The Meaning of Mitt’s Massachusetts Record

Posted: March 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 37 Comments

Romney campaigns in Mississippi: "I like grits!"

I’ve written a couple of posts about Mitt Romney’s economic record in Massachusetts. It’s a very poor record. I can’t seem to dig up the links to my previous posts right now, but I’m including two from The Boston Globe. I’ve also written about Romney’s cold and distant, almost robot-like behavior–as have a number of journalists–for examples see here and here.

As a citizen of Massachusetts who didn’t follow state politics very closely, I had a sense of Romney as a deeply amoral man, a user who only ran for office–first for Senator against Ted Kennedy and then for Governor–as a stepping-stone to the presidency. During his time as Governor, Romney turned Massachusetts’ already regressive income tax into a flat tax and increased fees so that the economic burden fell more heavily on the poor. His record on jobs was abominable, and the population in the state actually dropped as Bay-Staters went elsewhere in search of work.

It became a joke in the state that Romney was never around–he was always traveling around the country building support for his presidential run. After his one term in the State House (he was very unpopular and unlikely to win reelection), Romney moved on to greener pastures where he proceeded to criticize and mock Massachusetts in order to win favor with the right.

Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article by Michael Barbaro that I want to call to your attention. Barbaro (or his contributors Ashley Southall and Kitty Bennett) actually talked to a number of people who did watch state politics very closely during Romney’s governorship–other politicians, specifically state legislators. What they had to say only confirms my intuitive sense of Romney as a person.

He was aloof and distant–not unfriendly per se, but he didn’t care for schmoozing with other politicians. He saw himself as the CEO who could delegate responsibilities and didn’t need to reach out to legislators. He had the attitude that he could simply make a decision and that was the end of it. This anecdote is typical of many who spoke to Barbaro:

Well into Mitt Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts, a state legislator named Jay Kaufman developed a nagging suspicion: the governor had no idea who he was.

A committee chairman and a veteran Democrat in the State House of Representatives, Mr. Kaufman routinely waved to Mr. Romney from his capitol office, right above the governor’s parking spot. But when he crossed Mr. Romney’s path in the building’s marble corridors one day, his fears were confirmed.

“Hello, Senator,” Mr. Romney called to Mr. Kaufman.

Sitting in his office five years later, Mr. Kaufman still seemed wounded by the slight. “No name, wrong title,” he said. “Give me a break.”

Instead of compromising, he vetoed hundreds of pieces of legislation and then the vetoes were routinely overturned by the legislature.

On working with the legislature:

Even though he worked just a few hundred feet from them for four years, Mr. Romney displayed little interest in getting to know lawmakers and never developed real relationships with most members of the Democratic-dominated body, according to interviews with two dozen current and former lawmakers of both parties and members of the governor’s staff….

“Romney just didn’t want to deal with legislators,” said Robert A. Antonioni, a Democratic state senator and a chairman of the Education Committee during the Romney years. “Typically, the governor wants to have a productive relationship with the legislature. That is not something that happened with him.”

A number of politicians who were interviewed said that Romney could have accomplished much more as governor if he had simply deigned to show a little respect for the legislative body it was his responsibility to deal with.

Some complained that Romney disrespected them when he visited their districts–forcing them to sit withe the rest of the audience in the “cheap seats” rather than “front and center.” Other were shocked when Romney

personally helped recruit 131 Republican candidates to run against Democratic legislators in 2004, an unusual frontal assault against incumbents….The effort backfired. Republicans lost seats that year, and Mr. Romney earned the enmity of the Democrats he had sought to unseat, especially those who had supported his initiatives….When Mr. Romney needed their votes, Mr. O’Keefe remembers several offended lawmakers rejecting his request by saying, “Talk to the next guy.”

One of Romney’s decisions that most insulted legislators was when he blocked off one the elevators in the State House for his personal use–so that he wouldn’t need to ride up with legislators. His staff claimed this was done for security reasons after 9/11, which seems to me to be a pretty feeble excuse.

The overall picture of Romney presented by those who worked most closely with him in Massachusetts rings true based on my own observations and on the general reactions of the media and the public to Romney as presidential candidate. He appears to be arrogant, insensitive, ham-handed, and authoritarian. In many ways he resembles Barack Obama who has also be criticized for being distant with Congress. But Romney makes Obama look like friendly and approachable.

