Mitt's Problem with Employment Issues

Paul Krugman has an interesting article regarding the Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, job creation and outsourcing.  Well, maybe that's offshoring.  Or is it just offsourced.  He dicsusses all these choices in, Romney Knows Outsourcing Not Creating Jobs.

In a better America, Mitt Romney would be running for president on the strength of his major achievement as governor of Massachusetts: a health reform that was identical in all important respects to the health reform enacted by President Obama. By the way, the Massachusetts reform is working pretty well and has overwhelming popular support.

In reality, however, Mr. Romney is doing no such thing, bitterly denouncing the Supreme Court for upholding the constitutionality of his own health care plan. His case for becoming president relies, instead, on his claim that, having been a successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs.

This, in turn, means that however much the Romney campaign may wish otherwise, the nature of that business career is fair game. How did Mr. Romney make all that money? Was it in ways suggesting that what was good for Bain Capital, the private equity firm that made him rich, would also be good for America?

And the answer is no.

The truth is that even if Mr. Romney had been a classic captain of industry, a present-day Andrew Carnegie, his career wouldn’t have prepared him to manage the economy. A country is not a company (despite globalization, America still sells 86 percent of what it makes to itself), and the tools of macroeconomic policy — interest rates, tax rates, spending programs — have no counterparts on a corporate organization chart. Did I mention that Herbert Hoover actually was a great businessman in the classic mold?

In any case, however, Mr. Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. Bain didn’t build businesses; it bought and sold them. Sometimes its takeovers led to new hiring; often they led to layoffs, wage cuts and lost benefits. On some occasions, Bain made a profit even as its takeover target was driven out of business. None of this sounds like the kind of record that should reassure American workers looking for an economic savior.

And then there’s the business about outsourcing.

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported that Bain had invested in companies whose specialty was helping other companies move jobs overseas. The Romney campaign went ballistic, demanding — unsuccessfully — that The Post retract the report on the basis of an unconvincing “fact sheet” consisting largely of executive testimonials.

What was more interesting was the campaign’s insistence that The Post had misled readers by failing to distinguish between “offshoring” — moving jobs abroad — and “outsourcing,” which simply means having an external contractor perform services that could have been performed in-house.

Now, if the Romney campaign really believed in its own alleged free-market principles, it would have defended the right of corporations to do whatever maximizes their profits, even if that means shipping jobs overseas. Instead, however, the campaign effectively conceded that offshoring is bad but insisted that outsourcing is O.K. as long as the contractor is another American firm.

That is, however, a very dubious assertion.

Consider one of Mr. Romney’s most famous remarks: “Corporations are people, my friend.” When the audience jeered, he elaborated: “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets.” This is undoubtedly true, once you take into account the pockets of, say, partners at Bain Capital (who, I hasten to add, are, indeed, people). But one of the main points of outsourcing is to ensure that as little as possible of what corporations earn goes into the pockets of the people who actually work for those corporations.

Why, for example, do many large companies now outsource cleaning and security to outside contractors? Surely the answer is, in large part, that outside contractors can hire cheap labor that isn’t represented by the union and can’t participate in the company health and retirement plans. And, sure enough, recent academic research finds that outsourced janitors and guards receive substantially lower wages and worse benefits than their in-house counterparts.

Just to be clear, outsourcing is only one source of the huge disconnect between a tiny elite and ordinary American workers, a disconnect that has been growing for more than 30 years. And Bain, in turn, was only one player in the growth of outsourcing. So Mitt Romney didn’t personally, single-handedly, destroy the middle-class society we used to have. He was, however, an enthusiastic and very well remunerated participant in the process of destruction; if Bain got involved with your company, one way or another, the odds were pretty good that even if your job survived you ended up with lower pay and diminished benefits.

In short, what was good for Bain Capital definitely wasn’t good for America. And, as I said at the beginning, the Obama campaign has every right to point that out.

