Secretary Of Business

Another effective ad from Team Romney...

"Five Days" to go...

Five Days

It's Time To Vote

The Romney campaign has done some good videos this year. Here's another...

American Crossroads: "At Stake"

Clint's back, and there's nothing subtle - or amusing - about this one.

The Clear Path

Mitt Romney's close:



It works.

New Romney Ad - Apology Tour

Apology Tour



Yeah, that works...

The Choice on Jobs

The Choice on Jobs



I agree with those who think that this is another effective ad from the Romney campaign. And, in the established context, the overall effect is fair. Obama did promise change, and jobs, and he's obviously not delivered.

But the statement that he made the other night that "some jobs are not going to come back" is absolutely true, and does not represent "giv[ing] up hope." The US economy is not producing the number of buggy whips that it once did, and those jobs aren't coming back. It's going to be a long, long time before much of the low-skilled manufacturing jobs which have left for the far east are profitable to bring back. (And if it becomes profitable for Americans to do those jobs again, it's very bad news for the American worker, because it means our economy, and standard of living, have been effectively destroyed.)

So, yeah, there are a lot of jobs that aren't coming back. But even more relevant are the jobs that will come back once the Federal Government stops implementing the economic policies that this administration wants. So the ad is, if not perfectly fair (albeit much more honest and fair than most of the Obama campaign advertising has been), plenty fair enough...

Laughing at the Issues

That was quick. A strong new ad from the GOP...

Freedom To Succeed

Thomas Peterffy, a Hungarian immigrant, believes in freedom. And is putting his money where his mouth is with this ad, which he produced and is paying to run.

I grew up in a socialist country and I have seen what that does to people. There is no hope, no freedom, no pride in achievement. The nation became poorer and poorer, and that's what I see happening here.

I have a friend who also grew up behind the Iron Curtain, in then-Czechoslovakia, and, while I haven't talked to him about this, I know that he's entirely in agreement with it. (And if you think I get worked up about the media in this country [and I do], you haven't heard anything until you've heard the people who grew up in the Pravda regimes get started on what the media in this country is doing to America.)

According to CNN,

Peterffy ... expects to spend $5-$10 million on the ad buy, depending on its effectiveness. The spot will run on CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, and test markets in Ohio, Wisconsin, and possibly Florida.

The one-minute spot, which began airing Wednesday and will continue through Election Day, has no mention of any specific politician or lawmaker. It's simply a plea for an end to what he sees as growing hostility to personal success - and to vote Republican.

To which I say, God Bless You, Mr. Peterffy. This is must-see viewing...

Obama - right on something...

A new infographic from the GOP:

...[I]f you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters.

If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things.

Barack Obama, 2008

"The Dinner Table"

This ad, from Americans For Prosperity, is inspiring praise. Well-deserved, I think. This one stands out, and quietly cuts through the clutter of the race...

Truth

This is obviously true, which makes it shocking to see someone actually writing it...

Verdict is in: Obama levels more personal attacks

A crabby, negative campaign that has been more about misleading and marginal controversies than the major challenges facing the country? Barack Obama and Mitt Romney can both claim parenthood of this ugly child.

But there is a particular category of the 2012 race to the low road in which the two sides are not competing on equal terms: Obama and his top campaign aides have engaged far more frequently in character attacks and personal insults than the Romney campaign.

With a few exceptions, Romney has maintained that Obama is a bad president who has turned to desperate tactics to try to save himself. But Romney has not made the case that Obama is a bad person, nor made a sustained critique of his morality a central feature of his campaign.

Obama, who first sprang to national attention with an appeal to civility, has made these kind of attacks central to his strategy. The argument, by implication from Obama and directly from his surrogates, is not merely that Romney is the wrong choice for president but that there is something fundamentally wrong with him.

As noted. Repeatedly.

Mixed blessings...

It's been fascinating to watch, over the course of the past week, as the Democrats have leaped on the Ryan selection as dooming Medicare, only to have the attack boomerang. The Republican ticket is talking Medicare, but not responsively, not defensively; they're using Medicare as an attack against the President.



 Paul Ryan's campaigning on Medicare in Florida today, with his mom.

“What he probably did not mention yesterday is that when he passed his signature health care achievement Obamacare he raided 716 billion dollars from Medicare to pay for Obamacare,” Ryan said at Walsh University. “This will lead to fewer services for seniors. President Obama’s campaign calls this an achievement. You think raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare? Neither do I.”

