Tuesday Morning Reads

Posted: September 4, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign, Banksters, Mitt Romney, morning reads | Tags: , , , | 50 Comments

Good Morning!

I’m trying to get back into the idea of “time” right now.  I still feel jet-lagged and I keep having to remind myself what day, month and hour it is.  It’s a really strange feeling to be so displaced in time. It reminds me of when I was deep in the fight against cancer and having chemo.  Everything is here and now.

The President made a stop to see the flooding in St. John’s Parish yesterday.  This is one of the more rural parishes in Southern Louisiana.  It really got drenched.  LaPlace is a bedroom community that frequently attracts families where one person works in Baton Rouge and the other in New Orleans.  It sits adjacent to all kinds of interstate action so its easy to move around SE Louisiana from the small town. The rest of the parish is very rural and quite Cajun.

“What I’ve pledged to these folks is we’re going to make sure at the federal level we are getting on the case very quickly about figuring out what exactly happened here and what can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again and expedite some of the decisions that may need to be made,” Obama told reporters after touring hard-hit St. John the Baptist Parish, 30 miles outside of New Orleans.

Joined by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal and members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation, Obama walked through a neighborhood of brick homes and front yards that were a painful reminder of last week’s hurricane. Orderly piles of water-logged debris — bedding, insulation, furniture and toys — filled the yards.

The president shook hands with residents in La Place, where several neighborhoods were inundated by water and some residents were rescued from rooftops by boats.

“How y’all doing?” he asked.

“Better now,” one man shouted back.

In the sticky heat, the president walked from house to house, asking residents about what happened and posing for photos. There was debris but no signs of lingering water.

“We’re here to help,” the president said at another home.

Obama praised the coordination of federal, state and local officials and pointed out that his administration issued disaster declarations well in advance to ensure officials “weren’t behind the eight ball.” In highlighting the work, Obama was drawing a contrast with President George W. Bush’s widely criticized response to Hurricane Katrina seven years ago.

The President also celebrated labor day with Auto and Steel Workers in the swing state of Ohio.  Unlike Eric Cantor who insisted that Labor day was a day to salute “risk takers”, the President recognized the importance of the labor movement in the United States and was welcomed for his role in saving the US Auto Industry. Did I mention that I bought Ford for about $1.67 a share a few months after Obama took office?   It’s over $9 now.  Too bad I couldn’t have sunk a lot more money into it!

Hours earlier in Ohio, Obama spoke to members of the United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers, and noted his decision to rescue automakers General Motors and Chrysler in 2009, a move that Romney opposed.

“If America had thrown in the towel like that, GM and Chrysler wouldn’t exist today,” Obama said. “The suppliers and the distributors that get their business from these companies would have died off, too. Then even Ford could have gone down as well.”

There’s an awful essay out by  Nicholas Eberstadt that suggests that we’ve become a nation of “takers”.   He works for the AEI so it’s not unusual that ideology takes a front seat to evidence.  He does notice that “entitlement” spending has grown more rapidly under Republicans than Democrats, but seems to overlook the idea that we all work and pay for the majority of our social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Worker’s Comp.  How can we take what we have paid premiums to receive?  Here’s a sample of things that I found highly offensive in his writings.

How has America’s great postwar male flight from work been possible? To ask the question is to answer it: This is a creature of our entitlement society and could not have been possible without it. Transfers for retirement, income maintenance, unemployment insurance, and all the rest have made it possible for a lower fraction of adult men to be engaged in work today than at any time since the Great Depression—and, quite possibly, at any previous point in our national history. For American men, work is no longer a duty or a necessity: rather, it is an option. In making work merely optional for America’s men, the US entitlement state has undermined the foundations of what earlier generations termed “the manly virtues”—unapologetically, and without irony. Whatever else may be said about our country’s earlier gender roles and stereotypes, it was the case the manly virtues cast able-bodied men as protectors of society, not predators living off of it. That much can no longer be said.

