Monthly Archives: June 2012

Dewey Beats Truman, again –Wrong predictions on health care

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DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN, AGAIN!

2012 wrong predictions on health care

“Surely, as there are mountebanks for the natural body, so are there mountebanks for the politic body; men that undertake great cures, and perhaps have been lucky, in two or three experiments, but want the grounds of science, and therefore cannot hold out. . . So these men, when they have promised great matters, and failed most shamefully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado.”

Francis Bacon, “Of Boldness”

 

George Will

The list of wrong predictions about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on ‘Obamacare’ would be a long, long one. This post will hardly scratch the surface. Still, it is worth pointing out that some of the preeminent newspapers in the United States got it wrong; some cable television channels got the prediction wrong and even went so far as to get the ruling wrong after it came down; and virtually every member of the rightwing noise machine got it wrong.

Erroneous headlines went up first

A few main points:

1)      They said what they were paid to say, of course. Rush-Limbaugh-Land would not have reacted kindly had George F. Will or Charles Krauthammer, for example, suggested that the high court might well uphold much or most of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Koch brothers retreats, the speaker circuits, the book-buying in bulk, even the television appearances designed to reinforce a safe predictability–what David Brock referred to as six-figure speaking fees and seven-figure book contracts—all might threaten to dry up or at least to diminish, if any significant right-wing voices had taken a balanced line with regard to health insurance reform.

2)      This is health care they were talking about. Not predicting the horse race of presidential elections, not the outcome of a senate race. Health care, which in one way or another touches every American.

3)      Not one of them is financially in need of help with regard to health care.

4)      There is no suggestion whatsoever that any editor or producer or othre member of so-called management, at their respective media outlets, will provide guidance or correction, for even the most egregiously ridiculous predictions and bogus arguments about ‘Obamacare’. Far from it.

 

Admittedly not everyone went so far as Forbes, with a blanket prediction that the Supreme Court will strike down all of Obamacare.

But some notable prognosticators spent months overtly campaigning against, and predicting the downfall of, health care reform and/or health insurance reform. (The same experts likewise campaigned, for weeks and months on end, in favor of invading Iraq, and for much the same reasons.) That includes—of course–George F. Will, who used to be referred to as a constitutional scholar, and Charles Krauthammer, who at least once on air advanced his training as a psychiatrist to argue in favor of torture. Krauthammer is a Fox contributor, but Will is employed by ABC. They are both syndicated through the Washington Post Co., through which Colman McCarthy—the noted peace author—used to be syndicated, until both the Washington Post and the Washington Post Writers Group fired him on the same day.

In the wake of the high court’s ruling on health care, both Will and Krauthammer brought out columns this morning spinning the high court’s ruling on health care. Taking Bacon’s impudent fellow as their model, neither columnist volunteers the fact that he himself was wrong, let alone repeatedly wrong, on the question of whether the law would be upheld.

Let’s keep this short. Krauthammer and Will have both predicted the downfall of the law too many times to catalog. For Krauthammer, a few reminders here and here and here and here and above all the 180-degree-wrong prediction here.

For Will, offerings here and here and here, among many others. Will predicted on air that the law would be struck down, and “should be.”

 

The problem is that, as go the big-money columnists, so too often go the journalists—at least in political reporting. Chris Cilizza and Dan Balz of the WashPost may use a different idiom from Will and Krauthammer, but their line of thought is all too similar. Like God, they are always on the side of the big battalions, or what they perceive as the big battalions.

 

One result is that some of the biggest papers in the country have gone for decades as though insurance abuses are among the topics nice people don’t mention, at least in print. A corporate insurance practice of denying claims, whether denial was colorable or not, got outed in fiction by John Grisham, not in reporting by the Times.

Btw I heard about this as ‘company policy’ at one insurance company, anecdotally, myself. It is improbable that no Washington journalist, NYC journalist or Chicago journalist ever heard of it.

UPDATE:

Damn

I thought, ‘Dewey beats Truman’, swear I did. THEN I saw this blog, minutes after posting. It includes the related video: Stranger, go read it.

