Mitt Romney – Page 2 – charles' log

Romney spent more on TV ads but got much less

A nonpartisan research firm presented data showing that President Obama had far outperformed Mitt Romney in managing the largest single expenditure of the campaign: television advertising.

2012-12-12 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From:Washington Post

By:Tom Hamburger

“Senior Republican campaign operatives who gathered over beer last week in Alexandria for a post-election briefing were taken aback by what they were told. A nonpartisan research firm presented data showing that President Obama had far outperformed Mitt Romney in managing the largest single expenditure of the campaign: television advertising.

Romney’s spending decisions on advertising look like “campaign malpractice,” said one person who had reviewed the newly circulated data.

Obama and his allies spent less on advertising than Romney and his allies but got far more — in the number of ads broadcast, in visibility in key markets and in targeting critical demographic groups, such as the working class and younger voters in swing states. As the presidential race entered its final, furious phase, for example, millions of college football fans tuning in to televised games saw repeated ads for Obama but relatively few from the Romney campaign.

All told, from June through Election Day, the Obama campaign and its allies aired about 50,000 more ads than Romney and his allies, according to the research firm’s data.

“The Obama guys put more lead on the target and were buying their bullets cheaper,” said an attendee at the briefing, Will Feltus, a senior vice president at National Media, the firm that represented Romney in 2008 and President George W. Bush in his 2004 reelection effort.

That contrast is among a series of revelations creating a stir in recent days as GOP consultants conduct postmortem meetings to review what went wrong in Romney’s surprisingly lopsided loss. To some Republicans, the ad-buying strategy reflected other problems with the campaign, including an insular nature that left it closed to advice from the outside. Romney campaign officials rejected the criticism, saying they pursued a deliberate and careful strategy that allowed them to closely monitor expenses while buying the ads they needed at a fair price.

Interviews with Obama campaign officials as well as independent analysts show that the Obama team, in carrying out its ad strategy, took advantage of discount rates and used sophisticated buying techniques and precision targeting to make the most-effective buys.

Romney not only paid more for his ads but also missed crucial opportunities to advertise, for instance during the political conventions and on Spanish-language television, according to the campaign officials and analysts. Spending by super PACs — such as Restore Our Future, set up by former Romney campaign officials — compensated for some of the advertising shortfall, but even with those expenditures the Obama campaign had a clear advantage.

“Obama’s quality and quality control beat out quantity of dollars spent” by Romney, said Elizabeth Wilner of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a nonpartisan organization that monitors ad spending.

Retrospective criticism of losing campaigns is a tradition in Washington. But charges of profligacy and poor management take on particular meaning in Romney’s case because of his reputation as the tough-minded, data-driven founder of Bain Capital, the highly successful private-equity firm.

Romney campaign officials dismiss the criticism, saying they managed well, watched spending closely and pursued an independent advertising strategy intended to save on overhead and commissions.

“We had in place a process to be sure that the dollars we were spending per demographic group and per voter were attractive,” said Darrell Crate, Romney’s campaign treasurer. “We were careful and deliberate and used a whole set of metrics so that we knew exactly what we were buying and would pay only what was fair and reasonable.” He said the effort was similar to the Obama campaign’s.

Democrats and some Republican operatives say a different story emerged from comparative advertising data assembled by the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a division of Kantar Media. The organization provided data to both political parties and the media, including The Washington Post.

Presentations made by the group’s president, Ken Goldstein, show that Obama outpaced Romney in several advertising categories, including many considered critical to winning in swing states. For instance, Romney ads were far less visible on Spanish-language television. The organization said Obama ran 13,232 spots on Spanish-language TV stations, compared with 3,435 for Romney.

Also, between Oct. 22 and 29, Obama and his main campaign ally, the Priorities USA Action super PAC, aired more commercials in most of the top media markets despite being outspent by the Romney campaign and its main ally, the Restore Our Future super PAC, by about 30 percent.

“It is puzzling that people with such talent could produce such disappointing results,” said Marc Wolpow, a former partner of Romney’s at Bain Capital who now runs his own firm in Boston.

Romney is known as an ardent competitor. After starting Bain Capital in 1984, he quickly built a reputation for producing impressive returns based on a strong commitment to rigorous research and analysis. Famously frugal and careful, Romney was so insistent on playing devil’s advocate in business meetings at Bain that his longtime partner, Bob White, told the Boston Globe he sometimes felt like punching Romney in the nose.

Four years ago, Romney and Obama both relied on outside, independent media consulting firms to place and produce television ads, the biggest single cost of any national campaign. In the 2012 election cycle, however, Romney changed the organizational chart. To purchase ads and other services, his campaign set up American Rambler, a closely held business entity named for the iconic car produced decades ago by American Motors, the firm led by the candidate’s father. American Rambler contracted for major expenditures, sometimes picking top campaign officials or their firms as contractors.

For example, Rambler provided compensation to Romney advisers Eric Fehrnstrom, Beth Myers, Stuart Stevens and Russell Schriefer, campaign officials have said. One top vendor to the campaign, Targeted Victory, was co-founded by Romney digital director Zac Moffatt. It received $64 million for online advertising services, federal election records show. The firm has had a contract with the campaign since 2009.

“Unfortunately, the Romney campaign ended up having to pay more money than they would have if they had used an outside agency,” Feltus said. His agency had the contract with Romney in 2008.

Crate, the Romney campaign treasurer, rejects the criticism of how the Romney effort structured its advertising effort.

“The folks that were providing services were chosen for their expertise and competence. Contracts were negotiated in ways that were fair and reasonable.” The campaign took special care to review spending, he said. “Operational controls were in place over all spending,” Crate said.

Obama stuck with the organizational structure he deployed in 2008, relying on Washington-based GMMB for ad production, placement and viewer research data. Nearly half of the campaign’s budget went to the firm, which is run by Democratic consultant Jim Margolis, who was media adviser to Bill Clinton.

In 2012, Margolis said he assigned 25 to 30 people to research the most efficient and effective advertising slots. They relied on merging data from Nielsen and other television rating services with consumer and campaign-produced voter data.

Schriefer, a Romney senior strategist, said the campaign also used sophisticated data and consumer information in making ad-buying decisions. But he said Obama’s financial edge let the Democrats buy more ads.

Steven Law, the president of the conservative super PAC American Crossroads, said he was so impressed with the way Obama campaign managed its advertising budget that he stopped Margolis at a recent conference to inquire more about the Democrats’ 2012 system.

“It is really important for Republicans to learn from this,” he said. “We need to go forward and enhance our own development of data and analytics to enable campaigns and outside groups like ours to do that kind of targeting.”

Karen Tumulty and Dan Eggen contributed to this report.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-campaigns-tv-ad-strategies-criticized-in-election-postmortems/2012/12/11/a2855aec-4166-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics

5 Fraudulent Election Claims by Religious Right Leaders Exposed

Like other conservatives, many religious-right activists predicted [3] a big victory for Romney and Republicans in the U.S. Senate, based on five myths they hold about the electorate:

2012-11-08 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: Alternet

By:Brian Tashman

“The religious right took a drubbing at the polls yesterday as voters rejected not only Mitt Romney but also some of the most extreme Republican candidates, even those in races that should have been easy Republican victories. Like other conservatives, many religious-right activists predicted [3] a big victory for Romney and Republicans in the U.S. Senate, based on five myths they hold about the electorate:

Myth #1: Americans want a ‘True Conservative’

The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody called [4] the results a “nightmare for the GOP” and a “colossal disaster.” Of course, right-wing activists will be quick to declare that Mitt Romney, like John McCain, wasn’t conservative enough [5] for voters, and that the self-described “severely conservative” Romney couldn’t effectively articulate or sell conservative principles. Their solution is that the next nominee must be a pure right-wing ideologue who emphasizes social issues, like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum. Of course, if voters were seeking to support ultraconservative politicians, then Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock wouldn’t have lost their Senate races in the red states of Missouri and Indiana, Tea Party hero Allen West wouldn’t have lost re-election and Michele Bachmann wouldn’t have merely eked out a tiny win in her heavily Republican district.

Myth #2: Blacks will Defect from Obama over Gay Rights

Black conservative activists such as Harry Jackson, E.W. Jackson, William Owens, Patrick Wooden and Star Parker continue to tell the largely white religious right leadership that African Americans are defecting en masse [6] from the purportedly demonic [7], Baal worshiping [8], anti-Christian [9] and anti-God [10] Democratic Party and will turn against Obama over the issue of marriage equality [11]. Pat Robertson even said that Democratic support for marriage equality is a “death wish [12]” and Mike Huckabee said the move “may end up sinking the ship [13].” According to exit polls [14], however, Obama won African Americans 93-6 percent. African Americans also turned out in strong numbers and didn’t stay home, with the same high turnout rate (13 percent of all voters) as 2008 [15]. In addition, marriage equality had victories in the four states it was on the ballot.