We’ve also seen that Romney will lie with a straight face no matter how often his supposed position on an issue changes. For whatever reason–probably daddy issues–Romney has always wanted to be president. But in my opinion Romney is not tempermentally suited for the job. We’ve already had two presidents in a row with daddy issues. That’s just not a good reason.

The only other reason I can figure that Romney wants the job is so he can make sure that rich people get a lot richer and poor people bear the economic burdens of the country. That’s what he did in Massachusetts.

There is no way this man should be president. If he doesn’t feel ready for retirement yet, he should return to the business world.

Doonesbury Takes on the Zygote Zealots

Posted: March 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , | 8 Comments

Several newspapers will not be running next week’s Doonesbury cartoons.  The strip has been censored before.  Next week’s strip takes on the newly passed transvaginal ultrasounds laws states of Texas and Virginia for women exercising their constitutional rights early in their pregnancies.  The demeaning procedure–frequently referred to as a form of state approved rape–has already been forced on Texas women.

Here’s what’s in the strips:

Monday: Young woman arrives for her pre-termination sonogram, is told to take a seat in the shaming room, a middle-aged male state legislator will be right with her.

Tuesday: He asks her if this is her first visit to the center, she replies no, that she’s been using the contraceptive services for some time. He says, “I see. Do your parents know you’re a slut?”

Wednesday: A different male is reading to her about the transvaginal exam process.

Thursday: In the stirrups, she is telling a nurse that she doesn’t want a transvaginal exam. Doctor says “Sorry miss, you’re first trimester. The male Republicans who run Texas require that all abortion seekers be examined with a 10″ shaming wand.” She asks “Will it hurt?” Nurse says, “Well, it’s not comfortable, honey. But Texas feels you should have thought of that.” Doctor says, “By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape.”

Friday: Doctor is explaining that the Texas GOP requires her to have an intimate encounter with her fetus. He begins describing it to her. Last panel, he says, “Shall I describe it’s hopes and dreams?” She replies, “If it wants to be the next Rick Perry, I’ve made up my mind.”

Saturday: Back in the reception area, she asks where she goes now for the actual abortion. Receptionist tells her there’s a 24-hour waiting period: “The Republican Party is hoping you get caught in a shame spiral and change your mind.” Last panel: She says, “A final indignity.” Receptionist replies, “Not quite. Here’s your bill.”

Cartoonist Gary Trudeau has given an interview on the strips.

I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women’s health currently being waged in several states. For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.

Several papers will be running the cartoons.

Debbie Van Tassel, assistant managing editor of features at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tells Comic Riffs that she and other top editors have decided to run next week’s strips, which feature a woman who sits in a “shaming room” as she awaits a pre-termination sonogram and a check-up from a legislator. “We didn’t deliberate long,” Van Tassel tells Comic Riffs. “We all agreed that some readers will be upset by them, mainly because they appear on the comics page, but also because of the graphic depiction of a transvaginal sonogram.”

Van Tassel cites the larger journalistic context in which “Doonesbury” appears. “This newspaper deals with those issues routinely in the news sections and in our health section,” she tells us. “Our page one today, for example, carries a story about the movement by women legislators across the country to curb men’s abilities to get vasectomies and prescriptions for erectile dysfunction. I haven’t heard of any objections to that story yet.”

The Plain Dealer also believes “Doonesbury” deserves a long satiric leash. “Garry Trudeau’s metier is political satire; if we choose to carry ‘Doonesbury,’ we can’t yank the strip every time it deals with a highly charged issue. His fans are every bit as vocal as his critics. We are alerting readers to the nature of the strips so they can decide whether to read them next week.”

Good for them and shame on the papers that censor Trudeau.

Saturday: Politics, Physics, and… Purr-pics!

Posted: March 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 72 Comments

Morning, news junkies!

Here’s your Saturday morning link dump… grab a cuppa or have your furry one pour you a refill… and let’s get started!

“What Barack Obama seems to want to do is go back before those days when we were in different classes based on income, based on color of skin.”

–another moment of Grizzly Inanity, on Sean Profanity’s show

JACKSON, Miss. – Campaigning in the Deep South, where he faces tough opposition from more-conservative rivals for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney is promoting an antiregulatory theme and a vision of a new environment in which regulators “see businesses and enterprises of all kinds as their friends.”

At a town hall meeting here on Friday, Romney also slammed the Obama administration for imposing a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil-spill disaster.

“We were in Pascagoula yesterday and we saw behind us a couple of large drilling rigs not being used right now,” Romney said. “The use of drilling rigs in the Gulf is the lowest of any place in the world, lowest utilization. That’s because of this president and the moratorium he put in place that’s illegal.”

