Tag: Politics

Oct 16 2012

Justice Party Candidate: Rocky Anderson

If you watch only the major networks or read only the local newspapers you would think that only Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are vying for the Oval Office. There are other candidates running for President but the MSM and the two major parties have managed to keep them out of the debates. There are three other candidates: Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson; Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Today’s focus will be on Justice Party candidate, Rocky Anderson.

Ross Carl “Rocky” Anderson (born September 9, 1951) served two terms as the 33rd mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, between 2000 and 2008. He is the Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights. Prior to serving as Mayor, he practiced law for 21 years in Salt Lake City, during which time he was listed in Best Lawyers in America, was rated A-V (highest rating) by Martindale-Hubbell, served as Chair of the Utah State Bar Litigation Section and was Editor-in-Chief of, and a contributor to, Voir Dire legal journal.

As mayor, Anderson rose to nationwide prominence as a champion of several national and international causes, including climate protection, immigration reform, restorative criminal justice, LGBT rights, and an end to the “war on drugs”. Before and after the invasion by the U.S. of Iraq in 2003, Anderson was a leading opponent of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and related human rights abuses. Anderson was the only mayor of a major U.S. city who advocated for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, which he did in many venues throughout the United States.

Anderson’s work and advocacy led to local, national, and international recognition in numerous spheres, including being named by Business Week as one of the top twenty activists in the world on climate change, serving on the Newsweek Global Environmental Leadership Advisory Board, and being recognised by the Human Rights Campaign as one of the top ten straight advocates in the United States for LGBT equality. He has also received numerous awards for his work, including the EPA Climate Protection Award,[9] the Sierra Club Distinguished Service Award, the Respect the Earth Planet Defender Award, the National Association of Hispanic Publications Presidential Award, The Drug Policy Alliance Richard J. Dennis Drugpeace Award, the Progressive Democrats of America Spine Award, the League of United Latin American Citizens Profile in Courage Award,[14] the Bill of Rights Defense Committee Patriot Award,[15] the Code Pink (Salt Lake City) Pink Star honor, the Morehouse University Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award, and the World Leadership Award for environmental programs.[16]

Formerly a member of the Democratic Party, Anderson expressed his disappointment with that Party in 2011, stating, “The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party.” Anderson announced his intention to run for President in 2012 as a candidate for the newly-formed Justice Party

Logan native Rocky Anderson discusses run for U.S. president, need for more parties

Since announcing his run for the White House in January, Anderson has stressed the elimination of corporate influence in American government and on making the office of president more accountable. Other issues that top his list, he said, are climate change, equal rights and the regulation of banking and finance industries. [..]

Explaining the purpose of the new Justice Party, Anderson says his campaign is different because the two primary candidates are ignoring the country’s most significant challenges.

“Neither of the dominant parties will even discuss breaking up the banks that are too big to fail,” he added. “We just went through a major economic upheaval with tragic results for the American people … and yet the conditions that led to the economic meltdown are still in place, and it’s because these candidates and their parties have received millions of dollars from Wall Street firms.”

The candidate said he wants the White House to be held accountable for its aerial drone program, which Anderson says has killed “hundreds if not thousands of innocent men, women and children,” and tainted the United States’ reputation for global security.

Oct 15 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: No Shame

There are many unanswered questions about the vicious assault in Benghazi last month that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. And Congress has a responsibility to raise them. But Republican lawmakers leading the charge on Capitol Hill seem more interested in attacking President Obama than in formulating an effective response.

It doesn’t take a partisan to draw that conclusion. The ugly truth is that the same people who are accusing the administration of not providing sufficient security for the American consulate in Benghazi have voted to cut the State Department budget, which includes financing for diplomatic security. The most self-righteous critics don’t seem to get the hypocrisy, or maybe they do and figure that if they hurl enough doubts and complaints at the administration, they will deflect attention from their own poor judgments on the State Department’s needs.

Paul Krugman: Death By Ideology

Mitt Romney doesn’t see dead people. But that’s only because he doesn’t want to see them; if he did, he’d have to acknowledge the ugly reality of what will happen if he and Paul Ryan get their way on health care.

Last week, speaking to The Columbus Dispatch, Mr. Romney declared that nobody in America dies because he or she is uninsured: “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” This followed on an earlier remark by Mr. Romney – echoing an infamous statement by none other than George W. Bush – in which he insisted that emergency rooms provide essential health care to the uninsured.

