Tag: Politics

Jan 01 2013

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Perspective on the Deal

To make sense of what just happened, we need to ask what is really at stake, and how much difference the budget deal makes in the larger picture.

So, what are the two sides really fighting about? Surely the answer is, the future of the welfare state. Progressives want to maintain the achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society, and also implement and improve Obamacare so that we become a normal advanced country that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens. The right wants to roll the clock back to 1930, if not to the 19th century.

There are two ways progressives can lose this fight. One is direct defeat on the question of social insurance, with Congress actually voting to privatize and eventually phase out key programs – or with Democratic politicians themselves giving away their political birthright in the name of a mess of pottage Grand Bargain. The other is for conservatives to successfully starve the beast – to drive revenue so low through tax cuts that the social insurance programs can’t be sustained.

New York Times Editorial: A Tepid Fiscal Agreement

For the first time since President George W. Bush began the country’s long slide into debt by cutting taxes in 2001, an agreement was reached late Monday in the Senate to raise income taxes on the rich. That’s what makes the deal significant: assuming it is approved by the House, it begins to reverse the ruinous pattern of dealing with Washington’s fiscal problems only through spending cuts. [..]

The White House argues that it achieved 85 percent of its revenue goals, raising $600 billion over a decade, a third of which comes by phasing out exemptions and deductions for people with incomes greater than $250,000 a year. And Republicans achieved none of the draconian spending cuts they wanted.

But that battle is far from over. Negotiators have yet to work out a deal to stop the arbitrary spending cuts known as the sequester, which are scheduled to slash $110 billion from the defense and domestic budgets beginning this week. And Republicans are waiting for the Treasury to hit its debt limit in a few weeks, hoping to once again extort more spending cuts.

Robert Reich: Lousy Deal on the Edge of the Cliff

The deal emerging from the Senate is a lousy one. Let me count the ways: [..]

Yes, the deal finally gets Republicans to accept a tax increase on the wealthy, but this is an inside-the-Beltway symbolic victory. If anyone believes this will make the GOP more amenable to future tax increases, they don’t know how rabidly extremist the GOP has become.

The deal also extends unemployment insurance for more than 2 million long-term unemployed. That’s important.

But I can’t help believe the president could have done better than this. After all, public opinion is overwhelmingly on his side. Republicans would have been blamed had no deal been achieved.

More importantly, the fiscal cliff is on the president’s side as well. If we go over it, he and the Democrats in the next Congress that starts later this week can quickly offer legislation that grants a middle-class tax cut and restores most military spending. Even rabid Republicans would be hard-pressed not to sign on.

John Nichols: Social Security Is Off the Table… For Now

Preserving Social Security should never have been all that difficult.

But it took Harry Reid to settle the issue – at least as regards the miserably long and absurdly inappropriate debate of 2012.

“We’re not going to have any Social Security cuts,” the Senate majority leader said on the floor of the chamber Sunday. “It’s just doesn’t seem appropriate at this time.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had attempted Saturday to use the “fiscal cliff” fight to advance a proposal to adopt a chained consumer price index-“chained CPI”-scheme (pdf) that would slash cost-of-living increases for Americans who rely on Social Security and other government programs. The Obama administration had entertained the “chained CPI” switch earlier in December. But as the critical point when a deal to cut Social Security might have been made, Reid said “No.”

John Atcheson: Reality’s Revenge: Will 2013 Be the Year Climate Change Deniers Get Hoisted on Their Own Petard?

n 2007, then Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman, Rejendra Pachauri said:

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

Well, don’t look now, but 2012 just whizzed past, and thanks to a well-organized and well-funded denier movement, once again, we took no action on climate change.

Ironically, by stalling action, climate change deniers are bringing about the end they’ve been struggling to prevent.

Bottom line: deniers hate big government.  As ClimateProgress editor Joseph Romm pointed out, that’s the main reason many conservatives oppose action on climate change.

Of course there is a second reason: money.

Ralph Nader: Compare the 1912 Elections with the 2012 Elections

Before the electoral year of 2012 slinks into history, it is worth a comparative glance back to the electoral year of 1912 to give us some jolting perspective on how degraded our contemporary elections, voter performance and election expectations have become.  