  • This headline made my Friday night: “Gloria Allred seeks Rush Limbaugh prosecution“…. Bwahahaha! Classic! Whatever you think of Gloria Allred and her skill/intentions at seizing any opportunity to take on a high profile lawsuit, she still serves as a check and balance in our misogynist culture… anytime she gets on her legal eagle box, it’s a barometer of sorts. So I says… Go get him, Glo! LOL.
  • You don’t hear me say this often, so listen up: Thank you, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama Administration for not granting a waiver that would free up funds meant for the Women’s Health Program here in Texas. The banning of this program, due to icky Planned Parenthood cooties, has been such a maddening and saddening story to watch unfold. So to have the HHS and President do this is a welcome surprise for me. I hope it is more than a showhorse (rather than workhorse) move during an election year–but I’m not foolish enough to discount that possibility either. Still, this is a GOOD showhorse move, with symbolic heft to it.
  • I always give credit where it’s due… So, while I am firmly in the “Honey Badger for President” camp and have zero intention of voting for Obama (or any other Republican running, Obama being one himself in everything but name…), here is another move that I must give the President credit for this week: Obama Personally Lobbied to Defeat XL Pipeline. More election pandering? Probably. It is Obama’s typical “we need more studies first” stance. But, I was still very glad to see the measure defeated. And, we do need more studies first–at minimum.

Alright. Now for a bit of Blogger housekeeping…

I apologize for not getting the Kitty or the Hillary posts out last weekend as promised. I’m not sure *when* I’m going to be able to get the Saturday afternoon kitteh posts going, though I haven’t forgotten about doing them one bit (and commenter paperdoll, if you’re reading, I haven’t forgotten about the dog pics I am super duper tardy on owing you, either!) It’s just going to take a few weeks more or so for me to deliver. This afternoon I have to attend the first birthday of my cousin’s first kid, so this weekend is a non-starter. And, I’m in the process of moving into some new digs (move-in date is Saint Patrick’s day)! And, then at the end of this month I turn thirty-one. So it’s nonstop nonstopping for me for a bit 😉 As soon as things settle down, I’ll re-organize my blogger schedule and fit everything in.

I  will have a new “Cinematherapy in Feminist Perspective” post  over at Taylor Marsh’s this evening, so check it out.

Until then… here’s a picture of Rue reading the Economist with me:

If you’re curious (or nosey like Rue’s sister, Lily), here’s what we were reading last Saturday night…

Sex and Advertising: Retail Therapy -- How Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of S. Freud, revolutionized marketing (The Economist, Dec. 2011, holiday double issue)

As for the Hillary blogging–well, I’ve tried to keep my morning read on the lighter side this Saturday so I can spend more time on a super duper sized Hillary Sundae post for you this weekend.

Therefore… it is now your turn in the comments… What’s on your read-n-rant list this morning? Hope you have a lovely Saturday!

Oh… and here is Rue telling Lily some kind of secret…

(…actually, Rue was just grooming Lils…)

Morning-ish Reads: Carpe the Saturday!

Posted: March 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 43 Comments

Pluperfect. (h/t Joyce Arnold for passing this graphic along)

Morning, news junkies… What a week in politics…what a bunch of election year/horserace manure! I’ve got a potpourri of reads for you this morning, to help you get a break from all the political nonsense and recharge a bit. Hope you enjoy. I’m just gonna do this real quick link-dump style and then get to the grand finale… 😉

“Unfortunately, the Mexican food served abroad is not at all like ours. There is a misperception that Tex-Mex food – burritos, chilli con carne – is part of our daily diet,” says Ricardo Munoz Zurita, a well-known chef and owner of Azul Condesa restaurant in Mexico City.

“Perhaps Mexican chefs don’t know how to export their food as well as French, Spanish or Italian cooks,” he tells the BBC.

I’m going to post try to post a Saturday afternoon photobomb of my kitty-babes… here’s a brief teaser/preview:

So what’s on your read ‘n rant this morning?

Embarrassing Tales Told by Politicians

Posted: February 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 primaries, just because, psychology, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 8 Comments

Brain areas involved in memory

Human memory can be amazingly accurate and detailed. It is possible for people to accurately recall events that happened in the decades previously. Yet humans are also subject to numerous memory errors, which are actually adaptive for most purposes, but can be embarrassing when they happen to people in the public eye.

