Once upon a time in America ...

Let's free associate. Let's suppose that Mitt Romney, who you will recall ran for president in 2008, was nominated and defeated Barack Obama four years ago.

And let's also suppose that, as President Romney took office in 2009, the Republicans had won control of both houses of Congress. Now that we've got the stage set, let's assume that immediately after taking office, President Romney announced that the enactment of health care reform would be his top priority.

He tells the nation that health care costs have become so staggeringly and uncontrollably high that reform is necessary to prevent the soaring costs of Medicare and Medicaid from bankrupting the nation. He tells the nation that we can no longer permit 50 million Americans to go without health insurance, and so he will propose to cover 30 million of them.

And most importantly, President Romney tells the nation that his initiative will be modeled after the program he enacted as governor of Massachusetts. At its heart will be the individual mandate.

In order to dispel skepticism among Republicans, who had expected that fixing the nation's economic mess would take center stage, President Romney reminds them that his program with the individual mandate as its centerpiece had come from conservative thinkers. After all, it was Mark Pauly, a conservative economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, who had devised the individual mandate as the alternative to the Democrats and their obsession with a single-payer health care system.

Not long after Pauly advanced the individual mandate, Stuart Butler at the Heritage Foundation, one of the nation's premier conservative think tanks, began to push the mandate with Republicans. For them it was the perfect free-market alternative to the Democrats' addiction to big-government solutions.

But rather than develop a bill to do just that and submit it to Congress, the president hands the job off to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner. McConnell and Boehner, both partisan lawmakers, quickly decide to write the bill to their own liking in anticipation that they could secure the votes to pass it. The Democrats predictably are radicalized in their opposition to the bill and to a process that excludes them.

The enactment of health care reform is by definition complex and controversial. But President Romney's withdrawal from the field of battle coupled with McConnell's and Boehner's "my way or the highway" approach turns the passage of the legislation into all-out war.

Fifteen months later, President Romney signs the bill into law. Not a single Democrat has voted for it. It's grown to more than 2,500 pages in length, and nobody understands it. Its real costs are disguised by frontloading the revenues and backloading the costs. Soon it will have more than 10,000 pages of federal regulations.

Town hall meetings held by members of Congress to explain the new program to their constituents turn into screaming matches among those who love or hate a bill they don't understand. The nation is torn in half.

And very shortly after it becomes law, the inevitable happens. More than 20 states file suit, claiming the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The heart of their complaint is that the individual mandate, which will force the American public to purchase health insurance or face stiff fines imposed by the federal government, is an unconstitutional exercise of power based on the Constitution's Commerce Clause. The suits argue that Romneycare, as it has come to be known, is proposing to create an economic market and then compel individual Americans to enter that market or face hefty federal penalties. They assert that Romneycare will profoundly and destructively alter the relationship between the federal government and the people.

Ultimately, the cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The four liberal justices mount a full-throated assault on the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate during an unprecedented three days of oral arguments before the high court. Justice Stephen Breyer's questions indicate that, while he sees no constitutional problem with funding health care through a well-established single-payer system like Medicare, he worries that the individual mandate stretches the federal reach of the Commerce Clause to and beyond the breaking point.

On the other hand, Justice Antonin Scalia and the other three conservative justices argue just the opposite. If single-payer Medicare is constitutional, then surely so, too, is the individual mandate. Moreover, they inferentially raise the specter that striking the individual mandate amounts to activist judges legislating from the bench.

There you have it. The folks we put in office to lead, and it makes no difference whether they're Democrats or Republicans, won't work together. Once upon a time in America, it was not like this. It's way past time to purge the incumbents — all of them.

Please Visit:  CITIZENS AGAINST POLITICS AS USUAL

Please Visit:  MIKE TOWER'S POLITICAL OPINION

Politics, religion inextricably intertwined

Just after Easter 42 years ago, I was only a few months into my first job on Capitol Hill with the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. The Committee closely monitored NASA, especially during manned space flight operations.

On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 had set off for the moon. But on the 13th we all heard Jim Lovell's five terrifying words, "Houston, we've had a problem." When you're 200,000 miles from Earth and you get a master alarm that indicates a main B bus undervolt, you know the spacecraft and its crew are in desperate, potentially unrecoverable circumstances.

