"Republican pundits love to say that the national debt has increased by $5 trillion because of President Obama. Factually, that statement is simply untrue. Let's examine the evidence.
Of the alleged $5 trillion, $1.6 trillion is related to costs of the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars. These were costs George W. Bush intentionally hid from the budget, and that President Obama allowed to be calculated when he assumed office.
Note that Obama could have continued to hide the bill as Bush did, passing it along to his predecessor.
President Bush was able to manipulate funding for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars using special emergency authorization bills. He did this because, as you recall, the Democrats were attempting to defund the war legislatively.
The overall point is simple: Obama, as president, authorized not one cent of that $1.6 trillion to be spent.
It has been previously reported by marketwatch.com that President Obama increased overall government spending by a smaller margin than any modern president, all the way to President Eisenhower.
Rex Nutting at marketwatch clarifies:
What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year. It takes time to develop a budget and steer it through Congress — especially in these days of congressional gridlock.
Over $1.4 trillion was spent on interest payments caused by the already standing debt.
Knowing that, let's examine the GOP's argument.
They say President Obama has spent too much, but 32% of the total amount they claim has been spent is a direct result of Republican presidential policies, and previous spending.
President Obama is stuck paying the bill for the previous GOP administrations of Reagan, H.W. Bush, and W. Bush. President Clinton left with a surplus if you recall, and added nothing to our debt. This point has been discussed constantly, and was even visited by President Obama's former Press Secretary Jay Carney during a press gaggle.
It is not disputed that the national debt was $10 trillion before President Obama took office.
The interest that is paid on the debt today was created by the very same people who now are attempting to blame the cost of that interest on the president. Do not allow yourself to be fooled, the GOP is attempting to blame the president for something they caused.
Now our journey of $5 trillion has been twiddled down to $2 trillion.
Another piece of the puzzle is that the CBO projected because of the Bush Era Tax Cuts, our government lost over $1.6 trillion in projected revenue. Of course, these unpaid taxes were supposed to create jobs for the middle class. The tax cuts have been in place for over 10 years, one would think our nation would be swimming in jobs. Yet, friends, that is not the case.
If reasonable tax rates were in place that were similar to those used while President Clinton was in office -- America's fiscal outlook would be more optimistic.
This leaves only $400 billion to be unaccounted for, and surely the fervor about reckless spending can not be over that amount because in that regard there are many instances where the GOP is equally guilty, if not more culpable. For example, our nation is still paying for the wasteful Medicare part D plan. Passed in 2003 and enacted in 2006, it has been estimated to cost a staggering $17 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Others put a more conservative price of $8 trillion including former head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, David Walker.
$8 - $17 trillion in spending, and yet they say President Obama is the reckless spender? No matter how you look at the numbers, the GOP is guilty of at least one-and-a-half more spending, or three times as much spending. How can they claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility?
The overall premise of the argument has now been debunked, and the truth is quite clear; 88% of the debt which the GOP blames on President Obama was not created as a consequence of his policies.
Showing posts with label Pres. Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pres. Obama. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
FACT CHECKING THE DEBATE
Lets Fact Check The Debate: Here are two media sources and their fact checking.
My personal comments are in brackets [ ] and blue in color.
THINKPROGRESS:
At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 31 Myths In 41 Minutes
1) “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.”
Fact: Paul Ryan’s budget could cut Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students and even Romney’s white paper on education, “A Chance for Every Child,” suggests that he “would reverse the growth in Pell Grant funding.” It says: “A Romney Administration will refocus Pell Grant dollars on the students that need them most and place the program on a responsible long-term path that avoids future funding cliffs and last-minute funding patches.”
2) “I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.”
Fact: The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.
3) “And the president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land. As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent.”
Fact: 14 percent is a one-year number. “Overall, oil production on federal land under Obama is up from 566 million barrels in 2008 to 626 million barrels in 2011, a 10.6 percent increase.” Compared to the last three years of President Bush, there have been 241 million more barrels of oil produced from public lands in the first three years of President Obama.
4) “Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.”
Fact: There are slightly fewer permits in 2009 and 2010, from between 8,000-9,000 permits to over 5,000, and they have not been cut by half. The oil and gas industry is sitting on 7,000 approved permits to drill, where it hasn’t begun exploring or developing. Two-thirds of “acreage leased by [oil] industry lies idle” on public lands, according to the Department of the Interior.
5) “I believe very much in our renewable capabilities; ethanol, wind, solar will be an important part of our energy mix.” Romney is actually against a one-year renewal of the wind production tax credit. The wind production tax credit has led to $14 billion of investment in 2011 and tens of thousands of American jobs.
6) “And coal, coal production is not up; coal jobs are not up.”
Fact: 1,500 coal jobs have been created under Obama.
7) “And if we do that, if we do what I’m planning on doing, which is getting us energy independent, North America energy independence within eight years.”
Fact: Romney would actually eliminate the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.
8) “I will fight to create more energy in this country, to get America energy secure. And part of that is bringing in a pipeline of oil from Canada.”
Fact: Even with generous assumptions, the impact of the pipeline on oil prices is unclear and may raise prices in Midwest states. After all, a lot of that refined tar sands crude will be sold on the international market.
9) “The proof of whether a [energy] strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump. If you’re paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you’re paying more.”
Fact: Gas prices are certainly high, but oil is a global commodity, and the president has virtually no control over them. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, Romney’s proposal to increase domestic oil production would not have much impact on volatility.
10) “And I will not — I will not under any circumstances, reduce the share that’s being paid by the highest income taxpayers. And I will not, under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle-class.”
Fact: As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.
11) “But your rate comes down and the burden also comes down on you for one more reason, and that is every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. No tax on your savings. That makes life a lot easier.”
Fact: This would actually help very few Americans. Nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income. To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it.
12) “A recent study has shown the people in the middle-class will see $4,000.00 per year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration.”
Fact: Romney is pointing to this study from the American Enterprise Institute. It actually found that rather than raise taxes to pay down the debt, the Obama administration’s policies — those contained directly in his budget — would reduce the share of taxes that go toward servicing the debt by $1,289.89 per taxpayer in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.
13) “Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people.”
Fact: Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased.
[Lets remember that officially a small business is defined by having a limited number of owners and is privately held, thus not publicly traded on the stock exchanges. Some examples of small business that earn huge incomes, Johnson A Family Company, Koch Industries owned by the Koch brothers who earn billions of dollars annually, most every hedge fund manager who earns millions of dollars a year, Cargil that earns $109 billion, Mars that earned $30 billion, PricewaterhouseCooper that earned $29 billion, Bechtel earned $28 billion and Publix Supermarkets that earned $35 billion. There are hundreds more, but you get my point. Most Ma and Pa businesses will not be effect by this increase nor would the amount they would save with the lower rate be enough to even hire one person for a year. So his statements are false.]
14) “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.”
Fact: Romney did not ask women groups for candidates. Instead, prior to his election, a “bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government.” They “put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions” and presented it to Romney after he was elected. A UMass-Boston study found that “the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006.”
15) “I’m going to help women in America get good work by getting a stronger economy and by supporting women in the workforce.”
Fact: Romney has been uncomfortably silent on the issue of pay equity. He has refused to say whether he’d support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would allow women to sue for equal pay, and named four of the justices who voted to roll back equal pay in that Supreme Court decision as his models for any of his appointments to the federal bench.
16) “I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.”
Fact: But back in March, Romney expressed strong support for the so-called Blunt amendment, which that would allow employers to deny contraception coverage to women. Romney also wants to defund Planned Parenthood, where 76 percent of the patients seek low-cost birth control options. Defunding the organization would make it much harder for those women to get contraceptives.
17) “So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And — and I think it’s important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommend and ultimately what happened.”
Fact: This is false. As Buisnessweek explain: “Romney is misstating his position. He opposed any use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the automakers, advice that President George W. Bush and Obama ignored. GM and Chrysler went through managed bankruptcies after Bush, at the end of his presidency, and later Obama provided federal funds.” “Without federal funds, GM and Chyrsler would not have survived. As former Bush aide Tony Fratto explained, “It wasn’t just that there wasn’t credit available; a lot of private equity had cash, they just weren’t giving it away.”
