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Republicans, the party of the nation’s entitled rich, are holding a knife to the throat of America’s frail recovery.
The GOP sore losers have America up against a wall. Republicans don’t care that the majority of the country voted for a candidate who promised to raise taxes on the rich. Republicans don’t care that an even larger majority – 60 percent – told election day pollsters they wanted those taxes raised. Republicans don’t care about majority-rule democracy at all. They’re demanding ransom – extension of tax cuts for the rich. If Americans don’t submit, Republicans will slash the nation’s economy.
“Back away from your Social Security, your Medicare, your Medicaid,” the Republicans are ordering. The GOP insists those crucial social insurance programs be sacrificed to prevent the entitled rich from once again paying the income tax rates that they did during the boom years of Bill Clinton. The party that lost the Presidency, lost seats in the House and lost seats in the Senate is willing to take down the economy, to eviscerate programs like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration rather than require the entitled rich pull their weight as citizens of the country that enabled them to live lives of unprecedented luxury.
The candidate Republicans chose as their presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, stated the party’s position loud and clear last spring and reiterated it during a phone call last week with his millionaire financiers. Romney told funders in May that he had no intention of “worrying about” 47 percent of Americans who he described as moochers, citizens he slandered with the allegation that they refuse to “take personal responsibility.”
In the phone call last week, Romney claimed that the Americans he referred to as government moochers all voted for President Obama because the Democrat gave them “gifts.” Romney, a quarter-billionaire, described the administration's plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest as a “gift” to students. The Republican candidate born into wealth and pampered in private schools characterized as a “gift” the requirement in Obamacare that health insurance companies provide prescription contraceptives without co-payments.
The rich boy said President Obama bought women’s votes for $10 co-pay forgiveness. But for Republicans, it’s never the other way around. Romney and the GOP don’t think they were buying the votes of the rich with their promise to add another 20 percent break on top of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest.
That’s because they believe they’re entitled. They derisively refer to the social safety net programs that prevent the nation’s poor and elderly from being reduced to eating cat food as “entitlements.” But it’s the entitled rich – Romney, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and their ilk – who demand that America give them “stuff” like tax breaks for sending jobs overseas, like tax loopholes for hoarding their assets in the Caymans, like government-paid roads and sewers and rail lines to their businesses.
The entitled rich and their political party don’t seem to get the fact that they lost the election. Eighty CEOs have ponied up $37 million to make sure the so-called fiscal cliff problem is resolved their way. They’re saying, basically, they’re willing to give up one of the “couple of Cadillacs” they drive if the middle class just accepts cat food as its meat course. The CEOs, calling themselves the “Fix the Debt” coalition, claim they’ll pay a secret amount more in taxes if the 99 percent suffers cuts to its social safety net and endures slashed government programs.
Republicans in Congress won’t even go that far. Their legislation would give more to the rich and less to everyone else. They’ve proposed, for example, extending the estate tax cuts that benefit the richest 0.3 percent of American families when their millionaire relatives die, an estimated 7,000 people in 2013. At the same time, Republicans are demanding an end to child tax credit and earned income tax credit enhancements that help 13 million families get by, families that include 26 million children. Those 7,000 entitled rich people and their Republican representatives believe 26 million kids can always join the grandmas dining on cat food. Tastes like chicken, right?
Congress and the President are confronted with a deadline in these hostage negotiations. On Jan. 1, half a trillion in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts are scheduled to take effect for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. It’s called the fiscal cliff because many economists believe the combined effect during a weak recovery would shove the economy back down into recession.
Democrats don’t want to risk damaging the economy. They’ve proposed extending the tax cuts for the 98 percent right now. The richest two percent would benefit from these breaks as well, receiving them on the first $250,000 of their earnings. Everybody gets something. This proposal passed the Democratic-controlled Senate. The Republican-controlled House refuses to even vote on it.
Republicans aren’t talking about extending tax breaks for the 98 percent. Instead, they’re threatening the economic life of the country if they don’t get what they want – tax breaks for people who don’t need them.
Law enforcement experts discourage paying off blackmailers and kidnappers.
President Obama is right to take that advice and refuse to pay the ransom Republicans are demanding to appease the entitled rich.
Are you sleeping, are you sleeping,
Brother John? Brother John?
Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.
Early in the morning, the day after Americans awarded him four more years in the White House, President Obama gave his acceptance speech then sought détente immediately by calling GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Johnny and Mitch rebuffed him. They were asleep, Barack Obama was informed. They would not be rousted to speak to the likes of the President of the United States.
Then, the day after Americans voted to reject Mitt Romney's plan to reduce the deficit on the back of the middle class, Johnny and Mitch insisted that Congress must reduce the deficit on the back of the middle class.
Johnny and Mitch need to wake up to the new reality. Ding, dang dong. Republicans lost. They lost the Presidency. They lost seats in both the House and the Senate. The American people smacked Republicans down and trounced the GOP’s darling Tea Party. Losers don’t disrespect the victors. And, Johnny and Mitch, just FYI, losers don’t dictate the terms of armistice. The victor in the 2012 Presidential election ran on a pledge not to renew those expiring Bush tax cuts for the rich. American voters validated those terms.
President Obama and Mitt Romney reveled in their differences. The choice was clear for Americans. For his part, Romney dismissed 47 percent of Americans as lazy, irresponsible “takers” and promised to decrease taxes for the nation’s wealthiest by 20 percent beyond the Bush cuts.
President Obama, by contrast, promised he would let expire the Bush tax cuts for everyone earning more than $250,000 a year, which would include himself and Mitt Romney. As Republicans carped about the nation’s debt, Obama said it was time for those who had benefited most from America to fulfill their responsibilities to their country.