Myth #3: Hispanics are ‘Natural Allies’ of the Religious Right

Conservatives claimed that Hispanic voters, especially those who identify as evangelical and Pentecostal, are ripe for supporting Republicans. Samuel Rodriguez [16] of the conservative National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and [17] others [18] continue to argue that Hispanics are strongly opposed to abortion rights (not true [19]) and gay rights (also not true [20]), and therefore “natural allies” of the religious right. Romney actually fared worse (27 percent) than McCain (31 percent) among Hispanics.

Myth #4: Catholics Abandoning Obama for ‘Declaring War’ on the Church

Heavy [21] politicking [22] from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and growing [23] outreach [24] to Catholics by traditionally evangelical religious right groups didn’t stop Obama from once again carrying the Catholic vote. Republicans consistently claimed that Obama declared “war on religion [25]” and specifically “attacking the Catholic Church [26],” and hoped Paul Ryan’s use of Catholicism to justify his draconian budget plan would bring Catholics into the GOP fold. Obama led 50-48 percent in exit polls, down slightly from his 54 percent total in 2008.

Myth #5: Evangelical Wave Waiting in the Wings

New groups such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition [27] and United in Purpose/Champion the Vote [28] boasted of grand plans to turn out a wave of evangelical Christians upset about health care reform and marriage equality. But according to exits, Protestant (not all of whom identify as evangelical) turnout remained about the same this year (53 percent) as the last president election (54 percent). Christianity Today notes [29] that in swing states, self-described evangelical turnout was approximately identical or merely slightly larger as it was in 2008, and Romney’s support among evangelicals compared to McCain’s decreased in states like Ohio and Nevada.”

emphasis mine

see:http://www.alternet.org/print/news-amp-politics/5-fraudulent-election-claims-religious-right-leaders-exposed

The morning after

2012-10-04 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From:The New Republic

By: Johathan Cohn

“The pundits are unanimous. Mitt Romney had more energy, offered more specifics, and may even have come across as more empathetic. I agree and polls suggest voters saw it the same way.

The debate may not change the dynamics of the election. But if I knew nothing about the candidates and this was my first exposure to the campaign, I’d think this Romney fellow has a detailed tax plan, wants to defend the middle class and poor, and will take care of people who can’t find health insurance.

Problem is, this isn’t my first exposure to the campaign. I happen to know a lot about the candidates. And I know that those three things aren’t true. Romney has made promises about taxes that are mathematically incompatible with one another. He’s outlined a spending plan that would devastate the middle class and (particularly) the poor. And his health care plan would leave people with pre-existing conditions pretty much in the same perilous situation they were before the Affordable Care Act became law.

My standard for candor in politics is whether candidates have offered the voters an accurate portrait of what they’ve done and what they are proposing. Tonight, Romney did precisely the opposite. And that really ought to be the story everybody is writing, although I doubt it will be.

Some details:

1. Taxes. President Obama repeatedly described Romney’s tax plan as a $5 trillion tax plan. Romney repeatedly took exception. The figure is correct. Romney has not given many details about his tax plan, but it’s possible to extrapolate from his promises and the Tax Policy Center, a project of the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, did just that. Crunching the numbers, they determined that his proposed rate cut would cost… $5 trillion.

Romney has said he would offset those cuts by closing loopholes. The Tax Policy Centerhas analyzed that promise and found that it is mathematically impossible, unless Romney raises taxes on the middle class or lets his tax plan increase the deficit—neither of which Romney has said he’s willing to do. Romney has challenged the Tax Policy Center conclusion and did so again tonight, referring mysteriously to “six studies” that supposedly prove he’s right. He’s also been cryptic about what deductions he’d cut and, tonight, even suggested maybe he’d back away from some of the cuts if the numbers didn’t add up—although, as always, he was so vague that the statements could mean absolutely nothing.

I wish Obama had pressed him on this inconsistency even more directly than he did: “OK, governor, you say you can offset the $5 trillion cost of your tax plan. Tell us how, with real numbers. Are you getting rid of the home mortgage deduction? The exclusion for health insurance? Be straight with the American people about what you are proposing.” Obama didn’t do that, but it’s a question Romney has never been willing to answer.

2. The deficit and spending cuts. Asked by moderator Jim Lehrer how he’d cut the deficit, Romney outlined his plan for cutting spending. It included three main provisions.

First, Romney said, he’d repeal the Affordable Care Act. He’s serious about that, I presume. The problem is that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the health care law reduces the deficit. Repeal it and the deficit goes up. Then Romney said he’d review programs and cut all that are non-essential, singling out PBS. Well, fine. That’s pennies on the budget. It wouldn’t be nearly enough to make a meaningful dent in the deficit.

After that, Romney mentioned “turning programs over to the states.” Here there is real money, particularly if Romney includes Medicaid, which will soon eclipse Medicare as the government’s most expensive health insurance program. But Romney suggested this would work because the states are more efficient. This is what he usually says. The implication is that the states can spend a lot less on the programs without dramatically reducing services.

That’s nonsense. Medicaid already pays less than every other insurance program, private and public. Cutting more from the program would inevitably force states to reduce whom or what the program covers. A year ago, when the House Republicans proposed a similar scheme, a Kaiser Family Foundation report by Urban Institute researchers crunched the numbers and determined that the Medicaid cut would mean between 14 and 27 million people would lose health insurance.

By the way, the researchers assumed states would deal with declining Medicaid money exclusively by cutting eligibility for the able-bodied and non-elderly. In fact, most of the program’s money goes to the disabled and elderly. Most likely, they’d feel at least some of the pain.

3. Medicare: Over and over again, Romney attacked Obama because the Affordable Care Act reduces Medicare spending by $716 billion. As you probably know by now, Paul Ryan’s budget made the exact same cut. And less than a year ago, Romney was praising this budget to the hilt.

But there’s another problem here: Romney’s own budget numbers don’t add up. Remember, he’s promised to cap non-defense spending at 16 percent of GDP. And he’s said he won’t touch Social Security. If he walls off Medicare, too, that would mean even sharper cuts across the board. How sharp? The Center on Budget and Policy Prioritiesran the numbers. If Medicare is getting that $716 billion back, he’d have to cut other programs by an average of a third by 2016 and in half by 2022. Non-discretionary defense spending, which “has averaged 3.9 percent of GDP and never fallen below 3.2 percent,” would fall to 1.7 percent.

That’s simply not realistic. I have no problem believing Romney would cut domestic program deeply; his willingness to endorse the kinds of cuts he has specified, to Medicaid and food stamps, tell you everything you need to know about his priorities. But these figures are the stuff of fantasy. Either Romney can’t restore the Medicare dollars as he says or he’s not living up to his promises on deficit reduction.

The real shame of the exchange was that Romney’s own plan got so little attention. Again, I wish Obama could have pressed Romney harder, or explained more clearly, why the voucher scheme he proposes would likely end the guarantee Medicare now makes to seniors—and why current retirees, as well as future ones, would feel the impact.

4. Health care and pre-existing conditions. Yeah, this was the part when I jumped out of my chair. Obama said that Romney’s alternative to Obamacare wouldn’t protect people with pre-existing conditions. Romney said it would. Sorry, but Romney is just plain wrong here. I’ve written about this before, so I’m just going to quote something I wrote previously:

Romney, like most Republicans, has long favored “continuous” coverage protection. But, for complicated reasons … this protection is relatively weak unless it includes the sort of substantial regulation and subsidies that Romney, like most Republicans, has opposed. As a result, such protection would do very little for many of the people who need it most. Among other things, as Sarah Kliff points out … “There are tens of millions of Americans who lack continuous coverage.” (A typical example would be somebody who lost a job, couldn’t keep making premium payments, and let coverage lapse.)

For people in this situation, Romney and the Republicans have traditionally said they favor coverage through “high-risk pools.” But high-risk pools are basically substandard policies: Although they cover catastrophic expenses, they leave people exposed to huge out-of-pocket costs. They also tend to be underfunded, because they cost a lot of money but serve only a small number of people. …

So what would this mean in practice? Imagine for a second that you have cancer, diabetes, or Parkinson’s. With the coverage you’re likely to get form a high-risk pool, chances are that you’ll continue to struggle with medical bills. You’ll end up going into financial distress, just to cover your health are costs, unless you decide to start skipping treatment. And that’s obviously not a very good idea. These policies are better than nothing, for sure. But what you really need is comprehensive insurance and way to pay for it—in other words, the kind of protection that the Affordable Care Act will provide, starting in 2014, unless Romney and the Republicans repeal it.

I don’t want to pretend Obama was always as forthright as he could have been, any more than I want to suggest he was the more adept debater tonight. At one point, Obama talked about letting tax rates on higher incomes return to Clinton-era levels as essential to reducing the deficit. That’s true. But a truly serious approach to deficit reduction would let all taxes, even those on more modest incomes, return to Clinton-era levels (albeit after the economy is on sounder footing). Obama decried Romney’s plan to leave seniors “at the mercy of the private insurance system” but those are strong words from a guy whose own health care plan relies heavily on insurance plans, albeit with a lot more regulation than most conservatives like.

Still, these are tiny transgressions compared to Romney’s, which also included misleading statements about the origins of the deficit and claims of a jobs plan that is, if anything, even more unspecific than his tax plan. And I worry that nobody will call him on it.