18) “He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year.”
Fact: Premiums have increased, though at a lower rate than before. And while the Affordable Care Act’s most important cost contentment strategies have yet to be implemented, the law is already lowering costs. 16 million seniors have received preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving at least $3.9 billion on prescription drugs. Millions of young adults now have insurance coverage and are staying on their parent’s health care plan, insurers have refunded consumers, and states have successfully rejected dramatic premium increases.
19) “He keeps saying, ‘Look, I’ve created 5 million jobs.’ That’s after losing 5 million jobs. The entire record is such that the unemployment has not been reduced in this country.”
Fact: Job creation is net positive since Obama took office in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression. Economists estimate that up to 3 million jobs were created by the stimulus alone.
20) “The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident.”
Fact: But Romney has promised to end President Obama’s deferred action directive, which saves some young undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he would not take away visas from people who had already received them. He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act.
21) “Now, when the president ran for office, he said that he’d put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation — he’d file a bill in his first year that would reform our — our immigration system… He didn’t do it. He had a Democrat House and Democrat Senate, supermajority in both houses.”
Fact: Senate Republicans repeatedly prevented Obama’s immigration reform efforts. The GOP actually blocked the DREAM Act from securing 60 votes to pass cloture, denying hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) even said on the Senate floor that young people lobbying his office had wasted their time.
[We must remember that there was only a few broken up months that there was any super majority because Senator Byrd was hospitalized and could not vote and then Ted Kennedy dies which left his post open for a few months until it was filled temporarily until Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill that seat. Most of the time the Democrats only had 58 votes at any given time.]
22) “Any investments I have over the last eight years have been managed by a blind trust. And I understand they do include investments outside the United States, including in — in Chinese companies.”
Fact: Romney’s blind trust is not very blind, and includes investments in a company owned by Romney’s son. [Additionally, Romney himself said, speaking of Ted Kennedy's blind trust, that they are not as they seem because the owner of the trust can direct the blind fund in what it can and can't invest in.]
23) “It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people.” Obama called the Libya incident an act of “terror” the very next day.
Fact: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” he said. “Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”
24) “Consider the distance between ourselves and — and Israel, the president said that — that he was going to put daylight between us and Israel.”
Fact: The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].”
25) “The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and — and — and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes.”
Fact: Obama never embarked on an “apology tour.” [The only apologies that the administration has issued are for misconduct by our military personnel when they burred a bunch of Korans, the soldier pissed on dead Afganies and a few other instances of misconduct. What the Republicans like to claim is that when Pres. Obama gave a speech at a university in Egypt that it was an apology, in fact it was an attempt to reduce tensions between those who think the west has a holy war against Islam. There was no apology at all.]
26) “We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.”
Fact: [It is legal to own an automatic weapon, but it’s not easy. Automatic weapons are "Class III" weapons, and are titled much like cars are. Most firearms dealers do not have a Class III FFL. The title transfer fee is hundreds of dollars, and you need written permission from your local police chief or county sheriff. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was enacted in 1994 and the Bush Administration tried to extend it, but his own party in Congress rejected the extension. In July 2004, then-Governor Romney signed legislation into law that made Massachusetts' assault weapons ban permanent and not reliant on a federal ban that expired at the end of 2004. The state issued a press release at the time, in which Romney described assault weapons as "instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."]
27) “The — the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to — to gun violence in some respects is what — what is known as Fast and Furious. Which was a program under this administration, and how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely, where thousands of automatic, and AK-47 type weapons were — were given to people that ultimately gave them to — to drug lords.”
Fact: The Justice Department’s inspector general “issued a scathing critique of federal officials for their handling of the botched gun-trafficking case,” but “exonerated Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., whom many Republicans have blamed for the scandal.” [Another report stated that the program was actually started under the Bush Administration as "Operation Castaway" and was operating out of Florida and Texas. The ATF was trying to track and find out who the cartel person was that was receiving the weapons. The IG report indicated the AG Eric Holder and Pres. Obama had no idea about this ATF operation, as the ATF didn't brief them when they took office. When AG Holder became aware of the operation, he called Arizona and all the other field offices and ordered the operation to stop.]
28) “What I will do as president is make sure it’s more attractive to come to America again.”
Fact: Romney’s plan to move the country to a territorial tax system would let corporations do business and make profits overseas without ever being taxed on it in the U.S. This would no doubt encourage American companies to invest abroad, potentially costing the country up to 800,000 jobs.
29) “Canada’s tax rate on companies is now 15 percent. Ours is 35 percent. So if you’re starting a business, where would you rather start it? We have to be competitive if we’re going to create more jobs here.”
Fact: The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies.
30) “And there’s no question but that Obamacare has been an extraordinary deterrent to enterprises of all kinds hiring people.”
Fact: Under the law, only companies with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance or pay a fine — that’s just 2.6 percent of businesses. If anything, expanding health care coverage to more Americans will actually create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
31) “He said he would have by now put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road to bankruptcy.”
Fact: The possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.
AP/HUFFINGTON POST:
1) OBAMA: The day after last month's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, "I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."
ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."
OBAMA: "Get the transcript."
THE FACTS: Obama is correct in saying that he referred to Benghazi as an act of terrorism on Sept. 12, the day after the attack. From the Rose Garden, he said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. ... We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act."
But others in his administration repeated for several days its belief that the violence stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. It took almost a month before officials acknowledged that those protests never occurred. And Romney is right in arguing that the administration has yet to explain why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.
___
2) OBAMA: "Let's take the money that we've been spending on war over the last decade to rebuild America, roads, bridges, schools. We do those things, not only is your future going to be bright, but America's future is going to be bright as well."
THE FACTS: What Obama didn't mention is that much of the money that has been paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was borrowed. In fact, the government borrows nearly 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Thus using money that had been earmarked for wars to build schools and infrastructure would involve even more borrowing, adding to the federal deficit.
___
3) ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters."
OBAMA: "Very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We've opened up public lands. We're actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration and my – the previous president was an oilman."
THE FACTS: Both statements ring true, as far as they go. Obama more correctly describes the bigger picture.
According to an Energy Department study published in the spring, sales of oil from federal areas fell 14 percent between 2010 and 2011 and sales of natural gas production fell 9 percent, supporting Romney's point. The lower oil production was a result mainly of a moratorium on offshore drilling imposed by the Obama administration after the April 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
According to the same report, though, oil production from federal areas is up 13 percent since Obama took office despite last year's dip, and analysts say Gulf oil production is expected to soon exceed its pre-spill levels.
Natural gas production from federal areas has been declining for years because drillers have found vast reserves of natural gas in formations under several states that are cheaper to access than most federally controlled areas.
___
4) OBAMA: "For young people who've come here, brought here often times by their parents, have gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag, think of this as their country and understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers, we should make sure we give them a pathway to citizenship. And that's what I've done administratively."
THE FACTS: His administrative actions do not provide a pathway to citizenship. The administration is allowing as many as 1.7 million young illegal immigrants to apply to avoid deportation for up to two years and get a work permit. And the government has begun a policy of prosecutorial discretion under which illegal immigrants with long-standing ties to the U.S. and no criminal history are generally not arrested and deported by immigration authorities. But these steps do not extend legal status or a process resulting in citizenship.
[Since the Dream Act was filibustered in the Senate by the Republicans and when he met with the leadership of both parties for a comprehensive reform, it became clear that he was not going to get any immigration legislation passed. His ...pathway to citizenship is not law as pointed out, but should he get reelected and a more humble opposition party starts to work with him, he could create by law a pathway to citizenship]
___
5) ROMNEY: "I know he keeps saying, `You want to take Detroit bankrupt.' Well, the president took Detroit bankrupt. You took General Motors bankrupt. You took Chrysler bankrupt. So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And I think it's important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened."
THE FACTS: What Romney recommended did not happen, and his proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business. He opposed using government money to bail out the automakers, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. But the automakers were bleeding cash and were poor credit risks. The banking system was in crisis. So private loans weren't available. Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets sold in pieces.
