Morally disabled far-right-wing?

It's truly remarkable that thirty-seven Republican senators voted against ratification of the international disabilities treaty yesterday. Considering that the Americans With Disabilities Act was the basis for the treaty, and the fact that the Act was put forward by Republican George W. Bush and championed by many Republicans, the rebuff by the right wing of the Republican party is a stunning and appalling demonstration of just how powerful the paranoia of the right can be. Claiming that somehow this treaty, which has been ratified by many other nations, would "damage American sovereignty," the nay-saying senators dishonored all those who have fought for our country and lost the use of one or another limb or faculty, as well as all the many others who live with a disability. Their disregard for the suffering and difficulties of others is nothing less than inhumane. One can't help wonder what strange blindness prevents them from seeing the humanity in others and extending simple human compassion that they themselves would surely crave if they themselves were disabled.

Republican Math: An Oxymoron?

Pau Ryan really is good. i can't think of anyone who can spin a tall tale as well as he does it. Every time someone interviewing him asks him whether he thinks the President has won a mandate, he says something like:

No. I don't think so. After all, we Republicans still hold the majority in congress. I think our economic message is a very popular one.

That's a sweet sentiment, but he has left out a few pertinent facts.

1) As mentioned in a previous post, Obama's margin of victory was almost 3%--very, very close to 3%, and considering the Republicans' vigorous efforts to suppress Democratic-leaning voters--the poor, hispanics, the elderly, African-Americans--that's a healthy margin.

2) While it's true that the Republicans still have a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, it's a smaller majority than it was before this election. The Democrats have gained eight seats so far--there is at least one seat still not settled, in Arizona, where the vote count still isn't complete; so the House of Representatives now has 234 Republicans and 201 Democrats.

Sounds like the Republicans still have something of a mandate in congress, right? Well, consider the fact that:

3)  because of the huge Republican gains in state legislatures in 2010, when the results of the census were determined, Republican legislatures were in charge of re-districting, and as good party workers, they did their best to isolate pockets of Democratic voters so that a minimum of Republican congressional seats would be endangered in the 2012 elections.

So while it is true the Republicans do still have a majority in congress, their majority is not necessarily a result of enormous voter enthusiasm. A number of districts were redrawn to favor retention of Republican seats. There is more than one way to win an election.

Mr. Ryan still has not explained, in a way that convinces non-partisan agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office, how his proposals for budgetary change would result in a balanced budget. In fact, the CBO has concluded his approach would significantly increase the deficit.

One fact remains that Mr. Ryan has yet to explain: the tax rates that obtain today, which are the same as the past ten years, are the lowest in decades. And they have not produced job gains until recently under President Obama. These very low tax rates, with a cap of 35% for the highest income bracket, should have given the people Mr. Ryan and other Republicans call "job creators" great incentive to create jobs . . . but they haven't really done so.

Therefore one has to ask why that would change under his projected budget.

On the other hand, when we had really large job gains  under Clinton, and when we were recovering from the Reagan recession, tax rates were higher. Mr. Ryan must hate this fact, but it is a simple, if perhaps inconvenient truth: tax increases stimulate job growth.

Trickle-down economics, the Republican model, never has worked. That is another inconvenient truth for Mr. Ryan. And that's why I wonder whether the term "Republican math" is an oxymoron.

The 2012 Election results . . . and what is Grover Norquist?

President Obama, as everyone must know by now, has won a second term as president of the United States. And the Democratic Party has gained seats in both the U.S Senate and the House of Representatives. I thought the election was completely resolved by last weekend, but I was wrong--I just discovered--because there are still some elections for which not all the ballots have yet been counted. Most shocking is the case of Arizona, where as many as one-fourth of all the ballots cast have not yet been counted, a full week after the election.

Also,  it is now well documented that in a certain number of states voters were forced to wait for many hours--as many as ten or eleven hours in some cases--to cast a vote. This may become a legislative issue, but whether or not legislation to enforce some sort of non-partisan, nationwide standards for the conduct of elections is enacted, there is no doubt that this has been an election cycle with a number of problems in the process.

It was mildly surprising to see some people proclaim that, first of all, the President's victory is not a mandate for his legislative agenda; and second, the President won because the Democratic Party suppressed voter turnout.

The first was surprising because, as Rachel Maddow noted last week, when George W. Bush won re-election with a more slender margin, he declared it gave him a mandate, and nobody seemed to complain about that.

The second was a bigger surprise, because if there was voter suppression in this election, the statistics would seem quite clearly to indicate that it was done by Republican governors in Ohio, Florida and Arizona, most egregiously.

But probably the strangest moment so far in the days since the election came today, when Grover Norquist, famous for telling conservative or Republican lawmakers to pledge that they will never, ever vote to raise income taxes, said that President Obama won in part because he, in Norquist's own words, "called Mitt Romney a poopie-head."

A poopie-head? Norquist,, to my mind, is something of an outlier, but a very influential one, because he has threatened candidates who violate his oat by saying their constituents will rebel against them by doing so. And I think his notion of "never" raising income taxes is simply unrealistic, besides being impractical and inimical to ecomomic growth. But having said what he said publicly about why the President won, Norquist has gone beyond being an outlier. His statement is simply bizarre, which is what makes me wonder not who he is, but  . . . what he is.

I'm open to theories.

There are many other interesting developments resultant from the election, including the fact that there are now more women in the Senate than have ever before served there at once, twenty altogether. n the coming days I hope to discuss some of the more interesting developments.

Please Vote for the President

I've been watching Rachel Maddow tonight, and she has been ticking off the accomplishments of President Barack Obama.Iit's actually rather impressive. One can't really judge this president on the basis of what he has not accomplished, because every presidency has unfinished business. And because of the legislative logjam engendered by the enormous efforts of the Republicans in congress, there is a lot of unfinished business that President Obama would have finished if he had been allowed by the people on the other side of the aisle in congress.

Seldom (not never, but very seldom) has a president had such determined and steadfast opposition to his legislative agenda as President Obama has had. When political ads claim that he has failed, that he has not kept his promises, that his economics don't work, they always omit the key fact that the congressional leadership of the Republican party stated publicly and planned privately from the very start of this administration in 2009, to use as their strategy in this election a policy of blocking every legislative initiative of the Democratic party that they could possibly block, in order to put a damper on the economic recovery from the Bush recession and the disaster of Fall 2008 from which we have been trying to recover--the housing market, jobs, and the stock market.

Interestingly, the stock market has quite nicely recovered. But you wouldn't know it to talk to Republicans. And there has been 32 months of jobs growth--more than 5 and a half million jobs created under this president . . . but you wouldn't know that to hear the Republicans.

He got us out of Iraq; and is getting us out of Afghanistan, and as Rachel Maddow noted, has NOT gotten us into any new wars . . . but you wouldn't know that to listen to Republican rhetoric.

Nor does the Republican rhetoric ever acknowledge their party's role in the difficulty we have had to get out of the economic hole that their president, George W. Bush, sent us tumbling into in the Fall of 2008. And the Romney campaign and his friends do not acknowledge in the slightest that their "change" --"big change" to get the country on the right track, as they say, is the exact same course as George W. Bush's policies . . . the failed, destructive, rich man's economic policies.

President Obama has also managed, despite all the opposition of the Republicans, managed to get a health-care reform bill passed. Not the best possible bill, but one that at least begins the process of taking back health care from the profiteers in the health insurance and big pharmaceutical industries that prey on the old and the ill, and which have for decades sucked money out of everyone who wants health care, and feathers the pockets of the heads of health-insurance companies with hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of people go without healthcare.

There are many other things this administration has accomplished, and to their credit, they have done it while being viciously opposed by the most expensive political campaign in history, fueled by unseen donors in the private sector who have contributed so much money to campaign against the Democratic party that the bill for all the political ads this election season total, according to an estimate I heard today, six BILLION dollars. That is the Citizens United bill at work for its sponsors. And let the Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of that decision explain in what way free speech for individuals should be extended to corporate entitles that don't exhibit any of the normal characteristics of actual human beings. Corporations do not get married, they do not breathe, they do not, officially, vote. Years from now i vouchsafe someone will wonder what temporary madness created this decision.

It's the same madness that ha kept the government from acting against global warming pollution: corporate greed. Different industries perhaps, though I would bet that oil and coal has had a lot to do with both causes on the Republican side.

It is sad to see so many people swayed by distortions of the recent legislative history of the federal and state governments. Only by ignoring the role of the "loyal opposition" can anyone pretend that President Obama is responsible for the economic problems we have faced. And only by ignoring that opposition's role can anyone even pretend that the policies of Mr. Romney and his Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan would improve our economic outlook.

