George Bush

Mitt Romney: Magic Man

Leo Gerard — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:28:38 -0400

"I’m gonna float like a butterfly and sting like a bee;
George can’t hit what his hands can’t see;
Now you see me, now you don’t;
He thinks he will, but I know he won’t." ~ Muhammad Ali

At last week’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

He punched and parried, feigning the great Muhammad Ali.

Any likeness between the two is, however, mere illusion. America has seen victory by Muhammad Ali. America worked through disputes with Muhammad Ali. Now America admires Muhammad Ali. And Mitt Romney is no champion. Instead, Romney's a magic man. He employs sleight of hand. He uses smoke and mirrors to confuse and obscure. Unlike President Obama, Mitt doesn't do math. He performs tricks, sorta like Muhammad Ali said in his rhyme – Now you see severely conservative Romney, now you don’t. The GOP nominee asks Americans to engage in magical thinking – to believe his hocus-pocus is not just a stage show but will actually painlessly solve problems.

Last week, Romney promoted his magic show during the debate. He promised his performance as president would be fabulous, stupendous, unprecedented! He bragged:

“My plan is not like anything that’s been tried before.”

Specifically, he was talking about his tax plan. Romney has pledged to reinstate the Bush tax cuts should they expire at year’s end as scheduled, then further slash income taxes by 20 percent for everyone. Also, Romney has vowed to eliminate and cut other federal taxes, including the estate tax.

Here’s the part where Romney promises to accomplish something never done before: he says he’ll slash and burn all these taxes but not add a dime to the deficit or to the tax burden of the middle class. When Ronald Reagan made a similar promise, George Bush I called it voodoo economics. George Bush II tried this magic trick and failed. Bush gave everyone, particularly the rich, tax breaks. Then the federal deficit skyrocketed. To quote a bumbling former Republican presidential candidate, “Whoops.”

Romney says that won’t happen when he performs as president. He’s too good. The illusionist swore to the nation Wednesday night:

“My, my number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

He hasn’t specified how he’d accomplish that because, as you know, magic tricks are proprietary secrets. He’s offered a couple of enticing tidbits, however.

One is that he’d close tax loopholes and deductions to recoup income lost because of all those tax cuts. But he won’t say which ones because, again, those proprietary magic secrets.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) analyzed Romney’s proposal and concluded it didn’t add up – even when they gave him lots of breaks because his plan is clandestine. To get back $1 from closed loopholes for every $1 in tax cuts, the TPC determined that Romney would have to eliminate breaks favored by the middle class, such the mortgage deduction. And that means Romney’s plan would cost middle class families an additional $2,000 a year on average, the TPC said.

Still, Romney assured the American people last week:

“I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families.”

Abracadabra!

Romney insists his bag of tricks contains one that will enable him to defy the math of the TPC economists, who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. One way would be to do what Bush did, just cut taxes and increase the deficit. Romney contends that’s not in his repertoire:

“I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. That's part one. So there's no economist can say Mitt Romney's tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.”

Nobody can say it if Mitt Romney says they can’t! He dismisses pesky economic experts with a wave of his magic wand.

Just as he’d heal the budget, Romney would patch up the nation’s health care system -- with pixie dust.

First, he says he’d repeal Obamacare on day one. Second, he told debate listeners:

“What I support is no change for current retirees or near-retirees to Medicare.”

Logically, or mathematically, or realistically, that won’t work. As of August, 5.4 million seniors had saved $4.1 billion on prescription drugs, about $768 each, because Obamacare closes the Medicare prescription plan donut hole. And, under Obamacare, this year more than 18 million Medicare recipients received at least one preventive service for free. Killing Obamacare would mean seniors would have to pay those costs once again from their own limited funds. This would be a costly change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

Also, Obamacare extended the life of Medicare by eight years. It did so by reducing payments to medical facilities by $716 billion over a decade, reductions accepted by the providers when the law was negotiated. Romney says he will eliminate the savings to Medicare and give those payments to the medical facilities. That, logically, would snuff out the life of Medicare eight years earlier, which would be a tragic change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

But, you know, presto-chango, Romney says it ain’t so.

