mitt romney

(Photo credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

Americans have faith in the presidential debates to be wide-ranging discussions that probe the candidates’ views and hold them accountable to the public. And for much of recent history, that’s what these debates were. From 1976 to 1984, the League of Women Voters held debates renowned for their fiercely independent moderators and transparent process.

But in more recent years, the debates have been held by an organization called the “Commission on Presidential Debates,” (CPD) which tightly controls the process by choosing moderators and questions.

Here’s one little known fact about the CPD — it’s chaired by corporate lobbyists. One of the chairmen isAi??Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr., who was once a Republican National Convention chairman but now works as a gambling industry lobbyist. The other chairman is Michael D. McCurry, who is a former press secretary for Bill Clinton. He now works as a “partner at Public Strategies Washington, Inc., where he provides counsel on communications strategies and management to corporate and non-profit clients.” Given the loopholes in our lobbying laws, McCurry doesn’t even have to disclose his clients, but we do know that in 2006 he spearheaded the Hands Off The Internet campaign that was designed to kill net neutrality on behalf of big telecom companies.

Every year, CPD also opens up the debates to corporate sponsors. Here’s the list of this year’s sponsors:

Anheuser-Busch Companies
The Howard G. Buffett Foundation
Sheldon S. Cohen, Esq.
Crowell & Moring LLP
International Bottled Water Association (IBWA)
The Kovler Fund
Southwest Airlines

With a sponsorship list like that, don’t be surprised if we don’t see questions critical of the industries listed. But this year’s list is relatively tame. In the past, theAi??tobaccoAi??industry, AT&T, and others have all been sponsors.

Here’s one last interesting tidbit about the debates. …

Will Obama and Romney be asked about any of these issues? (Photo credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

Last night’s vice presidential debate marked the second debate between the Romney-Ryan ticket and the Obama-Biden campaign. There are two presidential debates left to go, and both will be between Obama and Romney.

These debates are supposed to serve to educate Americans about the differences between the candidates. But we’ve done a review of the questions asked at the debates and we’ve found five important issues that have yet to come up at all. Here’s the list, in no particular order:

Labor Unions: In the three hours of debate so far between the two campaigns, labor unions have not come up once. In a question related to education, Romney didn’t even resort to his normal teacher-bashing by attacking teachers unions. The absence of unions from the debate is stunning, given that research shows that the decline of unions in America has corresponded with the decline of the middle class.
Economic Inequality: The word “inequality” didn’t arise once during the two debates. The moderators did not ask about the growing class divide in America nor the candidates’ solution to the problem.
Climate Change: There hasn’t been a single question asked about global warming. This is at a time when scientists are predicting that entire island nations like the Maldives will disappear thanks to rising sea levels.
The Drug War: The drug war is one of America’s greatest failings, and it’s estimated that half of our prison population is nonviolent drug offenders. But the issue simply didn’t arise during the debates.
LGBT Equality: President Obama was the first sitting president ever to endorse marriage equality, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the debates. The Obama-Biden ticket was …

An photograph illustrating Romney’s view that we need to shower corporations with even more tax cuts.

The policies politicians propose and enact represent both priorities and trade-offs. So when Mitt Romney proposes cutting corporate taxes at the cost of $1 trillion over the next ten years, he’s telling us that it’s more important for him to reduce the tax rates paid by Big Business than to have that trillion dollars in the Treasury to fund public priorities.

Here’s one of those priorities. Using data from the National Priorities Project (NPP), I calculated what else we could finance with a trillion dollars. I found that we could fund four-year scholarships for 31million students over the next ten years instead. Each student could go to a “flagship” state school for one year and have their tuition and fees fully subsidized.

Here’s a few other things we could finance for a trillion dollars instead of tax cuts for well-off corporations:

Veterans Administration care for 126 million veterans for one year
Hiring 14.5 million teachers for one year
Hiring 14.1 million police officers for one year

These are just a few alternatives to cutting corporate taxes by a trillion dollars over the next ten years. It’s up to us to choose what’s a better use of our tax dollars.

(Photo credit: Flickr user Adam Glanzman)

During his debate with President Obama last night, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney boasted of being governor of Massachusetts while the state was ranked best in the nation in education.