Most of us know how NASA's ingenuity and the crew's bravery combined to enable them to return safely to Earth. Less well known is the way in which the government and the American people turned to God during this crisis. Most Americans, indeed millions around the world, began to pray to God for the safety and survival of Apollo's crew. Prayer is a solemn request for God's assistance. It inherently assumes the existence of a sovereign and holy God with dominion over the universe.

The U.S. Congress, controlled by the Democrats, swiftly passed a resolution urging prayer for the astronauts.

President Richard Nixon, a Republican, called for the nation to observe a day of prayer for the astronauts, and he said, "I think more people prayed last week than perhaps have prayed in many years in this country."

Nobody said any of this violated the separation of church and state. Nobody questioned the worth of prayer or the existence of God. But when government officially calls for prayer, it is assuming the existence of God; it is assuming such prayer is not in vain; and it is assuming that God in His providence may answer such prayer.

But look where we are now, 42 Easters later. The American people and their elected and appointed leaders in all three branches of the government are caught in an increasingly polarizing conflict between Christians who feel persecuted and secularists and atheists who are demanding that there can be no nexus between the state and religion. Religious wars are never pretty, and this one is no exception.

Most Americans have been taught to believe that mixing politics and religion is a bad idea. But that teaching flies straight into the face of this nation's history and heritage. And whether we like it or not, or whether we're willing to admit it or not, politics and religion are inextricably intertwined.

To sort this out, it's useful to look at the thinking of Michael Gerson. Gerson is an op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. Time magazine has called him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.

Gerson believes that too frequently the use of religion in politics has become a source of cynicism. By that he means that when faith adopts a political ideology too closely, it sacrifices its independence. Gerson abhors the extent to which some Christian evangelicals have twisted Christian social ethics into an uncompromising, anti-government ideology.

Gerson reminds us that, although Christ did not focus on Roman politics, Christ's teachings on compassion and human dignity have had dramatic public consequences. In other words, he's saying religion has and should continue to play a significant role in the definition of political priorities.

And he amplified these ideas at a recent speech delivered at Calvin College, an evangelical school in Michigan. He said, "Public expression of faith often reveals the deepest commitment of the faithful, and determines their image in the world." He went on to urge Calvin's students to engage the political system as the best way to strengthen justice and morality.

He's suggesting that the hard-edged, sometimes apocalyptic tone of the religious right is counterproductive. He argues that this "politicization of religion" has been responsible for the fact that many young people have turned against religion itself.

Gerson believes Christian political engagement is both worthy and necessary. But he also believes it needs to have at its center the protection of human dignity. Gerson is arguing for a redefinition of the interface between politics and government on the one hand and religious faith on the other. And that can be achieved if Christians understand that the vast majority of Americans reject both secularism and sectarianism.

Gerson's on to something here that has worth far beyond his focus on the role of faith in public life. The coarsened and bitter debate between evangelicals and secularists that Gerson finds so counterproductive is but another example of how the dominance of political power at the extreme right and the extreme left have polarized and paralyzed the political process and brought the federal government to its knees.

The only time I'd like to see the government on its knees is when it's praying.

Happy Easter.

Please Visit:  Citizens Against Politics As Usual

Please Visit:  Mike Tower's Political Opinion

Health care reform or high court reset?

The anguished and incomplete American struggle to achieve health care reform (HCR) is now 100 years old. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party platform called for “the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness.” From Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama, presidents of both parties have sought the Holy Grail of HCR. None of them has found it. And, as the costs of health care have spiraled upward and our society has grown much older, the nation now stands on the edge of an economic abyss. The reality is that today health care costs are threatening to destroy the federal government.

The costs of health care are now more than onesixth of the nation’s GDP, and those costs are rising much faster than any other major component of the national economy.

Federal spending for Medicare and Medicaid is the largest item in the federal budget. It’s over $832 billion this year — larger than Social Security, defense or interest payments on the national debt. The nation’s unfunded liability for Medicare and the new prescription drug program is in excess of $100 trillion dollars — that’s trillion with a “T.”

Right after he took office, President Obama made the enactment of HCR his top priority.

