the Senate, but the Republicans are treating him like the lamest of lame ducks. It should be clear by now — meeting these people halfway only whets their appetite.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Will Bankers at JPMorgan Chase Finally Pay for Their Misdeeds?

Will California Attorney General Kamala Harris hang tough in her new lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, the first to target individual bankers accused of defrauding the public? If so, it would be the first time in five years that executives at a major bank have personally paid a price for their misdeeds. [..]

And if this is merely another publicity stunt, she needs to know that a choreographed cave-in will be very poorly received by her constituents.

Harris therefore deserves strong expressions of support, along with statements that citizens expect her to see this action through — at least far enough to ensure that the malefactors involved pay some personal penalty for their misdeeds.

Mary Bottari: Ghost in the Machine: Pete Peterson Haunts College Campuses

An odd couple made an appearance on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus recently: Tea Party Senator Ron Johnson and Madison’s progressive Congressman Mark Pocan. The two were invited to participate in a conversation about the national debt hosted by a local student organization and a bevy of national groups, including  the Comeback America Initiative, the Concord Coalition, the Can Kicks Back, and The Campaign to Fix the Debt. On the agenda: debt, deficits, and the economy. [..]

But the most telling sentence of the meeting was one of the first. The student sponsors thanked Mark Graul and Stephanie Kundert of Arena Strategy (a local PR firm) for their help in setting up the event.

No one in the room appeared to catch the fact that they all were participating in an elaborate public relations ruse, set up by well-known Wisconsin spinmeister (Graul) whose claim to fame is a racist attack ad on a sitting judge, and orchestrated by a Wall Street billionaire whose name was never mentioned in the two-hour “teach-in.”

Take a bow, Pete Peterson — $500 million can buy you a lot of good feelings and positive press.

Richard Reeves: We Are Family

In sifting through the election returns of last year, some of the clueless Republicans and conservatives did get some clues. Losing focused their minds for a bit.

Last week, one of the stars of the “soft” right, David Brooks of The New York Times, wrote a wake-up column with implications for readers who not only do not much like dark-skinned immigration, but are also hostile to such kindling issues as gay marriage and abortion. They seem incapable of understanding, once more, that these are family issues. Gays and women who choose abortion are our relatives. They are in our families. We love them-even Republican senators with gay children love them-and we don’t like seeing them pushed around by our government. The Republicans like to talk about “family values,” but they certainly don’t appreciate some of them.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: ‘Slow-Motion Mass Murders’

Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.

Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don’t want to be unmasked as caring even more about their ratings from gun lobbyists.

And opponents of the most moderate gun reforms engage in a shameless game of bait-and-switch. Because measures such as background checks would not stop every murder, they’re declared useless even though they’d still save lives. Then the gun lobby turns around and opposes other measures, such as a ban on high-capacity magazines, which could prevent some of the killings that background checks might not.

Yesterday, for the first time in human history, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the primary global warming pollutant, hit 400 parts per million in our planet’s atmosphere. This number is a reminder that for the last 150 years — and especially over the last several decades — we have been recklessly polluting the protective sheath of atmosphere that surrounds the Earth and protects the conditions that have fostered the flourishing of our civilization. We are altering the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Indeed, every single day we pour an additional 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the sky as if it were an open sewer. As the distinguished climate scientist Jim Hansen has calculated, the accumulated manmade global warming pollution in the atmosphere now traps enough extra heat energy each day to equal the energy that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-scale atomic bombs exploding every single day. It’s a big planet — but that is a LOT of energy. And it is having a destructive effect.

Now, more than ever before, we are reaping the consequences of our recklessness. From Superstorm Sandy, which crippled New York City and large areas of New Jersey, to a drought that parched more than half of our nation; from a flood that inundated large swaths of Australia to rising seas affecting millions around the world, the reality of the climate crisis is upon us.

David Sirota: The Military’s 40-Year Experiment

Few probably recall the name Dwight Elliott Stone. But even if that name has faded from the national memory, the man remains historically significant. That’s because on June 30, 1973, the 24-year-old plumber’s apprentice became the last American forced into the armed services before the military draft expired.

Though next month’s 40-year anniversary of the end of conscription will likely be as forgotten as Stone, it shouldn’t be. In operations across the globe, the all-volunteer military has been employed by policymakers to birth what Gen. George Casey recently called the “era of persistent conflict.” Four decades later, we therefore have an obligation to ask: How much of the public’s complicity in that epochal shift is a result of the end of the draft?