One hundred years ago, workers were marching, picketing and forming unions. Eugene Debs, the great labor leader and presidential candidate that year, spoke to outdoor labor rallies of 100,000 to 200,000 workers and their families gathered to protest low wages and working conditions.

Farmers were flexing their muscle with vibrant political activity in progressive parties and organizing farm cooperatives, through their granges, and pushing for proper regulation of the banks and railroads.

Dec 31 2012

Missed Deadline: Tax Cuts to Expire at Midnight

The Senate has failed to come to an agreement to avoid the mythical “fiscal cliff” and the House has adjourned for the day thus missing the deadline for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the spending cuts that were agreed to last year. The MSM pundits are of course saying that this is not the be all or end all for an agreement. According to CNN sources told them that they saw little difference in settling the issue Monday versus Tuesday. Apparently it’s a Republican source:

If lawmakers approve a bill on Tuesday — after tax rates have technically gone up — they can argue they’ve voted for a tax cut to bring rates back down, GOP sources said.

So far, according to a report in McClatchy this is what they have argeed to:

Negotiators were working toward a scaled-back package that includes a series of critical tax changes that would extend permanently the Bush tax cuts on most Americans but end them and thus raise taxes for individuals who make $400,000 and families who make $450,000.

Individuals earning more than $250,000 and couples earning more than $300,000 would still be taxed higher because some of the value of their exemptions and itemized deductions would be phased out.

The tentative package would also:

– Extend unemployment benefits for 2 million Americans.

– Prevent about 30 million Americans from having to pay the alternative minimum tax.

– Keep Medicare payments to doctors at the current rate.

– Extend tax credits for children and college tuition.

– Provide tax breaks to clean-energy companies.

– Raise the estate tax, but significantly less than Democrats had wanted. The value of estates over $5 million would be taxed at 40 percent, up from 35 percent.

Left unaddressed, at the moment, are the $1.2 trillion in sequestration-related cuts that will also be triggered on Jan. 1.

The new congress will be sworn in January 3. If Obama and the Democrats are smart they will start tomorrow with a clean slate, as of tomorrow, telling the Republicans to suck it up.

It wouls appear that Congress has gotten an early start on dropping the ball.

Dec 31 2012

Live at 1330 EST: Obama Press Conference

Dec 31 2012

FBI and Banks Supressed “Terrorist” #OWS

If anyone had any doubts that the US Government is no longer a “government of the people” but of corporation and Wall St, you need only read the recently released FBI documents that labeled Occupy Wall Street a “terrorist group” and coordinated with banks and cities nationwide to suppress the protests with strong arm tactics and targeted assassinations (see pg 61 of document). This all started before the protest even began without evidence that the protests would be anything but peaceful and despite the internal acknowledgment that the movement opposed violent tactics. The documents prove that the government blatantly lied about the Department of Homeland Security involvement in coordinating the violent crackdown in New York City, Oakland and other major cities. Partnership for Civil Justice obtained the heavily redacted FBI documents revealing that the surveillance began at least a month before the protest in Zuccotti Park began and that the #OWS movement was being treated as potential criminal and terrorist activity.

The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).  “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.  These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

“The documents are heavily redacted, and it is clear from the production that the FBI is withholding far more material. We are filing an appeal challenging this response and demanding full disclosure to the public of the records of this operation,” stated Heather Benno, staff attorney with the PCJF.

Author and activist Naomi Wolf reported in The Guardian that these “new documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent.”

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves – was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations’ knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, sat down for an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Transcript can be read here

So much for paranoia. The government is out to stop peaceful protest in anyway they can.

Dec 31 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Ezra Klein: The Republican Party in one tweet

This is pretty much the Republican Party in one tweet:

[..]

You can see why these negotiations aren’t going well.

Paul Krugman: Brewing Up Confusion

Howard Schultz, the C.E.O. of Starbucks, has a reputation as a good guy, a man who supports worthy causes. And he presumably thought he would add to that reputation when he posted an open letter urging his employees to promote fiscal bipartisanship by writing “Come together” on coffee cups. [..]

