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Is this Really the Most Important Election in a Generation?

October 19th, 2012 | Posted by Rich in Blog | Featured - ()

by Rich Abete

 

Every four years, the political analysts and pundits predictably proclaim, “This election is the most important election in a generation,” or some such hyperbole. While I’m not certain if that statement is generally true this time around, the damage that a Republican administration could plausibly inflict upon this nation (and especially its women) if President Obama loses this election is breathtaking.  Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan must be stopped.

On the domestic front, we need look no further than the last two Republican House Budgets that came directly from Mr. Ryan, as he is the House Budget Committee Chair and the author. Based upon the analysis of Robert Reich, in my previous post,Is the GOP Morally Bankrupt?, I noted, “Mr. Ryan’s budget, which would be the law of the land if the GOP controlled the Senate and the White House, is a surprisingly diaphanous attempt at upward wealth redistribution and class warfare. It should be required reading for any civic-minded American and be treated as a cautionary tale when pulling the lever in November.” Mr. Romney has endorsed the Ryan Budget on several occasions, which, according to Mr. Reich, dramatically cuts programs and eliminates tax credits and deductions essential to the poor, seniors, the working poor and middle income families in favor of a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. In addition, Mr. Romney promises to reduce the deficit. So, essentially, a Romney/Ryan Administration would implement an austerity program similar to the recently catastrophic European example; but here’s the cherry on top: instead of reducing the deficit with the savings from draconian spending cuts to vital programs and the elimination of tax credits and deductions upon which the middle class depends, they would kick much of the proceeds upward to the wealthy where it may just sit in off-shore accounts accruing interest (if they follow the example of their hapless reverse-Robin Hood leader) vs. being pumped into the economy. To be fair, many wealthy folks would actually welcome a more progressive and equitable tax regime in this country.

When it comes to our personal freedom as individuals, women should be particularly alarmed at the prospect of a Romney/Ryan administration. Neither man generally supports issues that are important to women, including issues of equality and the personal right to make choices regarding her own reproductive health. Mr. Romney is opposed to making contraception accessible by requiring health insurance to cover all or part of the cost of various forms of birth control. Incidentally, birth control reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore the number of abortions (DUH!). Some forms of contraception even reduce the transmission of disease… How ‘bout that!? During Tuesday night’s debate, Mr. Romney said he would leave it up to the discretion of the employer to determine whether or not contraception would be covered via that employer’s insurance plan. It’s interesting how the folks on the Right are always warning that one day, liberals will devise panels of bureaucrats to “ration your health care, but they apparently have no qualms in allowing employers to do that very thing, even with something as personal as family planning. On the issue of abortion, Mr. Romney magnanimously makes an exception for the victims of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life may be compromised by giving birth. While Mr. Ryan is now bound to the positions of his counterpart and boss, his previous record on women’s rights is abysmal. Most recently, he co-sponsored legislation with the now infamous misogynist, congressional Republican and senatorial candidate Todd Akin, that would re-define rape more narrowly, making it harder to convict rapists in certain circumstances. Of course, one of the more troubling features of a potential Romney/Ryan Administration would be their inevitable ability to place one, and perhaps two, right-wing extremists (a.k.a., mainstream Republicans) on the Supreme Court in place of retiring liberals. If they are elected, the delicate balance on the already right-leaning court would change emphatically, both in character and the manner in which they hand down decisions. The votes would surely be there to overturn it, so there is no reason to believe that Roe wouldn’t be fair game. To believe otherwise would be naïve.

Regarding foreign policy, Mr. Romney has shown himself to be uniquely inept. From his statement that getting bin Laden was not a priority or “worth moving heaven and Earth for,” to jumping the gun on the Libyan consulate attack by immediately holding a press conference to score some cheap political points by criticizing the Administration when he had yet to obtain the facts, or when he criticized the Brits on their organizational acumen during the Olympics (while he was in Britain!) which by most accounts was a wild success, he has shown a singularly acute ability to say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time. This assertion was proven spot-on in Monday night’s Presidential debate when Mr. Romney was fact-checked in real time by the moderator regarding his statement that the President did not characterize the attacks on the Libyan consulate as terrorism until two weeks after they had taken place. But even more problematic is his incessant drum beating and bluster regarding Iran. His myopic overtures seem more than a little dangerous, and could ultimately lead to yet another ill-advised ground war in the Middle East if he is our next Commander-in-Chief.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan must be stopped.  Get out and vote in November!