So I urge you--any of you who can see past the basic distortions of Republican rhetoric to the truth of the struggle it has been for the Obama administration to govern effectively--to vote for this president, and for Democrats in general. I won't say Democrats are uniformly honest and upstanding and wonderful. But consider this: Republican-dominated states have acted to keep as many people from voting as they can. That is anti-American. We are a democracy, and in a democracy, we need to allow people to vote.

The Obama administration has kept its promise to work steadfastly for change, and to move the country forward in ways that are beneficial to the country. If you look closely at the legislative process we have had in the past four years, you cannot deny that it has been an arduous process. If nothing else, look at the great number of proposals that were originally Republicans' ideas . . . which, once President Obama embraced them, the Republicans opposed. There are quite a number of them. Looking at the record is like looking through the Looking Glass at a world gone mad. Because the Republicans have banked on making President Obama fail. And what they offer instead is simply more of what got us into this mess before he was president. So how is that "big change"? (Answer: it's not!)

So please vote!

Where Mitt Romney's Heart Really Is

As we come down to the last few days before the Presidential election, I am still struck by the fact that Mitt Romney's recent ads and stump speeches seem to have convinced a great number of people that he is not the same person he has been for most of his adult life, in business the past few decades.

I refer to the fact that he has very clearly proven himself  to care passionately . . . about money. He took the money he inherited from his family and has grown the family fortune by a considerable degree by expert stewardship of Bain Capital, and also by making extremely canny investments and sheltering those investments from United States income tax.

Most particularly striking is something he said during one of the debates: "You can get a pretty clear indication of where a man's heart is by where he puts his money."

What's so striking about that statement is the fact that Mr. Romney has put his money in a lot of different places, among them investments in Chinese businesses, and also, more to the point, in the Cayman Islands and in Swiss banks. When he has been asked about his taxes--particularly about the fact that he pays a lower tax rate than people who earn a tiny fraction of his yearly income, he has consistently stated that he pays the amount of tax that is required by the law--no more and no less.

And that is not entirely true. Some of his offshore investments take advantage of loopholes in the federal income tax code that have expired. And other investments he has in the Caymans, a tax haven which shelters income from United States income tax, run into more than one hundred million dollars.He has, as reported in various mainstream media, failed to completely report on his Cayman Island investments, some of the tax-sheltered investments, which run into more than one hundred million dollars.

When reporters or people at other events have been critical of his investment choices, he has sometimes responded by asserting that pretty much everyone has some investments in China or the Caymans, because Mutual Funds and 401-Ks will invariably put some of their assets into such venues. But while that is probably true, there are two key differences. Most people don't have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in anything. When Mr. Romney talks about the "middle class" he is fond of talking about what "most people" do with their money--"their investments" . . . but most people don't really have investments. With the increasing disparity of income between the most wealthy and everyone else over the past ten years, the middle-class has been squeezed so that most people have less disposable (or investable) income, not more.

And secondly, Mr. Romney, being, as he has said many times, very experienced in business for the past several decades, knows exactly how and where to invest his money for the greatest possible return. Which is very nice for him and his family . . . but which isn't necessarily so nice for people who work for companies in which he invests. He can make a lot of money--and often, quite a bit more money than by other means--when he sells a company, or when he outsources its production or other facilities to an offshore location where overhead--especially labor--is less costly than it is in the United States. He is noted as a pioneer in the art of outsourcing manufacturing to offshore sites such as China. Especially China. But while this can be extremely lucrative for him, it causes the loss of jobs in the United States.

And that is the point. Business and government are not, no matter what Mr. Romney claims, the same. What is good for investors, Mr. Romney's most typical role, is not necessarily best for the people whose livelihood depends on their actual labor in a business. Making money by one's own labor, as opposed to making money by investing in businesses, requires one to have a job. And when Mr. Romney outsources companies to make investment gains, jobs for Americans go away.

Even more distressing is the fact that when he outsources the labor force of a company that was employing American workers, his customary policy has been to leave those American workers high and dry, offering only minimal severance packages, and leaving them to fend for themselves for jobs and healthcare.

When he says "where a man puts his money is a good indication of where his heart is," this suggests that his heart is not really in the United States, but rather is instead in the Cayman Islands. I can't imagine how a person who has that kind of focus--on building his personal fortune by any means possible, pushing the limits of investment ethics and tax advantages to their maximum while ignoring the human consequences of those whose jobs are left behind--can act as an ethical, compassionate and responsible steward of the common welfare of the United States.

I only hope that voters will see past Mr. Romney's blithe, vague claims of "big change" and creating millions of new jobs and helping the middle class . . . to his true, long-held agenda of amassing great personal wealth, and pursuing a tax and economic policy that aids people in his income bracket at the expense of the middle class. When he talks about his tax policy, and he speaks of closing loopholes, he doesn't talk that much about eliminating the estate tax . . . but that is part of his agenda. And that's something that affects nobody but people who have at least $250,000 to pass on to each of their heirs. Eliminating that tax wouldn't save the middle-class any money. It would save a lot of money for those who already have a lot of money, though.

That's just one example of just how different his focus is from the focus of most people in this country, who are just trying to make a living. Do you have investments in the Caymans? Do you have more than a quarter-million dollars to pass on to each of your children? And what if you did? Would you really refuse to pay a percentage of your income that is as no lower as people making much less money pay?
Do you think it is fair that the rich should pay less than the poor and middle class pay, relative to their income?

Don't decide by watching the artfully produced ads and full-color cardboard mailers. Just think about who Mitt Romney really cares about, and where his heart really is. And please, if your heart is here, in the U.S., and you care about this country, tell your friends.

Disaster response and Mitt Romney's complaint

I'm lucky tonight, sitting at home in Wisconsin, watching the terrible, terrible aftermath of the enormous storm that has wreaked havoc on the Eastern seaboard from North Carolina up through Connecticut. Literally millions of people on the East Coast--and people as far inland as Pittsburgh, and Youngstown, Ohio (and elsewhere, as far south as West Virginia, as far north as upstate New York in the Adirondacks) are not nearly so lucky.

I work for a company that is headquartered in Manhattan. I've been working as I usually do, from my office in Wisconsin. Normally I would be on the phone and emailing with people in the New York headquarters. But nobody has been able to work in our headquarters, because of the flooding in Manhattan, the loss of electrical power to the building, and who knows what else they have had to deal with. It is difficult to encompass the scale of the destruction in New York, New Jersey, and everywhere else affected by the storm.

But even as the mind reels from the vast scope of this monster storm's effects, which even now continue to be felt as the floodwaters still cover large tracts of land, I also see and hear people in the affected areas talking about the recovery efforts, and how determined they and the tens of thousands of people working to get the water back where it should be and repair what has been destroyed or damaged are to get this fixed. Some of them are even talking about making this disaster into an opportunity to improve the infrastructure of affected areas so that the next time a huge storm hits, the country will be better able to deal with something like this.

Someone--I believe it was Connecticut's Governor Dannel P. Malloy--said that in the past year, more or less, his state has had to deal with not one but three major natural disasters in the form of storms. He, or someone else who was interviewed tonight, said that we are now seeing storms that we would have thought of as once-in-a-lifetime storms are becoming a once-every-couple-of-years storms. "The new normal," one said. The reason for such storms can be debated, though one meteorological scientist said that it really is connected to global warming. i don't doubt that, because for several decades it has been apparent to climate scientists who aren't in the pay of the fossil-fuel industry that carbon emissions have vastly increased the "greenhouse effect" that retains heat in the atmosphere, raising the overall temperature of the planet. The rising temperature of the planet extends to the temperature of the oceans as well as the rest of the world, and as snow and ice melt--exposing previously snowbound mountains, greatly reducing the size of the world's glaciers, shrinking the arctic icecap and visibly melting large chunks of antarctic ice and snow that were solid for at least ten thousand years if not longer. And this liberates more water and water vapor, as well as providing storms with more energy when they are over warmer ocean waters. Extreme weather events have long been predicted by climatologists who have studied weather patterns and the logical results of global warming.

But for right now, whether we can somehow manage to persuade congress that dealing with the problem of global warming is a clear and present necessity that will before very long save the country an enormous amount of money in smaller disaster-relief costs, we are faced with dealing with the current crisis. And that is something that is done by many local and state agencies, and by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency that failed so terribly during Hurricane Katrina, but which before the George W. Bush administration, and during the current administration, has been extremely effective in helping communities all over the country deal with disasters of all sorts.