Affordable Care Act largely upheld by Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court ruling just out, upholds the health care law in most important provisions. The so-called individual mandate is upheld, deemed constitutional as a tax, Chief Justice Roberts joining the majority on the ‘left’ of the high court.

Also reported: the Medicaid provisions remain in.

From C-Span 3, images of a largely negative but subdued crowd rallying in front of the Supreme Court building. Easy to see the effect and swiftness of rumor; a man calls out that the mandate is struck down, and there’s cheering. The correction comes fast, and there’s booing. Further news and clarification, and within seconds a woman addresses the anti-‘Obamacare’ crowd, telling them that “doctors say” that whatever the Supreme Court rules today is irrelevant.

Chief Justice Roberts

More to come.

 

Medicare for all

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Medicare for all

–Or at least for more. As this writer has noted more than once, the way to get young and healthy people into general coverage is to expand Medicare to cover everyone up to age 26. Why not? What would be the argument against? –This is the cohort least liable to the ills of old age, after all; least liable to need long-term care, to decline into Alzheimer’s dementia, least liable to be diagnosed with colon cancer or breast cancer or pancreatic cancer, least prone to heart disease or strokes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Et cetera.

Not that youth doesn’t have its problems, where health and survival are concerned. As previously written, a host of ills awaits to tackle healthy young people–alcohol and other substance abuse, eating disorders including over-eating and the reverse, aggression and guns, dangerous/reckless driving, pointless accidents, dangerous sports and games, and of course war, among others. Every thinking parent is well aware of the possibilities.

But all these, we can tackle. To some extent, the attempts have already begun, with some effect.

Even with all the problems, a large population awaits better wellness and better coverage, with the fiscal pay-off of lowering health care costs partly by spreading the risk far wider. Let’s hope it happens some time.

This comes to mind today, of course, because the cable channels were–just a few minutes ago–all agog with certainty that the Supreme Court would announce a ruling on health care today. Thank God for C-Span, also covering the issue, which instead of inflicting more political prognosticators on a long-suffering public, showed the activists–all sides–demonstrating and speaking in front of the Supreme Court building.

Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C.

Two Supreme Court rulings were announced today: Ms. Justice Kagan read the court’s opinion, on a five-to-four decision, against life without parole for juveniles; and Mr. Justice Kennedy read the court’s opinion, Kagan abstaining, invalidating much of Arizona’s sweeping Latino-profiling law (Arizona v. United States).

Sheriff Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona

Meanwhile, the Dow plunged in early trading this morning. Looks as though the stock market was less gleeful, or perhaps spiteful, over speculation that ‘Obamacare’ would be struck down than were many of the cable commentators. Most of them are just chafing in resentment over their misreading of the public anyway. It is still remarkable that the Washington Post, among other periodicals, went thirty years without reporting insurance abuses.

And speaking of resentment, we still hear wofully little about public reaction to the insurance companies. Many, many commentators have harped on Tea Party anger over the individual mandate. Few, very few, commentators have pointed out that that anger does not speak well for the insurance industry.

Aside from undertakers and mortuaries, is there any industry in America that has more reluctant customers than the insurance industry?

How flood plains work

We also still hear little genuine reporting on flood insurance as a massive transfer of wealth. But then, the officeholders most vehemently denying climate change or most eagerly avoiding it as a topic are the same people, by and large, most in the pay of the insurance industry.

 

 

 

Imaginary flap over Marco Rubio

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Imaginary flap over Marco Rubio

The VP flap yesterday over Marco Rubio’s not being ‘vetted’ as Mitt Romney’s pick for the second spot on the Republican ticket was pretty weird, even for television. I’m all for imagination, the play of color and the zodiac of human wit and all that, but there’s supposed to be a limit. Lo-mein-for-brains took over the airwaves yesterday, at least in politics.

Rubio

Seriously: Not that this writer bears any brief for Romney, but to call him out for not vetting Rubio for the GOP nomination for Vice President of the United States is just baseless.  This is what passes for political analysis nowadays–a flap because Marco Rubio is reportedly not being considered for the VP spot?

Why should he be considered? Why in the world should the Romney campaign, or any presidential campaign, spend time and resources vetting Marco Rubio?