Romney is likely referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, which the Department of Education uses to grade states based on student knowledge in reading and mathematics.

Indeed, Massachussetts’ ranking has been impressive, and it ranked first in the nation in 2005 and 2007 in math and reading scores for 4th and 8th graders, both years under which Romney was governor. What Romney didn’t note was that the state also ranked first in 2009 — long after he had left his position.

In fact, it was also that way before Romney ever became governor. Here’s a table showing NAEP scores for Massachusetts from 1992 to 2003, drawn from a UMass Amherst report by researchers Stephen Jirka and Ronald Hambleton (click on it to expand it):

As you can see, Massachusetts significantly outperformed the nation every year tested. Some of this has to do with the public policies followed by the state, but it also has a number of social benefits that boost its educational potential. That includes the lowest number of uninsured individuals and the second-highest per capita income among all states.

Can Mitt Romney really take credit for his state’s educational results when they were already high before he took office and remained high after? No, the most he can take credit for is not catastrophically ruining an already good system.

Romney’s view on who deserves federal help — big corporations, hedge funders, private equity managers, and every else who’s already wealthy.

Tonight, Mitt Romney set off an avalanche of criticism and satire following his remarks that at the Republican convention that he likes “Big Bird,” but he will be cutting all funding to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Here’s the clip of him saying that:

It’s worth pointing out that federal subsidies only account for a tiny minority of public broadcasting budgets. Only 15 percent of PBS’s budget comes from the federal trough.

In fact, all public broadcasting put together under the umbrella of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), only accounts for $420 million from the federal government.

So Romney wants to wipe out this funding, which amounts to $4.2 billion over ten years if the funding stays consistent. But his corporate tax plan — which involves a huge tax giveaway to Big Business — would blow a $1 trillion hole in the federal budget over the next ten years.

That means that Romney’s corporate tax cuts cost 238 times more than all public broadcasting funding combined.

Maybe the satire is onto something. It’s possible Romney doesn’t actually like Big Bird very much, or at least 238 times less than he likes ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, and other corporations he’d be rewarding with his tax plan.

Join the fight to save Big Bird. Click here.

Last night, prominent Republican Rep. Dan Lungren (CA) debunked presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s lie that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes and are simply demanding favors from the government.

During a debate with progressive Ami Bera, Lungren was asked about Romney’s comments and offered a strong rebuke of his infamous statement:

MODERATOR: Mitt Romney’s been trying to explain a lot lately what he meant at a fundraiser. What he said, ’47 percent of Americans,’ and I quote him, ‘Dependent upon government believe that they are victims, whoAi??believeAi??the government is responsible for them, who believe they are entitled to health care, food, housing. Is that how you see the country? And if not, can you tell me how you differ from Governor Romney?

LUNGREN: Ai??I think he made a major mistake in calling people victims, saying that they want to be victims. I do think he pointed that there are approximately 47, 49 percent of the people who don’t pay income taxes at the present time. But there are different categories of folks. Some don’t because they’re retired, they paid all their lives! I wouldn’t call them trying to be victimized. Others because they have a low income, don’t qualify for tax — paying taxes at the federal level. […]

Watch Lungren’s response (the relevant section starts at 09:25):

It’s telling that a Republican as senior as Lungren — who was his party’s gubernatorial candidate in 2004 and is the chairman of the House Committee on Administration — is debunking and distancing himself from Romney’s now-infamous statements. Romney’s fumbling candidacy has become so inept and extreme that Republicans down the ticket are scrambling to get away from it.

Romney demonstrating his view on how government should treat rich people.

Yesterday, video emerged of Republican presidential nominee essentially telling donors that 47 percent of Americans are lazy and just want to be dependent upon the governor. In Romney’s world, these are all Obama voters:

ROMNEY:Ai??There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.

Watch the video of Romney’s remarks, obtained by Mother Jones:

Romney’s words are rightly being condemned as offensive. But here’s the interesting part about his remarks. He talks about Americans who believe they are entitled to basic goods like health care and food. In Romney’s mind, this probably means the poor.