___
6) OBAMA: "And what I want to do is build on the 5 million jobs that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone."
THE FACTS: As he has done before, Obama is cherry-picking his numbers to make them sound better than they really are. He ignores the fact that public-sector job losses have dragged down overall job creation. Also, he chooses just to mention the past 30 months. That ignores job losses during his presidency up until that point. According to the Labor Department, about 4.5 million total jobs have been created over the past 30 months. But some 4.3 million jobs were lost during the earlier months of his administration. At this point, Obama is a net job creator, but only marginally.
[One must remember that in the first couple of months of assuming the office, the spiral started by the Bush Administration was continuing until Pres. Obama could get his stimulus bill passed in Congress with no help from Republicans and it took a couple of months for the money to flow to the projects and the tax cuts in the payroll taxes to start to take effect. To me, you can't look at the actual NET jobs because I attribute the losses in the first few months as those of G. W. Bush. Just because a person is sworn in on January 20th, doesn't mean everything changes on that date.]
___
7) ROMNEY: "The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you're paying at the pump. If you're paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you're paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, it's $4.00 a gallon. The price of electricity is up. If the president's energy policies are working, you're going to see the cost of energy come down."
THE FACTS: Presidents have almost no effect on energy prices; most are set on financial exchanges around the world. When Obama took office, the world was in the grip of a financial crisis and crude prices – and gasoline prices along with them – had plummeted because world demand had collapsed. Crude oil prices have since risen even as U.S. oil production has soared in recent years because global demand is reaching new heights as the developing economies of Asia use more oil.
Other energy prices have fallen during Obama's term. Electricity prices, when adjusted for inflation, are down, and homeowners are finding it much cheaper to heat their homes with natural gas. That's because natural gas production has surged, reducing prices both for homeowners and for utilities that burn gas to generate electricity.
[Gas prices rose to over $4.00 a gallon under the Bush Administration. Right-wing pundits claimed at that time that the president doesn't control energy prices because it is a commodity that is traded on the global free markets. But as soon as they climbed under Pres. Obama, then it is because of his policies and not the free market. They always want it both ways. One of the biggest problems are speculators who drive up the cost artificially. Speculation manipulation has to be prohibited, as it was before Pres. Bush eliminated the ban.]
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8) OBAMA: "What I've also said is, for (those earning) above $250,000, we can go back to the tax rates we had when Bill Clinton was president."
THE FACTS: Not exactly. The Bush tax cuts set the top income rate at 35 percent. Under Obama's proposal to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000, the president would return the top rate to the 39.6 percent set during the Clinton administration. But he neglected to mention that his health care law includes a new 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on households earning over that amount – and that tax would be retained. The health care law also imposes a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for high earners. So tax rates would be higher for the wealthiest Americans than they were under Clinton.
[Given the time constraints and learning from the last debate that you can't get mired down in the detailed numbers because the audience can't process it in proper context of the overall complex tax code. For me, I have no problem with those over $250,000, which include me, to pay the 39.6 plus the.9 Medicare surcharge and the 3.8 on investment income when I'm at that higher income level. It is my way of paying back for things like the G.I. Bill that I received and other services when I was just starting out in adult life and needed some sort of assistance. It's only fair.]
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9) ROMNEY: "I'm going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but I'm going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now."
THE FACTS: Romney is proposing to cut all income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, maintain and expand tax breaks for investment income, and do it all without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax deductions, exemptions and credits, but he can't achieve all of his goals it under the budget rules presidents must follow.
The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says in a study that the tax cuts proposed by Romney would reduce federal tax revenues by about $5 trillion over 10 years. The study concludes that there aren't enough tax breaks for the wealthy to make up the lost revenue, so the proposal would either add to the deficit or shift more of the tax burden on to the middle class.
Romney's campaign cites studies by conservative academics and think tanks that say Romney's plan will spur economic growth, generating enough additional money to pay for the tax cuts without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden to the middle class. But Congress doesn't recognize those kinds of economic projections when it estimates the budget impact of tax proposals.
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10) ROMNEY: "A recent study has shown that people in the middle class will see $4,000 a year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration."
THE FACTS: Romney's claim is based on an analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute that examines the amount of debt that has accumulated on Obama's watch and in a potential second term and computes how much it would cost to finance that debt through tax increases. Annual deficits under Obama have exceeded $1 trillion for each year of his term.
[What was not mentioned is that under the Bush administration, the cost of the two war where OFF BUDGET and funded by EMERGENCY BILLS, so it didn't reflect in Bush's annual budget deficit of $500 billion or more. When Pres. Obama took office he changed the accounting practice and included the war funding in his annual budget, thus doubling it just as a result of the war costs. Additionally much of the $1 trillion is legacy from the Bush tax cuts and these unfunded, borrowed, war debt that we are now paying for. The TARP money was passed by Pres. Bush. The $700 billion stimulus was the only major funding that Pres. Obama has had. Which has reversed the job losses and slowly, without any help from the Republicans, has improved. In desperation not to default on our debt, remember, Pres. Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone for two more years. That added to the deficit by keeping revenue low during a recession. So it is unfair to blame Pres. Obama for this deficit level.]
My personal comments are in brackets [ ] and blue in color.
THINKPROGRESS:
At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 31 Myths In 41 Minutes
1) “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.”
Fact: Paul Ryan’s budget could cut Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students and even Romney’s white paper on education, “A Chance for Every Child,” suggests that he “would reverse the growth in Pell Grant funding.” It says: “A Romney Administration will refocus Pell Grant dollars on the students that need them most and place the program on a responsible long-term path that avoids future funding cliffs and last-minute funding patches.”
2) “I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.”
Fact: The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.
3) “And the president’s right in terms of the additional oil production, but none of it came on federal land. As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent.”
Fact: 14 percent is a one-year number. “Overall, oil production on federal land under Obama is up from 566 million barrels in 2008 to 626 million barrels in 2011, a 10.6 percent increase.” Compared to the last three years of President Bush, there have been 241 million more barrels of oil produced from public lands in the first three years of President Obama.
4) “Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands, and in federal waters.”
Fact: There are slightly fewer permits in 2009 and 2010, from between 8,000-9,000 permits to over 5,000, and they have not been cut by half. The oil and gas industry is sitting on 7,000 approved permits to drill, where it hasn’t begun exploring or developing. Two-thirds of “acreage leased by [oil] industry lies idle” on public lands, according to the Department of the Interior.
5) “I believe very much in our renewable capabilities; ethanol, wind, solar will be an important part of our energy mix.” Romney is actually against a one-year renewal of the wind production tax credit. The wind production tax credit has led to $14 billion of investment in 2011 and tens of thousands of American jobs.
6) “And coal, coal production is not up; coal jobs are not up.”
Fact: 1,500 coal jobs have been created under Obama.
7) “And if we do that, if we do what I’m planning on doing, which is getting us energy independent, North America energy independence within eight years.”
Fact: Romney would actually eliminate the fuel efficiency standards that are moving the United States towards energy independence, even though his campaign plan relies on these rules to meet his goals.
8) “I will fight to create more energy in this country, to get America energy secure. And part of that is bringing in a pipeline of oil from Canada.”
Fact: Even with generous assumptions, the impact of the pipeline on oil prices is unclear and may raise prices in Midwest states. After all, a lot of that refined tar sands crude will be sold on the international market.
9) “The proof of whether a [energy] strategy is working or not is what the price is that you’re paying at the pump. If you’re paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you’re paying more.”
Fact: Gas prices are certainly high, but oil is a global commodity, and the president has virtually no control over them. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, Romney’s proposal to increase domestic oil production would not have much impact on volatility.
10) “And I will not — I will not under any circumstances, reduce the share that’s being paid by the highest income taxpayers. And I will not, under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle-class.”
Fact: As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.
11) “But your rate comes down and the burden also comes down on you for one more reason, and that is every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. No tax on your savings. That makes life a lot easier.”
Fact: This would actually help very few Americans. Nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income. To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it.