Let’s run down a quick list of the premises of this remarkable criticism of Romney. For perspective, it might be remembered that Romney is the man who, as they say in convention nominating speeches, recommended letting Detroit go bankrupt; who has never met a war he didn’t like except the one in which he could have served; who gives every sign of wanting another trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich and another trillion-dollar war if he can get it.

So what are they talking about, chez Romney? –Rubio. Marco Rubio?!?

Let’s have a little correction here, or at least a rethinking of some of those glib assertions all over the place yesterday.

No, passing over Rubio is not somehow an ‘insult to Hispanics’. There is less than no evidence that Rubio would draw Latino voters to the GOP or to the Romney ticket. Rubio is Cuban-American, not from Mexico or points south–and not even a refugee from Castro at that. His parents fled Cuba, as we know from the reporting of the WashPost’s Manuel Roig-Franzia, under the Batista regime. More importantly, every typical GOP policy Rubio supports is antithetical to the preferences of most Latino voters as expressed in recent elections. Immigration is only a partial exception–and Rubio’s comparative mildness or non-xenophobic position on immigration runs counter to that GOP ‘base’ we hear so much about. Back to Latinos, it would be more insulting to assume that Latinos are going to vote in a bloc for a man just because his last name ends in a vowel.

No, Rubio is not overwhelmingly ‘popular’ nationwide. He did well for himself in Florida, where the civic infrastructure has been laid waste by GOP state administrations and legs. The general public knows little about him except that he is young and Republican and male and married. There is no indication that he would help carry any other state. In fact, there is no hard evidence that he would help Romney carry Florida. If placed under nationwide scrutiny, his policies, his finances–that misuse of official credit cards, for example–and his misstatements about family history might well catch up with him. Then there’s the nature of his donors. He is no shoo-in, not somebody to be considered automatically a plus.

No, Rubio would not necessarily carry Florida. If Florida voters get a clear choice and a clear look at GOP policy–another trillion-dollar war, another trillion-dollar drain of public resources set up by tax policy for the wealthy and for corporations–there is no reason to think Rubio would somehow outweigh that in the balance. Self-adoration is not the same as the adoration of a multitude.

No, Rubio is not qualified to be Vice President. Cast of thousands, admittedly. Virginia’s Gov. McDonnell Douglas is also not qualified to be VP–unless VP stands for vaginal probe–but gets talked about that way anyway, as does Rubio.

No, Rubio is not such a significant political figure that he automatically gets entered in the veepstakes. What, exactly, has Marco Rubio done as a senator? What if anything did he accomplish in Florida, aside from some credit-card shopping?

No, Rubio would not necessarily be an overwhelmingly popular choice for the Republican ‘base’. The first choice of the GOP ‘base’ is not black; not female; not Latino. Never. They don’t say it, they are chagrined at being considered prejudiced, they tend to be defensive about it–except in private conversations–and they put up with tokens, exceptions and the Herman Cains of the world cheerfully. They don’t have a high opinion of politics, of candidates for office, for public office or for civic engagement in the first place, after all. But they still have their preferences, their base attitude so to speak. The national political press has spent a good fifty years ignoring this attitude and thus covering up for it. Meanwhile, the politicians the  insiders have protected have spent decades ignoring the racial disparity in applying the death penalty, just to take one example.

It’s still remarkable that they can get away with it, after all these years.

That said, from a certain perspective it might be beneficial if Rubio did actually end up getting put through what former Vice President Dick Cheney called the meat grinder.

In narrowly political terms, however, that’s another good reason for the Romney campaign not to subject him to it. All these commentators speaking, ostensibly, from the perspective of Romney’s political advantage–suppose the Romney team found out something about Rubio? What then?

BizarroWorld veepstakes.

Indirectly the flap yesterday may have been of benefit to the public, at that. If Romney can be pushed around this easily–doing an apparent 180 on a potential VP choice, just because some television commentators discussed Rubio’s not being on the list–then it’s good for American voters to know it.

Funny how you never hear the blowhards on air talking about a ‘Sistah Souljah moment’ when a Republican candidate is involved.