Not only did voters choose President Obama and his fiscal plan, but they also said in exit interviews that those Bush tax cuts for the rich have gotta go. Here’s what an infamous number – 47 percent – told the exit pollsters about the rich: Anyone earning more than a quarter million should pay more taxes. An additional 13 percent said everyone’s taxes should be raised.
Those results are consistent with the way Americans voted on local tax measures. They increased their own taxes repeatedly on Tuesday.
Residents of California and Arkansas, San Antonio and Austin voted to pay more in taxes for specific purposes such as education and infrastructure. In Oregon and Florida, voters rejected limits on and elimination of certain taxes.
The vast majority of Americans are willing to do their part to support their country. And they expect no special exemption from that responsibility for the nation’s richest. They sent that message Tuesday through their ballot choices.
John Boehner must have snoozed through that missive. On Wednesday, after speaking with fellow Republicans on a conference call – apparently he was awake for that one – Boehner announced that he would refuse to allow the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire.
He also said any deal with the White House to avoid the automatic budget cuts and tax increases dubbed the “fiscal cliff” that will occur Jan. 1, 2013 barring action by Congress must include overhauls to the tax code, Medicare and Medicaid.
The American people rejected all of this while Boehner was unconscious on Tuesday.
Romney chose as his vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who proposed voucherizing Medicare to shift costs to seniors and butchering Medicaid by shoving responsibility for it to the states. The Romney-Ryan team proposed cutting income taxes by 20 percent for everyone, including the rich, and recouping the revenue loss by closing loopholes they kept in a special secret lock box.
Non-partisan economists said this plan did not compute unless Romney and Ryan raised revenue from the middle class by eliminating deductions vital to them, such as those on mortgages. Romney and Ryan insisted they could, in fact, magically make the numbers add up without adding to the tax burden of the middle class.
But they refused to disclose that super-secret formula. For some reason, the American people didn’t believe them. They chose President Obama instead – the guy who flat out said he’d raise taxes on the rich and whose health care law broadly expands Medicaid. They chose the guy whose vice president pledged that the administration would not cut Social Security.
Thanks to the right-wing Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unlimited contributions to super PACs, a handful of the nation’s richest – including Kenneth Langone, founder of Home Depot; billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch; gambling kingpin Sheldon Adelson; Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts; Texas industrialist Harold Simmons, and Texas homebuilder Bob Perry – spent hundreds of millions in an attempt to buy a President for themselves.
They failed. The feet of hundreds of thousands of volunteers beat them. Jonathan Collegio, the spokesman for one of those Republican super PACs, American Crossroads, admitted it. He told reporter Amanda Terkel at Huffington Post:
“If you look at the exit polls, the way that Obama won was on the ground in Cleveland with a lot of the minority voters. . .I just don’t know that’s a job for super PACs.”
The voters who re-elected President Obama celebrated on Tuesday, rested on Wednesday, then went back to the streets on Thursday. They demonstrated at more than 100 sites across the country to demand protection for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, to demand that some stinking “grand bargain” to avoid the fiscal cliff does not include cuts to crucial programs promised the middle class. They re-elected President Obama and now they going to make sure he can keep his promises to them.
Hey, John Boehner: Morning bells are ringing. And if Republicans don't wake up and listen to the middle class, what they'll hear is mourning bells tolled after they lose even more seats.
In New Jersey, as Barack Obama and Chris Christie met last week to survey the devastation Hurricane Sandy caused, the President placed a reassuring hand on the heartsick governor’s shoulder. Later, the President embraced storm victim Donna Vanzant in Brigantine, N.J., and told her and all East Coast residents that he and the nation “are here for you.”
Here for you means the federal government would muster all its resources to help Americans devastated by a deadly hurricane to restore some sense of normalcy to their upturned lives and to help rebuild their homes and communities.
Americans unfailingly rally to the aid of those in need. A youngster helps grandma across the street. A community builds a wheelchair ramp for an injured veteran. Sometimes, though, the tragedy is too massive for the scale of help that families and neighborhoods can provide. Then Americans turn to the federal government to help them deliver safety and solace. This is among the most profound and basic duties of government. Barack Obama has insisted that it be performed well because he believes government can be – and must be – a force for good.
It’s not a matter of big government or small government. Although, frankly, a government small enough to drown in a bathtub, as Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist seeks, would not be large enough to respond to catastrophes such as Sandy’s destruction across 15 states or to the 750 tornadoes that ripped through the South and Midwest, including Joplin, Mo., in April and May last year. And a federal government that fobbed off responsibility for emergency management to the states or to private enterprise, as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he wanted to do during the GOP primary debates, would not be prepared to respond adequately to American catastrophes.
Romney has walked back those statements now, contending after Sandy hit that he wouldn’t eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But the nation has seen what happens when a president is careless about the federal government helping Americans during emergencies. That would be, specifically, former President Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina.
First, Bush chose patronage over qualifications in naming a FEMA director, appointing to the post an Arabian Horse Association functionary who had absolutely no experience or training in emergency management. Then when Katrina hit, the administration virtually ignored it – failing to respond to pleas for help from desperate governors and mayors; failing to cut short vacations, or even meals, to work on hurricane response, failing to provide available federal resources as Americans died in the Superdome.
In stark contrast, Obama demanded credentials when he selected his FEMA director. He went so far as to ignore party affiliation – appointing William Craig Fugate, a Republican. Fugate, who began his career as a firefighter and paramedic, was director of the Florida emergency management agency – a position that exposed him to rigors of responding to disasters, particularly hurricanes.