Eugene Robinson: Looks Like a Witch Hunt

Those who are trying to make the Benghazi tragedy into a scandal for the Obama administration really ought to decide what story line they want to sell.

Actually, by “those” I mean Republicans and by “the Obama administration” I mean Hillary Clinton. The only coherent purpose I can discern in all of this is to sully Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016.

That’s not a particularly noble way to use the deaths of four American public servants, but at least it’s understandable. Attempts to concoct some kind of sinister Whitewater-style conspiracy, however, don’t even begin to make sense.

Ralph Nader: Seeking Sustainability

Sustainability,” the late Ray Anderson–founder and chairman of Interface Inc. –once told theNew York Times, “doesn’t cost, it pays.” After his “conversion experience” on the harmful effects his modular carpet business had on the environment, Anderson redirected his corporate philosophy to focus on the noble goal of absolute sustainability. Through his efforts, the company’s industrial processes were improved to start making peace with the planet–all while continuing to run a profitable business. His dedication to a sustainable society is one that, ideally, all CEOs should share, but most do not.

There’s little to debate about the enormous impact our commercial culture has had on our planet and its costly toll on the environment. But there is much to debate about how our culture of excess consumerism and materialism can be transitioned into one of more efficient restraint and responsibility.

What do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, the devil is in the details. Robert MacLean is a former air marshal fired for an act of whistleblowing.  He has continued to fight over seven long years for what once would have passed as simple justice: getting his job back. His is an all-too-twenty-first-century story of the extraordinary lengths to which the U.S. government is willing to go to thwart whistleblowers.

First, the government retroactively classified a previously unclassified text message to justify firing MacLean. Then it invoked arcane civil service procedures, including an “interlocutory appeal” to thwart him and, in the process, enjoyed the approval of various courts and bureaucratic boards apparently willing to stamp as “legal” anything the government could make up in its own interest.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Problem in New York Politics Is Big Money, Not Small Parties

Rahm Emanuel was right: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Following the arrest of a leading state senator last month, which confirmed every New Yorker’s worst suspicions about the depths of our state’s corruption problem, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has a rare opportunity to push common sense reforms to get money out of our politics. But, instead, he’s seized the moment to push a “reform” that would leave our state’s politics even more dominated by the wealthy and well-connected.

As I noted last month, Cuomo has endorsed a legal change that would hamstring New York State’s third parties, including the Working Families Party, a savvy and steadfast counterweight against the power of big business and its backers in both parties. The WFP has been able to maximize its leverage here because, unlike most states, New York allows fusion voting: third parties can endorse a worthy candidate who’s also running on the Democratic or Republican Party ballot line, and place that candidate on their own line as well. Or, if neither candidate deserves their support, third parties can run their own candidate against them. Strategically deploying that option has helped the WFP become a force to be reckoned with.

Robert Reich; Sexual Assaults and Nuclear Missiles: What’s the Matter With the Military?

After years of repeated reports of sexual assaults — and years of promises to prevent them, and then years of studies and commissions to find the best way of doing so — a Defense Department study released Tuesday estimates that some 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in the last fiscal year, up from about 19,000 the year before.

Moreover, it turns out the Air Force lieutenant colonel in charge of preventing sexual assault has been arrested for … sexual assault. According to the police report, a drunken Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski allegedly approached a woman in a parking lot in Arlington, Va., Sunday night, and grabbed her breasts and buttocks.

Why has it been so difficult for the Air Force or the Defense Department to remedy this problem?

Les Leopold: The Rich Have Gained $5.6 Trillion in the ‘Recovery,’ While the Rest of Us Have Lost $669 Billion

Oh, are we getting ripped off. And now we’ve got the data to prove it. From 2009 to 2011, the richest 8 million families (the top 7 percent) on average saw their wealth rise from $1.7 million to $2.5 million each. Meanwhile the rest of us — the bottom 93 percent (that’s 111 million families) — suffered on average a decline of $6,000 each.

Do the math and you’ll discover that the top 7 percent gained a whopping $5.6 trillion in net worth (assets minus liabilities) while the rest of lost $669 billion. Their wealth went up by 28 percent while ours went down by 4 percent.

It’s as if the entire economic recovery is going into the pockets of the rich. And that’s no accident. Here’s why.

