Tag: Opinion

Aug 28 2015

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: Crash-Test Dummies as Republican Candidates for President

Will China’s stock crash trigger another global financial crisis? Probably not. Still, the big

market swings of the past week have been a reminder that the next president may well have to deal with some of the same problems that faced George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Financial instability abides.

So this is a test: How would the men and women who would be president respond if crisis struck on their watch?

And the answer, on the Republican side at least, seems to be: with bluster and China-bashing. Nowhere is there a hint that any of the G.O.P. candidates understand the problem, or the steps that might be needed if the world economy hits another pothole.

Eugene Robinson: The Republican Nomination: Anyone Who Says Donald Trump Can’t Win Is in Deep Denial

I know you haven’t heard enough about Donald Trump recently, so here’s more: At this point, anyone who says he can’t win the Republican nomination is in deep denial.

Trump announced his candidacy on June 16 and immediately vaulted into the top tier of candidates. On July 14, a USA Today poll put Trump in the lead by three points-and he has led every survey since. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday said he had the support of 28 percent of GOP voters-which is huge in a field this big.

The new poll gave Trump a 16-point lead over his nearest competitor, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Jeb Bush, whom Trump has begun describing as a “low-energy person”-and who campaigns at times as if he were the nominee of destiny-stood at a measly 7 percent. Yikes.

That jolt you felt Thursday morning wasn’t an earthquake, it was the detonation of the Quinnipiac bomb.

Megan Carpentier: The blasé acceptance that you might get shot is a fact of American life

The first time I did something about America’s epidemic of mass shootings was not when I looked up and saw on TV that a child had shot up a school full of children – although that’s happened a lot of times here. [..]

The blasé acceptance that, yes, you might well get shot some day is as much of a facet of American life in 2015 as it was in 2002. We are as desensitized now as we were were in 1993, when Colin Ferguson shot up a Long Island Railroad train car of commuters and in 1984, when James Huberty shot up a McDonalds in San Ysidro, California. The shooting at the University of Albany, in upstate New York (1994) didn’t change anything. Columbine (1999) didn’t change anything. The Lancaster, Pennsylvania Amish schoolhouse shooting (2006) didn’t change anything.

Nothing changed for Americans because our political leaders didn’t change anything. Instead, a nation ducked.

John Nichols: Since When Are Democrats Afraid of Debates?

The Democratic National Committee needs to adapt to the new politics of 2016. Instead of constraining debate, as it has so far, the DNC should change course and encourage an open and freewheeling discourse. This is not just the right choice; it’s the politically practical thing to do.

Like it or not, the 2016 campaign is in full swing, and Americans are engaging with it. A record-breaking 24 million viewers tuned in to watch the August 6 GOP debate-more Americans than voted in all of the Republican primaries and caucuses of 2012 combined. It’s easy to dismiss these debates as “clown car” spectacles, considering the atrocious statements coming from Donald Trump and his apprentices. Yet since that first debate, Trump and other Republicans have seen their numbers spike in polls pairing them against anticipated Democratic opponents in 2016.

Democrats are making a serious mistake if they imagine that they’ll somehow benefit by letting the Republicans claim center stage as summer gives way to fall.

Mary Turck: Bias against black jurors must end

Prosecutors’ challenges against black jurors reinforce distrust of the criminal justice system as a whole<

The racism permeating the U.S. justice system is blatantly obvious in jury selection. On Aug. 17, Reprieve Australia, an anti-capital-punishment advocacy group, released a study showing that prosecutors in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, excluded black people from juries three times as often as white people over 10 years. A similar study in 2010 by Alabama-based nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, conducted in eight Southern states, found significant racially discriminatory practices in jury selection.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this fall, Foster v. Humphrey, regarding a prosecutor’s use of challenges to eliminate black jurors. Such tactics result in fewer acquittals as well as deny a basic right and duty of citizenship. While court decisions are important, they are not enough. Community-based actions such as public campaigns and protests are needed to demand the enforcement of existing legal prohibitions of discrimination against black jurors.

