The Bitterness Within Us

With the U.S. presidential election entering its final weeks, it might be time to ask ourselves what we have learned this year about our nation and its people. The answers may not come very easily and may not be to anyone’s liking. The partisan divide makes one wonder if this nation will be able to move forward after such a contentious election season.

We appear more divided than ever, with few people able to open their minds to the harsh realities that lie ahead. Too many of us have become trapped in political echo chambers, unable to hear anything but the sounds of the like-minded. Few people actually listen to opposing views. Some seem afraid that respect for another opinion will shatter all previous beliefs, that it would upend the universe. Civility and respect are lost in a cacophony of hateful rhetoric, and the win at all cost attitudes of so many. Chalk it up to the messiness that is democracy, many say.

But what ails discourse in this country goes beyond the messiness of democracy. Our ailments lie in bitter hearts unable to empathize with others, in jaundiced eyes unable to see the tragedy that exists in a world different from our own. Two distinctive incidents recently brought this home.

One was the attempted murder of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan on Oct. 9. The other was the responses to a New York Times column in which Nicholas D. Kristof wrote about his uninsured college roommate, Scott Androes, who was dying of Stage 4 prostate cancer.

Malala, as nearly everyone knows by now, was heading home from school when gunmen boarded her school van, demanded she be identified, and then fired three shots – striking Malala and two other girls. Malala was rushed to a military hospital where she remained until recently being transferred to a hospital in Britain. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it will go after Malala again.

Why? The Taliban said because Malala is “promoting secularism” by pushing for education for women and girls. The attempted murder of Malala was rightfully met with outrage from many corners of the world. On Oct. 14, tens of thousands of people in Karachi protested against the Taliban’s actions.

In the United States, President Barack Obama decried the shooting as “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic.”

“Directing violence at children is barbaric, it’s cowardly, and our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded as well as their families,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said.

In Britain, the BBC quoted Foreign Secretary William Hague as saying that the attack had “shocked Pakistan and the world,” and that Malala’s bravery was “an example to us all.”

“The public revulsion and condemnation of this cowardly attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists,” Hague said. “The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism.”

Unfortunately in America, the shooting of Malala became a political football, a way to attack the Obama Administration. One conservative blog, Redstate.com, took a December 2011 comment by Vice President Joe Biden out of context in an effort to suggest that Obama and Biden had no issues with the Taliban and it’s shooting of Malala.

“Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy,” Biden said in an interview with Leslie Gelb of Newsweek. “That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.”

During the interview, Biden was seeking to explain U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, in particular those aimed at reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Biden was also discussing U.S. reasons for going into Afghanistan: To oust al-Qaeda, not necessarily to wipe out the Taliban.

Meanwhile, others decided that the shooting was an opportunity to attack Islam in general and the President in particular, rather than show solidarity with Malala. The virulent attacks were numerous and outrageous. One has to ask: What manner of person is unable to empathize with a young girl nearly killed for seeking an education?

The answer may be found in the reaction to Kristof’s column. Kristof wrote that Scott Androes “had a midlife crisis and left his job in the pension industry to read books and play poker.” Androes worked part time and earned $13,000 last year. To save money he did not carry health insurance and did not go to the doctor for wellness visits. During that time, Androes developed prostate cancer that spread to his bones.

Kristof used Androes’s story to argue the merits of Obamacare. While many readers empathized with Androes, many also blamed him for his plight, basically saying he made his bed and must lie in it.

According to Kristof, one Oregon reader wrote: “Not sure why I’m to feel guilty about your friend’s problem. I take care of myself and mine, and I am not responsible for anyone else.”

Another reader wrote that many people in hospitals are there because of their own poor choices: “Smoking, obesity, drugs, alcohol, noncompliance with medical advice. Extreme age and debility, patients so sick, old, demented, weak, that if families had to pay one-tenth the cost of keeping the poor souls alive, they would instantly see that it was money wasted.”

A third reader said, “Your friend made a foolish choice, and actions have consequences,”

It would be easy to chalk up those responses to a few callous people hiding behind the anonymity of Internet posts. To do so is to fail to recognize that in these trying times, people are not only filled with disdain and vitriol, they are even more willing to share that with all of society. Recent Pew Research Center polling found, for example, that such feelings have increased dramatically among Republicans.

And that raises some serious questions about how this nation will move forward, and whether everyone will be invited on the trip.

Selling America's Soul for a White House

Nearly a year ago I wrote that this presidential election was a battle for America’s soul. That is truer today than it was on Oct. 12, 2011, when that post first appeared. You don’t agree? Take a look at this election cycle and you will see what I mean. There is an assault on the ideas that make America great. It is not only the mendacity of the Republican presidential candidate. It is the efforts by the GOP, particularly conservatives, to roll back the progress that has occurred over the last 50 to 60 years, from civil rights to voting rights, from education to worship. No longer do we discourage the corrupting influences of big money in our elections, we revel in it.