As part of its post-debate analysis, ABC News asked correspondent Jonathan Karl to play the role of fact-checker. He picked out one statement from each side and rated it “mostly false.” But the Obama statement Karl picked was the description of Romney’s tax plan as costing $5 trillion—a figure, again, that comes straight from the Tax Policy Center. That’s not “mostly false.” If anything, it’s “mostly true.” Then Karl talked about Romney’s pre-existing condition promise, which really is “mostly false.” Sigh. ”

Update: Steve Benen and Greg Sargent noticed the same thing, so that’s a start.

follow me on twitter @CitizenCohn

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/108125/romney-debate-details-tax-medicare-pre-existing-contradictions-deceptions#

Don’t Tell Anyone, but the Stimulus Worked

Republicans learned a lesson from the stimulus that Democrats didn’t expect: unwavering opposition, distortion, deceit and ridicule actually work, especially when the opposition doesn’t put up a fight. The lesson for Democrats seems equally clear: when government actually works, let the world know about it.

2012-09-16 chasdarwinLeave a comment

Source: NY Times

Author: David Firestone

“Republicans howled on Thursday when the Federal Reserve, at long last, took steps to energize the economy. Some were furious at the thought that even a little economic boost might work to benefit President Obama just before an election. “It is going to sow some growth in the economy,”said Raul Labrador, a freshman Tea Party congressman from Idaho, “and the Obama administration is going to claim credit.”

Mr. Labrador needn’t worry about that. The president is no more likely to get credit for the Fed’s action — for which he was not responsible — than he gets for the transformative law for which he was fully responsible: the 2009 stimulus, which fundamentally turned around the nation’s economy and its prospects for growth, and yet has disappeared from the political conversation.

The reputation of the stimulus is meticulously restored from shabby to skillful in Michael Grunwald’s important new book, “The New New Deal.” His findings will come as a jolt to those who think the law “failed,” the typical Republican assessment, or was too small and sloppy to have any effect.

On the most basic level, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is responsible for saving and creating 2.5 million jobs. The majority of economists agree that it helped the economy grow by as much as 3.8 percent, and kept the unemployment rate from reaching 12 percent.

The stimulus is the reason, in fact, that most Americans are better off than they were four years ago, when the economy was in serious danger of shutting down.

But the stimulus did far more than stimulate: it protected the most vulnerable from the recession’s heavy winds. Of the act’s $840 billion final cost, $1.5 billion went to rent subsidies and emergency housing that kept 1.2 million people under roofs. (That’s why the recession didn’t produce rampant homelessness.) It increased spending on food stamps, unemployment benefits and Medicaid, keeping at least seven million Americans from falling below the poverty line.

And as Mr. Grunwald shows, it made crucial investments in neglected economic sectors that are likely to pay off for decades. It jump-started the switch to electronic medical records, which will largely end the use of paper records by 2015. It poured more than $1 billion into comparative-effectiveness research on pharmaceuticals. It extended broadband Internet to thousands of rural communities. And it spent $90 billion on a huge variety of wind, solar and other clean energy projects that revived the industry. Republicans, of course, only want to talk about Solyndra, but most of the green investments have been quite successful, and renewable power output has doubled.

Americans don’t know most of this, and not just because Mitt Romney and his party denigrate the law as a boondoggle every five minutes. Democrats, so battered by the transformation of “stimulus” into a synonym for waste and fraud (of which there was little), have stopped using the word. Only four speakers at the Democratic convention even mentioned the recovery act, none using the word stimulus.

Mr. Obama himself didn’t bring it up at all. One of the biggest accomplishments of his first term — a clear illustration of the beneficial use of government power, in a law 50 percent larger (in constant dollars) than the original New Deal — and its author doesn’t even mention it in his most widely heard re-election speech. Such is the power of Republican misinformation, and Democratic timidity.

Mr. Grunwald argues that the recovery act was not timid, but the administration’s effort to sell it to the voters was muddled and ineffective. Not only did White House economists famously overestimate its impact on the jobless rate, handing Mr. Romney a favorite talking point, but the administration seemed to feel the benefits would simply be obvious. Mr. Obama, too cool to appear in an endless stream of photos with a shovel and hard hat, didn’t slap his name on public works projects in the self-promoting way of mayors and governors.

How many New Yorkers know that the stimulus is helping to pay for the Second Avenue subway, or the project to link the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central? Almost every American worker received a tax cut from the act, but only about 10 percent of them noticed it in their paychecks. White House economists had rejected the idea of distributing the tax cuts as flashy rebate checks, because people were more likely to spend the money (and help the economy) if they didn’t notice it. Good economics, perhaps, but terrible politics.

From the beginning, for purely political reasons, Republicans were determined to oppose the bill, using silly but tiny expenditures to discredit the whole thing. Even the moderate Republican senators who helped push the bill past a filibuster had refused to let it grow past $800 billion, and prevented it from paying for school construction.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/opinion/sunday/dont-tell-anyone-but-the-stimulus-worked.html?src=recg

The Facts Behind Romney and Ryan’s Medicare Lies

First and foremost, the Ryan plan, in any form, would mark the end of Medicare as we know it—as a guarantee of health coverage for senior citizens

2012-08-172012-08-17 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From: workingamerica blog

By: Seth D. Michaels

N.B.: A concise, lucid explanation of what they say, what they mean, and what we need.

“It took approximately five minutes after the announcement of Paul Ryan as the Republican running mate for the spin to begin. Anxious to pre-empt a conversation about Ryan’s plan to end the guarantee of Medicare, the Mitt Romney campaign ison the air with some (strikingly dishonest) Medicare ads of their own. They have plenty of money to advance this message, so it’s worth unpacking what’s really going on.

First and foremost, the Ryan plan, in any form, would mark the end of Medicare as we know it—as a guarantee of health coverage for senior citizens. Instead, it would give older people a voucher to go buy their own private insurance. The Ryan budget would also increase the eligibility age, delaying the time when retirees could get Medicare. That’s the proposal the U.S. House voted on and passed in March and it’s the model Ryan has continued to promote even as he’s suggested possible tweaks.

So let’s move on to the claims the Romney campaign is making. The Affordable Care Act is paid for partly through billions in future savings—about $700 billion over 10 years in reduced payments to health insurance companies and providers. A lot of that money stays in the Medicare system, by paying for free preventative care for seniors and closing the prescription drug “doughnut hole.” The attack leveled by Romney, Ryan and their allies—an attack that’s Jonathan Cohn rightly called “astoundingly cynical”—is that this constitutes a massive cut to Medicare.

But here’s the catch: in the Ryan budget that passed, these future savings are included, even as the rest of the ACA is repealed. So the same reductions that the Romney campaign is complaining about were voted on and approved by Ryan and virtually every House Republican.

In the ACA, the cost savings that come out of Medicare go back into the health care system. In the Ryan budget, they’ll be needed to pay for the massive tax cuts proposed in that plan. Cohn notes that not only does this money get pulled out of providing health care entirely, but the attack the Romney campaign is making is a “brazen misrepresentation of reality.” Or, to say it in fewer and shorter words, “a lie.”

The Ryan plan doesn’t replace the guarantee with the vouchers for 10 years, so that major change doesn’t immediately affect today’s retirees. But the repeal of the ACA’s provisions on prescription drugs and preventative care absolutely will. If those provisions are gone, seniors who are on Medicare now will be paying hundreds of dollars more out of pocket. Ryan’s cuts to Medicaid, which many seniors depend on for nursing home care, would also have a big impact—his proposed cuts to Medicaid and the repeal of the ACA Medicaid expansion are a big and under-covered change in his budget. Some 6 million of today’s retirees depend on Medicaid and could lose out under Ryan’s plan. This is what was in the Ryan budget the House passed, and he hasn’t backed off of this at all.

What’s more, if Ryan’s plan kicks in ten years from now, today’s Medicare beneficiaries will getan unpleasant wake-up call as the voucher plan starts to erode the program:

In 2022, when the limited-subsidy program would be introduced, seniors who qualified for traditional Medicare would be allowed to switch to the new program. If healthier or younger beneficiaries make the change to lower their out-of-pocket costs, those still participating in Medicare would be part of an insurance pool that is less healthy and more expensive. To cover those higher per-person costs, Medicare might well be forced to either raise premiums or limit reimbursements to health care providers—which could prompt many to stop taking Medicare patients.

Romney has suggested he may back off of the Medicare savings that Ryan included in his original budget. But in that case, the Ryan budget math gets even more implausible. And by the standards Romney has laid out for how he wants his budget to work, Medicare would have to be slashed either way. That these cuts to programs for vulnerable people would be required in order to pass his huge tax cuts for the rich adds insult to injury. As Derek Thompson notes, Romney’s proposals “have clear and inevitable conclusions: Tax cuts for the richest and spending cuts for the poorest.”

It’s hard to overstate how hypocritical and dishonest the new Romney-Ryan attacks over Medicare are, coming from two people who have pledged changes so radical that they’d leave it unrecognizable.