The battle raged for 15 months. It tore the nation in half. It produced a bill that only Democrats supported.

The law President Obama signed is 2,300 pages in length, has more than 10,000 pages of regulations, and none of us understands it. The latest CBS/New York Times poll shows that only 26 percent of the American people support Obamacare.

The fundamental problem with Obamacare is that it’s too light on reform and cost containment, and too heavy everywhere else. More importantly, it raises profound constitutional issues.

American history teaches us that major social legislation cannot be successfully implemented in the absence of at least a modicum of bipartisan support. In case you’ve forgotten, 97 Republicans voted for Social Security in 1935, and 83 Republicans voted for Medicare in 1965. Thus, it’s no surprise that the constitutionality of Obamacare was immediately challenged in court.

And now the Supreme Court has concluded an unprecedented three days of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the law. Now the nation will hold its collective breath until the High Court renders judgment this summer. The stakes, political and constitutional, could not be higher. The high court’s ruling will not only significantly influence the outcome of the 2012 election, it may also create the conditions that force painful, yet urgently necessary, decisions to rein in skyrocketing health care costs. But most importantly, the court’s rulings may set limits on the federal government’s authority to regulate individual behavior through the Constitution’s commerce clause.

Three blockbuster issues are at the heart of this dispute. The first is whether the individual mandate in the law that would force individuals to purchase health insurance is or is not permissible under the Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce. The second is whether the court will strike down all of Obamacare if it finds the individual mandate unconstitutional. And the third issue is whether the gigantic expansion of Medicaid that Obamacare imposes on the states is or is not consistent with the Constitution’s concept of federalism.

Prior to the oral arguments this past week, most constitutional scholars had anticipated that the law would be upheld. But now that appears to be in doubt. Justice Anthony Kennedy has been the swing vote on numerous cases before the high court. His questioning of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, whose job it was to defend Obamacare, suggests that Kennedy may be poised to strike down the individual mandate.

Kennedy’s questions suggest that he believes the individual mandate “changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way,” thus giving Congress with what amounts to unlimited power.

Chief Justice Roberts echoed this same concern when he said, “Once we accept the principle, I don’t see why Congress’ power is limited.”

If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare this June, it will trigger a political earthquake across the landscape of the 2012 election.

If Republicans have any sense at all, they will keep their options open between now and then. It’s essential for the GOP to get beyond the conclusion of their primaries in early June without allowing any candidate to amass the 1,144 delegates needed to wrap up the nomination.

Even if you discount all of Mitt Romney’s flaws, and I don’t, there is no doubt that he’s joined at the hip to the individual mandate because of Romneycare in Massachusetts. That makes him damaged goods.

The GOP needs to let the court reach its decision, and then pick a fresh face in Tampa.

Please Visit: Citizens Against Politics As Usual

Please Visit: Mike Tower's Blog: Mike Tower Political Opinions

Failure to ‘rush' to judgment hurts GOP

On February 29^th Rush Limbaugh trained his heavy artillery on the testimony of Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University Law student, before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. She had testified in favor of mandated health coverage for contraceptives.  He did so during one of his weekly broadcasts of the Rush Limbaugh Show that airs on the radio.

Mr. Limbaugh called Ms Fluke a slut, a prostitute, and a feminazi.  He defines feminazis as persons for whom the most important thing in life is ensuring that as many abortions as possible occur.  Mr. Limbaugh also called upon Ms Fluke to videotape her sexual encounters and post them on the Internet.

Since then, Mr. Limbaugh has aired an apology of sorts saying; “I chose the wrong words in my analogy.”  President Obama has called Ms. Fluke and expressed his personal regret over what she has had to endure.  And, given the fact that these events occurred during the run-up to the GOP Super Tuesday primaries, several of the Republicans have also commented.  The front-runner, Mitt Romney, has said, “I won’t weigh in on that particular controversy.”

But what people say, or choose not to say, has consequences.  And in this case the consequences are likely to be far-reaching and profound. 

