Romney's 'Free Stuff' Speech Is a New Low

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/romneys-free-stuff-speech-is-a-new-low-20120713#ixzz20WVVGdhX

by Matt Taibbi

[…]

As far as free lunches go, we of course just witnessed the biggest government handout in history, one that Romney himself endorsed. Four and a half trillion dollars in bailout money already disbursed, trillions more still at risk in guarantees and loans, sixteen trillion dollars in emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, two trillion in quantitative easing, etc. etc. All of this money went to Romney’s pals in the Wall Street banks that for years helped Romney take over companies with mountains of borrowed cash. Now, after these banks crashed, executives at those same firms used those public funds to pay themselves massive salaries, which is exactly the opposite of “helping those who need help,” if you’re keeping score.  

That set of facts alone made the “free stuff” speech shockingly offensive. But the problem isn’t just that Romney’s wrong, and a hypocrite, and cynically furthering dangerous and irresponsible stereotypes in order to advance some harebrained electoral ploy involving white conservative voters. What makes it gross is the way he did it.

Romney can’t even be mean with any honesty. Even when he’s pandering to viciousness, ignorance and racism, it comes across like a scaly calculation. A guy who feels like he has to take a dump on the N.A.A.C.P. in Houston in order to connect with frustrated white yahoos everywhere else is a guy who has absolutely no social instincts at all. Someone like Jesse Helms at least had a genuine emotional connection with his crazy-mean-stupid audiences. But Mitt Romney has to think his way to the lowest common denominator, which is somehow so much worse.

Most presidents have something under the hood – wit, warmth, approachability, something. Even the most liberal football fan could enjoy watching an NFL game with George Bush. And even a Klansman probably would have found some of LBJ’s jokes funny. The biggest office in the world requires someone who buzzes with enough personality to fill the job, and most of them have it.

But Romney doesn’t buzz with anything. His vision of humanity is just a million tons of meat floating around in a sea of base calculations. He’s like a teenager who stays up all night thinking of a way to impress the prom queen, and what he comes up with is kicking a kid in a wheelchair. Instincts like those are probably what made him a great leveraged buyout specialist, but in a public figure? Man, is he a disaster. It’s really incredible theater, watching the Republicans talk themselves into this guy.

Progressives Team up With the Tea Party in Georgia

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13602

Submitted by mark karlin on Fri, 07/13/2012 - 11:21am. 

EditorBlog

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

On July 5, BuzzFlash wrote a commentary on the possibility of occasionally finding common ground with groups that are normally oppositional. It was entitled, "Don't Laugh: There Are a Few Little Ledges of Common Ground with the Right Wing and Gun Zealots."

The piece also included the invitation by right wing fundraiser Richard Viguerie for the left to team up with the right to oppose domestic drone use.

The column didn't receive an overwhelming response. Perhaps because it is easier to dislike those we disagree with in general than to agree with them on a few issues while still objecting to the majority of their social and political viewpoints.

Yet, in this dysfunctional economic, social and political climate, maybe there really is something to be said for putting aside differences when alliances based on a common goal or two can create a majority.

Such is the real life example happening in Georgia where Common Cause is teaming up with the Tea Party in that state to campaign for a cap on lobbyist gifts to lawmakers. As the Republic Report details, Georgia is currently one of only three states that allows unlimited gift giving to state elected officials.

It's not easy to get legislators to give up their perks.

So the head of Common Cause in Georgia and some Tea Party "Patriots" are jointly embarking on a four-day bus tour labeled "The Ethics Express."

Maybe we need to hold our noses on occasion and recognize some common ground, however small a patch it may be, in order to accomplish goals for the common good.

It probably won't be happening often, but it is happening in Georgia.

'The Last War Crime' debuts at Cannes, but censored in USA

http://www.nationofchange.org/last-war-crime-debuts-cannes-censored-us-1342021227

[…]

Written, produced and directed by a new talent known only as ‘The Pen,’ this film documents the torture protocol ordained by the Bush-Cheney administration. Since it first circulated a trailer on the web; it has been heavily censored and cyber attacked. You Tube has removed it at intermittent intervals and MTV (which is owned by Viacom) has refused to sell air time for a commercial.