Many aspects of Obamacare are beloved by those who have benefitted, including extending coverage for young adults on their parents’ plans, eliminating coverage caps and instituting rebates when insurers charge too much. But perhaps the most important Obamacare protection was the specification that insurers can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Repealing Obamacare would eliminate that benefit. Romney’s response at the debate:

“In fact, I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions.”

Romney’s plan could exclude millions, however, since it guarantees insurance only if the person with a pre-existing condition has maintained coverage without a lapse longer than three months.

But, no worries. In Romney’s magical world, if we all just clap loudly enough, Tinker Bell won’t die!

Like any good magician, Romney keeps the details of his plans for America hidden up his sleeve. Taking a cue from that Muhammad Ali rhyme, he believes:

Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.

Romney, Ryan Don’t Get the Average Joe

Leo Gerard — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:39:18 -0400

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney foolishly revived the dust up about his income tax secrecy last week. He claimed he paid at least 13 percent, an assertion easy enough for him to prove by releasing his tax documents.

But he’s refusing to do that. He called the concern about his tax rate “small minded.” Much more important issues overshadow it, he contended.

Maybe so. But the American people, the Average Jane and Joe, do care whether Romney used tricks and loopholes and offshore accounts to manipulate the tax system and pay nothing. And they’re not “small minded,” as Romney accused them of being, for wanting to know.

For them, a quarter billionaire who paid nothing or paid a rate lower than the middle class lacks the principles they like in a president. The vast majority of voters aren’t going to dissect the budget proposed by Romney’s running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, but they will vote based on the values it reveals. Romney’s ability to rattle off technical details won’t decide the election. Morality, or Jane and Joe’s perception that Ryan and Romney’s policies lack it, will.

Other millionaires have led the nation. In fact, the majority of those in the past presidents club were millionaires. But some of the nation’s wealthy presidents had spent time with America’s Average Janes and Joes and understood their dreams and struggles and were sympathetic to them.

Though raised on an estate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew suffering firsthand after being cut down by polio as a young man. He spent long periods with working men and women in Southern recuperation centers as he tried in vain to get his legs to work again. Immediately on his election to the presidency, he launched programs to aid the impoverished.

By contrast, Romney and Ryan, both raised in privilege, have demonstrated remarkable insensitivity to everyday Americans.

Romney, scion of a Detroit car company executive, said as GM and Chrysler struggled in the midst of the Great Recession, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” He’d have countenanced an uncontrolled bankruptcy for the two corporations, costing tens of thousands of middle-class workers at assembly plants, car dealerships and auto part manufacturers their jobs, their homes and their hopes. He’d have done nothing and let them all suffer. There’s a certain carelessness, a heartlessness to that. Those aren’t values many middle-class workers cherish in a president.

Ryan also grew up without worry about money, in a small town where his family owned a construction business and his father was a lawyer. Because his father died when Ryan was 16, Social Security helped him pay for college. Ryan’s plans, however, imperil Social Security for future generations, for the next decade’s 16 year olds who lose fathers.

Ryan sponsored legislation during the Bush administration to privatize Social Security, allowing the fund to be weakened by the draining of untold billions that would be risked on Wall Street, on the very stock market that crashed during the last year of Bush’s reign, sucking the value out of private pension funds. Many middle-class workers don’t find gambling with their retirement security attractive in a president.

Ryan and Romney are in trouble with America’s Average Janes and Joes over their tax proposals as well. Romney says he wants to cut income taxes by 20 percent for everyone, which he claims he would pay for by ending tax deductions. He has declined to specify which ones, however. Here’s what the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said about his plan: it would cost the wealthy like Ryan and Romney less and the Average Jane and Joe more.

That’s right. Specifically, the plan would reduce taxes each year for the nation’s wealthiest 5 percent, ranging from a cut of $1,800 for the least rich to nearly $250,000 for the most rich. For the other 95 percent of taxpayers, the nation’s middle class, Romney’s “tax cut” would mean a tax increase averaging $500 per household because, the Tax Policy Center said, tax breaks that the middle class depends on, like the one for mortgages, would disappear. The center said it was a fantasy for Romney to suggest he could fund his plan by eliminating only tax breaks for the rich.

The Average Jane and Joe may not read the entire report. But they do understand this one key fact: The Romney tax plan will cost them more and Romney less. Many will find the injustice of that to be unattractive in a president.