Aug 27 2015

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

New York Times Editorial Board: Killings of Journalists Bring Gun Violence to Dark New Level

It is an increasingly horrific fact of life and death in the United States that easily available guns offer troubled Americans the power to act out their grievances in public. This trend, dramatized in recent years by macabre shootings in schools, churches, movie theaters and workplaces, was taken to a dark new level on Wednesday in southwestern Virginia by a disturbed former reporter who chose not only to murder two journalists as they reported live for a television station that had fired him, but also to record and broadcast the crime on social media. [..]

Many politicians will focus on the gunman’s troubled personality and try to cast this shooting as a summons for better mental health care, certainly not gun control. Yet that ignores a grim reality: the estimated 300 million guns in America owned by a third of the population, far more per capita than any other modern nation. Guns are ubiquitous and easy to acquire, as statehouse politicians, particularly Republicans, genuflect to the gun lobby to weaken, not tighten, gun safety.

We all know no change is likely, for all the social media grotesquerie. The woeful truth underlying this latest shooting is more mundane than alarming. There are too many guns, and too little national will to do anything about them.

Trevor Timm: Many police departments spy on you without oversight. This must end

Local police around the country are increasingly using high-tech mass surveillance gear that can vacuum up private information on entire neighborhoods of innocent citizens – all to capture minor alleged criminals. Even worse, many cops are trying to put themselves outside the reach of the law by purposefully hiding their spying from courts to avoid any scrutiny from judges.

Two important news reports from the last week have shed light on the disturbing practices, and new technology that’s never been previously reported. The first investigation, done by USA Today’s Brad Heath, found: “In one case after another … police in Baltimore and other cities used the phone tracker, commonly known as a stingray, to locate the perpetrators of routine street crimes and frequently concealed that fact from the suspects, their lawyers and even judges.”

Dean Baker: The Stock Market Is Not the Economy

We are seeing the usual hysteria over the sharp drop in the markets in Asia, Europe, and perhaps the US. (Wall Street seems to be rallying as I write.) There are a few items worth noting as we enjoy the panic.

First and most importantly, the stock market is not the economy. The stock market has fluctuations all the time that have nothing to do with the real economy. The most famous was the 1987 crash, which did not correspond to any real-world bad event that anyone could identify.

Even over longer periods, there is no direct correlation between the stock market and GDP. In the decade of the 1970s, the stock market lost more than 40 percent of its value in real terms; in the decade of the 1980s it more than doubled. GDP growth averaged 3.3 percent from 1980 to 1990, compared to 3.2 percent from 1970 to 1980.

Amanda Marcotte: Why Fox News’ Defense Of Megyn Kelly Is Going To Backfire

Donald Trump has reignited his sexist harassment campaign against Megyn Kelly, and the folks at Fox News are, in seemingly coordinated fashion, striking back. Fellow Fox News hosts and pundits are asking Trump to cool it, and even Roger Ailes has released a statement calling Trump’s abuse “unacceptable” and “disturbing.” It’s almost touching, watching all these conservative media people who usually profit at peddling sexism choose, this time at least, to join together in an effort to stop this one particular instance of it.

It’s also going to backfire.

Conservative media and Fox News in particular have spent years – decades, if you count talk radio – training their audiences to believe that exhortations against sexism and racism are nothing but the “political correctness” police trying to kill your good time. Indeed, one reason that Trump was able to get so much attention for his presidential run in the first place is that Fox has spent years building him up, knowing that their audience enjoys vicariously needling imagined liberals and feminists with his loud-mouthed insult comic act.

Seamus Milne: China can ride out this crisis. But we’re on course for another crash

It may not yet be the moment to get in supplies of tinned food. That was what Gordon Brown’s former adviser during the 2008 crash, Damian McBride, suggested on Monday as stock markets crashed from Shanghai to New York and $1tn was wiped off the value of shares in one day. But seven years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers brought down the global financial system and plunged half the world into a slump, it’s scarcely alarmist to see the financial panic as the harbinger of a new crisis in a still crippled world economy.

