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.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
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!
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!
Friday, November 2, 2012
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.
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.
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