These are remarkable statements. They clearly demonstrate that Mr. Romney has no idea what life (and death) are like for those less fortunate than himself.

Jonathan Turley: Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech

Free speech is dying in the Western world. While most people still enjoy considerable freedom of expression, this right, once a near-absolute, has become less defined and less dependable for those espousing controversial social, political or religious views. The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony.

In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech. After a video called “Innocence of Muslims” appeared on YouTube and sparked violent protests in several Muslim nations last month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that “when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.” [..]

Of course, free speech is often precisely about pissing off other people – challenging social taboos or political values.

William K. Black: Ryan and Romney’s Secret Plan to Cut the Deficit — and Why Romney Opposes It

At Thursday’s vice presidential debate, Representative Ryan renewed his claim that he has a secret plan to cut the deficit while cutting all tax rates by 20 percent and not eliminating any tax deductions for which the middle class are large recipients. Oh, and Romney has also promised to increase military spending. [..]

There is, of course, no Ryan plan. There cannot be a Ryan plan because mathematicians are not like historians. The cruel joke about historians is that while God himself cannot change history; historians can. It is perhaps because they can be useful to God in this regard that he tolerates their continued existence and frequent errors. Mathematicians are useless to God, at least in the non-exotic realms of mathematics relevant to budgets, because they are so good at exposing errors and when they do so the error is beyond dispute. (Econometricians are God’s favorites among the quants.) No budget plan could meet all (or even most) of the policy constraints Ryan and Romney have promised they would obey. It is mathematically impossible. Romney and Ryan’s primary lie is that they have a secret plan to cut taxes, cut the deficit, and increase military spending.

Andrew Leonard: Romney’s magic economy plan

Mitt Romney gets a lot of guff from his critics for his unwillingness to spell out the details of how he plans to fix the U.S. the economy; how exactly his tax reforms will work, for example, or what precisely he will do in his first 100 days to boost job creation. But the best thing about the Romney agenda is that by his own admission, he doesn’t need a plan. Just getting himself elected is the ticket to prosperity. [..]

The notion that Romney could spur economic growth “without actually doing anything” invites mockery. The Atlantic’s Matt O’Brien memorably dubbed it “faith-based economic strategy.” At the very least it seemed to betray a breath-taking level of unwarranted hubris. But the key to understanding his boast is to ignore the low-hanging fruit (“without actually doing anything”) and focus on five crucial words: “We’ll see capital come back.“

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Town Hall Debate: Will Voters Ask the Medicare and Social Security Questions Reporters Haven’t?

If you support strong and effective government, then the unfamiliar glow you felt after last Thursday’s debate was the satisfaction of seeing your opinions forcefully defended by a national candidate. There hasn’t been much of that going on lately. But a deceptive question was asked in the vice presidential debate, while other important ones still haven’t been asked of any national candidate.

The president’s been undercutting his own party’s best message and keeps threatening to cut benefits for its signature programs. As for Mitt Romney and his running mate, there’s little left to be said: They’re both determined to undermine Medicare and Social Security. Even if they’re retreating from their most radical ideas now, you know those ideas will be back once they’re in office.

If what follows focuses more on the president than on his challenger, its because the Republicans are beyond redemption on this issue. But both candidates need to answer some direct questions on this topic.

Robert Kuttner: Muddled Ideology, Muddled Debate

The nation’s pundits have had a fine week, psychoanalyzing President Obama’s dismal performance in the first debate and Joe Biden’s effective if a bit over-the-top counter-punching in his match with Paul Ryan.

Maureen Dowd had it about right when she wrote that “Because Obama doesn’t relish confrontation, he often fails to pin his opponents on the mat the first time he gets the chance; instead, perversely, he pulls back and allows foes to gain oxygen.” Ouch.

But the psycho-biography school, fascinating as it is, mostly misses the point.

Romney and Obama have each muddled their views — but Romney does it in a way that helps him, while Obama’s muddling helps the Republicans. Let me explain.

Oct 15 2012

Green Party Candidate: Jill Stein

If you watch only the major networks or read only the local newspapers you would think that only Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are vying for the Oval Office. There are other candidates running for President but the MSM and the two major parties have managed to keep them out of the debates. There are three other candidates: Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson; Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Today the focus will be Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate:

Jill Stein (born May 14, 1950) is an American physician and the nominee of the Green Party for President of the United States in the 2012 election. Stein was a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in the 2002 and the 2010 gubernatorial elections. Stein is a resident of Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Harvard College (1973) and the Harvard Medical School (1979). She serves on the boards of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and MassVoters for Fair Elections, and has been active with the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities.

