Romney / Ryan will steal our country

The Republicans drove the United States into a ditch so they could grab the White House. We can't let them get away with it.

For the last two years Republicans stonewalled every attempt to get the economy going again. If the economy improved, Obama would be reelected. That would disrupt their business plan.

Paul Ryan is a liar and a hypocrite. He actively sought federal pork while saying he was opposed to pork. He was part of a budget deal that would withhold funds from the military if the Congress of which he was a part did not do its job, which it did not partly because of his efforts, and now he says he will go back on his word. 

Ryan opposes abortion in every situation as dictated by his Pope, as does Mormon Bishop Mitt Romney, and both refuse to admit when and how they would impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.

Romney will say anything, and has, to get elected. He tears down the Presidency, makes a mockery of America's place in the world, then says our President diminishes the office. Romney plays the bigot in Israel and says stupid things about the English and brags about his wealth. 

 Both men were born on third base and pretend they hit a triple. Romney says culture is what creates success, by which he means the Mormon culture. Ryan is an acolyte of atheist Ayn Rand but picks bits of her "philosophy," such as it is, that justifies his belief in himself. God, what a pair of putzes. With no compassion whatsoever, their hunger for power shows so little class.

Romney/Ryan want the rich to get richer and the poor to suffer: 

Romney/Ryan want to end Social Security to enrich Goldman Sachs, the bankers who ruined the economy then profited from the chaos. 

Romney/Ryan want to end Medicare to enrich the insurance industry which will enrich them in turn and pay their political hyenas. 

Romney/Ryan want to rig the "non-free market"  in favor of large corporations in which they have a stake, to hell with individuals, laborers and small business owners. 

Romney/Ryan will take away individual rights and give them to giant corporations who view all citizens simply as consumers.

Romney/Ryan lie and cheat and steal. We can't let them steal our country. We just can't.

The GOP's magical thinking

Karl Rove is the political operative running the largest funnel of anonymous money into the Republican party's battle for the presidency. On August 15, 2012, the once credible Wall Street Journal gave Rove a forum for the fiction he uses to reshape America:

“… While there would be no changes in Medicare for those 55 or older, starting in 10 years younger Americans … could either pick traditional Medicare or use … money the government spends on each Medicare enrollee to buy private insurance. The reasoning is based on a reliable truth: Competition will lower costs by using market forces to spur innovation and improvement.”

First, the statement is incoherent. Competition is the "market force." Rove is saying competition will lower costs by using competition to spur innovation… or market forces will lower costs by using market forces…" By using two words for the same force, Rove creates an illusion. The creation of a fictional entity to make belief plausible is characteristic of "magical thinking.”

Rove could have written more logically that "competition will lower costs, spur innovation and improvement," but that would have exposed the second magical element of his thought: the market forces he refers to do not actually exist in most areas of health care.

For there to be "market forces" there has to be a functioning "market." A market requires good information available to informed buyers who choose between multiple providers competing for their business. That is not how we make most health care decisions.

That's the GOP sleight of hand. The GOP doesn't support the fundamentals of efficient markets. The GOP doesn't advocate for good information. The GOP doesn't encourage multiple players in a market, especially if dominate companies make campaign contributions.

Instead, the GOP says "government is the enemy" even when government is protecting markets. The GOP calls rules that prevent oligopolies from ruining markets "antibusiness" when those rules are actually business positive. Bank deregulation harmed many businesses in America by turning mortgage markets into gambling casinos.

The delusions of Paul Ryan and Karl Rove that the Wizard of Competition will give us cheaper healthcare that is even better – Cheaper! Better! – is equally distructive. What they mean is that huge health care monopolies, some partly owned by Mitt Romeny's Bain Capital, will get even more of our health care dollars. That's not healthy for anyone.

Hospitals: sick profits from monopoly

Hospitals, once run by nuns and charities, are becoming big business. An article in the New York Times published on August 14, 2012 tells how profits are up, sometimes at the cost of lives (read it here).

A major investor in HCA, one of the largest hospital conglomerates in the country,  is Bain Capital, the firm of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The formula is simple: Buy a hospital, cut expenses and increase revenues to make higher profits. 

Cutting costs has included putting fewer nurses on station and turning people away at the emergency room. These efforts have lead to patient deaths. 

