Tag: President Obama

More disingenuous crap from Mitt Romney on medicare this time

More disingenuous crap from Mitt Romney on medicare this time

Posted on by Jack

I do like the term “disingenuous crap” to describe many of Mitt’s apparent positions. This time he is talking about Medicare.

I suppose it is meant to scare seniors who don’t think it through. Be Scared, very scared. Not so much about Obama’s cuts to Medicare as Mitt would like. But just think about the Medicare cuts in the Ryan/Romney budget.

Read the NPR story on his latest dubious and baffling claim. Is he really that that confused or is he trying to confuse us?

Who Do You Trust? Obama or Romney

Who Do You Trust? Obama or Romney

Posted on by Jack

When I was a kid there was a game show called Who Do You Trust?. I don’t remember ever watching but I remember seeing the promos on my TV. I think elections come down to that question.

Politicians are not known for their forthrightness. I liked that last word and it seemed to fit but I had to look it up to make sure. Forthrightness is defined as “Direct and without evasion” or “straightforward” by the Free Dictionary.

Politicians are good at telling you what you want to hear, not what you should know about them or their plans. We select our leaders with imperfect and incomplete information.

I’ve complained about Mitt Romney’s lack of specifics many times in the past months but to be fair I should note that Barack Obama is not always very specific about what he would do in a second term. But as I see it, the President has spent almost 4 years being very specific, even sending specific plans to Congress with proposals of what he would like to do.

Think about our real needs to rebuild our decaying infrastructure or educate workers or help veterans re-enter the job market. The president has proposed plans. Congress rejects these plans. It always seems to be Republicans blocking these plans. (To be fair I note that Democrats often reject Republican plans.)

Now I am not saying that each of Obama’s plans is perfect or that Congress could not work with the administration to improve these plans. But in many cases, Congress did not suggest improvements but just rejected these plans on a partisan basis. My point is that you have a pretty good idea about the type of things he would like to do.

Governor Romney has no such track record. All we have are his vague statements, a track record as governor of Massachusetts but he has pretty much denied everything he has done there (except for being a bipartisan guy which is somewhat in dispute), and his business record. It is unclear to me how this would translate into success in running the federal government.

I think all elected leaders run on a platform of “trust me”. But in this race, Romney requires a lot more trust.

President Obama and Governor Christie

President Obama and Governor Christie

Posted on by Jack

I see President Obama and Governor Christie working together for the good the people of New Jersey impacted by the storm. Wouldn’t it be nice if more of our politicians were able to put political differences aside long enough to work for the good of the people?

Mitt Romney is now the candidate of big change or big flip-flop

Mitt Romney is now the candidate of big change or big flip-flop

Posted on by Jack

So Mitt Romney is now the candidate of big change. Sounds very 2008 when President Obama was a candidate of hope and change.

I guess the difference is that I liked some of President Obama’s changes. I think it is good that health insurers can’t turn down people with pre-existing medical conditions. And it is good that insurers cannot cap your coverage if you have some really big claims. It seems good that insurers cannot find a reason to deny coverage if you are sick. There will be problems with health care reform and we need to elect people who will modify the reform to get it right.

I like that the economy is not falling apart and we are not losing hundreds of thousands of jobs each month as we did in the year before Obama took office. It seems the Presidents Bush and Obama (and Congress) took the right steps in late 2008 and 2009 to reverse the trend. Certainly things could be much better and I think they probably would be if Republicans in congress did not block many of President Obama’s efforts. But I see nothing to indicate Governor Romney would do any better.

I like that Obama seems to have a thoughtful foreign policy.

But Governor Romney is also known for his changes or flip-flops. I am surprised he wants to remind voters about that.

Science Debate

Science Debate

Posted on by Jack

No doubt science is important. Very important. It help us understand our world and beyond. It guides us in many ways as we find our way to live in the world. It is the basis of industrial advances. It is an important part of a healthy economy. Scientific advances are also important to our health. The ways in which science impacts our lives are almost too numerous to count.

Yet science does not seem to play a large part in political debates. The presidential candidates barely mention science and certainly not in any way that approaches its importance to our society. I’m not aware of any elected political office where the candidates discuss science.