Similarly, Ryan’s budget “Roadmap” would also lower Romney’s tax rate. Ryan would require him to pay less than 1 percent. That’s because the vast majority of Romney's $21 million income in 2010 came from capital gains, interest and dividends, and Ryan would eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.

Most middle-class household income, all of $50,000 a year and declining, comes from wages, not capital gains, interest and dividends. So those families would be paying rates way higher than 1 percent. In fact, the Tax Policy Center determined that Ryan’s budget would raise taxes on the bottom 30 percent of wage earners.

The Average Jane and Joe may not memorize all those facts and figures. But they will recall that Ryan wants quarter billionaires to pay 1 percent and them to pay way more. That’s just galling. Far from what the middle class finds to be a desirable trait in a vice president.

When a reporter asked Romney about his tax rates last week, the Republican candidate had just finished lecturing the ensemble on the intricacies of his Medicare plan using a white board.

What Romney can’t comprehend is that for the middle class, it’s not the numbers.

What the Average Jane and Joe will recall is that Romney and Ryan plan to privatize Medicare, to destroy a beloved program on which the middle class depends. What they’ll know about Romney and Ryan is that their proposed policies show they don’t have a clue what it’s like to struggle. And don’t care. Carelessness is not a quality the middle class finds desirable in the occupants of the Oval Office.

Hey, GOP: Give the 99 Percent Some Lovin’

Leo Gerard — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:26:16 -0500

MTV needs to stop giving that creepy vampire guy and moony human girl in the “Twilight” series the “best kiss” prize in its annual movie awards because it’s Republicans who truly earned the trophy for the big wet smooches they lay on the 1 percent.

Just think of the GOP lovin’ that went into the Bush tax breaks that gave millionaires more than $125,000 a year and the middle class less than $1,000. Or the arduous embrace signified by cutting the capital gains tax to a rate lower than that on middle class income.

The GOP is a faithful lover to the 1 percent, steady and true. Last week, Republicans found themselves confronted with a choice between raising taxes on the 99 percent or on the 1 percent, and the GOP spared the millionaires. The GOP’s fidelity to the 1 percent is so strong that Republicans wavered on their promises – never raise taxes – and principles – tax cuts don’t have to be offset. As a result, the 99 percent is beginning to feel more than a little spurned by the GOP.

Since the days of the Bush breaks in 2001 and 2003, Republicans consistently have said that tax reductions stimulate the economy and the lost revenue needn’t be offset. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Senate Republican, asserted, for example: “You should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.” The GOP didn’t pay for the Bush breaks, a decision that dramatically increased the deficit, which Republicans now say the 99 percent must pay by suffering slashed government services.

Similarly, Republicans have loyally upheld their solemn pledge to lobbyist Grover Norquist to never, ever raise taxes. Last year, for example, they GOP refused to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, contending that would be a tax increase, not the end of rates intended to be temporary.

To recap: The GOP vowed never to raise taxes. The GOP defines an expiring temporary tax cut as a tax increase. And the GOP believes tax reductions don’t have to be offset.

To serve the 1 percent, however, Republicans discarded all of that supposedly sacrosanct philosophy during last week’s struggle over extending the temporary payroll tax cut. Congress voted last December to decrease for one year the payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent, putting an extra $1,000 in the hands of 160 million workers during a recession to pay bills.

This fall, President Obama and the Democrats proposed extending the cut another year, enlarging it by dropping the rate to 3.1 percent, and expanding it under certain circumstances to employers, who pay a matching amount. That would give the average family an extra $1,500 to spend, which would, according to Moody’s Analytics, inject as much as $120 billion into the economy and create 750,000 jobs.

Initially, the GOP opposed extending the tax cut – even though that would seem to violate their principal that restoring previous rates is a tax increase. Norquist must have taken to task the anti-payroll-tax-break Republicans because by last Tuesday, the GOP changed its mind.

Still, Republicans insisted, this tax cut would have to be offset – even though that demand violates their principal that tax cuts don’t need to be paid for.

Democrats proposed offsetting the cost of the extension with a 3.25 percent surtax on 350,000 millionaires and billionaires – the 1 percent.