The market gyrations that followed “Black Monday” this week and the 40% drop in the value of Chinese stocks since June have only underlined the fragility of what is supposed to be an international recovery. For all the finger-wagging hubris of western commentators over the fact that the latest mayhem has erupted in China, this is a global firestorm. And after three decades of deregulation punctuated by financial crises and a systemic meltdown, there is every reason to fear more fallout from casino capitalism.

Scott Lemieux: Gun control is political. So is refusing to address the politics of gun violence

After the 24-year-old television reporter Alison Parker and her 27-year-old cameraman Adam Ward were killed while on camera from a lake outside of Roanoke, Virginia on Wednesday morning, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, somewhat predictably tweeted that “[w]e must act to stop gun violence, and we cannot wait any longer” and Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe called for new gun control measures in the form of background checks .

The conservative response to Democrats’ anodyne reactions is even more predictable:  it’s wrong, they say, to “politicize” individual acts of firearm violence. But gun violence in the United States has everything to do with politics – and we should be talking more, not less, about the impact of America’s failed gun policies on victims and their families and communities.

Aug 26 2015

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.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Danger of ‘Foreign Policy by Bumper Sticker’

The GOP’s paranoia and hubris promises yet another self-inflicted foreign policy disaster.

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1966, George F. Kennan, the legendary Cold War diplomat often called “the father of containment,” criticized the escalation of the war in Vietnam. The United States, he said, should not “jump around like an elephant frightened by a mouse.”

Kennan’s “frightened elephant” is a strangely apt metaphor for the situation in which we find ourselves nearly a half-century later. In the GOP primary, the candidates are calling for a foreign policy defined by fear-mongering and senseless aggression. Their agenda includes plans to reverse President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran, abandon renewed diplomatic ties with Cuba, escalate tensions with Russia and deploy U.S. troops in Syria. Much like Kennan’s agitated elephant, the Republicans candidates see threats in Iran, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and in the Islamic State and other Islamic extremist groups that are far out of proportion to any real harm they could ever inflict on U.S. interests. They are so out of touch with reality that even admitting the folly of the Iraq war has become a sign of weakness. The far greater danger, though, is the combination of paranoia and hubris that characterizes the foreign policies of the Republican candidates leading us into yet another self-inflicted foreign policy disaster. Once again, they would have us rush to embrace unnecessarily militaristic responses to otherwise manageable foreign policy challenges, bringing yet more chaos to the Middle East and Eastern Europe while costing the nation even more in lost lives and treasure.

Joan Walsh: An ugly new frontier in GOP race-baiting: Attacking the Asian menace

Jeb says it’s Asians who have anchor babies, while Trump and Walker bash China. Good luck with the outreach, guys!

Jeb Bush proved for the millionth time Monday that he’s the worst candidate promoted as a presidential “frontrunner” since Ted Kennedy in 1980. Bush’s latest gaffe, you probably heard, involved his claim that he’s not scapegoating Latinos with his complaints about “anchor babies,” because the real “anchor baby” scammers – people who aren’t Americans but have children here so they become citizens – are “Asian people,” not Latinos.

Bush brushed off a suggestion that he’s alienating Latinos with his “anchor baby” rhetoric by pointing to “my background, my life, I’m immersed in the immigrant experience.” Then he stepped in it: “Frankly it’s more related to Asian people coming into the country…taking advantage of birthright citizenship.”

Suddenly it seems the GOP field has a new political scapegoat: Asians! There aren’t as many of them as there are Latinos, though they’re the fastest growing “minority” group in the country. The same day Bush slurred Asians on the illegal immigration issue, Gov. Scott Walker demanded President Obama cancel his meetings with Chinese president Xi Jinping, because…toughness? He didn’t really say.

Amy B. Dean: The charter school movement needs greater accountability

Even supporters should realize that corruption is tarnishing charter schools’ reputations and wasting public money

Charter schools enroll more than 2.5 million students in the U.S. But as these publicly funded, privately run schools have spread across the country, so have reports of corruption and waste bred by a lack of accountability.

A recent study published by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy, entitled “The Tip of the Iceberg,” found $203 million lost to fraud, corruption and mismanagement in charter schools, with a projected $1.4 billion in losses in 2015 alone. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is concerned as well: It has investigated schools in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Connecticut, Arizona, Ohio, Massachusetts, Indiana and Illinois. [..]