Emphasis Mine

see::http://blog.workingamerica.org/2012/08/15/the-facts-behind-romney-and-ryan%E2%80%99s-medicare-lies/

9 Reasons Romney’s Choice of Paul Ryan for Veep Is Smarter Than You Think

Probably the most overarching plus, though, is that by adding Ryan, Romney has brought the whole Republican-conservative tribal deal together, which, from my vantage point only increases — not decreases — the chance of the Republicans defeating Obama in November.

2012-08-13 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From: AlterNet

By: Don Hazen

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tapped Paul Ryan, the 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman, to be his running mate, progressives went on a happy-thon. That Romney chose the House Budget Committee chairman known as the architect of draconian budgets that would make huge cuts in every aspect of the safety net — not to mention his quest to turn Medicare into a voucher program — just seemed like a major blunder. My colleague, Joshua Holland, called it Romney’s biggest mistake. Many were gleeful and shocked that Romney would seemingly play right into the Obama message on how the Romney agenda harms the middle class.

But I wasn’t so happy. The Romney decision signals several things about the future, and none of them good — rather scary and ugly, as a matter of fact. My gut told me that, for the Republican vice presidential candidate, I would much rather have a non-entity like Portman or Pawlenty as the Republican than a right-wing rock star. Any day.

Progressives are right when they say Ryan represents everything that shows how out of touch the Republicans are with the needs of the country. But they are not looking at Romney’s Ryan decision for what it is — a hugely dangerous step toward getting the Koch brothers‘ hand-picked star right to the verge of the presidency, which, if it should it come to pass, could dramatically transform the nature of American politics for our lifetimes. Whether Romney wins or loses, the Ryan pick poses a threat to the well-being of the nation.

If Romney wins, then Ryan occupies the Number Two spot with a money base and huge constituency of his own, far more than any vice president has ever enjoyed. With his own leadership PAC and a close relationship to the Koch-funded Americans For Prosperity astroturf group, it is hard to imagine how Ryan doesn’t immediately become a co-president or, at least, the most powerful VP in history. And, and this is a win-win for Charles and David Koch, the right-wing billionaire brothers: If Romney loses, then Paul Ryan is sitting pretty to be the nominee in 2016, when there is no incumbent….a far easier race to win after eight years of President Barack Obama, the Democrat, presiding over a difficult economy whose recovery Republicans have done everything they can to obstruct. I have always felt that many conservatives intent on taking over this country, known for their long vision and patience, have this strategy.

And on the ugly side, the choice of Ryan says this Romney campaign, in contrast to even the McCain campaign, will be a no-holds-barred, vicious personal attack on Obama and everything associated with the Democrats –– scapegoating unions, public employees, poor people, immigrants, people characterized by Ryan as the “takers, not the makers [3].” This is the way the conservatives know how to win campaigns, and they are going all out to rip the Dems to shreds. If it doesn’t quite work in in this year’s presidential race, they could very well control of both houses of Congress come January.

Here are nine reasons that Romney pulled the trigger on Ryan, and why they make a lot of sense:

1. Romney was in danger of losing badly, so a gamble was worth the risk.

The polls and trends were going in the wrong direction as Obama was ahead by 9 percent among all voters and 11 percent among independents. As Michael Goodwin writes in the New York Post [4]:

Romney was on course to lose the election…perhaps by a landslide…Independents, despite being unhappy with Obama, were even more unhappy with Romney. And too many Republicans remain unenthusiastic about their party’s nominee.

So Romney had to do something to energize the campaign, or he was dead in the water. Pick Ryan.

2. Romney is now seen as bold. By picking a controversial choice, a young, mediagenic, so-called brainy numbers guy, and one loved by the conservative base, Romney passed up the gaggle of more boring white guys who populated the pundits’ predictions, to pick the radical one. But here, in fact, Romney has it both ways. Ryan is not a Palin or a Rubio — a wild card — but rather a well-positioned Republican with major mainstream and corporate credibility, whom the media often has gone ga-ga over. And Ryan is an insider — Erskine Bowles (the co-chair of the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission, and rumored to be the next Secretary of the Treasury), has lavished lots of praise on to Ryan, who served on the commission, as have many others.

3. Did I mention Ryan is Catholic? We hear how the conservative Catholic bishops are trying to push Catholic voters to Romney, who has obviously come late to his anti-abortion stance. And among Catholic voters, Romney’s Mormonism isn’t exactly a plus. Still any anti-abortion politician is better than Obama in the bishops’ minds. For the bishops, their task became easier with Ryan (even if they have a problem or two with his budget proposal), who is as conservative as they come, being against abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Those Catholics who are inclined to vote conservative are now very excited. And, in fact, it’s not just far-right Catholics to whom Ryan appeals. A lot of voters in this country, for some reason, really like candidates who stick to rigid principles, even if those principles contradict their own. Ryan will get some of those voters.

4. Romney now has even more money. Romney has been doing fine, raising hundreds of millions from investment bankers and other pots of big wealth from the 1/10th of the top 1 percent. Still the Ryan choice is a huge motivator to the group of rabid right-wing billionaires around Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who fund and raise money for right-wing candidates, and an array of right-wing groups. Ryan has been a Koch favorite for years, supported and featured in myriad ways. The Kochs have promised, with Karl Rove, to raise $400 million for the so-called “independent superPACs”. Now, with all those billionaires jazzed over Ryan, the sky may be the limit. There is talk of the superPACs and the Romney campaign raising and spending $1.2 billion — and now maybe even more.

5. Romney gets the full Koch election infrastructure. Solidifying the alliance with the Kochs is even more about infrastructure than campaign dollars, which will be plentiful. As my colleague Adele Stan, who covers the Kochs and conservative election field operations, explains:

The Kochs, via Americans for Prosperity and Faith and Freedom Coalition, own the infrastructure for the ground game in the swing states. They’ve been building it for years. That’s not something any amount of money can build in the three months leading up to the election. Romney really, really needs Koch buy-in.

5. Ryan seals the deal for a base-motivating campaign in the worst tradition of the Republicans. Republicans win when they run to their base, and play the “us versus them” card for their anxious constituencies. Voter suppression tactics of all sorts are in play, especially in Florida and Pennsylvania. Taken together, Ryan’s earnest demeanor and brutal budgets act as an a elixir for grassroots conservatives; the base will now be super-motivated.

Bush won two terms without winning the majority of the popular vote because the GOP wanted the win more than the Democrats — and Republicans cheat more. As Thomas Schaller writes at Salon [5]:

By picking [Ryan], Romney provides a powerful signal that he is willing to counter Obama’s failed attempt to unite America with an unapologetic attempt to win via econo-demographic divide and conquer politics.

6. The Romney campaign will now be the most brutal, race-tinged, fact-absent, expensive, technologically sophisticated campaign ever run. This presidential race is increasingly polarized. Polling shows that Obama has lost most of the non-college-educated white male voters he was able to capture in 2008. As Charles Blow points out [6] in the New York Times:

A staggering 90 percent of Romney supporters are white. Only 4 percent are Hispanic, less than 1 percent are black and another 4 percent are another race.

And of uncommitted “swing” voters, Blow writes:

Nearly three out of four are white. The rest are roughly 8 percent blacks Hispanics and another race.

Schaller adds: “Don’t be surprised in the Romney-Ryan ticket engages in the sort of racially tinged, generationally loaded entitlement politics practiced by the Tea Party...”

7. While the VP pick isn’t going to change the mind of many independent or hard-core party voters, it is a move to bring all elements of the party in sync. Progressive pundits, just a few days ago, were saying: Oh, the VP pick doesn’t make much difference…maybe, at best, a 2 percent swing. Today is apparently a new day, and progressives are pouncing on this choice as being a huge plus for Obama. Well, ya can’t have it both ways. Republican wins are always about turning out the base to the polls. Ryan probably won’t make that much difference on the large scale, but he becomes the thunderbolt to rouse the base, which appears to love him, even if he is a media-created fraud. In fact, Ryan may be the most effective political phony in America.

8. Repeat: Paul Ryan is the most effective phony in American politics today. When Romney picked Ryan, he was grabbing one of the great teflon politicians of all time. Ryan has a tremendous ability to appear earnest while lying through his teeth, as he did recently when he repeated Romney’s lie about Obama and welfare work requirements. Ryan represents what Salon’s Joan Walsh calls [7]the “fakery at the heart of the Republican project today.” She adds:

[Ryan,] the man who who wants to make the world safe for swashbuckling, risk-taking capitalists hasn’t spent a day at economic risk in his life.

Guys like Ryan “somehow become the political face of the white working class when they never spent a day in that class in their life,” writes Walsh. He has, she says, a “remarkable ability to tap into the economic anxiety of working class whites and steer it toward paranoia that their troubles are the fault of other people — the slackers and the moochers, Ayn Rand;’s famous ‘parasites’ …”

9. The Conservative tribe is now ready to fight all of its enemies. The conservatives and Republicans know what team they are on — and that tribal identity is more important to them than any idea of hegemonic cultural identity could possibly be to liberals. For one, the conservative team is almost totally white, and far more homogenous, while more than 43 percent of Obama’s supporters are people of color. Add in that conservative brand of resentment — the “makers versus the takers” — and it becomes clear who represents the conservative notion of a “maker.” With Ryan as the standard-bearer for the self-described “makers,” the team has its galvanizer.

