Shallow End Of The IQ Pool

The pundits say that elections are decided by the low information, undecided voters who cast their ballots based on their impressions and feelings rather than intelligent discussions of the issues or the facts. This works to the advantage of the Republican Party because they have been fishing for votes in the shallow end of the IQ pool for at least four years. The Republicans correctly concluded that if voters are going to blame the party of the President for a lagging economy it is in the interests of the Republican Party to keep the economy from picking up any positive momentum. As Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said, the goal of Republican Party is to make President Obama a one term President. In order to keep President Obama from dealing with the Bush recession the Republicans set out to make the government as dysfunctional as possible. The obstructionist tool they employed at first was the filibuster in the Senate. Mitch McConnell actually brags about how the Republican’s use of the filibuster requires the Democrats to get a super majority of sixty votes to pass anything. Furthermore, in 2010 the voters made the government even more dysfunctional by giving the Republican Party control of the House of Representatives.

Since gaining control of the House of Representatives the Republicans have exacerbated our economic problems by rejecting all of the increases in government spending that both parties have traditionally used to pull us out of economic slumps. Instead of doing what has always worked in the past the Republicans insist on imposing on us the same sort of austerity programs that have increased unemployment in Europe and caused so much pain there. By holding the approval of a federal budget hostage to steep cuts in federal spending the Republican House of Representatives has forced the government to lay off workers, dumping those workers onto the private market at a time when there are not enough private jobs available as it is. Furthermore the Republicans refuse to pass the American Jobs Act, which would provide the states with funds to help them keep policemen, firemen, and teachers on the job, and which would greatly improve our roads, bridges, schools, etc. while providing much needed employment for construction workers. Make no mistake about it; it is the Republicans who have made this a do nothing Congress. Rather than working on legislation to create jobs they have passed 31 bills to try to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act; they have also de-funded Planned Parenthood, passed anti-choice bills, and attacked birth control. Alright, maybe I am being a bit to bombastic, but, given the obstructionist tactics of the Republicans, blaming President Obama for not getting us out to the mess George W. Bush and the Republicans got us into makes Mitt Romney a bloviating bag of bullshit! As Bill Clinton so aptly said, all Mitt Romney and the Republicans are offering are the failed policies of George W. Bush on steroids.

The biggest problem this country has right now is getting the low information voter to pay enough attention to realize what the Republicans are doing. The idiots in the mainstream media are not helping any. A perfect case in point is the controversy over Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. Here we have Mitt Romney touting his experience as CEO of Bain Capital and claiming that that experience would make him a better President than President Obama is. Yet when it is correctly pointed out that Bain shut down American businesses and exported American jobs to other countries Mitt Romney suddenly wants to deny any responsibility for what Bain Capital did. He claims he did not make any decisions or have any knowledge of what Bain was doing after 1999. The problem is that the papers Bain Capital filed with the SEC named Mitt Romney as the CEO, Chairman of the Board of Directors, and sole shareholder of Bain for the years of 2000, 2001 and 2002. Furthermore, those papers were signed by Mitt Romney, and Bain Capital paid him a base salary of $100,000 during each year from 2000 through 2002. In spite of the fact that any court in the land would hold the CEO, Chairman of the Board, and sole shareholder of a corporation responsible for the actions of that corporation, several independent fact checkers are saying the Democrats should not hold Romney responsible for Bain Capital’s exportation of American Jobs. What those fact checkers are basing that opinion on is nothing more than Mr. Romney’s denial. The mainstream media is also lending Mr. Romney some credibility by repeating his denial without comment. Both the fact checkers and the mainstream media are ignoring the fact that Mitt Romney knew or should have known what Bain was doing. As the CEO, Chairman of the Board, and sole shareholder of Bain a lack of knowledge on his part would be gross negligence, and the $100,00 dollars he received would have been unearned. The credibility the fact checkers and media are giving to Mt. Romney is even more unreasonable given the fact that he is a proven liar. He does not merely exaggerate or spin, he tells demonstrably proven falsehoods constantly. There are even blogs such as Daily Kos that are trying to document and count all of Romney’s lies, and it is a full time job.

The one thing no one seems willing to give to Romney is a way out of producing his tax returns. Mr. Romney’s bank account in Switzerland and his business interests in Barbados and the Cayman Islands raise serious questions about tax avoidance. I am not going to speculate about the legality of what Mr. Romney may be doing or whether he avoided paying taxes for ten years. What I do say is that those records would reveal something he does not want us to know. Saying that producing his tax records would only give his opponents more to use against him is a sorry excuse that any politician could use; it screams that he has more to hide than the candidates who have produced theirs. Even the mainstream media is saying that Romney should produce more tax returns, and that makes it an issue that will even play in the shallow end of the IQ pool.