Whether or not one thinks that charter schools are a good thing, we should be able to agree that greater accountability strengthens our school system. However, many charter advocates have stood in the way of reform.

Lauren Pagel: Forget fracking. We need clean energy now

New EPA rule on methane takes step in right direction, but we must expedite the transition to renewable energy

One year ago, Earthworks, the environmental advocacy organization I work for, launched the Citizens Empowerment Project to document the effects of fracking on air quality in across the country. With the help of a special thermal camera that detects and visualizes the presence of harmful gases, people near fracking sites across the country can now confirm what they have known for years to be true: Oil and gas development is polluting their air.

This pollution includes Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, a known carcinogen. These pollutants contribute to smog, which can trigger a variety of health problems such as asthma. Air pollution is a problem at almost every point along the development chain, from the well pad to the pipeline and beyond. But until now,  state rules to protect families living near such sites have been spotty and largely unenforced. And there are few national protections that safeguard our air from fracking and related development.

Aug 25 2015

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

David Cay Johnston: The antidote to economic anxiety is better government

The stock market will recover. Whether jobs and pay will come back for most people is less certain

Sharp recent drops in the U.S., Chinese and European stock markets and the large crowds drawn by two very different men seeking to be president, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, point to the same issue: widespread economic anxiety. [..]

Although the news coverage is clamorous, the stock market will recover. Monday’s sudden stock market drops from Beijing to New York simply reflect the leverage of high-speed traders, many buying shares with $30 of borrowed money for every $1 of equity. With that much leverage, panic easily sets in when stock prices become volatile.

Encouraging this reckless behavior are the near zero interest rate policies of the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Artificially low interest rates decrease the costs of speculation and encourage frothing the market for quick profits, enabling traders and their clients to accumulate money without creating wealth.

This scenario is entirely preventable: If the government limited stock trades to ban or minimize borrowed money, there would be less speculation and less instability. In the long term, stock prices would move in greater accord with the profits and expected profits of each company.

Dean Baker: The Federal Reserve Board and the War for Poverty

There has been much talk in recent years about inequality and the poor life chances of children who grow up in poverty. Even many conservative Republicans have been putting forward proposals that are ostensibly designed to give people the opportunity to raise themselves out of poverty and into the middle class and beyond.

While the usefulness of the various proposals for combating poverty can be debated, the stated intention is increasing the income and opportunities for those at the bottom. This stands in sharp contrast to what the Federal Reserve Board seems prepared to do this fall. It plans to implement policies, specifically higher interest rates, which will reduce the income and opportunities for those at the bottom. [..]

However it is important that the public have a clear idea of what is at stake in the Fed’s decisions on interest rates. While many politicians and policy experts are grappling with ways to try to lower the poverty rate, by raising interest rates, the Fed will be directly preventing people in poverty from getting jobs and seeing pay increases. We can argue over the best policies to get people out of poverty, but a good place to start would be to end policies that keep them in poverty.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: In Troubled Times, the Federal Reserve Must Work for Everyone

It’s been a chaotic few days for the world’s markets. Recent events do not paint the picture of a stable economy guided by rational minds. Instead, the world of global finance looks more like a playground in need of adult supervision.

Like other nations, we have a central bank. What should the Federal Reserve do in troubled times? For that matter, what is the Fed’s role in preventing them from occurring in the first place? [..]

The Federal Reserve was created by the American people through an act of Congress. Its governors and its policies are there to protect and serve the public. The Fed should use its oversight capabilities to ensure that banks don’t behave in a reckless manner or help private funds and other unsupervised institutions to behave recklessly.

We are still paying the price for allowing big-money interests to dominate both lawmaking on Capitol Hill and monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. That must change. Congress and the Fed, acting together, should ensure that our nation’s policies benefit the many who are in need of help, not the few who already have more than they need.

Robert Reich: The Upsurge in Uncertain Work

As Labor Day looms, more Americans than ever don’t know how much they’ll be earning next week or even tomorrow.