Mitt Romney has created more jobs elsewhere while terminating jobs here.  Why should we believe that he now has the requisite experience regarding unemployment in the U.S. and creating jobs?

Doomsday Republicans

 

GOP Tea Party politicians and pundits came out swiftly to comment on the Supreme Court's 5 to 4 ruling to uphold The Affordable Health Care for America Act.  The following comments are examples of fear mongering, outright lies, misrepresentations and generally a lack of comprehension regarding the Constitution and the reality of the Act.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) compares Supreme Court ruling to 9/11

"Because really, isn't it pretty difficult to tell the difference between a horrific terrorist attack and a law saying that maybe people with preexisting health conditions ought to be allowed access to our health care system too?"

Sen. Rand Paul Reacts to SCOTUS Ruling on Obamacare

“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional." 

Rick Santorum Comments on Supreme Court Obamacare Ruling

"President Obama believes he is above the law, entitled to abusing his power to get what he wants, and willing to violate the constitution and the oath he was sworn to uphold. He has proven to be a very dangerous person to have this kind of power, and if he is not stopped this November, I am fearful that the make-up of this country as established by our founders will never be the same."

Mitt Romney’s Response to Supreme Court Decision

"What the court id not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States.  And that is I will act to repeal Obamacare."

Setting the Record Straight 

To set the record straight, Mike Pence's comments were deliberately stoked in fear mongering and misrepresentations.  He eventually apologized.  According to Politico: "at the time he was just in a blind, half-mad rage, and whenever Republicans are mad about something it's exactly like 9/11. Every. Damn. Time."  Pence told POLITICO:

"My remarks at the Republican Conference following the Supreme Court decision were thoughtless. I certainly did not intend to minimize any tragedy our nation has faced and I apologize."  

Rand Paul's comments are based in a total lack of understanding of the judicial system  and the precedent regarding the rulings by the Supreme Court.  He is absolutely WRONG!


Rick Santorum's comment is is vitriolic, based on innuendo and fear and completely WRONG. Our government in based on the separation of powers.  The decision of the Supreme Court has no bearing on the President's actions.  He is stoking the fires of fear and ignorance.


Mitt Romney went on to profess the affects of the Affordable Health Act and continue to spew his lies and misrepresentations.  Here are the reasons Mitt wants to repeal the Act and the truth about his statements:

~  Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion. Obamacare cuts Medicare - cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion. INNACURATE...

~ “Obamacare adds trillions to our deficit and national debt.” This is total fear-mongering.

~ Romney’s talking points have been debunked numerous times and found false. The CBO finds that the ACA is going to reduce the deficit, not add to it. Furthermore:

The key to this claim is the fact that the health care law does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget. Rather, the bill attempts to slow the program’s future growth, curtailing just over $500 billion in future spending increases over the next 10 years.

Also, it ends the Medicare Advantage program, which cost the government a huge amount of money with few benefits. Likewise, the law doesn’t add “trillions to our deficits.”  By most accounts, the law reduces the deficit over the next decade and works to reduce the overall rate of health care spending by the federal government.

~ Obamacare also means that for up to 20 million Americans, they will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and they want to keep. This assertion is a LIE! Under the law, you can maintain your current health insurance if you like it.

~ Along with Romney other politicians including Speaker of the House John Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor have echoed Romney's talking point that "The president’s health care law is hurting our economy by driving up health costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire. Obamacare is a job-killer. Businesses across the country have been asked what the impact is of Obamacare. Three-quarters of those surveyed by the Chamber of Commerce said Obamacare makes it less likely for them to hire people. This is a bizarre and inaccurate claim.

~ And perhaps most troubling of all, Obamacare puts the federal government between you and your doctor. FALSE  The law would set minimum benefits packages, but medical services will not be government-run, nor does the law allow for rationing of care.

Republicans have retreated from reality and launched an assault of lies instead of facing the truth about the Health Act.