12) “A recent study has shown the people in the middle-class will see $4,000.00 per year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration.”
Fact: Romney is pointing to this study from the American Enterprise Institute. It actually found that rather than raise taxes to pay down the debt, the Obama administration’s policies — those contained directly in his budget — would reduce the share of taxes that go toward servicing the debt by $1,289.89 per taxpayer in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.
13) “Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people.”
Fact: Far less than half of the people affected by the expiration of the upper income tax cuts get any of their income at all from a small businesses. And those people could very well be receiving speaking fees or book royalties, which qualify as “small business income” but don’t have a direct impact on job creation. It’s actually hard to find a small business who think that they will be hurt if the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year is increased.
[Lets remember that officially a small business is defined by having a limited number of owners and is privately held, thus not publicly traded on the stock exchanges. Some examples of small business that earn huge incomes, Johnson A Family Company, Koch Industries owned by the Koch brothers who earn billions of dollars annually, most every hedge fund manager who earns millions of dollars a year, Cargil that earns $109 billion, Mars that earned $30 billion, PricewaterhouseCooper that earned $29 billion, Bechtel earned $28 billion and Publix Supermarkets that earned $35 billion. There are hundreds more, but you get my point. Most Ma and Pa businesses will not be effect by this increase nor would the amount they would save with the lower rate be enough to even hire one person for a year. So his statements are false.]
14) “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.”
Fact: Romney did not ask women groups for candidates. Instead, prior to his election, a “bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government.” They “put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions” and presented it to Romney after he was elected. A UMass-Boston study found that “the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006.”
15) “I’m going to help women in America get good work by getting a stronger economy and by supporting women in the workforce.”
Fact: Romney has been uncomfortably silent on the issue of pay equity. He has refused to say whether he’d support the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would allow women to sue for equal pay, and named four of the justices who voted to roll back equal pay in that Supreme Court decision as his models for any of his appointments to the federal bench.
16) “I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.”
Fact: But back in March, Romney expressed strong support for the so-called Blunt amendment, which that would allow employers to deny contraception coverage to women. Romney also wants to defund Planned Parenthood, where 76 percent of the patients seek low-cost birth control options. Defunding the organization would make it much harder for those women to get contraceptives.
17) “So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And — and I think it’s important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommend and ultimately what happened.”
Fact: This is false. As Buisnessweek explain: “Romney is misstating his position. He opposed any use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the automakers, advice that President George W. Bush and Obama ignored. GM and Chrysler went through managed bankruptcies after Bush, at the end of his presidency, and later Obama provided federal funds.” “Without federal funds, GM and Chyrsler would not have survived. As former Bush aide Tony Fratto explained, “It wasn’t just that there wasn’t credit available; a lot of private equity had cash, they just weren’t giving it away.”
18) “He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year.”
Fact: Premiums have increased, though at a lower rate than before. And while the Affordable Care Act’s most important cost contentment strategies have yet to be implemented, the law is already lowering costs. 16 million seniors have received preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving at least $3.9 billion on prescription drugs. Millions of young adults now have insurance coverage and are staying on their parent’s health care plan, insurers have refunded consumers, and states have successfully rejected dramatic premium increases.
19) “He keeps saying, ‘Look, I’ve created 5 million jobs.’ That’s after losing 5 million jobs. The entire record is such that the unemployment has not been reduced in this country.”
Fact: Job creation is net positive since Obama took office in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression. Economists estimate that up to 3 million jobs were created by the stimulus alone.
20) “The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident.”
Fact: But Romney has promised to end President Obama’s deferred action directive, which saves some young undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he would not take away visas from people who had already received them. He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act.
21) “Now, when the president ran for office, he said that he’d put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation — he’d file a bill in his first year that would reform our — our immigration system… He didn’t do it. He had a Democrat House and Democrat Senate, supermajority in both houses.”
Fact: Senate Republicans repeatedly prevented Obama’s immigration reform efforts. The GOP actually blocked the DREAM Act from securing 60 votes to pass cloture, denying hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) even said on the Senate floor that young people lobbying his office had wasted their time.
[We must remember that there was only a few broken up months that there was any super majority because Senator Byrd was hospitalized and could not vote and then Ted Kennedy dies which left his post open for a few months until it was filled temporarily until Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill that seat. Most of the time the Democrats only had 58 votes at any given time.]
22) “Any investments I have over the last eight years have been managed by a blind trust. And I understand they do include investments outside the United States, including in — in Chinese companies.”
Fact: Romney’s blind trust is not very blind, and includes investments in a company owned by Romney’s son. [Additionally, Romney himself said, speaking of Ted Kennedy's blind trust, that they are not as they seem because the owner of the trust can direct the blind fund in what it can and can't invest in.]
23) “It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people.” Obama called the Libya incident an act of “terror” the very next day.
Fact: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” he said. “Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”
24) “Consider the distance between ourselves and — and Israel, the president said that — that he was going to put daylight between us and Israel.”
Fact: The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, told CNN, “President Obama is doing … more than anything that I can remember in the past [in regard to our security].”
25) “The president’s policies throughout the Middle East began with an apology tour and — and — and pursue a strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is unraveling before our very eyes.”
Fact: Obama never embarked on an “apology tour.” [The only apologies that the administration has issued are for misconduct by our military personnel when they burred a bunch of Korans, the soldier pissed on dead Afganies and a few other instances of misconduct. What the Republicans like to claim is that when Pres. Obama gave a speech at a university in Egypt that it was an apology, in fact it was an attempt to reduce tensions between those who think the west has a holy war against Islam. There was no apology at all.]
26) “We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.”
Fact: [It is legal to own an automatic weapon, but it’s not easy. Automatic weapons are "Class III" weapons, and are titled much like cars are. Most firearms dealers do not have a Class III FFL. The title transfer fee is hundreds of dollars, and you need written permission from your local police chief or county sheriff. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban was enacted in 1994 and the Bush Administration tried to extend it, but his own party in Congress rejected the extension. In July 2004, then-Governor Romney signed legislation into law that made Massachusetts' assault weapons ban permanent and not reliant on a federal ban that expired at the end of 2004. The state issued a press release at the time, in which Romney described assault weapons as "instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."]
27) “The — the greatest failure we’ve had with regards to — to gun violence in some respects is what — what is known as Fast and Furious. Which was a program under this administration, and how it worked exactly I think we don’t know precisely, where thousands of automatic, and AK-47 type weapons were — were given to people that ultimately gave them to — to drug lords.”
Fact: The Justice Department’s inspector general “issued a scathing critique of federal officials for their handling of the botched gun-trafficking case,” but “exonerated Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., whom many Republicans have blamed for the scandal.” [Another report stated that the program was actually started under the Bush Administration as "Operation Castaway" and was operating out of Florida and Texas. The ATF was trying to track and find out who the cartel person was that was receiving the weapons. The IG report indicated the AG Eric Holder and Pres. Obama had no idea about this ATF operation, as the ATF didn't brief them when they took office. When AG Holder became aware of the operation, he called Arizona and all the other field offices and ordered the operation to stop.]
28) “What I will do as president is make sure it’s more attractive to come to America again.”
Fact: Romney’s plan to move the country to a territorial tax system would let corporations do business and make profits overseas without ever being taxed on it in the U.S. This would no doubt encourage American companies to invest abroad, potentially costing the country up to 800,000 jobs.
29) “Canada’s tax rate on companies is now 15 percent. Ours is 35 percent. So if you’re starting a business, where would you rather start it? We have to be competitive if we’re going to create more jobs here.”
Fact: The U.S. is raising historically low amounts of revenue from the corporate income tax, and it already has the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed less than their foreign rivals, and the U.S. effective corporate tax rate is low compared to other developed economies.
30) “And there’s no question but that Obamacare has been an extraordinary deterrent to enterprises of all kinds hiring people.”
Fact: Under the law, only companies with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance or pay a fine — that’s just 2.6 percent of businesses. If anything, expanding health care coverage to more Americans will actually create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
31) “He said he would have by now put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road to bankruptcy.”
