I found my soul mate last night in Chicago

 I found my political soulmate last night in Kamala Harris. I never quite fit into one or the other strict party lines. Harris was strong on national defense and America's leadership in the world. Like her, I had a background in prosecution and use of regulations for battling consumer fraud and unfair trade practices and a deep understanding of what freedom means.She is mostly an economic populist, not a racial or cultural one like MAGA.. I had first-hand experience in dictatorships, married to an immigrant seeking freedom to be what he wanted to be. She hit all of those high notes, delivered with words that Ronald Reagan could have uttered. His name was invoked by many speakers at the DNC convention. Even on social issues, the theme of the entire convention was freedom, or as Gov. Walz phrased it, "mind your own damn business". That was about as libertarian as it gets. Where there was a coming together between our political blocks was a recognition that immigration was indeed a crisis, and she offered the humane solution, the bi-partisan solution Trump torpedoed. Red, white blue, and the flag and patriotism and love of the country were regained as also accepted and promoted as a Democrat value. Democracy of the traditional American concept was defended and exhorted. Law and order were again values upheld by a career prosecutor, as Kamala Harris has been. Where there was a departure, and even that was limited, was what action and finance needed to solve middle-class hardships and seek opportunity, and that help can come from the government. Even that degree of help was tied to affordability, not free stuff, but is given according to ability, requiring paying part of it. The one free stuff exception was feeding the hungry, breakfast and lunch for young students ( lunch was also offered me in Oklahoma in the 1950s). The other obvious visual departure was the inclusiveness of all Americans in the political process, regardless of race or gender, as contrasted by Trump, who dog-whistles his appeals to only white Christian nationalists as he proposed to favor and rule as constructed in Project 2025. The one fundamental departure from the conservative philosophy of Reagan is a rejection of the trickle-down tax policy, which never worked and has resulted in a handful of billionaires getting richer while growing the national debt while claiming the US cannot afford the middle-class relief Harris proposed.

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GOP’s new message of helping the middle class is hot air.

The GOP’s change in tune has a sour note.  Have you noticed a shift in message?. It has switched from “trickle down is good for you”   to “the GOP cares about the middle class and families”. The GOP must have been reading recent polls that showed they were 10 points behind Democrats when asked if the Republican party” cares about my problems” (CBS News Poll, May 16-19) and 20 points behind in “helping the middle class” (ABC/Washington Post poll April 24-27). The GOP’s  newly touted support of the middle class is  an empty glass  filled with hot air and the Democrats need to call them out on it.

Democrats  have either been silent or stuck in the wonky weeds of defense on middle class issue, recently. The best defense in the 2014 midterms is a good offense by  answering the question themselves:” Who can best help the middle class?”  For example:

Here is how the GOP, including Cory Gardner running for Senate in Colorado,   plan to help the middle class.

 The GOP in Congress  recently blocked legislation allowing those with older student loans to refinance  at a lower rate . How does that help the middle class?

Killing Obamacare  is still their main refrain.   They want to leave families once more  deeply in debt with medical bills and policies that deny coverage of pre-existing conditions or preventative care. The past system left the middle class one medical event away from  foreclosure and bankruptcy whenever an uncovered major medical event occurs.  The GOP has provided no alternatives that would provide  those protections. Instead,  they have proposed “ solutions” of malpractice reform and cross state insurance competition that even  the Congressional Budget Office estimated would have little effect in making insurance affordable for the pre Obamacare uninsured.. How does that help the middle class?

The GOP  makes it difficult for women who need to work to keep their families afloat financially by  putting barriers to family planning, whether making choice of when and how many children to have. Some, including Gardner,   have advocated making some forms of birth control illegal or  favored  preventing women from getting low cost pills from their employer’s insurance.  Most oppose equal pay for equal work .Many in the  GOP oppose raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, which would bring those working a 40 hours week above the poverty level. How does that revitalize the middle class?

Creating jobs? The GOP has opposed funding rebuilding highways and bridges and infrastructure improvements that would have long lasting higher paying jobs for millions over the years. (Keystone pipeline they tout  as a jobs program creates only  two years of  temporary jobs). Their jobs plan mostly consists of  giving  more tax breaks to big business.   If we learned anything over the years,  trickle down theories have failed in practice. How has that helped the middle class?