Policy matters

But then it is seldom suggested that a Republican candidate is actually trying to help a disadvantaged person or group, so there’s no bar to raise for hypocrisy in that regard.

 

Why GOPers don’t talk about campaign debt

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Why Republicans don’t talk about campaign debt

For a while there, back in August 2011, the CEO of Starbucks floated an idea of boycotting campaign contributions to all incumbents. Within days, more than a hundred CEOs of large companies had joined/signed on to the idea. We have heard little about it since, undoubtedly for a combination of reasons. Many corporate donors are indeed holding back even now, closer to the election, but less because of an objection to money in politics than because of a predilection for fence-sitting. They are by no means confident that Mitt Romney can win the 2012 presidential election and are not eager to bail on a popular president to become linked with a ludicrous challenger. Their state and local incumbents will either win the election and thus don’t need money—so far as they know—or will not win and thus are a losing proposition. In any case if they want to donate to politics, they can smoothly and discreetly do so through PACs and super-PACs.

 

Romney

Possibly there is another reason as well. At the time Starbucks’ Howard Schultz floated his proposal, it would have particularly damaged the new GOP members of Congress. As the public generally knows, big money in politics does not rain on the just and the unjust alike; the biggest donations—especially from big pharma, big oil and the finance sector–flow mostly to Republican candidates. And for all the hoopla over those budget-cutting deficit-hawk tightfisted Tea Party-influenced GOP freshmen in Congress, the majority of them finished their campaigns in serious debt—and stayed that way.

 

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.)

A quick overview of new GOP congress members, in a snapshot of their indebtedness as of Aug. 15, 2011, indicates that at least 45 of them* were still carrying serious debt from their election campaigns a year later. The Republican wave of 2010 did not carry its victorious campaigns to solvency. The situation has altered by now, of course, but there are still some interesting indicators.

Steel belt

A perennial GOP election tactic is to characterize the major industrial states as ‘swing’ states. At best, this characterization is seldom corrected in the national political press. No matter how many times Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin vote for the Democrat for the White House—the last FIVE elections, from 1992 through 2008, for Pennsylvania; the last SIX elections, back to 1988, for Michigan and Wisconsin—they still get pitched as swing states when an election year rolls around. There must be a lot of GOP consultants, or commentators who might as well be, left over from 1988. (There are.) This passive-aggressive media tactic, or sometimes genuine political ignorance, is particularly damaging as newspapers shrink in number and coverage and as the media are blanketed with multi-million-dollar false advertising. (Successfully-not-recalled Gov. Scott Walker’s dubious claim that he has brought about a budget surplus in Wisconsin is only one recent example. Walker’s claim looks likely to be rebutted by events, and a federal investigation is underway.)

The swing-state mentality, or analysis if it’s called that, is inherently pro-GOP. At least eleven new Republicans swept into Congress in the industrial ‘swing’ states in 2010 are on the list below—if they won at all, they ended their campaigns in serious debt, and they stayed in debt for at least another year. A set of hard, expensive campaigns does not look like a groundswell of enthusiasm for the GOP or even for throwing out incumbents.

To do them justice, at least all but one of them eventually voted in Congress to raise what is called the debt ceiling. The lone holdout, Michigan’s Justin Amash, seems to try to be a consistent libertarian conservative on the model of Ron Paul.

Illinois

Four new GOP members on the list below came in from Illinois. Of these, Randy Hultgren (Ill. 14th) still has money problems, relatively speaking—at least if the Dems have the sense to support challenger Dennis Anderson. House speaker John Boehner, leaving nothing to chance in the 14th, is out fundraising for Hultgren, whose district went solidly for Obama in 2008.

 

More ludicrously, Illinois also still has Rep. Joe Walsh in situ. Walsh is the notorious child-support dodger and debt defaulter who ended his 2010 campaign at least $340,000 in debt—and then voted in Congress against raising the debt limit, on grounds of fiscal probity. Walsh’s unsavory finances—besides child support–have been discussed elsewhere, including here and here, but he has drawn big-bucks support, presumably because of his low-rent-style personal attacks on the president. Everything that turns the public off on politics benefits the GOP and its corporate donors. Still, if someone like Joe Walsh could beat someone like Tammy Duckworth, Illinois has a worse literacy problem than yet brought to light. In fact, if the national GOP or its supporting orgs are actually still throwing money Walsh’s direction, there are few stronger indicators that they have money to burn.

