WithThe99.com supporting Democracy for and by the people

At MSNBC the “We Said No!” commercial was extracted from this Rachel Maddow rant to promote her show shortly after the election.  As commercials go, it’s pretty nifty and set to the right music and in the immediate aftermath of a fairly decisive election away from the “conservatism” of the previous decades, it seemed almost iconic.

But in March of 2013, that commercial and the rant that inspired it only reminds me of why I was not impressed with the results of the election then nor the legislative achievements since. This election was not just a complete rejection of the most extreme conservative policies and tactics, but also a full on embrace of the alternatives. We didn’t just NOT want to be force fed feces spritzed with sugar, we wanted the steak and lobster dinner!

• We wanted a move towards fair tax policy that gets corporations and the wealthy contributing more to the country’s infrastructure and the education/care of it’s citizen’s while shifting away from war and tax cuts that favor the wealthy.
• We wanted to do our nation building here at home. To help our fellow struggling Americans and our economy grow, we wanted jobs bills to keep teacher teaching and cops policing our streets, first responders fresh, available and well- equipped and construction workers making our bridges safe and our buildings energy efficient.
• We wanted living wages for our people and affordable education that’s accessible to as many as who want it so the real element that drives our economy’s job creation and wealth, the purchasing power of the average consumer can be unleashed.

Divided Government continues to be unimpressive and not what we voted for.

• We wanted a whole-hearted embrace of alternative energy sources as the next growth industry in America to make us energy independent, create jobs, and seriously combat the threat of global warming.
• We wanted immigrants illegal(schemers and dreamers) or not treated fairly(this doesn’t mean the same!).
• we wanted to be able to vote without being intimidated, misled or left waiting in line for hours on end.

We voted for these things for ourselves and our families across the political spectrum, but on Nov 6th, as I watched the election results come in and as Rachel Maddow waxed on about the rejection of the most extreme tenets of conservatism, I lamented the next two years as more of the same that we’ve had since 2010. The Obama Administration’s assessment that a resounding victory for him in 2012 would “break the fever” of the recalcitrant opposition to him in 2013 and beyond is laughable. Breaking that fever ALWAYS required that we make them irrelevant at the Federal level and with the House of Representatives legally stolen and Harry Reid’s calculated decision to give only lip-service to reform of the filibuster(he makes a different decision if the House is in Democratic hands, but at this point it’s hard to see him as anything more than just another Washington coward).

The Democrats ABSOLUTELY NEEDED to run the table including taking back the House of Representatives and it was clear that despite the almost one and one half million fewer votes(that’s right folk 1,400,000 fewer votes netted Republicans 18 more seats than Democrats somehow) Republicans leaders received there versus the Democrats across the country, they weren’t going to get it.

In Retrospect: The fix was ALWAYS in. The GOP hail mary southern strategy redux was just a ploy to distract from the years long well funded vote rigging procedure that was firmly in place: the Great Gerrymandering of Congressional Districts.

And so instead of the massive progress(muted by the impact of the Great Recession, an Obama Administration that thought their good works were so brilliant that they were self-evident needing little explanation and no defense, and a stupidly protracted battle over healthcare) we got in Obama’s first two years we get the filibustering, do-nothingness shenanigans of the last two.  And of course we the people, the 99 percent are caught in the cross hairs of this divided dysfunctional government.

Instead of additional revenues and modest cuts we’re left with the Sequester that’s forecast to cause job losses and keep us out of a robust recovery. Most Republican leaders deny it up and down, but in a moment of sobriety(LoL!) House Leader John Boehner declared that in that deal he got 98 percent of what he wanted. NINETY EIGHT PERCENT, you have to be pretty happy to quip in such high, specific percentages. Since the sequester is such a huge part of that deal, you’d have to assume that it was a part of the 98 percent that made him so happy. The GOP members of the bi-partisan Simpson-Bowles Commission (specifically Paul Ryan) charged with crafting an alternative to the sequester, blew it up. A leader Nancy Pelosi in a Democratic House Majority would have solved this problem.

