Blind eyes of Donald Trump and the GOP. The eye opening challenge: "prove it"

Originally posted 2/15/17/ Updated 2/22/17

President Trump, his supporters, and apologists are turning blind eyes to bad news that is in our faces and in plain sight.    The role Democrats and " the resistance" can play when they hear such delusions is to respond with "prove it" .   An administration that loses credibility is an administration that will likely fail in future elections.

Trump has continued to blast media as "dishonest", (most recently defined coincidentally when they criticize him) and "fake news' when it is negative about his administrations. He railed against the tone of reporters he called hate filled. He urged the public to view only Fox and Friends and some other ideologically right wing web casts instead of CNN and MSNBC  Hurling such  name calling   without proving how their reports are dishonest  eventually will become part of a credibility problem that will come back to haunt him. In the  meantime, he is  trying to damage the credibility and trust of all news sources.  https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-the-leaks-are-absolutely-real-the-news-is-fake-195441027.html

If political strategy and policy are based on delusions, there is great possibility they will make strategic errors that will work against the GOP and Trump sooner or later. It will give their opposition media fodder and could lead to the the public losing trust in both the Trump administration and GOP Congressional members who are trying to bury the issues they prefer not to give exposure. It will also dominate the news cycles and tie Congress in knots. The diversion will stop the Trump legislative agenda in its tracks for months, from job creation, tax reform, health care, and much more. But far more harmful to the public interest and the security of the US will be shaping of domestic and foreign policy based on false premises. Garbage in, garbage out , and that garbage could  be toxic to the well being of its citizens and national security.

 Here is the bad news :the GOP and the Trump administration either denies or seek to divert attention from the public eyes:

The Russian connection:  The Flynn debacle and the highly likely connection the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton is not only a problem of Russian meddling and hacking the 2016 elections, it is also the possibility it was to some extent coordinated with the Trump campaign.  The GOP and Trump instead of going full bore to find the truth are, trying to get public attention focused on "leaks" as the real criminal act instead of shedding light on the substance. That is a self-defeating strategy. The GOP dominated Congress has taken the route that would keep findings from the public eye by burying it in intelligence committees that mostly work in secret.  That is an outrage. The public needs to know, not just one secretive  committee in Congress and the way that can be accomplished is a Select Committee investigation, setting up an independent commission,  or the appointment of a special prosecutor.  The best proof: release the transcripts the FBI has of those conversations between the Trump operatives and Russian intelligence and officials. The text is going to be leaked sooner or later, anyway. Those in Congress who stonewall shedding public light on whether there was indeed collusion so harmful to our democracy deserve to be the target of the 'resistance".  The danger to national security is that foreign policy would be shaped  to enhance the power of Russia and would not to the national interests of both the US and its allies, especially our NATO allies, and  diminish US ability to shape policy in its national interests.

The delusion that the public demonstrations, in particular the women's march in revolt against Trump policies, were made up of paid flunkies, all 1.1 million, is so easily disproved,  it is truly laughable. I was one of those marchers; I know who organized this in my area and who communicated with me. I saw who stood next to me in that enormous crowd and who joined me at my encouragement.  The ultimate challenge to those who want to put blinders on their dedicated followers is to prove it.  In the meantime, 1.1 million paid minimum wage for 4 hours of their time and to be compensated for out of pocket transportation expenses (my bus ride to the event cost over $40) would be at minimum $23 million dollars. Where did that money come from? That  size of a money trail should be easy to uncover if it is true. Find it and prove it.

Donald Trump's more recent  attack of fooling himself is to claim all of those angry citizens turning up at GOP members of Congress' town halls are "fake".  They may be organized to turn out and paint signs, but there would not be such angry turnout if there were not a large body of voters who would be willing to do it...week after week. Think they are paid? Prove it.

The delusion is a making of Trump's own fantasy, that the nearly three million gap in favor of Clinton in the popular vote were illegal voters.  No one is challenging Trump's win  in the electoral college or his right to serve as President,  but it is a wound to Trump's  delicate ego and  it diminishes his claim to have a  popular mandate for  his policies . The challenge to Trump: prove it. An independent panel in Congress should conduct an investigation.  Of course, they won't, because only Trump  and his most dedicate followers believe it and he has already been sworn in.