Among others, Jill Stein has been endorsed for 2012 President by linguist, author and activist Noam Chomsky and by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and war correspondent Chris Hedges.

This was Dr. Stein’s response to five key debate questions

Give us a mandate for what America needs: a Green New Deal

We’ve heard Democrats’ and Republicans’ promises before and their Wall Street-driven policies have failed. It’s time to go Green

President Obama and Governor Romney are talking a lot about how they’re going to save the economy. But it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that what they’re saying is only talk. The debates are an opportunity for them to broadcast campaign promises, but where is the accountability, when past promises have already been left in the dust? [..]

Most Americans agree that the policies of the Green New Deal are exactly what we need. Yet, many voters remain afraid to vote their values. We’ve all been told to vote against politicians, not for policies. And the result has been, year after year, that the politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of: expanding war, the meltdown of the economy, and the dismantling of our civil liberties.

Our society is at a breaking point: we may not survive four more years of Wall Street rule. We must answer the politics of fear with the politics of courage. The Commission on Presidential Debates has attempted to monopolize the discourse and limit our choices. But the debate about America’s future that matters most is the debate that takes place within each of us.

Here is the link to the Green Party Platform 2012

Oct 14 2012

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris st 8 AM EDT are Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight), founder of FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver’s Political Calculus; Thomas Stemberg, founder of Staples, managing general partner of the Highland Consumer Fund; Sarita Gupta (@saritasgupta), executive director of Jobs with Justice and executive director of American Rights at Work; Josh Barro (@jbarro), lead writer for Bloomberg View‘s “The Ticker;” David W. Moore, senior fellow at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, policy critic at iMediaEthics.org and former managing editor and senior editor of the Gallup Poll; Maya Wiley, founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion; Zephyr Teachout, professor at the Fordham University School of Law; Monica Youn, Brennan Center constitutional fellow at the New York University school of law; and Alec MacGillis, senior editor for “The New Republic.”

This Week with George Stephanopolis: “this Week’s‘s guests are Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.

Jake Tapper moderates this special discussion, held before a live studio audience at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; former Senator Chris Dodd; Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz, moderator of this week’s vice presidential debate; presidential historian Richard Norton Smith; ABC News’ George Will; and Democratic strategist and ABC News Contributor Donna Brazile.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Guests are Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. Darrell Issa, and Rep. Elijah Cummings. Panel guests are Romney campaign advisor Bay Buchanan, Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, David Corn of Mother Jones, and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Liz Marlantes, The Christian Science Monitor; John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent; Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post National Political Reporter; and Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast Editor, The Dish.

Meet the Press with David Gregory:  David Gregory will go one-on-one with Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert about politics, comedy and his new book: America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t.

This week’s roundtable will have a special discussion looking ahead to the final three weeks of the campaign: Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA); Mayor Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta); Fmr. Gov Jennifer Granholm (D-MI); GOP strategist Alex Castellanos; and NBC’s Tom Brokaw, who has moderated his share of presidential debates.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Obama senior campaign adviser Robert Gibbs; Romney senior campaign adviser Ed Gillespie; former Florida congressman Robert Wexler and the former Chairman of the Florida Republican Party Al Cardenas.

Joining her for a panel discussion with  insights from the campaign trail and making sense of those tax reform promises with CNN National Political Correspondent Jim Acosta, USA Today‘s Susan Page, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, and Bill Burton of Priorities USA.

Oct 14 2012

What We Now Know

Saturday morning on Up with Chris Hayes, Up host, Chris Hayes discussed what we have learned this week with panel guests Amy Davidson, senior editor at the New Yorker; Goldie Taylor, contributor to Grio.com and MSNBC; Michael Hastings, contributing editor to Rollingstone; and Michael Moynihan, cultural news editor for Newsweek and the DailyBeast.

Romney: Uninsured? Head to the Emergency Room

Is BofA’s Foreclosure Review Really Independent? You Be the Judge

by Paul Kiel at Pro Publica

Late last year, the country’s bank regulators launched a massive program to evaluate millions of foreclosure cases and compensate homeowners who fell victim to the banks’ flawed or illegal practices. Regulators dubbed it the “Independent Foreclosure Review” to emphasize that the banks would not be making key decisions about loans they had made or serviced.