Increasing revenues has included changing billing codes to get more out of Medicare  (no wonder Romney want to "restore cuts to Medicare").

Market place economics do not work well in health care because the purchaser of the service (government and the insurance companies) are not the recipient of the service (patients). Since hospitals in most areas do not face "competition in the market place" because of the size of  the investment, only regulation can keep this essential service from being gruesomely driven by the profit motive. 

Romney wants to reduce that regulation, and favors – surprise– a voucher system that would have patients and states and insurance companies trying to negotiate with hospitals where there is little or no alternative.

Romney wants government smaller so there will be less supervision of the profit-making machines that he has championed his whole life. An exceedingly rich man, he doesn't understand what it is like to be on limited income and facing horrific medical expenses. With his large and involved family, he can't understand what it would be like to be cared for by harried and overworked nurses.

He just knows that there is money to be made.

Romney unhinged

Mitt Romney has become unhinged. Referring to a speech by Vice-President Joe Biden, Romney took words out of context and spewed anger and hate while accusing the presidents campaign of ... anger and hate.

Romney may have paid no taxes for years using off-shore bank accounts to hide his income. He is secretive, burning records and taking hard drives and misleading about his tenure in private industry. Romney is supported by polluters and gamblers and the big banks that nearly destroyed the economy. He wants to turn Social Security over to Goldman Sachs, Medicare over to the insurance industry.

Instead of answering questions about his background or ideas, he lurches into invective about a comment used by the vice president that came from Romney's own campaign.

Romney has done this before. When he was behind his Republican rivals in the primaries, he cranked up the ugly machine. And he won, backed by huge sums of money spreading vile deceit. And since it was successful before, he is going to do it again.

Romney, in his own words spoken by his own lips, has become a caricature of a politician. Avoiding the issues, he has embarked upon a campaign of hatred and fear and misinformation. He has no class.

Mitt Romney: Mormon missionary to America?

Mitt Romney's opacity should concern America in ways beyond hiding his tax returns. Documents were destroyed after he ran the Salt Lake Olympics, hard drives were removed from Massachusetts computers after he was Governor, conflicting information keeps surfacing about the capitalist of creative destruction at Bain.

Romney has been called unknown if not unknowable. This is by intent. Romney has erased his history. So to know the man, one needs to look at his culture. That culture is Mormon.

The isolated nature of Mormonism and Romney's insulated background of privilege together explain the gaffs, awkwardness, role-playing, uniformity and the persistence.

Romney downplays his Mormon background because of bigotry in America toward Mormons and because a focus on the beliefs and practices of the Mormon Church make it less likely he would be elected.

And getting elected is Romney's God-given responsibility, his Mission to America.

Being “at ease” with others requires shared assumptions, shared habits, shared speech, shared values. Mitt Romney comes from a different place than most. A Starbucks-addled, wine sipping urbanite would feel awkward at a Mormon gathering after being told no coffee. No alcohol. No nicotine. "For anyone?" No. And no abortions, gay love, or swearing, either.

At the same time, Romney's values are shared by many non-Mormons. Alcohol's effect on our society is tragic; nicotine is a profit-delivery system at the expense of individual health and national treasure; one can only wish dollars spent on America's craving for caffeine funded education reform.

And healthy, loving, caring families like many in the Mormon community promote gracious adults. A gentleness surrounds many Mormons like an aura. It isn't reticence, we are told, it is taking the time “to consider whether an act is consistent with my values before acting, if what I am about to say or do is consistent with my values,” says an ex-Mormon. These are good habits.

There are strict expectations about behavior in the Mormon Church, though quietly expressed. There is equality but rigid hierarchy. It is judgmental without overt criticism. It is communal but not democratic. Obedience is not open for discussion.

Mitt Romney epitomizes life within the Mormon nest of church and family. Outsiders are kept at a distance. There is little exposure to the lives and ideas of the rest of America. That and his upper-class privilege cause him to say without self-consciousness “Some of my best friends own NASCAR teams” or “I am not concerned about the poor” or "the Jewish culture explains why Israelis have higher incomes than Palestinians."