 The consequence is that his supporters who believe it too will make bad political calculations  in their overconfidence and  result in such overreaches in policy that such action will create a reaction that will swing the pendulum to the left in future elections. The danger is that policies on health care access and quality of benefits will be so shrunk, that many will be left in far worse condition than they now have with Obamacare, losing insurance and important benefits. Expect  a reaction  from Congress and the public to any replacement, finding the deficit or their out of pocket expenses will soar, as will the number of bankruptcies and poorer health of many. That pain would be felt immediately and the backlash will be equally quick.

Taking longer to feel the pain are removing  consumer protections from financial services practices provided in Dodd-Frank and weakening environmental regulations. Voter suppression moves will be felt in future elections.  Turning back Dodd-Frank  will lead to more fraud, anti consumer policies that will cost their pocket books, and  dangers of repeating the 2008 crash.  More bad air and polluted water will be what citizens will suffer , but not realize it for a while since those impacts are more accumulative and anecdotcal. Worse, the unproved delusions will be used as a political motivation by legislatures to restrict voters' rights and suppress the votes of the most vulnerable, the minorities, and seniors. That is great for the GOP, bad for democracy and citizen participation.

More delusions: 2017 polls are here as well...and except for one poll, the rest reveal Donald Trump is living in an alternate world. In his rambling press conference of 2/16 he cited the Rasmussen poll as proof he was doing well and popular...claiming 55% approval.  

RealClearPolitics - 2016 Latest Polls

2016 Latest Polls

REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM

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Footnote on fake news: I have spent some long noon hours lately listening to Denver  Radio Station KOA's line up of right leaning talk shows.  If attitude toward the "other side" is a hateful tone Trump defines as "fake news" , then what I heard  is "fake news" to me. During the campaign I  tuned into FOX, and theirs meet Trump's fake news definition in tone, emphasis to my ears.   In fact, if someone in the household switched to FOX, I could recognize a certain tone in the next room and recognize it as FOX without listening to the content, but  just on the basis of a unique plaintive, accusatory tone.  That is a hallmark of our fragmented media, especially cable, that caters to a divided audience and contributes to making a divided nation even more deeply divided as listeners/viewers accept the slanted report as factual and accurate news.   The problem is searching out straight news and I have some postings and statements regarding that.

While I write opinions, and I do not consider my columns  news, but my take on it.  I also footnote my sources upon what my opinion was based in each blog. Blogs are the wild west of opinion writing.  Facebook and twitter postings are likewise more opinion than fact.I  do not pretend to be a straight reporter; I give my opinions. That is why what I write is labeled as  "opinion", separate from the news reports in the other print pages.  In talk shows, opinion and facts get merged into something bordering on entertainment  bent on seeking ratings. I know that. I was one of Denver's first radio talk show hosts in the very early '80's and when the tone of the genre got nasty and hateful and got the big ratings, I  bowed out of that media form forever which required a tone and slant that was just not me.

What also listeners and viewers and readers also must realize, since Watergate  investigative reporting , once called muckraking in the early 1900's , is in vogue again.  Some of the reasons investigative reporting gets front page, serious news designation, is that it drives readership and it can have a real impact in uncovering facts and take the role of  whistle blowing. It is a valuable part of current journalism, but it takes critical thinking to sort out its credibility and its importance. Critical thinking depends on getting information and opinions and news  from many, sources not just from the media that synchs with our own opinions, guts, and knee jerks.

The GOP's war on health care consumers

We are a country that is besieged by     a  political war on health care consumers.  . It is clear on whose side  is the GOP : it is not us, , the patients and the potential patients. We, the end user of health care, are collateral damage to political battles over how to repair a sick  system that leaves so many out and bankrupts many, with  the prognosis it will  get sicker.

The   GOP ,is dedicated and  determined  to repeal Obamacare or terminally delay it.  They want you to forget what a consumer oriented piece of legislation it is.

The current GOP hollering  is all about 2014 talking points in  individual races.  The campaign to repeal Obamacare  is a Don Quixote quest because  even if the Senate turns Republican in 2014,  Obama has two more years to veto any Congressional attempt to kill it.   

The GOP’s goal  also appears  to make sure their business base sees Obamacare as a bane, as  they spread misleading information, or commit  sins of omissions in characterizing the law. It is a strategy banking on  perpetuating  ignorance .:” It is too long to read; too hard to understand; so throw it all out.”

