Summer punditry, now with 25% more opinion! Many of our commenters have their own favorites they've come across. Hat tips to readers who pointed out these gems:
Barbara Ehrenreich:
It's too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the ’80s and ’90s. "If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance," a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."
(h/t rontun)
Colbert I. King on disorderly conduct arrest stories:
They are citizen complaint cases, adjudicated by the District's Office of Police Complaints in 2008 and 2005, respectively. According to the Police Complaints Board, the two cases contain the same patterns of fact: citizen arrested for disorderly conduct without legal justification.
Unfortunately, they are not isolated events.
(h/t teacherken)
Alec McGillis:
Wonder why President Obama is having a hard time enacting his agenda after sweeping to victory and with large congressional majorities on his side?
Look to the Senate, the chamber designed to thwart popular will.
(h/t pelagicray)
Keith Baker:
The Tribune 's article on the increased demand for health care that might come from universal health insurance touched on an important but completely ignored issue in health care reform -- the rationing problem.
However, The Trib erred in implying that excessive demand for medical care would be a new problem created by universal insurance. No nation can or ever has fully met the need for health care. It cannot be done. There are not enough providers. There are not enough facilities. There is not enough money. Never was, never will be.
All nations have to ration care one way or another. Our current rationing system is simple and the worst there is. We ration by wealth. If you can't afford it, you don't get care.
(h/t Mol)
Derrick Z. Jackson:
When the Republicans can not even support Cash for Clunkers, bipartisanship has no horsepower...
It makes you wonder what planet the Republicans live on. It was less than a year ago that angry Americans, concerned about the ditch the Republicans and the Bush administration drove this nation into over the prior eight years, voted in Obama and an increased Democratic majority in Congress. Only a half year into Obama’s presidency, the only strategy the Republicans have is to stoke so much anger in Americans that they forget what they want.
(h/t teacherken)
Matthew Yglesias:
David Leonhardt has a nice article breaking down the sources of the growth in the budget deficit. Since Leonhardt works for The New York Times rather than USA Today, they didn’t see fit to illustrate his article with a pie chart, but I made one myself:
(h/t Pluto) Add to this the CBS/NY Times poll: More people blame Bush (30%) or Wall Street (29) for the economy than Obama (4). But jobs matter, and they always have.