First of all, it’s true that we face a time-sensitive issue in the form of the fiscal cliff: unless a deal is reached, we will soon experience a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that might push the nation back into recession. But that prospect doesn’t reflect a failure to “fix the debt” by reducing the budget deficit – on the contrary, the danger is that we’ll cut the deficit too fast.

How could someone as well connected as Mr. Schultz get such a basic point wrong? By talking to the wrong people – in particular, the people at Fix the Debt, who’ve been doing their best to muddle the issue. For example, in a new fund-raising letter Maya MacGuineas, the organization’s public face, writes of the need to “make hard decisions when it comes to averting the ‘fiscal cliff’ and stabilizing our national debt” – even though the problem with the fiscal cliff is precisely that it stabilizes the debt too soon. Clearly, Ms. MacGuineas was trying to confuse readers on that point, and she apparently confused Mr. Schultz too.

New York Times Editorial: A Broken System for Tracking Guns

As President Obama looks to reduce gun violence after the Connecticut massacre through reforms like reinstating the assault weapons ban, he and supporters of sane gun laws in Congress need to be equally serious about strengthening the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the beleaguered agency charged with enforcing federal firearm regulations. [..]

On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, President Obama reiterated his commitment to lay out a package of gun reforms quickly and put his “full weight behind it.” In addition to a tough assault weapons ban, he should be pushing to bar sales of high-capacity ammunition clips and to close the loophole that allows felons and other buyers to evade background checks at gun shows. Empowering the A.T.F. is another step that clearly needs to be part of his agenda.

Robert Kuttner; New Year, New Low for Republicans

Four years ago Barack Obama prepared to take the oath of office as a Democratic president, at a moment when free market ideology and Republican incumbency were disgraced by events. But a year that should have marked the end of the laissez-faire fantasy and the resurgence of effective government instead began an era of muddle through. [..]

Obama wanted to be the president who would change the tone in Washington, meaning a more collaborative relationship with the Republicans. That was not to be. The Republicans would not allow it. Now, history invites Obama to change the tone in Washington by dispatching an extremist Republican Party to the far fringes of public discourse where it belongs.

Peter Dreier: New York Times’ Xmas Present to Corporate Lobby Group Fix-the Debt: A Puff Piece

The New York Times should be embarrassed. On December 24 it gave a Christmas present to the corporate-backed lobby group Fix the Debt with its front-page Business section puff piece about the organization, which is pushing to balance the federal budget by slashing social programs while cutting taxes for the rich.

The 1149-word piece, “One Woman’s War on Debt Gains Steam,” by reporter Annie Lowrey, is a fawning profile of the group’s public face, Maya MacGuineas. The article makes it appear that the Fix the Debt group was hatched last year at a dinner party at Senator Mark Warner’s house, when in fact it is simply the latest incarnation of Pete Peterson, the billionaire Wall Street financier who over many years has invested tens of millions of his money in his long-term crusade to reduce the federal debt on the backs of the poor and middle class, including the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which Peterson funded and where MacGuineas once worked. Peterson is also the largest funder of Fix the Debt, but he isn’t mentioned in Lowrey’s article. The launching of Fix the Debt was announced on the Peter Peterson Foundation website. Lowrey could easily have found dozens of articles on the web about Fix the Debt that reveal Peterson’s crusade and his role in the group, including an investigative article in New York magazine. Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik exposed Peterson’s long-term crusade to forge an elite consensus to slash social spending in pieces last October 2 and October 9. Bob Kuttner performed a similar service in an article for American Prospect.

Indeed, Times columnist Paul Krugman mentioned Peterson’s close ties to the organization in his column “Maya and the Vigilantes” two days before Lowrey’s article appeared.

Ralph Nader: Make Civic Engagement a Priority in the New Year

Many people view the New Year as a time for resolutions — losing weight, exercising more, staying in better touch with friends, taking up a new hobby. Here’s something you don’t often hear of when considering New Year’s resolutions — devoting more time to civic life. Our nation has millions of runners, gym goers, bird watchers, collectors, sports fans and musicians. But one area that is often overlooked when it comes to one’s free time and quality of life is the “democratic arts.”