Duckworth

In Illinois’ 17th, Bobby Schilling came out of 2010-11 somewhat less in debt and has also pulled in large donations. Schilling has a solid challenger in Democrat Cheri Bustos, but another challenger, Eric Reyes, is trying to get on the ballot as a write-in candidate.

Tennessee, West Virginia

The most-preyed-upon belt produced three loaded-with-debt Republican freshmen in 2010—none from Kentucky, but two from Tennessee and one from West Virginia. New GOP Rep Diane Black (Tenn. 6th) had almost a million in debt a year later, David McKinley over half a million; Charles Fleischmann only $200K-plus. Black is heavily financed this time around, facing Democratic challenger attorney Brett Carter. McKinley of West Virginia is also heavily financed, against Dem challenger Susan Thorn. At least Black and McKinley eventually voted to raise the debt limit. Fleischmann, of Tennessee’s heavily gerrymandered 3rd, supported basket-case brinkmanship to the last, getting Boehner’s support anyway. Primaries still to come, in August, with the Democratic contenders looking a lot more credible than the GOP field.

For the rest

The point of highlighting some of our debt-ridden representatives is that coming in loaded with debt does not tend to make even a raw new congress member ‘independent’. Mouthing about ‘revolution’ or the Tea Party or ‘reining in spending’ or debt, when one is carrying liabilities in excess of one’s campaign’s ability to pay them off, should therefore draw some skeptical attention. In this context it might be noted that Arizona produced three of the new GOP in-the-redders, beating out California (one) and Florida (two). Paul Gosar of Arizona’s 4th and David Schweikert of Arizona’s 6th are a lot better off now, financially speaking—but face opponents in the August primaries in AZ. Schweikert’s opponent is fellow listee Ben Quayle, son of former Vice President Dan Quayle; both are lavishly funded. Presumably Quayle and Schweikert can’t both make hay in the primary over the fact that they both opposed raising the debt ceiling to the last, while in debt themselves.

*List on Aug 15, 2011:

  • Justin Amash,  MI 3: $10K cash on hand, $408K debts            N (unopposed for GOP primary Aug 7)
  • Louis J. Barletta, PA 11: $9K cash, $258K debt
  • Daniel J. Benishek, MI 1: $35K cash, $145K debt
  • Diane Lynn Black, TN 6: $36K cash, $1M debt
  • Francisco Canseco, TX 23: $141K cash, $1.1M debt
  • Steve Chabot, OH 1: $7K cash, $10K debt
  • Jeff Denham, CA 10: $47K cash, $54K debt
  • Robert Dold, IL 10: $81K cash, $144K debt
  • Blake Farenthold, TX 27: $33K cash, $157K debt
  • Michael G. Fitzpatrick, PA 8: $28 cash, $129K debt
  • Charles J. Fleischmann, TN 3: $31K cash, $250K debt            N
  • William Flores, TX 17: $44K cash, $731K debt
  • Cory Gardner, CO 4: $19K cash, $103K debt
  • Chris Gibson, NY 20: $31K cash, $50K debt
  • Paul Gosar, AZ 1: $740 cash, $59K debt
  • Tim Griffin, AR 2: $81K cash, $206K debt
  • Michael Grimm, NY  : $21K cash, $95K debt
  • Frank Guinta, NH 1: $493 cash, $355K debt
  • Richard L. Hanna, NY 24: $39K cash, $537K debt
  • Andy Harris, MD 1: $40K cash, $97K debt
  • Vicky Hartzler, MO 4: $22K cash, $163K debt           N
  • Nan Hayworth, NY 19: $53K cash, $505K debt
  • Jaime Herrerra, WA 3: $23K cash, $41K debt
  • Randy Hultgren, IL 14: $29K cash, $61K debt N
  • Bill Johnson, OH 6: $32K cash, $55K debt
  • Mike Kelly, PA 3: $28K cash, $383K debt
  • Jeffrey M. Landry, LA 3: $930 cash, $323K debt         N
  • David B. McKinley, WV 1: $77K cash, $670K debt
  • John Mick Mulvaney, SC 5: $137K cash, $210K debt N
  • Richard B. Nugent, FL 5: $12K cash, $15K debt
  • Ben Quayle, AZ 3: $8K cash, $27K debt         N
  • Tom Reed, NY 29: $37K cash, $76K debt
  • James B. Renacci, OH 16: $50K cash, $375K debt
  • Reid Ribble, WI 8: $2K cash, $173K debt
  • Scott Rigell, VA 2: $157K cash, $378K debt
  • David Rivera, FL 25: $11K cash, $137K debt
  • Jon Runyan, NJ 3:  $5K cash, $339K debt
  • Bobby Schilling, IL 17: $10K cash, $54K debt
  • David Schweikert, AZ 5: $16K cash, $523K debt        N
  • Austin Scott, GA 8: $11K cash, $99K debt      N
  • Steve Stivers, OH 15: $10K cash, $41K debt
  • Marlin Stutzman, IN 3: $523 cash, $8K debt                N
  • Scott Tipton, CO 3: $22K cash, $159K debt               N
  • Tim Walberg, MI 7: $52K cash, $72K debt
  • Joe Walsh, IL 14: $22K cash, $362K debt                   N