That confronted lawmakers with this choice: Slightly increase taxes on the nation’s richest 350,000 or raise taxes on 160 million workers by allowing the payroll tax break to expire.

In the U.S. Senate, Democrats and one Republican, moderate Susan Collins of Maine, voted to give the 160 million the break, for a total of 51 votes, more than half. Every other Republican in the Senate sided with the nation’s richest 350,000, providing enough votes to defeat the tax break for the 99 percent – not by a majority but by filibuster.

Republicans then proposed instead to leave the tax at 4.2 percent and offset the extension by freezing the pay of federal workers through 2015 and slashing the federal workforce by 10 percent – a total of 210,000 public servants.

That would spare the wealthy and instead make federal workers pay, and kill jobs during a period of prolonged, painfully high unemployment. Democrats defeated that.

The payroll tax break is set to expire Dec. 31.

Where’s the GOP lovin’ for the 99 percent?

The GOP vote against extending and expanding the payroll tax break felt like a kick in the ass to the 99 percent. The Republican proposal to make middle class federal workers – instead of the nation’s wealthiest – bear the cost of extending the tax break seemed like the GOP was once again kissing the 1 percent’s ass.

The 99 percent is beginning to suspect the GOP will never treat them any better than Newt Gingrich treats his wives. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans told New York Times/CBS News pollsters in October that they believe Congressional Republicans favor the rich.

Hey, GOP, are your right wings just too short to embrace the 99 percent?

Hold On, Alabama, Your Country's Here For You

Richard Eskow — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:59:58 -0400

The President's plane touched down at Tuscaloosa Regional Airport at 10 am this morning, local time.

That's Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA.

These are the moments that bring us together as a nation, and as people. Just like 9/11 did, before people used it to divide us. I lost friends when those planes struck the towers near my old office. We felt love and support from every part of the country back then. Hopefully the people of Alabama feel ours today. We are so sorry for your loss.

Back then the country singer Alan Jackson, who has his share of fans around Tuscaloosa, asked: "Where were you when the world stopped turning? Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer, and look at yourself and (at) what really matters?"

What really matters. We spend so much time vilifying one another that it takes a tragedy to bring us together. As bitterly divided as we get, most of us still care for each other in time of need. When President Bush spoke from the rubble of the World Trade Center, it seemed in that moment that he spoke for all of us - even those of us who questioned the way he became President. When President Obama came to Alabama, the hand he offered was our hand. The help he's sending comes through the government, but it comes from us. That's all a government really is, when democracy's working: It's just us. So hold on, Alabama. Your country's here for you.

People say that it takes a tragedy to bring us together, but maybe that's wrong. Maybe it takes a tragedy to remind us that we're always together.

Alabama's Governor, Robert Bentley, upset a lot of people when he took office by saying that people who weren't Christians weren't his brothers and sisters. ""So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

That ticked some people off. The President of the American Atheists said it was "outrageous" and added. "He is a governor, not a mullah." That's a reasonable reaction, but so's this one: Aw, that's just how those born agains talk. I had cousins like that. When the Governor says he wants to be my brother, that's evangelical talk for wanting me to join his church. But I've got news for him: He's already my brother. He may not find me in the next pew, but we're brothers. And another brother came this morning to tell him the whole family's here.

Now, Governor Bentley's a Republican and, like most Republicans, he'd rather cut government spending than raise taxes. And in the tradition of Dixie politicians from time immemorial, he pretty much told Uncle Sam to go hang in his inaugural address: "I will defend our right to govern ourselves, under our own laws and to make our own decisions without federal interference," he said.

Yesterday he asked for emergency federal assistance. A person could get indignant, I guess. Last time they did a study, Alabama was getting $1.71 in Federal money for every $1.00 it pays in Federal taxes. And interference was very much called for back in the civil rights days. But Alabama's hurting, and now's not the time to quarrel with my brother the Governor. Besides, I'm not indignant. If they get more money than we do, it's because they need it. That's the way a good government works. We all pay what's fair, and if someone else needs more help they get it. The Governor did the right thing by asking for our help yesterday. I'm glad he did, and I'm glad we can give it.