On Saturday it happened to Mitt Romney. During his speech to a Tea Party rally in Flint, Michigan, Romney described a vivid childhood memory

Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.

“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.

The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.

But Romney couldn’t possibly have been a the Golden Jubilee, because it happened in 1946–about 9 months before baby Willard was born. Was he lying? No, of course not. He probably formed this false memory based on stories told by family members, and perhaps family photos. This is a very common type of memory error–confusion about the source of a memory. Romney probably heard this story many times and perhaps rehearsed it by thinking about it and talking about it to family and friends.

Most theorists now believe that memories are stored in various locations in the brain and have to be reconstructed each time we recall them. Confusion can develop if we have memories of several events that happened in the same place–people can get mixed up about which time a specific event happened.

As you might expect, memory errors become more common with age. There are a number of famous stories about Ronald Reagan’s outrageous memory errors. He repeatedly told a heartrending story about a World War II bomber pilot who ordered his crew to bail out after the plane was hit by enemy fire. His young belly gunner was wounded so seriously that he was unable to evacuate the aircraft. Reagan could barely hold back tears as he related the pilot’s heroic response: “Never mind. We’ll ride it down together.” Supposedly the pilot had received the Congressional Medal of Honor, awarded posthumously.

Journalists searched in vain to learn about the war hero. They could find no Medal of Honor winner whose story matched the one told by Reagan. Finally the source of the story was identified as a scene from a Hollywood movie, “A Wing and a Prayer.” Reagan had recalled the “facts,” but not their source.

Another famous example is Reagan’s oft-repeated tale about how he had helped to liberate Auschwitz after World War II ended. In fact Reagan event repeated this “memory” to Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, explaining that he had

returned to Hollywood with film footage of the ghastly scenes he had witnessed, and if in later years anyone controverted the reality of the Holocaust over the Reagan dinner table, he would roll the footage till the doubts were stilled.

Of course no Americans were involved in the liberation of Auschwitz, which was a Russian operation. And although Reagan was in the Army, he never left California where he was involved in making propaganda films. Interestingly, Barack Obama also told a story about the liberation of Auschwitz back in 2008. Speaking to a New Mexico audience about the need for mental health care for veterancs, Obama recalled a family story about his uncle.

“I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps,” Obama said, slowly and methodically. “And the story in my family is that when he came home, he just went into the attic, and he didn’t leave the house for six months. Alright? Now, obviously something had affected him deeply, but at the time, there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.”

It turned out that Obama’s Uncle actually was involved in the liberation of a concentration camp, but it was Buchenwald, not Auschwitz. This was probably a story that was told repeatedly in Obama’s family, and he simply forgot the name of the camp and substituted a famous name–Auschwitz.

And then there was the 2007 speech in which Obama seemed to suggest that his parents had been brought together because of the Civil Rights march in Selma, Alabama in 1965. Obama was born in 1961. The speech actually had two doozies in it. Obama also claimed that the Kennedy family had been responsible for bringing his father to the U.S. Here’s the relevant quote:

What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, “You know, we’re battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we’re not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites.” So the Kennedy’s decided we’re going to do an air lift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.

This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.

I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I

Actually, the Kennedy family did donate $100,000 to the airlift program, but not until Barack Obama, Sr. was already in the U.S. As for how his parents got together, Obama’s campaign staff claimed that he had meant that the Civil Rights movement generally was responsible, but I think it was probably just an honest mistake. Certainly his speechwriters should have done some more careful fact-checking, but Obama was probably reporting what he “remembered.”

I’ll just share one more interest example of a high-profile false memory. This one from George W. Bush. Bush was in Orlando, Florida at a town hall meeting where he took questions from the audience. A young boy asked Bush how he felt on 9/11.

QUESTION: One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you’ve done for this country, and another thing is that how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?

….

Well, Jordan (ph), you’re not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card — actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower — the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, “There’s one terrible pilot.” And I said, “It must have been a horrible accident.”

But I was whisked off there — I didn’t have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, “A second plane has hit the tower. America’s under attack.”

But Bush could not have seen the plane hit the first tower, because there was no footage shown on TV until the next day. Bush obviously watched the footage later and became confused about when he had first seen it.

We all make errors like this–we just don’t often do it in front of a crowd of people and then end up getting fact-checked afterwards. The fact is, our memories are quite reliable for most daily purposes. It wouldn’t be adaptive for us to remember every single detail of what happens to us. But it pays to be aware that our memories can fail us is predictable ways.

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