 

Sad, pathetic jobs

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Just got a call from someone who has not been taught manners. When telephoning someone, especially someone you don’t know, the general guideline is that the caller identifies himself first, then asks for the person being called.

This was an unsolicited call from some company. What company? Still don’t know. [Name offered, possibly not his real name] said he was calling from the “Auto Processing Department.” When asked “of what?” he didn’t seem to understand the question. Pressed for the name of the company, he repeated “Auto Processing Department,” then adjusted slightly to “Auto Processing Center.”

Never did get a company name; have no idea what product or service was being offered. Caller–a young guy located in California–probably didn’t go to college for this, assuming he went. But this–telephone soliciting–was in all probability the only job he could land. Usually I try to be decent to cold callers, when I make the mistake of answering the phone, but this time the caller gave up, courteously, signing off wishing me a good day. Irritating though the whole thing was, I hope at least the job is just for the summer. It’s still a waste of everyone’s time. But our anti-regulation types on the whole won’t hear of protecting consumers against waste of time, waste of money, product malfunction, service misfeasance, or outright fraud.

We need our Do Not Call list capabilities again.

More fundamentally, we need to invest in our country, so our young people will have something to do besides telephone soliciting, waiting tables and bartending.

Rep. Boehner and Sen. McConnell seem unlikely to come through any time soon, since their place in Congress depends on preventing the Obama administration from accomplishing anything further positive. But at least the larger media outlets could report and explain the difference between debt and deficit, and the tax differential between income tax and capital gains, and the place of hedge funds and holding companies in the larger picture of wealth and income disparity in the U.S.

On related matters

Speaking of California–one of the unspoken truths in our century is that real estate in California costs too much. California is not Hawaii, certainly is not Hong Kong or Tokyo. California does not have to import almost all of its manufactured goods and most of its food. For a house to cost five times as much, or more than five times as much, in California as on the East Coast is not economically rational. There is no objective necessity for the gross difference. People should not have to finance a move to California as though they were about to rent on Saturn.  The gap between California and the rest of the nation is a drag on the entire housing industry.

[Update]

Re-reading the above, on second thought I do not lump in waiting tables and bartending with telephone soliciting. Waiting tables is honest work. Telephone soliciting is often not. This is not to blame a young guy for taking whatever job he could get. The fault lies with his employers, among others: He has the thankless task in the first place of calling strangers who do not want to hear from him. To perform this task, he is given no job training except on reading from a script. Probably they bestowed on him a fake name to identify himself with.

The script is a bunch of malarkey, and to have to read from it is demeaning, comparing unfavorably with reading from scripts (TV/radio commercials) pitching embarrassing body products.  At least commercial voice-over pays well, something not said for telephone soliciting.

