Joseph Stiglitz at The New York Times writes that economic "Inequality is a choice," mostly the choice of the political elites doing the steering not the folks doing the stoking:
Asymmetric globalization has also exerted its toll around the globe. Mobile capital has demanded that workers make wage concessions and governments make tax concessions. The result is a race to the bottom. Wages and working conditions are being threatened. Pioneering firms like Apple, whose work relies on enormous advances in science and technology, many of them financed by government, have also shown great dexterity in avoiding taxes. They are willing to take, but not to give back.
Amy Schiller at
The Nation writes "
Can Billionaire Philanthropists Replace the Federal Government?"
When the clock ran down on congressional negotiations and the federal government shut down on October 1, preschoolers across the country were locked out of their Head Start centers. But then, Laura and John Arnold, a billionaire couple from Houston, made a personal gift of $10 million to Head Start. [...]
Putting low-income children back in the classroom—thereby enabling their parents to go back to work—is a positive outcome. But it is no accident that the 7,195 children whose Head Start programs lost funding, and their families, are dependent on the Arnolds’ largesse to keep their lives running normally. The shutdown has created the perfect testing ground for wealthy benefactors to fill the gaps left by an absent federal government. In this way, the shutdown and Arnolds’ emergency philanthropy provides a snapshot of the very future toward which House Republicans, pressured by the Koch brothers, Grover Norquist, and others, are attempting to steer the country.
Doyle McManus at the
Los Angeles Times laments "
For the GOP, rightward ho!"
None of this was planned, of course; parties don't flirt with political suicide on purpose. But it wasn't accidental either. Behind the GOP crackup over the government shutdown lies a much bigger battle for control of the party.
And the most important actors aren't Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and the tea party members of the House who brought us the government shutdown. The party rift's chief driver is a constellation of hard-line conservative fundraising groups, led in part by a former senator most Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup, Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
More pundits have been corralled below the fold.
John Cassidy at The New Yorker writes—"A Janet Yellen question: Just how dovish is she?"
In selecting someone to run the Federal Reserve, Presidents tend to go for a dove in hawk’s clothing: somebody who has sufficient credibility with the markets to maintain the central bank’s inflation-fighting credentials but who is also sensitive to the needs of the broader economy, and, by extension, to the political needs of the party in power. [...]
At first glance, Janet Yellen appears to be a different animal: a dove in dove’s clothing. In a speech back in February, she noted that long-term unemployment, which has risen sharply since 2008, is “devastating to workers and their families …. The toll is simply terrible on the mental and physical health of workers, on their marriages, and on their children.” A month later, speaking to the National Association for Business Economics, she said that with unemployment remaining stubbornly high and inflation running well below the Fed’s two-per-cent target, “I believe it’s appropriate for progress in the labor market to take center stage in the conduct of monetary policy.”
Leonard Pitts Jr. at the
Miami Herald writes "
America held hostage by extreme tactics":
[T]he ability to spank legislators is largely lost. The reason in a word: gerrymandering — voting district lines drawn to insulate legislators from voters with contrary viewpoints. Lawmakers choose their own voters, are answerable only to those true believers who already agree with them. It is a system guaranteed to reward extremism and make punishing it nearly impossible. [...]
The system must be fixed. Districts should be drawn by judges or other nonpartisan entities along sensible geographic and demographic lines. No more of these crazy-shaped districts that look like Plastic Man eating spaghetti on a rollercoaster
Bob Garfield at
The Guardian writes "
False equivalence: how 'balance' makes the media dangerously dumb":
Let us state this unequivocally: false equivalency – the practice of giving equal media time and space to demonstrably invalid positions for the sake of supposed reportorial balance – is dishonest, pernicious and cowardly.
On the other hand, according to the grassroots American Council of Liberty Loving Ordinary White People Propped Up by the Koch Brothers, the liberal media want to contaminate your precious bodily fluids and indoctrinate your children in homosocialism.
Haha, kidding. Of course, there's no such group. But false equivalency in the news has been very much, in fact, in the news lately – thanks to reporting on the US government shutdown that characterizes the impasse as the consequence of two stubborn political parties unwilling to compromise on healthcare.
David Moberg at
In These Times writes "
In Vermont, the Call To Unionize Is Coming From Inside the Home":
More than 2 million people are now employed nationwide as care assistants, providing personal in-home help for people with some degree of disability. In 2010, their median wage was $9.70 an hour; 37 percent have no health insurance. Though many personal care assistants, about half of whom are Latina or African-American women, work directly for the individuals who need care, they’re paid through Medicaid or Medicare. Thus, the government typically regards them as independent contractors, who are not eligible to form a union. This classification, in addition to the disparate nature of home care workplaces, has made organizing difficult in the past.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times captures the essence of the Republican shutdown stance in "
The Dixiecrat Solution":
So you have this neighbor who has been making your life hell. First he tied you up with a spurious lawsuit; you’re both suffering from huge legal bills. Then he threatened bodily harm to your family. Now, however, he says he’s willing to compromise: He’ll call off the lawsuit, which is to his advantage as well as yours. But in return you must give him your car. Oh, and he’ll stop threatening your family — but only for a week, after which the threats will resume.
Rob Savillo at
Media Matters with another round of this sad friggin' story—"
Once Again, Sunday Morning Talk Shows Are White, Male, And Conservative":
White Men Still Represent The Largest Proportion Of Guests Except On Melissa Harris-Perry. Six of the seven shows analyzed—This Week, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Meet the Press, State of the Union, and Up—have hosted white men at a significantly higher rate than their 31 percent portion of the population. Melissa Harris-Perry provided the greatest diversity among guests, providing a much higher rate of white women and African-American guests than the other programs; Up also hosted a higher percentage of people from those demographics than CNN or the broadcast programs. Latino, Asian-American, and Middle Eastern guests have been largely absent from the Sunday shows. Native Americans fared even worse, with only two appearances (one on Melissa Harris-Perry and one on Up) out of a total of 2,436 appearances over the nine-month period studied.
The Editorial Board of Haaretz says "Stop the Expulsions":
The High Court of Justice will hear a petition on Monday by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the villagers of Khirbet Zanuta in the southern Hebron Hills, against the state’s intention to destroy the community and expel its 130 residents.
In a previous hearing, the court ordered the state to propose an alternative housing solution for the villagers, but the state ignored the directive and entrenched itself in its position that the village should be considered a random collection of structures that were built illegally on an archaeological site. Thus, the state said, it has no intention of moving ahead with another planning solution for the people living there. [...]
Indeed, the clear impression one gets from the way the state is behaving is that in the southern Hebron Hills, as in the Jordan Valley, Israel is conducting an intentional and methodical policy of expelling Palestinians and Bedouin, to ensure the annexation of these areas.