There has been some discussion about the need for an agency like FEMA.  At one point during the long series of Republican Presidential debates Mitt Romney stated that what FEMA  did would be better done by the states--and even better if it was done by the private sector.

I understand that Mr. Romney feels that business is better suited to deal with a lot of what the federal government does. And he spoke of the federal deficit as a reason for taking money spent on something like FEMA and instead having private business deal with what FEMA does.

He misses the point completely. First of all, the federal deficit is driven not by services like FEMA, but by the tax policy under which we have struggled since George W. Bush cut the tax rate for the wealthiest people in the country, and led us into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time. Back in 2003 when we went into Iraq it was noted by some news media, most particularly Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, that never in the history of the United States had an administration reduced taxes while the country was engaged in a war. But putting aside the question of deficits and their cause there is a bigger issue.

The issue I refer to is a very basic one. What is government for, after all? Thom Hartmann talks about the purpose of government on his daily show. He talks about the basic mandate set forth in the constitution, in the words, in the very first sentence of the Preamble: . . .  provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . . 

Those goals: promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity--not our personal welfare, not the welfare of various individuals, but the general welfare--they are all about the social contract between the government and the individual. As citizens we give up certain things so that we can get the benefits of things the government can do, which would be literally impossible for any single business or individual to accomplish.

This is where the progressive idea comes from. Living in Wisconsin, it was striking to me in the past two years to see how literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people came together when Governor Scott Walker began his assault on rights that the people of Wisconsin had fought to gain, rights that were inspired by the progressive movement that saw its birth in this stat and gave us: the forty-hour work week; the right to belong to a labor union; the right of fee assembly --guaranteed by the Bill of Rights but often challenged by those who would discourage protest when the government over-reaches--and protections that the progressive movement has encouraged or sponsored, such as protection of people in the workplace from hazardous conditions, and other governmental oversight that protects the people against exploitation or worse by private commercial interests.

Mr. Romney is supported by the vast contributions of businesses that stand to benefit hugely if he is elected President. His big backers seem to care not one whit about the general welfare, whenever it threatens the welfare of their business's bottom line profits. James Inhofe, senator from Oklahoma, can deny global warming until he is blue in the face, but his patently false argument against global warming are simply nothing more than that: lies. He says these things in the service of the oil interests in Oklahoma that provide huge contributions to his re-election campaigns (and doubtless, large amounts of money to advertising by Super-PACS in opposition to his opponents and Democratic candidates in general.

The general welfare is something that Rachel Maddow talks about when she does promotional spots for MSBC, and also when she discusses such issues on her nightly show. And she is exactly correct: when she stands in front of what I believe is the Hoover Dam, and talks about how such massive public-works projects are the sort of thing that only the federal government can accomplish, that is a conversation about the common welfare. It is one of the things government is supposed to do. The idea that we should stop maintaining the nation's infrastructure, or outsource FEMA's job to the private sector to reduce the deficit is simply wrong. It is a wrong-headed argument.

In fact, if we did hire some for-profit company to manage disaster relief, it would cost the cocuntry far more than it costs to have the federal government's non-profit agency do the job.

Instead of advocating privatizing disaster relief--and other federal agencies-- people who already benefit from what the government can offer all its citizens--the people who currently benefit the most should contribute a more reasonable, fair share toward supporting the general welfare. As many progressives have pointed out, as President Obama has said many times in the course of the current election campaign. those who earn a hugely disproportionate amount of money and yet contribute a smaller percentage of their income to the general welfare than those at the top of the income scale have contributed in more than fifty years, are simply not contributing their fair share. They, like everyone else, benefit from the services of the government. And yet, the percentage of their contributions in the form of income tax has shrunk because of the George W. Bush tax cuts. No matter the rationale for this: call them "job creators"--they have not been creating jobs since their taxes went down. And their corporate profits have soared . . . while income for most people in the country has actually declined.

The tax cuts for the wealthy have been absorbed by the middle class and poor people, who pay a higher percentage of their income on taxes. Not just income tax, but also sales tax and gasoline tax and other taxes they can't avoid. So let's not kid ourselves about who pays taxes. When Mr. Romney says that forty-seven percent of the people in the country don't pay tax, he was utterly wrong. Even if someone doesn't earn enough money to pay income tax, he or she still pays all those other taxes, and payroll and social security and medicare taxes.

But my point is that the common welfare is really what government is al about. And FEMA is an agency that benefits everyone who needs it. Not just businesses; not just the wealthy, but everyone, the wealthy and the poor; the healthy and the ill; the able and the disabled. It is the epitome of the promise government implicitly makes to its citizens when we agree to be citizens. Give up your autonomy to dot things that benefit you but might adversely affect others . . . in return for the benefits the government provides for all.

I fear that Mitt Romney, and his fellows on the Conservative Republican side of the aisle, especially his running-mate Paul Ryan, whose role model, Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" preaches that we should do first for ourselves, and that a government that in any way inhibits the free enterprise of individual entrepreneurs is evil, simply don't get it. Ayn Rand, born and raised in the repressive, totalitarian Soviet Russia after its revolution, understandably was leery of any government that threatened individual rights. But the federal government of the U.S., when it acts to restrain the unbridled greed of businesses that exploit their workers by trying to prevent them from bargaining through unions or by imposing unsafe working conditions . . . or when it acts to limit the power of Wall Street by keeping investment banks separate from consumer banks . . . is merely fulfilling its mandate to promote the general welfare of the people.

Romney, Ryan and others on the far right seem to have forgotten what government is supposed to do, and have confused corporate welfare with the general welfare of the nation's people.

Big projects, like those achieved by FEMA when it deals with disaster relieve, and other governmental agencies that enable the country to build and maintain infrastructure, or to provide education, fire-protection and police protection that affect all of us, are very properly the province of government, and to suggest that for-profit business should instead deal with such matters is simply a disingenuous claim designed to steer resources to the private sector because they would benefit some business. And whether  or not Mitt Romney has a direct interest in a potential disaster-relief company (as Dick Cheney had in Halliburton when he, as Vice-President, recommended that company as the "perfect fit" to perform the kind of support services the army needed in Iraq and Afghanistan), it has been shown time and again that the government can manage such matters just as well if not better than private agencies.

I don't know for sure what Mitt Romney really believes. What I do know is that his rhetoric about the federal deficit simply won't hold water as long as he refuses to acknowledge that the tax policy that he espouses is one of the biggest causes of the growing deficit. But more importantly, he does not seem to understand that when he talks about leadership, the real question for Mr. Romney remains: when he says we need leadership, does he mean the kind of leadership that shows its colors by being selfless and acting in the interests of all the people, or does he mean the kind of leadership that really seeks to benefit the few at the expense of the many? Until I see Mr. Romney clearly advocate policies that don't merely claim to benefit the whole country but demonstrably actually would do that, I cannot have any faith in his blithely optimistic claims about creating millions of new jobs and lowering middle-class taxes.

And when he--the man who was a pioneer in out-sourcing, and who, having said that you can tell where a man's heart is by where he puts his money, turns out to put tens of millions of dollars of his money in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland--approves an ad that claims Chrysler is sending all their manufacturing to China, when in fact they are increasing their workforce in Ohio and merely manufacturing cars for China in China . . . I don't see why anyone should trust his charmingly endearing but fact-free ads.

His actions do not bespeak someone seriously invested in promoting the general welfare.

Voodoo Economics Returns:The Reality of Mitt Romney's Economic Plan

When George H. W. Bush was contending for the Republican nomination for president against Ronald Reagan in 1980, he referred to Reagan's economic plan, which Reagan referred to as "supply side economics" as "Voodoo Economics."

He was right. The only way Reagan's economic policies could have worked was in a fantasy world where magic works.

This is all too relevant today, as Mitt Romney has managed, by clever ads, the bullying tactics he used in the first presidential debate, and by making vague promises based on utterly specious arguments, to make the current election for President much closer than it should be.

It is fascinating in a rather appalling way, to see (according to polls) millions of Americans who were underwhelmed by Mitt Romney for at least a year while he was campaigning for the Republican nomination and even after he won the nomination now being swayed by his feel-good ads and speeches, and by his fact-free attacks on President Obama's performance.

The facts are this: Mitt Romney has always promised, no matter how he dresses it up, to bring back voodoo economics. Call it supply-side economics, or call it what many people have called it for decades: trickle-down economics. It is the same thing. And it doesn't work. It has never worked. It didn't work for Ronald Reagan; it didn't work for Herbert Hoover; it didn't work for George W. Bush. And when I say "bring back voodoo economics" that isn't really true. Because as long as the Bush tax cuts continue in force, we are still operating on a voodoo economics system, thanks to our Republicans in Congress.