 They war whooped  with glee when the President  delayed  one part  until 2015:   collecting a penalty that  would be imposed  on businesses with more than 50 employees that failed to offer insurance. It only affects those which did not already offer health insurance. That affects no more than 1% of all employees,  6%  of all  businesses (only 2%  with over 200 employees) . Everything else takes effect in 2014,  including individual mandates and the exchanges.

Here is what the GOP  would want to  happen to all of us who are  consumers  if they could repeal Obamacare:  

We would again be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions,  30 million of us will not be able to get affordable insurance,   college age kids will no longer be required to be on their family’s insurance, and once again there will be high deductibles for mammograms, prostate screening, and colonoscopies .Once again there will be  bankrupting deductibles for our insurance or  too high employer  provided premiums .  Obamacare premiums will be subsidized by income level to make costs affordable. With Obamacare’s repeal, those provisions go away.

Repeal Obamacare and insurance companies would  be able to return to their prior practices of raking off more than 20% of  premiums for their overhead and profits.  Their virtual monopoly will continue. . In fact, the exchanges will be the first truly free market for insurance since all premiums and  all benefits will be open to large numbers of insurers and published side by side comparing apples with apples.    

Businesses, too, will benefit  since they can use the same public  information to negotiate better deals for insurance they offer their employees and small businesses will have access to their own exchanges and group rates only offered to large businesses before

Here is how the competition in  open market exchanges have already worked to drive down costs. In California and Oregon  insurance premiums offered through the exchanges came in as much as  25%  below the actuarial  forecasts or prior published rates. This is also  good for the cost of the program, since subsidies for lower income customers of the exchanges  will also  be lower.  

Piously, some members of the GOP pay lip service to the consumer benefits they like. However, they offer no way to cover the 30 million  uninsured or to pay for parts they like as covering pre-existing conditions. When you hear such pontifications, challenge them to tell you how they would pay for them.  It is that latter problem Obamacare addresses and the critics of health care reform who profess to care for consumers are blowing hot air.

For more, visit and www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

Paul Ryan's chicken in every pot spiced with arsenic

My column in the Sky Hi News today

The oldest gimmick in politics is to promise a chicken in every pot. The problem is always who pays for that chicken.

The GOP's budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan is promising us chickens: 10 percent income tax for all except 25 percent for the yet-to-be defined rich and a deficit that will still grow by $797 billion, but will be less than the Democrat's proposal of $977 billion.

Ryan proposes to reduce corporate taxes to 25 percent. The president's proposal is 28 percent). While Ryan is vague about the cuts needed to get us there, what the GOP and he have proposed so far already adds arsenic to our health care pot.

With the Ryan budget, future seniors and the poor would pay the most. Seniors on Medicare would be given vouchers that fall $6,000 a year short of costs of care but — big whoop — they are free to choose unguaranteed private insurance or guaranteed public insurance. The sick and poor will see a cut in Medicaid, and in food stamps that help the poor to eat, with inevitably less support for nursing home care after mom runs out of savings.

Left yet are some potentially troubling details. Would tax deductions for charitable contributions to entities that provide many health services go away? While middle class taxes could be reduced, would deductions for education, health care, and home mortgages be eliminated?

Heaping on Ryan's hit to consumers is the pledge of every GOP candidate to repeal Obamacare. Health care reform is already law. It gives benefits to the public. Repealing it takes those benefits away. The Supreme Court could also declare Obamacare unconstitutional.

The provision mandating all to carry health insurance, subsidized per income level, is the chief issue being argued before the Supreme Court this week. Kill the mandate and kiss goodbye to coverage for the 30 million now unable to afford health insurance and those with pre-existing conditions.

At issue is whether the federal government can require all to have insurance or whether a freeloading individual can refuse to carry it. The purpose of the mandate is to include as many healthy people in the “pool” so that risk and cost are spread around, which is essential to make it affordable to cover pre-existing conditions and insurance coverage for everyone.

Obamacare means 540,000 currently uninsured in Colorado (20.7 percent of Grand County residents) will finally be able to buy affordable health insurance by 2014. Per www.health.costhelper.com, averaging nationwide now, insurance costs annually $11,000 for a family, over $4,000 for a single male. A mammogram can cost as much as $212 and the average colonoscopy bill is $3,081.