Here are the FACTS about The Affordable Care Act:

1. Expands healthcare coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans,
2. Requires many health insurance plans to cover prevention and wellness benefits with no co-pay or deductibles for 54 million Americans that have private insurance,
3. Eliminates the lifetime coverage limit for 105 million Americans already insured,
4. Gives 2.3 million elderly Medicare patients access to annual wellness checkups,
5. Provides prescription care “donut hole” coverage for 5.1 million seniors, and
6. Requires insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions, including 17 million of the 74.9 million children ages 0-17 years old residing in the U.S., according to recent US Census figures.

Most people only know about three portions of the law that have already gone into effect:

1.  The part that closes the donut hole for prescription drug coverage;
2. The provision that has enabled 2.5 million kids up to the age of 26 to piggy back off their parents’ insurance; and,
3. The part which stops health insurers form denying coverage for children and other people with preexisting conditions.


Little is known about the other parts of the law but click HERE to go through a primer on who may benefit and who will lose if the law is upheld or struck down.

The bottom line is that it is important to have the correct information to understand this Act.  Politicians who use innuendo, misrepresentation and lies based on fear mongering should be held accountable for their inaccurate statements. 

Headlines in the News

 

Romney Advises Broke, About-to-be-Unemployed College Students: “Just Borrow Money From Your Parents!”

The Mittster’s latest Richie Rich moment from the campaign trail has him regaling an audience of economically anxious college students with some swell advice on how to succeed in business: just be like his “friend” sandwich shop entrepreneur Jimmy John, and get your parents to bankroll the costs of a start-up! Hey, that sounds easy — why didn’t I think of that?! Here’s Mittens:

This kind of divisiveness, this attack of success, is very different than what we’ve seen in our country’s history. We’ve always encouraged young people: Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business. READ MORE

Food Stamps In Crosshairs Of Republicans' Plan To Save Military

For the Republicans' constant trumpeting of saving the economy in public, they have proven time and again that's exactly the opposite of what they want to do. The latest: the GOP would like to save the disproportionate defense spending by... cutting food stamps. No, America, they do not care about your well being, or whether all of us can afford to eat.

In a memo sent to members Wednesday instructing them how to write their reconciliation bill, Republicans picked a number of targets, including extracting $80 billion from federal workers and $44 billion from health care. In all, it identifies $78 billion to cut in 2013, and details around $300 billion over 10 years.

But the memo spends the most time targeting the exploding cost of food stamps, on which more Americans rely than ever, at greater expense to the government than ever before.

Each month during fiscal 2011, an average of 45 million mostly poor Americans received benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, at a cost of $78 billion to the federal government. Last year's SNAP participation represented a 70 percent increase from 2007, and the highest enrollment the program has ever seen. In that time, the cost of the program more than doubled. READ MORE

Government-Run Healthcare is More Efficient Than Private Healthcare

One of the problems with the employer-centered healthcare model that we adopted accidentally during and after World War II is that it does a pretty good job of hiding costs. Sure, our premiums and copays rise every year, but most of us have very little idea how much our medical insurance really costs. We pay a small portion, and the rest is, from our point of view, effectively free. By contrast, in European countries, which have done a much better job of controlling costs than the U.S., spending comes largely out of tax dollars, which means that legislatures and taxpayers have to face up to the cost of healthcare every year when they pass a budget. The fact that the process is played out in the rough and tumble of the political spotlight gives everyone a strong incentive to hold down spending. After all, rising costs mean rising taxes.

Until the cost of medical care bites, Americans won't put a lot of pressure on the healthcare industry to rein in its prices and administer care more efficiently. Taxpayer-supported national healthcare could help us get there. The relative efficiency of Medicare and Medicaid are bellwethers we should pay attention to. READ MORE


The GOP’s Death Wish: Why Republicans Can’t Stop Pissing Off Hispanics, Women, and Young People

How can a political party be so dumb as to piss off Hispanics, women, and young people? Because the core of its base is middle-aged white men – and it doesn’t seem to know how to satisfy its base without at the same time turning off everyone who’s not white, male, and middle-aged. READ MORE

The Phony Arguments

 

Garry Wills takes a realistic look at the Republican Tea Party in hi s article Contraception's Con Men.