Voodoo economics works for the people who are already wealthy.  Which suits Mr. Romney and his base--the very wealthy--just fine.

Recently, he has decided, in a brilliant campaign strategy, to claim that he represents "Change." Not just change, but big change. Which might be humorous if it wasn't so utterly false and self-serving.

In fact, what he proposes is not change at all. He proposes more of what has gotten us into the economic doldrums since the Bush tax cuts. He wants more tax cuts. For everyone. And he makes it sound as if his plan would benefit the middle class. Whereas in fact, the way he has structured his tax cut, the people who would benefit the most are the people who have already been benefitting from the George W. Bush tax cuts: the very wealthy, and it would actually end up costing middle-class people because the loopholes that would be closed and the deductions that would be eliminated would cost middle-class people more than they would save from his announced across-the-board 20% tax cut.
His tax cut would decrease the amount of money that would be available for essential government programs, while giving yet bigger tax breaks for the very wealthy.

Moreover, part of his plan calls for eliminating deductions and loopholes. He would eliminate tax deductions that would hurt the middle class more than they hurt anyone else. I'm referring to deductions like the deduction for interest payments people make for their mortgage. Also, deductions for college tuition payments would be eliminated. And deductions for charitable contributions. I haven't seen any more specifics about deductions he would eliminate, but one thing that is clear is that Romney's tax plan would still benefit the very wealthy.

I'm writing this blog partly because I saw Bill Clinton's video about Romney's $5 trillion tax cut plan --which is the core of his economic plan.  I recommend that video. It is a cogent and clear explanation of the problem with Romney's plan. If you have seen my facebook post last night about that video, you know something about this already. But  it is important to put his plan in historical perspective, in perspective relative to his campaign for the Republican nomination, but most importantly, in perspective relative to the George W. Bush administration's economic policies.

What is so unnerving about hearing Mr. Romney saying that he is for Big Change is that his change, as noted above, is to, as Rachel Maddow would say, to simply double-down on the same basic economic policy as George W. Bush. Bush's mantra was that we needed to cut taxes for the very wealthy people at the top of the income scale, the "job creators." And they in turn would use that tax cut to hire more people for their businesses.  Republicans continue to this day to use the "job creator" mantra when referring to the people with vast wealth in the country.

There is only one problem with this logic. As stated before, it doesn't work. If it did work, we would not have had the Great Depression; if it did work, Reagan would not have gotten us out of the recession in his administration by raising taxes (and raising taxes did help the economy.) If it did work, we would not have had such a low rate of job creation during George W. Bush's administration, and--because the Republicans, by their extreme intransigence in legislative matters--during the present administration. Luckily, President Obama has been able to pass some legislation, despite the Republicans' attempts to block everything he proposes. There was a stimulus in 2009--which Republicans reviled, and which they have unfailingly taken credit for when they go home to their constituencies. The stimulus, which Republicans in Washington always refer to as the "failed stimulus," was not nearly as much stimulus as Obama and the Democrats would have liked. In a desperate attempt to get Republicans to vote for it, the Democrats cut the amount of money actually going to stimulus and instead included tax cuts as part of the legislation.

When Romney talks about change, he gets a certain amount of traction with people who want to believe that voting for him will make things better for them. And lots of people would like things to get better--I think we would all like things to improve. Let's face it: it is taking a long time to recover from Bush's tax policies. But while Mitt Romney blames the slow economic growth on President Obama and his policies, it is not President Obama's fault. It is the fault of the Republican Congress that has blocked almost all of the President's proposed legislative initiatives that are  intended to create jobs: transportation bills; farm bills; job-training bills; infrastructure bills . . . there are others, but I'm not trying to list every one, just a few examples.

I apologize in advance for repeating the following, but it is extremely relevant: Republican Senator and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said publicly in 2009 that his most important goal during President Obama's presidency was to insure that the President would be a one-term president. What I didn't say the last time I wrote those words was that there was also a meeting of key Republican congressional leaders after the 2008 election, in which those leaders --as reported by Sam Stein, based on Robert Draper's book Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives--met on the night of Obama's inauguration to set a direction for their legislative agenda during his presidency.

According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.

Thus was born the policy that led to the filibusters and threats of filibusters; the challenging of every legislative initiative; the attempts to discredit or otherwise diminish the legislative clout of various Democratic members of congress. As noted by Stein in his article and Draper in his book, some opposition to the Democratic agenda was undoubtedly  genuine idealogical disagreement. But the now-tiresome proclamation of "legislative gridlock" since the election of President Obama is undeniable evidence of the determination of the Republican leadership to keep Obama from succeeding. In Draper's book he asserts that the Republicans at that inauguration-night meeting was to do everything possible to make Obama fail, specifically so that they could defeat his re-election bid in 2012.

And that is where we are right now. But that will only happen if all the independents who have to decide whether they can believe Romney's claim that he will improve the lot of most Americans are swayed by the virtual avalanche of advertising that paints him as a benevolent, effective leader, despite the reality--that his tax and economic policy are simply an extension of George W. Bush's tax and economic policy.

A few brief facts that also apply here: 

Another part of Mr. Romney's tax plan entails eliminating the Estate Tax. That is the tax on money left by someone who dies to his or her heirs. Currently, there is an exemption on the first $250,000 that someone might inherit. I don't know about you, but most middle-class people are not seriously affected by this tax. And George W. Bush tried repeatedly to eliminate this tax. It is a tax on the very wealthy.

Yet another part of Mr. Romney's tax plan calls for eliminating the Capital Gains tax. In a speech he has given recently, and in one of the debates as well, Mr. Romney mentioned very briefly that his tax plan would ease the burden on the middle class, partly by eliminating the tax on their capital gains. I am sure Mr. Romney must think of himself as the typical American. Certainly for him, eliminating Capital Gains tax would be very helpful to his fortune. But how many middle-class families really have to worry about tax on their capital gains. On their investments. He's not talking about the middle class. He's talking about the wealthy--those who already have enough money so that they can afford to invest money that can grow from capital gains, that is an increase in the value of stocks and bonds that they already hold.  Once again, as is true of so many of his proposed policies, he is thinking of what he would benefit from, but not what will benefit most Americans. It is all part of his Conservative philosophy, and Paul Ryan's philosophy, which is informed by the writings of Ayn Rand--the greatest influence over Ryan's political philosophy, as he stated on more than one occasion, until the Catholic Church criticized him for espousing policies that were not at all Christian in their effects on those who most need help in the world. Ryan then renounced Ayn Rand, denying he had ever espoused her "godless," "atheistic" philosophy. But he has not really renounced it. He still requires all his legislative aides to read her works. Her philosophy, "objectivism" basically says that one must think first of oneself in order to to the most good in the world. This is not a precept that agrees with the concept of the United States which has enabled people to rise from poverty into the middle class and become productive members of society. It is a philosophy that is beneficial to those who already have what they need. For all others, this philosophy says, effectively, "Sorry. I got mine. If you would just try harder, you'd get yours, too." It's a philosophy that is appealing to the haves of the world. Like Mitt Romney, who famously, when talking about his cars, spoke blithely of his cars, and his wife Ann's cars. She only has a couple Cadillacs. 

In what world do most couples have at least four cars, two of them Caddys?

Romney also has claimed that he would save Medicare, and that President is destroying Medicare. For the record, Obamacare calls for savings to Medicare that come from increased efficiency, not from reduced benefits to patients, while Romney's plan--really Paul Ryan's plan, but one must assume that if they win, it will be Romney's too--would change Medicare by introducing vouchers that would be given to seniors annually, approximately $8000, with which the seniors then would have to purchase private health insurance from insurance companies. 

This policy would essentially, for everyone who is currently younger than 55 years old, end Medicare as we have known it for the past decades. No matter what Romney says, that is what his plan means.

The differences between Romney and Obama are so huge it is terrifying to me that so many people have been so ensorcelled by his propaganda that they no longer can see how destructive his policies would be to their lives. I am reminded of the very funny, very sad Onion headline from just after Election Day, 2004: "Millions re-elect Bush, Voting Against Their Own Best Interest." That may not be an exact quotation, but that was the gist. It would be tragic if the same happened this year, if Mitt Romney wins. Millions tricked into believing he is for them would rue the day as soon as he was able to get any legislation passed.

And lastly: Not only did Ronald Reagan abandon his "supply-side" economics in favor of tax increases to stimulate the economy and to attempt to balance the budget. His budget director, David Stockman, repudiated the policy years after the Reagan administration. 