Instead of a move to make Federal Elections more fair across the states, there’s talk of striking down the voting rights act (which stopped most of the election-rigging voter ID tactics by the GOP run states in their tracks), we have Scalia characterizing it as an entitlement to be revoked and Republican led State Institutions trying to institute Congressional District Voting for the 2016 Presidential Election (only in battleground states). Had this method of apportioning the vote been used in the Presidential Election, we’d have President Romney to deal with for the next four years despite him receiving 5 million fewer votes nationwide. This puts in clear perspective how unfairly congressional district gerrymandering is thwarting the will of we the people. It’d take democrats in control of both chambers of the senate to present/consider legislation that would move us towards more uniform and fair federal laws governing federal elections.  Federal law trumps state law period and this is a case (the will of the electorate intentionally thwarted for the benefit of the wealthy few) where that is good news. The House GOP simply won’t take something like that up, EVER.

After the newtown murders and the nearly 3000 (2728 when I added this link) Americans who’ve been murdered by guns in three months since, a serious attitude with serious measures to match are being considered. Meanwhile the gun manufacturer’s front organization the National Rifle Association is taking a cartoonishly aggressive stance to oppose any type of intervention except those that equip yet more people with guns. Their stance on this would be a lot different if they didn’t have the bulwark of the GOP House to hide behind.

So for those of you who in and with the 99 percent who voted in your own interest and are as frustrated as me that the other guys still block everything, call your representatives and send in some post cards to let them know that their days will be numbered if they don’t act in the interest of you and your family’s health care, education, and overall quality of life.  If that doesn’t work(it won’t, but we have to try) start thinking about the mid-terms and overcoming the gerrymandered, stacked deck to get John Boehner and House Republicans out of power in 2014.

It’s time (past time) for you to VOTE YOUR ECONOMIC INTEREST (for you and your family)
Ultimately it’s about your economics and on this front your choice couldn’t be clearer

• Democrats have historically presided over better economies and job growth than Republicans(a good reason to voter for them).

• As I’ve discussed in a previous post, trickle down economics has been discredited by a report that the Congressional Republicans wanted to keep from the public.  Those policies favor tax cuts for the wealthiest among us as a means of creating wealth for all of us.  That’s not how President Clinton Presided over the creation of 23 million jobs during his two terms but trickle down economics were in place and did little to boost up President Bush’s anemic 1 million jobs numbers.

• There’s another clear indicator of why it’s in your interest as well as mine to vote not just for the democratic President but for the Democratic House and Senate as well,  there is a good deal of historical policy making that account for where our states are and it clearly indicates that Red States are more impoverished and use more of our safety net than Blue States. In the cases where red states are economically strong it’s because of their natural resources NOT their policies.

Policies espoused by Republican Leaders that decrease economic vitality of We The People(red and blue!).

• De-emphasis on education.  College graduates make million of dollars more over their lifetimes than high school graduates and yet there is an anti-education bias in the Republican leadership.  Recently, Rick Santorum vanquished primary opponent of Mitt Romney  called Obama a snob for wanting people to go to college.

• Hatred of Unions.  Unions in our country are responsible for things we take for granted and that don’t exist in places like China:  living wages, better work conditions, the 40 hour work week, vacation pay, and a variety of other improvements to the quality of life and are widely credited with the creation of the largest middle class in the history of the world.  Republican leaders have actively sought to destroy unions since their inception and most recently via big fights in Ohio and Wisconsin. Paul Krugman talks about this here.  It’s a real eye opener.

• Republican leaders tend to invest a lot of their time enforcing a narrative that certain groups of people are lazy and are taking from you the responsible citizens via govt programs.  But (and this is a big but) it’s never been up to Govt to tell us how hard we should or shouldn’t work.  It is up to Govt to build a stable, fair society with ladders and opportunities for its businesses and people and to protect the vulnerable among us.

• This lack of an understanding or the Government’s mission and a lack of commitment to the constituency and a belief that Government is incompetent (but it’s like anything else it’s the people who run or don’t run things who make those thing work incompetently: case in point Hurricane Katrina response versus Hurricane Sandy response) allow for the debacle we’ve seen play out in this Congress which is probably the least productive we’ve had in the history of our country.