A practitioner of the democratic arts can rally others informally or through civic groups to stand up against the power brokers who act against the interests of local communities or national interests; a practitioner of the democratic arts will dedicate time and ability to watching over institutions such as Congress, government agencies and multinational corporations; a practitioner of the democratic arts will not just grumble at injustices, but rather seek out and challenge injustices. In short, a practitioner of the democratic arts is an active citizen.

Politicians of all stripes can promise “hope and change,” but real change will only come when more Americans decide to try their hand at civic action. There is an old saying: “Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty.” An update may be — if you don’t have a say, you’ll pay, pay and pay.

Dec 30 2012

Congressional Game of Chicken: On the Brink of a Stalemate

Up Date 16:33 EDT: Republican Senators have taken Social Security off the table as part of the negotiations for the “fiscal cliff.”

With the deadline for the expiration of Bush Tax cuts and austere spending cuts, the Senate negotiations have reached a stalemate. At the last minute, the Republicans demanded significant cuts to Social Security benefits. House Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who was described as  “shocked and disappointed” and this may well be the “poison pill” that ends the charade of “fiscal cliff” talks.

The development came after a long weekend of negotiations during which the two sides had been making progress.

The aide said Democrats had shown flexibility on the major sticking points involving taxes. They had not ruled out maintaining the tax on inherited estates at the current low rate, as Republicans prefer. And they had been open to a deal that would allow taxes to rise on many fewer wealthy households than President Obama had proposed. Republicans were seeking tax increases only on income higher than $400,000 or $500,000 a year, while Obama wanted to set the threshold at $250,000 a year.

But Obama was pressing for $30 billion in new spending to keep unemployment benefits flowing to the long-term unemployed, and he wanted to postpone roughly $100 billion in automatic spending cuts set to hit agency budgets next months. In exchange for those items, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted Sunday that Democrats put cuts to Social Security benefits on the table, noting that Obama had offered to do so as part of the big deficit-reduction package he had been negotiating with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio.)

Republicans declined to comment on the new offer, but noted that Obama endorsed the adjustment, known as chained CPI, again Sunday, in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.

President Obama suggested that he was open to the highly unpopular proposal to cut increases to Social Security by linking it to the “chained CPI” in the context of a larger deal.

The other “monkey wrench” that McConnell threw into the mix was estate taxes which are scheduled to increase to the Clinton level of 55% on estates over one million dollars. The estate tax currently exempts the first $5 million of inheritance and taxes the remainder at 35 percent, which the Republicans want to keep. Pres. Obama wants to make it less generous, reducing the exemption to $3.5 million and taxing the remainder at a 45 percent rate. This tax only affects an extremely small number of people.

Under the Republican proposal, 3,800 people would pay the estate tax year, also near an average of $3.3 million. The GOP proposal would raise $182 billion for federal tax coffers over the next 10 years.

Under Obama’s proposal, 6,500 people would pay the estate tax next year, with an average payment estimated at about $3 million. The president’s proposal would raise $284 billion in tax revenue over the next 10 years.

No action by Congress would send the estate tax back to what it was in the 1990s – with a $1 million exemption and 55 rate percent for the remaining share. That would affect more than 40 million Americans.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-SC) has reached out to Vice President Joe Biden to break the impasse.

 

Dec 30 2012

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Steve Kornacki is guest host. Joining him will be:

Sen. Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon and leading advocate of filibuster reform; Rep. Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; Jamelle Bouie, staff writer at The American Prospect, fellow at The Nation Institute; Suzy Khimm, reporter for the Washington Post; Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion; Kevin Williamson, deputy managing editor at The National Review and author of “The Dependency Agenda;” Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express; and Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests on “This Week” are Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY); Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ);  Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD); and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID.

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl leads the roundtable with guests the former Vermont governor and founder of Democracy for America, Howard Dean; former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, president and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable; Politico senior political reporter Maggie Haberman; and Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). Joining him on the panel are the Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan, Vanity Fair‘s Dee Dee Myers, and TIME Magazine‘s Michael Duffy and Joe Klein who offer their take on the fiscal cliff situation with updates from CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett and CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

The Chris Matthews Show: Joining Chris for his annual holiday awards show are Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor; Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent; and Sam Donaldson, ABC Reporter.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: In an exclusive, President Barack Obama sits with David Gregory for his first interview on a Sunday talk show in three years.

