The Only Path To Victory



Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr. yesterday denied the effort by plaintiffs to block Pennsylvania from implementing its voter suppression identification law, implausibly claiming a requirement that displaying identification at the polls is a "reasonable, non-discriminatory, non-severe burden when viewed in the broader context of the widespread use of photo ID in daily life."

Gosh- I forgot about the national ID card in widespread use in daily life.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett (R-Fracking) and Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele believe the requirement is reasonable and the burden acceptable.   They are, however, apparently far less aware of the burden than is Judge Simpson.    Aichele admitted during the trial- during the trial- "I don't know what the law says."  Corbett maintained early this month that, aside from student identification, "It can be military ID.   There's two or three other forms, right now off the top of my head I don't have it here in front of me."

The most important supporter of the legislation, as well as the official charged with implementing it, don't know what forms of identification are acceptable, perhaps not even that military ID without an expiration date is unacceptable.  But the Commonwealth's lawyers did stipulate there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states."  No cases of voter fraud, and that's good enough for the guys and gals determined to suppress the Democratic vote.

That couldn't be clearer.   The lead plaintiff in the suit, 93-year-old Viviette Applewhite, lacks what Pennsylvania's GOP power structure considers proper ID because her important documents were in her pocketbook stolen a few years ago.    Therefore, as Jessica Parker writes in The Philadelphia Inquirer, "she tried for years to get a new birth certificate, lawyers helped her obtain one in May. But she hasn't been able to replace her Social Security card because it uses the name Applewhite while her birth certificate lists her father's surname, Brooks."

But, Parks continues

Even if Applewhite gets a new Social Security card by November, she will also need to show two proofs of residency. She has one - the lease agreement for her apartment. But the utility bills are in her daughter's name, and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials have rejected all of the other documents she has bearing her name and address - welfare statements, voter registration cards, bank files, Medicare paperwork, a letter from the mayor, and a birthday card from President Obama.

Applewhite, unfortunately, well represents the Gas and Oil Party's target audience.    It's not surprising that her welfare statements and Medicare paperwork are unacceptable, given that they suggest she is poor and elderly.   Applewhite also is black, which isn't helpful, especially with a guy named Obama on the ballot.

Nothing to see here, citizens, just move along.    A presidential election stolen in Florida, one stolen four years later in Ohio, then perhaps eight years later in Pennsylvania.   You'd almost think it was a pattern.

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Not Appreciative


On a campaign swing through Ohio, Paul Ryan maintained "The president, I’m told, is talking about Medicare today.   We want this debate (but) what I don't think he'll be telling people is that the president took $716 billion from the Medicare program- he raided it to pay for Obamacare."
 
Similarly, Mitt Romney contends "President Obama is the one who should be worried, because he has cut $700 BILLION from Medicare to pay for Obamacare."   Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus writes "President Obama is the only president who has cut Medicare by $700 billion. And he is the only candidate in this race willing to let Medicare die."    Exhibiting far more experience with alliteration than with class, Priebus also accuses the Obama campaign of "dirty, despicable, and desperate"  tactics.   Try as he might, however, the chairman cannot outdo Rush Limbaugh, who claimed

The money they paid in is now being given to people that have paid nothing. That's what the $700 billion cut is. Money that you've put in is being taken out and given to others. The whole design of Obamaville is to take from people who work and earn and give it to people who don't in the name of fairness, in the name of the people who work are just lucky. The people that have jobs and earn a lot of money, that's just luck. We need to spread the wealth around.

Rush does at least sum up well the GOP's ethos of selfishness.   The Affordable Care Act guarantees health insurance for roughly 35 million people, some of them employed.   We just cannot have that, especially when the party's vice-presidential nominee is a disciple of the Queen of Selfishness, the late Ayn Rand.

But Ryan deserves credit for a little bit of honesty.   Unlike the others- and virtually all other Republicans- the Wisconsin congressman did specify that the $716 billion reduction is in the "Medicare program," which is undeniable, rather than in "Medicare," which falsely implies the cut is in services to recipients.    There is no benefit cut, as illustrated in the pie chart, from Sarah Kliff of Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, below:

Kliff explains

The blue section represents reductions in how much Medicare reimburses private, Medicare Advantage plans. That program allows seniors to join a private health insurance, with the federal government footing the bill. The whole idea of Medicare Advantage was to drive down the cost of health insurance for the elderly as private insurance companies competing for seniors’ business.