 

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Mitt Romney is a Big…Fat…Liar!

October 14th, 2012 | Posted by Rich in Blog | Featured - ()

by Rich Abete

(Graphic by Steven T.)
As the election draws nearer, Mitt Romney has left much of the public rather bemused as to exactly what kind of an agenda he would pursue as president. After his brilliant, metamorphic slight-of-hand during the first of three presidential debates a couple of weeks ago, even those of us who pay close attention to politics are scratching our heads. To be clear, this is nothing new with Mr. Romney, who has been on every side of every issue during his illustrious career in politics, and much of the flipping (or is it flopping?) has occurred during his almost six year quest for the White House (see Mitt Romney: The Shape-Shifter). But what he did last Thursday night was no ordinary flip-flop. It was pathological. Sometime recently, after years of incessant pandering, Mr. Romney has come to the conclusion that once he makes a declarative statement, then by definition it becomes an unimpeachable fact despite what he may have said the day before.

So, if today Mr. Romney denies the existence of his proposal to provide the wealthy with another $4.8 trillion tax cut after months of touting it, then it simply never existed. If he says that his proposed tax cut (regardless of how big it is) will not increase the tax burden on the middle class or blow up the deficit, then his statement becomes fact despite the analysis of most economists who have studied his proposal. And if he says his healthcare plan (like he even has one aside from repealing the ACA!) will not exclude those with pre-existing conditions, then it is so (of course this “fact” was immediately walked back by his campaign after the debate). And if he says he’s not really going to dramatically increase the defense budget (by $2 trillion over 10 years), but has repeatedly said he will right up until he took the stage for the first debate, then it suddenly is just not true. I could continue, but I think I’ve made my point. Wait, wait! One more: If he says he’s a huge champion of higher education for the middle class, yet he will cut Pell grants and other means by which the middle class can afford higher education, well, it’s true and cannot be denied.  Sorry, I can’t stop…If he says his main domestic priority is the welfare of the middle-class, yet his proposals might just snuff out the American dream once and for all… then…he is a $#%&@^% LIAR!  I know, I threw you off there!  I just couldn’t help it.

Clearly, he was off his game, but it’s no wonder that President Obama was flustered that night he finally met what he thought was going to be… Mitt Romney, Severe Conservative! How can one respond to a guy who is wholly unencumbered by facts, or even by anything he himself has previously said to be true of his own proposals? How can one debate someone who suddenly states in steroidal earnestness that he cares about the needy, the elderly, the poor and the middle class, after years of campaigning on policies that will prove devastating to those very populations? Who the hell does he think he is all of a sudden? George McGovern? FDR? It would be laughable if the potential result wasn’t so frightening. Personally, I think the President should have made an earnest statement himself, perhaps something like, “With all due respect Mr. Romney, you sir, are a big, fat, liar!”

What’s particularly troublesome is that more than just a couple of folks bought into his eleventh hour Kafkaesque transformation. The news junkies and politicophiles who have been acutely watching the process unfold all year saw it for what it was: the obvious culmination of the candidacy of a conviction-devoid panderer. Regretfully, the folks that aren’t included in either party’s base and have just tuned in to the process will cast the votes that determine this election. God help us! Our future depends on the whims of the undecided.  To be candid, not a good situation! But if the real President Obama shows up tomorrow night armed with a list (not unlike the bullets in my previous post, Our Herculean President) of his copious achievements…and he exposes the egregious violation of the public’s trust that the magnitude of Mr. Romney’s lies constitute, then… game on!

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Is the GOP Morally Bankrupt?