The social psychologist Jonathan Haight and his researchers have compiled a catalog [8] of “six fundamental ideas that commonly undergird moral systems: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity.”

Among them, he finds that group loyalty and identification is important among conservatives, but not among liberals. As William Saletan describes Haidt’s thesis [8] in the New York Times Book Review:

Social conservatives see welfare and feminism as threats to responsibility and family stability. The Tea Party [9] hates redistribution because it interferes with letting people reap what they earn. Faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order — these Republican themes touch all six moral foundations, whereas Democrats, in Haidt’s analysis, focus almost entirely on care and fighting oppression.

Come election time, that array of values makes the Republican project more formidable. It is why, when conservative ideas are not popular, when significant majorities of Americans disagree with conservatives, they still have enormous capacity to exercise outsized influence, controlling much of the public debate — and are on the doorstep of winning control of all three branches of government. Despite their minority status, the tribal thing still leverages far more power than is fair or many thought possible.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether Romney picked Ryan out of desperation, or may have had to take Ryan as a deal for support from the Kochs, or may have felt Ryan was actually the best man for the job. Whatever the reason, the Ryan pick does a whole lot for the Romney campaign –conferring money, authority, media attention, change of tone, and more. Probably the most overarching plus, though, is that by adding Ryan, Romney has brought the whole Republican-conservative tribal deal together, which, from my vantage point only increases — not decreases — the chance of the Republicans defeating Obama in November.”

Emphasis Mine

see:

12 Things You Should Know About Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan

2012-08-112012-08-11 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From: Think Progress

By:Igor Volsky

Mitt Romney has picked as his running mate 42 year-old Republican Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of the GOP budget, which the New York Times has described as “the most extreme budget plan passed by a house of Congress in modern times.” Below are 12 things you should know about Ryan and his policies:

1. Ryan embraces the extreme philosophy of Ayn Rand. Ryan heaped praise on Ayn Rand, a 20th-century libertarian novelist best known for her philosophy that centered on the idea that selfishness is “virtue.” Rand described altruism as “evil,” condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, viewed the feminist movement as “phony,” and called Arabs “almost totally primitive savages. Though he publicly rejected “her philosophy” in 2012, Ryan had professed himself a strong devotee. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” he said at a D.C. gathering honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.”

2. Ryan wants to raises taxes on the middle class, cuts them for millionaires. Paul Ryan’s infamous budget — which Romney embraced — replaces “the current tax structure with two brackets — 25 percent and 10 percent — and cut the top rate from 35 percent.” Federal tax collections would fall “by about $4.5 trillion over the next decade” as a result and to avoid increasing the national debt, the budget proposes massive cuts in social programs and “special-interest loopholes and tax shelters that litter the code.” But 62 percent of the savings would come from programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes, who would also experience a tax increase. That’s because while Ryan “would extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, he would not extend President Obama’s tax cuts for those with the lowest incomes, which will expire at the same time.” Households “earning more than $1 million a year, meanwhile, could see a net tax cut of about $300,000 annually.”

Audiences have booed Ryan for the unfair distribution!

3. Ryan wants to end Medicare, replace it with a voucher system. Ryan’s latest budget transforms the existing version of Medicare, in which government provides seniors with a guaranteed benefit, into a “premium support” system. All future retirees would receive a government contribution to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans or traditional fee-for-service Medicare. But since the premium support voucher does not keep up with increasing health care costs, the Congressional Budget Offices estimates that new beneficiaries could pay up to $1,200 more by 2030 and more than $5,900 more by 2050. A recent study also found that had the plan been implemented in 2009, 24 million beneficiares enrolled in the program would have paid higher premiums to maintain their choice of plan and doctors. Ryan would also raise Medicare’s age of eligibility to 67.

4. Ryan thinks Social Security is a “ponzi scheme.” In September of 2011, Ryan agreed with Rick Perry’s characterization of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” andsince 2005 has advocated for privatizing the retirement benefit and investing it in stocks and bonds. Conservatives claim that this would “outperform the current formula based on wages earned and overall wage appreciation,” but the economic crisis of 2008 should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers who seek to hinge Americans’ retirement on the stock market. In fact, “a person with a private Social Security account similar to what President George W. Bush proposed in 2005″ would have lost much of their retirement savings.

5. Ryan’s budget would result in 4.1 million lost jobs in 2 years. Ryan’s budget calls for massive reductions in government spending. He has proposed cutting discretionary programs by about $120 billion over the next two years and mandatory programs by $284 billion, which, the Economic Policy Institute estimates, would suck demand out of the economy and “reduce employment by 1.3 million jobs in fiscal 2013 and 2.8 million jobs in fiscal 2014, relative to current budget policies.”

6. Ryan wants to eliminate Pell Grants for more more than 1 million students.Ryan’s budget claims both that rising financial aid is driving college tuition costs upward, and that Pell Grants, which help cover tuition costs for low-income Americans, don’t go to the “truly needy.” So he cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could “ultimately knock more than one million students off” the program over the next 10 years.

7. Ryan supports $40 billion in subsides for big oil. In 2011, Ryan joined all House Republicans and 13 Democrats in his vote to keep Big Oil tax loopholes as part of the FY 2011 spending bill. His budget would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.” For instance, it “calls for a $3 billion cut in energy programs in FY 2013 alone” and would spend only $150 million over five years — or 20 percent of what was invested in 2012 — on energy programs.

8. Ryan has ownership stakes in companies that benefit from oil subsidies . Ryan “and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan,” the Daily Beast reported in June of 2011. “Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.”

9. Ryan claimed Romneycare has led to “rationing and benefit cuts.” “I’m not a fan of [Romney’s health care reform] system,” Ryan told C-SPAN in 2010. He argued that government is rationing care in the state and claimed that people are “seeing the system bursting by the seams, they’re seeing premium increases, rationing and benefit cuts.” He called the system “a fatal conceit” and “unsustainable.”

10. Ryan believes that Romneycare is “not that dissimilar to Obamacare.” Though Romney has gone to great lengths to distinguish his Massachusetts health care law from Obamacare, Ryan doesn’t see the difference. “It’s not that dissimilar to Obamacare, and you probably know I’m not a big fan of Obamacare,” Ryan said at a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Spectator in March of 2011. “I just don’t think the mandates work … all the regulation they’ve put on it…I think it’s beginning to death spiral. They’re beginning to have to look at rationing decisions.”

11. Ryan accused generals of lying about their support for Obama’s military budget. In March, Ryan couldn’t believe that Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey supports Obama’s Pentagon budget, which incorporates $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice,” Ryan said at a policy summit hosted by the National Journal. “We don’t think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget.” He later apologized for the implication.

12. Ryan co-sponsored a “personhood” amendment, an extreme anti-abortion measure. Ryan joined 62 other Republicans in co-sponsoring the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which declares that a fertilized egg “shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” This would outlaw abortion, some forms of contraception and invitro fertilization.

Emphasis Mine.

see: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/11/677171/12-things-you-should-know-about-vice-presidential-candidate-paul-ryan/

10 Theories About What Mitt Romney’s Really Hiding in Those Tax Returns

2012-08-02 chasdarwinLeave a comment

From AlterNet [1] / By Joshua Holland [2]

“Mitt Romney knows how to do a cost-benefit analysis, and he’s determined that it’s better to be dogged by reporters for failing to release his tax returns for the duration of the 2012 campaign than it is to make the documents public. Never mind that a majority of Americans – and a third of Republicans – think he should come clean.

It’s beyond obvious that whatever’s in those returns must be enough to do serious damage to Romney, or even sink his candidacy completely.

What might it be, exactly? In the vaccuum Romney has created by not disclosing, any number of theories have been floated as to what his returns could reveal. For your convenience, we’ve collected 10 theories that are making the rounds in the political press.

1. Mormon Tithes

Mormons are expected to fork over 10 percent of their income to the Church of Latter Day Saints. And that fact leads us to two theories.

First, Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press speculated [3] that Romney doesn’t want to remind evangelical Christians that he belongs to what many consider a non-Christian “cult.” “The Republican candidate’s commitment to the church is a double-edged sword in the contest for the presidential nomination,” she wrote. “Many GOP voters are Christians who do not consider Mormons to be part of historic Christianity. Romney supporters worry that details of his church donations contained in the tax returns could fuel opposition to him based on his religion.”

But it may be the other way around – perhaps he doesn’t want to piss off Mormons. After all, the right-wing Daily Caller reported that in 2010 and 2011, the two years for which Romney released partial returns, it looks like the former Mormon bishop under-tithed the church, paying 7 percent of his income one year and 9.7 percent over the two-year period. As the Caller noted [4], “Romney recently told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, ‘I made a commitment to my church a long, long time ago that I would give 10 percent of my income to the church, and I’ve followed through on that commitment. So, if I had given less than 10 percent, then I think people would have to look at me and say, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with you fella — don’t you follow through on your promises?’”