Apparently, there are some things that Viacom won’t accept money for—namely any film or story which exposes the regular torture ordered by Vice-President Cheney. Curious about this documentary and the blatant censorship–(I couldn’t download it)–I contacted the artist aka The Pen. Here is the interview.

JM : What are you hoping this film will accomplish in terms of genuine political change?

The Pen:” The Last War Crime Movie is about indicting Cheney for torture. And isn’t that something billions of people want to see? They say sometimes life can imitate art. But first we felt it was important that we retrace our country’s steps as to how torture was used to get the false intelligence to sell us on a war with Iraq. The real story of how this happened has been buried under an avalanche of pseudo history. They want people to forget the Downing Street minutes and the foreknowledge that the British had that Cheney and Bush were determined to invade Iraq, even if they had to “fix the facts around the policy” to do so. They want to obliterate the memory of the flimsy legal arguments in the torture memos. So we dig out all the true facts, and put them on the big screen, together with an entertaining narrative story about what it would have been like if justice had already prevailed.

The people who committed these war crimes believe they can escape accountability by changing the way people think, by selling the American people on the idea that torture was a great thing that got us wonderful intelligence to protect us. But the only people making these arguments are the torturers themselves and their propaganda advocates. All other percipient witnesses confirm the opposite, which we knew already, that torture does not even work, and that any actionable intelligence they got was obtained before they started torturing people. So part of the mission of this movie is to counter their ongoing lies initiative, to change the way people think back to the truth, and then we can have good policy change, which is political change.

JM : Do you expect more interference, and if so–in what form?

The Pen: Based on what we have run into already, the attempted YouTube censorship (which we forced them to reverse after more than 7,000 direct protests), the rejection of the ad submitted to MTV (Viacom Inc.), it is clear that we are encountering serious censorship interference from the very beginning. Obviously we are telling a story that certain people don’t want heard. The American people believe that we have free speech. It was on that justification that the Supreme Court said in the Citizens United decision that the gloves were off, and that corporations with unlimited war chests should be permitted to flood our political process with money favoring their point of view. But now we see that the other side of that bargain was a fraud, that these same corporations believe they can discriminate against points of view they disagree with. So for the actual people, we find that even if we have the money, we cannot even BUY “free” speech.

This is not a tolerable situation. Must we generate thousands of protests every time we want to run an ad when it is rejected for political reasons?

Already Viacom has received over 12,000 protest messages in response to our call to action there, and in that situation apparently they think “we the people” can just be ignored. We are seriously considering a federal lawsuit, the argument has to be made, that if they accept political advertising of any kind, at least in that case, it must be some kind of 14th Amendment equal protection violation to practice what we would call “speech discrimination”. Only by bringing such a case can we determine if we actually have free speech or not.

JM: Has there been any direct retaliation or threats connected with the release of this film aimed at you? Any suspected retaliation?

The Pen : Gandhi is reputed to have said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win”. At this point we are still mostly at the attempted “ignore you” stage.

JM: What has Hollywood’s reaction been to this film’s coming debut? Are you encountering the same kind of cowardice that Michael Moore experienced after his Oscar night comments about the war?

The Pen: We are just starting to get the word out about this film. The censorship attempts are doomed to fail, but we still don’t have enough visibility to where the rest of the Hollywood film community would be called on to react. It would not surprise me if some of the censorship we’ve been talking about was based in part on cowardice. Of course we all remember when Michael Moore called out the fiction of the basis for the war in Iraq at the Oscars. But in that case another reasonable possible explanation is that those who booed him then would object to any attempt to politicize the Academy Awards ceremony. The problem is that when you say you don’t want to hear about this political issue here, and you don’t want to hear about it there, you may end up with the dynamic we are confronting now with The Last War Crime movie, that the corporations that dominate our media really don’t want these issues talked about anywhere.