When Rush speaks many listen.  His broadcast is the highest rated radio program in America.  In November of 2008 a poll by Zogby International found that Rush Limbaugh was the most trusted news personality in the nation.  Mr. Limbaugh’s bombastic persona has catapulted him into a place of prominence, influence, and great wealth.  He attended Southeast Missouri State University for a couple of years, but dropped out.  According to his mother, “he flunked everything.”  But the absence of much formal education has not stood in the way of his ability to amass great wealth.  In 2008 he signed an 8-year contract for his syndicated radio show that was worth $400 million dollars.

And there can be little doubt that Mr. Limbaugh revels in his ability to cast a giant and foreboding shadow over the landscape of the Republican Party.  That shadow has helped convince him that he can do no wrong.  But, of course, like all of us, he has feet of clay just as the Prophet Daniel said of King Nebuchadnezzar.

But in this matter Mr. Limbaugh is small potatoes.  He’s an unrepentant misogynist who will never comprehend the obligations that his privileged position demand of his behavior.  After all, he’s learned that regurgitating hatred inflates his ratings and feeds his cash cow.

But the larger matter here is how the Republican Party has chosen to deal with this matter.  Recall Mr. Romney’s dismissive comment, “I won’t weigh in on that particular controversy.”  What’s he really saying?  He’s saying, given the choice between crossing Rush’s bow and defending Ms. Fluke, he’s with Rush.  His response is morally offensive, disgusting, and politically stupid.  It’s driven by fear that angering Mr. Limbaugh might have deleterious consequences for him as he staggers toward the GOP nomination.  His words provide us with a chilling insight into his character. 

But more than that, his words demonstrate that he is oblivious to the political damage to his quest for the Presidency that he has inflicted upon himself.  All women, and many men too, have been sickened by Mr. Limbaugh’s outburst.  Moreover, most of those women, and men, are going to vote this November.

And you can count on the fact that the Obama Campaign will remind the nation this fall about Mr. Limbaugh’s tirade and Mr. Romney’s cowardice. 

Suburban women are one of the most pivotal voting blocks in the America.  How they vote can be determinative in electoral rich, swing states like Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida.

Since the next crucial primary is in Illinois this coming Tuesday, let’s take a look at the Land of Lincoln. Understanding how Illinois will vote in a Presidential election is straightforward.  The City of Chicago will vote Democratic.  The small towns and farms downstate will vote Republican.  The balance hangs in the “Collar Counties”, Will, Kane, DuPage, McHenry, and Lake, which surround Chicago.

Here you have middle class and affluent families who have traditionally been more Republican, than Democratic.  These voters are overwhelmingly conservative on fiscal and economic issues, yet moderate to liberal on social and cultural issues.  And this bias toward moderation on social issues is especially prevalent among these suburban women.

Once reminded of Mr. Limbaugh’s vitriol and Mr. Romney’s fearful acquiescence to it, they will take their revenge at the polls on November 6^th.  If Mitt Romney becomes the GOP standard bearer, his character flaw will bury him and the GOP next fall.  Stupid is as stupid does.

Please visit: Citizens Against Politics As Usual

For the GOP, it's game over, pal

In 1964 the Republican Party lurched far to the right and nominated Barry Goldwater for President.  Remember his battle cry—A Choice, Not An Echo?  Goldwater carried his home state of Arizona and only five other states in the deep South.  His humiliating defeat reminds us that Presidential elections are won in the middle and lost at the extremes. It's a lesson that zealots at both ends of our political spectrum are incapable of learning.

Although the characters and the plot line are different now, the same sort of self-destructive scenario is unfolding for the Republicans. On Super Tuesday Romney underperformed everywhere.  Whether he can amass enough delegates to win the nomination in the remaining primaries, remains problematic.

We are witnessing the disintegration of the Republican Party. The puzzle pieces of this GOP nightmare include, the Presidency of George W. Bush, the rise of the Tea Party in 2010, and how those forces now threaten the viability of the GOP. 

After eight years of George W. Bush, Barack Obama waltzed into the White House over the scorched-earth policies of Bush and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill.  Together they exuberantly turned their back on traditional Republican values and raced out upon the thin ice of adventurism abroad and fiscal profligacy at home.