The kicker is that all the time spent by this employee on the job is subsidized through our federal tax policy; his wages or salary are a business write-off for the employer. Any time misspent or message misdirected, owing to lack of training or lack of demand or lack of good business judgment, falls under the same heading of business expenses. My time wasted, au contraire, or that of any other unwilling customer, is of course not a write-off.

Meanwhile, we’ve got GOP legislators and candidates screaming about ‘government jobs’–meaning teachers among others (firefighters, police, emergency response). These guys are perfectly willing to support half-trained telephone soliciting on behalf of possibly fraudulent products–most of these calls turn out to be about refinancing mortgages or some other form of lending, which is seldom offered via cold calling by any reputable company. They’re considerably less willing to support education at any level, in the public interest, by genuine teachers at genuine schools.

It’s the scandalous set-up for-profit diploma-mill online ‘universities’ all over again, on a smaller scale.

Trump, birtherism and the GOP race 2012: The more things don’t change, part 3

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The more things don’t change, part 3

2012 from primary to election

 

The dynamic that shaped the Republican primaries is now shaping the Republican campaign for the White House: Future nominee Mitt Romney is continuing the Rick Santorum strategy of going for the leftovers.

 

Romney supporters in Tennessee

As we know, the GOP primary season from summer 2011 to May 2012 shaped up as a contest dividing the voters from more populous counties, in general, from the voters of less populous counties. The GOP primary race was never between ‘moderate’ and ‘conservative’; all the candidates except in some ways Ron Paul support the same rapacious policies. The primary race was between Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul on one hand and Santorum on the other, the fault line being metropolitan/suburban appeal versus rural appeal. Santorum took most of the less populated counties, and he took states where rural and small-town counties and congressional districts outweigh metropolitan areas and suburbs. In this metric, as previously written, Santorum had the advantage of a divided field among his opponents and the leftovers to himself. Romney, Gingrich and Paul divided the more populated areas.

 

Romney with Nikki Haley

Now Romney has the Republican electorate all to himself—an electorate dependent on voters in regions where population density is not high, where communications are not good, where newspapers are not strong, and where per capita wealth and computer literacy are most lopsidedly divided between highest and lowest. Meth lab country. ‘Safe states’? The only respectably safe state for Romney is Utah. Romney is inordinately dependent on states that gave Rick Santorum victories—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee—or that would have boosted Santorum if he could have lasted longer or if he had gotten his electors/delegates on the ballot—Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia.

Of the states just mentioned, Texas comes closest to being Romney territory. (Texas also comes closest of these to being Obama territory, but so far the Dems have successfully kept that secret.) As written last week, however, out-of-the-race candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and others pulled several thousand votes in the May 29 Texas primary won by Romney. So did “Uncommitted,” on the GOP ballot: More than sixty thousand voters turned out, in an uncontested Republican primary, to vote NOT for their party’s overwhelming favorite and frontrunner, rejecting even the cachet of putting the nominee over the top.

 

Trump

Enter Donald Trump, with his version of support for Romney.

Trump’s support is hardly intended for ‘swing states’. There is no evidence that Trump has wide popular appeal in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Even in Missouri he looks iffy. Trump’s ‘birth certificate’ ploy is not part of a grand strategy to soften antagonism to Romney among people who work in the automobile industry in Michigan or even in Indiana. No, Trump’s support, his ghastly pitch for birtherism, is a straight-out invitation to the most ignorant counties in the U.S. Grabbing headlines big enough to reach people who don’t read and who distrust the ‘liberal media’ so intensely they refuse to read newspapers or to watch any television news except Fox, Trump is going openly for the voters in the 91 of 95 Tennessee counties won by Santorum.

 

The brighter side of factories closing

Regrettably, automobile workers in Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina are seldom allowed to know about Romney’s policy positions. If you want another trillion-dollar war and another trillion-dollar tax cut for speculators and hedge fund managers, Romney’s your man—video clips widely available. But the dearth of newspapers in places that need them most seals up policy discussion as though it were national secrets. The result is ongoing harm to U.S. manufacturing and to working families.