But the presidential candidates (President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney) participated in an online science forum ( http://www.sciencedebate.org/ ) in which they answered a series of science questions.

The questions were submitted to and answered by the candidates. So it wasn’t really a debate but it is the start of a discussion and the hope is that candidates might be moved to address these important scientific questions in a debate.

So if you would like to know what the candidates are thinking about science, be sure to check out http://www.sciencedebate.org/.

A false savings by repeal of Obamacare

A false savings by repeal of Obamacare

Posted on by Jack

I have many disagreements with Mitt Romney’s tax and budget plans and here is one that may surprise a few people who think his promises are all about saving money. On his website, he lists several savings. Among them-

Repeal Obamacare, which would save $95 billion in 2016

The House recently passed a bill that did just that. Or at least it would do so if it also passed the Senate and was not vetoed. Seems a bit unlikely now but there next year there is sure to be a different Congress and maybe a new President. But my point was that the House did pass this bill, HR 6079, which would repeal Obamacare and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) looked at the fiscal consequences.

In a “Letter to the Honorable John Boehner providing an estimate for H.R. 6079, the Repeal of Obamacare Act”, the CBO did a 10 year estimate of spending and revenue which would result if that legislation became law.

Sure enough there were big saving there but the government was forgoing even more revenue. The bottom line is a net loss to the government of 109 billion dollars. Since this is just an estimate a reasonable guess is that the average cost is about 10 or 11 billion dollars per year. This could just be added to the deficit or we could just add this to Mitt Romney’s tax plan.

I’m sure this figure does vary from year to year as different parts of Obamacare are implemented but since the average appears to actually be net loss to the government Governor Romney should explain why he thinks this action will save 95 billion dollars in 2016. And he might want to mention what he thinks will happen in all those other years.

The Etch a Sketch man with the sketchy plan

The Etch a Sketch man with the sketchy plan

Posted on by Jack

In the second debate we learned a bit more about the Romney tax plan on which he has been extremely vague. It is still very vague but a few more details were added during the debate. The plan involves a multi-trillion dollar tax cut and closing of unspecified loopholes and elimination of unspecified deductions.

The Romney plan also includes mostly unspecified spending cuts on the non-military and non-security parts of the budget and large increases in military spending. I guess that is related but strictly speaking not part of the tax plan.

In the first debate, Romney added a bit more and we learned that he will not cut education but will cut PBS and he will not add to the deficit.

And then in the second debate, he also promised that the rich will pay the same portion of the income tax that they pay now. And he also said –

I want to make sure we keep our Pell grant program growing. We’re also going to have our loan program, so that people are able to afford school.

One does wonder how he is going to do all these things.

He was asked which would be his priority if he could not do all at the same time. Governor Romney seems to not even consider that possibility. After all, he is a businessman and he would never make a mistake with money.

Below is that portion of the exchange. The entire transcript is on the ABC news website.

OBAMA:…We haven’t heard from the governor any specifics beyond Big Bird and eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood in terms of how he pays for that.

Now, Governor Romney was a very successful investor. If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.

And — and what’s at stake here is one of two things, either Candy — this blows up the deficit because keep in mind, this is just to pay for the additional spending that he’s talking about, $7 trillion – $8 trillion before we even get to the deficit we already have. Or, alternatively, it’s got to be paid for, not only by closing deductions for wealthy individuals, that — that will pay for about 4 percent reduction in tax rates.

You’re going to be paying for it. You’re going to lose some deductions, and you can’t buy the sales pitch. Nobody who’s looked at it that’s serious, actually believes it adds up.

CROWLEY: Mr. President, let me get — let me get the governor in on this. And Governor, let’s — before we get into a…

ROMNEY: I — I…

CROWLEY: …vast array of who says — what study says what, if it shouldn’t add up. If somehow when you get in there, there isn’t enough tax revenue coming in. If somehow the numbers don’t add up, would you be willing to look again at a 20 percent…

ROMNEY: Well of course they add up. I — I was — I was someone who ran businesses for 25 years, and balanced the budget. I ran the Olympics and balanced the budget. I ran the — the state of Massachusetts as a governor, to the extent any governor does, and balanced the budget all four years. When we’re talking about math that doesn’t add up, how about $4 trillion of deficits over the last four years, $5 trillion? That’s math that doesn’t add up. We have — we have a president talking about someone’s plan in a way that’s completely foreign to what my real plan is.