Bush and his inner sanctum of Neo-Con, foreign policy advisers created the concept of PREVENTIVE WAR and then attacked the wrong country, Iraq. Iraq was not a player in the 9/11 attack.  It had no significant connection with al-Qaeda. The price that has been paid in blood and treasure for that miscalculation has been incalculable.  Domestically Bush and the GOP coupled a radical policy of tax reductions with a spending spree. In addition, they did not anticipate the bursting of the economic bubble and subsequent economic meltdown that began in 2007.

Blunders of this magnitude do not go unpunished. And in 2008 the electorate rewarded the Democrats with a clean sweep of the levers of power in Washington.  President Obama had campaigned on changing Washington politics.  But he failed to deliver on the promise.  Immediately after taking office his approach to the economic stimulus legislation and health care reform gave new meaning to polarization as the Democrats rammed through their bills with no bipartisan support. The arrogance of one-party rule gave birth to a national uprising—the Tea Party.

In 2010 The Democrats lost control of the House and saw their margin narrowed in the Senate.  Ironically, however, the ascendancy of the Tea Party with its overly simplistic notion that Washington's problems can be fixed by gutting the relatively small discretionary portion of the Federal budget has taken the polarization and poisonous passion of Washington politics to an all new level.

The simplistic and mindless nostrums of the Tea Party are reminiscent of the Republicans of   a half century ago who nominated Barry Goldwater without any inkling of the onrushing debacle. 

The compelling evidence of what's coming now is abundantly obvious in the bizarre battle for the GOP presidential nomination.  The fragility of the nation's economy, unacceptably high unemployment, skyrocketing debt, and Obama's inexperience are more than enough to make him vulnerable.  Yet the Republicans seeking to oust him are a joke.

It comes down to a choice between the front runner, Mitt Romney, who has been running for President since 2007  and still can't connect with average Americans or articulate a specific set of proposals that would deal with the nation's massive problems, or the three remaining willing hostages of the zealots—Santorum, Gingrich and Paul. 

Instead of setting forth proposals to turn the economy around, create jobs, reform the broken tax system, achieve energy independence, reform immigration, and revitalize education, Romney has embarrassed himself statements like:  “Corporations are people too; My wife drives a couple of Cadillacs; and I like to be able to fire people.”  Statements like these would be a blockbuster opening for a Romney monologue on SNL, but on the campaign trail they're devastating.  Romney's strategy of carpet bombing his opponents with negative ads exposes the barrenness of his quest.

Barring some cataclysmic externality between now and November 6^th, the GOP is going nowhere fast. More than three dozen Tea Party freshmen were elected from districts that Obama carried in 2008.  Many of them are about to learn the meaning of Satchel Paige's best aphorism—don't look back, something might be gaining on you. 

If you step outside your front door and listen really, really hard, you can just barely hear what sounds like laughter.  It is laughter, and it's coming from the White House. The once proud and vibrant Republican party is about to hand Obama his second free pass to the Presidency. 

Please Visit:  Capau.org

My readers may also be interested in the following Washington Post Article.

"One super PAC takes aim at incumbents of any party"

THE LUCK OF THE IRISH

The President was in Ireland last May reaffirming his Irish roots. He visited the tiny town of Moneygall in County Offaly.  It had been the home of his great-great-great grandfather, Falmouth Kearney.  Perhaps it’s his Irish heritage that explains the phenomenal luck that has over the past two decades taken him from Chicago to Springfield, to the Senate and now the White House.

His first opportunity to seek elective office came in 1994 when Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer announced she would vacate her seat.

Obama and four others filed for the seat in 1995. But, as luck would have it, one of them withdrew and the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners disqualified the other three. Unopposed for the nomination, Obama won the general election with 82% of the vote in the heavily Black district on the Southside of Chicago.

Although he was twice reelected to the State Senate, Obama’s legislative record in Springfield was meager. Perhaps best remembered is the fact that 129 times he voted “present”, rather than aye or nay on legislation.

The best way to understand his lackluster record as a State Senator is to realize that his real agenda was to seek higher office.  In 1999, not long after taking office as a state senator, he announced his candidacy for the U.S. House seat then held by Bobby Rush.  That effort failed. 

But Obama never lost sight of his goal to move up.  In July of 2002, 21 months before the upcoming Primary election, he launched his bid for the U.S. Senate seat then held by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. 