This varied group includes independent contractors, temporary workers, the self-employed, part-timers, freelancers, and free agents. Most file 1099s rather than W2s, for tax purposes.

On demand and on call — in the “share” economy, the “gig” economy, or, more prosaically, the “irregular” economy — the result is the same: no predictable earnings or hours.

It’s the biggest change in the American workforce in over a century, and it’s happening at lightening speed. It’s estimated that in five years over 40 percent of the American labor force will have uncertain work; in a decade, most of us.

Mark Weisbrot: US and Europe face common political problems

Resistance to economic insecurity and inequality is growing on both sides of the Atlantic

As the ever-lengthening U.S. election season begins to heat up, it is interesting to compare the U.S. and Europe regarding the evolution of their politics since the world financial crisis and recession (2008-09). In Europe, there has been quite a bit of political upheaval, with center-left parties often losing a large part of their voters. In Greece, to take the most dramatic example, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) is now polling just 3 percent of the electorate, after decades of wining around 40 percent or more of the vote. There have been significant losses of popularity for similar center-left parties in Spain, Italy, France and other countries – although some have yet to materialize in elections. In Greece, the leftist Syriza party has gotten most of the disaffected voters and took power this year; in Spain, the newly created leftist Podemos party shot up to the top quickly, although it has fallen some in polls recently. In France it has been the extreme right National Front that gained most, and in Italy, the new populist Five Star Movement.

The U.S. is an oasis of political stability by comparison, partly because of our different political system. But the main reason for Europe’s political turmoil, to mangle political strategist James Carville’s over-used slogan for the 1992 election: It’s the stupid economy.

Aug 24 2015

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

New York Times Editorial Board: An Opening for Diplomacy in Syria

The beheading by Islamic State militants of the Syrian archaeologist Khalid al-Asaad, who gave his life protecting some of Syria’s greatest treasures, was a grisly reminder of how a conflict that has ripped Syria apart for over four years has been greatly complicated – and exploited – by the Islamic State and its savage doctrinal and territorial rampage.

The completion of the Iran nuclear deal last month created space for a renewed push for a political solution to a ruinous civil war between President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the rebels seeking to oust him, which has cost 250,000 lives and forced 11 million people from their homes. Since then, a burst of high-level diplomatic meetings has raised hopes that such an effort is finally underway.

But it is still not clear that the United States, Russia, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other key players have the sense of urgency and political will to set Syria on a more stable path. It is clear, though, that without a political settlement in Syria, it is hard to see how there can be an effective, unified campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and its determination to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

Paul Krugman: A Moveable Glut

What caused Friday’s stock plunge? What does it mean for the future? Nobody knows, and not much.

Attempts to explain daily stock movements are usually foolish: a real-time survey of the 1987 stock crash found no evidence for any of the rationalizations economists and journalists offered after the fact, finding instead that people were selling because, you guessed it, prices were falling. And the stock market is a terrible guide to the economic future: Paul Samuelson once quipped that the market had predicted nine of the last five recessions, and nothing has changed on that front.

Still, investors are clearly jittery – with good reason. U.S. economic news has been good though not great lately, but the world as a whole still seems remarkably accident-prone. For seven years and counting we’ve lived in a global economy that lurches from crisis to crisis: Every time one part of the world finally seems to get back on its feet, another part stumbles. And America can’t insulate itself completely from these global woes.

But why does the world economy keep stumbling?

Trevor Timm: Republicans think if your data is encrypted, the terrorists win

Jeb “I’m my own man” Bush sounds more and more like his know-nothing ex-president brother every day. This time, in between defending the Iraq War and saying he might bring back torture if elected president, he’s demanding that tech companies stop letting billions of the world’s citizens use encryption online to protect their information because of “evildoers.”

Bush’s comments echo the dangerous sentiments of FBI director Jim Comey, who has publicly campaigned against Apple and Google for attempting to make our cell phones and communications safer by incorporating strong encryption in iPhones and Android devices. [..]Unfortunately, Bush’s comments seem to be part of a pattern with the 2016 presidential candidates, none of whom seem to understand the basic precepts of technology, and the critical role encryption plays in all of our cybersecurity.