It just doesn't work. 

What Romney and his friends don't tell you

I've was away more than I was home for the past month, and have only been back since last Sunday night. I have seen a lot of political ads on television, though, in Ohio, and when I've been home, in Wisconsin. There are differences in the regional ads: in Ohio, Sherrod Brown gets trashed a lot by various Republican ads; here in Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin gets trashed by the same Republican organizations, in eerily similar ads. And of course, in both places, President Obama gets trashed as well.

The local ads are worth discussing, but for now I want to concentrate on the Republicans' national messaging, and how people who don't know the full background of the people sponsoring the messaging can understand what is really going on.

For people who don't understand where these ads are coming from, i can only think they must wonder how the world has not yet come to an end. If one is to believe all these incredibly negative ads, they pound certain themes:

The economy has gone into terrible decline on President Obama's watch.

His administration is the "status quo" and he has no plan for the next four years to make things better.

Mitt Romney will make things better for everyone. He will bring the "big change" we need to turn the economy around.

The messages above, and the many variations on these themes suggest that President Obama has utterly failed as a President. But every one of these messages is false, for several reasons.

First of all, let's just look at who actually pays for these messages, and what possible reasons they could have for spending the hundreds of millons of dollars they have spent to create and air them:

Some of the ads are run by the Romney campaign, or the National Republican Party. O.K. They are understandably partisan for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. I'll come back to them.

Other ads are run by various patriotic sounding or forward-sounding organizations:

Crossroads GPS, Restore our Future and Americans for Prosperity are two of the bigger sponsors of ads that criticize the President for being either ineffective, clueless or simply unable to deliver on promises because of some intrinsic personality flaw.

Why are these ads being run? Both organizations, and others with a similar agenda, have disclaimers that run with each ad stating that they are not authorized by any political party or candidate. Yet with utter consistency they advocate against a single candidate: President Barack Obama.

One of these, Crossroads GPS is run by Karl Rove. If you don't think he is a political parisan, you haven't been paying attention. He was known, during the George W. Bush administration, as Bush's Brain, and he has been a key Republican political operative for more than a decade on the national stage, and longer than that in Texas. He is a commentator for Fox News, but I would not say this qualifies him as non-partisan. When I think of a news organization, I think of reporters who investigate stories, and don't rush to spread specious, barely possible rumors from partisan, extremist bloggers or other internet sites. Yet Fox News has repeatedly picked up and run with stories that accuse one or another Democrat of one crime or misdeed or another, only to have it subsequently be proven that the story was either utterly false, or seriously flawed by half-truths or cleverly edited video clips that created a deliberately false impression.

But even if one can excuse sloppy journalism, what is inexcusable about a news organization that propagates such true-fact-free news is that they never, ever correct their false stories. They never issue apologies or admit that they made a mistake. I'm sorry. That is simply not what a news organization should do. And for an organization with the word "News" in their name, that is not a good sign.

So Mr. Rove, who is an acknowledged booster of all things Republican, is in charge of Crossroads, and Crossroads GPS. And all their ads are basically "anti-Democratic-party" ads. But they say that these ads are not authorized by any political party or candidate. They can say that, and technically it is true, but only technically. In reality, his agenda is to help the Republican party defeat the Democratic Party. That's his prerogative, but for the ads to say that Crossroads, GPS or not, is not affiliated with a political party is only true in that technical sense. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but has a label that says, "not a duck" . . . draw your own conclusions.

Then there is Americans for Prosperity. Who are these patriotic sounding people? Well, the prime movers behind this "non-partisan" organization is the Koch brothers, whose father was one of the founders of the John Birch Society, and who own their own very large Oil company, as well as the Union Pacific Railroad and other corporate interests. When an ad run by Americans for Prosperity talks about creating jobs, or about the failure of President Obama's economic program, they are not non-partisan. When here in Wisconsin Governor Walker  came into office and with a Republican majority in both houses of the State Legislature began to reshape Wisconsin's agenda by such measures as rejecting the $800 million the federal government had given to Wisconsin for a high-speed rail line from Madison to Milwaukee, mandating an abstinence-only sex education regime for our schools, an making it illegal for public-employee unions to negotiate with the government, Americans for Prosperity was behind the governor, running ads in support of his programs, and more to the point, paying for tens of millions of dollars of ads against the democratic candidates running in recall elections against Walker and various Republican State Senators. Americans for Prosperity claims to be in favor of jobs for Americans, but what they really support are candidates who support their own causes--tax breaks for big corporations and tax cuts for the very wealthy. They are strenuously anti-union, and when they talk about "tax breaks for the middle class" what they really mean is tax breaks for everyone . . . including the wealthiest--the very wealthiest--people in the country, who have done very well the past ten years or so, since the Bush tax cuts were passed into law.

Restore Our Future was started by Charles Spies, a Mitt Romney aide, in 2010, and has raised more than $50 million dollars in the past two years to advocate against Romney's political rivals, including at least #20 million from Sheldon Adelson, the casino owner and operator, as well as tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street investment funds.

The subject of this post was What Romney and his friends don't tell you. And while I've dealt with the identities of some of the many organizations that are running ads for Mr. Romney or against the President, I haven't really said what they don't tell you. Here's some of what they don't tell you:

When their ads talk about the state of the economy, they always fail to mention exactly why the economy is not as vigorous as any of us would like. They never mention simple, large contributing factors such as the fact that the congress has been locked in stalemate since Obama was elected. Why has there been legislative stalemate? Well, in 2009, Mitch O'Connell, the Republican Minority Leader in the Senate stated publicly that his single biggest goal during the Obama administration was to ensure that Barack Obama would be a one-term president. And to try to achieve that goal, the Republicans in the Senate have engaged in many filibusters to prevent legislation from being passed.

Now, there have been filibusters in the Senate for many years. But never in such numbers. If you look at a chart at the number of filibusters by year, you'll find that in the past few years the number of filibusters or threatened filibusters to block legislation has skyrocketed. Some of these actions have been to block judicial or other administration appointments, such as the appointment of the first head of the new Consumer Protection Agency. But many of them blocked jobs bills, tax bills, transportation bills, infrastructure bills, farm aid bills . . . the list goes on and on. So when the ads that accuse President Obama of not being able to improve the economy or cut unemployment, they are being entirely disingenuous by omitting the fact that the congress has made it almost impossible for the President to pass the vast majority of the economy-helpful measures he quite reasonably expected to see enacted during his first term in office.

Exactly why the Republican Party has been so rigorously obstructionist is a matter one can debate. But considering McConnell's avowed goal in 2009, it is not difficult to see a simple motivation: A sluggish economy is the single biggest reason for voters to reject a second term by a sitting president. And with the enormous deficit rolled up during the George W. Bush administration by a combination of two wars, the cost of which Bush literally simply left out of his budgets, and the tax cuts he initiated which cut revenues, coupled with the terrible financial crisis and $700 million Wall Street bailout and mortgage market collapse in late 2008, President Obama was faced with not a bad economy, but a really terrible economy, giving the Republicans a clear opportunity to take advantage of poor economic conditions to retake the White House.

Their strategy worked in 2010 in the House of Representatives, when the Tea Party, another disingenuously concocted organization funded largely by Dick Armey, a former Republican congressman via his FreedomWorks organization. Claiming to be a grassroots organization, in fact, FreedomWorks received more than a million dollars via Armey's lobbying firm DLA Piper from pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. In 2009,  when the administration was trying to pass healthcare reform, Rachel Maddow accused FreedomWorks of inciting Tea Party members and others to disrupt the town hall meetings being held by Democratic members of Congress, for the purpose of distracting the electorate from the real issues and instead focusing attention on a series of specious, anti-administration issues, with signs such as those that equated the President with Adolph  Hitler, or  with loudly shouted protests, like the bizarre plea: "Keep your hands off my Medicare" from someone who clearly didn't understand that Medicare was a program run by the government . . . the same government from which he wanted to protect his Medicare.

My point is simply that the Republicans have been using a wide range of tactics, executed by a number of different organizations, only a few of which I've mentioned here. I won't say that there are no organizations working for the Democrats. However, the campaign ads that I have seen from the left, while some of them have questioned the character of Mitt Romney, have not been the same kind of utterly disingenuous ads the Republicans and their allies have employed against the President.