The roundtable guests are NBC’s Tom Brokaw; historians Jon Meacham and Doris Kearns Goodwin; the New York Times‘ David Brooks; and NBC’s Chuck Todd.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Joining Ms. Crowley are Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, John Barrasso (R-Wy), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD).

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warning on a spike in milk prices next year, and why rural America is losing its influence.

And Live at noon, she will talk about the latest news on the fiscal cliff with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID).

Dec 30 2012

What We Now Know

Up with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes tells some of what we should know for the coming year, including what is on the legislative agendas of lawmakers around the country

Sharing what they know are Richard Wolff, Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University; Susan Crawford, Professor at the Center on Intellectual Property and Information Law Program at Carodozo School of Law; Karl Smith, Assistant Professor of Economics and Government at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Chrystia Freeland, Editor of Thomson Reuters Digital and author of “Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.”

North Carolina Senate Set to Repeal Racial Justice Act

The North Carolina state senate voted to gut a law on Monday that allows death row inmates to argue that racial bias influenced their sentencing. Enacted in 2009, the Racial Justice Act requires judges in North Carolina to commute death row inmates’ sentences to life in prison if they find race played a “significant” role in the initial sentence.

State Republicans have long set their sights on undoing the law, the Wall Street Journal reports. The GOP-controlled North Carolina state house weakened the original law in June, changing its language to require that courts prove that prosecutors acted “with discriminatory purpose” when selecting juries and seeking the death penalty. But proving intent, as one attorney told the Raleigh News & Observer, is exceedingly difficult. And Colorlines‘ Jamillah King reports that the new language “represented a meaningful undermining of the point: The law had moved courts to a focus on racially disparate outcomes, rather than a racist intent.”

In 2012, Executions Hold Steady, But Death Penalty Imposed Less

Convicted killer Michael Hooper’s heart stopped beating in an Oklahoma death chamber from lethal injection on Aug. 14. The country’s next executions happened more than five weeks later on Sept. 20 when Ohio killed Donald Palmer, who’d murdered two strangers, and when Robert Harris was executed in Texas for killing five people.

The long gap between executions made 2012 one of the quietest years on death row, since executions peaked in 1999, according to a study by the Death Penalty Information Center.

In all, 43 death row inmates have been executed in 2012, the same number as in 2011. That’s down by 58 percent from 1999 when 98 condemned prisoners were executed.

“The public still wants it on the books, but they see life without parole as a real alternative,” said Richard Dieter, the Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director.

The public considers capital punishment too expensive and doesn’t think of it as a deterrent to crime, he said. “Capital punishment is being clustered and isolated in a few states.”

Minimum Wage Increase Hits 10 States, Boosting Pay For An Estimated One Million Workers

WASHINGTON — New Years Day will bring a small pay bump to some of the lowest-paid American workers, with 10 states set to hike their minimum wages for 2013.

Nearly a million low-wage workers will see their earnings rise because of the increases, most of which come courtesy of state cost-of-living adjustments that account for inflation. Washington State will once again have the highest minimum wage in the nation, at $9.19 per hour, after a raise of 15 cents for the new year. The other states raising their wage floors are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Dec 29 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: A Double Shot of Misunderstanding

(T)he reality is that the business leaders intervening in our economic debate are, for the most part, either predatory or hopelessly confused (or, I guess, both).

I’d put Fix the Debt in the predatory category; it’s quite clear that the organization (which is yet another Pete Peterson front, this time explicitly dominated by corporate interests) has an agenda more focused on cutting social insurance and corporate taxes than on reducing the deficit per se.

Meanwhile, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, exemplifies the hopeless confusion factor. By all accounts, he’s a good guy, with genuinely generous instincts. But in his message to employees, urging them to write “come together” on coffee cups, he gets the nature of the fiscal cliff completely wrong. In fact, he gets it wrong in two fundamental ways.