Even before Sandy struck the East Coast, Obama and Fugate began planning and coordinating a response. Proactively, the President called 20 governors and mayors to offer help and arrange expedited disaster declarations. He called Christie several times during the storm and gave the governor his personal phone number so Christie could reach him directly. He ordered FEMA and other federal officials to respond to calls from political leaders within 15 minutes. Everyone focused on the impending calamity.
Before the hurricane made landfall, FEMA organized search and rescue teams, sent 139 ambulances to New York, and established support centers with supplies like generators and blankets in New Jersey and Massachusetts. By Monday evening, when the storm hit New Jersey with winds of 80 miles an hour, FEMA had already delivered hundreds of thousands of ready-to-eat meals and bottled water for New Jersey residents who might need it. There would be no Superdome fiasco in New Jersey or New York.
By Wednesday, President Obama joined Christie in New Jersey to assess the devastation in person. A clearly exhausted Christie, who had previously been a vocal critic of the President, expressed strong support for Obama’s response to the storm, saying:
“The president has been all over this, and he deserves great credit.”
President Barack Obama embraces Donna Vanzant, owner of a New Jersey marina damaged by Hurricane Sandy. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
When tragedy occurs, we all naturally turn to our families first, brothers and sisters, parents and cousins, aunts and uncles who we know we can depend on, who we know will give us comfort and relief.
Obama sees government as an extended family. He referred to the federal agencies he collected to respond to Hurricane Sandy as a federal family. We all have immediate biological families, but we all also belong to the American family. We share American experiences and values, privileges and responsibilities.
President Obama has said many times that he believes we all are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Here’s what he says in his speeches:
“Yes, our road is longer, but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up.”
That is what he sees American family members doing for each other. That is how Americans pull together to help fellow Americans struck by tragedy. And when the tragedy is of gargantuan proportions, Obama believes that to respond effectively, the federal family must be more than competent. It must be good to do good.
In addition to providing the bottled water and rescue teams, the federal family must, just as any good family member would, just as President Obama did in New Jersey, wrap consoling arms around the traumatized.
Mitt Romney kept quiet last week when the subject was rape and God’s will. He remained silent the week before when the news was all about Illinois factory workers pleading with him to stop his alma mater Bain Capital from offshoring their jobs.
At no time this year did Mitt denounce Republican employers who threatened their workers if President Obama is re-elected or condemn repeated Republican legislative attempts to suppress Democratic votes.
Throughout the campaign, Mitt Romney confronted numerous George Washington moments -- opportunities to establish an aura of honor. It takes moxie to tell fellow Republicans that voter suppression is un-American. Only a guy with strongly held principles would stand up to the firm he founded and insist they stop the morally bankrupt practice of offshoring jobs from profit-making American factories. At every turn, Romney chose the ignoble path. He kept his mouth shut rather than speak up for what’s right.
Just last week, an opportunity for righteousness landed in Romney’s lap. It happened when the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Indiana, Richard E. Mourdock, said he opposed all abortions, even in cases of rape, and suggested that God intends rape to happen. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2012/10/26/obama-mourdock-romney-r... what Mourdock said:</a>
<blockquote>“Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, it is something that God intended to happen.”</blockquote>
Romney could have specifically renounced this view – that God intends women to be raped and become pregnant as a result. And he could have underscored that position by ending television ads in which he endorses Mourdock.
But he didn’t. A campaign spokeswoman said Mitt “disagreed” with Mourdock on that rape thing, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2012/10/26/obama-mourdock-romney-r... still supports him.</a> Since then, Mitt has refused to answer questions about Mourdock. And he’s kept airing his Mourdock endorsement ads.
Clearly, Mitt values a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate over a decent stand on rape.
Just the week before, heightened news coverage of the plight of workers at the Sensata factory in Freeport, Ill. gave Romney another opportunity to do the right thing.
He chose to do nothing.
The 170 workers at Sensata will lose their jobs at year’s end <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/us/politics/as-romney-repeats-trade-me... Bain Capital finishes shipping the car sensor factory lock, stock and machinery to China.</a> The workers have repeatedly petitioned Romney to intervene with Bain, a firm he created and still profits from, to stop the offshoring.
Romney stiffed them. The candidate who claims he would create 12 million jobs if elected president failed to make an attempt to save the jobs of these 170 workers <a href="http://pressroom.sensata.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=210277&p=irol-pressArti... a successful, money-making American factory</a>. He didn’t send the workers his condolences <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/18/1041171/employees-protest-b... personally profiting</a> from their calamity. He has never even acknowledged the Sensata workers’ existence.
At virtually any moment as he ran for president over the past two years, Romney could have very publically deplored Republican attempts to suppress Democratic votes. That’s because virtually continuously over that time, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/170287/courts-block-gop-voter-suppression-... legislatures, Republican governors and other GOP officials have concocted a variety of measures to wrest from Democrats their right to vote</a>. These include passing onerous photo ID requirements, limiting early balloting and aggressively purging voter rolls.
These measures <a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/07/voter-suppression-returns">disproport... affect minority, poor, disabled, elderly and women voters, all of whom tend to vote Democrat.</a> Among the most egregious examples occurred in Ohio where <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/169454/ohio-gop-admits-early-voting-cutbac... secretary of state tried to limit poll hours in Democratic-dominated counties and extend them in Republican-controlled counties</a>.
At any time during the massive publicity over any one of these incidents across the country – from Maine to Montana and Florida to Arizona – Romney could have stood up and spoken for fairness. He never did – not even after the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/3-Va-lawmakers-seek-federal-vot... National Committee was forced to fire a shady voter registration firm</a> that was caught in September submitting hundreds of fraudulent registration forms in Florida or after a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/25/politics/virginia-fraud-claim/index.html">... operative in Virginia was criminally charged</a> in October with throwing completed voter registration forms in a Dumpster.