By a revolting combination of con men and fanatics, the current primary race has become a demonstration that the Republican party does not deserve serious consideration for public office. Take the controversy over contraceptives. American bishops at first opposed having hospitals and schools connected with them pay employee health costs for contraceptives. But when the President backed off from that requirement, saying insurance companies can pay the costs, the bishops doubled down and said no one should have to pay for anything so evil as contraception. Some Republicans are using the bishops’ stupidity to hurt the supposed "moderate" candidate Mitt Romney, giving a temporary leg up to the faux naïf Rick Santorum; others are attacking Barack Obama as an "enemy of religion."

Pusillanimous Catholics - Mark Shields and even, to a degree, the admirable E. J. Dionne - are saying that Catholics understandably resent an attack on "their" doctrine (even though they do not personally believe in it). Omnidirectional bad-faith arguments have clustered around what is falsely presented as a defense of "faith." The layers of ignorance are equaled only by the willingness of people "of all faiths" to use them for their own purposes. Consider just some of the layers:

The Phony Religious Freedom Argument 

The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a "conscience exemption." It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.

Contraception is not even a religious matter. Nowhere in Scripture or the Creed is it forbidden. Catholic authorities themselves say it is a matter of "natural law," over which natural reason is the arbiter - and natural reason, even for Catholics, has long rejected the idea that contraception is evil. More of that later; what matters here is that contraception is legal, ordinary, and accepted even by most Catholics. To say that others must accept what Catholics themselves do not is bad enough. To say that President Obama is "trying to destroy the Catholic Church" if he does not accept it is much, much worse.

To disagree with Catholic bishops is called "disrespectful," an offense against religious freedom. That is why there is a kind of taboo against bringing up Romney’s Mormonism. But if Romney sincerely believed in polygamy on religious grounds, as his grandfather did, he would not even be considered for the presidency - any more than a sincere Christian Scientist, who rejects the use of medicine, would be voted for to handle public health care. Yet a man who believes that contraception is evil is an aberrant from the American norm, like the polygamist or the faith healer.

The Phony Contraception Argument

The opposition to contraception has, as I said, no scriptural basis. Pope Pius XI once said that it did, citing in his encyclical Casti Connubii (1930) the condemnation of Onan for "spilling his seed" rather than impregnating a woman (Genesis 38.9). But later popes had to back off from this claim, since everyone agrees now that Onan’s sin was not carrying out his duty to give his brother an heir (Deuteronomy 25.5-6). Then the "natural law" was fallen back on, saying that the natural purpose of sex is procreation, and any use of it for other purposes is "unnatural." But a primary natural purpose does not of necessity exclude ancillary advantages. The purpose of eating is to sustain life, but that does not make all eating that is not necessary to subsistence "unnatural." One can eat, beyond the bare minimum to exist, to express fellowship, as one can have sex, beyond the begetting of a child with each act, to express love.

The Roman authorities would not have fallen for such a silly argument but for a deep historical disrelish for sex itself. Early Fathers and medieval theologians considered sex unworthy when not actually sinful. That is why virgin saints and celibate priests were prized above married couples. Thomas Aquinas said that priests must not be married, since "those in holy orders handle the sacred vessels and the sacrament itself, and therefore it is proper (decens) that they preserve, by abstinences, a body undefiled (munditia corporalis) (Summa Theologiae, Part 3 Supplement, Question 53, article 3, Response). Marriage, you see, makes for defilement (immunditia). The ban on contraception is a hangover from the period when the body itself was considered unclean, as Peter Brown overwhelmingly proved in The Body and Society (1988).