From a Nation of Takers to a Nation of Gamers to a Nation of Chiselers

With the disappearance of the historical stigma against dependence on government largesse, and the normalization of lifestyles relying upon official resource transfers, it is not surprising that ordinary Americans should have turned their noted entrepreneurial spirit, not simply to maximizing their take from the existing entitlement system, but to extracting payouts from the transfer state that were never intended under its programs. In this environment, gaming and defrauding the entitlement system have emerged as a mass phenomenon in modern America, a way of life for millions of men and women who would no doubt unhesitatingly describe themselves as law-abiding and patriotic citizens of the United States.

Abuse of the generosity of our welfare state has, to be sure, aroused the ire of the American public in the past, and continues to arouse it from time to time today. For decades, a special spot in the rhetorical public square has been reserved for pillorying unemployed “underclass” gamers who cadge undeserved social benefits. (This is the “welfare Cadillac” trope, and its many coded alternatives.) Public disapproval of this particular variant of entitlement misuse was sufficiently strong that Congress managed to overhaul the notorious AFDC program in a reform of welfare that replaced the old structure with TANF. But entitlement fiddling in modern America is by no means the exclusive preserve of a troubled underclass. Quite the contrary: it is today characteristic of working America, and even those who would identify themselves as middle class.

Here is a response to the essay written by Lane Kenworthy that I found highly interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Can Romney Embrace Ryan While Distancing Himself from the Ryan Budget?

Posted: August 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

No, he can’t.

This morning, shortly after Romney’s announcement of Paul Ryan as his pick for VP, CNN obtained a copy of of a list of media talking points for surrogates, designed by the Romney campaign to distance their candidate from Ryan’s plans for draconian changes to Medicare and cuts to other popular social programs that help the middle class, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. Here are some examples:

Is Romney “adopting the Paul Ryan plan?”

Gov. Romney applauds Paul Ryan for going in the right direction with his budget, and as president he will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance.

So there are differences between Romney and Ryan?

Of course they aren’t going to have the same view on every issue. But they both share the view that this election is a choice about two fundamentally different paths for this country. President Obama has taken America down a path of debt and decline. Romney and Ryan believe in a path for America that leads to more jobs, less debt and smaller government. So, while you might find an issue or two where they might not agree, they are in complete agreement on the direction that they want to lead America.

On Medicare:

Do you worry that Paul Ryan’s controversial Medicare plan will hurt the campaign with independents?

– No. President Obama is the one who should be worried, because he has cut $700 BILLION from Medicare to pay for Obamacare, and put in place a panel of Washington bureaucrats to make decisions about what kind of care seniors will receive under Medicare. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a bipartisan plan to strengthen Medicare by giving future seniors the choice between traditional Medicare and a variety of private plans. They are committed to ensuring that Medicare remains strong, not just for today’s seniors, but for tomorrow’s seniors as well.

Actually, Ryan’s budget plan retains all of the medicare cuts that are included in Obamacare.

Of course the talking points provide no specifics about these supposed differences in the two men’s policies. I think we have to assume that since Romney’s goal so far has been to scrupulously avoid talking about specific policies, he is going to be stuck with defending the Ryan plan. And he should be forced to defend it again and again and again.

Why? Because Romney has explicitly endorsed Ryan’s plan in public on multiple occasions. Think Progress has identified five occasions on which Romney enthusiastically praised the Ryan plan:

1. “Very supportive.”“I’m very supportive of the Ryan budget plan. It’s a bold and exciting effort on his part and on the part of the Republicans and it’s very much consistent with what I put out earlier. I think it’s amazing that we have a president who three and a half years in still hasn’t put a proposal out that deals with entitlements. This president’s dealing with entitlement reform — excuse me — this budget deals with entitlement reform, tax policy, which as you know is very similar to the one that I put out and efforts to reign in excessive spending. I applaud it. It’s an excellent piece of work and very much needed.”

2.”The right tone.” Romney told Talking Points Memo, “He is setting the right tone for finally getting spending and entitlements under control. …Anyone who has read my book knows that we are on the same page.’”