He added that the Romney ticket will “protect and strengthen Medicare, leave it intact for our current seniors and save it for the next generation.”

And there's a lot of material there for them to use in attacking the Obama administration on the Medicare front.

Countdown To Bankruptcy

So, if this is an issue that helps Romney beat Obama, well, obviously, I'm all in favor of that.

But. I dislike - strongly - the raising of Medicare to sacred cow. It has been for the Democrats since it was first passed, but to have the Republicans join them in according it that status is disconcerting.  I'm not saying that it should be eliminated today - it can't be - but it's bad public policy and we should be working for a way to move away from it.  As I've written before (about Social Security - it all goes for Medicare, too):

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It is utterly and completely unsustainable without major modifications. (Medicare is the same, but I'm just going to address Social Security right now.) It is a Ponzi scheme because, contrary to the way that government officials like to talk about it, it's not a savings plan, it's not an investment plan, it's not a retirement account. It's a tax, a direct transfer from working Americans to retired Americans. And the ratio of workers to retirees has fallen significantly since the law went into effect, and continues to fall. Where each retiree was supported by about 16 workers in 1950, it's now down to about three and headed to about two as the baby boomers retire¹. And there is no "trust fund." The money comes in to the treasury, the money goes out of the treasury.

So it can't be sustained. The problem is, it can't be eliminated, either. I think it's a bad plan, I think it's bad public policy, bad economics, and would have fought against it if I were around when it was proposed, but since it's now been in effect for 70 years, it cannot just be eliminated. The fact is, the government has made a commitment to those who are retired, and those nearing retirement age, to provide this program, and the government is morally obligated to follow through. Those people have lived their lives under the assumption that that commitment was real. They've paid their Social Security taxes, on the belief that, when it was their turn, funds would be provided for them, too. So you can't just cut it. Unfortunately.

And, to be fair to Ryan, he clearly recognizes that.  His plan takes the right approach - sustain the program for those who are currently, or soon to be dependent on it, while providing superior alternatives to wean society as a whole off of it.  Current and near-term future taxpayers are screwed by this approach, of course, but they're screwed anyway.  We need to fix the problems.

Chesterton was right...

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.

- G. K. Chesterton

"Anger & Division"

This one is very well done.



Of course, there's no shortage of material with which to work...

Paid In

Hmm... I wonder what the Obama supporters will claim is the lie in this one?

Paid In

The Romney Welfare attack, as syllogism

Having been accused of employing pretzel logic for defending the truth of the Romney attack ad on the Obama administration welfare policy, I see that it needs to be addressed again.  So let's try it in the form of a syllogism.

Definitions:

"Guts" - central elements, main purposes, integral contents

"Gutted" - Removed the guts of

Major Premise:  One of the "guts" of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act was that it contained non-waivable work requirements.

Minor Premise:  The Obama administration, in its July 12, 2012 letter, claimed for the Secretary of Health and Human Services the right to waive work requirements.

Conclusion:  The Obama administration has gutted the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.

Clearly, that's a valid syllogism.  Equally clearly, the minor premise is true.  The only possible argument that one could make for the syllogism being false is that the major premise is not true. 

Now, one can argue about whether or not waivers might make the system better, more effective, more humane, more cost-effective or anything else.  But if the non-waivable nature of the work requirements were one of the "guts" of the reform (and all of the evidence suggests that that is the case), and those "guts" have been removed or overridden or ignored, then the act has been gutted.  Period.  And there's no pretzel logic whatsoever required to get to that position.  It's all very simple and straightforward.

Romney/Ryan

Big Solutions



I love the Ryan pick. He's the most articulate conservative voice on the biggest issue facing this country right now - the out-of-control entitlements and the fiscal ruin that we're headed towards if we don't deal with them. Mitt has ensured that this is an election about big issues, and, whether they win or not, the Republican ticket is on the right (and correct) side.  I was always going to be happy to walk into the ballot booth and vote against Obama; I'm going to be very happy to walk into the ballot booth and vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan...

I find it interesting to note that they doctored the video (well, at least the audio) because when Mitt introduced Ryan, he introduced him as "the next President of the United States." He later acknowledged and corrected the misstatement, but for the ad, they've just inserted "vice" into the statement.

The Ad Wars continue...

There's been a lot of hyperventilating on the part of the anti-Romney forces about the vicious "lies" that Romney's campaign is telling. Here's Steve Benen, at Rachel Maddow's blog, with a typical example.