And we do it all in the guise of protecting the U.S. Constitution, though many of those who claim to hold that document sacred fail to adequately distinguish it from the Declaration of Independence. We have become a nation of angry tribes whose members cannot see beyond their own myopias, unable to discern fact from fiction, dogma from policy, substance from style, bluster from diplomacy. You sell it, we'll buy it. The market place of ideas has been inundated with cheap products with fake expiration dates.

Willard Mitt Romney’s recent debate performance was a prime example of the obfuscating that is occurring in this election. Indeed, Romney and President Barack Obama have engaged in hyperbole in an effort to win votes. When facts were not available, each has turned to spin and speculation to make a point. But what we are seeing from Romney is a complete abandonment of the ideas that sprung from his “severely conservative” philosophy. His dodging is beyond what we have seen in previous elections. Romney shows the sales skills that helped him become a multi-millionaire, not the skills that are needed to be a leader.

During the Republican presidential primary, for example, Romney promised that his tax cut plan would help the “job creators” (the 1 percent) not the moochers (the 47 percent). During the presidential debate, he declared that he had no tax cut for the wealthy, just a gosh-darn great plan to cut taxes by 20 percent across the board. According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, as well as other groups, Romney’s math does not add up because there are not enough high-end loopholes to make up for the level of tax reduction he seeks. The center estimated that Romney’s “plan” would cost $456 billion by 2015. Extrapolated over 10 years, including inflation and other costs, the total would be $4.8 trillion, the center concluded. Of course that $4.8 trillion ($5 trillion when rounded) is not a hard number because Romney has refused to give details. But that is not the problem. No, the problem occurred when he tried to suggest that he would not reduce the amount of money that the wealthy pays in taxes, a counter argument to what he had been saying since the Republican primary.

Add to that his statements about having a health plan that protects people who have pre-existing conditions (not so said his campaign after the debate); his claims that he would seek no limits to abortion access (he has said he wants to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v Wade and he wants to defund Planned Parenthood); his support for hiring more teachers (in June and again this week he mocked Obama for wanting to hire more teachers); his claim that Obama wants to drastically cut the defense budget (a plan approved by the House GOP); and one sees the manner in which Romney has distorted the political landscape.

The same is true of his party. Republicans have been claiming since their national convention that they, like much of America, supported the President and wanted him to do well. The problem, they say, is the President was in over his head. That argument requires us to forget that since the first day of the Obama presidency GOP lawmakers have done all they could to deny him a second term. That included taking the nation to the fiscal cliff during the debt ceiling debate, spending more time on voting to repeal Obamacare than helping to fix the economy, and launching all out attacks on women’s reproductive rights, including suggesting that abortions should only be available in the cases of “forcible rape.” (This week House Republicans are investigating "lax" security at the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, although they will say little about more than $400 million in GOP cuts to the State Department's security budget over the last two years.) Add to that local Republican efforts to tamp down the vote through a series of voter identification laws and we see a GOP that has put its interests before that of the nation.

And they have been able to do so because of the shady dealings of a host of conservative billionaires who have created shell groups disguised as grass-roots movements in an effort to buy the campaign without most people knowing. From the Koch brothers to Sheldon Adelson to Karl Rove’s army of check-writing robots, conservative billionaires have decided that no political race will be without their financial influence. (Conservative billionaires have spent $20 million in Ohio alone in an effort to oust Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown.) They have pumped millions upon millions into congressional campaigns not to promote the general welfare, but to increase their own.

David Siegel, the chief executive of the timeshare company Westgate, went so far as to send a menacing email to his employees telling them that their jobs would be in jeopardy if Obama wins next month, according to a story posted to The Huffington Post. While the email was couched in terms of tax increases, it raises questions about whether Siegel was making an indirect threat against his employees. Vote for Obama and you get to be part of the mooching 47 percent. Richard Lacks, the chief executive of the car parts manufacturer Lacks Enterprises, told his workers that an Obama election would result in a decrease in their pay, the Huffington Post article said. Those two incidents came after a Republican coal mine owner forced his workers to take part of the day off without pay so they could be props for a Romney campaign stop.

The result is a close election where few people truly understand the issues or are willing to study them. Instead they are swayed by bluster. Too many voters have decided that the election season is too long and every politician is too corrupt to warrant citizen participation in the political process. More pronounced, of course, are the so called undecided voters, those who have not made up their minds this late in the game. One has to ask: If one cannot choose between Obama and Romney after more than a year of campaigning, then what else does one need before making a choice?

What makes it all the more appalling is the U.S. Supreme Court’s failure to recognize that its Citizen United decision has indeed corrupted the political system, turning corporations into people and making the will of the few more valuable than the needs of the many. The High Court, as well as several lower Federal courts, has all but gutted Montana’s century-old, anti-corruption laws, which were aimed at protecting the electoral process.