But a raft of evidence – internal Bank of America memos and emails obtained by ProPublica, interviews with two bank staff members who have worked on the review, and little-noticed documents released late last year by a federal banking regulator – throw the independence of the review into serious doubt. Together, they indicate that Bank of America – the financial giant with the largest number of homeowners eligible for the program – is performing much of the work itself.

Mitt Romney, On 60 Minutes, Cites Emergency Room As Health Care Option For Uninsured

by Amanda Terkel and Sam Stein at Huffington Post

Downplaying the need for the government to ensure that every person has health insurance, Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured. [..]

This constitutes a dramatic reversal in position for Romney, who passed a universal health care law in Massachusetts, in part, to eliminate the costs incurred when the uninsured show up in emergency rooms for care. Indeed, in both his book and in high-profile interviews during the campaign, Romney has touted his achievement in stamping out these inefficiencies while arguing that the same thing should be done at the national level.

Report Describes How Armstrong and His Team Eluded Doping Tests

by Ian Austen at The New York Times

An explanation emerged Wednesday, when the United States Anti-Doping Agency released its dossier on Armstrong, citing witness testimony, financial records and laboratory results. Armstrong was centrally involved in a sprawling, sophisticated doping program, the agency said, yet he employed both cunning and farcical methods to beat the sport’s drug-testing system.

The report also introduced new scientific evidence that the agency said suggested Armstrong was doping the last two times he competed in the Tour de France.

Mitt Romney’s Bain Made Millions On Big Tobacco In U.S., Russia

by Jason Cherkis and Zach Carter at Huffington Post

As the Soviet Union splintered in the early-1990s, Sushovan Ghosh packed his colleagues into a van and chugged across the collapsing nation, hitting depressed towns and famished cities, busted up factories and lonely kiosks. In each ragged destination, they stopped long enough to interview cigarette smokers.

Ghosh plied the citizenry with free cigarettes and, sometimes, McDonald’s hamburgers. [..]

Ghosh’s work for cigarette companies was chaotic, unbridled and, ultimately, deadly. To Mitt Romney and his colleagues at Bain & Co., it was a chance to rake in money. Ghosh said he reported directly to Romney, who was excited about the Russian market. “He was my boss,” Ghosh said.

Oct 13 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Michele Dean: The Week of Unhappy Men on the Internet

It’s been hard out there for unhappy white guys on the internet this week. Paul Ryan took some pictures and found himself instantly (hilariously) photoshopped onto the cover of Atlas Shrugged. Buzz Bissinger complained that he was “savaged” by fans and fellow journalists for endorsing Mitt Romney, and ended up throwing obscenities at Nation Institute Fellow Jamelle Bouie on Twitter and declaring, “Nobody comes close to what I write.” (Hey, sure, I shall begin icing that on a cookie immediately.) Men on reddit who take upskirt shots of-among other women in their general vicinity-the students in the high school classes they teach, are having their real identities outed. [..]

Though I speak only for myself, I don’t know if these men are “misogynists.” I certainly doubt they shriek and run at the sight of breasts per se. The problem is their fear of getting called out for doing anything that might be characterized as even vaguely sexist. That’s when they cut anchor and boot it, screaming the whole way about the injustice of it all. As Irin Carmon of Salon asked on (where else) Twitter: “The real question is, why are men so freaking sensitive?” What intelligent, not-sexist, not-misogynist, not-oversensitive adult people do when confronted with criticism is suck it up, consider it and reply with mature reflection. This is, apparently, too much to ask. For them, sexism is not a measure of disadvantage; it’s a personal character flaw. And one from which, by the by, they are more than happy to exempt themselves.

Gail Collins: Veeps Go Yeep! Nation Nods.

O.K. Forget everything that’s happened so far. Now it’s all about the next debate.

Obama versus Romney on Tuesday! That will be far more important than the conventions. Or the first debate, which President Obama sort of lost, in a game-changing moment that we are now prepared to completely forget because it’s all about the next debate.

Which will be so far more important than the vice-presidential debate that we can hardly bear to mention them in the same paragraph.

Although that thing on Thursday was pretty cool. Paul Ryan’s eyes! Joe Biden’s teeth! Paul Ryan’s water intake! Can that man hydrate, or what?