Fact: The possibility of Medicare going bankrupt is — and historically has been — greatly exaggerated. In fact, if no changes are made, Medicare would still be able to meet 88 percent of its obligations in 2085. Social Security is fully funded for another two decades and could pay 75 percent of its benefits thereafter. There is also an easy way to ensure the program’s long-term solvency without large changes or cuts to benefits.
AP/HUFFINGTON POST:
1) OBAMA: The day after last month's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, "I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."
ROMNEY: "I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."
OBAMA: "Get the transcript."
THE FACTS: Obama is correct in saying that he referred to Benghazi as an act of terrorism on Sept. 12, the day after the attack. From the Rose Garden, he said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. ... We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act."
But others in his administration repeated for several days its belief that the violence stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. It took almost a month before officials acknowledged that those protests never occurred. And Romney is right in arguing that the administration has yet to explain why it took so long for that correction to be made or how it came to believe that the attack evolved from an angry demonstration.
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2) OBAMA: "Let's take the money that we've been spending on war over the last decade to rebuild America, roads, bridges, schools. We do those things, not only is your future going to be bright, but America's future is going to be bright as well."
THE FACTS: What Obama didn't mention is that much of the money that has been paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was borrowed. In fact, the government borrows nearly 40 cents for every dollar it spends. Thus using money that had been earmarked for wars to build schools and infrastructure would involve even more borrowing, adding to the federal deficit.
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3) ROMNEY: "As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production was down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters."
OBAMA: "Very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We've opened up public lands. We're actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration and my – the previous president was an oilman."
THE FACTS: Both statements ring true, as far as they go. Obama more correctly describes the bigger picture.
According to an Energy Department study published in the spring, sales of oil from federal areas fell 14 percent between 2010 and 2011 and sales of natural gas production fell 9 percent, supporting Romney's point. The lower oil production was a result mainly of a moratorium on offshore drilling imposed by the Obama administration after the April 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
According to the same report, though, oil production from federal areas is up 13 percent since Obama took office despite last year's dip, and analysts say Gulf oil production is expected to soon exceed its pre-spill levels.
Natural gas production from federal areas has been declining for years because drillers have found vast reserves of natural gas in formations under several states that are cheaper to access than most federally controlled areas.
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4) OBAMA: "For young people who've come here, brought here often times by their parents, have gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag, think of this as their country and understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers, we should make sure we give them a pathway to citizenship. And that's what I've done administratively."
THE FACTS: His administrative actions do not provide a pathway to citizenship. The administration is allowing as many as 1.7 million young illegal immigrants to apply to avoid deportation for up to two years and get a work permit. And the government has begun a policy of prosecutorial discretion under which illegal immigrants with long-standing ties to the U.S. and no criminal history are generally not arrested and deported by immigration authorities. But these steps do not extend legal status or a process resulting in citizenship.
[Since the Dream Act was filibustered in the Senate by the Republicans and when he met with the leadership of both parties for a comprehensive reform, it became clear that he was not going to get any immigration legislation passed. His ...pathway to citizenship is not law as pointed out, but should he get reelected and a more humble opposition party starts to work with him, he could create by law a pathway to citizenship]
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5) ROMNEY: "I know he keeps saying, `You want to take Detroit bankrupt.' Well, the president took Detroit bankrupt. You took General Motors bankrupt. You took Chrysler bankrupt. So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And I think it's important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommended and ultimately what happened."
THE FACTS: What Romney recommended did not happen, and his proposed path probably would have forced General Motors and Chrysler out of business. He opposed using government money to bail out the automakers, instead favoring privately financed bankruptcy restructuring. But the automakers were bleeding cash and were poor credit risks. The banking system was in crisis. So private loans weren't available. Without government aid, both companies probably would have gone under and their assets sold in pieces.
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6) OBAMA: "And what I want to do is build on the 5 million jobs that we've created over the last 30 months in the private sector alone."
THE FACTS: As he has done before, Obama is cherry-picking his numbers to make them sound better than they really are. He ignores the fact that public-sector job losses have dragged down overall job creation. Also, he chooses just to mention the past 30 months. That ignores job losses during his presidency up until that point. According to the Labor Department, about 4.5 million total jobs have been created over the past 30 months. But some 4.3 million jobs were lost during the earlier months of his administration. At this point, Obama is a net job creator, but only marginally.
[One must remember that in the first couple of months of assuming the office, the spiral started by the Bush Administration was continuing until Pres. Obama could get his stimulus bill passed in Congress with no help from Republicans and it took a couple of months for the money to flow to the projects and the tax cuts in the payroll taxes to start to take effect. To me, you can't look at the actual NET jobs because I attribute the losses in the first few months as those of G. W. Bush. Just because a person is sworn in on January 20th, doesn't mean everything changes on that date.]
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7) ROMNEY: "The proof of whether a strategy is working or not is what the price is that you're paying at the pump. If you're paying less than you paid a year or two ago, why, then, the strategy is working. But you're paying more. When the president took office, the price of gasoline here in Nassau County was about $1.86 a gallon. Now, it's $4.00 a gallon. The price of electricity is up. If the president's energy policies are working, you're going to see the cost of energy come down."
THE FACTS: Presidents have almost no effect on energy prices; most are set on financial exchanges around the world. When Obama took office, the world was in the grip of a financial crisis and crude prices – and gasoline prices along with them – had plummeted because world demand had collapsed. Crude oil prices have since risen even as U.S. oil production has soared in recent years because global demand is reaching new heights as the developing economies of Asia use more oil.
Other energy prices have fallen during Obama's term. Electricity prices, when adjusted for inflation, are down, and homeowners are finding it much cheaper to heat their homes with natural gas. That's because natural gas production has surged, reducing prices both for homeowners and for utilities that burn gas to generate electricity.
[Gas prices rose to over $4.00 a gallon under the Bush Administration. Right-wing pundits claimed at that time that the president doesn't control energy prices because it is a commodity that is traded on the global free markets. But as soon as they climbed under Pres. Obama, then it is because of his policies and not the free market. They always want it both ways. One of the biggest problems are speculators who drive up the cost artificially. Speculation manipulation has to be prohibited, as it was before Pres. Bush eliminated the ban.]
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8) OBAMA: "What I've also said is, for (those earning) above $250,000, we can go back to the tax rates we had when Bill Clinton was president."
THE FACTS: Not exactly. The Bush tax cuts set the top income rate at 35 percent. Under Obama's proposal to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000, the president would return the top rate to the 39.6 percent set during the Clinton administration. But he neglected to mention that his health care law includes a new 0.9 percent Medicare surcharge on households earning over that amount – and that tax would be retained. The health care law also imposes a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for high earners. So tax rates would be higher for the wealthiest Americans than they were under Clinton.
[Given the time constraints and learning from the last debate that you can't get mired down in the detailed numbers because the audience can't process it in proper context of the overall complex tax code. For me, I have no problem with those over $250,000, which include me, to pay the 39.6 plus the.9 Medicare surcharge and the 3.8 on investment income when I'm at that higher income level. It is my way of paying back for things like the G.I. Bill that I received and other services when I was just starting out in adult life and needed some sort of assistance. It's only fair.]
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9) ROMNEY: "I'm going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but I'm going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're paying now."
THE FACTS: Romney is proposing to cut all income tax rates by 20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, maintain and expand tax breaks for investment income, and do it all without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by reducing or eliminating tax deductions, exemptions and credits, but he can't achieve all of his goals it under the budget rules presidents must follow.
The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says in a study that the tax cuts proposed by Romney would reduce federal tax revenues by about $5 trillion over 10 years. The study concludes that there aren't enough tax breaks for the wealthy to make up the lost revenue, so the proposal would either add to the deficit or shift more of the tax burden on to the middle class.
Romney's campaign cites studies by conservative academics and think tanks that say Romney's plan will spur economic growth, generating enough additional money to pay for the tax cuts without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden to the middle class. But Congress doesn't recognize those kinds of economic projections when it estimates the budget impact of tax proposals.
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10) ROMNEY: "A recent study has shown that people in the middle class will see $4,000 a year in higher taxes as a result of the spending and borrowing of this administration."
