Tag Archives: Romney

Political Rants

Resolved.

You’ve heard enough about the debate, I know. Now hear it from me. I will dispense with my usual grouse about these not being actual debates – no proposition advanced or opposed, no rules of order, etc. Let us concede that they are essentially dueling press conferences. The salient fact is, I tuned in to watch a debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, and neither of those two men showed up. Obama was taciturn and seemingly unaware that he was in front of a national television audience of 68 million, his head featured in an inset box practically the whole ninety minutes. (I felt like yelling, “He’s over there, Barry! Stop doing your homework!”)

And Romney. Has a man ever run farther or faster from his own proposals? Can conservatives truly celebrate the candidate they saw on Wednesday night? Just a few small points:

Romney: “I don’t want to cut our commitment to education”

Okay, aside from funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I didn’t hear Romney advocate cutting anything. So… if he’s going to cut the federal deficit without raising revenue – in other words, reforming the tax code in a “revenue neutral” fashion – where are those cuts coming from? Not from defense – he’s adding many billions to that as he’s boasted many times. Apparently not from education. His intimations about Medicaid spending sounded like cheap sleight of hand; how does the federal government save money by block granting programs like Medicaid? You’re still spending the money, only without the knowledge that it’s being spent on what it’s intended for.

Romney: OK, what are the various ways we could bring down deductions, for instance? One way, for instance, would be to have a single number. Make up a number — 25,000 (dollars), $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people.

This counts as kind of a bidding war with himself. Romney’s people have been floating this notion of a $17,000 deduction cap on individual income tax. Wednesday night he worked that up to $25 – 50K. Do I hear $75K? Wait another week. Once again, caught advocating for a deeply unpopular policy of ending major deductions like mortgage interest, Romney is cycling backwards at lightning speed. We still have no information on where “loopholes” and deductions could be found to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts – 20% across the board, which he has endorsed.

Romney: It’s — it’s — it’s a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my [health care] plan. Number two, young people are able to stay on their family plan. That’s already offered in the private marketplace; you don’t have — have the government mandate that for that to occur.

Say what? Since the hell when? A week ago, Romney’s plan was for sick poor people to go to the emergency room – that’s what he told David Gregory, anyway. And if keeping your kids on your “family plan” is common in the marketplace, it’s news to working people.

Then there’s the look. The patient, condescending smile while Obama is talking. It’s actually the same look Romney uses when people are saying nice things about him. Fact is, he uses that all the time when he’s waiting to speak. I call it his screen saver.

Barry: Here’s a free line for the next debate. “Hey, Mitt – glad to see you’ve finally come around to my positions on health care, education, and taxes. I’m thinking about asking you to join my administration.”

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Soothsaying.

The trouble with writing blog posts at the end of a week is that, more often than not, you find yourself on the wrong end of the news cycle, when every blogger and talking head has had more than his/her say. So what the hell – I’m going to comment ever so briefly on a few things and then be quiet for a stretch of days. You’re welcome.

Embassy attacks. Been watching the awful scenes from overseas. Trouble is, it’s always that way for ordinary people in many of those countries. Think of what life is like in Iraq still, with the economy and infrastructure still in a shambles and bombs going off regularly, killing people at random in large numbers. We almost don’t even give it any notice unless the death toll reaches north of fifty or so. And yet, I tune in to Talk of the Nation and get to hear Fouad Ajami, formerly known as George W. Bush’s favorite Arab and a strong advocate of the Iraq invasion, talking about what Arab peoples need to do to join the community of civilized nations.  Doctor, cure thyself. (Again… how wrong do people have to be before they stop being trotted out as “experts”?)

Forty-seven fifty-three and fight. Like practically anyone with a television, I’ve seen excerpts of the Romney fundraising video captured in Boca Raton last May. There’s been a lot of talk about the errors Romney has made, but it seems like his most egregious ones are when he tells the truth. I’m sure that’s exactly how he and his advisers see half of the American people – a bunch of layabouts who want everything handed to them. Think about the picture that paints in your mind – who are they talking about? Are they talking about your mother on Social Security, or your father in the nursing home?

I’ve got news for Mitt Romney – and obviously there’s no way he would know this without being told – but when it comes to nursing home care, practically everyone in this country is poor enough for Medicaid. Here’s some more news: old people used to suffer badly before Medicare, Medicaid, and yes, Social Security. My grandfather had a heart condition for ten years before they passed Medicare. Try that sometime, richy, rich.

If there are a lot of working age people getting government checks or food coupons, it’s because Romney’s party skull-fucked the economy over the last decade… not because they want to be there. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re now trying to shift the blame for that onto those who suffer the most.

luv u,

jp

Uncategorized

After party.

Just some random thoughts on the major party conventions, now that they’re over. Don’t have a lot of time to write this, so it’s going to be… well, random.

Tale of Two Crackers. Bill Clinton’s big speech on Wednesday night capped what seems to me like a political rehabilitation of monumental proportions. At some point, everybody started loving Bill Clinton, and he has become a major statesman … or as close to that as you can come in this age. It wasn’t terribly surprising to see this process happen with Ronald Reagan, who – despite having a spotty popularity rating during his presidency – the media always portrayed as wildly popular, and around whom an image-enhancement industry of sorts has been at work since his departure. But Clinton? Does anyone remember how denigrated he was throughout his presidency? I suppose people have gradually come to the realization that things weren’t so bad in the 1990s … since everything since then has pretty generally sucked.

That brings me to the second cracker – W. Bush. During Clinton’s long speech, while people were hanging on every word, it was hard not to think of W’s total absence from his own party’s convention, both in person and in rhetoric. If this election is truly about a competition between two distinct approaches to government, this contrast speaks volumes about the degree to which each vision (1) has a record of success and (2) is something its proponents can advance with confidence.

Turnaround. Is America ready for a turnaround, Romney-style? I think we’ve already gotten a piece of that. Matt Taibbi’s recent reporting on Mitt Romney’s history at Bain Capital illustrates a bit of what we can expect from a Romney administration. The short story is this: Like the corporate raiders of the 1980s, Bain would do leveraged buy-outs of companies – basically buy them on credit with relatively little money down. The resulting debt would then be held by the company. Then they would compel the company to monetize its assets for dividend payments to its new shareholders – the people at Bain and its partners. What is left is the husk of a company that had already been under stress before Bain’s arrival and is now buried under a crushing debt burden, its assets sold off to enrich others.

That’s the Romney plan for America, in a nutshell. The G.O.P., if elected, will do what it always does – borrow massively (i.e. leverage), cut taxes for the rich (i.e. dividend payment to investors), privatize (i.e. monetize assets), and deregulate. You don’t need an MBA to figure out where that’s headed.

luv u,

jp