 

Back to the birthers—

Theoretically Romney came out of the Texas primary as undisputed top dog and all-round GOP winner, safely in a position to train effective opposition against the Democrats and the president for the next five months. No more press hype boosting minor opponents like Tim Pawlenty (see here and here and here). No more unappealing candidates like Bachmann, Gingrich and Santorum trying ham-handedly to swipe at Romney. Right? No more para-candidates like Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin and Trump to distract attention from the nominee. Uh. No more specter-candidates like Chris Christie and Jeb Bush as embarrassing reminders of how many GOPers hoped for more latecomers in the race—at least, not yet this week. No more speculation in the political press as to whether Romney will be downed by a much-hyped ‘Christian right’, Tea Party, and ‘rebellion’ in the ranks. Hm.

Theoretically Romney has massive advantages.

  • He was a primary candidate who did not flunk the one-look-from-across-a-crowded-room test.
  • He presumably has political infrastructure intact at the state level, remaining from a front-loaded primary schedule, copious early money and longstanding organization.
  • He will have unprecedented funding from everyone from Karl Rove to the Koch brothers and the Chamber of Commerce in between.
  • His campaign has five months to benefit from expensive and misleading television ads.
  • He can count on intransigence from Republicans in Congress, to prevent any legislation that would improve the condition of ordinary Americans.

And yet, and yet—he still faces, as previously written, the prospect of some voter sectors not finding a ‘top-tier’ candidate ugly enough for their tastes, and wishing they could have replaced him with someone more transparently unsavory. These are the Manchurian-candidate voters to whom Trump appeals.

If an obvious falsehood triumphs anywhere, it is most liable to triumph in wide-open stretches where mass communications are poor, where former farms produce hay and timber if they’re lucky, and where meth labs start looking like a good way to make a living. Even the most declined neighborhoods in the large industrial states do not tend to be hotbeds of birtherism. Susceptibility to Romney’s claim of being an effective manager is still found more in suburbs than in cities.

Perhaps by now we should all be used to wild claims, and used to the political press reporting wild claims as though they were substantive. Look at the way quintessential Washington insiders and career politicians typically claim to be outsiders, a new start, a fresh face—like Herman Cain, and Santorum with his lobbying career, and Gingrich with his contract with Freddie Mac. To some extent the discrepancies are aired by the national political press, though not as much as they should be and too often as though they are equally endemic to both sides in a national election.

Worse, such factual reporting as survives the filter of the national political press is jeopardized by continuous undertow from the business press. All the major GOP candidates, regardless of stylistic differences, are essentially corporate mouthpieces. Personality differences notwithstanding, the core fiscal trickle-down policy remains intact: it’s rich-get-richer. It’s always there.

They don’t put it that way, of course. The obfuscation is protected by the business press—the same commentators, analysts and journalists who failed to notice the impending mortgage-derivatives crisis and who almost unanimously supported ‘deregulation’. Still do.

It’s the same gang that keeps giving us Orwellianisms about ‘austerity’, ‘debt’, ‘energy’ and ‘jobs’ while doing everything it can to siphon off value from the many and convey it to the few, and a highly unqualified few at that.

Once again, a recent example—U.S. Treasury bills last week sold at a remarkably low rate of interest, yield, meaning that 1) U.S. Treasuries are regarded as rock-solid investment, and 2) their sale saddles the Treasury with little to no debt. But in all the hoopla about ‘the budget’, when was the last time you heard a GOPer in Congress mention the fiscal benefit of issuing U.S. Treasuries at a lower interest rate, to pay off bonds with a higher rate?

Once again, there is an analogy here to refinancing your mortgage. Most people understand the value of refinancing their mortgages if they can get a significantly lower interest rate. It would be illuminating to know which members of Congress have refinanced their houses, just to check on which members understand the same idea. Unfortunately, that information is not publicly available. Residences of congress members are exempted from financial disclosure.

Publicly, in any case, they all go the pro-corporate line of harping on ‘debt’ and ‘deficit’ anyway—except when it comes to discussing corporate debt.

 

More on Trump’s version of birtherism later