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