Of course, if he were sheltering additional income in offshore accounts, then the degree to which the Caller says he shortchanged the Mormons might be even greater.

2. Things That Might Infuriate the Base

Mitt Romney, who just four years ago was dubbed the “conservative alternative” to John McCain is probably, as he claims, “severely conservative.” But when he wanted to become governor of Massachussetts, he played to that state’s politics, swearing to protect a woman’s right to choose, saying that climate change isn’t a socialist plot and generally being reasonable. He passed the precursor to Obamacare, which he now condemns as a sign of looming tyranny.

Rick Newman at US News and World Report wonders [5] whether Romney really stopped supporting those causes when he claims to have converted himself into a far-right Republican. Could he have a bunch of itemized deductions to, say, Planned Parenthood listed on those returns? We’d be wrong not to speculate.

3. Harry Reid, Lazy Blogger

That’s how Wonkette characterized [6] Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s unsourced, second-hand rumor that Mitt Romney paid no taxes at all over a 10-year period. (This is very unlikely, due to the Alternative Minimum Tax.)

But many, many people have speculated that the reason Mitt doesn’t want to reveal his tax returns is that they will show that he paid a significantly lower rate than his campaign has claimed in the years prior to 2010.

4. It’s the IRAs

Mitt Romney has an Individual Retirement Account, just like you probably do! But unlike you, Mitt has somewhere between $20 and $101 million in his account.

We know that the maximum amount one can contribute to an IRA account is $17,000 per year (employers can match that with up to $30,000). So that would be a pretty impressive performance – what an investor!

Or what a cheat. Michael Graetz, a professor of tax law at Columbia University and a former official in the senior Bush’s Treasury Department, suggested [7] that to get such a fat IRA, “we have to presume that Mr. Romney valued the assets he put in his retirement account at far less than he would have sold them for.”

He continues:

The I.R.A. also allows Mr. Romney to diversify his large holdings tax-free, avoiding the 15 percent tax on capital gains that would otherwise apply. His financial disclosure further reveals that his I.R.A. freed him from paying currently the 35 percent income tax on hundreds of thousands of dollars of interest income each year.

5. The Mini-Mitts

Graetz has a second theory about what Mitt might be hiding, and it also has to do with dramatically under-valuing his assets in order to screw over Uncle Sam.

It has to do with a trust he set up for his five sons in 1995. Graetz explains that until this year, there was a $1 million life-time exemption on such gifts, and after that they should have been taxed at between 29-44 percent. So Mitt would have been on the hook for between $29 and $44 million in gift taxes.

“Based on his aggressive tax planning,” writes Graetz, “my bet is that — if Mr. Romney filed a gift tax return for these transfers at all — he put a low or even zero value on the gifts, certainly a small fraction of the price at which he would have sold the transferred assets to an unrelated party.”

Wouldn’t he get busted with such a brazen strategy to avoid paying taxes? After all, that’s some pretty serious tax fraud. Well, catching Mitt in this kind of scheme might be harder than one would think. Graetz explains that “every good tax professional knows that gift tax returns are rarely audited, except after the transferer’s death. And normally the I.R.S. cannot challenge such a return after three years from its filing.”

6. Is It All About 2009?

BusinessWeek‘s Joshua Green thinks Romney may not want to reveal his taxes for one year in particular – 2009. That’s because Romney probably took some significant losses when the economy crashed in 2008. Green explains [8]:

It’s possible he suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009. If true, this would be politically deadly for him…

The “zero tax in 2009” theory—again, this is sheer speculation—gains further sustenance when you consider it’s the only year for which nobody knows anything about Romney’s taxes. He’s revealed what’s in his 2010 and 2011 returns, and he reportedly submitted 20-some years’ worth of returns to the McCain campaign when he was being vetted for vice president in 2008. Steve Schmidt, McCain’s chief strategist in that campaign, said on MSNBC,,, that while he didn’t examine Romney’s returns himself, nothing that McCain’s vetters found in them disqualified Romney from consideration.

7. CEO, President and Chairman of Bain

You probably know that Mitt claims he retired – or perhaps retired “retroactively” – from Bain Capital in 1999. You probably also know that almost three years later, as the Huffington Post reported [9], “Romney was listed as the CEO, chairman and president of the company… in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission; took a six-figure salary; signed corporate documents related to major and minor deals and attended board meetings for at least two Bain-affiliated companies.”

It’s possible that releasing his returns could clarify exactly what involvement he had with Bain after 1999. And that might reveal that Romney was, contrary to his claims [10], involved in Bain’s decision to invest in Stericycle, a medical waste company that disposed of aborted fetuses. Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman, told Fox News: “If he released more documents, like further tax returns, we would know the extent of his involvement at Bain during this period.”

8. Is Mitt a Felon?

Relatedly, in 2011, Mitt Romney signed a financial disclosure form and sent it to the Federal Election Commission. In it, he stated emphatically that he had no active role in the company after February 1999. That claim appears to be contradicted by a number of other documents.

It’s a felony to lie on an FEC financial disclosure form [11]. Some forms of tax evasion are also felonies. Mitt’s tax returns might offer proof that he committed a crime.

9. Are There Other Non-Disclosures?

There’s lying on a disclosure form, and then there’s not filing required forms. The LA Times reports [12] that “at least 23 funds and partnerships listed in [Mitt’s] 2010 tax returns did not show up or were not listed in the same fashion on Romney’s most recent financial disclosure, including 11 based in low-tax foreign countries such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.”

More tax returns might reveal other investments that Romney has failed to disclose, as he is required to do by law.

10. There’s Nothing – It’s Just His Sense of Entitlement

Esquire’s James Wolcott doesn’t think there’s any there there [13]. Sure, Romney’s tax returns would provide an object lesson in how the ultra-rich avoid paying their fair share of taxes, but everyone already knows that those at the top of the pile game the system. For Wolcott, the issue comes down to Romney refusing to bow to the little people on principle.

It is helpful always to remind yourself that, in the mind of Willard Romney, there are only two kinds of people — himself and his family, and the Help. Throughout his career, and especially throughout his brief political career, Romney has treated the Help with a kind of lordly disdain…

The Help has no right to go pawing through the family books, giggling at the obvious loopholes and tax dodges, running amok through all the tax shelters, and probably getting their chocolate-y fingerprints all over the pages of the Romney family ledger. And, certainly, those members of the Help in the employ of the president of the United States, who is also part of the Help, have no right to use the nearly comically ostentatious wealth of the Romney as some sort of scrimey political weapon. He does not have to answer to the Help. I mean, jeepers, he’s running for office.

This isn’t stubbornness. That’s often an acquired trait. What this is, fundamentally, is contempt. Contempt for the process, and contempt for the people who make their living in that process, and contempt for the people whose lives depend on that process. There are rules for the Help with which Willard Romney never has had to abide, and he has no intention of starting now. My dear young fellow, this simply is not done.

The Most Likely Explanation

Given Romney’s refusal to release his returns, this kind of speculation is entirely predictable. But the most likely reason Romney doesn’t want to release his returns is that they’ll cast a bright light on the aggressive tax avoidance strategies the super-rich use every day – strategies David Cay Johnston outlined so well in his excellent book, Perfectly Legal [14].The Romney campaign keeps assuring us that he paid all taxes required by law, and that very well might be the problem.

A Vanity Fair investigation [15] into the trickle of tax documents that Romney has disclosed – under intense pressure – found that they “provided a lavish smorgasbord for Romney’s critics. Particularly jarring were the Romneys’ many offshore accounts.”

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in “jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,” as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.

While James Wolcott thinks that it’s “hardly a secret anymore” that “our tax code — and, indeed, our entire economic system — has been gamed to benefit the folks in Romney’s economic stratum,” most people probably don’t have a firm grasp on precisely how the vaunted “job creators” avoid paying their fair share, and the release of Romney’s returns would offer a teachable moment.

As real estate billionaire Leona Helmsley once said, “Only the little people pay taxes.” That’s not the message Mitt Romney wants to convey during a campaign that has a lot to do with tax cuts for the wealthiest.

Emphasis Mine

see: http://www.alternet.org/print/election-2012/10-theories-about-what-mitt-romneys-really-hiding-those-tax-returns

Why Is There So Much God in America’s Politics?

2012-06-24 chasdarwin1 Comment

From: AlterNet

By:Santiago Wills, Salon

N.B.: “Religion is not a majoritarian issue in the United States.” Judge John E. Jones.

“His silence about his faith notwithstanding, Mitt Romney will become the first Mormon to win a major-party presidential nomination. That could put more attention on his religion than any candidate has faced since John Kennedy in 1960, especially as Romney tries to attract skeptical evangelical voters. Meanwhile, President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage and the ongoing social issues surrounding the war on women are bound to intensify criticism from the religious right and the crucial faction of conservative Latino voters.

But religion has profoundly influenced presidential politics since the days of George Washington. As Michael I. Meyerson argues in his new book, “Endowed by Our Creator: The Birth of Religious Freedom in America,” a scholarly account of how the framers of the Constitution viewed the role of religion in government, the current campaign has a lot in common with some of the country’s first electoral bouts. Then as now, Meyerson says, the debates were portrayed as a clash between a godless candidate who wanted a secular country and a true defender who was willing to restore the morals of a Christian nation. He says that the study of the formation of the American government can help us understand the reasons behind the growing partisan divide and help bridge the conflicting religious opinions of both political parties.

