Thomas O. McGarity at The New York Times discusses What Obama Left Out of His Inequality Speech: Regulation:
But there’s a crucial dimension the president left out: the revival, since the mid-1970s, of the laissez-faire ideology that prevailed in the Gilded Age, roughly the 1870s through the 1910s. It’s no coincidence that this laissez-faire revival — an all-out assault on government regulation — has unfolded over the very period in which inequality has soared to levels not seen since the Gilded Age.
History tells us that in periods when protective governmental institutions are weak, irresponsible companies tend to abuse their economic freedom in ways that harm ordinary workers and consumers. The victims are often less affluent citizens who lack the power either to protect themselves from harm or to hold companies accountable in the courts. We are in such a period today.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times laments once again the Republicans' off-the-mark viewpoint on long-term unemployment in
The Punishment Cure:
Now, the G.O.P.’s desire to punish the unemployed doesn’t arise solely from bad economics; it’s part of a general pattern of afflicting the afflicted while comforting the comfortable (no to food stamps, yes to farm subsidies). But ideas do matter — as John Maynard Keynes famously wrote, they are “dangerous for good or evil.” And the case of unemployment benefits is an especially clear example of superficially plausible but wrong economic ideas being dangerous for evil.
Richard Long at the
Campaign for America's Future explains
How Congress Can End The Sequester and Tax Loophole Madness:
Congress could, if it chose to, vote today to repeal the mindless across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester and at the same time close loopholes corporations use to escape paying taxes, ensuring that we have the resources to put the American economy back on track while ending incentives for sending American jobs overseas.
That’s what a bill introduced by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) would do. “The Sequester Delay and Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act” would end the manufactured crisis known as the sequester in 2014 and 2015, and remove $38.6 billion worth of sequester cuts in 2016 – all together around $220 billion – by closing corporate loopholes that allow companies to keep their profits overseas and out of American tax coffers.
This bill corresponds with Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act”, raising the $220 billion that was removed by the sequester and investing it back in American jobs, preventing the cuts that hurt the economy in 2013 from doing so again in the next two years. Both of these bills are related to a letter to Congress signed by the Campaign for America’s Future and 40 other organizations in September titled “Principles for Debate on the Budget and the Economy.”
Ana Marie Cox at offers some
Tips for talking about the 2016 presidential nominations – a year ahead of time:
1. It's okay to say someone is inevitable! [...] 2. If you're going to think out-of-the-box, have some data on your side. [...] 3. Parse the difference between "lack of interest" or "no plans" in a presidential run and a denial that one will run. [...]
4. Gaffes are not death sentences.
Below the fold are more pundit excerpts.
Gideon Levy at Haaretz writes—Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu have no right to eulogize Nelson Mandela:
Neither Peres nor Netanyahu have any right to eulogize Mandela; both are responsible, more than any other statesmen in the free world, for undermining his legacy and establishing the (nonidentical) twin of the regime he battled. They’re eulogizing him? Mandela will turn in his grave and history will laugh bitterly.
Israeli public opinion tolerates everything, even intolerable, two-faced eulogies. But Israeli cooperation with the apartheid regime, and the continuation of its legacy in the occupied territories, cry out beyond the gloomy skies of a grieving South Africa.
The world’s mourning should inspire some pointed questions here as well. Why was Israel virtually the only country that collaborated with that evil regime? Why are so many good people convinced that Israel is an apartheid state? While it may not pay to dwell on past shame – even Mandela forgave Israel – questions about the present should disturb us greatly.
William Rivers Pitt at
Truthout fumes in
Top Gun Santa:
[W]hen I saw this article on Tuesday morning, I very nearly went around the bend:
As Santa streaks through the sky this Christmas Eve, Rudolph merrily guiding the way, he will be flanked by some new and unusual companions: a jet-fighter escort, bristling with missiles. That is the twist that - to the dismay of at least some child advocates - the US military has chosen to put on this year's version of its traditional animated tracking of the yuletide journey. This year's updated segment, now previewing on the military's website, depicts Santa soaring over snow-capped peaks with military aircraft keeping pace on either side. [...]
Threats? To Santa Claus? Whose bright idea was this? Now, for the first time in history, children who see this nonsense will go to bed on Christmas Eve worried that someone might try to kill Santa Claus, an idea that no kid anywhere has ever been required to encompass.