The New York Times: The ‘Moderate Mitt’ Myth

The way a presidential candidate campaigns for office matters to the country. A campaign should demonstrate seriousness of purpose and a set of core beliefs, and it should signal to voters whether a candidate shows trustworthiness and judgment. Those things don’t seem to matter to Mitt Romney.

From the beginning of his run for the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney has offered to transfigure himself into any shape desired by an audience in order to achieve power. In front of massed crowds or on television, he can sound sunny and inclusive, radiating a feel-good centrism. His “severely conservative” policies and disdain for much of the country are reserved for partisans, donors and the harsh ideologues who clutter his party’s base. This polarity is often described as “flip-flopping,” but the word is too mild to describe opposing positions that are simultaneously held.

Bill Boyarsky: No Room for the Poor in This Election

In 90 minutes of debating, Rep. Paul Ryan failed to explain why the Romney-Ryan budget plan wouldn’t inflict hardship on the middle class and the working poor. Actually, poor people weren’t mentioned much, even by his foe, Vice President Joe Biden. This debate was about the middle class, that somewhat amorphous demographic at the center of the presidential campaign.

It’s not surprising that Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, didn’t mention the millions of Americans on Medicaid and other social programs who would be badly damaged if his government-slashing budget plan, supported by running mate Mitt Romney, becomes law. But I expected more from Biden, especially after he talked in the debate about how he was influenced by Catholic Social Justice doctrine, which advocates helping the poor.

Robert Sheer: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My President

Maybe I have been too harsh in judging Barack Obama’s economic performance. Instead of following George W. Bush’s lead in bailing out the bankers first, I wanted Obama to do more for beleaguered homeowners and less for the Wall Street swindlers who trafficked in toxic mortgages. But the president must have done something right, or the hucksters at Goldman Sachs wouldn’t hate him so.  

Ever since Bill Clinton appointed Goldman honcho Robert Rubin to be his Treasury secretary, the firm has been the top corporate supporter of the Democrats, according to the authoritative Center for Responsive Politics. And the investment paid off big time when Clinton followed Rubin’s lead and teamed up with congressional Republicans to reverse the sensible restraints on Wall Street that had kept the economy sound for six decades. Thanks to that decision, Goldman, a high-rolling investment house, was allowed to suddenly become a commercial bank and avail itself of the cheap money provided by the Federal Reserve to bail out troubled banks.

Peter van Buren: Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell

We had a debate club back in high school. Two teams would meet in the auditorium, and Mr. Garrity would tell us the topic, something 1970s-ish like “Resolved: Women Should Get Equal Pay for Equal Work” or “World Communism Will Be Defeated in Vietnam.” Each side would then try,  through persuasion and the marshalling of facts, to clinch the argument. There’d be judges and a winner.

Today’s presidential debates are a long way from Mr. Garrity’s club.  It seems that the first rule of the debate club now is: no disagreeing on what matters most. In fact, the two candidates rarely interact with each other at all, typically ditching whatever the question might be for some rehashed set of campaign talking points, all with the complicity of the celebrity media moderators preening about democracy in action.  Waiting for another quip about Big Bird is about all the content we can expect.

George Zornick: Paul Ryan’s Congressional Opponent: Debate Me Next!

On the heels of last night’s vice-presidential debate, Paul Ryan’s Democratic opponent for his congressional seat wants a second round-while he sits Biden’s chair.

Rob Zerban is facing a tough road to unseating Ryan, who won Wisconsin’s 1st district with over 68 percent of the vote in 2010-and the district has since been reapportioned to include even more Republicans.

Yet, the district is still fairly purple-Obama narrowly won it in 2008, and the redistricting only added a couple Republican points. Zerban has far outraised any other Ryan challenger over the years, though he still lags far behind Ryan in that category.

But most importantly, Zerban believes that by exposing Ryan’s radical views on the safety net-Zerban notably supports a Medicare-for-all plan, as opposed to Ryan’s partial privatization-he can win over voters in the district. He believes a debate would be the best chance to do that.

Oct 12 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman; Triumph of the Wrong?

In these closing weeks of the campaign, each side wants you to believe that it has the right ideas to fix a still-ailing economy. So here’s what you need to know: If you look at the track record, the Obama administration has been wrong about some things, mainly because it was too optimistic about the prospects for a quick recovery. But Republicans have been wrong about everything.