As luck would have it, in 2004 Fitzgerald chose not to seek reelection.  Obama handily won the Democratic nomination and Jack Ryan won the GOP nomination.  Then Lady Luck struck again. Within three months Ryan withdrew from the race, as a sex scandal overwhelmed him. Three months later the Illinois Republican State Central Committee selected former diplomat Alan Keyes, a carpetbagger from Maryland, as a token replacement.  Obama annihilated him.

Within two years after having been sworn into the U.S. Senate, Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency.  From then until he won the White House in 2008 he was on the campaign trail. He was a Senator in name only.

However, he needed a lot more luck and he got it.  Few expected that his candidacy was more than a place marker for the future.  After all, Senator Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination seemed inevitable. But Clinton’s hubris and her failure to campaign in the caucus states put her in an unrecoverable position.

Having secured the nomination, Obama then caught the best break of all, running against a Republican party that had destroyed itself over the preceding eight years of the Bush Administration.  The country was fed up with Bush’s war in Iraq and the economic bubble had burst.

His campaign brilliantly promised to change the way Washington works.  That promise was stillborn. The economy, while improving, is still dangerously fragile.  Millions remain unemployed.  His Afghan surge strategy has not worked.  The structural debt that threatens America’s economic future grows worse. We are nowhere on issues like energy independence, immigration reform and tax reform. And remember that during his first two years as President, the Democrats controlled all of the levers of power in Washington.

Previous Administrations facing these kinds of headwinds have been sent packing by the American people.  Think Hoover in 32, Nixon in 60, Ford in 76, Carter in 80, and Bush in 92.

Incredibly, Obama has mastered politics, but has never taken the time to learn how to govern.  Neither the bully pulpit nor Capitol Hill works like a University of Chicago lecture hall. 

So is his house of cards about to crumble?  Perhaps.  But you can’t beat somebody with nobody, and the Republican Party is now racing toward oblivion at light speed.  Obliterated by the voters in 2006 and 2008, the GOP has reinvented itself by charging to the far right. The Tea Party leads this suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade.  Can you imagine what Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan would say about the transmogrification of the GOP?

When the votes are tabulated this November, a jubilant Obama should invite the Tea Party to the White House and thank them.  For them it will be condign punishment.  That’s a task he’s up to.

Two years ago President Obama told Diane Sawyer on ABC World News, “I’d rather be a really good one-term President, than a mediocre two-term President”. The truth is that Barack Obama has never had a good first term.

Please Visit:  CAPAU.org

Shuler a show pony?

There’s been a lot of ink recently in the Hendersonville Times-News and the Asheville Citizen-Times about Heath Shuler’s decision not to seek re-election in the 11th Congressional District. One of the major themes that emerged in the recent coverage of Shuler’s decision treats him favorably as a moderate who worked to build bridges between the extremists of the far right and far left in the House of Representatives.

For example, in a long editorial the Times-News states, “In his six years in Congress, Shuler will be remembered for his leadership in the moderate to conservative Blue Dog caucus.” It goes on to say, “Moderate voters, however, will remember Shuler as someone who listened to all sides and tried to bridge the ever-growing partisan divide.”

The problem with these round words of praise for Mr. Shuler is that, in my opinion, he doesn’t deserve them. One of the first things that I learned when I worked in the Senate long ago was to be able to distinguish between a “workhorse” and a “show pony” in Congress.

Heath Shuler has been a show pony. And the bitter and divisive battle over health care reform proves it.

We all know that the battle over HCR tore the nation in half. It produced a bill that, in my opinion, a majority of Americans believe is too costly and won’t work. Moreover, its constitutionality has been challenged and the Supreme Court’s decision this summer will weigh heavily on who wins the White House in November. But it didn’t have to be this awful way.

In 2009-10, as the battle over HCR raged, The Blue Dogs, with Heath Shuler as their whip, had more than 50 votes. Had Shuler been a workhorse and done his job, he could have “whipped” the Blue Dogs behind a compromise bill that would have profoundly transformed the outcome. Without the support of a unified Blue Dog Coalition, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans could have gotten any HCR bill through the House. Obama, Pelosi and Boehner all would have been forced to compromise with the Shuler-led Blue Dogs. That’s what workhorses do.