August 13th, 2012 | Posted by Rich in Blog | Featured - ()

By Rich Abete

It should be noted that my post originally appeared several months ago, just subsequent to Paul Ryan’s budget proposal that would end Medicare as we know it by replacing it with an inadequate voucher program (more below).  To be fair to Mr. Ryan, who now holds the dubious honor of being Mitt Romney’s running mate and the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate, his more recent proposals to do in Medicare are not quite so rabid in tone.  Be that as it may, we as citizens should continue to hold him accountable for his initial draconian proposal that would wreak havoc on the lives of the sick, the elderly and the destitute.  From what I have read, his “softer” back tracking of late is no picnic for the most vulnerable either.  What’s especially crazy-making, is folks like Ryan speak of cutting Medicare and other social safety net programs  in the name of austerity against a backdrop of corporate welfare, wholesale tax giveaways to billionaires and the bolstering via incentives of the already dream-like bottom lines off Big Oil, Big Pharma and the like.

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As Sarah Palin would say, “You betcha!”  I guess that was too easy!  Maybe a better query is, “Should governance be moralistic?”  At least it’s a bit more challenging.  Assuming that governance in the U.S.is all about “we the people” and the “collective good” is the ideal, then the answer should also be a resounding “Yes!”  Of course, if we’re talking about some right-wing dictatorship (that we, the U.S., were so fond of aligning ourselves with a few decades ago and are now in the business of removing at gun point- oops! I can feel a tangential rant coming on…then of course all bets are off.  For the sake of clarity then, we’ll confine this discussion to the “we the people” paradigm of U.S. governance.

First off, I’d better define morality, since it seems to have lost a good amount of depth in recent years.  I am not referring to the narrow conceptual definition of morality that the right-wing in this country has foisted upon the rest of us.  That puritanical version concerns itself largely with personal sexual matters…almost exclusively.  As we lefties are aware, there is a hell of a lot more to morality, if indeed personal sexual matters are issues of morality at all, than just who we choose to sleep and when, and how often and for what purpose we do it.  (Disclaimer: non-consensual sex and statutory rape are issues of morality.  For the record, bestiality is not a moral issue, unless of course it is non-consensual (Give me a break PITA!).

So, what is morality then?  According to Dictionary.com, the first definition of morality reads, “moral or virtuous conduct” and the second reads “moral quality of character.”  Admittedly, the third definition mentions “chastity,” but it’s third people!

I would suggest that morality is about how we treat each other and how we treat our planet, how we treat an ailing elderly parent or a hungry stranger, how we conduct our business and how we raise our children.  Morality is also about matters of war and peace, friendship, tolerance and humility…but most importantly, morality is about how we treat “the least among us.”  Jesus had a bit to say on that topic.  I felt momentarily compelled to use language with which the Right might logically identify, but at once realized that the Right is so Old Testament.  It’s interesting how they seem to discount the New Testament where Jesus teaches a broad notion of morality.

What compels me to write on morality at this moment in time, is the shameful proposal put forth last week by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-WI.  Ryan’s budget, which would be the law of the land if the GOP controlled the Senate and the White House, is a surprisingly diaphanous attempt at upward wealth redistribution and class warfare.  It should be required reading for any civic-minded American and be treated as a cautionary tale when pulling the lever in November.

According to Robert Reich http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/republican-budget-plan_b_1369347.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=032112&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief, Mr. Ryan’s budget would, in conspicuous fashion, upwardly redistribute the wealth in this country; specifically, he wrote, “This would give the wealthiest Americans an average tax cut of at least $150,000 a year… The money would come out of programs for the elderly, lower-middle families, and the poor.”  Just breathtaking!

The moral to this tale of morality is thus:  We (the Left) must not cede the mantle of morality to the Right.  We own it, because when we’re good, we walk it, live it and breathe it.  Let them cede the lion’s share of moral issues to the rest of us in their quest to serve a divisive few, and when they do, let’s call them on it!  Sooner or later, it may just catch up with them and the truth will be revealed.  One peak at Mr. Ryan’s budget might just set you free.

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Mitt Romney: The Shape-Shifter

June 20th, 2012 | Posted by Rich in Blog | Featured - ()

by Rich Abete

This post originally appeared on BNV in April. However, it has been edited and updated and remains relevant today.

