A Few Political Issues

   Here are a few ramblings, while trying to figure out why Curt Schilling continues to blame Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee for not funneling MORE state taxpayer’s funds into his failed 38 STUDIOS corporation. Like most "strict constitutionists" the former Red Sox pitcher’s ideology apparently only applies to OTHER people seeking public largesse.

   A sarcastic "tip of the hat" is due to the Supreme Court for their deliberately-disastrous 2010 CITIZEN’S UNITED ruling on political campaign contributions, a decision that as we all knew at the time took candidate preference decisions away from regular citizens and handed them to deep-pocketed corporations and billionaires like the Sheldon Adelsons and Bob Perrys of the world. The conservative 5-4 majority got what they wanted, handing a huge advantage to Mitt Romney and the GOP for the November elections, with businesses gleefully and understandably sending barrels of cash their way ($100 million captured by Romney alone in June). But what about the rest of us, whose voices and dollars are being drowned out by the near-limitless coffers of the affluent, all eager to continue the George W. Bush tax cuts which were supposed to be temporary and which directly led to the debt/deficit problem that president Barack Obama inherited in 2009? Couple that with unregulated donations from most energy corporations who aren’t the least bit interested in environmental laws meant to preserve our air and water for succeeding generations.  

   Speaking of Romney, his penchant for over-the-top flip-flopping was in cartoon-level display last week, as on Tuesday he ruefully agreed with the Obama side that the penalty for people who try to avoid having a healthcare plan is indeed just that, a penalty, similar to withdrawing IRA funds before age 59 ½, taking principal from a CD investment before maturity, etc. But then on Wednesday, obviously after consulting with political advisor Eric Fehrnstrom, he reverted back to his initial "it’s a tax" declaration. An extreme example of business-as-usual Romneyspeak. 

   This coreless of politicians received one of the most left-handed same-party "endorsements" of all time last weekend from no less than Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who candidly suggested that while he’s going to do his best to get the GOP nominee elected, added "Listen, we’re just politicians. The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney." This points up one of the latter’s main problems : voters who honestly look at his checkered business past with company-destroying Bain Capital, as well as his less-than-stellar business history as the absentee governor of Massachusetts, have to wonder why anyone other than a lockstep Republican would want him in the world’s highest office.  

   And then looking at the lack of details re: his plans for rectifying the remaining problems the Democrats in Washington continue to work on gets even more confusing. How does Romney plan to "balance the budget" while at the same time approve $6 trillion of tax cuts, mostly for the affluent? How can seniors get behind his Medicare "plan" of allowing a set amount annually for each citizen to draw from to cover the cost without even knowing what the premium support will be? And how can Romney justify UPPING government expenditures for our military without simultaneously CUTTING depended-upon programs like Social Security? In sum, the total reductions revealed by Romney so far equal only 6 to 7 percent of his planned tax cuts. This type of arithmetic makes "voodoo economics" look positively Einsteinian.

   Anyone with the slightest objectivity looking at the issues and the vastly-improved landscape our nation is enjoying compared to the war-torn and economic nightmare of 3 ½ years ago knows that Obama has spent his first term in office fighting a mostly-winning battle against a GOP in Washington that has carried out its four-year plan to attempt to submerge our nation to even greater depths than the Bush/Cheney "Bring ‘em on!" regime left us. A current case-in point is his ongoing battle to end the aforementioned temporary tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 annually while continuing those for America’s middle class, the segment that was flying high during the Bill Clinton years and eviscerated during the Bush era. You have to laugh when the right wing continues calling this a "tax hike on the rich".

   Finally, to all those history-challenged "voices" who have spent 3 ½ years dishonestly blaming Obama for the illegal immigrant problem in America, here’s some facts and figures from the Department of Homeland Security that have been well-known to some of us already. It was George W. Bush’s lax deportation policies both as governor of Texas and later as president that led to last decade’s increased immigrant numbers, a fact that most conservatives like to conveniently forget. The illegal population was around 8 ½ million when Bush took office, and swelled to 12 million by 2007 during his administration. Obama actually took plenty of heat from the Hispanic population from his inauguration in 2009 through last year, as approximately 400,000 illegals were deported annually during that period.  

   So far this year the deportation numbers have leveled off as his administration assailed the tough Arizona laws that thankfully saw many of its tenets struck down by the Supreme Court recently, as Obama also instituted his Hispanic-friendly DREAM legislation. There are approximately 9 million illegals currently within our borders, a 25 percent reduction from what he inherited from Bush/Cheney. Tell that to the next Obama-bashing xenophobe running off his mouth or typewriter about this overblown topic...the problem has actually been vastly alleviated under the Obama administration.