noun loss of a large block of politically awkward memories; complete or partial loss of recall of policies enacted while governor, usually caused by brain injury, shock, or running for president.
EUCLID, Ohio (AP) — Campaigning in the backyard of America's auto industry, Mitt Romney re-ignited the bailout debate by suggesting he deserves "a lot of credit" for the recent successes of the nation's largest car companies.
That claims comes in spite of his stance that Detroit should have been allowed to go bankrupt.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told a Cleveland television station on Monday that President Barack Obama followed his lead when he ushered auto companies through a managed bankruptcy soon after taking office.
"I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet," Romney said in an interview inside a Cleveland-area auto parts maker. "So, I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back."
Romney has repeatedly argued that Obama ultimately took his advice on the auto industry's woes of 2008 and 2009. But he went further on Monday by saying he deserves credit for its ultimate turnaround.
The course Romney advocated differed greatly from the one that was ultimately taken. GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy on the strength of a massive bailout that Romney opposed. Neither Republican President George W. Bush nor Democratic President Barack Obama believed the automakers would have survived without that backup from taxpayers.
Romney opposed taxpayer help.
"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye," Romney wrote in a November 2008 opinion article in the New York Times. "It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed."
The key is Romney's use of the "help was given" element, which is where there was an enormous difference between what he advocated and what Obama (and Bush!) set out to do.
Interesting that Romney doesn't claim "some credit", but "a lot of credit". Why not, if you are living in a fantasy world?
NB: The thing to do is take Romney at his word, and not as a scheming pandering politician. Romney really thinks he deserves a lot of credit for the automobile industry recovery. What do you call such a man? Insane.
Rupert Murdoch 'not fit person' to lead News Corp, say MPs
The cross-party culture committee questioned journalists and bosses at the now closed paper, as well as police and lawyers for hacking victims.
Its report has concluded that Mr Murdoch exhibited "wilful blindness" to what was going on in his media empire.
And it said the News of the World and News International misled Parliament about the scale of phone hacking.
The committee of MPs began its inquiry in July 2011 in the wake of fresh newspaper revelations about the extent of hacking at the tabloid newspaper, with reported victims including the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the families of victims of the 7/7 London bombings.
It heard evidence from Mr Murdoch and his son James, and has now concluded that the notion that a hands-on proprietor like Rupert Murdoch had "no inkling" that wrongdoing was widespread at the News of the World was "simply not credible".
It noted that the newspaper mogul had "excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail when it suited him"
It was discouraging to watch John Burns of the New York Times indicate that he was buying the Murdoch bullshit. Last week Burns said on the Charlie Rose show that the most telling moment was when Rupert "admitted" that he panicked when he closed down the News of the World. It was not the panic of an old man. It was a cold, calculating move to destroy evidence. (Burns also sugar-coated Murdoch/NewsInternational by repeatedly saying that they were "very competitive", which is an oblique way of saying that they were ruthless and transgressing laws and norms.)
Lis Smith, an Obama campaign spokeswoman, accused Fehrnstrom of distorting Romney's record.
“GM and Chrysler are in existence, creating jobs, and posting some of their most profitable quarters in history today because President Obama bet on American workers," Smith said in a statement to The Hill. "If Mitt Romney had had his way, the American auto industry and the millions of jobs it supports would cease to exist. Dishonesty and distortions are nothing new for the Romney campaign, but they can’t change this simple fact.”
Those words are basically of no value, merely assertions or slogans ("bet on American workers"). Smith does not say why the auto industry would cease to exist under Romney's business plan. She fails to point out the difference between what Romney would have done and what Obama did. The difference is that when Detroit was in big trouble, there was no source of private lending to help the companies and therefore, federal money had to be part of the mix - which is something Romney ruled out.
David Walker former US Comptroller General from 1998 to 2008:
If we broaden the tax base and recognize that we're spending $1.1 trillion a year in deductions, exemptions, credits, exclusions, and differences in tax rates. We can lower the top marginal tax rates for corporations, individuals, the estate tax at 25%. We can get more people paying income taxes. 35 to 51 percent don't pay any income tax. That's a dangerous disconnect.
George Stephanopoulos:
What I hear when you say that is that if you're a working american making $50, $60 thousand a year, your taxes are going up?
David Walker:
Well, here's what I'm saying. Let me finish. Buffet has got a real issue. But the reason that's an issue is because the wealthiest people make more of their money through capital gains and dividends. So if you can do what I've just said, bring the top marginal rate down to 25%, you can eliminate the difference between capital gains, dividends, and ordinary income, and we will accomplish multiple objectives in a prudent and sustainable manner.
Walker doesn't answer the question. Instead his solution to low capital gains and dividends rates is to lower the top rate for the rich (and lower the estate tax by 10% at the same time) while eliminating deductions that many in the middle class benefit from. Walker is a stooge for the ultra rich. Broadening the tax base means taxing more at the bottom and less at the top.