For those who can't watch clips online, the ad shows President Clinton signing welfare reform into law in 1996, "requiring work for welfare." The spot then argues, however, that President Obama "quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements." The voiceover tells viewers, "Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.... and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare."

We then learn, "Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement because it works."

Romney's lying. He's not spinning the truth to his advantage; he's not hiding in a gray area between fact and fiction; he's just lying. The law hasn't been "gutted"; the work requirement hasn't been "dropped." Stations that air this ad are disseminating an obvious, demonstrable lie.

The ad in question is here.


The text:

In 1996 President Clinton and a bipartisan Congress helped end welfare as we know it by requiring work for welfare.

But on July 12, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job, they just send you your welfare check. And welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.

Mitt Romney will restore the work requirement, because it works.

So, is the Romney ad lying? Is it "an obvious, demonstrable lie"?

Uh, no. It is not.

Obviously, the first and last sentences should be fairly non-controversial; it's that middle passage that has people up in arms.  So let's look at it.

But on July 12, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.

What is the "fact" in that sentence that would qualify as a lie? Not the beginning, because on July 12, President Obama did, in fact, make an announcement about federal welfare benefits. And it was quiet - no Rose Garden ceremony, no press conference. His administration issued a letter, declaring, in part, "the Secretary’s willingness to exercise her waiver authority under section 1115 of the Social Security Act to allow states to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families."

The question then becomes, did the Obama administration, in the process of doing so, "gut welfare reform." If it did not, then it's a lie. If it did, then it's not.

The biggest problem with calling that a lie is that it's not a technically precise term. If I say that someone "guts" a deer, that means something. If I say that someone "guts" a law, that means something different. The former is a statement of fact, the latter is a metaphor, a term of commentary. Obviously, those on the left, many of whom were upset with Bill Clinton for signing the 1996 Welfare Reform Act in the first place, disagree with the characterization.

That does not make it a lie (unless Romney does not believe it and says it anyway).

The ad continues, saying that

Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job, they just send you your welfare check. And welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.

This part is a little more problematic. It is not, on its face, true - the change does not explicitly create that situation. Nothing in the letter explicitly calls for a removal of work requirements. But it's not necessarily false, either. Whether that ends up being true for some welfare recipients depends entirely upon the contents of waivers requested and waivers granted. What is clearly true, is that Congress and the President had the ability to give the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to act on waiver requests when they enacted the law, and specifically declined to do so. Despite the fact that many Governors request that feature. They intended to tie the hands of future Secretaries of HHS, and did so. According to Dick Morris,

In the negotiations that preceded the passage of this landmark legislation — in which I participated heavily — then-Senate Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) was particularly suspicious that future HHS secretaries might dilute the work requirement, just as the administration has done. He worked overtime with counsel to make sure that education and training would not be used to substitute for the work provision.

Robert Rector:

Section 1115 states that “the Secretary may waive compliance with any of the requirements” of specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: Any provision of law that can be waived under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself. The work provisions of the TANF program are contained in section 407 (entitled, appropriately, “mandatory work requirements”). Critically, this section, as well as most other TANF requirements, are deliberately not listed in section 1115; they are not waiveable. In establishing TANF, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the TANF program from the section 1115 waiver authority. They did not want the law to be rewritten at the whim of Health and Human Services (HHS) bureaucrats. Of the roughly 35 sections of the TANF law, only one is listed as waiveable under section 1115. This is section 402.

So, was the 1996 Welfare Reform Act "gutted" by the Obama administration? (Whether or not it even has the legal authority to do what it's claiming it has the authority to do is open to debate.) That looks like legitimate commentary to me. I tend to agree with it. But even if I didn't, it's obviously characterization and commentary, rather than "lying." The strongest negative that you can legitimately claim for this ad is "mis-characterization."

And I wouldn't even agree with that one...

 Here's some more excellent analysis, this time from Mickey Kaus, a rational man of the left:

As of several years ago, the details of these work requirements turned out to matter less than the general signal they sent, that no-strings welfare was over and even low-income single moms were supposed to work. As a result, the welfare rolls shrank so rapidly (roughly by half) that many states never faced the detailed work requirements (since they got credit for everyone who left welfare).

But of course the work requirements were part of what sent that general “signal.”

To the extent the administration’s action erodes the actual and perceived toughness of the work requirements, which it does, it sends the opposite and wrong signal.

