Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media 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 “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: America Needs to Empower Workers Again

Unions aren’t obsolete, and we need to get them back.

Labor activists hoped that the unionization vote at Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse would be a turning point, a reversal in the decades-long trend of union decline. What the vote showed, instead, was the continuing effectiveness of the tactics employers have repeatedly used to defeat organizing efforts.

But union advocates shouldn’t give up. The political environment that gave anti-union employers a free hand may be changing — the decline of unionization was, above all, political, not a necessary consequence of a changing economy. And America needs a union revival if we’re to have any hope of reversing spiraling inequality. [..]

Organized labor used to provide a counterweight to corporate influence. Unions were never in a position to match corporate dollar power, but they could offer people power — the ability to mobilize their members and their members’ friends and neighbors in a way corporations couldn’t. And we need that kind of countervailing power more than ever.

So let’s hope that labor activists treat Bessemer as a learning experience, not cause for despair. We still need to get strong unions back.

Eugene Robinson: I want to believe justice is possible in Derek Chauvin’s trial. But a part of me holds back.

After decades of heartbreaking trials, it feels risky to assume the outcome will be different.

After hearing in such clinical, heartbreaking, infuriating detail about George Floyd’s final agonies, I want to believe justice is possible in the Derek Chauvin trial. I want to believe the jurors heard what I heard and felt what I feel. I want to allow myself to hope for it. But a part of me holds back.

The police officers who beat Rodney King to a pulp were acquitted. The self-appointed vigilante who shot Trayvon Martin to death was acquitted. The police officer who killed Philando Castile after a routine traffic stop — just miles from the Minneapolis intersection where Floyd died — was acquitted.

It feels risky to have any confidence that this time the outcome will be different, even though it feels as though it should be. It’s not just that the prosecutors seeking to convict Chauvin of murder have presented what seems to me an overwhelming case. This trial and the context in which it’s taking place are different from the other proceedings that led to such shattering disappointments.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump’s lasting legacy: Scandals don’t hurt politicians like Matt Gaetz and Andrew Cuomo

Politicians in the post-Trump era bet they can weather scandals by playing chicken with a press that’s easily bored

Donald Trump is a bored old man whose main entertainment these days is making a fool out of Republican fundraisers with his unhinged rants, but, sadly for the rest of us, his impact will be long-lingering, from the mainstreaming of white nationalist rhetoric to the size of the lies Republican politicians feel emboldened to tell. One of the oddest, most annoying legacies Trump leaves behind has the potential to impact not just Republican politicians, but Democratic ones as well: that all they need to do when faced with a scandal, no matter how serious, is to dig in their heels and refuse to resign. Eventually, as Trump’s time in office demonstrated, the press will get bored and move on.

The two current examples of this phenomenon come from different sides of the aisle but have a surprising amount in common with both each other and Trump: New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, and Congress’ most “Florida man” member, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. {..}

Blame Trump.

In his four years in office, Trump was a non-stop hurricane of scandals, many that were far more serious than what Gaetz and Cuomo are accused of doing. Trump weathered a sex scandal that was also a campaign finance scandal, a rape scandal, and various accusations of sexual assault. He was impeached twice, both times for efforts to cheat in or steal the election that could be understood as seditious. He settled out of court for committing fraud. He shamelessly used his businesses as go-throughs to collect bribes, both foreign and domestic. And that’s just a taste of all the criminality and corruption Trump indulged in as president.

None of it mattered, at least while Trump was in office. (There’s still hope he may feel the cold metal of handcuffs, like so many of his associates have in the past.)

Robert Reich: Republican ‘attacks’ on corporations over voting rights bills are a hypocritical sham

The deal between big business and government – donations in return for low taxes or none – remains absolutely unchanged

For four decades, the basic deal between big American corporations and politicians has been simple. Corporations provide campaign funds. Politicians reciprocate by lowering corporate taxes and doing whatever else corporations need to boost profits.

The deal has proven beneficial to both sides, although not to the American public. Campaign spending has soared while corporate taxes have shriveled. [..]

The basic deal between American corporations and American politicians has been a terrible deal for America. Which is why a piece of legislation entitled the For the People Act, passed by the House and co-sponsored in the Senate by every Democratic senator except Manchin, is so important. It would both stop states from suppressing votes and also move the country toward public financing of elections, thereby reducing politicians’ dependence on corporate cash.

Corporations can and should bankroll much of what America needs. But they won’t, as long as corporations keep bankrolling American politicians.

Michelle Goldberg: The Biden Boom Is Already Wild

When lots of money is sloshing around, culture changes.

It was amazing how quickly it happened. For almost five years — from Donald Trump’s rise in the 2016 Republican primaries to the Jan. 6 insurrection following his defeat — the lurid spectacle of our national politics sucked up most of the country’s cultural energy. Almost every conversation I had during that time began with mutual expressions of outrage and incredulity about whatever was happening in the hourly news cycle.

And then it was over. Trump’s cultural power evanesced as quickly as his political power did. Now everyone except those running in Republican primaries can ignore him. National politics didn’t exactly become boring — Joe Biden’s administration is proving transformative — but it no longer demanded most people’s minute-by-minute attention. That left room for a new national obsession, especially once the vaccine rollout picked up and the end of America’s pandemic nightmare appeared in sight.

Increasingly, as the economy gets hotter, I wonder if that obsession might be markets.

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media 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 “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Biden, Yellen and the War on Leprechauns

Bribing corporations with low taxes isn’t the way to create jobs.