Wikipedia on Walker:
Walker has compared the present-day United States to the Roman Empire in its decline, saying the U.S. government is on a "burning platform" of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, expensive overcommitments to government provided health care, swelling Medicare and Social Security costs, the enormous expense of a prospective universal health care system, and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.
"swelling ... Social Security costs" is the tell. Oh, and Walker is closely involved with Pete Peterson's Concord Coalition.
Following up on the previous post that examined the total opposition by Republicans and their violation of institutional norms, some additional thoughts emerge.
It seems like every time I turn around I'm confronted by growing extremism. The Catholic Church is, increasingly, little more than an angry collection of reactionary old men who hate the modern world. The Republican Party is a refuge for bright-eyed true believers intent on tearing down the modern state. The state of Israel, unable to break the grip of its most expansionist zealots ...
What can you say about a party that rejects Keynesian economics? That dismisses the scientific consensus about global warming? That adheres to an empirically proven false doctrine of trickle down economics? That makes absurd claims about how the health care system works? That thinks that force is the solution to just about any foreign policy issue?
Note, these are not social issues about which people can disagree. If you don't like gay marriage, that falls into the category of morals where people are allowed to have their preferences, however disagreeable.
It's the economic and foreign policy area where the complete lack of rationality and acceptance of evidence is most troubling. What is the political observer supposed to do in this case? It's futile for pundits to "argue" the point on issues because there is no common ground of theory or evidence.
Let's look at so-called sensible conservative David Brooks. In a recent op-ed he wrote: (emp add)
In 2009, we had a big debate about whether to pass a stimulus package. Many esteemed and/or Nobel Prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Larry Summers and Christina Romer argued that it would help lift the economy out of recession. Many other esteemed and/or Nobel Prize-winning economists like Robert Barro, Edward Prescott and James Buchanan argued that positive effects would be small and the package wouldn’t be worth the long-term cost.
We went ahead and spent the roughly $800 billion. What have we learned?
For certain, nothing. The economists who supported the stimulus now argue the economy would have been worse off without it. Those who opposed it argue that the results have been meager. It’s hard to think of anybody whose mind has been changed by what happened.
Stop. Right. There. *
Brooks ignores the historical record, going back to the 1930s demonstrating the efficacy of Keyneisn economics. There are even data sets from the last five years on this! Instead, Brooks points to some people who haven't changed their mind, as if that makes the case that we don't know if the stimulus helped.
This is typical of how someone like Brooks works to prevent accountability on his side. We have results, but look, some people haven't changed their minds. That must mean the issue is still unresolved. Hence, no changing of policy positions, no compromise, just continue the fight until Brooks' team takes over.
This has been the situation for a while but it's intensified since Obama took office. There is no dialogue to be had with Brooks or his wilder compatriots. There is nothing to be said. It's a waste of time and energy dealing with a cult-like party, which is what the Republicans have become.
(* The essay continues with Brooks citing global-warming-obfuscator Jim Manzi hilariously arguing that we should conduct controlled experiments in artificial environments and heed the results. That's merely a prescription for Kevin Hassett -style bullshit about DOW 36,000 or John Lott's manipulative statistics.)
Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein write in the Washington Post: (excerpts, emp add)
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. ...
What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist. ...
Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators, according to ATR. The Norquist tax pledge has led to other pledges, on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible. For Republicans concerned about a primary challenge from the right, the failure to sign such pledges is simply too risky.
Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented. ...
We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.
Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?
Good luck with that last one. The press is feckless.
It's [Republicans'] ideological extremism that drives their radicalism and disrespect for institutional norms. The stuff that makes no sense to us, like UN conspiracy theories, has its origins in the netherworlds of the far-right ideology. This fringe stuff is now bubbling into the mainstream of movement conservatism as tribal identifiers. It's the incoherent id of the far-right, but the general narratives of who the good guys and bad guys are, what might happen, is all pretty standard far-right ideology.
And disrespect for institutional norms is just the logical conclusion when your ideology instructs that all government is evil, wasteful and corrupt. You take that ideology, plug into our current instituions and you end up with the nihilistic power-grab of Delay and the unprecedented obstruction of McConnel. They hate government and benefit politically from the institutional norms that keep it running becoming discredited and ineffectual. In the meantime though, they are happy to use their disregard of these norms for the benefit of those that their ideology tells them to support: business, finance, social conservatism.
The press and ideology aside, the Mann and Ornstein essay cite cases where some Republicans were in support of various policies, but reversed themselves when the policies turned out to be close to something the Democrats could agree with. That's a result of the decision (reported elsewhere) that the stance of the Republicans was 100% opposition from day one of the Obama administration.