That’s not what happened. By 2010, the average Medicare Advantage per-patient cost was117 percent of regular fee-for-service. The Affordable Care Act gives those private plans a haircut and tethers reimbursement levels to the quality of care administered, and patient satisfaction.

The Medicare Advantage cut gets the most attention, but it only accounts for about a third of the Affordable Care Act’s spending reduction. Another big chunk comes from the hospitals. The health law changed how Medicare calculates what they get reimbursed for various services, slightly lowering their rates over time. Hospitals agreed to these cuts because they knew, at the same time, they would likely see an influx of paying patients with the Affordable Care Act’s insurance expansion.

The rest of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts are a lot smaller. Reductions to Medicare’s Disproportionate Share Payments — extra funds doled out the hospitals that see more uninsured patients — account for 5 percent in savings. Lower payments to home health providers make up another 8.8 percent. About a dozen cuts of this magnitude make up the green section above.

The irony, of course, is that the Medicare provisions in "Obamacare" were fashioned to meet the concerns of Republicans and their neoliberal allies.    By their addition to the legislation, the PPCAA is projected not to add to the deficit but to reduce it.    Further, they are designed to "bend the health care cost curve," which is virtually synonymous with the GOP's whine about the need to "strengthen" or "protect" Medicare.   Priebus, echoing the complaints of Republicans the last couple of years, argues "President Obama and Democrats have no plan whatsoever to preserve Medicare for future generations- or protect it for today's seniors and those nearing retirement."     In an effort in part to meet GOP objections, President Obama did in fact add a plan "to preserve Medicare for future generations"- precisely the cuts Republicans are now denouncing.

"What I don't think he'll be telling people is the President took $716 billion from the Medicare program," Ryan coyly told his supporters.   Understandably, what Representative Ryan won't be telling people is that his GOP colleagues in the House voted for the same "raid" on Medicare when they voted for Ryan's 2012, then for his 2013, budget.   His honesty, clearly, has its limits.




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Romney Supports Ryan, Except When He Doesn't


Peter J. Boyer in The Daily Beast repeats conventional wisdom, contending

In choosing Ryan, Romney is no longer defending a vague set of ideas aligned with Ryan’s reform approach; he’s now taken on the thing itself, and will find himself spending the remainder of the campaign defending it, in all of its potentially damaging details. If entitlement reform is the third rail of politics, this is an entire third-rail transportation system.

The big advantage of having Ryan on the ticket is that he’ll have a huge national platform from which to explain his plan...

That is, in the unlikely event Massachusetts Mitt wants the plan to be explained.   NBC News reminds us that Mitt Romney, during a presidential debate in January- trying no doubt to allay fears from the far right about him- described Paul Ryan's Medicare plan as "absolutely right on."   Once he thrilled that constituency by selecting Ryan as his running mate, Romney went on 60 Minutes (transcript, here) and responded to Bob Schieffer's question about the congressman's budget plan by stating "well, I have my budget plan as you know that I've put out.   And that's the budget plan that we're going to run one."

The following day- and only two days after announcement of his running mate-  Romney (while pretending Ryan's plan did not include Obama's cut to the Medicare program) was back running on his buddy's proposal, maintaining

We haven’t gone through piece by piece and said, ‘Oh, here’s a place where there’s a difference.   But my plan for Medicare is very similar to his plan, which is ‘Do not change the program for current retirees or near-retirees but do not do what the president has done and that is to cut $700 billion out of the current program.

Later the same day, the candidate's policy director maintained Romney would restore the $716 billion cut to Medicare (implicitly endorsed by Ryan), arguing

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have always been fully committed to repealing Obamacare, ending President Obama’s $716 billion raid on Medicare, and tackling the serious fiscal challenges our country faces.    A Romney-Ryan Administration will restore the funding to Medicare, ensure that no changes are made to the program for those 55 or older, and implement the reforms that they have proposed to strengthen it for future generations.

One would almost have a little sympathy for the politically cross-dressing governor, were he not an empty suit happily owned by the far right of his far right party, and weren't consistently dishonest.   Almost.    But Republican politicians are busy sliding, if not running, from the scheme proposed by the House Budget Committee chairman (and approved in the GOP-run House), and Mitt Romney has an election to win.

The statements from the Romney camp are confusing, and are meant to be.   Perhaps the former governor, far smarter than he is given credit for, has conned the rabble which demanded he select Paul Ryan, while he had no intention of adopting his ideas as a candidate or President.     The more likely scenario, however, is buried in Romney's remark on 60 Minutes:    "I have my budget plan," the Empty Suit said, "and that's the budget plan that we're going to run on."