Robert Kuttner: 2016: The Coming Train Wreck

Six months ago, the 2016 election looked to be predictable and boring: Clinton II vs. Bush III. Advantage: Clinton.

Well, forget about that.

The Republican demolition derby has been getting most of the publicity lately, but one should worry more about the Democrats. Consider:

Hillary Clinton is sinking like a stone. She’s falling in the polls. Conversations with her longtime friends and admirers indicate grave worry. She is not generating the excitement that the first prospective woman president should; the email mess is not going away; even the money advantage is not what was anticipated. [..]

To sum up: The 2016 Republican field is more of a Mutually-Assured-Destruction mess than any in my long lifetime. It’s not only much too big, but far to the right of American public opinion. The exceptions are a surprisingly strong John Kasich, who is probably too moderate to be nominated, and Jeb Bush who may well be too clumsy. And then there is Trump.

In general, that’s all good news for the Dems. But never, never, discount the Democrats’ talent for doing themselves in. If this were an HBO series, it would be one hell of a show, albeit a little far-fetched. Unfortunately, it’s our life.

Char Millier: When firefighters speak out on climate change, we ought to listen up

Climate change is worsening the fires that ravage many parts of America each year. Grime-streaked firefighters battling one of the 167 active wildfires currently scorching portions of the US west will tell you as much. What they have encountered on the firelines in the past few years is evidence that everything has changed as a result of global warming.

In mid-August, the day after a quick-moving fire first exploded southwest of Boise, Idaho, the blaze more than doubled in size to nearly 79,000 acres in one four hour stretch. Along the way, it sparked a “firenado” that rained hot ash and dirt on firefighters.

Or consider the disturbing talk surrounding the still-smoldering fire named Rocky that this month scorched 70,000 acres near Napa, California: “This fire wants to do whatever it wants,” Jason Shanley, a Cal Fire spokesman, observed, adding “It’s defying all odds. 30 year, 40 year veterans have never seen this before.”

Robert Creamer: Out of Touch Punditry Should Get a Grip — Hillary’s Email Is Non-Story

A message to the out-of-touch Washington pundit class: get a grip. What was or was not on Hillary Clinton’s email server when she was Secretary of State is not a game-changing news story.

In fact, no one outside the chattering class — and right-wing true believers — could give a rat’s rear about this story — and there is a good reason: there is no “there” there. If someone really thinks the great “email” story — or the Benghazi investigation — are going to sink her candidacy, I’ve got a bridge to sell them.

Of course, this is not the first time that the media — with an assist from right-wing political operatives — have laid into Hillary Clinton in an attempt to create a “scandal” where there was none.

Aug 23 2015

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:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests o Sunday’s “This Week” are: GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley.

The roundtable guests are: TIME editor Nancy Gibbs; National Review editor Rich Lowry; Yahoo News national political columnist Matt Bai; Republican strategist Ana Navarro; and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Face the Nation: Host John Dickerson’s guests are: GOP presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ).

His panel guests are: TIME‘s Michael Scherer; Politico‘s Manu Raju; Ruth Marcus and Anne Gearan, both of the Washington Post.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this Sunday’s “MTP” are: Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina; and California Gov. Jerry Brown (D).

The political panel guests are: Alfonso Aguilar, Executive Director, American Principles Project’s Latino Partnership; Susan Page, USA TODAY; Jon Ralston, Reno-Gazette Journal; and Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper will have an exclusive interview with GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson and Democratic presidential candidate former Sen. Jim Webb (VA).

His panel guests are: Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress; Kevin Madden; former Rep. Bakari Sellers (D-SC); and S.E. Cupp, CNN contributor.

Aug 22 2015

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:

Rand Paul said something funny the other day. No, really – although of course it wasn’t intentional. On his Twitter account he decried the irresponsibility of American fiscal policy, declaring, “The last time the United States was debt free was 1835.”