Visit http://www.pollingreport.com/dvsr.htm for both the ABC and CBS polls .
A version of the above appeared in the www.skyhidailynews.com, all editions, 6/27/2014

Some additional thoughts that fill in some blanks:  Can we afford to do these things to help the middle class?
There are deficit hawks who put cutting the deficit  above everything regardless of the impact on the economy and the tool in their toolbox of government shutdown.  (The GDP took a serious dip when that was last tried and political approval ended in the toilet).  Their one and only pathway is to reducing  the deficit is to cut government expenditures without raising revenues. However, the only government expenditures they want to cut are social programs and education; defense gets fed well.
The problem is two fold:  every serious look at the deficit, i.e. Simpson Bowles,  said we must raise more revenues.  My fear:slashing and burning middle class perks  and poverty safety nets will only increase the disparity between the rich and poor....a destabilizing element in any democracy,  politically unsustainable and therefore unattainable.

Update: Polls are showing a great decline in middle class income and hope. Below is one released in July 2014.  Buried in this is the middle class decline and loss of hope.  Who gets the blame will determine much of the 2016 presidential race and it could impact the 2014 midterms. If the Democrats can pin the blame on Republicans and sell it, they may have a chance. When all is said and done, that is why the 47% issue that scuttled the Romney momentum.  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-are-down-on-america-190304928.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory

Romney's plans are a bad deal for women

Heads up, ladies.  You are being offered more than a sketchy deal; you are being offered a very bad one. The GOP wants women to trade off 40 years of struggle for women’s rights for a fantasy economic plan. Mitt Romney is waving a shiny lure of 12 million jobs in four years for you yet every fact checker and the most respected financial analysts such as Moody’s say 12 million new jobs will be created anyway if we continue the course Obama has set us on.  

Now Romney is offering the oldest political trick in the business: lowering your taxes by 20%.  There has also not been a financial analyst, even the six Romney likes to cite, that say cutting all the loopholes and deductions in the world will offset the loss of $5 trillion in revenue to the treasury, much less deal with the deficit and it may even inflate it.  This is no trickle down scheme either, since any tax cuts to the wealthy would be in theory replaced by losing loopholes and deductions…in theory, and only in theory, leaving no more in their pockets to become the “job creators”, if that every would have happened.  Dream on: either the deficit will have to be blown up or everyone will be asked to give up even deductions Romney prefers to save  or taxes will rise.  None of that makes for a happy ending.

  In order to pay for Romney’s continuation of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and spend another $2 trillion in pumping up the Pentagon,  analysts concluded 40%  would have to be cut in discretionary spending, including education, child care, child health care,  research and development  and everything not required by federal law to spend.  Even this part of the Romney plan has been evaluated by the Congressional Budget Office to increase the deficit. 
 Likewise, repealing Obamacare would add to the deficit, both the CBO and the Simpson Bowles Commission concluded.

In return for this bad deal, here is what the GOP gives you in return:  They want to make it harder for women to hold a job or to earn fair pay.  Women depend on control of their health in order to be able to work: The means birth control and good health, but the GOP wants to make this harder on women and more expensive. In fact, if there was one single factor that his enabled women to work and support their families, it was their own control over their reproduction.  Thanks to that, in this recession, more women have continued to work and support their families than men.   

 They want us to continue with pay that is 70 cents on the dollar to  a man’s pay for the same job…opposing women’s ability to sue for such discrimination,  such as the Lilly Ledbetter act which President Obama signed.   They want us to continue to pay more for our health insurance than men, a practice which Obamacare forbids and the GOP wants to repeal.  They want our employers to be able to deny health insurance coverage for birth control pills for any reason (even if they are not affiliated with a Catholic institution).  They and Mitt Romney are committed to appointing members of the Supreme Court to overturn a woman’s right to choose, making abortion illegal, sending women to the back alleys again...  They and Mitt Romney are pledged to defund Planned Parenthood, the low income service that provides women health services from birth control, cancer screenings, to others. (Federal money is already forbidden by law to fund abortions).  They want to reinstate high co pays for mammograms and pap smears by repealing the benefits of Obamacare.  The GOP and many of their followers want to effectively ban forms of birth control by passing laws saying life begins at conception and giving the fertilized egg full legal protection.  Some of them have even advocated forcing women to have invasive ultrasound or letting those women legitimately raped to let their bodies stop pregnancy.

If you think I am steamed, I am.  I am, as they say, long in tooth and high in age.  I have no desire to see my two daughters return to the days of the 1950’s, the ones I faced and resented and clawed my way in my professional life to overcome.  But that is what women are being asked to do in order to grasp onto a bogus deal, more jobs that will happen even if Romney’s fantasy plans would ever work.   It is a deal women should definitely refuse.

