Ever since Karl Rove's involvement with the GOP began, there's a trend in campaigns he touches where the candidates deny or denigrate a negative issue within their own policies or ranks by projecting it onto their opponents.
So when Romney/Ryan/Republicans talk about class warfare, they're merely attempting to move that failure from their brand and rebrand it Democratic. Sadly, it works when you also own a media outlet watched by the vast majority of your party's supporters. But to those not so close to the trees that they can still see the forest, it's a puerile tactic.
The same goes for wealth redistribution. While it's a conservative ideal to move wealth upward, they fear any downward redistribution, even when that redistribution is simply paying the middle and working classes living wages.
Their belief is that by being proactive rather than reactive, they control the ball and hence the game. But telling a lie before the fact doesn't exonerate the liar, it merely doubles down the offense by virtue of premeditation.
Showing posts with label ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ryan. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Exactly who IS the 47%?
Mr President, please remember that there are other candidates running for the Senate and the House and you could give them a boost by pointing out that the 47% myth is one held by most Republican politicians. It's true, which is why they're always harping on ending entitlements. They forget that a large part, possibly the LARGER percentage of the 47% belongs to THEIR party. But I'm pretty sure that they're going to be reminded of that fact come November.
How Romney views most Americans
What Romney has demonstrated is that the people of his socioeconomic group want to keep the middle and working classes poor and owing so that the wealthy will have sufficient labor to do their housework, grow their crops, fetch their drinks and food, and fill their factories and call centers with cheap labor. Failing that, they at least want to teach the rank and file their place in society with Romney and his cronies on top, and everyone else underneath them. Bain Capital was just the prelude. In a sense, it was Romney's graduate school where he learned exactly how to send American jobs overseas without remorse, chop up American companies into bits too small to handle the debt that he and his cronies saddled them with, and then leave the plebes in the lurch while his investors made millions.
Know your place, peons! You're here for this reason only: To vote Mitt Romney President, then go home, shut your mouth, do your minimum wage job, and repeat the process in 4 years. Minus the job, of course.
Know your place, peons! You're here for this reason only: To vote Mitt Romney President, then go home, shut your mouth, do your minimum wage job, and repeat the process in 4 years. Minus the job, of course.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
New GOP ticket order - Ryan/Romney
Ann Romney gave a good speech and after hearing her, I'd vote for her...for HER. But she didn't tell me anything about HIM, and he's the one running for President.
Chris Christie sounded like a high-schooler giving his first public address to the student body. It was embarrassing, and since I'm an Independent, I really didn't care if he embarrassed himself. That's an indicator how bad his performance was.
This morning, I'm still embarrassed for him.
But the pundits are right about one thing, the ticket has flip-flopped such that now, it's a Ryan/Romney ticket instead of a Romney/Ryan one. Looks like the GOP have picked yet another real winner for VP candidate.
After the election, maybe Mr Not-Vice-President Ryan and Mrs Not-Vice-President Palin can start a club.
Chris Christie sounded like a high-schooler giving his first public address to the student body. It was embarrassing, and since I'm an Independent, I really didn't care if he embarrassed himself. That's an indicator how bad his performance was.
This morning, I'm still embarrassed for him.
But the pundits are right about one thing, the ticket has flip-flopped such that now, it's a Ryan/Romney ticket instead of a Romney/Ryan one. Looks like the GOP have picked yet another real winner for VP candidate.
After the election, maybe Mr Not-Vice-President Ryan and Mrs Not-Vice-President Palin can start a club.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Privatization to its logical extension
The privatization crowd rarely show their math work. They're especially shortchanging when doing the math all the way to the likely conclusion. So let's take a look.
Assume that the entire country (has lost its mind and) has gone ultra-conservative. We privatize EVERYTHING.
Education: Rather than having what amounts to a group discount for education, you have to purchase it on the free market. And since it's been privatized, it has to turn a profit. So, we have to jack up the price of what is factored into your taxes by whatever amount that works out to. For the sake of argument, and to be...conservative...let's say the factor is 2.
Done - 2X
Transportation: The street you live on will be privatized. How will that work? One assumption is that your neighborhood could purchase a grid of streets and do its own maintenance. That means that you will have to pony up your share to help buy them. Again, no single-payer discount, and since fixing potholes requires a crew to go out each time and do that, figure a factor of 2, conservatively.(Fair disclosure: My stepfather worked for a paving company for over a decade and 2X probably isn't even close, more like 5X) (Edit note: Another option for the street you live on is for a private firm to buy it. Imagine having to pay a toll to pull out of your driveway. You'd probably have to pay, say, a month in advance, like you would for some other services. To pull out of your driveway. Having fun yet?)
Done - 2X
Health: What you pay now will make it seem like Walmart has been pricing your care compared to where those costs would go. No single-payer for services now covered by Medicare, Medicaid, VA, other public health plans, means that healthcare prices will skyrocket. Public plans help hold down the price of healthcare by way of competitive pricing between public and private plans. It's hard to make a guess for this, but it would be safe to assume that the byzantine "coding" system of healthcare pricing would remain in effect and probably get even more complicated, We'll be ultra-conservative and call it 2X.
Done - 2X
Security: Now ALL cops are rent-a-cops. Ever see 'Mall Cop'? Ever see the fat security guard at the mall with his face stuffed into a 2083-ounce pop? Those will be your new cops. Some might say that competition will breed better cops, but if that was true, current rent-a-cops wouldn't look like Kevin James.