That's the budget plan that we're going to run on.   They will run on that plan because Ryan's plan is less vague and more severe than Romney's plan.   But Mitt Romney, praised for boldly selecting an individual whose budget courageously slices and dices individuals on the margins of society while rewarding the wealthy handsomely, has bought Paul Ryan and his plan.   Escape from that would be worthy of Harry Houdini.





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Ryan Believes In America, At Times


Four years ago, I compared Michelle Obama and Rush Limbaugh.   Philadelphia Daily News writer and blogger Will Bunch had raised the possibility that an Obama administration would investigate the crimes committed by President George W. Bush.    Limbaugh condemned the idea as  "just an effort to embarrass and harm Bush (which) would be a direct assault on the United States and its government."    Michelle Obama had more (in)famously remarked, four months earlier, "People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and... for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

Of course, Michelle Obama is far more laudatory, having initiated a needed "Let's Move" campaign, as well as not being a bigot and snake oil salesman.    Nonetheless, both had conflated the greatness of the country with political preferences, Rush with marching lockstep with a conservative Republican president and Michelle with the American people opting for "the change we have been waiting for."

In steps Representative Paul Ryan, who expresses a similar sentiment on American exceptionalism.   The congressman, who never has represented an area larger than a congressional district, told a crowd of roughly 1,000 Tea Party supporters at a rally in Racine County, Wisconsin on June 6th "On Tuesday we save Wisconsin.   On November 6th we save America."

Sorry to undeceive you, Paul, but America doesn't need "saving."    A touch-up here and there, a radical change in a couple of places (such as the increasing concentration of wealth possessed by the wealthy), but no saving.

It is an odd view of the country, especially of someone running on a ticket headed by a guy who prattles on about "American exceptionalism" and claims his opponent doesn't believe in it.    The greatness of the nation, and the existence of an American exceptionalism, does not rest on who is in charge.  

Conservatives, especially Tea Party supporters, are fond of claiming possession of the U.S. Constitution, implying they, and they alone, revere the document.   Funny, then, that one of the heroes of the American right, Paul Ryan, has so little regard for the Constitution and other foundations of the American republic that he believes we now need to be saved because the President is from the wrong party.



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In Retreat, For Now



On Friday, anticipating Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate, The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza commented

But the good thing about the Ryan pick is that the Presidential campaign will instantly turn into a very clear choice between two distinct ideologies that genuinely reflect the core beliefs of the two parties. And in that sense, Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan is good news for voters.

Following Saturday's announcement, Salon's Joan Walsh made a similar point when she remarked

Ryan’s selection by Mitt Romney is a huge gift to Barack Obama and Joe Biden – and to the country. This is a clear electoral choice, with the potential for a rousing debate about the future of our country. Romney has spent two years refusing to tell us what he’d do as president. He’s literally said on more than one occasion that he won’t reveal his plans for specific program cuts, because if he did, people might not vote for him. But now he’s tied to a guy who’s revealed his pro-plutocrat agenda in bloody detail. What Obama this week called “Romneyhood” – Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor and giving to the rich – is best described as “Ryanhood.” Ryan’s budget is so devastating to the poor and middle class that it earned him a rebuke from the nation’s Catholic Bishops, the first time in memory they’ve entered politics for any reason but to deny women freedom and promote Republicans.

A skeptical Tristero, blogging at Digby's Hullabaloo, responded Saturday to Lizza

It would be nice if that were true. But Randism isn't so much an ideology as it's a cult, roughly akin to Scientology. Randism has as much intellectual integrity as intelligent design creationism or birtherism. As a result, "two distinct ideologies" aren't at play. There is only one: centrism, represented by Obama. What Romney and Ryan offer is just battiness, not a truly coherent vision...

Then on Sunday, Tristero reacted similarly to Walsh:

Ayn Rand's crackpot notions have now moved to the exact center of the national debate about what kind of country we should be, with an unprecedented level of visibility.

I don't want "a rousing debate about the future of our country" between centrist/moderate and extreme rightwing presidential candidates. I want a serious debate between liberal and conservative (in the Rockefeller/Eisenhower meaning of the term) presidential candidates about the future of our country.

