When Economic Math Gets Fuzzy

     During one of the debates between George W. Bush and Al Gore, then-President Bush coined the term "fuzzy math."  Well, Democrats seem to be using "fuzzy math" on the American people by trying to make the case for more tax increases on the wealthy, as a means of heading off the sequester, which they claim along with Republicans will have dire consequences for many Americans if it is allowed to happen.

     The January "fiscal cliff" was avoided because Republicans joined Democrats ti allow the Bush tax cuts to remain in place for middle-class Americans who earn less than $450,000.00.  President Obama had campaigned on allowing them to expire only for those earning less than $250,000.00 a year.  The President and Democrats agree to the $450,000.00 figure as a concession to Republicans if the taxes were allowed not rise of the those he previously defined as middle class.

     Republicans made a big concession because presumably the political backlash of such tax increases on the middle class would have forced them to agree to cut middle-class cuts in January.  Whatever the reasons, Democrats had the Bush tax cuts made permanent for the middle class and taxes-cuts were allowed to expire (or taxes were allowed to be raised) on the wealthy--and on some of those making  than $450,000.00 a year who may or may not be wealthy.

     Democrats took great joy in gloating over Republicans being between a political rock and a hard place, being on the defensive and forced to agree to a compromise.  But Democrats eventually may be perceived by the American people to be over-playing their hand.  It is certainly looking that way to me.

     President Obama wants even more tax cuts imposed on the wealthy by disallowing to them certain tax exemptions such as mortgages interest and state taxes.  Certainly there are people who are wealthy enough to not be significantly disadvantaged by such new taxes.  However, that probably should not reach down to those earning $450,000.00.  The middle class got their part of the deal when the Bush tax cuts were not allow to expire for them.   

     Americans must be willing to take our medicine when it comes to making adjustments that are necessary to bring the national debt under control and keep Medicare, Medicaid and Social  Security solvent for the coming generations.  I have recommended over the past twenty years of more that Medicare and Social Security should be means-tested.  I thought that, at some level of income, Social Security benefits and Medicare benefits, except in cases of catastrophic illnesses, should be discontinued.  The recommendation was that  these might be phased out.  

     How to best means-test is still something to be debated, but the main thing is that something has to be done to address the increasing number of high income people who are entering retirements and the increasing number of low income workers who are taking their places.  There will come a time when the baby-boomers will have passed on and there will be less demands on Social Security and Medicare.  But until then adjustment must be made to address the present nature of the American population and status of our economy.  Republicans keep saying the President needs to lead.  But when he leads they don't follow.  Maybe they mean he needs to lead his own party.  But it is just as likely that Democrats don't want to be lead either.  Nevertheless, Democrats must be willing to give some on entitlement reforms since that is where most knowledgeable people are say significant dents in the deficit can be made.  Boomers are living longer and end-of-life expenses are increasing, as ways of keeping terminally ill people experiencing ends of life that are lasting longer and making health-care costs increase, perhaps indefinitely.

     My understanding is that the ratio of the national debt to the nation's gross domestic product has been in a steady recent decline as a result of actions taken by President Obama during his presidency.   But how that positive trend should impact the need to address the debt in a more direct manner is less certain.  It becomes part of the fuzzy math of debt reduction.

     Republicans on the far right may be wrong for being unwilling to compromise, but despite being right from their own point of view about taxes and size of government, they become of no consequence when compromises can be shown to be a fair ratio of spending cuts to increased revenues and can attract the support of more broadminded Republicans.  As was shown in addressing the fiscal cliff standoff, there is still the possible of a compromise that can head-off the sequester.  President has on several occasions said that entitlements must be on the table.  That's what Republican say they want.  The sequester does not achieve that.  

     But American politics may be more fuzzy than the debt figures they debate.  Republicans say they want President Obama to lead.  Assuming they may really mean lead them too, maybe he should do so by submitting a plan that is "right" for the times bad Republican even if the average American voter may not understand why.  People have their own opinions, but at some point people expect their leaders to do "the right thing," much as President Obama is asking Republicans to do, despite opposition from their bases.   