But what Romney does not tell you, which to my mind is worse than the ads that are shown for the benefit of his campaign, is that when he talks, whether it is during a debate, in a stump speech, or in his own ads (though I have noted that he seldom if ever speaks in his ads), a lot of what he says is either extremely vague:

"We need big change to get the country moving forward again," for example, is one of his big lines lately. What is fascinating and somewhat horrifying about this particular line is that it seems clearly to be an attempt to co-opt one of President Obama's biggest buzzwords from 2008, Change" and also a basic progressive buzzword, "Forward," Wisconsin's motto, which Governor Walker also co-opted in his successful defense against the recall effort this past summer.

More troubling, though, are his utterly baseless attacks on the President, always spoken with an air of great certainty and confidence. These include the accusation that unemployment is increasing under President Obama, which is not true. In fact, the unemployment rate is under 8% for the first time since before the President took office, and more than five million jobs have been created in the past four years; also, In fact, if the Republican obstructionists in Congress had not been so effective in blocking legislation (and also in changing the stimulus of 2009 from one of primarily one which gave money to the states for various projects to one which had a large tax-cut as a component) there would have been a significantly greater number of people in government jobs than there are now, which in turn would have reduced the unemployment rate and stimulated the economy to a significantly greater extent than has been possible in the absence of the blocked legislation.

These are just two assertions by Romney or his campaign that are verifiably untrue. But most people don't have the combination of resources, time, and desire to look into the claims of negative ads or campaign rhetoric.

So, for example, when Romney ads criticize the President for the "status quo" they neglect to mention that the "status quo" --of economic underperformance and high unemployment--was a product of the Bush administration's policies, and has been perpetuated by Republican obstruction of legislative initiatives in Congress. Nor do Romney or his ads acknowledge that the economy has been waking up, slowly, but steadily, despite the deliberate obstruction of measures in congress that would hasten a bigger recovery.

These are just the tip of the iceberg of what Romney and his friends aren't telling you. But he and those friends have amassed, thanks to the unshackling of huge, anonymous donations by corporations, an enormous amount of money for ads in these last eleven days before the election. so there will be lots more of the vicious attacks.

But maybe if we all tell everyone we know about how false these ads and Romney's stump speeches are, how fact-free are his blithe assertions; how full of guile and subtle but false emotional appeals are the ads . . . maybe we can allow the truth of the situation to be what people understand when they go to the polls.

Politics again: In praise of Rachel Maddow and accurate reportage

I owe an apology to anyone who was following my posts on politics before now. When the Wisconsin recall election this summer ended with Governor Walker retaining his office I was so upset and disappointed that I had real trouble thinking of constructive things to say about politics.

I was also extremely busy with work, travel for business, and family matters, so it was all too easy to not blog for a week, a month and  . . . well, I haven't gone back to see just how long it's been between blogs. So I apologize for being absent.

However, in the time since I last blogged, I've been thinking a lot about politics, observing the developing campaigns--both for president and more locally the Wisconsin race for Herb Kohl's seat in the U.S. Senate.

I plan to resume this blog on as regular a basis as possible. which doesn't mean every day, but I hope will be at least once a week. Depending on other demands on my time, it will be more frequent than that. I predict that in a couple weeks I will have to interrupt the blog when I travel for business. And again in the second week of October. But otherwise, barring serious illness or emergencies, this should be a fairly frequent blog from now on.

For a long time I have wanted to do something in this blog that I could make a regular feature, and I think I've finally discovered something that I can feature that will be of benefit to anyone who wants to be able to tell the difference between non-partisan, reasonably accurate information sources and those that may seem non-partisan or claim to be non-partisan but which in fact are partisan in purpose and deliberately spreading false or distorted information because they are advocating for or sponsored by an organization or organizations that have an unannounced agenda which is partisan and not their publicly stated purpose.

If you watch television, get physical mail delivered to your house or Post Office box, or listen to radio you have been exposed to fraudulent or otherwise dishonest information that can only be characterized as propaganda.

People use the word "propaganda" and I'm not sure that most people understand what the word actually means. so let's start with a simple definition. From my Random House Unabridged Dictionary:

1. Information, rumors, etc., deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

2. The deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.

3. The particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.

There are other meanings, but these are the pertinent points defining the kind of propaganda that has become pervasive throughout the mass-media over the past several decades, and which has become so ubiquitous over the past ten years or so that it is now extremely difficult to determine whether something that is disseminated publicly by some information medium is truth or propaganda unless one is willing to take the time to do some real research into the source of the information.

There are some sources of news that I have come to trust, first and foremost Rachel Maddow and her nightly television show on the cable channel MSNBC. I trust her because repeatedly, for five years now, she has been investigating one news story after another, and when interviewing people who are directly involved in the developing story, she will offer a brief summary of the situation as she understands it. And without a single exception, whether the person she is interviewing has views similar to hers or of a different political persuasion, when she has finished summarizing what she claims to be the facts, she will say to her interviewee, "I've probably missed something or gotten something wrong. Have I gotten that right? Is that an accurate account of the situation?" or words to that effect.

And without exception, the interviewee responds, "No, actually that's an extremely accurate account," or words to that effect.

In other words, Rachel Maddow gets it right. She, and I assume the people on the staff of her show, are extremely diligent and accurate investigators, digging far beyond what many people who report the news dig, for information that not only is accurate but which is also clearly conveyed and precise, cogent information that helps her viewers make intelligent assessments of the truth of a given news story.

The contrast between Rachel Maddow's reports and those of the purported news organization I feel is the least rigorous and most obviously biased in things political, the oxymoronically named "Fox News," is stark.

The most obvious difference between Maddow and an enormous amount of what is labelled as "news" at Fox is simple: when Rachel Maddow makes an error of fact, she reports that error as quickly as possible. This occurs sometimes during the same hour-long show when she made the error; other times it will occur a day or two or three later, when, she says, someone brought her error to her attention.

In marked contrast, Fox News has made countless errors of fact in reporting news, but in one instance after another, when their facts are proven to be either inaccurate or simply entirely wrong, or based on what is subsequently proved to be a lie or distortion of verifiable fact, they do not admit their error or their mistake. They simply move on to a new story. Their commitment to honesty and integrity in their reporting is almost completely nonexistent.

I will not right now cite the particulars of Fox News's inaccurate, biased or fact-free reporting. At some later time, I will probably go into detail about something that Fox mis-reports or mis-represents.

However, to give a single example of such unprofessional behavior, consider the story of Shirley Sherrod, an Afro-American woman in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was accused of acting in a way that was racially prejudiced against Caucasian farmers. The accusation stemmed from a video of part of a speech she gave to the NAACP. The video, which was edited for content by a right-wing blogger, gave the impression that she had acted in a discriminatory fashion against a white farm family. Without investigating to see whether the video was accurate or complete, Fox News went full-bore to accuse Ms. Sherrod of abusing the power of her position for racist purposes. She was pressured to resign her position and did so, to avoid prolonging the criticism of the federal government that Fox and others were leveling against her and the Obama administration.

Within just a few days, the story was investigated by various news organizations, including Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann, who at that time had his own one-hour show on MSNBC, and very quickly it was determined that the offensive video had been severely edited to create the impression of improper action. When the entire speech was viewed, it was quite clear that Ms. Sherrod had not said anything whatsoever that gave even a hint of misdeed.

But it was too late. Ms. Sherrod felt her name and reputation had been so thoroughly debased by the hasty, vicious and irresponsible attacks by Fox and other news media too lazy to check the facts, that she did not accept the administration's offer to restore her to her previous position.

Did Fox News ever admit they had been wrong? No. Did they ever acknowledge that the source of their story had fooled them? No. Did they ever apologize for taking a story that was unverified, biased, partisan and factually untrue? No.

That, and innumerable similar instances of journalistic irresponsibility, is why I do not consider Fox News to be a legitimate news source, especially in matters of politics.

But I digress. What made me realize that I could do something in this blog that would be a valuable service to the public was a cardboard announcement that I received today in the mail.


Introducing a new feature of this blog:

These People Are Not What They Seem

The invitation I received was for  what is billed as a "Healthcare Town Hall Meeting" from an organization called "60 Plus Association, Inc."

At this "Town Hall Meeting" they promise to brief attendees on healthcare reform, to give out free food and refreshments, t-shirts and prizes, and to raffle off a copy of Pat Boone's book "America: 50 Years" and other prizes.

The 60 Plus Association terms itself "the conservative alternative to the liberal AARP."

A visit to their website reveals that they are in fact not so much an organization as the AARP as it is a group with the primary mission of advocating for the conservative view of the Affordable Care Act. Various of their press releases and position papers assert as facts such misstatements or deliberate distortions of the Act as claiming that it takes decisions about one's health care out of the hands of patients and gives the Federal government power over important healthcare decisions.