The bond-rating agency Moody’s made itself famous for giving subprime mortgage backed securities triple-A ratings at the peak of the housing bubble. This made it easy for investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to sell these securities all around the world. And it allowed the housing bubble to grow ever bigger and more dangerous. And we know where that has left us.

Well, Moody’s is back. They announced plans to change the way they treat pension obligations in assessing state and local government debt.

Instead of accepting projections of pension fund returns based on the assets they hold, Moody’s wants to use a risk-free discount rate to assess pension fund liabilities. This will make public pensions seem much worse funded than the current method.

Jim Hightower: Corporate Cowards Divert Shareholder Funds into “Dark Money”

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court pretends, they certainly are loudmouths, constantly telling us how great they are and spreading their names everywhere.

Amazingly, though, these corporate creatures have suddenly turned demure, insisting that they don’t want to draw any attention to themselves. That’s because, in this case, corporations are not selling, they’re buying – specifically, trying to buy public office for their pet political candidates by funneling millions of corporate dollars through such front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In turn, the fronts use the money to air nasty attack ads that smear the opponents of the pro-corporate candidates.

Mike Lux: Federal Government Nation’s Biggest Creator of Low-Wage Jobs: Time for Obama to Act

There was a moving and powerful event this morning at Union Station in D.C. where low-wage workers for federal contractors, leaders of the faith community, and members of Congress all did a little preaching to President Obama. Their message could not have been clearer: It is time to finally to do something real to help low wage workers step out of poverty and into the middle class. [..]

Fast-food workers in New York City, Chicago, and other cities; Wal-Mart workers all over the country have as well; truck drivers that take goods in and out of our nation’s ports; and workers at companies who contract with the federal government: They are all organizing. To hear these workers’ stories about the terrible pay, lack of benefits, and the way they are treated by abusive employers inspires me to keep fighting on their behalf every day, but it also makes me wonder: Where is Barack Obama? Didn’t he get his start in politics fighting for these kinds of workers? Hasn’t he talked repeatedly about how he is going to fight for them? Hasn’t he quoted the scripture of his faith about looking out for the least of these and being our brothers and sisters’ keeper?

Ray Barrett; The War on Terror Is Over…But Osama Bin Laden Won.

High in the mountains of Afghanistan many moons before 9/11, Osama Bin Laden told the British journalist Robert Fisk exactly what he sought to achieve through his murderous crusade against Uncle Sam.

  “I pray to God that he will permit us to turn the United States into a shadow of itself,” he said. [..]

With the al-Qaeda leader dead, the “War on Terror” morphed into a global “drone war”, and home-grown terrorism now the dominant US national security threat, history can begin to evaluate Bin Laden and his more esoteric aims. Thus, when it comes to the United States, were his prayers answered? Did he enjoy a measure of success in his quest to debase the nation?

Investigators are blaming ammonium nitrate for the massive explosion that devastated most of the town of West, Texas, on April 17. The chemical, which was stored in large amounts at the West Fertilizer Co., is used to make fertilizer. It’s also used by coal companies to blow up mountains.

Ammonium nitrate poses a threat to human and environmental health not only when it catalyzes fatally in a dangerous stockpile but also when particles of the stuff shatter into the air and seep into groundwater from strip mining, say residents of mining communities. Opponents of so-called “mountaintop removal” are in DC this week, taking that message to the Obama administration in a week of action culminating May 8 with a delivery of toxic water to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Amanda Marcotte: Time To Demand All Birth Control Pills Be Sold Over-The-Counter

In all the fussing over the sales of emergency contraception over the counter, it’s easy to forget that there’s another contraception drug out there that should be available over the counter (OTC) but isn’t: the ordinary, everyday birth control pill. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) thinks birth control pills should be sold OTC. Most other countries sell birth control pills OTC.  And now, as Think Progress reports, nearly two-thirds of American women say they want the pill sold OTC, and about 30 percent of the respondents who aren’t currently on the pill would consider going on it if this option was available.

So why can’t we have this, when the public and the medical establishment both think it’s a great idea? Part of it is no doubt the politics of it. As the furor over emergency contraception-which you only take in emergencies (and don’t need if you’re consistent with your birth control pills)-demonstrates, the idea of women being able to prevent pregnancy easily sets off all sorts of irrational reactions in this country. You should have to struggle for it to prove you deserve to be not-pregnant, because… mmmph that’s why. The religious right already believes that contraception is “too” easy to get, which is why they’ve been attacking it with so much vigor lately. Trying to make birth control pills available OTC would set off a political firestorm that would make the emergency contraception wars look like mere skirmishes.