It is a Faustian bargain that Republicans have made in an effort to wrest control from President Obama. It was most evident when Romney went from being “severely conservative” to “moderate” in 90 minutes. He leads that team that has put a “For Sale” sign on America’s soul. But what can one expect from a man who – if not for the advantages of his family pedigree – might otherwise be selling used cars in Roxbury?

The Allure of the First Debate Winner

The political pundits and party surrogates have spoken: Willard Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the Republican presidential candidate, won the first presidential debate in Denver Wednesday night. The problem with that conclusion is that the voters, particularly the undecided ones in the swing states, have yet to speak on the issue.

Indeed, Romney was the more assertive and more focused candidate. He rattled off statistic after statistic, and he seemed in control of the numbers. Meanwhile, President Barack Hussein Obama appeared tentative and disengaged for much of the debate. It was not until late in the exchange that the President seemed to gain his footing.

But once voters get past the style questions of the first debate they might find that the allure Romney projected is much like that presented by a hook up at a party. From across the room, that person looks attractive, worth considering for a long-term relationship. Then you get up close, engaging that person in conversation. The more that person talks and the more you listen the less attractive he or she becomes. Eventually, there comes the realization that the object of your desires, that alluring, generous specimen of humanity is actually very vacuous and self-absorbed, lacking many socially redeeming qualities.

Core values shift depending on with whom the person speaks. The passion comes and goes depending on whom that person is seeking to court. That was Willard Mitt Romney Wednesday night. He was alluring, charming, and warm from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., but chances are he will become cold and unattractive at 2 a.m. when the party is well over and the euphoria of the night’s alcohol wears off.

Why? Because that is when one steps back, looks at the real person, and asks: “Did he really say that?”

Yes, America, Willard Mitt Romney really did say that.

After 18 months of proclaiming that he had a multi-billion dollar tax cut plan that included breaks for the top 1 percent of earners, Romney announced Wednesday night that he did not have a tax plan that could cost the nation $5 trillion over 10 years. While the numbers attached to Romney’s tax plan were not of his making, they were a realistic assessment by economists and tax experts – including some whom he claims agree with him – seeking to fill the numbers void left by Romney’s lack of details.

According to Romney, he will not offer any tax plan that adds to the deficit. If that is true, then how does he plan to reduce taxes by 20 percent across the board? Nearly every study looking at Romney’s proposed tax cut says he cannot accomplish his goals by simply closing loopholes and eliminating deductions for the rich. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center – which Romney views as credible when it challenges Obama’s plans, but not when it questions his – suggests that Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class to reach his goals. So do other studies, including one by Martin Feldstein, a Romney advisor and Harvard economist.

Feldstein’s study showed that Romney can accomplish his tax-cut goals if he eliminates deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes for households making more than $100,000. The problem is Romney views the middle class as including people whose household income reaches $250,000, a figure many economists put above the middle class.

“First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut,” Romney proclaimed to Obama. “I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people.”

He added later: “With regards to that tax cut, look, I’m not looking to cut massive taxes and to reduce – the revenues going to the government. My – my number-one principle is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

Of course, such a proclamation sounds great, but in order for it to be true we have to take the word of a man who has often changed his positions on major topics. According to Romney, 47 percent of the people who do not pay taxes in this nation are moochers, a bunch of lazy government draining takers living off the sweat and hard work of the makers. The makers, Romney proclaimed during the Republican primary, need tax relief because they are the job creators. Those job creators are the 1 percent of the population that Romney now says will not receive any tax relief beyond what can be paid for, suggesting that the tax rate cannot drop by 20 percent.

In addition, Romney wants to develop a medical insurance program that allows children to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26; that bans insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions when those people change jobs; that helps to reduce medical costs. To accomplish such Romney has vowed to repeal Obamacare and replace it with . . . Obamacare. He also said recently that sick people can get free health care in emergency rooms, a practice that both Obamacare and Romneycare seek to discourage because of the additional costs incurred in such situations. Romney did not address how he will accommodate the millions of people who would be left uninsured, or how he will replace the preventive care provisions of Obamacare that make contraceptives free for women.

On Wednesday Romney also proclaimed the need to hire more teachers -- a major shift from what he said during a speech to Iowans in June. In that speech Romney claimed that Obama's call for more teachers was an expansion of Big Government that must be stopped.

"He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers," Romney said on June 8. "Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back government and help the American people."

And then there is Dodd-Frank. For 18 months, Romney proclaimed that government regulations, particularly Dodd-Frank, were ruining the economy. That changed Wednesday night when he offered support for regulations and Dodd-Frank, if not in total at least in part.

“Regulation is essential,” Romney said. “You can't have a free market work if you don't have regulation. As a businessperson, I had to have – I need to know the regulations. I needed them there. You couldn't have people opening up banks in their – in their garage and making loans. I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work. Every free economy has good regulation.”

It’s getting late and Willard Mitt Romney is losing his luster.