This is smply not true. If one reads the Affordable Care Act (a daunting prospect, admittedly; it's a lengthy document), there is nothing in it that gives the government the right to interfere in people's healthcare decisions or choices.

Yet 60 Plus, like a number of other organizations, which I will cover in subsequent posts, claims that the healthcare reform law hurts rather than helps seniors and others have access to affordable healthcare.

One of their biggest statements of untruth is their assertion that the healthcare reform will create a huge tax increase for the middle class. This is simply not true. The $716 billion dollars that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney have claimed is going to be cut from Medicare has been consistently mis-characterized by them and others on the right. Yes, that money is cuts. But much of that money is coming in the form of reforms to make Medicare more administratively efficient, and in other measures designed to increase the quality of care for those who use Medicare.

In fact, Romney and Ryan also want to cut $716 billion from Medicare. But not by implementing reforms to the structure and making the system work better. Their idea, and the idea of 60 Plus Association, is to hand health insurance, and Medicare in particular, to private insurance companies, changing the current system to one in which medical care is not, as is currently the case, guaranteed. But rather to issue vouchers to Medicare users for $6000 with which they can buy private health insurance.

This is not the same as "saving Medicare" as 60 Plus asserts. This is basically saving the earnings of private for-profit health-insurance companies. Seniors would be put in the position of having to pay far more for health insurance through private companies under the 60 Plus plan.

To characterize themselves as "the conservative alternative to the liberal AARP is disingenuous at best; at worst, it is a cruel trick to attempt to convince those who believe in truly conservative principles that the AARP is somehow a "liberal plot" to take their healthcare choices away from them. This is simply not true.

Yes, the AARP has done lobbying for healthcare reform, and for good reason. The millions of members of AARP already are reaping tangible benefits from the Affordable Care Act, and in the next several years the benefits will increase. Already, the "donut hole" that was legislated into Medicare coverage under George W. Bush--and the cruel "Medicare Part D" which made it illegal for the government to negotiate for lower prices for prescription drugs for Medicare members--have been retired, saving seniors hundreds of millions of dollars a year, perhaps more--it's too early to say exactly how much, but it might well run to more than a billion dollars a year.

However, the main activities of AARP involve offering its members discounts on many kinds of products, including insurance; publishing a magazine for their members, and acting as a de-facto consumer protection agency for their members, alerting them to scams and other unethical or exploitive schemes that prey on older people. The AARP is not a partisan organization as is 60 Plus.

So today, I would like to warn readers of this blog that 60 Plus Association is not what they seem to be. If you go to their website you will see that another part of their agenda is to "save medicare and social security" for the next generation. This language is a code phrase for, as mentioned above, changing the current Medicate system to a voucher system that would cost seniors millions upon millions of dollars while feathering the nest of private, for-profit health insurance companies.  And for "privatizing" social security by changing the system so that people would have to manage their own social security funds by investing them through investment advisors or stock brokerage houses.

Privatizing social security would be a disastrous policy for most private citizens. It would help certain people, specifically those who work on Wall Street or for investment firms across America. They would get enormous new business, leading to more money in commissions. But the vast majority of Americans would be immediately in danger of losing money that is under the current system guaranteed for their retirement. If the stock market and other investments increase in value, people would benefit, generally. But if, for example, your social security account money was invested unwisely under the Ryan/Romney/60 Plus Association idea, then you could lose some or even all of your retirement money.

This policy, which 60 Plus advocates, is not in the best interests of seniors. And no matter how much they distort the true facts, nothing they say to frighten or trick people into believing that their plan is a good idea for American seniors will make that true.

So I strongly suggest that you beware the clever distortions and tricky propaganda of the 60 Plus Association. They have Pat Boone; they have prizes, refreshments and free T-shirts. But they are not working for you, unless you are an executive or shareholder of a health insurance company. They are working for themselves, and for the private health-insurance industry, for which they have lobbied, and for whom they have spent millions of dollars in just the past year on campaigns against the Affordable Care Act and against candidates who support health reform that really does benefit the vast majority of Americans. The Affordable Care act is not perfect, but is a good first step in real healthcare insurance reform. And the people behind 60 Plus Association are trying to undo the good that this reform has begun, so that the private health insurance industry can make more money, at the expense of the people who 60 Plus claims to be trying to help. And that makes what they are saying in their invitation not a real invitation, but propaganda.

That's what I've got today.

It's past midnight on the night before the recall election. David Shuster of NBC News broke a story over the weekend that Governor Scott Walker is now a target of the "John Doe" investigation in Milwaukee into criminal misuse of government funds.

This news does not seem to have made any significant impact on Wisconsin news media, which doesn't actually surprise me. The recall election is the big news--actually, the recall elections, plural, for governor, lieutenant governor, and four state senators.

Whether or not Governor Walker was involved in the scandal that has already resulted in indictments of some of his aides, the fact remains that he has already accumulated a legal defense fund totaling more than $160,000. He has acted in ways that do not seem consistent with someone with nothing to hide, insofar as he has claimed to be cooperating completely with the investigators, while in fact refusing to turn over his emails to the investigators.

Tonight, on the Rachel Maddow show, I saw a video clip of Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. I have only seen her twice before, both times on ads for her defense against recall. They portrayed her as a smart, effective person who spent a lot of time doing her best to attract new business to Wisconsin.

The clips on the Maddow Show, however, were very different. In one clip, she said, "Republican candidate for Wisconsin Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch compared same-sex marriage to marrying a clock during a radio interview.

“This is a slippery slope,” Kleefisch said. “In addition to that at what point are we going to be okay marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table or this, you know, clock? Can we marry dogs?

“This is ridiculous,” continued Kleefisch. “And biblically, again, I’m going to go right back to my fundamental Christian beliefs marriage is between one man and one woman.”

“She’s perpetuating the idea that it’s not okay to be gay,” said one protester.

“The people of Wisconsin are against gay marriage,” Kleefisch later told FOX6′s Real Milwaukee. “The people of Wisconsin spoke on this issue, as you guys are aware, in 2006 passed a constitutional amendment that said marriage is between one man and one woman.”

Asked how she felt about Wisconsin’s amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage, Kleefisch responded that she is “against gay marriage as well” because it is a “fiscal back breaker.”

“The legislative fiscal bureau announced about five days ago that we are actually $265 million dollars further in the hole than we expected to be this year,” said Kleefisch. “We just don’t have the money to be giving out for extra benefits right now. It’s a fiscal back breaker.”

Later she apologized for saying things that were offensive to gay people. However, one of her uncles did not believe that she  was sincere in her apology, and to  showed his support for gay rights, donated $500 to Tom Barrett's campaign in the recall election.

What is clear is that Ms. Kleefisch is at least as radically right-wing as Governor Walker, and that if Governor Walker is either defeated in the election or wins, but is later impeached, a Kleefisch governorship would not be any better than Walker's has been.

I also heard this morning that the governor, and Reince Priebus, too, raised the specter of voter fraud. Which is ridiculous, as is Priebus's contention that "unions have come in from outside and hijacked the election." Considering the enormous advantage in spending the Republicans have, it seems clear hat from any objective point of view that if anyone is "hijacking" the election, it is money from Republican backers from out-of-state.

It is very difficult to overcome the overwhelming volume of pro-Walker, anti-Barrett ads, especially since there are a certain number of people who, like a friend of a friend who, when told that an ad in which Barrett was accused of wrongdoing of which he is verifiably innocent, said, "But if it got on TV, it must be true."

If it got on TV, it must be true. 

I don't know how one can argue with such un-critical acceptance of everything seen on TV. 

We can only hope that people who are still thinking will look at the volume of Walker's ads and wonder why the governor has gotten such a vast amount of money for ads, if he is as honorable and as supportive of Wisconsin's "forward" tradition as he claims. 

If people will ask themselves that question, perhaps they will be open to the truth about the governor's agenda, and about Tom Barrett's real qualification for the governorship of Wisconsin. 

Walker has continuously claimed that the people of Wisconsin are behind him. Something that has been lost in all the recall  excitement is the fat that in the 2010 election he and his corporate allies outspent Barrett by a huge factor to win that election. Walker has always had the corporate agenda he constantly denies. Barrett simply wants to help Wisconsin back to a sane, balanced state of governance. 

Its almost as simple as that.

In the field, canvassing, today

That was Saturday, and until I go to sleep and wake up again, it isn't entirely Sunday.

I spent three hours canvassing for Tom Barrett and Mahlon Mitchell in Fitchburg. Literally pounding the pavement, ringing doorbells. It's not easy for me to do this, especially at first, but once I have rung a few doorbells and talked with a few people, it gets a bit easier. People don't think I'm shy, but ringing the bell of someone I don't know at all is just not natural for me.