Unfortunately my computer crashed and was down for a week. They Republican convention has now started, and it already reveals an entire party embracing a pack of lies. First Rick Insanetorum repeated the lie that President Obama is eliminating the work requirement for collecting welfare. Every independent fact checker has called this a blatant falsehood, as has Bill Clinton who is credited with establishing the work requirement, as has every newspaper that looked into it. There is also the slogan on the wall, “We Built It.” This slogan is also based upon a Romney lie. He took President Obama totally out of context, and lied about what President Obama really said. Then there is the debt counter. It seems to blame President Obama for the entire national debt regardless of the facts. George W. Bush actually turned a surplus into the largest debt in our history. The fact is that the number of government employees has actually decreased under President Obama.  Furthermore all of the bail out money and stimulus money combined did not increase the deficit as much as it was increased by the Bush’s tax cuts for the rich.

Supreme Courting

Is the Supreme Court courting us? What are we to make of this? Just when we thought the most politicized Supreme Court in modern history was incapable of rendering an impartial decision on anything it ruled that Arizona’s immigration law is unconstitutional and that the Affordable Health Care Act and its individual mandate are constitutional. What is even more remarkable is the fact that it was Chief Justice Roberts who wrote the majority opinion in the health care case. How could this be? Justice Roberts usually pulls matters into the ideological chasm rather than out of it. So why did he do it? People who know him say he was concerned about the court’s reputation and the perception that it has become too political. Frankly, this is a bit like saying that a man who just went on a killing spree also helped an old lady cross the street because he is concerned about the perception that our society has become too violent and uncaring. This is, after all, the Bush v. Gore court. This is the Citizens United court. This is the court that also reaffirmed Citizens United by ruling as unconstitutional the campaign financing laws Montana passed decades ago to combat the corruption that was so rampant before those laws were put in place. This is the same court that said corporations are people with all of the rights of people, whereas Labor unions are not people and do not have the same rights as people or corporations. It does not take much knowledge to realize which interests and which political party this court favors.

Anyone who thinks that ideological and political considerations will not continue to drive this court is being far too optimistic. Justice Scalia demonstrated that all too well. His comments regarding the federal government’s authority over immigration and Arizona’s outrageous immigration laws ignored and misstated many of the facts, and he launched a very partisan attack on President Obama. Such bombastic and partisan statements have traditionally been considered beneath the dignity of the court, but that is of little concern to Justice Scalia. Unfortunately the petulant statements he is so prone to making often seem to reflect what the other three “conservative” justices are actually thinking. In almost every instance Chief Justice Roberts has voted with the other three Republican appointed Justices. What probably made the Affordable Health Care Case different for Justice Roberts is the fact that it did not decide an election, restrict the rights of corporations, or restrict the use of money to influence elections or government policies. In other words, it did not decrease the rule of money!

The politicization of this court is particularly egregious because the apparent conflicts of interest make so many of its decisions suspect. For instance, the two justices, Scalia and Thomas, who should have recused themselves from the Affordable Health Care Case actually voted in a manner favorable to the interests that should have caused them to recuse themselves. Furthermore, a very brief search on the inter net will reveal many more examples of when Justice Scalia and particularly Justice Thomas ignored the rule of avoiding even the appearance of bias and refused to recuse themselves from cases in which it appeared they had conflicts of interest. If Chief Justice Roberts is really concerned about the reputation of the Supreme Court he should speak out against the frequent violations of this very fundamental rule of judicial ethics and he should call out the Justices are committing such violations. No court that tolerates the violation of judicial standards and the rules of judicial ethics can or should command the respect of the citizens of this nation of laws. In an earlier post I said the Health Care Case should be considered the last straw, and Justice Thomas should be impeached if he does not recuse himself from that case. He did not recuse himself, and I stand by my statement. Justice Scalia’s behavior is as odious and damaging to the court’s reputation as is the behavior of Justice Thomas, but the case that be made against Justice Scalia for impeachable offences is not as strong as the case that can be made against Justice Thomas. To they who fear the precedent of impeaching a Supreme Court Justice I say we had better fear the decisions of unethical justices who are allowed to stay on the court for life.