Salon spoke to Meyerson — a professor of law and a Piper & Marbury Faculty Fellow at the University of Baltimore. — about the framers of the Constitution, the upcoming elections, and religious discrimination.

Throughout your book, you highlight how some of the writings and actions of the framers of the Constitution have been taken out of their historical context to support the political agendas of both liberals and conservatives. How does the historical record compare to the way both parties portray the framers today?

The framers were generally far more nuanced, complicated and willing to be complicated than the modern political dialogue. They didn’t have to be purely on the left or on the right. Most of them were trying to make a compromise between multiple concerns and constituencies.

Compared to the late 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, how would you describe the current discussion of religion in politics?

In terms of the role of religion in government, what I’ve found is that much of the modern dialogue is trying to make the framers entirely one thing or another. You have those who want to argue for a strict separation of church and state, and those who believe that America is a Christian nation. The former go through history assuming a lot and use writings by Madison and Jefferson with a very narrow desire to say that government should not have anything to do with religion. The latter look at the large amount of religious reference and activity in the colonies and say that there is a long history of government being entwined with religion. What neither side does is take into account the validity of the history of the other side. What you end up reading are two half-histories, and generally neither political side has been willing to put the two different components together, which is what I tried to do in my book.

You write that it is essential to create an “accurate picture of what freedom of religion meant at the time of the framing” of the Constitution. Why does that matter?

Even though we are a more pluralistic society, it is important to remember that the framers of the Constitution were dealing with a diversity of their own — and with very violent conflicts between the different denominations, some of which were caused and abetted by government. So what we can learn, first of all, is how to balance competing concerns. The debates that we are having about the role of religion in government are not new; we are dealing with a centuries-old debate. The framers, and especially the vastly underrated George Washington, were very aware of the fact that religion could be a force for good and a force for evil. That was what they were trying to balance.

Unlike Madison or Jefferson, Washington was very explicit in saying that he considered divine intervention one of the main reasons we won the Revolutionary War. He saw the hand of Providence in the writing of the Constitution, but he also understood — and this was where his genius was — that if you are sectarian, if you favor any particular religion, you end up dividing, rather than uniting, the nation. So, again, what we can learn from the framers is that government is not barred from acknowledging religion, but that it must do so in an extraordinarily careful and respectful way, in which the goal is making sure that every American feels a part of the country regardless of their religious beliefs.

In your book, Washington emerges as a practical thinker who saw religious freedom as a way of avoiding conflict and promoting morality. While he was in office, he used inclusive religious language in his speeches and was careful not to support the idea that the country was founded as a Christian nation, a belief that many people from the right accept today as an unquestionable truth. Why was the first president so vehement in his refusal to say that Christianity was the nation’s religion?

Washington knew that people don’t go to war for God; they go to war for a particular God. George Washington was unique in American history because he was the first person to look after a united country. He was the head of the military during the Revolutionary War, so he was forced to work with soldiers from all the different states, including those that had different religious backgrounds than his own. He knew that if he wasn’t careful and, more importantly, if his soldiers weren’t careful, then religion was going to destroy his army. Washington had to learn as a military person and as a political person that if you discussed religion, you had to do so in a respectful way. At the same time, he was not going to ignore either his religious views or those of the population.

How have the framers’ views on religious freedom shaped America as a whole?

First of all, they made America, ironically, a more religious country. A lot of the religious movements from the 19th century have their roots in the framers’ actions, given that there was no favored governmental religion. Especially in the newer states, there existed a sentiment that people could find the religion that spoke to them most. Second, once immigrants arrived — and despite the strong anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic views of most people throughout the 19th century — there was always a strong sense that the true American understanding was that all religions were welcome. It became part of the definition of what America was. You had, then, both a space for religion to grow on its own and a welcoming of religion. Finally, the Constitution also allowed for a secular view of society and life to also flourish as government was forced to step away. In the end, there was an ironic combination of more religion and more freedom of religion at the same time.

In your book, you mention the 1800 election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. It was framed in the Gazzette of the United States by the question: “Shall I continue in allegiance to GOD — AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT; Or impiously declare for JEFFERSON — AND NO GOD!!!” There are some parallels with the current elections.

[Laughs] Yes, yes. The idea of a presidential battle being a proxy for a view of religion is very old. Indeed, there was the sense that the Adams side viewed their efforts as the only way to protect religion, and that Jefferson’s side viewed their efforts as the only way to stop an establishment of religion in a narrow sectarian government. One of my goals in the book is to show that the debates that we are having today are not a creation of our times. We can learn from the lessons of the election of 1800. One of the most radical parts of the Constitution said that no one had to take a religious oath to serve in government. It was a major step, a radical change, perhaps the most important moment in American religious history. However, that doesn’t mean that people can’t vote based on their religious beliefs. The vote of 1800 seems to suggest that the people then didn’t want to have a purely religious government. They were more comfortable with the Jefferson approach, which sought to limit the role of government, than with the Adams approach, which was far more sectarian than that of Washington and Jefferson.

Mitt Romney’s religion played a significant role in the Republican primary. Because of his faith, after winning the nomination, he’s been forced to reach out to some of the Christian groups that had previously shunned him. Do you think there’s an implicit faith test for candidates within the GOP and one for the president within the country?

First of all, I think that surely within the country there is. There are surveys that say people will vote for almost anyone over an atheist. There is a 30 or 40 percent part of the population that will not vote for someone who doesn’t believe in God, so there’s definitely a religious test for the highest office.

Within the Republican Party, I think there is also a small group that does have a sort of religious test. Sometimes the test, if you will, will be passed if the candidate abides by politics that mirror religious beliefs, and sometimes [it will be passed] by the adherence to a specific faith.

In the book I tried to avoid the ongoing debate surrounding what were Washington’s and Jefferson’s specific religious faiths. I think that most American voters get that people’s professed faith doesn’t matter, and that someone’s beliefs can be incredibly complicated. What matters is how they live their lives and their view of government. One of the points of the framing period is that there were people that were very conservative, devout and pious men, who believed in a very limited role of government — for example, my hero John Leland, the Baptist minister. On the other hand you had people that were largely irreligious, like Benjamin Franklin, who supported teaching religion because they thought it was good for the masses. In political thought, there’s a sense that people should not search for a candidate with their same religious beliefs, but rather for one whose politics support their religious beliefs and tenets.

Meanwhile, Obama’s spirituality has been questioned many times …

Yes, he has been forced to declare his religion far more than most other presidents. While George Washington would never say in public that he was a Christian, President Obama has to do it all the time. Whether he is comfortable with it or not is irrelevant, but it’s a shame. It’s sad that we have to brand him with a religion. First of all, it implies something very hostile, given that he’s had to say that he is Christian because he’s been accused of being a Muslim, as if that were something really bad. On the other hand, the fact that he has to declare his religion implies that that is the right religion for a political leader. I don’t think he believes in doing that, but he knows that politically he has to sort of fit in with this mindset.

Taking Romney into account, what I think you end up with, ironically, are two candidates who consider themselves to be Christian, even though the Mormon faith is not considered to be Christian by some Christians, and Obama is not considered to be a Christian by some Christians. Both of them need to present their bona fide credentials in a way that I think works to divide, rather than to unite, religious faith.

And those credentials are the faith test you mentioned earlier.

Exactly. In fact, it was understood by de Tocqueville and others that the governmental oath test was removed, but the individual’s religious test could remain. It has fluctuated over time, and I think you saw it in the Republican primaries. It might be muted a little in this campaign because I think that many people are going to vote for the candidates’ politics and not for a candidate who represents their faith.

Republicans have constantly accused Obama of waging a so-called war on religion. Many Catholic groups have filed law suits against the government claiming that their religious freedom was violated by the inclusion of contraceptives in basic health care coverage for women. His recent statements regarding gay marriage have only exacerbated that view among his opponents. Do you think those complaints have any legal standing?

Well, let’s break up the two issues. President Obama had to deal with the religious objections to gay marriage by giving his support in religious language, so that’s not a “war on religion.” Both sides can quote the Bible in support of their own beliefs. You can make a very strong religious argument, as he did, in favor of an inclusive view of society to combat those who use their faith to oppose that view.

In terms of the Catholic Church and other institutions being “forced” to provide contraception, the problem is more complicated. There are two different issues here. First, all institutions, religious or otherwise, must follow generally applicable laws. These are laws which require everyone to do something. For example, there’s a famous case in which the state of Oregon banned the use of peyote, the psychedelic drug. At the time, the drug was used recreationally and also for religious purposes by Native Americans. The Supreme Court said that the law didn’t target religion. It was universal: No one could use the law. Therefore, even though the law had the effect of crippling a religious practice, the law was considered to be constitutional because it was neutral.