The lowlights are stunning:

• Refusal to implement a jobs bill that would have added upwards of 2 million jobs for struggling americans so they can say Obama’s economy is weak (A TRUE DEAL BREAKER, Republicans and any Democrats who would oppose such a bill should be removed from office)

• A meeting codifying Obstuction as Governance the day Obama is inaugurated(a month in which Americans lost 820,000 jobs)

• A rejection and belittling of the Stimulus plan that broke the back of the Great Recession and received three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House of Representatives.

• The passage of The Affordable Care act a republican idea implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusettes negotiated in bad faith by blue dog democrats and once passed attempt to repeal in part or in whole 33 different times

• A downgrade of US Credit because Tea party republicans threaten to default on US Credit in a high stakes game of Chicken on raising the debt ceiling (John Boehner House Majority leader gets a more favorable deal from the President than he was looking for takes it back to his caucus and they reject it).

These illustrate why the President needs people he can work with in Congress.

The ideas and policies that the GOP Congressional Leadership push are not what most Americans(dems and republicans) want.

We have our kooks and you have yours.  But heaven help us all when they form the core of your party leadership as has been and is happening NOW with the Tea Party Republicans in Congress.

• Most Americans(dems and republicans) don’t think we should be fighting more and more wars in the middle east(while Romney struck moderate tones in the 3rd debate he has as the core of his foreign policy team the Bush neo-cons and architects of the Iraq war.  Not to mention Romney has shown little appetite or interest in foreign policy;  Mitt Romney looks to be their next empty suit should he prevail).

• Most Americans(dems and republicans) believe that women deserve equal pay for equal work (but Republicans in Congress voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act a bill which helps to realize this aim).

• Most Americans(dems and republicans) think women should make their own health care and reproductive choices (but Republican elected officials at the state and federal level have passed a lot of controversial laws to repeal those rights in what amount to and have been collectively labelled as a “war on women“)

• Most Americans(dems and republicans) don’t consider rape to be just another form of conception and don’t believe the victims should be made to bear their rapist’s child(Too many in the GOP Leadership hold and would legislate this position including the republican VP candidate Paul Ryan)

The above are outrageous in some ways and have captured our attention but the next two while less controversial impact us all.

• We the people (dems and republicans) want taxes to go up on the wealthy as a matter of economic fairness combining cuts and spending in a balanced way to improve the economy through the hiring of first responders, cops, teachers for the education of our children and construction workers for infrastructure investments and to pay down our trillions of dollars in debt.

• Obama and the democrat leadership are with the people on this and the GOP Leadership are ABSOLUTELY NOT(Republicans in Congress fillibustered the American Jobs Act killing legislation that would have created 1 to 2 million more jobs for hurting, out of work Americans than we have right now without adding to the deficit).

• In The GOP Primary debates every candidate (including Romney) were opposed to raising tax revenue by ratios of $10 cuts to $1 revenue.
• I’ts often said and now it’s been proven.  Trickle down economics = low taxes for the top income earners trickling down as an increase in jobs/opportunities for the rest of us, has been tried for decades and doesn’t work.  Republicans in Congress made respected, non-partisan Congressional Research Service take the report down, because they didn’t like the wording in it but could not object to it’s findings.
• Most every republican has signed a pledge to some guy named Grover Norquist to not raise taxes under any circumstance and that seems to take precedence over their oath of office and any commitment to their average non-rich constituents.
• Instead of tax hikes on high income individuals the Romney/Ryan tax plan proposes a 20% tax reduction across the board on top of the existing Bush Tax cuts which become permanent most of which benefits the high income individuals($250k a year).  He begins reducing our 16 trillion deficit by first adding 5 Trillion to it in tax cuts and 2 trillion more in military spending on top of the 1 trillion already built in by the Bush cuts and then proposes to somehow reduce it by closing tax loopholes(some of the biggest of which he refuses touch) The math doesn’t add up and it would necessarily result in a tax hike for average Americans and the gutting of infrastructure and domestic programs.)

• We the people(dems and republicans) want to protect the social safety net that keeps millions out of poverty, a safety net the democrats have almost exclusively built and nurtured and that Obama has now extended via the Affordable Care Act.
• Historically speaking, medicare and social security the main portions of that safety net are essentially insurance programs we pay into our whole working lives and that we collect benefits on in our later years.  While these programs are immensely popular with all Americans, the GOP Leadership have opposed the very existence of them ideologically since their inception.  The default position is that the democrats protect and defend these programs and the republicans attempted to privatize portions of them as a means of dissolving them(as has been done with the introduction of Medicare Advantage under Clinton and medicare part D under George W Bush.   Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s VP has chosen to go quite a bit further.