More from Kaus:

But in legal terms, “guts” isn’t inapt. Congress went put a lot of effort into resisting efforts by governors (including GOP governors), bureaucrats, paleoliberals, and non-profit softies to water down the work requirements (by allowing, for example, extended “job search” or BS-type activities like self-esteem classes, and more generally by emphasizing what will help “place” existing recipients in “good” private jobs instead of deterring possible future recipients from making the choices that land them on welfare).

The authors of the law thought they’d restricted HHS’ authority to undermine the work requirements. Comes now HHS secretary Sebelius to claim she has broad authority to dispense with all those requirements through waivers, subject only to her opinion as to what is “likely to assist in promoting the objectives” of the welfare law. TNR‘s Ed Kilgore loyally declares ,”The Obama administration has not changed the architecture of the 1996 welfare reform law at all.” But that’s wrong. The legal architecture of the work requirements has been altered dramatically. Old system: Congress writes the requirements, which are … requirements. New system: Sebelius does what she wants–but, hey, you can trust her!

So, in the end, whether you agree with the commentary or think that it mischaracterizes the situation depends on your beliefs about Barack Obama. As Stanley Kurtz says,

Much of the debate over the claims in Romney’s new ad hinge on what you think Obama’s long-term intentions for welfare reform actually are. Either you believe the president when he and his representatives say that this change to the work requirements is just a tiny tweak that doesn’t mean much, or you believe conservative policy experts like Robert Rector, who say that all that talk is a smokescreen for an attempt to gut the core of the 1996 bill.

To resolve this conflict, voters need to form a judgement about Obama’s long-term intentions. And to make that decision, Obama’s leftist history on this issue is pertinent information. In short, the president’s past matters, as the Romney campaign itself pointed out when it raised his 1996 statements in opposition to welfare reform. Have a look at what else Obama was doing that year, and the point becomes stronger still.

The media’s refusal to report the new information confirming that Obama did in fact join a leftist third party in 1996 clearly matters.

"Mitt Romney murdered my wife!"

At least, that's the implication of this new ad from Priorities USA Action.



Very effective, I think. If what you're striving for is to push the "Mitt Romney is a cold, unfeeling, immoral, rich bastard," if what you're trying to do is suppress the turnout of white working class voters that wouldn't consider voting for Obama in November. It doesn't do a thing to get people to the polls to vote for Obama, but that's obviously not the intent.

Of course, there are several factual issues with this ad.

1. Bain purchased GST in 1993, preventing bankruptcy and saving 750 jobs (in a company that had had over 4000 ten years earlier) and it closed in 2001. So if they were in it to strip it and flip it, they didn't do a very good job.
2. Mitt Romney left the active management of Bain in 1999, to run the Salt Lake City Olympic games, two years before GST closed.
3. Even after GST closed in 2001, the Soptics still had health insurance through Mrs. Soptic's job.
4. Mrs. Soptic died in 2006.

(See this and this. Even CNN found that the ad is "not accurate.")

But that's not really what interests me. There are two issues raised that interest me.

The first is fairly obvious, and it is, again, how negative the Obama campaign¹ is, and has to be. In 2008, he had no record and didn't have to run on one. Now he does, and can't. He's doing nothing to expand the voter-base. His whole campaign is an effort to suppress the anti-Obama vote by trying to make Mitt Romney toxic, to paint him as a villain.

The other thing is more insidious, and concerns me greatly about the country in which we live. And that is the implied assumption that once you've hired someone, you're responsible for that person, and his family, for the rest of his life. As if hiring someone is morally identical to adopting him. It is not. You hire someone to do a job, at an agreed upon rate of compensation, that may or may not include non-monetary benefits such as health insurance. You have every obligation to be honest and forthright with your employees, to treat them appropriately, but you do not take on a lifetime obligation unless that's part of the upfront agreement. There is no implicit agreement, and certainly no moral obligation, to maintain the upkeep of anyone involved in a venture that is no longer profitable.

I don't want to beat up on Mr. Soptic, because what happened to him is painful, and seems unfair, but the extrapolation of his personal woes into Mitt Romney's responsibility is outrageous. It is based on several different unsupported assumptions of possible counterfactuals, and a worldview that looks on people as sheep to be tended by the first shepherd they can find.

And it's par for the course for the Obama campaign.





¹ - Don't bother telling me that this isn't an official Obama campaign ad. No, it's not, but it comes from an outside group that's clearly following the official Obama campaign playbook. They've been all over the Bain record with exactly this kind of thing.

"President Obama attacks success...therefore...we have less..."

A powerful response from the Romney campaign to the Obama "you didn't build that" speech...

These Hands

After four years of being torn down, it's time to rebuild...