A simple statement from Romney would have sufficed: winning by means of voter suppression and registration fraud is craven and beneath the dignity of anyone seeking public office. But he said nothing.
Similar to voter suppression is the attempt at voter coercion that has been made by numerous employers this year. Just this past week, Mike White, owner of Rite-Hite, a Milwaukee industrial equipment manufacturer<a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/ceo-who-received-stimulus-money-threaten..., threatened his workers with “personal consequences”</a> if President Obama is re-elected. Earlier this month, timeshare mogul David Siegel, who is building himself a 90,000-square-foot, $100 million home, <a href="http://www.wogx.com/story/19778007/timeshare-mogul-threatens-layoffs-und... to lay off his workers </a>if President Obama is re-elected. <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/14/1009651/ceo-fire-employees-o... Allen of ASG Software Solutions</a> and the Koch brothers of Georgia Pacific, <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/14017/koch_industries_sends_45000_employ... their tens of thousands of workers they’d suffer fallout</a> if Romney loses.
Romney could have acted as a shield for workers by condemning this intimidation. Instead, in a June conference call with business owners, <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/10/11804/nfib-conference-call-romney-ur... encouraged bullying.</a> He <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/26/sheldon-adelson-workers-voter-g... the business owners:</a>
<blockquote> "I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”</blockquote>
What Americans want is a president like George Washington. The general’s appeal is not the quirky wooden teeth or odd half-finished portrait. It’s the never-tell-a-lie, step-down-from-power nobility of the guy. Romney, by contrast, has shown he’s willing to win without honor. He doesn’t seem to know Americans won’t elect a candidate they believe lacks nobility.
Every day President Obama reads and responds to letters from citizens. This illustrates his basic philosophy: people first.
By contrast, for Mitt Romney, profit is the priority. He hasn't responded to any of the letters sent to him by workers at Sensata Technologies, a car sensor manufacturer in Freeport, Ill. owned by Bain Capital. Romney doesn't run Bain anymore, but he still reaps millions from the strip-and-flip firm each year. The Sensata workers want Romney to intervene with Bain and stop it from shipping their jobs to China. He won't. Because the bottom line is that profit is more important to Romney than people.
In the debate last week, Romney said if elected president, he’d create 12 million jobs, including 2 million by cracking down on China – the very place where Bain is transporting Sensata – jobs, machinery and all. Romney said:
“That's why I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.”
No doubt, 12 million jobs would be great. But the Food and Drug Administration should ban this snake oil – no wonder Romney hates government regulation.
First of all, 12 million is not impressive. Really. That’s because between 9 million and 12 million jobs are going to be created anyway. No matter what. Even considering the so-called fiscal cliff. Those estimates are according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Moody’s Analytics and Macroeconomic Advisors. So Romney’s promise is empty – zero more jobs than expected.
Maybe, in fact, Romney pledged to achieve what’s going to happen no matter who is president because he believes government can’t produce jobs. In last week’s debate, Romney repeated twice his contention government can’t generate jobs. Okay. But then how is a Romney government going to create 12 million jobs?
Well, he has a five-point plan, right? Romney says in a campaign ad that his tax cuts would create 7 million jobs; his energy policies 3 million; and his crack down on China, his expanding trade and his job training all together 2 million. The studies that the Romney campaign offered to the Washington Post to support these claims don’t actually support these claims. They’re so bogus that the Post gave Romney its highest liar rating for his 12-million-job claim – four Pinocchios.
And then there’s Sensata.
It’s highly profitable, not some failing enterprise limping overseas for cheap labor, tax breaks and lax environmental laws. Bain can’t claim that excessively high American payroll costs are forcing it to move to China because Sensata is making money hand over fist while paying decent middle class wages.
Bain transported its new Chinese workers to Illinois and ordered its American employees, some of whom have devoted more than 40 years to the company, to suffer the humiliation of training their replacements. One hundred and seventy middle class Sensata workers will lose their jobs by year’s end. The community will lose a major employer as well as the tax revenue it received from the company and the workers. The state will suffer the same losses.
Mary Kerr, who worked at Sensata for six years and whose husband also worked there, told the Sun Chronicle newspaper:
“We only want to make a living and pay our bills, just like everyone else does. They’re not moving our jobs because they’re losing money. They want to make an extra dollar.”
That’s exactly right. Obviously Bain believes it will make even more money by transferring American manufacturing and American jobs to China. It has no allegiance to the United States or to American workers; just to money. It got that philosophy from its founding father – Mitt Romney. The Republican presidential nominee also stands to gain because under his retirement agreement with Bain, when it makes more money, he makes more money.
To Romney, and the creature he created – Bain Capital – it’s all about profit. Workers be damned.
Romney has rebuffed entreaties for help from Sensata workers who delivered a petition with 35,000 signatures to a Romney campaign office, workers who went to the Republican convention in Tampa, and workers who sought him out in Iowa during the Republican primary, as well as from Freeport City Council and the governor of Illinois.
Yet this guy wants America to believe he’ll create jobs. He said in the second debate:
“I know what it takes to create good jobs again. I know what it takes to make sure that you have the kind of opportunity you deserve. And kids across this country are going to recognize, we're bringing back an economy.”
The Sensata workers have experienced Romney’s economy and they’re advising against it. In a rally at Sensata headquarters last week, workers chanted:
"We are from Freeport; we are united; we don't want a Romney economy."
Romney brags about being a businessman. That’s what he is, all right, a used car salesman peddling America an economic lemon. The country can't afford four years under a president who claims he'll create 12 million jobs but won't lift a finger to save 170 in Freeport.
