The Etch-a-lie Candidate

There are lies, damn lies, statistics and Romney lies. A businessman who will say or do anything to make a profit is not unusual, nor is a politician who will say or do anything to get elected. Legally we even have a category of permitted lies called puffing. Romney’s lies about starting Bain Capital and Staples are examples of political puffing or exaggeration. The problem with Romney is that he does not content himself with puffing or even spinning. What puts him in a rare category of liars is his apparent ability to convince himself that whatever he wants people to believe must be true no matter how absurd it may be. A perfect example of this is the credit he is trying to take for the survival of the U.S. Auto industry. Everyone who has studied the reemergence of the Auto industry agrees that the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler would have failed without the funds President Obama provided for that purpose. Instead of supporting those loans, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in which he railed against what he called the bail outs and said, in essence, that we should let Detroit go bankrupt. What is so delusional about Romney’s contention that the policies he advocated saved the auto industry is the fact that anyone can look up the op-ed in which he advocated a laissez faire government policy that would have let GM and Chrysler die.

The more outrageous the policy or action is the more outrageous is the lie Romney uses to defend it. The Republican Party’s war on women is an example of this. Everyone who has fact checked it has labeled as a lie Mr. Romney’s statement that 92% of the jobs lost during President Obama’s term have been lost by women. The truth is that women hold a disproportionate number of the teaching, nursing, and government jobs. It is the Republican controlled House of Representatives that has and is preventing President Obama from providing the states with funds to keep teachers and other government workers on the job, and it is the Republican governors and state legislators that are making the most drastic cuts to education and local government. So in addition to the Republican Party’s attacks on Planned Parenthood, birth control, and any woman who seeks an abortion, we can also add the Republican Party’s attacks on jobs held by women. Gee, I wonder why women think the Republican Party is waging a war on them.

Trying to list all of Romney’s lies is nearly impossible. I cannot think of a single thing Romney has said about the economy or President Obama’s handling of the economy that is true, Not One Thing! President Obama did not cause the deficit. George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and two wars turned a surplus into a deficit and continue to add to the deficit to this very day. The stimulus did create jobs and the American jobs act would create even more jobs while greatly improving our roads and bridges if the Republicans would pass it. Mr. Romney obviously wants us to forget that the economy crashed under Republican rule. The job growth rate under George W. Bush was the lowest it had been since WWII, and that was before the crash. Contrary to Romney’s untruthful contention, private sector jobs have been added to the economy during each of the last 26 months. That the recovery from Bush’s recession is not progressing as quickly as it should be is due to Republican filibusters and other obstructions the Republicans in the House have been using in an effort to make President Obama fail. Mitt Romney's lies about the economy are an attempt to get the voters to blame Mr. Obama for the Republican Party's failed policies.

Pardon me for putting this in the vernacular, but Mitt Romney is a walking bag of bullshit! You need to carefully examine everything from him for the economic equivalent of E. Coli. Bear in mind that he openly supports the Ryan plan, which would further enrich the rich, add to the deficit, and prove deadly to many of our most vulnerable citizens.

Nothing To Offer

The season in which mastodon bellows at mastodon, across the primeval swamp of reactionary politics is almost over. The oligopoly is asserting its will. Although a few rogues are still holding out, the pachyderms are falling in line. That they are not exactly singing songs of joy as they fall in line is to be expected. All they have to unite them is their hatred of President Obama. In order to vilify him they have resorted to vilifying the government and disparaging the vital role government must play in an industrialized economy. They are actually arguing that this great nation can no longer afford to invest in its infrastructure, its educational system, health care, or science, even though those investments are a necessary requirement for economic growth. Since they say government as the problem they have no positive programs to offer. Many of them are even using the term “moderate” as an insult because moderates believe a government should actually govern. This has left the Republicans with no one who can sing a siren song to the mugwumps, who sit on the fence with their mugs on one side and their wumps on the other side. The problem is that the independent voters who actually decide the outcome of national elections are moderate fence sitters. This has placed the oligopoly in a difficult position. The best they have to offer is Mitt Romney. He would do away with those pesky regulations that make members of the oligopoly behave responsibly, but he is not very appealing to the voters. He is not trusted by the base of the Republican Party because he once embraced moderate policies, and he is not trusted by moderates because he had to embrace the radical policies of the nihilistic Republican base in order to win the primaries.

Nit-Mitt Romney is the quintessential representative of the one percent. He is the businessman who will say anything and do anything to sell his product. He will now try to market himself as the “new and improved” candidate. Forget this nonsense about birth control and health care, he will say. I never said I was against birth control and health care, particularly women’s health care. I love my wife, I provide her and the rest of my family with the best health care money can buy. Just because my health care law in Massachusetts mandates insurance coverage for everyone does not mean I think everyone should be forced to buy health care coverage; it is only the people in Massachusetts who deserve such a universal health care plan. I am not against industry, either. When I said I would “let Detroit go bankrupt” I was not saying I did not like cars. I own lots of cars, and I really love them. The people who say I am not sensitive about unemployment just because I am wealthy are also dead wrong. I understand the pain of losing your job. Some of my best friends were forced to resign from prestigious positions, and the millions of dollars they received as golden parachutes did not make up for the pain of having to resign. Believe me, this is no way to treat a job producer!

What the Republicans and Mitt Romney are about to find out is that Mitt Romney is who he is, and the Republican Party is what it has sadly become. There are no do overs in politics! When you constantly shake off the images on the Etch A Sketch what people will remember is the blank Etch A Sketch because they are smart enough to know that any new images you try to create are as fleeting as the ones you erased. The only way we have of assessing what kind of President Mr. Romney would be is to look at his Party. Both the radical economic policies and social policies of the Republican Party are out of step with the majority of the people of this nation. The American public wants an equitable tax system that requires the wealthy to pay their fair share. They do not want to continue enriching the rich at the expense of safety nets such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Unemployment insurance. They do not want to continue rewarding companies for exporting jobs. They want to reward the companies that are creating jobs here. They do not want a government that imposes a moral view on them that they do not share. They want insurance coverage that makes health care and birth control more affordable. They want real choices that allow them to follow their own consciences and make their own decisions, and they want a government that lives up to its responsibilities in regard to providing an economic climate that offers opportunities to all rather than just a few.

The disparity in wealth between the top two percent and everyone else is greater than it has been since the nineteen twenties. The economic policies of the Republican Party will only increase that disparity. In doing so it will destroy the engine of prosperity that was created when the rise of the middle class provided the greatest market on earth. I think the high unemployment and the decreasing wealth of the middle class at a time when the rich are getting much richer is finally beginning to make people understand that trickle down does not work. Even people who do not understand the consequences of the Republican Party’s economic policies are smart enough to reject a political party that wants to interfere with their reproductive choices. This is why the Democrats will probably win the next election by a wide margin.