     President Obama was elected to be President of the United States for the next four years, to lead the country and the Democratic party not to be led by them.  Unless Democrats get behind their president and give Republicans more of what they want this time, Democrats will be no more deserving of the people's votes in 2014 than the Republican--and there is no third choice.  The House coalition that averted the fiscal cliff can also avert the sequester if Democrats make it possible.

Securing Job and Economic Certainty

     If allowing the Bush tax cuts to end was going to create an economic cliff and crippling uncertainty about hiring, why did wealthy people and corporations accept the tax cuts they did not need and their extensions under President Obama?  And why have both not saved and/or invested those tax savings for the time when the tax cuts would end?  When they were extended in 2010, neither expressed that there would still be uncertainty even if the country made significant progress toward recovery?  

     Businesses and Corporations have enough money to hire more workers, and workers work enough hours to share time with many who are unemployed.  Both would result in those helping to create more jobs sacrificing some income:  smaller pay checks for workers and smaller dividends going into retirement accounts and the pockets of share-holders.  But more people will have the certainty about working which means more certainty about people remaining able to buy goods and pay for services.  Because of greater job security, more people can be trusted to buy cars and homes which in turn will increase--or at least tend to sustain--the needs for the things working people make and the services they provide. 

     Government, business, workers, and consumers are the players in an economic system.  Government of the people, by the people and for the people are the umpires or referees who must decide what the rules of the game must be and when the game is being played fairly. and when both are too complicated to be understood even when they are transparent.

     Voter suppression is an example of those who control government attempting to restrict voting by people who have a stake in who is elected.  Everybody votes for his or her special interest.  Why should poor Americans who need government assistance not be able to vote for candidates who promise to help them?  Wealthy people do it.

     Businesses say they must have certainty about future profits before it can start hiring.  But consumers also will need certainty if we ever recover from this recession--possibly becoming a depression--before they will spend as they did in the past.  They will instead save more for rainy days and retirement since both employment and retirement benefits will continue be uncertain so long as businesses continue to wait on certainty.

     The way to return certainty to America's economy is to redistribute wealth opportunities by reassessing the value of different kinds of work in the workplace.

Presently, while inventors, innovators and decision-makers are critical to the success of businesses, workers play a more important part in that processes of making the products and providing the services than is too often reflected in their financial compensations for that work.  The fact that there are more people available to work on low level jobs should not account for the value of the contribution to the economy.

      If relative incomes at all levels a business was constant, it would produce levels of certainty that could sustain the economy even in tough times.  The citizens of the United States are like members of a family, a big family.  The children within a family aren't rewarded according to their scores on intelligence tests, grades or other achievements that may reflect differences in IQs levels or present levels of motivation among the children.  The quality and amount of  food they eat and  clothes they wear don't depend on differences in such attributes.  Now families could make it a rule to do so and could come up with reasons to do so.  But it would not be good for relationships within the family.  And it also would not work if the spouse who has the higher income feels that he or she should drive the more expensive car or wear more expensive clothes.

     When Karl Marx said that a society should expect from all members according to their abilities and provided to all members according to their needs, he was not saying that money should be taken from the wealthy and given to those who are less able.  He also was not saying that the poor should sit back and expect such redistributions.  The poor have abilities also, not as much as the most able but are expected to contribute their livelihood to the extent of their abilities.  

     Similarly for the most able among us, they have needs to succeed: to pursue professions, invent, create, establish businesses and otherwise pursue wealth- and job-creating opportunities.  They must be enabled to take advantages of opportunities--educational and otherwise--that fulfilling those aspirations not just possible but likely for both themselves and others within the society.

     But while the society should provide opportunities for people to become wealthy, it must limit the amount of wealth they can keep for themselves.  Part of the taxes on wealth must assist the most needy, but perhaps a larger part must provide the kinds of education that motivate, enable and maximize success at the lower end and middle of the wealth scale.  Both the most able and the less able will have received what they need to maximize their contributions to society.   But unless limits are  placed on the amount of wealth one family can accumulate, others in the society must be impoverished in order to feed an insatiable greed.

     Life-styles would not change--only images--by multi-billionaires becoming billionaires becoming multi-millionaires becoming millionaires becoming near or future millionaires?  Incomes of the working poor and middle class would increase commensurate with individual abilities and effort.  If these were phased in over ten years, there would be certainty about profits, incomes and consumption relative to the health of the economy.

     Unfortunately, if by the time this column is read, President Obama has not been elected and Democrats have not gained control of both houses of Congress with wide margins of victory, then regardless of which party succeeds, middle-class America will have defeated itself again, either by voting for its enemies or by not realizing it had survival reasons to vote.

Politicians Who Deceive Voters Must Be Punished

     If a person who starts out on a journey by automobile from Houston, TX to Los Angeles, CA calls home when he reaches El Paso, the person receiving the call does not report that the driver failed to reach Los Angeles.  Likewise, the journey out of a near depression, which became the responsibility of President Obama, is making progress toward a recovered economy.   Not having yet reached Los Angeles is not failure.   Mitt Romney calls such progress toward recovery failure, and, mysteriously, many Americans agree.      

     But the following don't sound like failures:  

    (1) Ending the war in Iraq;  signing a bill guaranteeing equal pay to women for equal work;  (2) Passing health care plan that insures all Americans; passing a stimulus package that saved millions of jobs of teachers, fire fighters, and police officers;  (3) Extending the Bush tax cuts during the low points of the present Great Recession; Finding and bring to justice Osama bin Laden;  (4) Reducing middle-class and small business tax cuts; extending unemployment benefits during the depth of the recession;  (5) Presenting a jobs bill, ignored by Congress, which would have further helped address the nation's critical infrastructure, clean energy and employment needs; (6) Wanting to introduce an immigration reform bill but not having able to get congressional support for such the bill;  (7) Preventing the interest on student loans from being increased; (8) Expanding money available for student loans by removing middle men and granting direct federal loans; (10) Initiating a "Race to the Top" program to increase the performances of America's schools; (11) Improving the image of the United States throughout the world;  (12) Ending the war in Iraq;  confirming the end of 2014 as the end of the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan; (13) Having the American auto industry and banking system, thereby preventing the nation--and the world--from plunging into another depression; (14) Decreasing the monthly number of jobs being loss by American workers and gradually reversed the trend to an increasing number of jobs being created;   (15) Reducing the unemployment rate to 7.8% (under 8%), lower than what he inherited; (16) Protecting women's health and reproductive right, etc.   

     These are just some Obama successes on the journey toward fixing America's economy.     

     However, these successes have been referred to as failures by Romney without having to say what he would have done differently.  When asked such questions, he says he "would not have done what this president did."  When asked what he will do in the future, his answer is that he will "do better."  But is never asked to tell how many jobs he created as governor of  Massachusetts or since.

      The candidate we elect to the presidency should be one we can trust to mean what he/she says and seriously try to achieve what is promised during the campaign.  Whoever wins should be able to clearly identify the conditions or obstructions that may have prevented campaign promises from being achieved.  Many voters don't  remember--or never knew--Republicans in Congress did it.

     Unfortunately, poor schools produce poorly educated Americans who are more likely to be sufficiently uninformed about political and economic matters to be easily confused and deceived.  Being poorly educated and uninformed are not equivalent to being unintelligent.  Rather, they are the consequence of being deprived of opportunities to observe and engage in rational discussions about competing political and economic ideas, and to think about and propose better alternatives.  "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,"  Thomas Jefferson.  He says further that  "No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity."

     Who is the real Mitt  Romney?  Why would even informed people conclude that the most recent Mitt is the real and final one?  Why do people, despite his many reversals on issues, believe that he will keep his word about the reasons they have decided to vote for him?  More than eighty CEOs have asked Congress and the presidential candidates to cut spending and raise their taxes to address the national debt.  If that's true, then Romney could change his mind again--this time about cutting taxes--and promise taxes on the wealthy.  But, then, he could change his mind again after the election.

      This election is uniquely important because this could be the first presidential election where a candidate can be both publicly and frequently inconsistent and loose with the truth, and neither the candidate nor his party be politically punished  for it.   Mitt Romney (a former Mormon pastor, minister and bishop) despite being deceptive and often loose with the truth presently has at least an even chance to be elected President of the United States.  A nation is in trouble when supposed Christians no longer even pretend.  This places at risk the integrity of all American institutions.  

     Attempts to suppress voting by segments of the populations are discussed primarily by those who are targeted.  Polls suggest that most voters have no problem with the voter suppression efforts.   Rewarding those who benefit from voter suppression reflects on the character of those who have gained control of our economy and politics and on that of an uninformed or indifferent public.    Most troubling is the extent to which many religious leaders and religious communities are either supportive of or silent about these flaws in our nation's conscience.

     This election, therefore, becomes crucial, less because of who may be elected president and more because of (1) how it reflects on the kind of religious values and political and economic reasoning characterize the American electorate, (2) what it will do to world's confidence in the wisdom of America's economic and political leaders and (3) what will be modeled by Americans and passed on to our children: America's politicians, economists, clergy and voters of the future.  

     Placing the most powerful military the world has ever known back into the hands of some of the most mistrusted, war-loving political leaders of all times is scary.

Debates Count-- But How, for What, and for Whom?

     When an electorate is not sufficiently informed about the issues and the candidates positions and ideas related to those issues, presidential elections can be won based on the quality of performances during debates (on how well the speaker spoke and how convincing and presidential the speaker looked) rather than the quality of the candidate's ideas and veracity of his/her assertions.

     Because I had concluded how useless and maybe even counter-productive debates might be, I considered not listening to this year's Obama-Romney debates.  The media were communicating that positions and ideas expressed by candidates during the debates could nullify things already said either prior to or during the campaigns.   It was as if voters are being told to treat the pre-campaign dialogues as only training for the championship match, where the championship is unrelated to anything that transpired prior to the big match.  Past lies, inconsistencies and condescending remarks about fellow Americans no longer matter.  Everything needed to select a winner rests on what happens during the debates, making an etch-a-sketch strategy possibly a winning strategy when enough voters who are undecided because they are uninformed use the debates are their primary source of information. 

     Expressions such as convictions, passion, determination and sincerity can be inferred from a candidate's jesters or manners of speech, but they cannot be properly evaluated in the absence of the candidate's history because they can be learned performances.  Even such things as shaking one's head when the opponent says something that is persuasive but not true or conflicts with previous positions can arouse suspicion in the minds of less informed viewers about the opponent's veracity.  And because no fact-checker is present during the debates,   skeptical viewers might have reasons to seek out fact-checks in the future.     

     Unfortunately, many viewers will have already voted or will not seek any harder to become informed about the candidates after the debates than they did before the debates.  Debates especially don't equip voters to make wise decisions in choosing the candidate more likely to respond properly to that "3:00 call in the morning" and which one is more likely to keep promises.

      A better debate formate might be one which allows candidates to question each other on a list of predetermined issues.  All questions that need to be asked, especially the toughest ones, are more likely asked by the opposition.  Partisan interviewers, one or two from each party might be even better.   Chris Matthews and   Rachel Maddow  vs  Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be a perfect contest.

     Despite everything that I thought was wrong about these debates, I decided to listen to the first one.  And at first, I thought Romney had won.  Romney threw a lot of punches.   But most of them missed.  Known lies and flip-flops are misses--unless the opponent gives good reasons for changing positions.  So I changed my mind: The debate was a draw.    The fact that Romney lied and flip-flopped so skillfully, allowed him to get points that he did not deserve.  But he gains points not only with style but by twice pointing out instances of wasteful investments by the President on failed clean-energy projects.  The result was consensus opinion that, despite lost points for lying and inconsistencies, Romney was the winner.  

     Obama got points for consistency and truthfulness, but he lost points for failing to challenge Romney's lies and flip-flops.   He also lost points for failing to criticize Romney about the reasons that caused Romney's falling polling numbers prior to the debates: Bain Capital, the "47%", refusing to submit more than two tax returns, lying about certain components of his health plan.  Romney was even allowed to pass himself off as the champion of the middle class, teachers and the poor.  But  when Obama lost points for failing to take advantage of the many opportunities to challenge Romney, those challengeable events also count against Romney.  So, in conclusion, Obama wins the overall debate--by a point.   Integrity counts, and flip-flops and lies are low blows.

      Responses by potential voters in several groups of undecided voters suggest that many people who are responding to the various polls after the debates are as uninformed about the positions and opinions of the candidates prior to the debate as are many of those in the focus groups.  The media have convinced voters that what candidates say during debates should tell more about who a candidate is than the candidate's history.  Even Obama supporters were caught up in Romney's performance, giving it more weight than Obama's honesty. 

     What and who a man is and what he believes are reflected in how he behaves and what he says when he is in the company of like-minded people, not in the impressions he rehearses in order to change public perceptions and expectations.  If a candidate changes his/her mind about his beliefs or positions on issues several times during a campaign or during his political career and is loose with the truth, how can voters believe anything he claims to believes and promises to do?  A Romney election would strongly suggest that America, by placing it faith in liars and flip-floppers, is becoming an increasingly dysfunctional government, with a decreasing ability to solve problems, provide creditable world leadership both toward effecting a world economic recovery and continuing to hinder terrorists ability to terrorize.

     Truthful or not, flip-flopper or not, undeserving or not, Mitt Romney may have convinced enough independents and borderline Republicans and Democrats that he has moved toward the ideological middle, enough to elect him president, regardless of how well the President and Vice President Biden perform in the next debates.  Romney's base won't mind; all they want is for Obama to be defeated.  

     This last debate, of course, was only round one of a four-round contest.  But the etch-a-sketch strategy, which we Democrats thought to be folly, is now being implemented, and it's no longer a laughing matter.  

      

Reforming Education Top to Bottom

     If a group of smart people, each with degrees in health, English, history, philosophy, or music were given hundred barrels of unrefined oil and given the challenge of making that oil usable to make a 2012 BMW run properly, many, if not most, of them would have a problem not only doing it, but within their existing training and experiences even finding a way to do it.   Many teachers are given such a responsibilities of taking 20-30 unrefined children and to drawing or otherwise separating out the ingredients that can make a society work.  But many, if not most, have had little training in making crude, unrefined children ready for service.  And the conclusion is too often drawn that doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists, teachers, lawyers, business entrepreneurs and other refined products that are essential for a viable society are not there.

     Southeast Texas knows how to refine oil.   But at one time it had no oil, less on know how to refine it.  Then it had oil but didn't know what to do with it.  But when it finally was discovered what could be done with petroleum and what were the best ways to do it, everybody with oil either refined it that way or found somebody who could, and eventually oil all over the world came to be refined essentially the same way.  And because successful ways of extracting the products of petroleum was copied in different locations all over the world, we drive cars, fly planes, and run trains and trucks, and reap other benefits of that shared means of refinement.  No excuse is made for the fact that some oil is harder to refine than others, that some of it comes from undesirable places (coming from the "wrong" kinds of homes so to speak.)  They learned to make adjustments, so that both sweet and sour crude can be successfully refined, though not in exactly the same ways.

     This analogy could easily have been building bridges like the Golden Gate, sky scrapers like the Empire State Building, finding cure for dread diseases, or transplanting organs.  People learn to do what needs to be done by refusing to accept what other say cannot be done.  They say it can't be done, yet.   Children are told that they can solving the problems, yet, that they can't properly interpret passages, yet.  The message to their brains is never that it can't be done.  The message to your brain always should be "I can't do it yet."  Maybe after a few more minutes or hours or days of thinking about it, I'll get its.  And even if I don't solve this problem, my minds will be in better condition to solve the next one, simply because of the time spent exercising it by trying to solve the previous ones.

     Teaching is a problem-solving activity.  Some teachers, because of self-motivation to be successful or because of concern for the children they teach, learn on their own how to solve this problem of refining the curiosity, the skills-potentials, and the attitudes of the children they teach.  Other teachers learn how to do it by going to colleges and universities that teach them to do it.  Still other teachers learn it from fellow teachers, while other learn to do it from their instructional leaders within their schools or school districts who either teach or model for them how to do it.

     There are children who will learn well despite the teacher's method of teaching or attitudes toward the children they teach.  All some children need is the opportunity to learn and a reasonable effort by teachers to cause it to happen.  But just as there are established methods that can refine different types of petroleum and strategies for build bridges across different expanses of land or water, there are ways that can span the gaps in learning abilities and learning styles and make all children successful.  Maximum success for certain students may require small variations which may be different in dealing with different children.   Different strategies may be needed to motivate some children.  Some children may need boosts in confidence by first being exposed to learning opportunities that guarantee early success.  When time and effort result in success, that success breeds a desire for success and the confidence that time and effort will be rewarded.  It works for student and teacher.

     But every oil refinery can tell you or show you one paper or in picture from beginning to end how it produces its products, from the design, construction and operation of a cracking unit to quality control of the products the processes  generates.  

     Every construction company or engineer can show you its plan for building a bridge.  They can describe for you everything that will be done from preparing the ground to laying the foundations to laying the final slab.  Everyone who has the time and is interested enough can see on a daily basis the rise of a skyscraper, from the laying of pilings to the floor levels ascending skyward until the final brick is laid.  No one who is interested has to wonder if the bridge or sky scrapper is being built.

     Just as oil can be refined, bridges and buildings can be built by using the strategies and designs that have been successful used by others, and just as there are plans and evidence of progress, why can education in our schools do the same?  Or perhaps a better question is:  Why don't they or why won' t they do any better?

     For one thing, few schools or school districts to my have plans for educating children that can be shown and explained to patrons.  I'm talking about processes that are written on paper and demonstrated on video tape, showing how children are taught and evaluated, how instructional and testing procedures are evaluated and what changes have been made to fix recent deficiencies in what children are taught and how well they are learning.  

     Any board of education that cannot show patrons a detailed plan, developed by it and its superintendent, which describes how children are taught within the district and the roles, effectiveness and modes of evaluation of the board, the superintendent, assistant superintendents, supervisors, principals and teachers in the educational process isn't interested in the children if they are not continuously asking to see the plan and expecting credible evidence about how well the plan is working.

     Tax payers who care about the district's children also will want answers.

Debates Count: But How, for What and for Whom?

     When an electorate is not sufficiently informed about the issues and the candidates positions and ideas related to those issues, presidential elections can be won based on the quality of performances during debates (on how well the speaker spoke and how convincing and presidential the speaker looked) rather than the quality of the candidate's ideas and veracity of his/her assertions.

     Because I had concluded how useless and maybe even counter-productive debates might be, I considered not listening to this year's Obama-Romney debates.  The media were communicating that positions and ideas expressed by candidates during the debates could nullify things already said either prior to or during the campaigns.   It was as if voters are being told to treat the pre-campaign dialogues as only training for the championship match, where the championship is unrelated to anything that transpired prior to the big match.  Past lies, inconsistencies and condescending remarks about fellow Americans no longer matter.  Everything needed to select a winner rests on what happens during the debates, making an etch-a-sketch strategy possibly a winning strategy when enough voters who are undecided because they are uninformed use the debates are their primary source of information. 

     Expressions such as convictions, passion, determination and sincerity can be inferred from a candidate's jesters or manners of speech, but they cannot be properly evaluated in the absence of the candidate's history because they can be learned performances.  Even such things as shaking one's head when the opponent says something that is persuasive but not true or conflicts with previous positions can arouse suspicion in the minds less informed viewers about the opponent's veracity.  And because no fact-checker is present during the debates,   skeptical viewers might have reasons to seek out fact-checks in the future.     

     Unfortunately, many viewers will have already voted or will not seek any harder to become informed about the candidates any after the debates than they did before the debates.  Debates especially don't equip voters to make wise decisions in choosing the candidate more likely to respond properly to that "3:00 call in the morning" and which one is more likely to keep promises.

      A better debate formate might be one which allows candidates to question each other on a list of predetermined issues.  All questions that need to be asked, especially the toughest ones, are more likely asked by the opposition.  Partisan interviewers, one or two from each party might be even better.   Chris Matthews and   Rachel Maddow  vs  Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be a perfect contest.

     Despite everything that I thought was wrong about these debates, I decided to listen to the first one.  And at first, I thought Romney had won.  Romney threw a lot of punches.   But most of them missed.  Known lies and flip-flops are misses--unless the opponent gives good reasons for changing positions.  So I changed my mind: The debate was a draw.    The fact that Romney lied and flip-flopped so skillfully, allowed his to get points that he did not deserve.  But he gains points not only with style but by twice pointing out instances of wasteful investments by the President on failed clean-energy projects.  The result was consensus opinion was that, despite lost points for lying and inconsistencies, Romney was the winner.  

     Obama, though, got points for consistency and truthfulness, he lost points for failing to challenge Romney's lies and flip-flops.   He also lost points for failing to criticize Romney about the reasons that caused Romney's falling polling numbers prior to the debates: Bain Capital, the "47%", refusing to submit more than two tax returns, lying about certain components of his health plan.  Romney was even allowed to pass himself off as the champion of the middle class, teachers and the poor.  But  when Obama lost points for failing to challenge Romney when he should have been challenged, it counts against Romney too.  So, in conclusion, Obama wins the overall debate--by a point.   Integrity counts--or should.

      Responses by voters in several focus groups of undecided voters that followed the debates and group interviews prior to the debate, suggest that many people who are responding to polls after the debates are as uninformed about the positions and opinions of the candidates prior to the debate as are many of those in the focus groups.  They are not aware of lies, contradictions and distortions.  The media have convinced voters that what candidates say during debates should tell more about who a candidate is than the candidate's history.  Too much weight is given to a good performance.  Even Obama supporters were caught up in Romney's performance, giving it more weight than than Obama's honesty. 

     What a man is and what he believes are reflected in how he behaves and what he says when he is in the company of like-minded people, not in the impressions he rehearses in order to change public perceptions and expectations.  If a candidate changes his/her mind about his beliefs or positions on issues several times during a campaign or during his political career and is loose with the truth, how can voters believe that he will not change his mind about the last things he says he believes and promises to do?  A Romney election would strongly suggest that America, by placing it faith in liars and flip-floppers, is becoming an increasingly dysfunctional government, with a decreasing ability to solve problems, provide creditable world leadership both toward effecting a world economic recovery and continue hindering terrorists ability to terrorize.

     Truthful or not, flip-flopper or not, undeserving or not, Mitt Romney may have convinced enough independents and borderline Republicans and Democrats that he has moved toward the ideological middle, enough to elect him president, regardless of how well the President and Vice President Biden perform in the next debates.  Romney's base won't mind; all they want is for Obama to be defeated.  

     This last debate was only round one of a four-round contest.  But the etch-a-sketch strategy, which we Democrats thought to be folly, is now being implemented, and it's no longer a laughing matter.  

      

     

Ronald

Email:  rcspoon@earthlink.net

Blog: ronaldcspooner.blogspot.com

U.S. Needs Honest, Agreeable GOP

    I haven't submitted a column for the past few weeks, not because I have not been listing, reading, thinking and writing, but because there have been so many things to write about that I found myself either starting to write another opinion before finishing the one I was on, or trying to incorporate disparate content in a single column.  At my age, ideas vanish rather quickly, so I have to write them down quickly.  Writing them down, however, triggers supporting ideas, and, soon, I'm writing another column.  All of these topics will remain timely until after the November elections, and likely will be fully developed before then.  

     There are people who believe that whatever they believe is right must be pursued even if traditional values suggest and most people believe both the ends and the means of pursuit are wrong.   Only recently has such deeds and dealings been welcomed into the America's value system.  Now, people don't seen to mind their politicians lying.  Some are happy because they benefit from the lies.  Others are happy just to have been on the winning side even if winning means they lose.  This expanded abandonment of traditional values of all kinds explains why Americans are growing increasingly tolerant of unkindly--and even immoral--actions toward more vulnerable Americans.

     Over the past several years television game shows such as Survivors and Big Brothers have reinforced the practices of lying, deceiving, conniving and double-crossing by rewarding them if they can be a used in a winning combination. it's supposedly all in fun but it softens society's moral resistance.  As in the real world, the winners are usually not only the best at deceit; they also have other attributes that enables them to effectively use lies .

     Prior to the Republican convention, the question had been asked among media talk-show hosts and guests:  What can Mitt Romney--and those who will speak in his behalf--say so the American people will really know who Mitt Romney is?  As if his past and present actions have not already revealed a lot toward answering that question.  If, during his youth, Romney actually threw a homosexual young man to the ground and cut his hair--which Romney apparently has not denied--that's who he is.  With a smile on his face, a disrespectful and insensitive Mitt Romney told the proud African American audience at the NAACP convention that the first thing he will do as president is get rid of Obamacare.  Tha't who Mitt Romney is.  When he falsely (evenly solemnly) claimed that he wanted Obama to be successful, that's who Mitt Romney is.  The man who has been distorting the words and effectiveness of the actions of the President every chance he gets, that's who Mitt Romney is.  The man who is constantly changing who he himself is reflects who Mitt Romney is.  Trying to remake Mitt Romney look good is like saying the only thing President Obama needs at the Democratic convention is for some people close to him say that the economy is doing much better than it appears, and that 92.7% of Americans who want to work and need to work have jobs.

     Marco Rubio said that America's greatest virtue is its faith in God.  He also quoted "from whom much is given much is expected."  It means that, from those who have had the good fortune to inherit wealth or acquire it on their own, there is the responsibility not to spread the wealth but to pay more taxes to help those who have not been so fortunate or so blessed.  Some people give more money to churches, charities, and government so that money can be used to pay the nation's bills and give necessary help to those in need.  The government services the same kinds of needs as churches and charities--just on a larger scale. 

      Government must help people who either don't  belong to a church, may not attend church, or don't belong to those churches whose members have enough wealth to assist members in need.  Government serves those who very often are not served by the charities to which wealthy people contribute.  It is hard to understand why wealthy people are able to make a distinguish between giving the money to government so it can both pay its bills and help those in need and similarly giving money to churches and charities so they can do the same things.  Inefficiencies exist in all organizations (churches, unions, charities, etc.) where contributions often flows through the hands of dishonest handlers, to unknown destinations for unintended purposes, which are determined by unknown and unethical decision-makers.  Neither of these has ever been a reason, however, to stop contributing when it is obvious that the organizations are putting much more money to good use than may subject to abuse by a few individuals.

     There is a Republican party out there that is not represented by those who are leading the party at this time.  There are Evangelicals within the Republican party who don't believe that politicians should be telling lies to those who they believe don't know any better and those they believe know better but don't care.  These Republican feel that if they must choose between liars and those who support abortions, they will choose liars as the lesser evil.  

     Democrats would seem to believe the contrary, that abortions are a lesser evil than lying.  That's because Democrats have failed to communicate the difference between women HAVING THE RIGHT to have abortions under certain conditions and their believing abortions ARE MORALLY RIGHT.  Similarily, saying that people have the right to marry someone of the same sex is not the same as saying that it is believed to be the right thing to do.  The Constitution and the Supreme Court Justices interpretation of the Constitution give people CERTAIN RIGHTS that they have regardless of how other people may feel about it.  

        America and Republicans need to resurrect the honest, big tent, creative and compromising GOP.  But they need Democratic victories this year to do it.   Republicans know that they didn't just let Obama fail; they hindered success.  A vote for Democrats this year would not be a vote for abortions and gay marriages.   It is a vote for bipartisanship.   Like most Republicans, most Democrats don't engage in nor do they necessarily condone every activity permitted by the Constitution.  In November, only God and the voters will be in the voting booths.  And if Sen. Rubio is right about our faith in God being America's greatest virtue, then, lying, misdeeds and evil intentions don't have a chance.