If the law is repealed, the uninsured would continue to do as they do now: Put off colon, breast, prostate, diabetes screening, or prenatal care, and instead only seek very expensive care in the ER after they become very ill, with the high costs of treatment eventually shifted to everyone else paying for premiums, deductibles and copays. Repeal would reinstate the practice of charging women as much as two times higher insurance premiums than men. Pregnancy could again be an uncovered pre-existing condition. Medical bills would continue to be the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy.

Thanks to Obama's health care reform, there is no longer a lifetime limit on coverage. In Colorado, 362,000 women have seen their coverage for preventive services like mammograms expanded. About 282,000 seniors and people with disabilities who have Medicare have already received free preventive care; 44,000 young people are now staying on their parents' insurance plans until they turn 26. The donut hole in Medicare drug coverage was closed.

The GOP would take away all in the name of freedom, choice, small government and cost. Ah ,then, how great the joys of freedom, limited government, and choice. Great for those who can afford it, that is.

Fact checking and Obamacare

My column in the Sky Hi Daily News March 21, 2012

In the next eight months we are going to see a barrage of advertising contaminate our TV-watching, and claims and counterclaims will be flying.

While many will concentrate on the soft issues — personalities, trustworthiness, leadership, character, ideology and economic theories — others will be about the hard facts of issues.

It is very difficult to be objective about facts, and it is particularly difficult when the issue is complex, such as health care reform. Distortions, misinterpretations, and out-right lies are even more likely.

There are non-partisan, independent sources that look behind the slogans, delve into the wonky details, and arrive at conclusions that separate the facts from fiction. I recommend three fact-checking websites. www.Factcheck.org is a nonprofit project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which is housed at the University of Pennsylvania. Another is Politifact.com which is connected with the Tampa Bay Times and is a Pulitzer prize winner. They rate political claims with a truth-o-meter. The Washington Post sponsors one and awards Pinocchio noses based on the degree of truth distortion (www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker).

Not all of these analyze the same claims and not all political talking points are scrutinized, but all of them give detailed reasons for arriving at their awards of the degrees of truthfulness. Both parties take their lumps from the fact checkers.

Here are some of the fact-checking conclusions about Obamacare. This is just a brief summary of the conclusions. To see any caveats and how the conclusions were reached, visit the websites.

One frequently heard claim by Rick Santorum is that Obamacare will cost trillions over the next 10 years. Per the Washington Post fact checker: “Santorum is only counting one side of the ledger — and overcounting it at that. Because the health care law raises some taxes and cuts Medicare spending, the Congressional Budget Office calculated that it slightly reduced the deficit in the first 10 years…..”

Another oft heard claim, especially made by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is that the health care reform law will be a job killer. Factcheck.org called that a” Republican Whopper.” The best economic analysis of the new health care law points to the loss of a ‘small' number of low-paid jobs — starting in 2014. That's when firms with 50 or more workers will be required either to provide health insurance coverage to their employees or pay a penalty….”

Politifact:.com: A close look at the studies cited by the Chamber of Commerce … as well as other independent analyses of the health care law, provide little, if any, evidence that the health care law will result in a significant net number of job losses. We rate the statement False.

Another claim mouthed by many Republican leaders and candidates is that Obamacare will cut $500 billion from Medicare, a claim geared to scare the old folks that benefits will be cut.

The Washington Post fact checker found that benefits were not “cut.” “The health bill will reduce projected Medicare spending by $575 billion over ten years, primarily by reducing projected fees to hospitals and other providers and by reducing payments to private Medicare Advantage insurance plans... "

So true is a comment added by Factcheck.org: “It may be that the constant repetition of this false claim will make a lot of voters believe it. But repeating a whopper doesn't make it true, it just makes it a bigger whopper.”

For more commentary, go to www.Mufticforum.com

Who is really overreaching into women's lives? Listen up my daughters, grandaughters

Listen up my daughters and granddaughters. The ultra religious right wants to dictate how you live your lives, not just by delivering edicts from the pulpit, but from the legislature and the political podium. They want laws to carry out their religious mission whether you share their particular interpretation of the Bible or not. The result, the freedom to make choices about your lives and health care, the relationship with your doctor, the ability even to have the wherewithal and freedom to make those choices, is in jeopardy.