JM: Anything else you would want to add?

The Pen: “The soul of America is on trial right now. We have thrown not just international law overboard, we have repudiated our own long established law. We have always considered waterboarding to be torture. We have always prosecuted waterboarding in the past as torture. So what’s the difference now, that the war criminals have a big “R” after their names? We are called by history, the real history, to stand up and speak out about this, to bring America back to its highest calling. So if your readers are interested in participating in the Viacom action they can go to , where you can also see the ad that MTV rejected. And there is a Facebook page  where we are posting video clips, still shots from the movie, including behind the scenes shots, and more on a daily basis, so you can follow our progress and help get this movie out in real theaters where it belongs and deserves to be.”

It should be noted that as of May 22nd, 2012, The Last War Crime was presented at the Cannes Film Festival. There was no refusal to air the film, no censorship–corporate or otherwise. Apparently the independent artistic community in Cannes and similar venues knows something that evades the vapid corporate offices of Hollywood.

Government of Billionaires, for Billionaires, by Billionaires

Mitt Romney's offer of government of billionaires, for billionaires, by billionaires

In the Romney candidacy, the Republican party has found the apotheosis of the fact that it now represents solely the super-rich

By Robin Wells

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/mitt-romney-offer-government-billionaires

“Too much money" sounds like an oxymoron, especially when applied to American politics. But in the last week, Republicans are beginning to learn that lots of money can have its downside. Thursday's story that Romney may have actively directed Bain Capital three years longer than he claimed – a period in which Bain Capital-managed companies experienced bankruptcies and layoffs – caps what must be the worst weekly news cycle of any modern American presidential candidate. From images of corporate raiding, to luxury speedboats, to offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, to mega-mansions in the Hamptons, this week's stories suggest that the candidacy of Mitt Romney – poster-boy for the symbiotic relationship between big money and the modern Republican party – is in serious trouble.

Last weekend's photos of the Romney clan on a luxury speedboat cruising around a lake in New Hampshire, where their multimillion-dollar compound sits, were startling in their tone-deafness. And just to make sure the sentiment wasn't lost on anyone, at a campaign event the same week, Obama recounted childhood memories of touring the US with his grandmother by Greyhound bus, even the thrill of staying at a Howard Johnson motel. In a smart political calculation, the Obamas chose to forgo their annual summer vacation in Cape Cod (a nice upper-middle class vacation spot, mind you, but nowhere near the same league as the Romney estate). Instead, Obama was photographed visiting a senior citizens' home in the battleground state of Ohio.

And the hits kept coming. Next, Vanity Fair published an article listing theRomneys' various offshore investment accounts worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in the secretive tax havens of Cayman Islands and Bermuda, as well as a since-closed Swiss bank account.Democrats stoked the predictable outrage from the revelations. On the Sunday ABC news program "This Week", Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley thundered:

"Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters."

On the same program, Bobbie Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana, could only lamely respond:

"In terms of Governor Romney's financial success, I'm happy that he's a successful businessman."

While there is no evidence that the Romneys illegally evaded taxes through their various offshore accounts (their secretiveness making it impossible to tell), the reek of entitlement became overwhelming when it was revealed that the Romneys had accumulated somewhere between $20m and $101m in an "IRA", a tax-advantaged retirement account designed for middle-class savers, limited to a few thousand dollars a year contribution. As one commenter parried, "I may be stupid, but I ain't no fool." In other words, we might be too stupid to understand how Romney was able to obtain all these tax breaks legally, but we aren't fooled about unfairness of it all.

Well, at this point, you might of think that the next sighting of Romney would be of him clothed in ash-cloth ladling out soup at an inner-city soup kitchen. But no. Next, we were regaled with the New York Times story of a lavish fundraiser in the Hamptons hosted by the infamous David Koch, the billionaire benefactor of conservative causes. The optics were worse than bad, as the the Times recounted how one woman in a Range Rover, idling in a 30-deep line of cars waiting for entry, yelled to a Romney aide, "Is there a VIP entrance? We are VIP."