Besides unfairly equating intelligent design with birtherism, Tristero gave insufficient credit to Walsh, who noted "Ryan’s addition to the GOP ticket makes the choice between Republicans and Democrats crystal clear. As long as Democrats remember that they’re Democrats."    Tristero worries some Democrats may not remember they're Democrats, most notably President Obama whom, The New York Times recently reported  

has come to believe the news media have had a role in frustrating his ambitions to change the terms of the country’s political discussion. He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit.

Still, aside from hanging, nothing focuses the mind like a desire to be re-elected and even Barack Obama, accurately if uncomfortably, will portray the Gas and Oil Party as targeting Medicare and Social Security.   The selection of Ryan was, nevertheless, not as bold as the congressman's worshipers and the news media suggest it was.

Consider that Mitt Romney's announcement was made before the national convention.   On a Saturday morning.   During the Olympics.   And far from wanting to sharpen ideological differences, Romney on Saturday chose to muddy the waters.   "Unlike the current president," he stated, "who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion, we will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security."

When Republicans such as Romney, who opposes the defense cuts scheduled in the budget sequester, dishonestly attack the President for cuts in defense, they do not declare a determination to "preserve and protect national defense."   They want to bolster national defense, as do the President and Democrats; Medicare and Social Security, not so much (or at all).   Talking Point Memo's Sahil Kapur, observing GOP criticism of Obama's Medicare cuts, commented

The trouble with this argument — made frequently by Republicans, including Ryan himself — is that Republicans have voted overwhelmingly for Ryan’s own budget which sustains the Medicare cuts in “Obamacare.” Conservatives argue that Ryan’s plan, unlike the Affordable Care Act, doesn’t use the Medicare savings to fund additional spending.

Talking points circulated by the Romney campaign Saturday similarly instruct surrogates to make the “Obama cut Medicare” argument to blunt voters’ fears over Ryan’s Medicare plan.

Romney- who earlier endorsed the Ryan budget- neglects to mention, as Kapur points out, that the decrease in Medicare funding is not in benefits, but primarily in reduced payments to hospitals, discounts on Medicaid prescription drugs, and pay cuts to private insurers under Medicare Advantage.  

While Romney introduces the guy who enthralls the right partly because he wants to cut off the elderly at the knees, he slams the President because of a relatively paltry cut to the Medicare program.      It is the same Mitt Romney who, seeking an edge in the nomination process, allied himself with the Ryan plan and now, having chosen its architect to be second in line for the presidency, is qualifying  his support.   On Sunday, asked by CBS News' Bob Schieffer about "Paul Ryan's budget plan," Romney replied "well, I have my budget plan as you  know that I've put out.   And that's the budget plan that we're going to run on."

In so doing, Romney was being Romney- splitting the difference, hedging his bets, trying to have it both ways, and enabling a cliche-obsessed blogger.   He puts Ryan on the ticket, then throws his budget (sort of) overboard.  He slams Obama's cuts to Medicare, then says he wants to raise the eligibility age for "those of us who are younger," as he told Schieffer.    It may be characteristic Mitt Romney; but bold, it is not.




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Voter Fraud In Massachusetts


The number of cases in which someone has attempted to vote illegally has been trumped up by a Republican Party which believes its supporters are sufficiently ill-informed that they will be snookered by an obvious effort to deny other Americans their right to vote.   Nonetheless, 10% more cases have occurred over the past twelve years than one study has found.     The Philadelphia Inquirer today reports

A new nationwide analysis of more than 2,000 cases of alleged election fraud over the last dozen years shows that in-person voter impersonation on Election Day was virtually nonexistent.

The analysis of 2,068 reported fraud cases by News21, a Carnegie-Knight investigative-reporting project, found 10 cases of alleged in-person voter impersonation since 2000.

With 146 million registered voters in the United States, those represent about one for every 15 million prospective voters.

Concern over voter impersonation has prompted 37 state legislatures, including Pennsylvania's, to enact or consider tougher voter-ID laws. Pennsylvania's law has been challenged in court and a decision is expected this week.

The News21 report is based on a national public-records search in which reporters sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of alleged fraudulent activity - including registration fraud; absentee-ballot fraud; vote-buying; false election counts; campaign fraud; the casting of ballots by ineligible voters, such as felons and noncitizens; double voting; and voter impersonation.

If News21 had looked a little more closely, it would have found one additional case of voter fraud.    Brad Friedman explained  last month

To date, there has been no legitimate explanation for Mitt Romney having cast a vote in the January 2010 Special Election for the U.S. Senate between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. At the time of his vote (which he has admitted doing) he owned no house in MA, and yet he was registered to vote from the address of his son's unfinished basement in Belmont, MA
.
While Romney owned houses in both CA (purchased in May of 2008 for $12.5m) and NH (April of 2009 for $3.5m) at the time, it wouldn't be until July of 2010 --- a full six months after the Special Election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy --- that the state's former Governor would once again own a house there, after purchasing an $895,000 townhouse in Belmont.