• Paul Ryans budget rips huge holes in it by voucherizing Medicare and severely underfunding Medicaide as he “sends” block grants back to the states that don’t keep pace with spending. He also stood with Bush in his attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005.
• Paul Ryan’s budget PASSED the House of Representatives but was safely euthanized in the Senate by the democrats.

Stand against the party that opposes the things we all want on a bipartisan basis and you will almost always be standing with the democrats.

To my fellow Americans and patriots in the red states and of a “conservative” persuasion, if you cannot bring yourself to vote for Obama and the Democrats do your family, your community and your country a favor and please stay home on election day.  The Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan ticket, our corporatized supreme court, and the GOP Leadership in Congress have shown by their action that they care more about power than doing what’s best for the vast majority of us.  They aren’t fit for the positions they currently have or to which they aspire.  Here’s why…

Mitt Romney is LYING TO US perpetually!  His success depends on our ignorance.

Mr Romney has not often looked presidential during this campaign season:

• his 47% statement has probably made him unelectable already and clearly wasn’t a presidential moment
• his foreign policy trip disaster looked feckless, was immediately and widely lampooned, world public opinion turned against him and today if nations abroad were deciding our election there’d be no contest between he and the President.
• He never has and never will release more than a year of his tax returns and is clearly not the man his father was in this regard.
• Democrats and republicans alike recoiled as opportunistic Mitt politicized a terrorist attack in Benghazi as it was occurring on the anniversary of 9/11 (Mitt Romney’s “Lehman moment”)
• his fake response to Hurricane Sandy was almost as pathetic as Paul Ryan’s photo-op at the soup kitchen.

But the deal breaking lack of character for me has been Mitt’s casual (non-existent) relationship with the truth.  The national stage of presidential politics has never seen such brazen, unapologetic lying.  There have been oft-rebutted never retracted lies at every juncture:

• He started his campaign by quoting Obama out of context attributing the statement “If we keep talking about the economy we’re going to lose” to him in 2012 instead of Obama saying that about McCain’s campaign in 2008.
• He continued with an ad saying Obama was gutting welfare reform (an utter lie and a throwback to the shameful Southern Strategy)
• He themed his convention (a wooden lack-luster affair missing policy positions, and most notable for an angry old man muttering at an empty chair) on the lie that the phrase “You didn’t build that” referred to the businesses folk start instead of the roads and bridges we all use and the government built with tax dollars.
• His V.P. is nothing short of a con artist parading as a “serious fiscal conservative” but who literally voted for every budget busting move of the Bush Administration.
• And now in his last desperate gasp he’s lied about the Jeep plant in Ohio saying that GM/Chrysler were shutting that down and sending it to China and attributing that to the President a lie so egregious that GM/Chrysler forcefully rebutted it.

The lies that weave throughout the Romney/Ryan platform (If you care, the sheer volume and scope of Mitt’s lies are chronicled at http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/ and articles on his lying are found on blogs and news sites alike) is an affront to reasonableness, to the honor of the office they’re pursuing, an insult to our collective national intelligence and disqualifies Mitt as any type of ethical leader fit for the Presidency.

At what point do lies become unacceptable?

If in the course of your typical interview, you get caught “red-handed” lying about anything, your chances of getting the job go to zero regardless of what you may or may not know. One of Mr. Romney’s campaign managers should probably inform him of this, if they themselves understand the concept.

These commercials, conventions, stump speeches and Presidential debates are part and parcel of an elaborate, multifaceted, and gruelling interview for the most powerful job in the world and Mr. Romney and crew have delivered whoppers for all to see in every phase thus far. Character and vision play a huge role in the job and the Romney/Ryan ticket’s lack of these is coming through loud and clear.

The Obama campaign and the media have called the blatant lies perpetuated by the Romney camp out so many times that an association is occurring. The lies are beginning to look like a characteristic of his campaign like red feathers on a robin or scales on a fish. Mr. Romney for his part seems unfazed by the criticism. He and his campaign managers obviously believe that there’s enough economic pain and that they have enough money, low information voters, and true believers on their side of the ledger to sweep him into the White House.