3. “Marvelous.” “I think it’d be marvelous if the Senate were to pick up Paul Ryan’s budget and to adopt it and pass it along to the president,” Romney once professed while in Wisconsin.

4. “An important step.” “I spent a good deal of time with Congressman Ryan. When his plan came out, I applauded it, as an important step. … We’re going to have to make changes like the ones Paul Ryan proposed.”

5. “The same page.” In March, on a local Wisconsin radio show called the Vicki McKenna Show, Romney told the host “Paul Ryan and I have been working together over some months to talk about our mutual plans and we’re on the same page.”

In addition, Romney super-surrogate John Sununu

said on a call with reporters, “Mitt Romney supports what Paul Ryan did. He endorsed what Paul Ryan did. Mitt Romney had his own package of entitlement reform, which Paul Ryan has praised. They both meshed together.”

There is no way Romney can be permitted to etch-a-sketch all that away.

Furthermore, I think we can assume that, if elected, Romney would give Ryan carte blanche in dealings with Congress and fiscal matters. As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney only put in about two years before he got bored with governing and turned over his duties to his staff so he could start running for president.

Romney isn’t interested in policy. He’s a CEO, accustomed to giving orders, delegating tasks, and expecting admiration and obeisance from his underlings. Ryan’s already good at sucking up; he was named “biggest brown-noser” by his high school graduating class, after all. Ryan would be Romney’s Cheney–praising his gaffe-prone boss while doing things his (Ryan’s) own way.

The Nation’s John Nichols, who is from Wisconsin and has followed Ryan’s career closely, agrees.

The hyper-ambitious political careerist—who has spent his entire adult life as a Congressional aide, think-tank hanger-on and House member—is looking for a road up. And he is sly enough to recognize that, like Dick Cheney with George Bush, he could be more than just a vice president in the administration of so bumbling a character as Romney.

Ryan figured Romney out months ago.

The two men bonded during the Wisconsin presidential primary campaign in late March and early April. They got on so well that Ryan was playing April Fool’s Day jokes on the Republican front-runner—giving Romney a rousing introduction before the candidate came from behind a curtain to find the room where he had expected to be greeted by a crowd of supporters was empty.

Romney loves those frat boy stunts. Ryan would be the perfect sidekick for him. But we can’t let it happen. Ryan’s plan is a complete fraud. Now the Obama campaign has the opportunity to expose Ryan for what he is: a fake and a “hypocritical big spender” who, as John Nichols points out, has never yet lifted a finger to actually cut government spending during his decade in Congress.

I’ll let Charlie Pierce summarize Ryan’s fakery:

He’s a garden-variety supply-side faker. His alleged economic “wonkery” consists of a B.A. in economics from Miami of Ohio — which he would not have been able to achieve without my generosity in helping him out with the Social Security survivor’s benefits that got him through high school after his father kicked. (You’re welcome, zombie-eyed granny-starver. Think nothing of it. Really.) Whereupon he went to work in Washington for a variety of conservative congresscritters and think-tanks, thinking unremarkable thoughts for fairly unremarkable people. Once in Congress, however, he has been transformed into an intellectual giant despite the fact that, every time he comes up with another “budget,” actual economists get a look at it and determine, yet again, that between “What We Should Do” and “Great Things That Will Happen When We Do” is a wilderness of dreamy nonsense, wishful thinking, and an asterisk the size of Lake Huron.

This is the man whose plan Willard Mitt Romney has now signed onto. If Romney wants to “distance” himself from Ryan’s plan, then he’s going to have to start getting very specific about what their differences are. In choosing Ryan as his running mate, Romney has made this a campaign about “entitlements.” He can no longer focus on just attacking Obama and making vague promises.

I say bring it on! Look what happened to George W. Bush when he tried to privatize Social Security. Romney can no longer focus on just attacking Obama for failing to get us out of the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression. Romney is going to have to own the Ryan budget and Ryan’s plans to decimate the social safety net–or he’ll have to explain exactly where he disagrees with Ryan and why.