The state's requirements for residency for the purposes of voting are quite clear in MA. Ones residence must be "where a person dwells and which is the center of his domestic, social, and civil life," according to state law. Yet, the evidence demonstrating that Romney ran afoul of those requirements in order to vote in that election are similarly clear, at least as fairly meticulously compiled by a former Republican Presidential candidate last year.

Romney's 2010 state tax return, which he still refuses to release, even though he finally released his federal return from that same year, likely shows that he did notpay state income tax in MA, but rather declared himself to be a NH resident for its more friendly tax purposes.

Such a declaration, if revealed via his 2010 state tax return, would underscore the apparent fact that Mitt Romney himself is actually a voter fraud felon.

Republicans often accuse Democrats of conducting "class warfare" (the war which nonetheless has been concluded, and won by Mitt Romney's class) and of being jealous of the morally and economically superior "job creators" of multi-millionaires.    But, really, we are not jealous of individuals such as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.   Most of us are fortunate enough to own, rent, or pay room and board in an apartment or some sort of house.     We don't envy Mitt Romney, only feel sorry for him because he must live, presumably with his wife, in an unfinished basement in a state he pretends doesn't exist.



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Definitive Response


It looks like they got their answer.   Echoing the 40+ year old sentiment of Joe South (video at end), The nuns from the Nuns on the Bus tour Thursday asked Mitt Romney

to spend a day with them so he could understand the plight of the poor and what his policies would do to them. Sister Simone Campbell, President ofNETWORK, a national social justice lobby,sent the invitation to Romney to “spend a day with Catholic Sisters who work every day to meet the needs of struggling families in their communities,..."

Sister Campbell's organization isn't the only Roman Catholic group which finds the GOP's concern for the comfortable and distaste for the poor and the hungry not quite Christ-like.   Yesterday

a group of Franciscan asked Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House GOP budget that bears his name, to join them in Milwaukee to “spend time with the poor.” Like NETWORK, the Franciscan Action Network took issue with the misleading ad about welfare reform the Romney campaign released this week.

“FAN is disturbed by the demeaning campaign ad and conversation about welfare by the Romney campaign,” it said in a release.

The group also criticized Romney for endorsing the House GOP budget, which cuts programs that benefit the poor and middle class. Romney’s ad is hypocritical, the group says, because it talks about “ensuring that low-income people are working” even as the Romney-endorsed GOP budget cuts job training programs for the poor.

Rhett Engelking, OFS, a lay Franciscan in Milwaukee, WI, who works with the poor in hunger relief and mental health, said “Wisconsin is getting a lot of attention as a swing state, and political leaders talking about the poor in demeaning ways while proposing to cut job training programs should spend time with the people they are affecting.”

The Ryan budget has been attacked by religious groups since its release in the spring. Religious leaders called it an “immoral disaster” that “robs the poor” when it was first released, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops circulated letters through Congress calling the budget’s cuts to food assistance programs “unjustified and wrong.”

Catholic nuns targeted the budget during a nine-state bus tour this summer despite suggestions by the Vatican that they were spending too much time on the poor and not enough time on contraception and gay marriage.

Today, NETWORK and FAN got its response from presumptive GOP presidential nominee, and it wasn't pretty.     Ezra Klein explains (with table, below) that under the budget of Mitt Romney's V.P. selection, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan

everything the federal government does that is not Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security will be cut to less than 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050. That means defense, infrastructure, education, food safety, energy research, national parks, civil service, the FBI — all of it. Right now, that category of spending is 12.5 percent of GDP.

In Luke 14, Jesus, invited to a feast with others at the home of a Pharisee,  admonished his host 

When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not ask your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.   But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you.   For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

If there were doubts about former governor Romney, there no longer can be.   He intends to kick to the door the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind, as well as the elderly.   His designee, Paul Ryan, now is not only a U.S. Representative from Wisconsin, the chairman of the Budget Committee, or even a presumptive vice-presidential nominee.   He is a guy who in January may become next in line to be President of the United States or (if the ticket is defeated) will be the favorite to win the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.    There is nothing that should more energize Sister Campbell and her fellow warriors for social justice.







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