About that misplaced optimism: In a now-notorious January 2009 forecast, economists working for the incoming administration predicted that by now most of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis would be behind us, and the unemployment rate would be below 6 percent. Obviously, that didn’t happen.

Why did the administration get it wrong? It wasn’t exaggerated faith in the power of its stimulus plan; the report predicted a fairly rapid recovery even without stimulus. Instead, President Obama’s people failed to appreciate something that is now common wisdom among economic analysts: severe financial crises inflict sustained economic damage, and it takes a long time to recover.

John Nichols: Richard Milhous Ryan: No Specifics, Just a ‘Secret Plan’

Richard Milhous Nixon said in 1968 that the war in Vietnam was the critical concern of that year’s presidential contest, the one issue that had to be addressed by the candidates.  And he addressed it with a “secret plan” to end the war. No details during the campaign, the Republican nominee for president explained; voters just needed to trust him and he would cut the right deals once elected.

Paul Ryan says in 2012 that budgeting to cut taxes for the rich while at the same time doing away with deficits is the critical issue of the presidential contest, the one that has to be addressed by the candidates.  And he addresses the issue with a “secret plan” to cut taxes and balance budgets. No details during the campaign, the Republican nominee for vice president explains; voters just need to trust him and he will cut the right deals once elected.

Michael Weisbrot: Why Chavez Was Re-elected

For most people who have heard or read about Hugo Chávez in the international media, his reelection on Sunday as president of Venezuela by a convincing margin might be puzzling.

Almost all of the news we hear about him is bad: He picks fights with the United States and sides with “enemies” such as Iran; he is a “dictator” or “strongman” who has squandered the nation’s oil wealth; the Venezuelan economy is plagued by shortages and is usually on the brink of collapse.

Then there is the other side of the story: Since the Chávez government got control over the national oil industry, poverty has been cut by half, and extreme poverty by 70 percent. College enrollment has more than doubled, millions of people have access to health care for the first time and the number of people eligible for public pensions has quadrupled.

Tracy Bloom: Romney’s ‘Etch A Sketch’ Abortion Positions

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney “reaffirmed” his staunch pro-life abortion position on Wednesday, saying his stance on the hot-button issue hasn’t changed. At least not since he became pro-life midway through his political career.

Like on many issues-taxes, health care, stem-cell research, minimum wage, immigration reform, etc.-Romney has flipped-flopped positions in a seemingly concerted effort to appeal to a certain ideological group of voters. This is not an earth-shattering revelation by any stretch of the imagination, as evidenced during the presidential primary when his Republican rivals challenged him on his evolving abortion stance. And after Romney suggested Tuesday that abortion-related legislation would not be a major part of his presidency, he was forced once again to clarify his position.

“I think I’ve said time and again. I’m a pro-life candidate. I’ll be a pro-life president,” Romney said Wednesday, attempting to convince social values conservative voters once again, perhaps for the final time, that he’s their man.

E. J. Dionne: Sherrod Brown’s Lessons for Obama

If anyone can testify to the problem of giving really rich people a chance to tilt the political playing field, it’s Sen. Sherrod Brown.

A proud labor-populist, Brown seems to invite the hostility of wealthy conservatives and deep-pocketed interest groups. The amount they have spent to defeat him went somewhere over $20 million this week.

Brown can live with that. His uncompromising advocacy on behalf of workers, toughness on trade, and progressive policies on a broad range of other issues have allowed Brown to build a formidable organization across Ohio, and a large cadre of small donors.

David Sirota: A GOP Shift on Taxes?

When it comes to tax policy, Mitt Romney is not merely a spinner, an equivocator or a run-of-the-mill dissembler. He’s a liar. Hyperbolic and overwrought as that label seems, it is, alas, the only accurate description for someone who would, in February, promote a proposal to cut taxes “on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent” and then appear at an October debate and insist that the very same proposal “will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.”

For the most part, analyzing such hideous dishonesty is where political reporting has started and stopped. How big a liar is Romney? Was he lying in the first statement or the second one? These are, no doubt, important questions-and to answer but one of them, it’s obvious Romney was lying in the most recent one. As the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center reported, the Republican nominee’s proposal, if enacted, would “result in a net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers.”

However, critical as such short-term fact checking is, it misses the much bigger news embedded in all the subterfuge. In short, it misses the genuinely mind-boggling fact that a Republican nominee for president is now campaigning for president on a promise to not cut taxes on the wealthy.