It is common practice for Mormon “home teachers,” an Elder and a Priest, never only one, to visit every Mormon home once a month. During this visit they bring a “lesson” from the church and also check on the family. If a church member asks for help they will be helped. If the house is in disrepair and the husband ill they will call in assistance. If the wife is sick the Relief Society Sisters, who also go out once a month, offer the family support.

A family's adherence to the precepts of the church are also evaluated. This sense of being reviewed and judged pervades the culture. Romney's candidacy would not exist if it did not have the blessing of the Church.

According to doctrine, Jesus Christ heads the Mormon Church and the President of the Church is a Prophet of God. Through this prophet God speaks. Twelve apostles serve the church president just as the twelve served Christ. These men reveal God's word as direct and continual revelation to his people through the conduit of the priesthood which is held by every adult male Mormon in good standing.

"Romney would consult with the leadership of the church prior to making this decision to run for president and it would have been sanctioned for him to do this," said one ex-Mormon.. “If a Jack Mormon was running for president the Church would be subtly condemning him."

Which begs for the question: What happens when a Mormon Prophet, the church president, “calls” a priesthood holder to the Presidency of the United States? If the Mormon Church is supporting the candidacy to what extent does it have control over the candidate?

There is a very real possibility that Mitt Romney believes he is on a mission from God and that being President of the United States is his calling. In the Mormon faith one does not refuse The Call. This calling comes directly from God. One does not deny God. Doing God's will is the ultimate case of ends justifying the means.

One of the strengths of Mormonism is how it cares for members, the interweave of individuals into family, community and church. While occasionally derided, this interdependence is also a source of support. What the Mormon Church does for members is what liberals envision as the role of government

The Mormon Church may view the current debate about the relationship of individual to society as a power struggle between church and state. If the state provides it lessens the role of the church. If families care for their own it lessens the need for the state.

Republicans imbued Ronald Reagan and George Bush with the myth these role-players were rugged individuals of The West. Mormons do not represent the “rugged individualism” so beloved of the Reagan Right. They are as communal as any in group in America (Utah, home of the Mormon Church, is sometimes referred to as “The Beehive State"). In this sense Romney's values are more similar to inward-looking, self-validating, closed-societies than those of the lone cowboy riding his trusty horse into the sunset.

This is not about the rights of the Mormon Church, the Urim and Thummim, undergarments or any other ritual, whether the U.S. Constitution is a Mormon document divinely inspired, angels appearing to Joseph Smith, Jesus returning to earth in Missouri or Mormons baptizing Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Mormonism does not disqualify Romney any more than being a Catholic disqualified JFK or being black disqualifies Barak Obama. But If Mitt Romney is on a Mission to America, Americans need to think about how our lives will change with Mitt Romney as president.

Instead of discussing policy, Romney spews soundbites. His record of secrecy, from his tax returns to  Bain to the Olympics to Massachusetts, is appalling. So it is necessary to look deeper than his words and the influence of the Mormon Church on Mitt Romney should not be discounted.

They want even more

"What do you say… let's privatize Social Security and make grandmothers trust their retirement to Goldman Sachs?"

"Good one! How about this? Lets buy into the insurance industry. Then we get rid of Medicare. We give them tax money so they can buy insurance – only if they want to! – … then deregulate the insurance industry so the money comes back to us!"

"Good! Good! It worked when we did it for the drug industry! Why not?!"

"Hey! You know how bank deregulation and Goldman Sachs ruined the economy? Those poor idiots have no memory, and they're stupid … let's blame everything on too much government and get them to vote AGAINST programs that benefit them! We get richer and they get less opportunity!"

"Hahaha! Hey: The economy needs money to get going again… Let's cut money OUT of the economy! A little recession is good for them, it will help them fix their values!"

"Whoooeee. Class warfare and we are winning! And while we are at it, let's increase the gap between rich and poor… rich guys can buy three Cadillacs because auto workers will be making even less. Public schools will suck, but our kids go to private schools. So who cares?"

"I like it, I like it. It's win/win: Somebody's got to pump our gas! Let's drill in their back yard, too and get rid of laws that protect their water– we drink Perrier!"

"Oh, oh that's good. That's really good. But how about this, how about this … let's cut taxes on the rich! Let's cut our own taxes!"

"Taxes? I don't' pay taxes. Do you pay taxes?"

"Hahahahahahaahahahahahah."