THE FACTS: Romney's claim is based on an analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute that examines the amount of debt that has accumulated on Obama's watch and in a potential second term and computes how much it would cost to finance that debt through tax increases. Annual deficits under Obama have exceeded $1 trillion for each year of his term.
[What was not mentioned is that under the Bush administration, the cost of the two war where OFF BUDGET and funded by EMERGENCY BILLS, so it didn't reflect in Bush's annual budget deficit of $500 billion or more. When Pres. Obama took office he changed the accounting practice and included the war funding in his annual budget, thus doubling it just as a result of the war costs. Additionally much of the $1 trillion is legacy from the Bush tax cuts and these unfunded, borrowed, war debt that we are now paying for. The TARP money was passed by Pres. Bush. The $700 billion stimulus was the only major funding that Pres. Obama has had. Which has reversed the job losses and slowly, without any help from the Republicans, has improved. In desperation not to default on our debt, remember, Pres. Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone for two more years. That added to the deficit by keeping revenue low during a recession. So it is unfair to blame Pres. Obama for this deficit level.]
Monday, August 20, 2012
Swift Boating Pres. Obama. Fact or fiction?
The Karl Rove creation of what is now referred to as "Swift Boating" is now being used against Pres. Obama. For those who don't understand this term, swift boating refers to an attack ads by a group of right-wing ex-military individuals and some who were not in the military, but said they were part of Sen. John Kerry's Vietnam Navy swift boat team. They claimed that the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and 3 purple hearts were not deserving. It made it out like John Kerry was faking his action in combat in Vietnam. Once the Pentagon released John Kerry's military records which proved he did deserve them, the damage was done and Bush won the election, with some skepticism of a fair election.
Now this same approach is being used to try to undermined Pres. Obama's foreign policies and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. They have produced what appears to be a documentary about how Pres. Obama leaked classified information leading up to the raid and all the details of the raid after the fact. It makes some very serious charges.
But the truth is much different. Peter Bergen, a CNN a National Security Analyst debunks the charges in this film.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/17/opinion/bergen-obama-swift-boat/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Now this same approach is being used to try to undermined Pres. Obama's foreign policies and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. They have produced what appears to be a documentary about how Pres. Obama leaked classified information leading up to the raid and all the details of the raid after the fact. It makes some very serious charges.
But the truth is much different. Peter Bergen, a CNN a National Security Analyst debunks the charges in this film.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/17/opinion/bergen-obama-swift-boat/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is a director at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that seeks innovative solutions across the ideological spectrum, and the author of the new book "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad."
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A group of former U.S. military and intelligence officers, including retired Navy SEALs, appear in a 22-minute documentary that was released on Wednesday asserting that the Obama administration has leaked considerable classified intelligence about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden for political gain.
They also claim that the administration has given itself too much credit for this feat of American arms and intelligence gathering. The film even makes the dramatic charge that the Obama administration is "purposefully putting lives in jeopardy" because of its purported leaks about national security.
The charges bear some resemblance to the "Swift Boat" tactics used against Sen. John Kerry in the tight 2004 presidential election against President George W. Bush in which Kerry's service in Vietnam, seemingly a strength of the candidate, was turned into a weakness.
The particulars of the indictment against Obama as laid out in thenew film, which is titled "Dishonorable Disclosures," are:
Peter Bergen
-- The president announced the bin Laden raid before intelligence picked up from bin Laden's compound could be fully exploited.
-- The use of hitherto covert "stealth" helicopters on the raid was publicized.
-- The name of the secret unit that executed the raid --SEAL Team Six -- was made public putting them and their families at risk.
-- The name of the Pakistani doctor recruited by the CIA to help find bin Laden was leaked, jeopardizing him and the CIA's ability to recruit spies in the future. The doctor is now serving 33 years in a Pakistani prison.
-- Obama has taken way too much credit for killing al Qaeda's leader. "Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden, America did. The work that the American military has done killed Osama bin Laden. You did not," says a former Navy SEAL interviewed in the film.
Criticism of the way that the bin Laden raid has been discussed publicly by the Obama administration makes up the bulk of "Dishonorable Disclosures," but the administration is also taken to task for supposedly leaking details of covert U.S. actions against the Iranian nuclear program to New York Times reporter David Sanger (who has said he was not the recipient of "deliberate leaks out of the White House") and outlining to other journalists the personal involvement of Obama in selecting targets for the CIA drone program in Pakistan.
One former Navy SEAL featured in the film demands dramatically, "Tell the president to stop leaking information to the enemy."
Is there any merit to these serious accusations?
In fact, Obama and his national security team made every effort -- successfully -- to keep the intelligence about bin Laden a closely held secret for almost a year, from the time they first identified what they believed might be the al Qaeda leader's hideout in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan, in August 2010 until May 1, 2011, when the raid was launched to kill him.
The raid itself was conducted as a covert operation under the overall direction of then-CIA Director Leon Panetta.
I have written a book about the hunt for bin Laden during the course of which I was the only journalist granted access by the Pakistanis inside the compound in Abbottabad where bin Laden was killed. I also spoke on the record about the hunt for bin Laden with a variety of current White House, Pentagon and intelligence officials, as well as former Defense Department and CIA officials familiar with aspects of the story.
None of them divulged classified information about the bin Laden operation. Indeed, they went to great pains to avoid doing so.
What precipitated the operation going public was not Obama's announcement of the raid but the crash of one of the Black Hawk choppers used in the raid, which turned what had hitherto been a covert operation into a very public event.
Pakistani journalists started arriving at bin Laden's Abbottabad compound soon after the helicopter crashed and started filing stories about the mysterious helicopter and its oddly shaped tail rotor. An Abbottabad resident even tweeted about the unusual sound of helicopters flying over the city in the middle of the night.
It wasn't much of a leap for reporters to ascertain that these helicopters had particular features that had prevented them from being detected by Pakistani radar.
Soon after the SEALs had raided the Abbottabad command, Pakistani officials on the ground were interrogating bin Laden's wives and children at the compound who told them that bin Laden had just been killed. None of this was going to stay secret for long.
Indeed, it was Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's top military officer, who sped up the Obama administration's announcement of the raid. A few hours after the raid, Kayani told his American counterpart, Adm. Mike Mullen, "Our people need to understand what happened here. We're not going to be able to manage the Pakistani media without you confirming this. You can explain it to them. They need to understand that this was bin Laden and not just some ordinary U.S. operation."
Mullen then told Obama and his national security team, "Kayani has asked for us to go public," which swayed Obama to announce the raid sooner than was planned. (Obama wanted to wait for 100% DNA confirmation that it was bin Laden. At the time of the president's announcement about the raid the confirmation was at 95%.)
During his speech to the nation and world, Obama did not divulge the name of SEAL Team Six, saying only that a "small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability."
It quickly leaked that SEAL Team Six had executed the raid, but this was hardly surprising as the SEALs are the principal Special Operations Forces in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater, something that has been discussed in multiple news stories over the past several years and in bestselling books such as "Lone Survivor" by former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell.
And the SEALs have hardly kept a low profile of late, cooperating in a movie "Act of Valor" that was released in theaters this year, which actually featured real SEALs playing the parts of the heroes of the movie.
Perhaps if you had absolutely no knowledge of the U.S. military, or indeed access to Wikipedia where SEAL Team Six has had an entry since 2004, it would be news to you that SEAL Team Six, along with the Army's Delta Force, are America's premier counterterrorism units. Obviously, a mission to take out bin Laden would not be entrusted to any other than these elite units.
So the notion that the public naming of the unit that killed bin Laden endangers the lives of its members and their families is overwrought. Members of SEAL Team Six are well able to take care of themselves and their families. And who first leaked the involvement of SEAL Team Six in the bin Laden operation remains unclear.
It is just plain wrong that anyone in the U.S. government leaked the name of the CIA asset in Pakistan, Dr Shakil Afridi, who was recruited by the agency in its quest to find bin Laden. This information first surfaced in a story in the Guardian newspaper in July 2011 after Afridi was arrested by the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI. It is obvious that this information was leaked not by the Americans but the Pakistanis who have done their own investigation of the bin Laden raid, which embarrassed them considerably.