The Phony "Church Teaches" Argument

Catholics who do not accept the phony argument over contraception are said to be "going against the teachings of their church." That is nonsense. They are their church. The Second Vatican Council defines the church as "the people of God." Thinking that the pope is the church is a relic of the days when a monarch was said to be his realm. The king was "Denmark." Catholics have long realized that their own grasp of certain things, especially sex, has a validity that is lost on the celibate male hierarchy. This is particularly true where celibacy is concerned.

There was broad disagreement with Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical on the matter. Pope Paul VI set up a study group of loyal and devout Catholics, lay and clerical, to make recommendations. The group overwhelmingly voted to change the teaching of Pius XI. But cardinals in the Roman Curia convinced Paul that any change would suggest that the church’s teachings are not eternal (though Casti Connubii had not been declared infallible, by the papacy’s own standards).

When Paul reaffirmed the ban on birth control in Humanae Vitae (1968) there was massive rejection of it. Some left the church. Some just ignored it. Paradoxically, the document formed to convey the idea that papal teaching is inerrant just convinced most people that it can be loony. The priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley said that Humanae Vitae did more damage to the papacy than any of the so-called "liberal" movements in Catholicism. When Pius IX condemned democracy and modern science in his Syllabus of Errors (1864), the Catholic historian Lord Acton said that Catholics were too sensible to go crazy every time a pope does. The reaction to Humanae Vitae proves that.

The Phony "Undying Principle" Argument

Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate. Yet he is praised by television pundits, night and day, for being "sincere" and "standing by what he believes." He is the principled alternative to the evil Moderation of Mitt Romney and the evil Evil of Newt Gingrich. He is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic. Messrs. Boehner and McConnell call him a martyr to religious freedom. A young priest I saw on television, modeling himself on his hero Santorum, said, "I would rather die than give up my church’s principles." What we are seeing is not a defense of undying principle but a stampede toward a temporarily exploitable lunacy. Acton to the rescue!

  This is just another example of religion being used to destroy the freedoms of those who don't agree.

Straight from the Horses Mouth, or is that the Elephants Rear?

When former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) , the GOP frontrunner, was recently asked at the Iowa State Fair why he was focusing on entitlement reforms as a means of deficit reduction over asking corporations to share part of the burden, he said:

"Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings my friend."

WATCH Romney:

Now, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) who kicked off her bus tour of Iowa at the state fairgrounds where Romney spoke also sided with corporations, declaring, “Mitt Romney was right.”

KEYES: Governor, are corporations people?

PALIN: The people pay the taxes. It’s not an entity — the corporation itself — that pays the taxes. It’s the people who pay the taxes. So Mitt Romney was right.

WATCH Palin:

Then, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) went further than Romney and Palin by saying, “all of us are corporations.”

KEYES: What did you make of Mitt Romney’s statement today that “corporations are people”?

PAUL: Corporations are collections of people. I think we’re all corporations. To say we’re going to punish corporations like they’re someone else. All of us are corporations.

KEYES: Do you think that was basically in line with what he was saying?

PAUL: You think about, if you own a retirement fund, you have a 401k, everybody who has a 401k has parts of corporations, so in a sense we are.

KEYES: I think people might argue that corporations can’t be sent to jail.

PAUL: I think those arguments can be made, but I think the fact that a lot of times people want to vilify corporations, saying they’re someone else, that they’re these other rich people. They’re us. They’re the middle class. We all own parts of corporations.

WATCH Paul:

You heard it straight from the horses mouth, or is that the elephants rear? These GOP Tea Party politicians want to protect the 'PEOPLE'S MONEY.' That means the Corporate Money with the Corporate Loopholes and the Corporate Tax Cuts. Because, you my friend... the little people.. don't have any money anymore to protect.

The Front Runner is…A RICH WHITE GUY ….!

Anybody Surprised?

Romney picked as 2012 GOP front-runner