But government actually spends a relatively small amount of its budget on assisting the poor. It actually spends an extraordinary amount of money handing the already-rich even more money. Here’s five ways that Republicans like Romney use government to give even more money to the already-rich (who finance the party):

Supporting The Oil Subsidies: The newest line among Republicans is that they despise “crony capitalism.” But House Republicans have votedAi??unanimouslyAi??Ai??time and time again to give billions of dollars to the oil industry. Paul Ryan’s budget maintains $40 billion in subsidies for Big Oil over ten years. The oil industry is giving approximately ten times as much cash to Republicans this year as it is giving to Democrats.
Providing Federal Funding For Rip-Off For-Profit Colleges: The for-profit college industry has abused students …

What should be Mitt Romney’s convention theme song? (Photo credit: Flickr user Adam Glanzman)

Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan poked some fun at Mitt Romney during his speech last night. He made said he heard some of Romney’s songs on the campaign bus, and that he was urged to play those songs at campaign rallies. “I said, ‘look, I hope it is not a dealAi??breaker Mitt, but my playlist starts with AC/DC and it ends withAi??Zeppelin,’” he joked.

That gets us thinking. What song will Mitt Romney emerge to tonight (in 2008 John McCain appeared to the tune of Indiana Jones)? Here are some tracks we thought would be appropriate from Romney:

– Ai??ABBA’s “Money Money Money”:Ai??It is indeed a “rich man’s world” if Romney wins the election. He’s promising an average tax cut ofAi??$87,117 to Americans making over a million dollars a year. Meanwhile, middle-class families would face an average tax increase of $2,000.

– Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction”: This song that recalls the war in Vietnam and the spiral of violence overseas is appropriate when you look at Romney’s ultra-hawkish foreign policy. He wants to increase military spending by over $2 trillion over the next ten years, and some of his advisers like John Bolton have even suggested a nuclear strike on Iran.

– Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad”:Ai??The Boss’s track recalls the Depression-era tale ofAi??The Grapes of Wrath and the migrant families who were unable to find work. Romney’s business tenure was marked by profiting off of outsourcing, and he’s a strong backer of corporate-written, job-killing “free trade” deals.

– The Zombies’ “I Can’t Make Up My Mind”: With the lyrics “I can’t make up my …

(Photo credit: Flickr user Spencer T.)

Here’s an interesting tidbit from a 2008 interview with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan. TheAi??Walworth County Week asked Ryan about alternative energy, and the congressman blasted ethanol:

RYAN: On ethanol, and that’s, you’re going to hear a lot about this. Turning food into fuel is not a good long-term energy policy. I think there are better renewable energy policies like cellulostic ethanol, where you turn corn stalks, switch grass, into fuel instead of food into fuel. Because if you turn food into fuel as your energy policy that makes both more expensive. Food and fuel become more expensive. And I’m also fearful that this is going to produce a backlash against our farmers. You’re already seeing this. […]

INTERVIEWER: Now in the last, it was the farm bill or the energy bill they kept the subsidies for corn ethanol, but haven’t been able to pass subsidies for wind —

RYAN: Congress quintupled the ethanol mandate. I did not support that. Because I thought that’s what happening now was going to happen when we were goin to have dramatic price increases.

 

Watch the interview (the relevant section is at 3:13)

Both conservatives and progressives have good reason to be skeptical of ethanol. The lobby for this fuel has invested well in politicians and has worked to downplay the potential disastrous consequences on food prices. As former vice presidential nominee Al Gore admitted, politicians of both parties have pandered to the lobby and put aside legitimate concerns.

But while Ryan deserves some credit for his ethanol skepticism in 2008, it’s ironic his running mate Mitt Romney is a huge supporter of the mandate the congressman opposed. Romney supports the Renewable Fuel Standards that include ethanol, “a mandate several …

Compared to Mitt Romney, Nixon may well have been a defense spending dove.

Last week, we showed you how far to the right the Republican Party has drifted by noting that in its 1956 platform, the party called for expanding unions rights, gender equality, investing in science, and other now-banished ideas among right wing thinkers.

Here’s another area where the party has in several decades drifted dangerously to the right.

At the party’s 1972 convention, Republican President Richard Nixon — certainly no dove by any stretch of the imagination — took to the podium and boasted of cutting defense spending:

NIXON:Ai??Let’s look at the record on defense expenditures. We have cut spending in our Administration. It now takes the lowest percentage of our national product in 20 years. We should not spend more on defense than we need. But we must never spend less than we need.