And so the lies continue. At the very center of an event that’s supposed to be about Mitt Romney’s vision and character, the words are of the loving father, devoted husband, devout Mormon, successful businessman but the event itself is themed upon a lie intentionally perpetuated for faux outrage and big-business donations. Mr McCain was a deer in the headlights on the economy, but he was no liar. Mr Romney is(a liar).

When you’re seen as an opportunistic liar, why take a phrase from President Obama out of context and make it the theme of your whole convention? EVERYBODY KNOWS what he was saying: you didn’t build the roads and bridges NOT you didn’t build the business. If this line of attack had never been pursued, nobody would now be telling Mitt it was any kind of missed opportunity because it’s weak and makes he and his team seem desperate! Isn’t there anything The President has actually said in context that they could use? The President has said very many things these last 3 and 1/2 years. Well, here’s Elizabeth Warren making the exact same point a bit more clearly! (by the way, I may find a way to work this clip into every post on my blog cause I like it so much!)

Two minutes and 5 seconds of pure truth there my friends. And when she said it, NO CRITICISM TOOK HOLD because 1. She spoke her message clearly and 2. it’s not particularly controversial.

The silliness in the “You didn’t build that” lie isn’t really worth recounting. The big guys are already handling that. Here CNN talks about it, Here The Washington Post does it, Here the NY Times does it, Here Aljazeera enumerates the trend of Romney as LIAR, and here even Fox News acknowledges the controversy while “leaving you to decide” if the statements was indeed taken out of context.

The point being drowned out by the focus on this contextual fib is that the conservative point of view is the true anti-business position being expressed in all this. The contrary view being elevated against Obama’s often expressed belief that government has the roll to support economic growth via infrastructure investment is that:

1. it is somehow not important to business success,
2. that these expenditures aren’t worthy of our tax dollars, esp. the tax dollars coming from the top earners, who never needed any “Big Government” infrastructure investment to succeed anyway.
3. It’s the hard work/risk taken by the entrepreneur that trumps every other ingredient in the success mix.

Well, that position is (and has always been) nonsensical:  It’s NEVER been up to the government to tell people either how hard they should or should not work at their jobs/business or how much/which risk to take to grow a business. Those are personal decisions. However it IS within government’s purview and interests to promote opportunity and increase the potential for success of it’s citizens by investing in education and infrastructure and by establishing rules of fairness to maximize the opportunities for all. This very basic understanding is the essence of why democrats have been historically better for wide spread economic prosperity over the last 100 years than the republicans. Simply put: if you make it easier for more people to succeed, they do.

Until Mr. Obama got the job of President, support for strong infrastructure was not a partisan issue. It is PRECISELY this support that represents the US Government’s commitment TO strong small businesses and citizens alike.  This historic support also helps explain in part our great economic success.  Case in point: The government did build the internet.  Millions of companies and billions of people all over the world use it.  Our most esteemed, innovative, and iconic companies (Google and Apple come to mind) depend and thrive on that internet. The fact that my tax money paid for that to be built is something I’m proud of.  Good work Mr Gore!

Not surprisingly, this twisting of Obama’s words to paint him as anti-business too has been complicated by the fact that a good many participants in Romney’s ensuing ad campaign “You didn’t build that” took full advantage not only of the government-built infrastructure but government loans and services to grow their businesses, even promoting in videos to other business folk ways to get government assistance at the Small Business Administration and Romney himself depended heavily on the government for assistance to help him successfully turn around the 2002 Winter Olympics.

We could chalk it up to politics I suppose and dismiss all this, but I cannot excuse this lie or the many others that have been perpetuated by and exposed in Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s campaign.  They have been caught telling big lies which they have flatly refuse to correct when they’ve been pointed out, brazenly declaring that their campaign is not going to be dictated by fact checkers.  The idea that they feel perfectly fine with this is disturbing.  They’re trying to trick us and their success depends on our ignorance.

Even if Romney brings something to the table he could not work for me(as my President).  Ultimately, I simply wouldn’t trust him. I hope the majority of my fellow Americans feel the same way.