Oct 11 2012

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Dean Baker: Social Security: President Obama’s Biggest Failure in Last Week’s Debate

President Obama definitely had a bad night when he faced Governor Romney in Denver for the first presidential debate. However, for many listeners the worst moment was not due to his atypical inarticulateness. Rather, the worst moment was when he quite clearly told the country that there was not much difference between his position on Social Security and Governor Romney’s. He also expressed his desire to “tweak” Social Security to improve its finances.

This is very bad news to the tens of millions of people who depend on Social Security now or expect to in the near future. It’s also bad news to the hundreds of millions of people who have been counting on the Social Security system to provide a degree of financial security to their retired or disabled family members. [..]

When President Obama links arms with Romney on Social Security, it is not good news for supporters of the program. Nor was the situation made better by the desire to “tweak” the system.

Glenn Greenwald: Election Year Garbage

Whatever is awful about the US political process is magnified in the election season, and increases each day until it’s mercifully over

{..}It’s a bit bizarre, to put that generously, to insist that protecting Social Security is one of the prime reasons to dedicate oneself to Obama’s re-election when he not only worked hard to cut that program substantially, but himself said just last week that he and his opponent have a “somewhat similar position” on that issue.

Whatever is awful about the American political process is magnified in the election season, and exponentially intensifies each day as the election approaches. That would all be perfectly tolerable if not for the fact that the election process is 18 months long, or close to 1/3 of each president’s term. One of the most effective tactics for keeping the electorate distracted and confused is ensuring that the time when they pay the most attention to the political process is exactly the time when political reality is most obscured.

New York Times Editorial: Race-Conscious Admissions in Texas

Affirmative action provokes conflicting views about what equal protection means under the law. Does the Constitution permit race-conscious programs that provide minorities with opportunities, even though it prohibits programs that exclude minorities because of their race? [..]

Affirmative action is largely a voluntary commitment by leading institutions that are convinced it is in their self-interest to enlarge opportunities for historically disfavored groups, because it helps fulfill their missions. It would be a travesty for the court’s conservatives to reverse or weaken longstanding legal precedent on this issue. The harm they would inflict in doing so would be felt in education, business, national defense and many areas of American life.

Martha Burk: The Corporate Court’s War on Women

So far, not so good.

When President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, women’s groups mobilized to no avail. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to filibuster either nomination despite personal pleas from feminist leaders. Our main worry was reproductive freedom.

But many of us feared something that has proven to be just as menacing – a strong bias in favor of corporations. Women’s rights at work have been under constant assault since Congress passed the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace in the 1960s.

History has proven that our fears of a Roberts Court were well founded. In 2007, it overruled six lower federal courts by upholding a ban on one abortion procedure with no exception for a woman’s health. The same year, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Court overturned 40 years of precedent when it severely curtailed a woman’s right to sue for sex discrimination in pay. And in 2011 it piled on the punishment with Walmart v. Dukes, cutting the heart out of women’s ability to sue as a class when they’re unfairly denied pay and promotion.

Jim Hightower: The 1 Percent’s Cry for Justice

It’s out! This year’s list of American success stories has just been published, and according to its compiler, it “instills confidence that the American dream is still very much alive.”

Maybe you are one of these success stories. You might be a great public school teacher, for example, who motivated students to achieve new heights or an inventor who came up with an energy-saving device and got it to market at a fair price, generating a profit for yourself, the environment and society generally.

No, no, no. Not that kind of success. We’re talking money – the flow of mammon beyond regular people’s wildest dreams. That’s how Forbes magazine measures not only “success,” but also a person’s value: You are what’s in your Swiss bank account. And, just to rank last on this year’s “Forbes 400” listing of America’s wealthiest people, you need more than a billion dollars in financial wealth. To get into the top 10 requires at least $25 billion. And to be numero uno means you’ve got $66 billion socked away. Who says America is broke?

Gail Collins: Democrats at the Deep End

It’s a tough time to be a Democrat.

When Democrats run into each other in elevators, they exchange glances and sigh. Or make little whimpering sounds. [..]

Things haven’t really gone off the deep end for the Obama campaign. They’ve gone back to normal. You knew that the Obama-is-going-to-win-by-10-points euphoria wasn’t going to last. When did anybody ever win a presidential race by 10 points? Don’t tell me about Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan was president, gas was 90 cents a gallon and I was writing on a Kaypro.