In that last paragraph, Mitt very quickly refused to consider the possibility that he could be wrong and then changed the subject.

Since there has been talk of his Etch a Sketch campaign which he clearly demonstrated in the first debate and his sketchy deal was demonstated by Presdent Obama in the second debate (see quote above), should we call Gov. Romney the Etch a Sketch man with the sketchy plan ?

Slippery Mitt moves toward the middle in the debate

Slippery Mitt moves toward the middle in the debate

Posted on by Jack

It has been widely said that Mitt Romney clearly won the first presidential debate held on October 3, 2012. Here is a transcript of the first presidential debate.

How did he do it? It comes down to that President Obama was unprepared for another shake of the Etch a Sketch when Slippery Mitt was asked about the tax plan that he has been proposing for a year or so. President Obama asked how it was possible to have to have this large tax cut and greatly increase military spending without adding to the deficit. Yes, old Mitt slipped away while denying any increase in the deficit was possible under his plan. He said that he would not increase the deficit. He said it, so it can’t happen.

“My plan is not to put in place any tax cut that will add to the deficit.”, said Mitt Romney. This seems to be something new. Before it was a kind of article of faith that if you cut taxes the economy would boom and revenue would pour into the federal coffers. But does this mean that if the massive tax cuts look like they might cause a deficit, that the tax cuts are off the table? Are they conditional on Congress agreeing to end enough deductions to offset the lower rates. Do we have any particulars on which deductions will be lost?

Further, it is widely assumed that this severely conservative budget will be a decrease over the present budget. So if we massively increase military spending and decrease taxes rates (although that will be wholly of partly offset by decreasing unspecified deductions), it stands to reason that some pretty big cuts must come out of the other stuff. But when President Obama questioned Slippery Mitt on how he would cut education, Mitt slipped away again by saying he would not cut education. So now it seems like the cuts elsewhere would be more severe.

You may have noticed that he did not agree to any of Obama’s expansions to education (more teachers and so forth), he just said he would not cut. Exactly what that means, I do not know. But it does sound much more moderate that previous stances.

So I think most of us figured Mitt Romney would eventually slip away from some of the more conservative positions he has taken and try to move toward the middle but he surprised me and maybe the President by his quick and bold moves during the debate.

But the lack of specifics in his proposals has been maddening. Of course, for most of these changes he has to work with Congress. So it would be foolish to say “this is what will happen”. But it would be nice if he took a position and said “this is what I propose”. Instead all we get are vague statements like – I know how to create 12 million jobs or I will cut the budget.

So trust in Slippery Mitt and trust in our highly-regarded Congress. It seems like such a good plan.

Are polls biased in favor of Obama?

Are polls biased in favor of Obama?

Posted on by Jack

Several new polls show President Obama with a wide lead in many swing-states. Some say there is a bias.

Of course, the polls could be wrong. But it seems unlikely that the people who do the polls would show a deliberate bias as this would tend to destroy any credibility in the long-run.

But there could be all sorts of unintentional bias. Younger voters tend to have cell phone rather than landlines and so might not get the call. I have a landline but tend to look at my caller-ID and not pick up calls from numbers I don’t recognize and that don’t attempt to leave a message. Some who indicate they are probable voters might not actually vote.

There are probably quite a few other reasons. But the one that came to mind is voter suppression as a consequence of the Voter ID laws mainly sponsored by Republican legislatures. This seems to be a factor here in Pennsylvania.

Mitt Romney may know something we don’t know about Voter ID

Mitt Romney may know something we don’t know about Voter ID

Posted on by Jack

Most of the polls I’ve seen indicate that President Obama is widening his lead in Pennsylvania but Mitt Romney has campaigned here in an attempts to turn things around. I know of at least 2 events yesterday (Friday).

I try to remember not to answer my phone without checking my caller-ID. Today unknown caller was calling so I figured it was a political or maybe a sales call and I’d listen to the message if there was one. The message was inviting me to a victory event for the Romney campaign tomorrow.