What's more, I respect Gov. Bentley, despite our differences. He wants to cut the state budget by 15%, but he laid out some ground rules in his first State of the State address: "Medicaid, which provides health care to approximately one million children, elderly and disabled people, must be protected." He also said that he wouldn't lay off any teachers or shorten the school year. If you insist on labeling everything as "left" or "right," that puts him to the left of a lot of Democrats in Washington. And politics aside, it makes him a decent man.

I do hope the Governor asks his Republican colleagues in Congress to think twice about their vote to cut funding for the agencies that protect people from violent storms. But he's my brother either way.

Besides, as a former musician, I have a special place in my heart for Alabama. Aretha, Otis Redding, Bobby Womack, Percy Sledge ... they all recorded in Muscle Shoals. Hank Williams was from Montgomery. The Louvin Brothers came from Henagar, up in the mountains. Their innovative brother harmonies influenced the Everlys, and through them the Beatles. Arthur Alexander was born in Sheffield, and he was the only songwriter who ever hit the rock and roll trifecta: His songs were recorded by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. The great and too-often overlooked Eddie Hinton was from right there in Tuscaloosa.

And let's not forget Lynyrd Skynyrd. Once I was dating someone interesting - very interesting - and I took her to see Skynyrd and ZZ Top. I could tell by the look in her eyes she was having second thoughts about me. Really? Southern rock? But then Skynyrd started playing and she was yelling just as loud as as those bottle blondes in the tight stars-and-bars t-shirts ...

(Did somebody just yell "Free Bird"? Go ahead, wiseguy, but they're great. And you're damn right I married her. You don't let one like that get away.)

Why talk about music in an hour of tragedy? Because music's an expression of the heart, and our hearts can be close even when our politics aren't. Lynyrd Skynyrd likes to attack liberals in general, and President Obama in particular, with songs like "God and Guns" and "That Ain't My America." I know, I know. But doesn't everybody fight with their brothers sometimes?

Rebecca Solnit wrote a book called A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. Solnit described our response to catastrophes this way in an interview: "The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully. People rescue each other. They build shelters and community kitchens and ways to deal with lost children and eventually rebuild ..."

Pulling together can even bring economic benefits. Some people were surprised when the Japanese yen strengthened against the US dollar last week. But economists were already predicting that the Japanese economy would rebound and become even stronger because of government spending to rebuild. Do we need to learn that lesson the hard way, too? We're still in a financial disaster. We'd all be better off if we made more of an effort to rebuild from it. And if our hearts break for those who lost their homes to a whirlwind, can't we feel something for those who lost their homes for other reasons?

It's not about economics, of course. It's about us. If we can respond this way when tragedy strikes, then isn't that who we really are? This generosity of spirit must be inside us every day. One purpose of government is to express our inward generosity while we're busy going about our daily lives. Government can represent our best selves, our bond, our spirit.

The Bible says God spoke to Job from a whirlwind. I'm no expert, but I think the message was that sometimes things must be accepted rather than understood, because there are limits to our human understanding: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? ... while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" It's heartbreaking to read of the deaths, to search for meaning in the wreckage. But even when we can't understand, we can help.

I've never heard the morning stars singing together, but I've heard the Louvin Brothers and Hank Williams and Arthur Alexander and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I'm grateful that my President and my government were there to offer my hand in brotherhood when I was so many miles away.

Where were you when the world stopped turning on 9/11? You were in lower Manhattan, as the head of your government stood in the ruins and spoke for you. Where were you when the winds ripped through Tuscaloosa? Your plane touched down at 10 am this morning.

________________

This post was written for the Curbing Wall Street project and the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Paid your taxes already? Thank you. If you'd like to do more to help, try donating to the Alabama Red Cross. And let's not forget the victims in other states. The governor of Mississippi, the one who ticks me off so much, arranged for donations to be made here; hope he collects a million bucks. The local Salvation Army seems like the best bet for Georgia.

Mississippi gave us the blues - the blues! It gave us John Hurt and BB King. And Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, both of them, which means it gave us rock and roll too. Georgia gave us James Brown, Johnny Mercer, the Allman Brothers, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Travis Tritt, and our old friend Alan Jackson. And all three states gave us writers like William Faulkner, Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor, F. Scott Fitzgerald ...

Here's a sampler of fine Alabama music you can listen to while you're donating. Like the man on the record says: Turn it up!