It was a positive experience. People I talked to were generally for the candidates I'm for, and that helps, of course. And there were a couple people who were worried about the outcome, and that is entirely natural. When the opposition lies about virtually everything, from his agenda to his achievements to his opponent's record, and has an advantage in funds of 25 to 1, it would take a fool to be sunnily optimistic.

However, some really interesting things have emerged from the day that put things in clearer focus for me. First of all, I realized that there is a lot about Tom Barrett that has gotten completely buried by Scott Walker's--and Walker's friends'--propaganda.

Walker and others who propagate ads on tv and radio that trash Tom Barrett always refer to him only as the Mayor of Milwaukee. And Barrett is, indeed, the Mayor of Milwaukee. But his experience in government is far broader than that. He served two terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly, then served in the State Senate, and then four terms as a Congressman from Wisconsin, before being gerrymandered out of his district. He then ran for mayor of Milwaukee, and won. But more intriguingly, he won reelection by an enormous majority--over 70%--twice!

It is telling that while Scott Walker, who was the Milwaukee County Supervisor all the years that Barrett was Mayor, until Walker became governor, trashes Barrett, but the voters of Milwaukee seem to think that Barrett has done a very good job. And though Barrett lost to Walker 52% to 48% for governor in 2010, he won Milwaukee by a 2-1 margin.

What Scott Walker has going for him is very, very wealthy friends. While he claims to be taking Wisconsin forward, in fact, he has really taken it backwards in terms of the government's service to the people, with his extreme cuts to education, health care, salaries for government employees and many other measures. He even managed to lose $800 million in Federal grant money to the state, before he even took office, by announcing that he would reject the money, which was supposed to help build a high-speed rail link between Madison and Milwaukee, which would have been a huge economic boon to the state, creating jobs, and also encouraging economic development along the rail corridor. It also would have gone a long way toward re-invigorating Scott Walker's home base, Milwaukee.

Why did Walker reject the money? I don't know for sure, but I have noticed that he has given state subsidies to firms that are engaged in construction of highways. There may be a connection there, but I can't know for sure.

But the bottom line here is simply just that. Walker is all about the bottom line. Can anyone whose eyes are open really think that the vast amount of negative advertising paid for by groups that are not his campaign's own but which are aimed at discrediting Tom Barrett is merely the pleas of a concerned electorate?

All one has to do is notice the bus tour of "Americans for Progress," the organization funded directly by the Koch Brothers who have stood behind Walker, and who own the largest privately held oil and energy company in the United States. Can anyone really believe it is a coincidence that these people launched a ten city bus tour of Wisconsin a week before the recall election? They claim there is no connection, and that they are not campaigning for any political candidate.

That may be technically true, but their message is absolutely clear. Their way is Walker's way. And their way is the same way as the way of the far-right conservative Republican way. They claim that we need lower taxes . . . but they've been saying that for ten years, and we have had lower taxes in these ten years, and the results have benefitted only one group of Americans--those who are already most wealthy or most profitable, in the case of businesses.

Tom Barrett has been an able public servant. He has shown an ability to cooperate with others in government, on both sides of the aisle. Even a Republican as conservative as Paul Ryan said nice things about Barrett, when they were both in the U.S. Congress.

We have all--voters, media, everyone--been bombarded by so much negative campaignage by Walker and his friends that Tom Barrett's real virtues, and the many positive accomplishments he has had in a much longer and more effective political career have been terribly obscured. All that Walker has shown is an inclination to bully those he can bully. With a Republican majority in both houses of the legislature, he decided that he could simply eliminate what, to him, was the inconvenient presence of unions in the public sector. No governor of Wisconsin, Democrat or Republican, has ever felt the necessity to do away with negotiations with unions. Every single one of them has managed to govern without eviscerating the function of unions.

And while he claims to have balanced the budget while lowering taxes, that is not entirely true. He has raised taxes for older people; he has lowered government contributions to health insurance for state employees. And he has consistently lied about the role of unions in their relationship to state government, claiming that state workers did not contribute to their retirement funds, when in fact this was never true.

He has lied about a lot. And his claims of job gains in the state, while in small measure true--yes, there have been jobs created in the state, bear close scrutiny. First, there have been fewer jobs created in Wisconsin than he claims. But more significantly,  he has been personally responsible for the loss of jobs in the state because of all the jobs he has eliminated in the state government. And no matter how he would like to say it isn't true, the statistics still stand. Under his administration, Wisconsin has LOST more jobs than any other state in the United States.

But his ads--his constant barrage of ads--make it seem as if this is not true.

They are ads. Even the ones that say "facts" are ads. And for every "fact" in those ads, there are many more facts that are conveniently left out of those ads, which completely contradict the "facts" in his ads.

But the worst thing of all may be, as mentioned above, that he has attempted to cloak himself in the progressive tradition of Wisconsin. His ads often trumpet that with Walker, Wisconsin will continue Forward (and with Barrett, Backward). The word "forward" is the motto of the state. And it comes from the Progressive movement. The movement that fostered unions, and worker's rights, and which has been responsible for bringing many laws into being which help to balance the power of moneyed interests by regulating business's excesses and advocating for the rights of workers and the general populace against the enormous powers that wealth and corporate clout muster in the name of profit.

Corporations are made for profit. But that is not the role of government. When people in Wisconsin vote on Tuesday, I hope they will understand that a vote for Scott Walker is a vote in favor of the interests of corporations, not the interests of everyone else. The government is supposed to protect us from corporate overreach. If Walker keeps being governor, we will be surrendering to corporations as never before.

It has been said that we are known by the company we keep. Scott Walker keeps company with the Koch Brothers and with other big business interests. He has proven this in many ways, the most obvious of which was the $130 million dollars in subsidies he doled out to corporations last year when he claimed that he had to eliminate union bargaining rights, cut $800 million from the education budget and eliminate thousands of state jobs. Have those subsidies created a lot of jobs? Not enough to keep Wisconsin from having lost more jobs last year than any other state.

What more proof do we need to know where his interest really lies, no matter what his ads say?

And every time those ads say "Forward," it is a slap in the face to the state motto and the people of Wisconsin.

Last nightWisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his Democratic opponent in the upcoming recall election had a debate, or something like a debate. It was strange, the two of them sitting at a table with a moderator.

Walker is slick. He keeps saying "move forward," which is designed to appeal to Wisconsinites, because we are the state that has the motto "Forward," and we also are the birthplace of the Progressive movement.

But Walker and Forward are like that famous couple, a fish and a bicycle--nothing in common. The only people Walker really wants to move forward are the Koch Brothers, who have donated literally tens of millions of dollars to his last two political campaigns, and have also just sent more than seventy people here specifically to campaign for  . . . well, they don't say for what or for whom, because they can't do that without being in violation of campaign finance fules. But it's a really amazing coincidence that they've chartered buses to visit ten Wisconsin cities a week before this recall election.

Stoom Barrett is not a perfect candidate. As the mayor of Milwaukee, he's had a very difficult task. Milwaukee has never been an easy city to govern, at least since the early 1960s when it lost a lot of its industrial base, and much of its middle-class fled to the suburbs. But he's a reasonable man, a bright, talented man with a strongly progressive agenda, and he's got a good deal of character, and good ideas

Walker runs ads that make him sound like a guy who's been attacked by "special interests," whereas the fact is, he is the king of special interests in Wisconsin. He has taken the classic Republican position of the new millennium: accuse the opponent of having the vices you have. So he refers to Barrett as pandering to special interests. But since becoming governor, Walker has the worst job-creation record of any sitting governor; he has created a crisis in education in the state, about which he lies (class size has not been this large, on average, since 1995); he has tried to privatize the University of Wisconsin, and everything else he can get his hands on; he's helped pass voter suppression laws; he's generally discouraged or made impossible voting by certain groups -coincidentally, largely Democratic-voting groups: poor people, young people, old people, minority voters. Amazing coincidences, eh?

The debate was full of disingenuous statements by Walker, and denials by him of responsibility for anything he has done.

Yes, he was right in asserting that Milwaukee has a problem with crime. But that's about all he could say to argue his points against Barrett. And the fact that he has eviscerated education funding in Milwaukee for more than a decade now has been a significant contributory cause to Milwaukee's crime problem, and its unemployment problems. So his hands are far from clean in those matters he blames on his opponent.

What is clear, however, is that his agenda has not benefited the vast majority of people in Wisconsin. And that's what the election is about.