Maybe Democrats should try to be more like the Republicans, and reduce stress by blaming all bad news on incorrect information, cooked up by cabals of political partisans.

Oct 11 2012

International Day of the Girl 10/11

10-11-12 has been designated the International Day of the Girl by the United Nations:

The theme for the first-ever observance of the Day will be “Ending Child Marriage,” chosen because child marriage is a phenomenon that violates millions of girls’ rights, disrupts their education, jeopardizes their health, and denies them their childhood, limiting their opportunities and impacting all aspects of a girl’s life.

Ending child marriage has taken a backseat due to an the shooting of a 14 year old girl on her way to school in Pakistan:

There has been intense public reaction in Pakistan to the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a 14 year-old schoolgirl, by Taliban gunmen.

Yousafzai, who was seriously injured in the attack, is unconscious while she recovers from an operation. Two other girls were also injured in the attack.

Private schools closed for the day in protest and students gathered to pray for her.

Yousafzai had come to public attention at the age of 11, when she publically criticised the Pakistani Taliban for its violent action against girls’ schools in the area which was then under its control, and became the first recipient of Pakistan’s National Peace Award for Youth.

The government has condemned the attack, with Asif Ali Zadari, the Pakistani president suggesting that Yousafzai should get medical treatment in Dubai. But the teenager does not have a passport and is too unstable to be moved.

There have been many instances of clashes between tribal law, custom and a democratic constitution in Pakistan.

The reality:

In more than 100 countries, school is not free, and parents of limited resources choose to invest in their sons’ education, not their daughters’.  The high rate of child marriage in some cultures means that many girls in developing countries never even have the opportunity to go to school. Worldwide, only 30% of girls are enrolled in secondary school.

And when it comes to overall literacy, there is a gap between males and females worldwide.  Though there has been progress over the past decade, there is a 5.1% gap between male and female youth literacy, meaning that fewer young females are literate.

According to UNESCO, “Despite progress, girls and women continue to be disproportionately excluded from education, especially at secondary education level and in the area of adult literacy.”

Our hearts are with Malala and her companions for their recovery.  

Oct 11 2012

How To Politely Say STFU Aussie Style

Australia’s first female Prime minister, Julia Gillard delivered a 15 minute blistering smackdown of opposition leader Tony Abbot for his hypocrisy in attacking a member of her party over sexist text messages. This is want Mr. Abbot said:

Mr Abbott was perfectly within his rights to put forward the motion that speaker Peter Slipper should be immediately dispatched. Most Australians feel likewise. But the words Mr Abbott chose to deliver this message were not only vicious but monumentally stupid beyond belief. Who are his advisers – the Sydney University young liberals?

Here is what Mr Abbott said: “I must allude to the vile anatomical references to which this Speaker appears to be addicted in his text message… Should (Gillard) rise in this place now to try and defend the Speaker, she will shame this parliament again… And every day the prime minister stands in this parliament to defend this Speaker will be another day of shame for this parliament, another day of shame for a government which should already have died of shame.”

Can you believe Tony Abbott used that phrase? Can you believe, after every drop of water that has flowed under the bridge since (Alan) Jones’ ill-advised speech to the young libs, that the would-be Prime Minister of Australia still thinks it fitting to poke further fun at the death of the sitting Prime Minister’s father. Can anyone believe that?

Alan Jones made the remark that M. Gillard’s father had “died of shame” over her politics at an Abbot fund raising lunch. The aftermath caused advertisers to pull ads and Mercedes Benz took back the $200,000 car on loan to the broadcaster.

The Prime Minister, who is 51, unmarried and has no children, has been told to “make an honest woman” of herself, a “slut”, taunted with signs saying “Ditch the Witch” and worse.

At naked capitalism, Yves Smith notes that Americans politicians could take some lessons from PM Gillard:

Look how Gilliard speaks effectively and energetically, referring to notes only when she needs to read quotations, for fifteen minutes. As YY indicates, the context is clear enough that you don’t need the backstory to infer what happened.

Do we have a single politician in the US who could command attention for that long and deliver a blistering attack with so little in the way of props? I suspect this is one of the by products of the Commonwealth tradition of “question time,” in which government ministers have to deal with the cut and thrust of Parliamentary debates, while in the US, we have far more staging and far less real controversy in our political discourse.

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