However, there was a response to that case that [argued for making] exceptions so that religious groups can follow their faith. This was adopted in all sorts of cases, including conscious objectors to the draft. Since then, the government tries to accommodate minority religions, in part because majority religions are always accommodated. Only minority religions need special accommodations.

In the case of Obama and contraception, though, the administration learned from past mistakes and arranged for private insurance companies to be in charge of the distribution of contraception. Meanwhile, there are ongoing negotiations on how to be sensitive to religious needs.

The second issue has to do with those ongoing negotiations. While they are taking place, the Supreme Court is bound to rule on whether the health care act is unconstitutional. If the court rules against it, the whole issue will go away. Now, what’s incredibly sad is that a religious argument has been put in the midst of a political debate. I think that contraception is a very important and difficult issue because there are the rights of religious institutions and also the right of women to have health care. To drag this into court in the middle of the presidential campaign while the negotiations are under way smells more like politics than religion.

Their complaints aside, the Catholics don’t seem to be the religious group that the government has actually targeted. Since 9/11, Muslims have been singled out by, among others, the NYPD. Are there any similar historical precedents in America?

From what I know of the issue, what happened is similar to what was done with other minority religions in the past. Catholics were viewed as suspect because they were connected with foreign powers, be it the Pope or France. There was a suspicion of the whole group, an assumption that anyone who was Catholic couldn’t be loyal. John Kennedy had to deal with that in the 1960 presidential campaign — this presumption not of divided loyalty but of lack of loyalty to America because of your religion. I think you have the exact situation here. There’s an invidious presumption that if you believe in X religion, then you must be part of an alien culture that’s un-American. The widespread distrust of Muslims, whether in fighting where a mosque is built or regarding the monitoring of Muslim individuals, is part of this view that being a part of a minority religion make you un-American.”

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.alternet.org/story/155971/why_is_there_so_much_god_in_america%27s_politics

Lakoff: Why Conservatives Sell Their Wildly Destructive Ideology Better Than Democrats

Framing is (or should be) about moral values, deep truths, and the policies that flow from them.

2012-06-21 chasdarwin1 Comment

From: AlterNet

By George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling

“As of their kickoff speeches in Ohio, Romney and Obama have both chosen economics as their major campaign theme. And thus the question of how they frame the economy will be crucial throughout the campaign. Their two speeches could not be more different.

Where Romney talks morality (conservative style), Obama mainly talks policy. Where Romney reframes Obama, Obama does not reframe Romney. In fact, he reinforces Romney’s frames in the first part of his speech by repeating Romney’s language word for word — without spelling out his own values explicitly.

Where Romney’s framing is moral, simple and straightforward, Obama’s is policy-oriented, filled with numbers, details, and so many proposals that they challenge ordinary understanding.

Where Obama talks mainly about economic fairness, Romney reframes it as economic freedom.

As the authors of Authors of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, here’s a discussion of Obama’s speech.

****Obama began his kickoff campaign speech in Cleveland stating that he is “in complete agreement” with Romney: “This election is about our economic future. Yes, foreign policy matters. Social issues matter. But more than anything else, this election presents a choice between two fundamentally different visions” regarding economic policy.

Obama’s strategy is to pin the Bush economic disaster on Romney, with good reason, since Romney has essentially the same policies as Bush. Since Obama has not consistently pinned the blame on Bush over the past four years, he comes off as defensive.

Romney’s strategy is to pin the disaster on Obama. He uses the Caretaker Metaphor — Obama has been the national caretaker, so the present condition is his responsibility. Since Obama started out assuming a caretaker’s responsibility, it is difficult for him to escape the frame now. He should have avoided it from the beginning. Pinning the disaster on Bush is possible, but it will take a lot of repetition, not just by the president, but by Democrats in general. Not just a repetition of economic facts, but of the moral differences that led to both the Bush disaster and the Obama attempt to recoup.

Perhaps the most important omission from the Obama speech was any overt mention of The Public — everything that our citizenry as a whole provides to all, e.g., roads, bridges, infrastructure, education, protection, a health system, and systems for communication, energy development and supply, and so on. The Private — private life and private enterprise — depends on The Public. There is no economic freedom without all of this. So-called “free enterprise” is not free. A free market economy depends on a strong Public. This is a deep truth, easy to recognize. It undercuts Romney’s central pitch, that is it private enterprise alone that has made our country great, and that as much as possible of The Public should be eliminated.

Romney calls free enterprise “one of the greatest forces of good this world has ever known.” In reality, America free enterprise has always required The Public.

Romney attacks The Public, speaking of “the heavy hand of government” and “the invisible boot of government.” The contrast is with the putative “invisible hand” of the market — which leads to the good of all if everyone follows their self-interest and the market’s natural force is not interfered with. Romney’s “invisible boot” evokes the image of a storm trooper’s boot on your neck. The government is the storm trooper, your enemy. You are weak and in an impossible position. You can’t move — a metaphor for being held back and not being able to freely engage in the economy. Romney uses the frame consistently: “The federal establishment,” he says,” has never seemed so hostile.” The Public is an “establishment” — an undemocratic institution — which is the enemy of the people. It is implicit in this frame that the government is not the people.

Romney’s assumption here is that democracy is based on the “liberty” to seek one’s self interest with minimal regard to the interests or well being of others. People who are good at this will succeed, and they deserve to. People who are not good at this will fail, and they should. In Romney’s speech, “The Freedom to Dream,” he used the word “freedom” 29 times. This is what he means.

Although Obama intends to argue against this understanding, he unintentionally feeds it. He does so in three ways: First, by accepting and reinforcing many of Romney’s central frames (often by negating them); second, by moving to the right in his own argumentation; and third, by not spelling out his own moral principles explicitly right from the start.

First, here are three examples of Obama repeating Romney’s frames (in bold):

“Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe deeply in the theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down.”

“They maintain that if we eliminate most regulations, if we cut taxes by trillions of dollars, if we strip down government to national security and a few other basic functions, the power of businesses to create jobs and prosperity will be unleashed and that will automatically benefit us all.”

Republicans “believe that if you simply take away regulations and cut taxes by trillions of dollars, the market will solve all of our problems on its own.”

Though Obama’s statements are supposed to be taken sarcastically, they actually are positive, straightforward, easy to understand versions of Romney’s positions and beliefs.

Second, Obama argues for his willingness to compromise by giving examples of his “bipartisanship,” where he did just what conservatives wanted and had argued for as the right thing to do: cutting taxes and eliminating regulations. Here is Obama:

“Understand, despite what you hear from my opponent, this has never been a vision about how government creates jobs or has the answers to all our problems. Over the last three years, I’ve cut taxes for the typical working family by $3,600. I’ve cut taxes for small businesses 18 times. I have approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.”

Conservatives talk endlessly about “cutting spending.” The president uses the same frame: “I’ve signed a law that cuts spending and reduces our deficit by $2 trillion.

Language is important here, as well as policy. “Spending” is a conservative term; it suggests a needless draining of financial resources, a waste of money. But most of that money was “invested” in our people or used to maintain our infrastructure — not just “spent”. Though a tax reduction for working families may very well have been a good idea, the term “cutting taxes” is a conservative term, suggesting that taxes in general are bad and should be “cut.”

There is of course a deeper problem here. Anyone this me-too-conservatism might appeal to would most likely vote for a real conservative over Obama.

Third, in his speech, the president gives a long list of perfectly reasonable policies: ending oil subsidies, investing in education, hiring more teachers and pay them better, not deporting young immigrants, investing in clean energy, encouraging energy innovation, supporting R&D tax credits, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, reforming the tax code, eliminating tax breaks for businesses that ship jobs overseas, strengthening Medicare and Medicaid, and so on.

No such list is going to be remembered by most of those who heard it. Moreover, what is said first matters; it sets the moral frame. In his speech, Obama first repeats the Romney frames, opposes them to numbers and policy lists, and only at the end talks about his own moral vision.

What could Obama have done better?

Frame everything from his own moral perspective, including Romney’s positions and assumptions. Avoid the Romney language. Start with his own moral position, which he stated beautifully in his 2008 campaign but has since dropped: That democracy is based on empathy (citizens caring about fellow citizens), responsibility both for oneself and others, and an ethic of excellence (doing one’s best not just for oneself, but for one’s family, community, and country).

What else?

Repeat the truth that The Private depends on The Public. It is The Public that provides economic freedom. Give a vision of responsible, progressive business. Talk freedom — as well as fairness. Point out that the hoarding of wealth by the 1 percent kills opportunity, as Joseph Stieglitz has discussed at length. Speak of an “Economy for All — not just rich bankers, managers, and job killers like private equity firms.” Yes, Romney and those like him are job killers. Say it. Point out that during the economic recovery of 2010, 93 percent of the additional income went to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers. Stop using “top” to mean rich. “Top” suggests high morality, merit, and ability. “Bottom” signifies the opposite.

We are now in a situation where conservatives have framed almost every issue. The least Democrats can do is to refuse to repeat their language and so help them.

We could go on, and we do in The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, and on The Little Blue Blog www.littleblueblog.org. Click on it now for a first visit.

George Lakoff is the author of Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate‘ (Chelsea Green). He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.

Emphasis Mine

see: