News Roundup for 2/3/12

Can't keep his story straight

-Headline of the Day-
"Soledad O'Brien Questions Mitt Romney Claim He 'Misspoke' On 'Very Poor' Comments."

CNN's Soledad O'Brien has what I think of as a "name of the future." In the coming years, when we're all just one big diverse jumble of cultures, names like Soledad O'Brien will be common. Or Yukio Garabaldi. Or Ludmilla Walking Bear. It's gonna be awesome.

That's got nothing to do with anything though. I just thought I'd bring it up. What's got something to do with something is Mitt Romney and his assertion that he doesn't give a hot squat about the poor. Or, rather, his previous assertion. It's not his assertion any more.

Now everything's all different. Mittens says he didn't mean to say what he said and it's all a big misunderstanding. He meant to say something entirely different. Although, what it was he meant to say remains a mystery, because he hasn't told anyone. This raises suspicions among people who use their brains.

Anyway, Soledad were talking on the TV -- just letting her mind wander or something -- and suddenly it hit her.

"That was after he repeated his stance twice actually on our show," she said. That's right, Mitt had originally gone on an explanation binge, before he decided that wasn't working. Now he says didn't really say it.

Who knows what he'll say tomorrow? (Huffington Post, with video)


-History comes alive-




Why does the name Ozymandias pop into my head? (McClatchy)


-Bnus HotD-
"Mitt Romney: We Are The Only People Who Put Their Hand Over Our Hearts During The National Anthem."

Yeah, that's about as wrong as it's possible to be.

Mittens is really turning out to be a gaffe machine, isn't he? (Buzzfeed, with video)

Susan G. Komen, Planned Parenthood, and the 'Teachable Moment'

One of the most abused terms in politics is "teachable moment." Most of the time, when someone says, "This is a teachable moment," what they're really saying is, "On the bright side, we've figured out an additional way to fail. We won't do that again." Besides, it's become threadworn and cliche. The way it's used currently, it's almost meaningless. With that in mind, I present you with an honest-to-goodness teachable moment.


[The Atlantic Wire:]

The Susan G. Komen foundation has reversed its position on Planned Parenthood, and will continue funding the organization after all, issuing a statement that apologizes "for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives." The move comes after a week of online protest over the news that Komen would end a grant to Planned Parenthood to provide mammograms. It was not a move that Komen took lightly. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg unearthed memos from December that show how the Komen foundation instructed its employees to "obfuscate the issues when confronted with questions about why Komen cut off funding to Planned Parenthood." The letters outline "updated eligibility requirements" that include changes in tax-exemption status and loss of federal funding, among other things.


The first lesson here is the most obvious; if you're a foundation dedicated to fighting a certain disease, don't make politically-motivated funding decisions that will actually increase the overall severity of that disease. Planned Parenthood offers cancer screenings -- for some women, the only access to such screenings they have -- and cutting funding would mean fewer screenings. Fewer screenings means more instances of undiagnosed breast cancer. You can do the math from there.

But the most obvious lesson isn't the one that needs pointing out. The better and less obvious lesson is that when an organization does something you believe is insane, don't just shut up about it. The campaign to restore PP's funding won their battle (or seems to have -- don't let your guard down until all the details are out) with astonishing speed. And they did it in the face of a PR campaign to defend that decision that had been under construction since at least December. Komen unveiled their decision and their big PR, carefully crafted machine started rolling -- and they lost their battle in a matter of days. When they made their announcement, Komen was prepared and their soon-to-be critics were not. And all of Komen's careful preparation got them squat. In their press release, also from The Atlantic's link, we see that PR machine still rolling, but repurposed for damage control, while Komen scrambles to put out enough white flags to satisfy their critics.

Another lesson is that Planned Parenthood is a lot more popular than Republicans seem to believe. They've made the women's health centers a political football, attacking them, running kangaroo court investigations into them, and working to cut their funding in order to throw a bone to their "pro-life" base. They originally saw this as a political asset, but there's now very good evidence that it may be more of a liability. Democrats can stop worrying about publicly defending Planned Parenthood now. It's clear there are plenty who would have their backs. Here in Wisconsin, Scott Walker's attacks on PP should be a part of the criticism leveled against him as he heads into a recall election. The GOP's attacks on Planned Parenthood's funding should make them the pro-breast cancer party.

This is the same sort of teachable moment we arrived at with SOPA and PIPA, as well as the 99-percent movement; if enough people make enough noise, it scares the beejesus out of people in power. Because that power isn't inherent in them, but is sort of borrowed -- collectively -- from everyone else. The "consent of the governed" doesn't apply only to governments, but to institutions as well. We can take it away -- and it pays to remind them of that. Often.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 2/2/12

Champions of central "local" control

-Headline of the Day-
"Oops: Florida Republican Forgets To Remove ALEC Mission Statement From Boilerplate Anti-Tax Bill."

It used to be that Republicans were always talking about "local control." What they meant was that states didn't need Big Government coming in and telling them what to do. State governments could make up their own minds, thank you very much, and no federal meddling was needed. You couldn't get them to shut up about it.

Now, things are different. Republicans don't talk as much about local control because they put together this thing called ALEC. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council and it's made up of state legislators. What do they do? They write laws -- well, they get lobbyists to write them anyway. And they do it for everyone. Then they can pretend they aren't Big Government goons pushing the states around. They're small government goons doing the pushing. I guess there's some difference.

See, this way you've got local control. Of course, the idea is that all the locals are controlling things exactly the same way across all the states. Every ALEC law is, in practice, one big national law, since the idea is that every state has the same one. Local control! Except it's not so local as it is central.

Yeah, it's a confusing mish-mash of contradicting argument, but that's Republicans for ya.

Anyhoo, this all strikes a lot of people as wrong -- not to mention hypocritical. People in Florida shouldn't be writing Wisconsin's laws and vice versa, for example. So all the ALEC people like to pretend that they came up with these identical laws all on their lonesome. It's all so common sense, they argue, why wouldn't a bunch of people come up with the same thing?

This argument took a little ding when Florida state Rep. Rachel Burgin introduced a bill calling on the feds to reduce corporate tax rates -- and left an ALEC identifier in it. "WHEREAS, it is the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council to advance Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, yada-yada-yada, wank-wank-wank...," Burgin's bill began, which was kind of letting the cat out of the bag. Someone else wrote this thing and Rachel just copied and pasted it -- apparently without even reading it.

According to the report, "Burgin quickly withdrew the bill hoping that no one had noticed and then re-introduced it 24-hours later, with a new bill number (HM 717), but now without the problematic paragraph."

As you can see, that strategy failed. Wait for this Florida bill to show up in your state, because local control is super-important. (ThinkProgress)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, ever wonder how to write an attack ad for a shadowy, secretive Super PAC? Yeah, me neither. But Uncle Mark's going to show us anyway! Yay!


Click for animation

Well that's just [adjective]. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Trump endorses Mitt Romney for president."

Meanwhile, there's this from Pew:



Looks like The Donald can expect a thank-you note from Newt. (CBS News)

Blaming the Treatment for the Disease

Bass-ackward reasoning 101: Imagine a patient with kidney disease. This patient has be treated with dialysis regularly or the blood toxins normally filtered out by the kidneys will eventually kill him. It's not cheap, but it's necessary. Everyone knows that the solution to this problem is a kidney transplant. But a group of quacks -- without any real research at all -- insist that the problem isn't the failing kidneys, the problem is the dialysis. Stop giving the patient the treatment and they'll recover.

I bring this up to draw a parallel. After Mitt Romney said he wasn't "concerned about the very poor," head wingnut and US Senator Jim DeMint suggested a better way of putting it -- the dialysis is the problem, not the disease.


[Roll Call:]

DeMint said that portion of Romney’s comments also need to be reframed. While Democrats have been using Romney’s comments to argue he is callous toward the poor, conservatives have expressed concern that the former governor might be OK with having Americans who are dependent on government-subsidized social programs.

“He needs to address it,” DeMint told Roll Call. “Because I know he does care about the poor. But I think he was trying to make a case that they’re taken care of. But, in fact, I would say I’m worried about the poor because many are trapped in dependency, they need a good job; they don’t need to be on social welfare programs. I think he needs to turn that around because — the middle class is key, and we have to focus on that. And, really, the problem with the middle class is not successful people, it’s politicians — but the key to making our country successful it to get everyone on that economic ladder.

“I think all of this is a teachable moment for America,” DeMint continued. “I think Bain Capital was, and I think he finally turned that around and showed some confidence in his success, and we need to do that here. We do worry about the poor when they’re trapped in government dependency programs and the education system’s not producing the skills [and] character for them to succeed, and I think it is an important thing for him to backtrack on that. I don’t think anyone thinks he doesn’t care about the poor, but I think he’s trying to say they’re taken care of right now with these programs. Those are the programs that are hurting, not just the poor, but our country. We need to address it at every level.”


Yes, many people are "trapped in dependency," just like our dialysis patient who's dependent on a machine. But here's the thing; dialysis isn't the problem, kidney disease is the problem. In the same way, the social safety net isn't the problem, poverty is the problem. The point isn't just to get the guy off the machine, the point is to get the patient off the machine because he's well.

But this all ties in with the conservative view of poverty -- poor people are poor because they're lazy. It's like saying people on dialysis aren't really sick, they're just too damned lazy to put in the effort it takes to use their own kidneys. Never mind that our economic system requires low income people to function. After all, if everyone's a millionaire, who hands out burgers from the drive-thru window? Mitt Romney? Jim DeMint? Our economy, as it's set up now, wouldn't function without low-wage workers. That's just the way it works. If everyone's wealth, wealth offers no advantages or security -- the two things that are the whole damned point of being wealthy.

But the "pro-business" approach to labor ensures that things would be even worse. As I wrote a few days ago, high unemployment is actually good for hiring, since it keeps wages low and replacement workers plentiful. Republicans, who serve the 1% almost exclusively now, have plenty of incentive on more than one level to keep employment high as long as possible; it helps out their big donors and it makes President Obama look bad. And they don't actually have to do anything to keep the numbers high, other than block every effort to lower them and make sure nothing gets done. In the face of this Republican pro-poverty economic policy, I'm amazed that DeMint can still, with a straight face, blame poverty on the poor.

But that's today's Republican Party -- shameless to the core. In you're on dialysis, shut down the machine. If you're in poverty, remove the safety net. They're both bad prescriptions, but the point isn't really to solve the problem. The point is to exacerbate it. Not because it's good for this particular patient, but because it's good for another -- actually much healthier -- patient who's willing to pay more.

-Wisco

Super PACs and the Power of Negative Thinking

It's a glimpse into most of our futures. There's a big old crapstorm rolling through America and the front has only passed on for a handful of states. Stick the kids in the basement, stock up on food, and board up your TV, radio, and mailbox. It's going to be bad.


[Washington Post:]

Negative ads were so prevalent in the final week before the Florida primary that they accounted for 92 percent of all campaign commercials that ran.

And the most heavily broadcast commercial this past weekend was not one featuring Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich but Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchor whose image the Romney campaign co-opted for an ad that used a 25-second clip from an old newscast on Mr. Gingrich’s political troubles.

These figures, compiled by the Kantar Media Campaign Media Analysis Group, attest to the bitter turn the race took after the South Carolina primary when Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and the “super PACs” working to elect them unleashed a barrage of attacks.


Before we go any further, I want to say I'm not against negative ads. In fact, I'm for them. Pro-candidate ads are generally useless information about how the candidate will "fight to protect" things that offend no focus group. We learn, for example, that candidate X is for a good education for our children, a strong economy, and getting Washington back to work -- as if there's any candidate out there who's against all that. In short, positive ads tell us nothing. They're useless information. In them, candidates boldly stake a claim to those things guaranteed to appeal to everyone.

It's negative ads that provide actual useful information. Your vote is going to be much more influenced by negative ads -- even as you say you hate them -- than by the positive ads that make every candidate seem like a clone of the same person.

The problem with negative ads comes in the fact that they throw truth out the window. I would really, really, really like to see a truth in advertising law applied to campaign ads. If we could make sure that negative ads were as factual as possible (statements of opinion or hyperbole can always skirt the truth), they'd become a boon to the American voter. I want to know that candidate X voted to privatize Medicare or to invade Iraq. That's the sort of thing that will influence my vote, not the fact that a candidate promises to "stand up for families," just like every other candidate running for every other office. Part of the reason that people vote against things -- rather than for things -- is the fact that the only useful information given to us by candidates is mostly negative.

But if the problem isn't with the ads themselves, it's certainly with the volume. According to the report, "The bulk of the ads were run by Mr. Romney and his PAC, Restore Our Future, which spent a combined $15.4 million on television and radio advertising in Florida. That compares with $3.7 million for Mr. Gingrich and his allies..."

68% were anti-Gingrich, while 23% were anti-Romney. Gingrich went into Florida  with a decent lead after winning South Carolina. By election night, he was swamped. Mitt Romney basically bought the Florida primary from underneath Newt Gingrich (although Gingrich's moon plan probably didn't help him any). Thanks to Citizens United and the rise of the Super PAC, elections are for sale.

-Wisco