As to the notion that Obama has taken too much credit for the bin Laden raid, well he is commander-in-chief, and it was entirely his decision to launch the risky raid on Abbottabad based on the only fragmentary intelligence that bin Laden might be there.
As Adm. William McRaven, who was the military commander of the bin Laden raid, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer last month, "at the end of the day, make no mistake about it, it was the president of the United States that shouldered the burden for this operation, that made the hard decisions, that was instrumental in the planning process, because I pitched every plan to him."
The raid decision was opposed by Vice President Joe Biden, who had run for the Democratic nomination for the presidency against Obama. If Biden had won the White House in 2008, Osama bin Laden might still be alive.
And the decision to do the raid was also opposed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had served every president going back to Richard Nixon. Gates was concerned about some kind of replay of the 1980 Iran hostage rescue debacle, which helped to turn President Jimmy Carter into a one-term president.
The notion that the decision to greenlight the risky raid was made by anyone other than Obama is just plain silly, and it was a decision he made against the advice of both his vice president and his secretary of defense.
The film "Dishonorable Disclosures" gets even sillier. At one point one of the former officers interviewed for the film charges that the Obama administration "divulged to the world we are using drone technology." The fact that the United States uses drones in Pakistan is one of the world's worst kept secrets. In fact, the New America Foundation where I work has maintained a public database of these attacks since early 2010.'
Similarly, the claim that the Obama administration has recently leaked information about the Stuxnet virus attacks on the Iranian nuclear program to the New York Times is overblown, as this information has been reported since 2010, and the Iranians themselves publicly acknowledged that their nuclear program was under cyberattack two years ago. It is true that the U.S. role in the cyberattacks was disclosed in the New York Times.
And in June, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed two federal prosecutors to investigate leaks including the New York Times story about Obama ordering the cyberattacks against Iran with the Stuxnet virus.
There remains much that is unknown about the still-classified intelligence surrounding the bin Laden raid, including:
-- How did the CIA find the real name of bin Laden's courier who was the key to finding him?
-- How was the courier's cell phone first tracked down?
-- How was he tracked to bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad?
-- How did the CIA establish a safe house in Abbottabad? And who staffed it?
None of this information has been leaked, and it remains classified for good reason as it gets into the CIA's "sources and methods."
Don't expect to hear any of those details any time soon.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
As I have read responses by conservatives about this article, they are lining up to dispute the information Peter presented. They are adding more inflammatory claims that on the very surface make no sense. They are claiming that Pres. Obama should be tried for treason.
It is so interesting that when faces with the truth and what is more logical than what is claimed in the film, these wackos still believe the lies and will not search independently the facts. They are lazy and just accept what they are told by the right-wing propaganda machine at Fox News, and all the hate talk radio people.
We are loosing our values as a nation to the ignorant and lazy right-wing nuts. It is so similar to Europe in the 1930s. There was so much anger and fear as a result of the Great Depression that hit them. A little man by the name of Adolph Hitler took advantage of that fear, suffering and anger. He directed it to the Jews, Homosexuals, and Gypsies. Once he got the fear and hate to a fever pitch, he was able to seize power and turn the anger and hatred into political force that led to the murder of 6 million Jews and 10 million homosexuals and Gypsies. Not to mention the millions that were killed during the war, both military and civilians.
It is obvious that many in America have forgotten or never learned this history. Or that they know how it happened and using it to also seize power to take control of this nation. That is more likely.
So many American think that everyone in America are benevolent. But whenever there is power and money, there is a total lack of benevolence by certain people who wish to secure absolute and permanent power. Think Karl Rove here as well as the Koch Brothers.
It is so interesting that when faces with the truth and what is more logical than what is claimed in the film, these wackos still believe the lies and will not search independently the facts. They are lazy and just accept what they are told by the right-wing propaganda machine at Fox News, and all the hate talk radio people.
We are loosing our values as a nation to the ignorant and lazy right-wing nuts. It is so similar to Europe in the 1930s. There was so much anger and fear as a result of the Great Depression that hit them. A little man by the name of Adolph Hitler took advantage of that fear, suffering and anger. He directed it to the Jews, Homosexuals, and Gypsies. Once he got the fear and hate to a fever pitch, he was able to seize power and turn the anger and hatred into political force that led to the murder of 6 million Jews and 10 million homosexuals and Gypsies. Not to mention the millions that were killed during the war, both military and civilians.
It is obvious that many in America have forgotten or never learned this history. Or that they know how it happened and using it to also seize power to take control of this nation. That is more likely.
So many American think that everyone in America are benevolent. But whenever there is power and money, there is a total lack of benevolence by certain people who wish to secure absolute and permanent power. Think Karl Rove here as well as the Koch Brothers.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
THE LOSS OF OUR DEMOCRACY
By Robert Murri 7-26-2012
Sorry I have not kept up with my blog. I speed too much time
on FB with my rants. Guess I better catch up a bit.
I have been obsessed with this year’s presidential and
congressional elections. I know I’ve sounded like I might be losing my mind and
maybe I am. But as I see it lining up, it gives me great fear. It is like
looking at the stars in astrology and reading the possible future, and it doesn’t
look good.
Since the inception of ALEC, the American Legislative
Exchange Council, the Christian Coalition, Koch brothers reincarnated Tea
Party, aka the John Birch Society of old, and their Freedom Works, CATO
Institute and the organization known as the Family or Fellowship, which is a
radical Christian fundamentalist organization, and add to this the Ayn Rand disciples,
and the growing Libertarian ideology of Ron and Rand Paul, … (I don’t know this as fact, it’s just an assumption on my part, but I
might suggest that Ron Paul’s son, Rand Paul and a Senator might have been
named after Ayn Rand, since she embraces many of the Libertarian philosophy.) …these organizations have been on a decade’s
long quest to obtain total power over the USA politically and culturally. All
of these groups have slightly different final objectives, but they do have a
common thread that has come together in a force like we have never seen before
in the USA.
First all of these organizations are extremist of the far
right of the political spectrum. By comparison, the Soviet Union was actually a
right-wing conservative form of governance. They want total power, they abhor
any opposing philosophy or political ideology, they purge members of the party
who waver from the lock step order of the leadership, they will eat their young
to maintain power, and they will use any method available, propaganda is one of
their major tools to convince the public that they are the trusted ones,
regardless if it is honest and true or not or downright lying and manipulative
to gain and maintain that power. They
will manipulate and even commit voter fraud to insure they gain and retain
power. The Soviet Union was really never a true socialist system, it was a pure
communist system which has some socialist features, but communist centralized
economy failed and cronyism replaced pure communism even before the coup d’tat
in 1989. Communism is collectivism on steroids.
The only difference between the Soviet Union and these
organizations are two: 1) The Soviet Union rejected free market capitalism. The
USA on the other hand grew out of merchant and agrarian economies into a highly
industrialized capitalist economy. 2) In the Soviet Union the
plutocrats of the oligarchy were not corporations, but communist party members
whose position gave them wealth and power, even though there was not supposed
to be any economic classes of their society or any individuals of privilege. In
the USA our plutocrats of our oligarchy are major multinational corporations
and very wealthy individuals who can buy their way into power via money to
legislators of all levels of government and through their huge resources of
funds to manipulate the messaging of an election. In the USA we have a rather expanded power
structure that is part of the plutocrats and that is our banking and finance
institutions. And they are very, very powerful by having control over the Federal
Reserve Banks and the Dept. of the Treasury. This gives them almost unlimited
access to money and monetary policy making.
The financial sector of our economy as part of the GDP was held to about 9% in history, expect for the decade before the Great Depression and it only rose to 12%. Today it is reaching nearly 20%. When any institution reaches that level of GDP it gives them inherited power in governance. Goldman Sachs, Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, US Banc Corp, HSBC of America, and a few others hold the majority of Americas money assets. This has allowed them to dominate the seats on the various regional and nation boards of the Federal Reserve Bank. Since the Reagan administration, the Treasury Secretary has come from one of these major banks, primarily Goldman Sach. Most all of them sat on one of the Fed boards as well. This has compromised the separation of the Fed, with the Treasury Secretary and even the economic advisers to the president, regardless of what party or who is president. They all come from these banks. That is why you don't see economic scholars like Paul Krugman as a presidential adviser.