Romney's promise to create 12 million jobs is hooey

Romney's promise to create 12 million jobs in 4 years is a bunch of hooey. It makes no difference if he is elected or Obama is re-elected...12 million jobs will be created anyway. He is like a rooster taking credit for a sunrise. Perhaps he is making a seriously conservative promise because he just threw under the bus the entire case beloved by the fiscal supply siders and trickle down lovers: give big business a tax break and they will have enough extra money to invest and create jobs. However, the Romney give-th and the Romney take-ith away. His etch a sketch flip flop on taxes has an internal contradiction: on one hand he grants big business a major tax break and on the other hand he makes them pay for it by losing deductions and loopholes. So what is left to trickle down? That all of a sudden he cares about the 47%? Nothing else changed: his anti women's health posture; his cuts to Medicaid, the end of guaranteed Medicare, and all of the immoral holes he punches in the social safety net and his shoving 30 million uninsured back into the ER remains. He weasels on the details of what middle class deductions will remain and will leave all of that up to Congress, whom we know and love and trust so much. He is still the same businessman that would let the auto industry go bankrupt. And the tax cuts he wants still add up to $5 trillion, while has pay fors fall so short, that either taxes will have to be raised or the deficit will increase (which he is pledged to avoid at all costs). He may try to look like a caring pastor of his flock, but other than trying to position himself as if he is no longer one of the 1% , he has not changed his spots. His policies that remain or have left us without anymore details that we had before.

Factchecker: Romney’s ’12 million jobs’ promise

www.washingtonpost.com

Factchecker: Romney’s ’12 million jobs’ promise

Excerpt from the Fact Checker:

"But, in fact, the number is less impressive than it sounds. This pledge amounts to an average of 250,000 jobs a month, a far cry from the 500,000 jobs a month that Romneyclaimed would be created in a “normal recovery.” In recent months, the economy has averaged about 150,000 jobs a month.

The Congressional Budget Office is required to consider the effects of the so-called “fiscal cliff” if a year-end budget deal is not reached, which many experts believe would push the country into a recession. But even with that caveat, the nonpartisan agency assumes9.6 million jobs will be created in the next four years. (This is a revision downward; CBOhad estimated 11 million in January.)

But Moody’s Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. (See page 51.) And Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs."

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It's the how to details that count Oct. 3

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

If wishes were horses

Beggars would ride….

That nursery rhyme teaches  the folly of wishing without a workable action plan . .   Mitt Romney has  based his  campaign on wishes.  Who does not want  more jobs,  a growing economy, and a solution to the deficit problem:?  Some  items not on his list were  apple pie.(Motherhood crops up in his severe right turn to social conservatism as he proposes ending Planned Parenthood and overturning Roe v Wade) and  the details  of  how he would  turn those wishes into reality. He has a chance to fill in the blanks  in the debate in Denver, Oct. 3 (tonight).

So who will win the debate?    Many experienced observers  believe   it is the degree of  likeability , competence, and who comes up with the best zingers. However, Pres. Clinton received praise for this year’s Democratic  convention speech  for being the “explainer in chief”..  There is  a hunger for explanations and this  may be the year of “it’s the message details, stupid”. 

 

Polls are showing that confidence in the President’s ability to manage the economy has increased so much, he is ahead of Romney now.  Obama so far has succeeded in making the case that   the GOP’s trickle down theories of cutting taxes on the wealthy and inflicting pain on the poor and middle class are not the only paths  to recovery . What the President has done or plans to do is more palatable and will eventually work..

While weak on the “how to”  details,  Romney has answered one question.     Whose interests would he favor when hard choices have to be made after the election? He will have a difficult  time with that one,  especially when he.was caught dissing   47% of Americans   as government dependence lovers  and for  not paying income taxes ...  

 

The dilemma Romney faces is that our problems are difficult  to solve  without goring someone’s ox and turning off  voters.  The best strategy for him is to remain vague and. Obama’s task is not to let him get away with it.

 Romney has some new headwinds. Former President  Bill Clinton raised an important point at the Democratic Convention that gained some traction.  It is the “addition” issue, the “ fuzzy math” charge revisited.. .  The GOP is vulnerable on the question of  whether Romney’s  plans will  decrease the deficit. . Romney himself has presented few details, but  his running mate, Paul Ryan, has.  The Congressional Budget Office scored both the impact of repealing Obamacare and  Ryan’s budget reduction plan.  Their conclusion was that neither would  reduce the deficit, and would actually add to it. So obnoxious are some of Ryan’s proposals, especially concerning voucherizing Medicare, that Romney has distanced himself by claiming he has his own plans…though he has never let  us know  with what part of Ryan he differs..