Billy Koehler died on March 7, 2009, for lack of health insurance. Mitt Romney said on Oct. 10, 2012, that’s impossible.
The Republican nominee for President told The Columbus Dispatch newspaper last week:
“We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”
Technically, that’s true of Billy Koehler. He didn’t die in his apartment. He died in his car. Koehler suffered cardiac arrest and perished slumped over his steering wheel at a stop sign in Pittsburgh because he didn’t have health insurance and didn’t have $60,000 to replace his implanted defibrillator.
Romney, a quarter-billionaire born with a silver foot in his mouth, has shielded himself from the world in which America’s many Billy Koehlers exist. Their paths don’t naturally cross. Billy Koehlers don’t hang out with Romney’s NASCAR owner pals. Billy Koehlers don’t disparage the nation’s elderly and impoverished at fundraisers in the homes of private equity moguls. FDR and JFK made an effort to understand the joys and hardships of the non-rich. But Romney hasn’t. And that’s why he so carelessly called America’s Billy Koehlers a deliberately dependent underclass, albeit one comprising 47 percent of all citizens. Because Romney knows nothing of the lives of the nation’s Billy Koehlers, the Republican nominee can dismiss their medical predicaments as nonexistent and assure wealthy donors he won’t “worry about those people.”
Romney told the Columbus newspaper that no one needs to worry about those lacking health insurance because federal law requires hospitals to treat emergency cases:
“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack.”
He continued:
“No, you go to the hospital; you get treated; you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital.”
Logically, then, the solution would be for no one to buy insurance. Why bother? Hospitals must treat and bill someone else, according to Romney.
But it doesn’t work that way. The late Billy Koehler is an example of how it actually operates – how it fails to work for 26,100 to 45,000 Americans who die each year for lack of insurance.
Billy’s sister, Georgeanne Koehler, a retired hospital worker and member of the Service Employees International Union, told his story at rallies for passage of Obamacare, taking with her an empty chair in his memory. She celebrated the law’s passage in 2010, particularly its provision forbidding insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. That might have saved her brother.
Billy was just 39 when he suffered his first cardiac arrest. An electronics technician, he had health insurance through his employer, and that paid for surgery to implant a defibrillator. Still, over the years, Billy spent his entire $25,000 in pension savings on medical bills that insurance did not pay.
In 2003, Billy lost his job and his health insurance when the company he worked for closed. He tried to get another job with health insurance but could not. He tried to buy health coverage privately, but every insurer in Pennsylvania denied his request because of his pre-existing heart condition. He didn’t qualify for Medicaid because he earned slightly too much money in his new job as a pizza delivery driver.
While at work on Dec. 14, 2007, he collapsed in the pizza shop. He survived, but a cardiologist told him that his defibrillator needed to be replaced. Because Billy had no insurance, the doctor required payment up front.
Romney’s right about one thing. The hospital treated Billy as an emergency cardiac arrest victim. But the hospital emergency room wasn’t required to give him surgery to replace the defibrillator. And neither Billy, nor his sister, had $60,000 to pay for it out of pocket.
Less than two years later, as Billy drove home from work, he suffered cardiac arrest again. And he died. For lack of health insurance.
Under Obamacare, insurers can’t deny coverage to people like Billy because of pre-existing conditions. Obamacare also established high-risk pools for people like Billy. And Obamacare will extend Medicaid to more low-income people like Billy.
Romney has pledged to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office. Like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette, he says: let ‘em go to the emergency room.
Romney’s prescription doesn’t work. It wouldn’t work for his own wife, Ann, who has multiple sclerosis and survived breast cancer. As quarter billionaires, the Romneys have the best insurance in the world. But without it, a hospital emergency room would not have provided Ann Romney with the care she needed. Emergency rooms don’t perform lumpectomies or radiation therapy. Emergency rooms don’t provide therapy for fatigue, dizziness, numbness or paralysis caused by MS. Emergency rooms don’t dispense MS drugs that can cost $3,000 a month. Romney’s clearly unaware of the empty chair campaign. Not having health insurance or $60,000 for surgery is inconceivable to him. He bought his wife a $500,000 dressage horse for MS therapy, after all.
America can’t afford to have in the White House an empty Armani who has made no attempt to find out what it’s like to try to survive uninsured, who remains clueless about all the chairs in America emptied by lack of insurance. The nation can’t afford a president so comatose to the lives of average Americans.
"I’m gonna float like a butterfly and sting like a bee;
George can’t hit what his hands can’t see;
Now you see me, now you don’t;
He thinks he will, but I know he won’t." ~ Muhammad Ali
At last week’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.
He punched and parried, feigning the great Muhammad Ali.
Any likeness between the two is, however, mere illusion. America has seen victory by Muhammad Ali. America worked through disputes with Muhammad Ali. Now America admires Muhammad Ali. And Mitt Romney is no champion. Instead, Romney's a magic man. He employs sleight of hand. He uses smoke and mirrors to confuse and obscure. Unlike President Obama, Mitt doesn't do math. He performs tricks, sorta like Muhammad Ali said in his rhyme – Now you see severely conservative Romney, now you don’t. The GOP nominee asks Americans to engage in magical thinking – to believe his hocus-pocus is not just a stage show but will actually painlessly solve problems.
Last week, Romney promoted his magic show during the debate. He promised his performance as president would be fabulous, stupendous, unprecedented! He bragged:
“My plan is not like anything that’s been tried before.”
Specifically, he was talking about his tax plan. Romney has pledged to reinstate the Bush tax cuts should they expire at year’s end as scheduled, then further slash income taxes by 20 percent for everyone. Also, Romney has vowed to eliminate and cut other federal taxes, including the estate tax.