Ezra Klein:

[A]t the elite level – which encompasses everyone from CEOs to media professionals – there’s a desire to keep up good relations on both sides of the aisle. And so it’s safer, when things are going wrong, to offer an anodyne criticism that offends nobody – “both sides should come together!” – then to actually blame one side or the other. It’s a way to be angry about Washington’s failure without alienating anyone powerful. That goes doubly for commercial actors, like Starbucks, that need to sell coffee to both Republicans and Democrats.

That breaks the system. It hurts the basic mechanism of accountability, which is the public’s ability to apportion blame. If one side’s intransigence will lead to both sides getting blamed, then it makes perfect sense to be intransigent: You’ll get all the benefits and only half the blame.

The two parties are not equivalent right now. The two sides are not the same. If you want Washington to come together, you need to make it painful for those who are breaking it apart. Telling both sides to come together when it’s predominantly one side breaking the negotiations apart actually makes it easier on those who’re refusing to compromise.

Dean Baker: Economy Wrecker Alan Greenspan Was Central to the Formation of the Campaign to Fix the Debt

Alan Greenspan will go down in history as the person who has done more damage to the U.S. economy and society that anyone who was not a foreign enemy. In fact the destruction he wreaked through his incompetence would also exceed the damage caused by almost all would-be enemies as well. [..]

This is why it would have been worth highlighting the news contained in a NYT article on the origins of the “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” the corporate financed effort to reduce the deficit. [..]

This is such an amazing tidbit that it really should have been the lead of the article. The person most responsible for wrecking the economy — and incidentially adding trillions of dollars to the debt — was there at the founding of the Campaign to Fix the Debt.

Wow, what did Santa get you for Christmas?

Matthew Rothschild: Why the “Fiscal Cliff” Bores the Snot Out of Me

I can barely write the words “fiscal cliff” without dosing off. And I’m not alone here. Utter the term to insomniacs and out they’ll go. [..]

And after this weekend or by the end of January at the latest, Congress will have passed a budget bill that maintains middle class tax cuts and averts the alleged calamities that, in all probability, were never going to come to pass anyway. [..]

The “fiscal cliff” has been a tiresome charade, and it disguises the fact that both parties are taking us down the path of austerity.

Sam Sacks: From MLK to Occupy, the FBI Resides on the Wrong Side of History

Why did the FBI consider a movement composed of students, senior citizens, mothers with baby carriages and Americans of all colors and backgrounds such a threat that they required covert monitoring?

During the heyday of the Occupy Movement last year, if you were lucky enough to walk through one of the encampments – as I was frequently here at Occupy DC – you would have seen a community built as an example of what our nation should be striving for. [..]

And in a nation facing economic desperation, historic levels of wealth inequality and a rapidly disappearing social safety net, Occupy was the way forward – a community in every city that could serve as an example of what we as Americans should be striving for during a time when Wall Street suits were choking the lives out of most Americans.

But if you were an FBI agent, then Occupy looked like something completely different. To the FBI, Occupy was a breeding ground for violence and domestic terrorism.

Robert Reich: Cliff Hanger: Why Republicans Don’t Care What the Nation Thinks

Are House Republicans — now summoned back to Washington by Speaker John Boehner — about to succumb to public pressure and save the nation from the fiscal cliff?

Don’t bet on it.

Even if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cooperates by not mounting a filibuster and allows the Senate to pass a bill extending the Bush tax cuts to the first $250,000 of everyone’s income, Boehner may not bring it to the House floor. [..]

But this assumes Boehner and the GOP will be any more swayed by public opinion than they are now.

Dec 28 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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Paul Krugman; Is Growth Over?

The great bulk of the economic commentary you read in the papers is focused on the short run: the effects of the “fiscal cliff” on U.S. recovery, the stresses on the euro, Japan’s latest attempt to break out of deflation. This focus is understandable, since one global depression can ruin your whole day. But our current travails will eventually end. What do we know about the prospects for long-run prosperity?

The answer is: less than we think.

The long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office, generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades. In particular, productivity – the key driver of growth – is projected to rise at a rate not too different from its average growth since the 1970s. On the other side, however, these projections generally assume that income inequality, which soared over the past three decades, will increase only modestly looking forward.