Wags quickly noted that the U.S. economy has, on the whole, done pretty well these past 180 years, suggesting that having the government owe the private sector money might not be all that bad a thing. The British government, by the way, has been in debt for more than three centuries, an era spanning the Industrial Revolution, victory over Napoleon, and more.

But is the point simply that public debt isn’t as bad as legend has it? Or can government debt actually be a good thing?

Believe it or not, many economists argue that the economy needs a sufficient amount of public debt out there to function well. And how much is sufficient? Maybe more than we currently have. That is, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that part of what ails the world economy right now is that governments aren’t deep enough in debt.

Robert Reich: Corporate Welfare in California

Corporate welfare is often camouflaged in taxes that seem neutral on their face but give windfalls to big entrenched corporations at the expense of average people and small businesses.

Take a look at commercial property taxes in California, for example.

In 1978 California voters passed Proposition 13 – which began to assess property for tax purposes at its price when it was bought, rather than its current market price.

This has protected homeowners and renters. But it’s also given a quiet windfall to entrenched corporate owners of commercial property.

Corporations don’t need this protection. They’re in the real economy. They’re supposed to compete on a level playing field with new companies whose property taxes are based on current market prices.

John Nichols:  Jon Stewart as a Debate Moderator? Yes, Please!

We need more primary and general election debates, featuring more candidates, more issues and bolder moderators.

The humorist Will Rogers ran a mock campaign for the presidency in 1928 that got so much attention, and was so favorably received, that some Democrats proposed him as a serious contender in 1932. Rogers politely pulled himself out of the running-with an observation that “Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.”

On a more personal and professional note, Rogers warned that “A comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious.”

That is the only argument I can think of for not asking Jon Stewart to moderate at least one of the 2016 presidential debates. And this argument fails because both comedy and politics have changed sufficiently over the past 80-plus years to justify the risk to the reputation of the recently-retired “Daily Show” host.

George Zornilk: Congress Is Sick of the Secrecy Around the TPP

And Senator Sherrod Brown is blocking a key Obama nominee to show it.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is in its final stages, though nobody seems certain when talks over the massive trade deal will actually conclude. The document is undergoing critical late-stage revisions as member nations haggle over the automobile trade with Japan, dairy prices in New Zealand, and monopoly periods for non-generic pharmaceuticals.

When the deal is completed, members of Congress will be able to see the entire text without restriction before they vote on passage. But until then, legislators are operating under hyper-strict rules when they want to review the text, which is locked in a basement room of the US Capitol. Only certain congressional aides with security clearances can see the TPP draft, and only when the member of Congress is also present. Notes taken during these sessions can’t be taken out of the room. [..]

Senator Sherrod Brown recently gave the administration a deadline to ease some of these restrictions. He wants his policy advisors to be able to evaluate the evolving text without having him present. But that access was never given, and his self-imposed deadline passed last Friday.

Brown has consequently announced he will place a hold on Obama’s nominee to be Deputy US Trade Representative.

Stephen W. Thrasher: Republicans’ deep hatred for teachers can’t be denied and they’re not trying

It’s August, the heat is miserable, kids are going back to school and that means one thing for America’s conservatives: it’s the perfect time to take a cheap shot at the nation’s teachers.

John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio – who is generally considered less extreme than Texas Senator Ted Cruz, less dynastic than former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and less crazy than professional troll Donald Trump – recently said: “If I were, not president, if I were king in America, I would abolish all teachers’ lounges where they sit together and worry about ‘woe is us’.”  [..]

Republicans love to hate teachers and imply that all the ills of US society are the result of their laziness. If only schools could be turned over to market forces and not held back by greedy teacher unions, conservative logic goes, everything would be fine – even though charter schools perform no better than traditional schools. Trying to bust unions in general (and those of teachers in particular) turns conservatives on as much as trying to deny climate change, defend the NRA, defund Planned Parenthood or battle for a check from the Koch brothers.

Zoë Carpenter:  The Racist Roots of the GOP’s Favorite New Immigration Plan

Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment, but Donald Trump and other candidates are keeping alive the idea that some Americans should not have equal rights at birth.