Romney was expected to haul in several million dollars from his trip to wine and dine with the billionaires of the Hamptons. But why risk confirming the very message that Democrats have been hammering upon: that Romney is a super-wealthy elitist whose objective is to further the interests of the 0.01%?

Certainly, billionaires for Romney would have given him those millions without the face-time and the photo-ops, the chance to dress up and be seen. And to be heckled by Occupy Wall Street protesters and parodied by reporters. What is so very puzzling about the whole episode is the sheer in-your-face-ness of it.

Yet, perhaps that is the point. As a very perceptive article in the New York Magazine, Lisa Miller describes how new psychological research indicates that wealth erodes empathy with others. In the "Money-Empathy Gap", Miller cites one researcher who says that:

"The rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes the more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes."

Researchers found a consistent correlation between higher income, management responsibility and disagreeableness. One researcher interpreted her findings to imply that money makes people disinterested in the welfare of others. "It's not a bad analogy to think of them as a little autistic" says Kathleen Vos, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

If this research is accurate (as it seems to be, replicated in various ways by several researches), the synergies between it, the increasing concentration of wealth and the Citizens United ruling, have striking implications for the future of the Republican party. As Newt Gingrich, the uber-southern politician, plaintively explained how he lost the Republican primary: "Romney had 16 billionaires. I had only one." The domination by the super-wealthy means that Republicans not only have no interest in the welfare of the rest of the 99.9%, they have no understanding of why this is a problem. The noblesse oblige days of the old money, such as the Bushes, the Kennedys and the Roosevelts are long gone, replaced by the new mega-money of hedge funds, corporate raiders and global industrialists.

How else can one explain the allegiance of the Republican party to the profoundly unpopular Ryan tax plan, which would eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid while delivering more tax cuts to the rich? What is the future of a party in a democracy when the powers-that-be can no longer even understand, much less address, the welfare of the vast majority of its citizens?

Taking the hint, the Obama administration is finally positioning itself on the firmly on the side of progressives, attacking income inequality and holding Republicans accountable for their assaults on the middle and working classes. How ironic it would be if, after all, the other side's big money is the answer to the Democrats' prayers.

USA Farm Bill Would Kick 280,000 Low-Income Children Off Of School Meals Program

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/09/513136/food-stamp-cuts-school-meals/

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 9, 2012 at 2:00 pm

Members of the House Agriculture Committee this week will be marking up a “compromise” version of this year’s farm bill, which includes cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — i.e. food stamps — that would result in two to three million people losing their food assistance. 45 percent of the proposed cuts to federal spending in the bill come from reductions in the food stamp program.

The bulk of the cuts would be a result of eliminating what is known as “categorical eligibility,” which gave states the flexibility to enroll families in SNAP even if their assets (such as a car or modest savings) or income push them barely above the line to qualify for assistance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, such a move would not only boot 1.8 million people off of food stamps, but would knock 280,000 children off of the free school lunch program:

The legislation would restrict categorical eligibility to only households receiving cash assistance. Based on data from the Department of Agriculture, CBO estimates that about 1.8 million people per year, on average, would lose benefits if they were subject to SNAP’s income and asset tests. In addition, about 280,000 school-age children in those households would no longer be automatically eligible for free school meals through their receipt of SNAP benefits. Assuming enactment on October 1, 2012, CBO estimates that this provision would lower direct spending by $11.5 billion over the 2012-2022 period.

These families’ free lunch benefits are tied to their receipt of SNAP funds. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, “A typical working family that qualifies for SNAP benefits due to categorical eligibility is a mother with two young children who has monthly earnings just above the program’s monthly gross income limit ($2,008 for a family of three in 2012).”

Republicans have mounted quite the campaign to convince the public that food stamp spending is somehow out of control, and this “compromise” bill buys into the worst of that rhetoric. Many House Democrats are voicing their objections. “This is a bill that robs the poor to pay the rich,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). “This bill is an outrage.”