Done - 2X
National security: Does anyone recall Blackwater? They changed their name to Xe, but it's still the same people doing the same things and charging ten times more than the same jobs done by equally or BETTER qualified people in the active military. Using private contractors to do the same work that military members could be doing is one of the great defense debacles of the Twenty-First Century. (Not only do we pay the contractors, we still pay the military members who are relegated to sitting on the sidelines or doing odd-jobs, so this is an 'in-addition-to' cost, not an 'instead-of' cost.) We pay over 10 times more for a contractor to do the same thing that soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors already do.
Done - 10X
Getting a sense of where this is going? In logical parlance, the term 'slippery slope' is a conditional fallacy, so I'll try to avoid the use of that. But one human trait has never failed us, going back millennia: Greed.
The factors I use above are simply back-of-the-envelope numbers pulled out of thin air, but there WILL be a multiplication factor measured in integers involved in what we pay now versus what we would have to pay if the services our government now provides were to be privatized. And the above is just a handful of the hundreds of services that government provides. Even if you could purchase some of them on an a la carte basis, you'd still end up paying many times more than you do now. If you pay 30% of your check in taxes now, imagine if the across-the-board factor was 3X. That means three times more than you now pay. So let's do some math: 30% X 3 = 90% or 30% of your current income that you now pay in taxes times the across-the-board factor of 3X equals 90% of your income to private firms that provide services that were once provided by government through the use of your tax dollars. The people who want privatization are the very same people, or cronies of the same people, who currently, or would, own the businesses once privatization occurs.
Government isn't perfect, and probably never will be. But it has the ability to purchase common goods and services on a scale that privatization would never be able to.
Think about that when you vote for someone who wants to slash government and hand that work over to the private sector.
Assume that the entire country (has lost its mind and) has gone ultra-conservative. We privatize EVERYTHING.
Education: Rather than having what amounts to a group discount for education, you have to purchase it on the free market. And since it's been privatized, it has to turn a profit. So, we have to jack up the price of what is factored into your taxes by whatever amount that works out to. For the sake of argument, and to be...conservative...let's say the factor is 2.
Done - 2X
Transportation: The street you live on will be privatized. How will that work? One assumption is that your neighborhood could purchase a grid of streets and do its own maintenance. That means that you will have to pony up your share to help buy them. Again, no single-payer discount, and since fixing potholes requires a crew to go out each time and do that, figure a factor of 2, conservatively.(Fair disclosure: My stepfather worked for a paving company for over a decade and 2X probably isn't even close, more like 5X) (Edit note: Another option for the street you live on is for a private firm to buy it. Imagine having to pay a toll to pull out of your driveway. You'd probably have to pay, say, a month in advance, like you would for some other services. To pull out of your driveway. Having fun yet?)
Done - 2X
Health: What you pay now will make it seem like Walmart has been pricing your care compared to where those costs would go. No single-payer for services now covered by Medicare, Medicaid, VA, other public health plans, means that healthcare prices will skyrocket. Public plans help hold down the price of healthcare by way of competitive pricing between public and private plans. It's hard to make a guess for this, but it would be safe to assume that the byzantine "coding" system of healthcare pricing would remain in effect and probably get even more complicated, We'll be ultra-conservative and call it 2X.
Done - 2X
Security: Now ALL cops are rent-a-cops. Ever see 'Mall Cop'? Ever see the fat security guard at the mall with his face stuffed into a 2083-ounce pop? Those will be your new cops. Some might say that competition will breed better cops, but if that was true, current rent-a-cops wouldn't look like Kevin James.
Done - 2X
National security: Does anyone recall Blackwater? They changed their name to Xe, but it's still the same people doing the same things and charging ten times more than the same jobs done by equally or BETTER qualified people in the active military. Using private contractors to do the same work that military members could be doing is one of the great defense debacles of the Twenty-First Century. (Not only do we pay the contractors, we still pay the military members who are relegated to sitting on the sidelines or doing odd-jobs, so this is an 'in-addition-to' cost, not an 'instead-of' cost.) We pay over 10 times more for a contractor to do the same thing that soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors already do.
Done - 10X
Getting a sense of where this is going? In logical parlance, the term 'slippery slope' is a conditional fallacy, so I'll try to avoid the use of that. But one human trait has never failed us, going back millennia: Greed.
The factors I use above are simply back-of-the-envelope numbers pulled out of thin air, but there WILL be a multiplication factor measured in integers involved in what we pay now versus what we would have to pay if the services our government now provides were to be privatized. And the above is just a handful of the hundreds of services that government provides. Even if you could purchase some of them on an a la carte basis, you'd still end up paying many times more than you do now. If you pay 30% of your check in taxes now, imagine if the across-the-board factor was 3X. That means three times more than you now pay. So let's do some math: 30% X 3 = 90% or 30% of your current income that you now pay in taxes times the across-the-board factor of 3X equals 90% of your income to private firms that provide services that were once provided by government through the use of your tax dollars. The people who want privatization are the very same people, or cronies of the same people, who currently, or would, own the businesses once privatization occurs.
Government isn't perfect, and probably never will be. But it has the ability to purchase common goods and services on a scale that privatization would never be able to.
Think about that when you vote for someone who wants to slash government and hand that work over to the private sector.
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