Here’s the part where Romney promises to accomplish something never done before: he says he’ll slash and burn all these taxes but not add a dime to the deficit or to the tax burden of the middle class. When Ronald Reagan made a similar promise, George Bush I called it voodoo economics. George Bush II tried this magic trick and failed. Bush gave everyone, particularly the rich, tax breaks. Then the federal deficit skyrocketed. To quote a bumbling former Republican presidential candidate, “Whoops.”
Romney says that won’t happen when he performs as president. He’s too good. The illusionist swore to the nation Wednesday night:
“My, my number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”
He hasn’t specified how he’d accomplish that because, as you know, magic tricks are proprietary secrets. He’s offered a couple of enticing tidbits, however.
One is that he’d close tax loopholes and deductions to recoup income lost because of all those tax cuts. But he won’t say which ones because, again, those proprietary magic secrets.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) analyzed Romney’s proposal and concluded it didn’t add up – even when they gave him lots of breaks because his plan is clandestine. To get back $1 from closed loopholes for every $1 in tax cuts, the TPC determined that Romney would have to eliminate breaks favored by the middle class, such the mortgage deduction. And that means Romney’s plan would cost middle class families an additional $2,000 a year on average, the TPC said.
Still, Romney assured the American people last week:
“I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families.”
Abracadabra!
Romney insists his bag of tricks contains one that will enable him to defy the math of the TPC economists, who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. One way would be to do what Bush did, just cut taxes and increase the deficit. Romney contends that’s not in his repertoire:
“I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. That's part one. So there's no economist can say Mitt Romney's tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.”
Nobody can say it if Mitt Romney says they can’t! He dismisses pesky economic experts with a wave of his magic wand.
Just as he’d heal the budget, Romney would patch up the nation’s health care system -- with pixie dust.
First, he says he’d repeal Obamacare on day one. Second, he told debate listeners:
“What I support is no change for current retirees or near-retirees to Medicare.”
Logically, or mathematically, or realistically, that won’t work. As of August, 5.4 million seniors had saved $4.1 billion on prescription drugs, about $768 each, because Obamacare closes the Medicare prescription plan donut hole. And, under Obamacare, this year more than 18 million Medicare recipients received at least one preventive service for free. Killing Obamacare would mean seniors would have to pay those costs once again from their own limited funds. This would be a costly change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.
Also, Obamacare extended the life of Medicare by eight years. It did so by reducing payments to medical facilities by $716 billion over a decade, reductions accepted by the providers when the law was negotiated. Romney says he will eliminate the savings to Medicare and give those payments to the medical facilities. That, logically, would snuff out the life of Medicare eight years earlier, which would be a tragic change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.
But, you know, presto-chango, Romney says it ain’t so.
Many aspects of Obamacare are beloved by those who have benefitted, including extending coverage for young adults on their parents’ plans, eliminating coverage caps and instituting rebates when insurers charge too much. But perhaps the most important Obamacare protection was the specification that insurers can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Repealing Obamacare would eliminate that benefit. Romney’s response at the debate:
“In fact, I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions.”
Romney’s plan could exclude millions, however, since it guarantees insurance only if the person with a pre-existing condition has maintained coverage without a lapse longer than three months.
But, no worries. In Romney’s magical world, if we all just clap loudly enough, Tinker Bell won’t die!
Like any good magician, Romney keeps the details of his plans for America hidden up his sleeve. Taking a cue from that Muhammad Ali rhyme, he believes:
Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.
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Leo W. Gerard also is a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee and chairs the labor federation’s Public Policy Committee. President Barack Obama appointed him to the President’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. He serves as co-chairman of the BlueGreen Alliance and on the boards of Campaign for America’s Future and the Economic Policy Institute. He is a member of the IMF and ICEM global labor federations and was instrumental in creating Workers Uniting, the first global union. Follow @USWBlogger
Republicans’ reaction to last week’s Monday Night Football debacle was record breaking given their decades of hating on union workers.
After replacement refs bestowed on the Seattle Seahawks a game clearly won by the Green Bay Packers, GOP standard bearers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and even Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the figurehead for GOP union-busting, called for the National Football League to restore its locked-out union refs.
Wait, what?
Unbelievably, it’s actually the sound of Republicans giving union refs a little respect. A union worker is to Republicans what comedian Rodney Dangerfield was to his stage wife – that is, a guy who can’t get no respect. Republicans have tried to tackle union rights since they were formally granted in 1935. The GOP admires business owners, not the working men and women whose labor is essential for companies to exist. The GOP believes owners and CEOs are indispensable but working stiffs are easily replaced. That’s what the NFL did – locked out the working stiffs and replaced them. That didn’t work out so well. And the GOP big wigs, in calling for the union refs’ reinstatement, admitted it. Amazing.
Here’s how it went down. First, the billion-dollar NFL locked out its union refs to save less than $5 million a year. That’s a lockout, not a strike. That means the refs were willing to work under the terms of their old contract until they could reach a new deal. But the NFL threw a little hissy fit and refused.
Lockouts don’t seem to make much sense. Logically, an employer would despise disruption and prefer workers continuing production until there’s agreement on a new contract. But that’s when workers are seeking a larger portion of the value of what they produce -- higher pay or benefits.
When employers want to slash pay and benefits, they lock out workers. Even massively profitable employers – like the NFL – do it in an attempt to take more for themselves and give less to workers.
And the key ingredient here is disrespect. They hold workers in such contempt that they think anyone can be replaced. Easily. No problem. Here’s what Ray Anderson, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, said in the early days of the lockout about the value of a ref:
“You’ve never paid for an NFL ticket to watch somebody officiate a game.”