The year 1866 was an alarming one for xenophobes: Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, declaring “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power…to be citizens of the United States.” Though explicitly intended to grant citizenship to African-Americans, who’d been denied it by the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1857 Dred Scott case, wouldn’t the law also “have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country?” wondered Pennsylvania Senator Edgar Cowan. “Undoubtedly,” responded Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. When President Andrew Johnson vetoed the act, he too raised the specter of the Chinese and “the people called Gypsies.”

Congress overrode the veto, and went on to enshrine the principle of birthright citizenship in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Needless to say, fears about the children of the gypsies proved unfounded. Yet the idea that people with certain types of parents should be denied citizenship-and the associated rights-persisted. Late in the nineteenth century the government tried to withhold citizenship from the children of Chinese immigrants, but was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. Native Americans weren’t considered citizens until 1924. These days the target is Latino immigrants and their children. And thanks to Donald Trump, the nativist argument against birthright citizenship has moved from a sideline item to a centerpiece in the Republican primary.

Aug 16 2015

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:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC): Republican presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson.

The roundtable guests are: ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd; Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; and Hugh Hewitt, host of the “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

Face the Nation: Host John Dickerson guess are: Gov. John Kasich (R-OH); Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC); former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD).

His panel guests are: The National Journal‘s Ron Fournier; Washington Post‘s Robert Costa; Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan; Bloomberg‘s Mark Halperin; and Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie.(

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on Sunday’s “MTP” are: GOP presidential contender Donald Trump; and Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Roundtable guest are a puzzlement once again.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Gov. John Kasich (R-OH); former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR); and senior adviser to Draft Biden 2016, Joshua Alcorn.

One of his panel guests is former Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT).

Aug 09 2015

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:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Real estate magnate Donald Trump; former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR): Gov. John Kasich (R-OH); former Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX); and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).

The roundtable guests are: ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd; ABC News contributor Donna Brazile; Republican strategist Sara Fagen; and Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, managing editors of Bloomberg Politics.

Face the Nation: Host John Dickerson’s guests are: Bernie Sanders (I-VT); Real estate magnate Donald Trump; former HP CEO Carlie Fiorina; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; and NAACP president Cornell William Brooks.

His panel guests are: Susan Page; Jonathan Martin, Ed O’Keefe and Michael Gerson.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: Sunday’s guests on “MTP” are: Real estate magnate Donald Trump; Gov. John Kasich (R-OH); Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL); Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO); human rights advocate Martin Luther King III; and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young.

The panel guests are: David Brooks, The New York Times; Hugh Hewitt, “The Hugh Hewitt Show“; Heather McGhee, Demos; and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Real estate magnate Donald Trump; former HP CEO Carlie Fiorina; and Gov. John Kasich (R-OH).

His panle guests are: fromer Rep Bakari Sellers (D-SC); Republican analyst Ana Navarro; CNN political commentator Patti Solis Doyle; and former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA).

Aug 02 2015

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:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Donald Trump; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA); and RNC Chair Reince Priebus.

At the roundtable are: Democratic strategist Maria Cardona; former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA); Republican strategist and pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson; and ABC News’ Cokie Roberts.

Face the Nation: Host John Dickerson’s guests are: former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR); and CBS News Aviation and Safety Expert Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.

On a panel to discuss money in politics are: CBS News Correspondent Julianna Goldman; former FEC commissioner Trevor Potter; Washington Post‘s Matea Gold; and Steven Law, American Crossroads.

The guests on the political panel are: Molly Ball, The Atlantic; Ron Fournier, The National Journal; Dan Balz, The Washington Post; and Reihan Salam, The National Review.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this Sunday’s “MTP” are: RNC Chair Reince Priebus; DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz; GOP presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson; and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

At the roundtable, the guests are:  Gerald Seib, The Wall Street Journal; Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post; Helene Cooper, The New York Times; and Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball.”

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: GOP presidential contenders Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

His panel guests are: Former Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS); Brianna Keilar, CNN senior political correspondent; Jennifer J. Jacobs, Des Moines Register; and Van Jones, Rebuild the Dream.

In a tribute to the departing host of “The Daily Show” Jon Stewart, Mr. Tapper speaks with Samantha Bee.

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