In the summer of 2016, Ireland’s Central Statistical Office reported something astonishing: The small nation’s gross domestic product had risen 26 percent in the previous year (a number that would later be revised upward). It would have been an amazing achievement if the growth had actually happened. [..]

What really happened? Ireland is a tax haven, with a very low tax rate on corporate profits. This gives multinational corporations an incentive to create Irish subsidiaries, then use creative accounting to ensure that a large share of their reported global profits accrue to those subsidiaries.

In 2015 a few big companies appear to have gotten even more aggressive about their profit-shifting, which led to a surge in the value of production they reported doing in Ireland — a surge that didn’t correspond to anything real.

To understand the big corporate tax reform proposed by the Biden administration, what you need to know is that it’s all about the leprechauns.

Charles M. Blow: Tucker Carlson and White Replacement

This racist theory is rooted in white supremacist panic.

On Thursday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson caused an uproar by promoting the racist, anti-Semitic, patriarchal and conspiratorial “white replacement theory.” Also known as the “great replacement theory,” it stands on the premise that nonwhite immigrants are being imported (sometimes the Jewish community is accused of orchestrating this) to replace white people and white voters. The theory is also an inherent chastisement of white women for having a lower birthrate than nonwhite women. [..]

But although white replacement theory is a conspiracy theory, the fact that the percentage of voters who are white in America is shrinking as a percentage of all voters is not. Neither is the fact that white supremacists are panicked about this.

White supremacists in this country have long worried about being replaced by people, specifically voters, who are not white. In the post-Civil War era, before the current immigrant wave from predominantly nonwhite countries, most of that anxiety in America centered on Black people.

Amanda Marcotte: Derek Chauvin’s trial is a test of whether facts matter

Will the truth prevail or will we face an ugly reminder of how often facts don’t matter in the face of bigotry?

There were two scenes from Minneapolis over the weekend, one real and one satirical, that illustrate why the ongoing trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is an intravenous line feeding a constant stream of anxiety into the national bloodstream.

First, the real: In the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center on Sunday, police killed a 20-year-old Black man named Daunte Wright who they had pulled over for an alleged traffic violation and then attempted to arrest when it was discovered he had an outstanding warrant. Police haven’t said what traffic violation Wright committed to prompt police to pull him over or what the warrant was for. Wright reportedly attempted to flee and that is when police shot him. Protesters, understandably furious that yet another Black man who appears to have been no threat at all has died at the hands of police, hit the streets of Brooklyn Center Sunday evening. They were met with a police response that’s become numbingly common: Flashbangs, tear gas and rubber bullets.

As for the satirical, the cold open on “Saturday Night Live,” comedians Ego Nwodim, Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon and Alex Moffat play four Minneapolis news anchors, two Black and two white, discussing Chauvin’s trial. The dark joke of the skit is that the two white anchors are optimistic that the overwhelming evidence against Chauvin will surely result in a conviction, with McKinnon saying, “there’s no way the jury is going to fall for” the defense’s dumb arguments. But the two Black anchors are skeptical, with Thompson hastening to say, “I’m not saying that.”

What ultimately matters more? Will it be the facts or will brute power prevail over reality itself?

 
Jamelle Bouie: Republicans’ Fake War Against ‘Woke Capital’

If they really wanted to help the working class, there is plenty they could do.

The Republican Party may not have much of an agenda to sell to the public right now, but it does have an enemy with which to rally its troops: “woke capital,” or those corporations that have adopted progressive rhetoric on social issues and used their platforms to support voting rights or back movements like Black Lives Matter. [..]

Republican “woke capital” critics are not actually interested in curbing corporate influence and putting power in the hands of workers. They don’t have a problem with corporate speech as a matter of principle. They have a problem with corporate speech as a matter of politics. If the situation were reversed, and corporations were vocal supporters of “election integrity,” it’s hard to imagine that McConnell or his allies would have a problem.

“Woke” capital also does not actually exist. A Black Lives Matter advertisement does not make up for the McDonald’s exploitative relationship to labor and the environment. Amazon might take a few items deemed offensive off its shelves, but it still relies on overworked and underpaid workers in its warehouses and delivery vehicles.

Capital is capital, and, culture war agitation notwithstanding, the Republican Party is more than willing to back its interests when it matters most.

Paul Butler: How toxic masculinity helped kill George Floyd

Cop machismo is an important way of understanding police violence against people of color.

The topic of “toxic masculinity” comes up more in conversations about #MeToo than about Black Lives Matter, understandably so. But cop machismo is an important way of understanding police violence against people of color. It helps explain why Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against George Floyd’s neck — continuing for two minutes after Floyd’s pulse stopped — and why three other officers chose to keep the crowd at bay rather than save Floyd’s life.

Much commentary on the broken relationship between police and African Americans focuses on anti-Black bias and structural discrimination. While it’s hard to overstate the role that race plays in policing, gender matters, too. Legal scholar Frank Rudy Cooper has described encounters between the police and African Americans as “Who’s the man?” contests. Some cops perform their masculinity by showing off their power and control over Black bodies. [..]

The final moments of Floyd’s life included a tragic conversation between him and Charles McMillian, an older African American man who told Floyd to do what the police told him, saying “You can’t win.” “I am not trying to win,” were the last words Floyd said to anyone at the scene other than the police officers who now charged in his death.

“Who’s the man?” contests are not actually contests in any meaningful sense. The police always win — at least in the short term. They have the guns and the authority of the law. But for bullying police officers intent on acting like men, too much power is never enough.