That disrespect led directly to the Packers-Seahawks fiasco. From the outset, the replacement refs fumbled and bumbled. Coaches complained that games were out of control. Fans mocked the numerous bad calls.
Wisconsin Gov. Walker, who faced a recall over his attempts to squash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public sector workers, tweeted afterward:
“After catching a few hours of sleep, the Packers game is still just as painful. #Returntherealrefs”
Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee who backed Walker’s attempt to decimate union rights, said this at a town hall in Cincinnati the next day:
"Did you guys watch that Packer game last night? I mean, give me a break. It is time to get the real refs."
GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who called National Labor Relations Board officials “stooges,” agreed, telling a CNN reporter:
“I sure would like to see some experienced referees, with NFL experience, come back to the NFL playing fields.”
Of course, the only referees with NFL experience were the locked-out union ones. The substitutes were “real refs,” despite Ryan’s derision. They were, however, unseasoned. They lacked the training and time on the NFL field that the union refs have. In addition, they didn’t have the help of union ref Ed Hochuli, who assigned himself headmaster for a lockout boot camp. He sent his 120 fellow refs five-hour tests on rules, organized weekly conference calls on regulations and distributed game tape to ensure the union refs would be prepared when the NFL ended the lock out.
The same way NFL teams choose the top-performing players they can get or an employer selects the best workers for the job, the NFL picked Hochuli and the other 120 refs. The NFL believed those 121 individuals to be unrivaled. After they were hired, the refs received training and experience on the job. The same as all workers do.
Disregarding all that, employers increasingly lock out workers. In any given year now, workers strike 83 percent less often than they did 20 years ago. But employers now lock out workers so often that this measure taken against workers accounts for a record number of work disruptions.
This is disrespect. This is disregard for the value, skill, training and quality of workers. And it’s not safe. That was an argument made by NFL players who feared they’d be hurt in games they perceived to be unruly under substitute refs. The danger of replacements is a fact.
When Con Edison locked out 8,000 utility workers in New York last summer, at least two replacement workers – both managers – were hurt. One was burned in a manhole explosion and the other in a substation fire. Utility Workers Union spokesman John Melia said trying to replace trained and experienced utility workers with managers was unwise:
“We really doubt whether you can take someone out of an office cube and put him down a flaming manhole.”
The same was true when Honeywell International locked out its uranium processing workers in Metropolis, Ill., in 2010 and replaced them with substitutes whose training to handle the highly toxic combustible and corrosive chemicals used to process uranium for nuclear fuel was questionable. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission cited Honeywell for illegally coaching replacement workers on exams. And at least two dangerous incidents occurred at the plant while substitutes worked there, including a release of hydrofluoric acid.
Maybe now that they’ve seen what happened with the replacement refs, the GOP will respect workers.
Naw. That would be too good to be true, like the NFL reversing that bad call on the Packers-Seahawks game.
GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, son of an American Motors CEO, naturally says he loves American cars. His wife, as he put it, “drives a couple of Cadillacs.” He’s installing an elevator in his beach mansion just for his cars. Though a millionaire, he rejected flying his five sons to a vacation destination, instead packing them into a car, then strapping their dog Seamus’ carrier to the car roof for a ride that, shall we say, challenged the canine’s intestinal fortitude.
President Barack Obama, by contrast, has given some love to American car companies and American car workers. He rescued Chrysler and General Motors, preserving the American icon companies and hundreds of thousands of American car manufacturing jobs. He imposed sanctions on Chinese tires that received improper export subsidies, a move that saved thousands of U.S. tire-building jobs. And now he’s challenging illegally-subsidized Chinese auto parts to sustain American companies and workers.
Romney has blasted Obama every auto-manufacturing-job-preserving step of the way. On the auto bailout, Romney admonished, “Let Detroit go bankrupt.” He condemned the tariffs on Chinese tires. Romney claims he loves American cars. But the actions of his private equity firm, Bain Capital, in buying companies that were “pioneers” in offshoring American jobs, suggest he’s fine with American firms making cars and car parts overseas. Obama, by contrast, took the action necessary to ensure American cars are made in America by American companies employing American workers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OACGoyOCSc&feature=player_embedded
Here’s what Romney actually said about his adoration for cars:
“I love cars. I love American cars. And long may they rule the world.”
When it came to helping them continue to rule the world, however, Romney dissed Detroit.
President Obama embraced Detroit. He took money from the Wall Street bailout fund and used it to help GM and Chrysler continue to rule the world. GM regained the title of world’s largest car company in January and hundreds of thousands of auto and auto part manufacturing workers retained their jobs.
Similarly, in September of 2009, President Obama imposed duties on unfairly traded Chinese tires. My union, the United Steelworkers (USW), filed the trade case that led to those duties. The sanctions saved thousands of tire-making jobs in the United States and contributed to creation of 1,000 more.
Earlier this year, the USW, the Alliance for American Manufacturing and 189 members of Congress urged Obama to take yet another trade action, this one to protect American auto parts manufacturers and their workers. The request followed publication of four reports detailing China’s illegal export subsidies to its auto parts sector. Nations may subsidize manufacturing for internal consumption, but international law prohibits subsidizing products to be exported because it distorts the market, causing the bankruptcy of manufacturers in countries where the artificially cheap products are sold.
The auto parts complaint says that forbidden export subsidies, including cash grants, preferential tax treatment and other perks valued at $1 billion over the past three years enabled China to jump from 16th largest producer of auto parts in 2002, when it exported $7 billion in parts, to 5th largest last year when it exported $70 billion.