Florida closes only tuberculosis hospital amid worst US outbreak in 20 years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/09/florida-closes-tuberculosis-hospital-outbreak

by Richard Luscombe in Miami

Health officials in Florida hastened their closure of the nation's only dedicated tuberculosis hospital on cost-cutting grounds as one of the worst outbreaks of the deadly disease in 20 years was taking a grip on the state, it has been revealed.

At least 3,000 people in Jacksonville may have been exposed to the highly contagious respiratory illness that claimed 13 lives in the city and left another 100 sick in the last two years, a report from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded.

But news of the severity of the outbreak never reached Florida's politicians, who voted in March to bring forward the closure of the 100-bed AG Holley state hospital in Lantana by six months to July 2.

As a result, patients once deemed too sick for contact with the public were released into the community and others newly diagnosed with the disease, mostly from the homeless population, are being put up in local motels in an effort to keep them on their medications.

"The high number of deaths in this outbreak emphasises the need for vigilant active case finding, improved education about TB, and ongoing screening at all sites with outbreak cases," states the report written by Robert Luo, a senior doctor with the CDC's epidemic intelligence service, and obtained by the Palm Beach Post following a public records request.

The CDC confirmed it was one of the worst outbreaks of TB anywhere in the United States for at least two decades.

Meanwhile, the Florida department of health expects to save up to $10m a year by closing AG Holley, which had treated patients with the most severe cases of the disease since 1950. The hospital discharged its last patients a week ago.

In a statement, the department defended the closure, insisting that patients in need of hospitalisation would receive adequate care at public hospitals in Miami and Jacksonville, which also agreed to take some of the most severe AG Holley cases.

"We move into the future with confidence that these patients will receive continued high quality care in settings closer to their communities," said Dr John Armstrong, Florida's surgeon general.

Yet before the closure was announced the department always claimed that patients admitted to AG Holley "cannot be treated and cured in the community".

In its 2013 health plan, it stated: "All of AG Holley's patients have failed treatment in their communities or have been diagnosed as medically complex requiring specialised care and treatment."

Of the patients discharged last week, 18 were released into the care of their own doctors, supervised by their county health departments. The state health board said that declining cases of TB statewide, 753 in 2011, a 10% decrease on the previous year, justified the hospital's closure.

Opponents have demanded an investigation by Florida governor Rick Scott, saying that the hospital's closure was rushed and that the need for a purpose-built facility with rooms with individual air and water systems to combat virulent airborne diseases was greater than ever.

Maria Lorts Sachs, a state senator who represents Lantana and a vocal long-term supporter of the hospital, told the Guardian: "Who knows how the vote would have been impacted by knowledge of this outbreak?

"It's a serious thing when a major fact is withheld from us. There needs to be an inquiry into whoever kept this secret and there needs to be an inquiry into why there was such a rush to close the hospital. The governor should stop everything, stop the closure and have a review. This is a dangerous thing and we need to make sure our people are safe."

The CDC's investigation into the Jacksonville outbreak revealed that only 253 people from about 3,000 exposed to the infection in Duval County's homeless shelters, prisons and mental health clinics had been traced and tested.

Effective treatment often requires regular, long-term uses of drugs, which officials acknowledge is often difficult to administer. If medications are not taken regularly, strains of the disease can become drug-resistant.

Charles Griggs, spokesman for the Duval County health department, said: "Since the identified outbreak cluster is primarily concentrated within at-risk individuals in Jacksonville's homeless community, we are concentrating our efforts in the most impacted areas of need.

"We are also trying to guard against the further negative stigmatisation of an already challenged population. 

There is no evidence to suggest that the identified cluster outbreak has had a significant impact on the local general population.

"The closure of AG Holley has very little impact on our local outbreak. Over the past two years, DCHD has been engaged in active TB outreach screenings at various locations that service our local homeless community.