The financial sector of our economy as part of the GDP was held to about 9% in history, expect for the decade before the Great Depression and it only rose to 12%. Today it is reaching nearly 20%. When any institution reaches that level of GDP it gives them inherited power in governance. Goldman Sachs, Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, US Banc Corp, HSBC of America, and a few others hold the majority of Americas money assets. This has allowed them to dominate the seats on the various regional and nation boards of the Federal Reserve Bank. Since the Reagan administration, the Treasury Secretary has come from one of these major banks, primarily Goldman Sach. Most all of them sat on one of the Fed boards as well. This has compromised the separation of the Fed, with the Treasury Secretary and even the economic advisers to the president, regardless of what party or who is president. They all come from these banks. That is why you don't see economic scholars like Paul Krugman as a presidential adviser.
What we are witnessing is a Coup D’Tat by these groups
either coordinated or that they just happen to be coming to power at the same time,
for whatever reason that might be. But nevertheless, it is happening.
Since the 1970s, the USA has been under internal political and cultural assault. The conservatives want to eliminate any opposition party. The Christianists want to establish a theocracy. The corporate powers want unrestricted and unregulated markets with no labor laws, no safety laws, zero taxation and no environmental laws; nothing that would reduce profits. The wealthy upper 1% are attached to the corporate desires to maximize returns on their investments without paying any taxation. The Neo-Conservatives want an imperial nation that commands all other nations to adhere to their orders, much the same as it was with the British Imperialism 200 years ago. The banking and finance institutions also want unregulated and unrestricted ability to make money at the expense of the underclass. We have been witnessing the biggest shift of wealth from the middle-class in the shortest period of time to the benefit of the upper 1% of the world.
Now let’s fast forward to 2012. What we have today is the
force and power of these groups to manipulate the upcoming elections so they
can complete their cop d’tat. Except for the Christianist, the other groups of
the oligarchy have the man they want for President, Mitt Romney. He is one of
them. He will follow their orders because it would be in his own financial
benefit to do so.
When a black man named Barack Hussein Obama won the election
in 2008 was a big surprise. They truly thought that John McCain having being a
household name and some appeal to the independents because he bucked the party
a few times, that would be the winner. They didn’t use their system of manipulating
the vote count that election and they thought that if they did when the polls
were showing Sen. Obama with such a huge lead, that if McCain had won, there
would be major unrest in the country, especially minorities that would cause a
revolt in the streets.
They didn’t want that, so instead the Republican leadership
in Congress pledged to not participate in any governance of the country, unless
absolutely necessary. They will stand firm and vote against any Democratic and
Pres. Obama’s bills. That is my Mitch McConnell stated right after the inauguration
that his primary goal was to make Pres. Obama a one term president. It was not
to help the country recover from the worst economic meltdown since the Great
Depression, it was not to stimulate the economy to create jobs, it was not to
insure that our credit rating remained at AAA to keep the lowest interest rate
on our debt, it was not to negotiate for a better health care bill, it was not
to do anything that would give Pres. Obama and the Democrats any credit for
saving the nation from disaster or benefit those who were losing their jobs and
homes. If thing improved, then Pres. Obama was sure to be reelected for another
4 years and that was way too long to wait to complete their coup d’tat.
Karl Rove made it very clear both when he was a student at the University of Utah in Political Science and when he was remaking G.W. Bush for the presidency, he stated that he wanted a permanent conservative Republican government in all branches and to create a system that insured that any opposition could be diminished quickly. Part of that move was to capture as many state legislatures and governorships so they can redraw districts to reduce or eliminate opposition strong holds, pass laws restricting voting that would impact those who lean more heavily toward Democrats, pass laws to eliminate labor unions, since these are the last major supporter of the Democrats with their money for TV ads and their organizational skills to get Democrats out to vote. Once they are eliminated, then the big money of the party can drown out any opposition message with false propaganda.
Karl Rove made it very clear both when he was a student at the University of Utah in Political Science and when he was remaking G.W. Bush for the presidency, he stated that he wanted a permanent conservative Republican government in all branches and to create a system that insured that any opposition could be diminished quickly. Part of that move was to capture as many state legislatures and governorships so they can redraw districts to reduce or eliminate opposition strong holds, pass laws restricting voting that would impact those who lean more heavily toward Democrats, pass laws to eliminate labor unions, since these are the last major supporter of the Democrats with their money for TV ads and their organizational skills to get Democrats out to vote. Once they are eliminated, then the big money of the party can drown out any opposition message with false propaganda.
The next step was to gain control of both houses of
Congress. In 2010 they were able to take over the House, but didn’t quit make
it in the Senate, but they did reduce the majority’s margin so that the
filibuster could be used to stop all legislation proposed by the majority, thus
the minority controls the Senate. If it
hadn’t been for just a few moderate Republican in the first year of Pres. Obama’s
administration, the ACA and Stimulus bills would not have passed. But that
changed in the second year when the Republican leadership whipped their members
into line to oppose everything. Since then the only bills that have been
proposed by the Republican are about abortion, prayer in public meetings and
schools, birth control restrictions, and other Christianist objectives.
This current congress has passed the fewest bills EVER in
our nation’s history. It is the least
productive and least responsive to the needs of the nation that ever before.
The Republicans are not the loyal opposition; they are the radical, non-loyal
opposition. The very statement by many that the only compromise they will
consider is if the Democrats come to their way of thinking. Otherwise there is
no point in even talking about it.
When the chairman of the health and human services committee
in the House called the minority ranking member on the committee to talk about
the ACA bill, the Republican responded that there was not going to be any negotiation
or compromise so there was no reason to meet and talk it over, period.
Now we are at a stage that it is very likely that Mitt
Romney will become the president, not because he actually wins the true and
actual votes, but my the voter restriction laws and by the possible rigging of
the voting tabulation machines that testimony states are very vulnerable to
hacking and manipulation with a simple USB thumb-drive and 2 seconds of access
to the machine. An executable worm would change the outcome of the vote to Mitt
and then eat itself in such a way that it would be impossible to forensically
find it. In fact one retired computer programmer for NASA testified that he did
just that for a law firm in Florida to test the security of their voting
equipment. Actually the law firm was an agent for the Florida Republican Party
Central Committee.
What happened to that little program is unknown as the law
firm and the party says they never ordered such a program and the programmer is
lying about it. However the programmer has proof that he received payment from
the law firm at the time he claims to have written the hacking program. This
all took place in 2003 and the programmer surmised that it was used in Ohio
since the exit polls are so far off from the tabulation of the votes for Bush
that it was statistically impossible to have such a large spread with Bush
winning when exit polls showed Sen. Kerry won by a small margin.
Also a programmer and computer engineer that worked on the
voting machines and tabulators testified that they are plat formed on windows
98 OS and was full of holes for hacking. He testified that nothing has been
done to update the OS and secure them from hacking. There was never any intent
to secure these machines from the day the company received the contract to make
them. However, the companies testified to Congress that the machines were
secure and near impossible to hack into or to change the vote. They stated that
the paper trail would prohibit this from happening. However, no one has
challenged the count and ordered a hand count of the paper trail to the
tabulator outcome and the engineer said that even that could be manipulated
because as the voting machines communicate with the tabulator, the tabulator
could cause printing of votes on the machine that were not actually cast by
real people. So unless they take the huge amount of time to not only count the
paper printouts, they would have to research the name of every voter to
determine if they are real or not. The cost of doing that is so astronomical
that no one has even contemplated that possibility.
So with all that said now, you can see that the USA has
become a banana republic that has rigged elections so the ruling plutocrats and
oligarchy retain power.
We have lost our democracy. The return to the Noble cause
of a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people will be a very
difficult and most likely a bloody one.
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