Ann Neumann: Guantánamo Is Not an Anomaly – Prisoners in the US Are Force-Fed Every Day

I know a hunger-striking prisoner who hasn’t eaten solid food in more than five years. He is being force-fed by the medical staff where he’s incarcerated. Starving himself, he told me during one of our biweekly phone calls last year, is the only way he has to exercise his first amendment rights and to protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act. [..]

But William Coleman is not at Guantánamo. He’s in Connecticut. The prison medical staff force-feeding him are on contract from the University of Connecticut, not the U.S. Navy. Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners – who are on U.S. soil and not an inaccessible island military base – are routinely and systematically force-fed every day.

The accounts of force-feeding coming out of Guantánamo, including Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s “Gitmo is Killing Me” in The New York Times two weeks ago, are consistent with how Coleman has described the process to me – and to the Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Kathleen Shuler: Cadmium, Mercury and Phthalates-Oh My!

Over 5000 children’s products contain toxic chemicals linked to cancer, hormone disruption and reproductive problems, including the toxic metals, cadmium, mercury and antimony, as well as phthalates and solvents. A new report by the Washington Toxics Coalition and Safer States reveals the results of manufacturer reporting to the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Makers of kids’ products reported using 41 of the 66 chemicals identified by WA Ecology as a concern for children’s health. Major manufacturers who reported using the chemicals in their products include Walmart, Gap, Gymboree, Hallmark, H & M and others. They use these chemicals in an array of kids’ products, including clothing, footwear, toys, games, jewelry, accessories, baby products, furniture, bedding, arts and crafts supplies and personal care products. Besides exposing kids in the products themselves, some of these chemicals, for example toxic flame retardants, build up in the environment and in the food we eat.

The US economy is suffering from a nasty case of austerity.

Only 165,000 new jobs were created in April – far fewer than is needed to address existing unemployment and to create positions for the millions of Americans who are entering the workforce. [..]

“This is a classic ‘hold-steady’ report – enough job growth to keep the unemployment rate stable but not much more,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, says of the latest news from the US Department of Labor. “In good times, this would be fine, but at a time like this, it represents an ongoing disaster.”

Why are things so slow?

In a word: austerity.

E. J. Dionne: Obama’s Wake-Up Call

President Obama got roughed up by the pundit class last week. The question is what lessons he draws from the going-over. Here’s one he should take: The nation’s political conversation has grown stale and many Americans have lost the sense of what he is doing to improve their lives.

You can argue that this perception isn’t fair. The Affordable Care Act, if it’s implemented well, will improve a lot of lives. The economy is adding jobs, not shedding them. The deficit is coming down. Two front-burner initiatives, immigration reform and broader background checks-yes, they’ll be voted on again-really do matter.

But the fact is that the talk in Washington has been dominated by the same stuff we obsessed over in 2010, 2011 and 2012: a monotonous, uninspiring, insider clash over budgets. Even in that context, we barely discuss what government can do that would be helpful (except to air travelers).

Eugene Robinson: Burning Questions About Intervention in Syria

For all the armchair generals advocating U.S. military intervention in Syria, I have a few questions: [..]

Isn’t it the case that Syria presents no good options, only bad ones? Isn’t it unclear whether U.S. intervention can even alleviate the Syrian people’s pain, much less advance U.S. interests? And although doing nothing seems like a bad alternative, doesn’t the only other choice presently available-doing something for the sake of doing something-look worse?

Last question: We have been at war in Afghanistan for a dozen years and in Iraq for a decade. Have we learned nothing at all?

Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers: Reinhart-Rogoff’s Lesson for Economists

What lesson can economists draw from the ruckus over a flaw found in an influential study by two Harvard University scholars? Our suggestion: Do a better job of checking one another’s work. [..]

Many observers have concluded that the error went undetected for so long because the research never underwent peer review, a traditional stop on the way to the coveted goal of publication in a prestigious journal. But peer review isn’t a line-by-line error check. It involves a few academics making a holistic judgment as to whether new research increases our understanding of the world.

There’s only one reliable way to verify empirical findings: Try to replicate them. In the narrowest terms, this can mean taking the author’s data and checking their spreadsheets, as economists Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin did in their critique of Reinhart and Rogoff. At a broader level, replication can mean collecting new data, assessing their reliability and using them to subject a finding to fresh scrutiny.