The upshot is that imports of auto parts from China increased seven fold, contributing to the loss of nearly half of all U.S. auto parts jobs – 400,000 – since 2000. An example is Olymco, Inc. a Canton, Ohio, metal-plating company where 100 workers, members of the USW, once made auto parts. Now, mainly as a result of subsidized Chinese competition, only 11 workers remain.
The predatory Chinese practices encourage U.S. auto parts makers to offshore manufacturing, and now some of the largest U.S. auto parts companies produce in China.
Sensata, a car parts manufacturer in Freeport, Ill. is among those on the way to China. The 145 workers in Freeport, who make sensors and controls, are training their Chinese replacements.
These workers may return to China to join many there who are packed into dormitories that rival turn of the 20th Century U.S. tenements for slum conditions. Romney described workers in a Chinese appliance factory he visited:
“working, working, working as hard as they could, at rates of roughly 50 cents an hour. They cared about their jobs; they wouldn’t even look up as we walked by.”
That’s right. These exploited workers kept their heads down. These 50-cent-an-hour laborers feared they’d be fired for the audacity of looking at a quarter billionaire American visitor.
Sensata is owned by Bain Capital, the company Romney founded in 1984, the private equity firm that Romney claims he left in 1999, even though it continued to pay him millions for a decade afterward. The workers at Sensata have publically begged Romney to intervene with Bain on their behalf to keep the factory in the United States. They’ve collected 35,000 signatures supporting their cause. They’ve got the backing of the Freeport City Council, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn. They’re camping outside the factory in a tent city called Bainport. But Romney hasn’t responded. No word from the candidate who claims to love American cars.
He loves owning ‘em. He relishes riding them up and down on elevators. But when it comes to showing a little love for car businesses and car workers, Romney’s frigid. Just ask the workers cooling their heels at Bainport.
The auto parts case is Obama’s ninth trade action against China. The Washington Post wrote:
“The Obama administration has steadily amped up its enforcement actions against China at the WTO.”
Obama has repeatedly confronted countries whose illegal trade practices threaten American companies and workers, filing twice as many cases in one term as Bush did in two. He has tangibly demonstrated his love for American cars and American car workers.
Republicans in two Congressional committees voted last week to press forward with legislation that would deny states the flexibility they requested to help more welfare recipients get jobs.
That’s right.
Not only that, Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential candidate, said last week he is eager to return to Washington this week for a floor vote on the Republican measure prohibiting the Obama administration from, as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) described it:
“encouraging states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF (welfare), particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find and retain employment.”
That’s right.
Republicans don’t want the Obama administration to help states get welfare recipients off the dole and into jobs. In July, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched an attack on the administration’s offer to meet a demand from states for more flexibility so states could move more people to work instead of pushing more paper around. Now, Republicans in Congress are taking up the cause of thwarting Obama’s plan to grant states’ request for flexibility. Historically, Republicans supported moving welfare recipients off the federal rolls and onto private pay rolls. But they’re not going to let Obama get credit for accomplishing that.
This dispute began with an attempt by the Obama administration to reduce regulatory burdens. Here’s what President Obama wrote Feb. 28, 2011 in the Administrative Flexibility memo:
“I am instructing agencies to work closely with state, local, and tribal governments to identify administrative, regulatory, and legislative barriers in federally funded programs that currently prevent states, localities, and tribes, from efficiently using tax dollars to achieve the best results for their constituents.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took the directive seriously and asked states for suggestions. Some state officials complained about burdensome welfare reform paperwork requirements and asked if HHS would provide flexibility. Among them were Utah and Nevada, both of which have Republican governors. Utah also has a Republican supermajority in its legislature.
HHS responded with a memo to states issued on July 12. It offers states a chance to achieve flexibility through waiver of some welfare rules if states conduct HHS-approved pilot programs that move additional welfare recipients to work in measureable ways.
The memo states at least 10 times that the goal is increased employment. For example, there’s this:
“HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF (welfare).
“Moreover, HHS is committed to ensuring that any demonstration projects approved under this authority will be focused on improving employment outcomes and contributing to the evidence base for effective programs; therefore, terms and conditions will require a federally-approved evaluation plan designed to build our knowledge base.”
In a letter that accompanied the memo, HHS repeats incessantly that all proposals must fulfill the goal of increased employment. Of the 21 sentences, at least 10 specify that less welfare and more work is mandated by the law, is important and will be required for waiver. For example, there’s this:
“The (HHS) Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits.”
Despite all that, Mitt Romney began condemning the waiver offer immediately after it was issued. Congressional Republicans hope this week to bludgeon it to death with legislation forbidding HHS from providing the flexibility requested by governors, including Republicans Gary Herbert of Utah and Brian Sandoval of Nevada. Herbert’s state department of HHS wrote the federal HHS in 2011 seeking flexibility:
“Nevada is very interested in working with your staff to explore program waivers. . .”
Like welfare-to-work, Republicans have long supported “flexibility” for states in implementing federal mandates. For example, in 2005 every Republican governor in the nation – 29 of them – wrote Congress to support a bill that would have allowed waivers to welfare reform law requirements. The governors told Congress they wanted “flexibility to manage their TANF (welfare) programs.” The letter said:
“Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.”
Mitt Romney signed that letter. He was among the 29 governors seeking flexibility through waivers to manage welfare.
That’s right. The same Mitt Romney who now is denouncing the Obama administration’s effort to provide flexibility.
Now, Romney despises flexibility. Now, he hates waivers. Now, he’s demanding an end to the effort by HHS to give states the ability to experiment with pilot programs to increase the employment of welfare recipients.
It’s yet another Romney flipflop, another Romney Etch-A-Sketch moment. Said it once, erase it now. Romney figures GOP inconsistency doesn’t matter as long as it hurts President Obama somehow.
