Willard ‘Mittens’ Romney will be Cousin George W. Bush redux
April 24, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Somehow I missed this bit of trivia from TIME magazine back in December. Romney and Bush Are Cousins, Ancestry.com Finds | NewsFeed | TIME.com: Believe it or not, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush are cousins — 10th cousins, twice removed, that is. Historians at Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family-history resource, have … Read more
An annual ritual of spring: ‘The sky is falling! The sky is falling!’
April 24, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The Arizona Republic today published an annual ritual of spring, the gloom and doom forecasts for the social security and Medicare trust funds. Social Security heading for insolvency even faster. The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
First, you need to keep in mind that there is an entire cottage industry in conservative circles that has sought to do away with the social security and Medicare trust funds since the funds were first established. The latest iteration of this effort is Rep. Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to America's Ruin" that proposes to turn Medicare into a coupon voucher system to purchase private health insurance plans, and the GOP dream of privatizing social security into individual retirement investment accounts so the banksters of Wall Street can rip you off and leave you destitute remains alive.
And then there are the media enablers of this conservative opposition to social security and Medicare. I have told you about Pete Peterson ("I.O.U.S.A. Solutions") who wants to repeal social security and Medicare, and his group's unholy alliance with the Neoconservative Washington Post. Pete Peterson's war on social security – and his media enablers, and Washington Post GOPropaganda. This "GOPropaganda" gets fed into the echo chamber of the "lamestream" media for amplification without any critical analysis.
So it is nice to see that Sarah Kliff at Ezra Klein's WonkBlog tells everyone to take a deep breath and chill, Reports of Medicare’s death are greatly exaggerated:
Around this time last year, Americans got a dire warning: Medicare was heading into the red, quickly. “Medicare to go broke in 2024,” one headline proclaimed. “We know,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) told Fox News, “that Medicare is going broke by 2024.”
Those predictions of Medicare’s impending doom came from the 2011 Medicare Trustees Report, an annual look at the entitlement program’s finances. The dense, 267-page tome is never much of a page-turner. Most of it is obtuse, economical analysis and endless charts — not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with endless charts. But there’s one figure that always gets a lot of attention: The date by which, if things stay on current course, the Medicare trust fund will become insolvent.
[On Monday], the Medicare Trustees will release their 2012 report. It’s likely to elicit a similar round of headlines. Before that happens, it’s worth understanding why projections of the fund’s insolvency actually say very little about whether Medicare is going bankrupt. Reports of Medicare’s death are, as Mark Twain would put it, greatly exaggerated.
* * *
In 1970, the Medicare Trustees began issuing annual reports on the financial state of the Medicare Trust Fund. It has faced a projected shortfall “almost from its inception,” a 2009 Congressional Research Service report found. In 1970, the Medicare Trustees Report predicted that the fund would be insolvent just two years later, in 1972. Pretty much every year after that, the Trust Funds’ insolvency has never seemed that far off:
Flash forward four decades, and Medicare still has the dollars to cover hospital visits. How does that happen?
The ‘lamestream’ media loves a liar
April 24, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The rationale for Willard "Mittens" Romney’s campaign is based upon the idea that President Obama should be held responsible for the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the months just after he took office when the economy was in free fall — but before any of his policies took effect.
Greg Sargent writes at the Plum Line blog, Mitt Romney the Amnesia Candidate:
As I noted last week, the Romney campaign is betting that he can lull the American people into forgetting just how severe a crisis Obama inherited upon taking office. The “net” job loss metric is central to this effort to inflict mass amnesia on the public.
Yet despite the fact that this argument is absolutely central to Romney’s case against Obama, it has drawn very little media scrutiny.
So it’s good to see that Paul Krugman has devoted an entire column to it today, labeling Romney the “amnesia candidate”:
Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.
How does the campaign deal with people who point out the awkward reality that all of the “Obama” job losses took place before any Obama policies had taken effect? The fallback argument — which was rolled out when reporters asked about the factory closure — is that even though Mr. Obama inherited a deeply troubled economy, he should have fixed it by now. That factory is still closed, said a Romney adviser, because of the failure of Obama policies “to really get this economy going again.”
…he’s basically attacking Mr. Obama for not acting as if George Bush had been given a third term. Are the American people — and perhaps more to the point, the news media — forgetful enough for that attack to work? I guess we’ll find out.
The degree to which Romney has been able to skate by with this argument is truly remarkable. It’s the basis of Romney’s entire rationale for running for president. He has repeated it in every conceivable forum for months on end. Yet it has gone almost entirely unexamined by the news media. One hopes Krugman’s column today will begin to change that.
Sadly, Greg Sargent has the answer to this question is subsequent posts:
Arizona Should Make War on Mexico (and SB1070 Will Be Upheld)
April 23, 2012
By Michael Bryan Arizona has suffered enough. Mexico continually violates our State’s sovereignty by encouraging their citizens to invade our state. The government of Mexico is deeply corrupt and in bed with violent criminals that operate black markets across our border, killing our citizens and endangering our communities. Any other nation on earth would consider … Read more
42 Percent
April 23, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: I have been kicking around this idea of a political science research project for years based upon the notion that 42 percent of the public is batshit crazy at any given time. An average of 42 percent of the public believes things that are demonstrably false and factually untrue. If we were to examine … Read more
Bruce Merrill/Morrison Institute Poll: Arizona is a “toss-up” state
April 23, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Unlike the push polls that the Jesse Kelly camp was leaking to the media before the primary last week, a credible polling firm in Arizona is out with a new presidential race poll today that finds Arizona is a "toss-up" state in April 2012. Poll: Obama vs. Romney a 'toss-up' in Arizona — Morrison Institute:
With the 2012 presidential election just over six months away, the latest statewide Merrill/Morrison Institute poll found that Arizonans are evenly divided on whom they will support in November.
According to the poll of 488 registered voters, 42 percent said they would vote for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, while 40 percent said they would support President Barack Obama and 18 percent were undecided. Because the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent, if the election were held today the contest for Arizona’s 11 electoral votes would be a “toss up.”
The poll found that the electorate is divided along party lines: 80 percent of Republicans said they would vote for Romney, 78 percent of Democrats for Obama. Although the sample of political independents is small (n=166), independents appear to be breaking slightly more for Obama (38 percent) than Romney (28 percent). However, the independent vote is still up for grabs because 34 percent of independents said they are undecided.
“In Arizona, like the rest of the nation, political independents may determine who wins in November,” said poll director Dr. Bruce Merrill, a senior fellow at Morrison Institute for Public Policy. “The eventual outcome also may be dependent on whether former Surgeon General Richard Carmona can mount a vigorous campaign for retiring Sen. John Kyl’s seat, a campaign that would stimulate turnout in the Hispanic community. While I think if the election were held today Romney probably would win, it appears Obama can mount a competitive campaign in Arizona.”
Let the games begin! (or continue)
April 23, 2012
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by David Safier I just found out Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is quite the tweeter. His latest: This just keeps getting more interesting.
Ann-Eve Pedersen on renewing the one cent sales tax
April 23, 2012
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by David Safier Good interview with Ann-Eve Pedersen in the Republic Saturday on the one cent sales tax initiative. Before the excerpts, I want to restate what isn't well understood about the initiative. The sales tax money can't simply be folded into the general fund, letting the lege either keep education funding where it is … Read more