I’ve written quite a bit about the Republican presidential candidates. I mean, who could resist that certifiable and hapless bunch? From the rank hypocrisy of Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann (and the rest of them for that matter), to Rick Santorum’s misogynistic overreach, from Newt’s baggage (which would rival the contents of the cargo hold on a 747), to Ron Paul’s list of pathologies that likely appear in the DSM-IV, they have provided me with endless fodder upon which to opine….and about which to be horrified. But there is a conspicuous omission from this list of characters from which I’ve derived such reluctant and ambivalent pleasure: Willard Mitt Romney.

Alright, so the obvious question is, “Why would I take a pass on such an easy target?” The answer is in the question (of course, they were all like hitting the broad side of a barn). However, since Mr. Romney has clinched his party’s nomination, it is now my civic duty (and anyone else’s who has a venue in which to rant) to make sure this guy’s myriad foibles are exploited to the hilt. To that end, let’s have some fun!

Let’s first establish what type of guy Mr. Romney is. This one word sums him up quite neatly: chameleon. Even with the absence of a darting tongue, this much is apparent. By the way, chameleon, according to dictionary.com, can be defined as a changeable, fickle, or inconstant person.

Much has been made of Mr. Romney’s political shape-shifting and glaring lack of core convictions… and rightly so. He has flipped (or is it flopped?) on every major issue that he was cornered to take a position on during the rabid, Republican primary. In fact, he has shape-shifted and painfully pandered on more than a dozen issues…some momentous…since launching his candidacy for the last go around in 2008. In the interest of time and space, here are just a fatuous few that I would consider biggies:

Universal Healthcare (specifically, the individual mandate): We all know that Mr. Romney signed into law a version of universal healthcare coverage when he was governor of Massachusetts that is remarkably similar to the federal Affordable Care Act (which is incidentally facing a constitutional challenge in the SCOTUS with regard to the so-called individual mandate).  Even as late as 2009, Mr. Romney wrote an op-ed during the national healthcare debate supporting the Massachusetts plan for the nation as a whole, and he specifically supported the individual mandate.  He has distanced himself from his position to such a degree that he now criticizes the President regarding the same mandate for which he advocated, and he has vehemently pledged to “repeal Obama Care.”

Man-Made Climate Change: Mr. Romney once reasonably believed that the issue of man-made climate change was settled by climate change scientists (as factual), of which 98% concur that man is contributing substantively to global warming. Not to be outdone by his primary opponents who unanimously derided the idea of man-made climate change as a hoax during the primary regardless of their previously stated positions, Mr. Romney now speaks eloquently (well, maybe not eloquently) the language of his right-wing cohorts.

Immigration: Once advocating a path to citizenship for “illegals,” Mr. Romney lurched so far right-ward in a transparent maneuver to out-flank his opponents during the primaries, that observing his conversion could have given you whiplash. He now proposes that the government round up the folks that are here illegally (all 12+ million of them!) and send them packing. What a douche… Sorry. That was lazy…but it’s the truth, right? It should be noted that since initial publication of this post, President Obama has gotten out in front on this issue by signing an Executive Order that would functionally allow young folks that come to the U.S. illegally with their parents to stay here without threat of deportation. This has left Mr. Romney literally speechless as of this date, despite incessant questions from reporters regarding the matter.  

Right to Choose: In 2002 while campaigning to be governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney stated, “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.”  Now, of course ever pandering to the right wing, he is ardently pro-life.  He does, however, magnanimously make an exception for the victims of rape and incest, unlike many of his brethren on the Right.

What will be so very fascinating to observe for we political junkies, will be Mr. Romney’s artful (or more likely, painfully inept) two-step back to the center in an attempt to appeal to the more moderate electorate in the general election. You really can’t pay for that kind of entertainment. Although it remains inevitable before November, Mr. Romney has not yet made any inevitably awkward maneuvers to claw his way back to moderation to gain the support of many independents. As such, there is yet much to look forward to in the upcoming campaign. His first jerky movement to the center will no doubt be his eventual response to the President’s bold…and yes, political…action on immigration.

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