You have enjoyed freedom to make choices in your life time. You have taken it for granted that freedom is there for you. You have lived in the era of Roe v Wade, Griswold v Connecticut, and a majority of those governing guarding your rights. However, there are those who are determined to roll your lives back to the times of under which those who went before you lived.

No one is telling you to get an abortion or take the pill. You may never ever want to do any of this. Some just want to deny your opportunity and ability to make your own decisions about your health in consultation with your priest, rabbi or minister and/or your doctor. Some want to make it even criminal for doctors to help you make some of these decisions.

Be aware that personhood amendments that define life as beginning at conception put into the laws you must obey could make it illegal for you to get the pill, much less to take any other measures to plan your family.

I have seen you, my daughters, delay mammograms and checkups until you could afford the copays or get a job that provided health insurance. Be aware that health care reform we call Obamacare outlaws treating pregnancy as a pre -existing condition, preventing it to be used as grounds for denying insurance. Obamacare provides that mammograms, colonoscopies, checkups, and contraceptives will be provided to all without co-pays.

Your father/grandfather, an obstetrician-gynecologist,is a doctor whose ethical beliefs have been in synch with Catholic hospital policies in which he has been in attendance. He is furious with these attempts to interfere with his relationships with his patients by restricting his ability to advise what he believes is best to make sure the mothers and the babies he delivers are healthy in mind, body and spirit. The last straw this past month came when it became obvious that there were those who wanted to keep you from getting or affording contraceptives. A purpose of such medication is to help you avoid undertaking even more emotionally and physically painful procedures in the future, including treatment for endometriosis.

Do not fall for the line that health reform legislation is just a big federal government overreach. The most radical overreaches are those laws that restrict your personal choices and are being enacted at the state level, while the Republican dominated House of Representatives echoes some of the same legislative initiatives. Remember, who will be elected President could appoint justices that overturn Roe v Wade. Feed this in your voting decisions , or else in 2013 you may be in for a rude shock.

Hope vs Back to the future; what would it have been like if the GOP won in 2008

My Column in the Sky Hi News on line edition today: The GOP presidential contenders are putting their eggs in one basket: The voters are feeling so much pain, anyone would be better than Obama. Oh?

Some in the GOP seem to yearn to return to the time of John Adams, when Abigail could run the farm and cash flow was only a nagging problem because she could raise their own food, sew her own clothes, and pay the doc in chickens.

That bucolic life is long gone thanks to the industrial revolution, the intertwined world economy, urbanization, an economy driven by middle income consumer spending, and expensive life-saving medical technology. “Each to his own and each on his own” has moral and economic implications. To what extent should we be our brothers' keeper? Is it good for the economy to leave one half of Americans near or in hopeless poverty?

To compensate for tax cuts, ground wars, and stagnant income, we plunged ourselves into deeper government and personal debt. Starry eyed, we put our money in unregulated investments based on questionable mortgage loans until the economy imploded in 2008.

When I hear voters wistfully say they just want it like it was before, for which “before” are they yearning? — the latter 1700s or the bubble of the early 2000s?. Most of the GOP's roadmap to prosperity is the bubble model that replicates their previous route that led to prosperity for the few, a col de sac for many, and eventual disaster for all.

Low taxes and less regulation did not lift the boats of the middle class much from 2001-2007, while the upper incomes soared, per the Congressional Budget Office. Job loss and recession began nearly the year before the crash of fall 2008. The theory that wealth trickles down to the middle class did not work well in practice.

The GOP is not about applying balm to middle income pains. They want to repeal help for Elm Street to aid Wall Street and Fifth Avenue, with more tax breaks to an already robust financial sector and the comfortable rich, repealing health care and Wall Street reform, and weakening consumer protection.

We can imagine a GOP future by going back to their past.  What would it have been like with a Republican or a Mitt Romney controlling Washington for the last three years instead of having the reforms and policies Obama supported and instituted? The financial sector would still be free to hoodwink investors and homebuyers, one bank failure could still bring down other banks, and we would still drown in the cost of more or indefinite ground wars. There would have been no pressure on banks to refinance responsible homeowners, and the housing market would be seeking an even deeper bottom. Detroit would have gone bankrupt; 1.4 million jobs would have evaporated as the industry would have moved abroad. The 2009 stimulus would not have been passed and another 2.3 million jobs would have been added to the unemployment count.