Does Mitt Romney know something we don’t know? Maybe the pollsters (except those working for the Republicans) are not figuring on an extensive suppression of the democratic vote by the new voter ID law passed by the republicans in the state house?

Writing off the 47%

Writing off the 47%

Posted on by Jack

Yesterday, I noted that Mitt Romney is writing off the 47% who don’t pay federal income taxes as Obama supporters. I pointed out that if this is correct, it pretty much insures an Obama victory and Romney loss. But there is more to the quote than that.

Governor Romney said:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. These are people who pay no income tax.

Quite a few of these people are responsible, despite what Mitt Romney thinks. The figure would include many on Social Security and Medicare who probably saved and paid taxes for much of their lives. There are the working poor. Leonard Pitts, Jr. profiles several of these in his “True stories of the 47 percent”. Interesting one of the comments is from the wife of a soldier who paid no income taxes because he was deployed to Iraq. There are people on disability.

There are many reasons people do not pay income taxes. What most have in common is that they make too little money. And many of them do pay other taxes. Some may be irresponsible. But it is probably not many and certainly not all.

There are even rich people who somehow avoid paying income tax (but that is another discussion for another day).

The President is president of all Americans, not 53% of them.

Mitt’s Math adds up to a Romney Loss

Mitt’s Math adds up to a Romney Loss

Posted on by Jack

Mitt Romney apparently believes that 47% of the population will vote for President Obama no matter what. It he is right (which is doubtful), he needs to find all his votes from the other 53%. So if he can get 95% of that 53%, he can eke out a victory in this election. Since you don’t really need a majority to win it may not be quite that bad but it is close. And then the figures may vary a bit from state to state so maybe he has written off fewer people in swing states but still his figures pretty much predict a Romney loss.

So here is an exact quote of Mitt Romney’s remarks on the subject:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. These are people who pay no income tax.

So if Mitt Romney is anywhere close to being right about the 47%, he will clearly lose. I don’t think he is right. But then I don’t think he is the right man to be President either.

Disingenuous crap: Obama has no jobs plan

Disingenuous crap: Obama has no jobs plan

Posted on by Jack

I liked the phase “disingenuous crap” so much to describe Romney’s claim that Obama has no jobs plan that I stole it from Andrew Sullivan. This is the third in his series on the big lies of Mitt Romney. This one seemed most relevant to today’s post so I referenced it here. But all are worth reading.

But it is rather a big claim that Obama has a plan so here is a second reference from the Washington Post. It seems it would have been more accurate for Mr. Romney to claim that President Obama has no plan that Republicans support.

Obama has proposed a plan and it has been blocked by Republicans who don’t want him to succeed. But he is succeeding. It seems likely to me that the success would be much faster if the Republicans in Congress would do their job and govern.

The highest Republican party objective seems to be to deny Obama a second term. That is a rather short video with Mitch McConnell defending his now famous quote. But if you have the time you might enjoy an almost 9 minute video from Media Matters which includes several Republican quotes and a bit of context.

Despite opposition President Obama is succeeding in getting our economy to grow. Of course, growth would be faster if he had the support of Congress. Think about that when you vote.

But if you remember, we were losing about 800,000 jobs per month when President Obama took office. The job loss slowed and for the past few years we have actually been gaining jobs each month. (See Stimulus worked, more jobs needed.)

That post is about a year old, see Chart Book: The Legacy of the Great Recession which bring things up to date and adds quite a bit more on the recovery.

Econ- Obama, Obama and small budget increases

Econ- Obama, Obama and small budget increases

Posted on by Jack

There is an interesting post on the Forbes website about increases in Federal spending by recent Presidents. I was surprised. We always hear how President Obama is a big spender. But when the actual numbers are examined, it turns out that President Obama is responsible for the lowest spending increases.

President Clinton was the second lowest. In contrast Presidents Reagan and both Presidents Bush were a considerably higher. It seems the Republicans talk a good game about being the financial watchdogs but the data don’t seem to support that view.

The tricky thing is the 2009 budget which is really a President Bush budget but some of President Obama’s stimulus is added to that. This is accounted for and explained well, especially in the comments.