Watch Nixon boast of reducing defense expenditures (the relevant section is at 33:06):

Current GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s platform is more than a little different. Romney is proposing aAi??$2 trillion increaseAi??in military spending over the next ten years, a plan that the Brookings Institution’s Peter Singer says “doesn’t reflect fiscal reality,” and that other defense experts warnAi??would require huge cutsAi??to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid if taken in conjunction with the candidate’s promise to reduce the deficit.

A coal-fired power plant. (Photo credit: Public Domain Photos)

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a story of how one group of workers lost out when Republican nominee for president Mitt Romney came to town for a routine campaign stop.

On August 14th, Romney visited the Century Mine near Beallsville, Ohio to “promote jobs” in the coal industry. For “safety and security” reasons, the mine was shut down during the candidate’s visit. Several coal workers employed by Murray Energy, which operates the mine, told local radio host Gary Blomquist that they were intimidated into appearing at the Romney event:

Blomquist said that he got multiple emails and phone calls from Murray Energy workers who felt that they were intimidated into attending Romney’s appearance. He said employees were told they’d have to forfeit the day’s pay unless they could make up their missed hoursAi??on overtime or weekends.

“If they shut the mine down, why should they lose a day’s pay? There are some guys that just want to go to work, feed their family and go home,” said Blomquist.

Ironically, Romney used the event to appeal to the coal lobby, blasting the supposed “war on coal.” If the details relayed by the workers at the mine are correct, it seems that these particular coal miners would’ve been better off had Romney never visited.

A Depression-era “Hooverville.” (Photo credit: Flickr user IMLS DCC)

The “Hoovervilles” — tent camps set up by jobless, homeless, and migrant families — were an iconic part of the Great Depression. They were a sign of the failure of Republican President Hoover’s policies and the failure of the government to repair the economy.

Taking a page from these camps, a group of protesters have set up what they are calling a “Romneyville” in downtown Tampa to protest Romney’s proposed economic policies. The Guardian reports:

Among those on view will be Elijah Seabrookes, 56, who arrived in Florida in recent weeks after failing to find work in his native New York.

He is now living out of a tent on the lot alongside Occupy movement protesters, Green Party members and the homeless and down-on-their-luck.Ai??”I came here because I wanted to find a home and a job. But I found that there was neither. So now I am living in a tent here,” said the former security guard.

Organisers say the name “Romneyville” is meant to play on the “Hooverville” settlements that sprung up during the Great Depression.Ai??”We want to show that the ‘P Word’ is not a curse word. With that word being ‘poverty’,” said Bruce Wright, one of the campaign’s organisers.

Indeed, Romney’s budget plans would be devastating for middleclass and working class Americans. The average middle-class family would see a $2,000 tax hike, while massive corporations would actually get their taxes cut. Meanwhile, the Romney-Ryan plan for Medcare could increase seniors’ health care costs by up to $60,000 during the course of their retirement.

Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan is often praised as being a mainstream and serious leader.

But the centerpiece of Ryan’s ideology — his budget plan that hands over seniors’ health care to insurance companies that we’ve dubbed “Medicare for None” — is anything but moderate.

A July 2011 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that just 35 percent of American adults supported Ryan’s plan (even 54 percent of self-described conservative voters disapproved).

Let’s put that into perspective by looking at some progressive policies that have much more support. Take, for example, marijuana legalization. Although the issue is often portrayed as fringe in the mainstream media, an October 2011 poll found that half of Americans support legalizing the use of marijuana. You’d have to go back to 2003 to find the cause to be as unpopular as Ryan’s budget plan is today.

Here are a few other progressive policies that are much more popular than Ryan’s proposal:

Ai??Medicare for All:Ai??Ryan wants to end Medicare as we know it by eliminating itsAi??guaranteedAi??benefit and handing it over to the insurance companies. But Americans actually really like this single-payer health care system for theAi??elderly and want to expand it to everyone. In 2007, the Associated Press and Yahoo asked Americans if we should “adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers.” 65 percent of Americans agreed that we should. Majorities of Americans have continued to support the idea since then.
Marriage Equality:Ai??Romney and Ryan oppose marriage equality, but Americans back it. A June 2012 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that 54 percent of Americans want the government to recognize gay and lesbian marriages as valid.
Public …