The Ryan plan would have passed so future seniors would pay $6,000 more a year for Medicare. 30 million citizens  could never hope to afford health insurance. Sending kids to college would have become a fading dream, with shrinking access to student loans, and continued unrealistic burden of paying back them back.

Simpson Bowles debt reduction plan would have been completely ignored because it recommended GOP no-no's   of reducing military spending, continuing cost saving Obamacare, and raising taxes on the rich, the very recommendations embraced by Obama.

In his State of the Union address, Obama gave us a new vision of “hope,” a fair shake for the future for the middle income. With all economic indicators zigzagging upward, he can rightfully claim he has indeed turned around the economy, if not yet cured it, and that a Republican future would be a leap back to the policies from whose consequences we are now trying to escape. 

GOP's Newspeak translated to Oldspeak is Alice In Wonderland Orwell style

Today's column appearing in the Sky Hi News  Jan. 11 2012

George Orwell's foreboding novel “1984” introduced a new language, Newspeak, and he predicted that by 2050 it would replace Oldspeak, the English we have known.

2050 has arrived.

The purpose of Newspeak, according to Orwell, was for totalitarian leaders to make subversive thought and speech impossible by reducing and simplifying grammar and vocabulary and removing all shades of meaning. The difference is today's Newspeak is a creature of modern communication.

A debate with many candidates requires each to condense explanations into 30-second sound bites. Thirty-second TV commercials depend upon catchy, simplistic phrases. However, these sound bites could generate some interesting shades of meaning if we add in a tad more Oldspeak. Fat chance. Newspeak's advantage to politicians: It is a mask for reality challenges and Alice in Wonderland style illogic.

What if the GOP's Newspeak were translated into Oldspeak? We hear the GOP claiming that President Obama is a” failed leader.” What the GOP could be saying in Oldspeak: “Obama got much of his agenda passed in spite of our efforts to stop him, but he failed to cave in to his supporters. That Obama passed through Congress a stimulus bill, Obamacare, auto industry bailout, increase of the debt ceiling, temporary passage of the payroll tax cut extension, and Wall Street Reform does not count; it wasn't our agenda.”

“Any one could have gotten Bin Laden by approving a risky operation. George W Bush assured us that getting him was not a big deal. Any action short of boots on the ground, bombing, and occupation is leading from behind or appeasement. Hang the cost; we can cut everyone else's budget and benefits.”

GOP Newspeak: “While the Great Recession was not caused by Obama,  he failed to turn around the economy.” Oldspeak translation: Anything short of a return to the pre-2008 economic bubble is not recovery. That GDP and employment have shown steady growth beginning in 2010 is not because of Obama's policies.

GOP Newspeak: “Obama wants to kill job creators. We know how to create jobs and only we understand how business and the economy works.” Oldspeak translation: We know how to kill jobs by opposing auto bailouts and infrastructure funding, and closing plants. Bush economic policies lost us over 8 million jobs, but let's not Bush bash. We have had low taxes for the rich, our job creators, for a decade. More of the same should work just as well in the future, too. Lowering taxes further for the 1 percent is fair enough. The Obama stimulus we opposed created nearly 3 million jobs, as promised. It failed because it did not create more than that. Shrinking government, stopping Obama, and protecting high end tax breaks are more important.

GOP Newspeak: “Uncertainty is killing business.” Oldspeak translation: Take back the White House and Congress. That will certainly make it possible to reinstate economic policies of the past. We certainly know where that got us. So let us restore past policies, stop reform, and take our country backward. Blame Obamacare. While not fully operational until 2014, it is OK to keep business uncertain if the GOP can kill it.

GOP Newspeak: “Government cannot create jobs.” Oldspeak: Only the private sector creates jobs. Teachers, firefighters, and police are public employees so they cannot count as jobs created by Government. Government cannot create road and bridge infrastructure jobs because our budget priorities are more important .

GOP Newspeak: “We have plans to save Social Security, Medicare, health care.” Oldspeak: Government guarantees that your pension will still be available when you retire are unnecessary. Wall Street investments always beat Social Security, recent experience with IRAs notwithstanding. If future seniors pay $6,000 more per year, we can save Medicare. Our health insurance cure-all: Cross state insurance purchase and restricting malpractice suits so we can make insurance affordable for 3 million of the uninsured 30 million.