New York Times: Time to Confront Climate Change

Four years ago, in sharp contrast to the torpor and denial of the George W. Bush years, President Obama described climate change as one of humanity’s most pressing challenges and pledged an all-out effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill limiting greenhouse gas emissions. [..]

Since his re-election, Mr. Obama has agreed to foster a “conversation” on climate change and an “education process” about long-term steps to address it. He needs to do a good deal more than that. Intellectually, Mr. Obama grasps the problem as well as anyone. The question is whether he will bring the powers of the presidency to bear on the problem.

Shannyn Moore: My Guns Are Less Regulated Than My Uterus

I’m old enough to remember when the NRA was invited into our schools to educate students on gun safety. Yes, I’m old, and I grew up in rural Alaska, but the NRA as an institution has changed as much as everything else has since then. It now operates as a lobby for gun manufacturers rather than for responsible gun owners who grew up with the traditions of hunting and shooting. [..]

In Alaska, many of us need guns to fill our freezers, but if you need a 30-round clip you’re a pretty poor hunter. If you are hoarding automatic (yes, they are legal) or semi-automatic weapons, you need Viagra. [..]

I’m not advocating for no guns. I like mine and am not about to give them up. But in this country, my uterus is more regulated than my guns. Birth control and reproductive health services are harder to get than bullets. What is that about? Guns don’t kill people — vaginas do?

When the cottonwood is flying and Alaskans are all lined up for Sudafed, we have to get it from a pharmacist, give them our identification, and the state keeps track of how much we’re consuming just so they’re sure we’re not running a meth lab. I get it, meth is bad, but I can buy bullets right off the shelf.

Dean Baker: Washington Post Pushes Mayan End of the World Story on “Fiscal Cliff”

Yes, the Washington Post is getting very worried that it will have egg all over its face if January 1 comes with no budget deal and we don’t get its promised recession. The paper pushed this line yet again, telling readers:

“Unless the House and the Senate can agree on a way to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” more than $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts will take effect next year, potentially sparking a new recession.”

Of course the potential for a new recession does not refer to missing the January 1 deadline. It is the risk the country faces if we continue well into 2013 paying higher tax rates and with large cuts in spending. This is an enormously important distinction.

Trevor Timm: Why We Should All Care About Today’s Senate Vote on the FISA Amendments Act, the Warrantless Domestic Spying Bill

Today is an incredibly important vote for the future of your digital privacy, but some in Congress are hoping you won’t find out.

Finally, after weeks of delay, the Senate will start debate on the dangerous FISA Amendments Act at 10 am Eastern and vote on its re-authorization by the end of the day. The FISA Amendments Act is the broad domestic spying bill passed in 2008 in the wake of the warrantless wiretapping scandal. It expires at the end of the year and some in Congress wanted to re-authorize it without a minute of debate.

The good news is-thanks for your phone calls, emails, and tweets-Congress will now be forced to debate it, which means we can affect its outcome. [..]

Any Senator who wants to stay true to the Constitution should vote no on its re-authorization, but in the alternative, there are four common sense amendments up for debate today that would go a long-way in curbing the law’s worst abuses

Joe Conason: Veterans Denounce Neoconservative ‘Swiftboating’ of Chuck Hagel

If Chuck Hagel is nominated by President Obama to serve as Secretary of Defense, there will be at least three compelling arguments in his favor. He served with distinction in the military and would, like Secretary of State nominee John Kerry, bring a veteran’s perspective to his post. He has adopted and articulated a sane perspective on the grave foreign policy blunders whose consequences still haunt the nation, including the Iraq and Vietnam wars. And as we have learned ever since his nomination was first floated, he has made all the right (and right-wing) enemies. [..]

The “swiftboating” of Hagel is being mobilized by the likes of William Kristol, the “Weekly Standard” editor, who managed to avoid service in Vietnam but still believes that bloody tragedy was a great idea. Kristol and his ilk have been so wrong about every policy issue over the past four decades that their angry opposition to Hagel is a sterling endorsement of him.

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