The GOP often counters  with “the President has not given us details either”. Their argument is “two wrongs make a right  ” .  Unfortunately for that line of discourse, Obama has been more detailed than Romney has.  Obama  did present a detailed deficit reduction plan that included 10 cuts for every one revenue dollar raised. Obamacare is law, reduces the debt,  and extends the life of Medicare.  His jobs plan to hire teachers and build infrastructure was presented as legislation. . It is just that since 2010, the  Teaparty controlled House of Representatives blocked any new initiatives .

The GOP sheds crocodile tears that Obama did not embrace in entirety the Simpson Bowles recommendations, yet every single GOP  member of the Senate and House  voted against it when they had a chance. .   If Obama wins, a Simpson Bowles- like  approach will too. If the GOP gets the government reins, the Ryan plan rises. That is the fundamental choice facing us in November.

(A version of this appeared in the Sky Hi Daily News today)

For more  visit www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

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Winning the sound bite wars

My column today in all of the editions of the Sky Hi Daily News

I have to hand it to them. Republicans have a knack for finding a few good words that become made for media sound bite icons for campaign talking points.

In unison Republicans utter words or phrases and bank them for future use, coming up with another good word when a new opportunity surfaces. “Greece” evokes fear of the deficit and a reason not to lift the debt ceiling, “Death Panels” played on fears that Obamacare was going to ration elder care. “Jobs” came in vogue when the May report showed a slowdown in growth. It is now the new shorthand for attacking Obama on the economy and every issue from foreign policy to health care no matter how indirect the connection.

The GOP has not been 100 percent successful: Their “Stop blaming Bush” slogan as a way to foist the entire economic mess on President Obama had its limits. The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll this month disclosed that 62 percent of Americans believe the Obama administration did indeed inherit the problem. However, the GOP is blaming the President for not getting us out of trouble so “Obama failed America.” That one will only work if the GOP convinces us their way is better.

However, Democrats tend to get lost in the explanation weeds when rebutting attacks, defending, or advocating a policy. Take the health care debate. The case was there to be made, but the Democrats could never articulate it effectively. Democrats must do better in the jobs-economy debate.

What if the Democrats also came up with a few of their own good words? They could force the GOP to prove their formula was better by tagging the GOP as the “trickle down” party. The trickle theory is what the GOP advocates practicing: By cutting the top tax bracket, businesses will invest and hire people, and that will bring the rest along, while increasing tax revenues, too. “Trickle” does not inspire those hurting who want a gusher now. “Trickle down” also implies that the people at the top get the tax break plums first while the middle class eventually gets any leftovers.

Trickle down does not work well, either. Obama could argue with credibility that the stimulus was “the right tool at the right time and trickle down was the wrong one.” Trickle down has never worked well to pull us out of bad recessions. In the '30s Hoover's failed; FDR's worked better. Ronald Reagan's trickle down stalled in the early 1980s so he raised corporate and other taxes and added 60,000 federal workers and added to the debt as percentage of the GDP. Only then were jobs were created.

George W Bush's stimulus attempted to counter a post-Sept. 11 recession with tax cuts to the rich and lost us 757,00 jobs and increased debt. The economy “fell into the hole, the deepest since the Great Depression; the deeper the hole, the harder it is to dig out.”

An analogy could be: “Trickle down is like turning the starter and listening to the clicks, because the private sector had a dead battery in 2008. “The better tool” was a battery charger of government spending coupled with continued low taxes. Proof? More private sector jobs were created in the past 15 months than the Bush trickle created altogether.

Democrats could call the Ryan plan approved by Congressional Republicans and disapproved by 75 percent of voters, “the worst medicine for seniors” since the GOP. Ryan would shrink seniors' retirement living by making seniors pay more from their pockets for Medicare.

Democrats have an opportunity to draw a contrast. They are leaning toward a proposal of cutting $3 of government costs for each dollar in increased taxes. They could claim “good medicine with fewer side effects,” because it would reduce the deficit nearly as much while leaving Medicare guarantees as they are.

What would happen if Democrats find more good words? They might even win the 2012 sound bite wars.