Obama needs to counter GOP issues immediately

My column in the Sky Hi News today; also linked by the Wall Street Journal in onespot.wsj.com/taxes

The 2012 Presidential campaign is in full throttle with the GOP trying to sell us their pitch that small government, low taxes will cure the Great Recession and any other problem that even indirectly relates to it.

President Obama, on the other hand, has hit the road in defense of his jobs plan, revving up friendly crowds in pep rally style. That approach is not enough if he wants to become more credible to the less friendlies who still have an open mind. He needs to do a better job of countering the GOP's substantive arguments as they arise and not wait for a year.

In the past three years, the GOP has repeated untruths until the untruths have been accepted as fact, even after such assertions got shot down by impressive numbers of independent experts. Instead of calling the GOP out immediately, the administration has often remained silent, allowing the Republicans to turn fiction into common wisdom and making it harder for Obama to persuade voters later.

Now we hear that the president is waiting until the GOP settles on a candidate to paint a contrast between himself and the other guy. Why wait? There are platforms held in common by all of the GOP presidential hopefuls and the president can begin at least countering those now and save other attacks specific to the GOP nominee for later.

To a person, the GOP candidates are firing salvos against health care reform and the president's jobs act. They are a Greek chorus of “kill them both.” The president has not returned substantive fire other than lobbing back fairness issues. This may rally an already sympathetic base, but he needs more substance to woo the skeptical middle. It is not enough to have a day or two of rebuttals by experts on talk media, either. The president himself needs to draw more on credible evidence and logic than he has been doing. His challenge is indeed couching complex argumentation in effective sound bites.

The GOP attack line has been “kill the jobs plan; it won't work. We need long term solutions instead.” That last phrase is the GOP's Achilles heel because the voters need help today, not years from now. Credit Obama for repeating ad nauseam, “pass this bill NOW.” He has not countered the “won't work” argument, though. The rating agency Moody's and the poll by Bloomberg News of leading economists conclude that Obama's job plan will save us from a double dip recession, improve the GDP growth, and increase employment somewhat. Obama should shout out these evaluations and accuse the GOP of hurting job creation and risking a double dip recession by holding short term measures hostage to the long term. Both are needed and complement each other.

Obama's failure to make a case for health care reform has allowed “Obamacare” to enter our vernacular as a dirty word. Both the Simpson/ Bowles report and the Congressional Budget Office say it will save the deficit billions. The president is making a mistake if he is waiting for the Supreme Court to rule in the spring on the laws' constitutionality to begin his counter-attack, because no matter what the Court's ruling, there will still be finger-pointing and threats of new legislation throughout the 2012 campaign.

Polls show that two provisions already in effect in advance of the 2014  full health law implementation are popular: allowing young adults to stay on their parents' insurance and requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions. Is that what the GOP wants to kill? The GOP has never had a plan to provide affordable coverage for the 30 million uninsured other than to let them continue to burden the inadequate ERs, rely on hospital charity that passes their cost on to the paying public, or palm the solutions onto the states who cannot even pay their teachers and firefighters. Obama should call them on it sooner than later.

Raising Cain on "obamacare"

Herman Cain just won the Florida GOP straw poll.  In the Orlando debate this week, he also made one of the silliest statements  I heard…Not only were his allegations geared to fear,  based only on some speculation that there would be long waits for tests if we had “obamacare”,  he showed just how out of touch the GOP is. Cain’s comments need raising, even though most still do not consider him a winner in the long run, but  they are much like other Tea Party panderings made by other candidates.
 His comments  got cheers from the crowd.. Those are the same kind of crowds that roared  cheers that so many had been executed in Texas, that those without health insurance should die, cheers that a gay marine ought to be booted out with restoration of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  Cain said he was a colon cancer survivor because he had early detection and claimed if we had “obamacare”, he would have died waiting for tests.  Sheer speculation; sheer fear mongering, not based on any fact or study .  That was bad enough, but what he neglected to say is that there are 30 million uninsured in this country who do not get or cannot afford such tests and checkups and they will have that access to preventative medicine when “obamacare” is implemented in 2014.  Lucky Cain; he could afford insurance and tests;  many others cannot.