You really have to see this turd to believe it.
David Sirota at
In These Times writes—
Meat consumption not only affects our environment, but also our access to antibiotics:
Right around now, many Americans are picking at the last few chunks of leftover turkey. This annual ritual is a reminder that stripped of its pilgrim mythology, Thanksgiving is an extended paroxysm of meat consumption. Oh, sure, we go out of our way to pretend it isn't really about that to the point where the president of the United States makes a public spectacle out of pardoning a bird. Yet, this particular holiday is our culture's grandest celebration of flesh eating–and therefore, it has become a microcosmic example of our willingness to risk self-destruction. [...]
The first is catastrophic climate change. According to a report last year by two former World Bank experts, more than half of all carbon emissions come from the livestock industry that supports the meat economy. Those emissions are related to everything from transportation to land use to excretion to petroleum-based fertilizers that generate animal feed. The more meat our society consumes, the more these carbon emissions continue, the more we intensify climate change, and the more we imperil human survival on the planet. [...]
[F]or argument's sake, maybe you reject all the environmental science and you genuinely either do not believe the climate is changing or you believe that the changes are inconsequential. Even then, I'm guessing you want life-saving medicine to continue being effective, right?
If you're answer is a resounding “yes,” then you should have a problem with how much meat our society consumes. That's because Food and Drug Administration data proves that to produce enough meat to feed America's current demand, the livestock industry is now consuming a whopping four-fifths of all antibiotics used in a given year. According to the Centers for Disease Control, this overuse of antibiotics has played a huge role in creating lethal drug-resistant superbugs. That threatens to turn back the clock to the era before modern medicine.
Doyle McManus at the
Los Angeles Times writes
John Kerry's high-wire diplomacy:
The Iran agreement is a long way from a permanent deal, the Israeli-Palestinian talks are just talks, and the Syria conference is little more than a date and a city (Geneva, Jan. 22).
But give Kerry credit. He has dared to take big risks—in notable contrast to his revered but risk-averse predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Clinton tended to subcontract out the unpromising assignments to special envoys like the late Richard C. Holbrooke, her deputy for Afghanistan. But Kerry has taken them on himself, personally and visibly. If any of them fail—and they all could—he'll take the fall himself.
Leonard Pitts Jr. at the
Miami Herald writes
Caught on camera, cops didn’t care:
You want to know the worst part?
It isn’t the incident where a police officer stopped a man at the 207 Quickstop convenience store and threw his purchases—cans of Red Bull—to the sidewalk.
It isn’t the incident where an officer stopped a woman outside that Miami Gardens store, pawed through her purse, then emptied the contents onto the ground and kicked at them.
It isn’t the dozens of times Earl Sampson—never convicted of anything more serious than possession of marijuana—has been arrested for trespassing while working as a clerk at the selfsame store.
It isn’t even that many of these crimes against conscience and Constitution were recorded on video.
No, the worst part is that police knew they were being recorded—and didn’t care. In fact, writes Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, “They relished it, taunting the store’s owner by waving open beer cans and cups, taken from customers, directly in front of the cameras.”
Chris Hedges at
TruthDig writes—
Shooting the Messenger:
There is a deeply misguided attempt to sacrifice Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond on the altar of the security and surveillance state to justify the leaks made by Edward Snowden. It is argued that Snowden, in exposing the National Security Agency’s global spying operation, judiciously and carefully leaked his information through the media, whereas WikiLeaks, Assange, Manning and Hammond provided troves of raw material to the public with no editing and little redaction and assessment. Thus, Snowden is somehow legitimate while WikiLeaks, Assange, Manning and Hammond are not.
“I have never understood it,” said Michael Ratner, who is the U.S. lawyer for WikiLeaks and Assange and who I spoke with Saturday in New York City. “Why is Snowden looked at by some as the white hat while Manning, Hammond, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as black hats? One explanation is that much of the mainstream media has tried to pin a dumping charge on the latter group, as if somehow giving the public and journalists open access to the raw documents is irresponsible and not journalism. It sounds to me like the so-called Fourth Estate protecting its jobs and ‘legitimacy.’ There is a need for both.