I feel Shuler did none of this. Instead the show pony ran for the hills, voted against the bill and came back here proclaiming “mountain values.” What Shuler did was designed to advantage his prospects for re-election. That’s what show ponies do. His gambit paid off at the polls in 2010. But it was a pyrrhic victory.

Outrage at Obamacare fueled the Republican tsunami in 2010. It gave the GOP control of the legislature in Raleigh for the first time in more than a century. And that led to the redistricting plan that has ended Shuler’s career. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if the 2012 stable had a workhorse in it? I’ve yet to see one.

Please Visit:  CAPAU Videos:

Please Visit:  CAPAU.ORG

I presented a Lecture at the Blue Ridge Community College, Flat Rock, NC on January 24, 2012.  The purpose of the lecture was to review the new book by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used To Be Us, which chronicles how America has mouse-trapped itself and what it can do to restore its greatness.  I am including a transcript  of the lecture.

THE ROOTS OF NATIONAL DECLINE

LeRoy Goldman

Please visit CAPAU:  Videos

Time to perform or perish

Are we able to rise above our collective stupidity? It’s the question that I’ll come to at the end of this column. Let’s start where we all agree.

America’s not just on the wrong track, we’re on a trajectory that will put us on the wrong side of history. Stop and think. It makes no difference what major issue you pick: jobs, economic growth, debt and deficit, energy, education, or immigration. All of them grow worse as the politicians in Washington do nothing about them but blame one another.

It’s been this way for decades. It doesn’t make any difference which party controls the White House or the Congress. America is in decline.

When a pitcher can’t get the ball over the plate the manager yanks him. When an employee can’t or won’t do his job the employer fires him. It’s the American way. It’s free enterprise and capitalism. It is the way America has reinvented itself for over 200 years. Perform or perish is as American as apple pie.

We all know that the problems that are crushing American can be solved. We also know that the solutions will be painful, but not as painful as pretending that everything is OK, while the American Dream becomes a nightmare.

But it’s undeniably clear that Congress won’t fix the mess. Why? The answer is simple and in that answer we can find what we must do. Congress won’t act because they all fear that making tough decisions will put their jobs at risk.

So they all have figured out a way to accomplish the one thing that Republicans, Conservatives, Democrats, and Liberals all agree upon — getting reelected. And they have stacked the deck so they win and America loses. House seats are gerrymandered so that only one party can win in most of them. The Senate has perverted the use of the Filibuster Rule so that it paralyzes everything. And all of them have prostituted themselves by taking so much PAC money from corporations and labor unions.

And it works. They get reelected. But America gets screwed. They won’t change. But we can change them. All we have to do is to rise above our collective stupidity that Congress counts on.

If we start this November, in four to six years we will have revolutionized Washington. Vote to oust every incumbent. Take away the one thing they really care about — their job. And send the message to those who replace them that they must come to grips with our national problems or they too will only have one term in office.

They will quickly learn that to keep their job they must do their job. All we have to do is wise up.

Please visit:  http://capau.org

Romney Still Carries Baggage

Unlike four years ago, Mitt Romney has won in both Iowa and New Hampshire. It now appears that the GOP nomination is his to lose, and it’s hard to imagine how that could happen. He’s got money and momentum.

But with all the excitement and hoopla now surrounding the Romney campaign, it’s important to not lose sight of the baggage he still carries, the incredible weakness of the opponents he is dispatching with ease, and how difficult defeating President Obama will be.

Mitt Romney has never been able to excite the electorate. He's wooden and aloof as a campaigner. He is vulnerable to the charge that he's unprincipled and a flip-flopper, a case that his GOP primary opponents are making in a way that Obama will savagely exploit in the fall campaign.

To put it bluntly, it is not clear if Romney stands for anything other than getting elected on Nov. 6, 2012. And he's prone to gaffes. His comment a few days ago that he likes to be able to fire people pushes political stupidity beyond the breaking point. It's devastating because it implies a sort of heartlessness that most Americans abhor.

And, while it is the case that Romney appears to be well on his way to being the last GOP aspirant left standing, it's the case that his opponents are a joke — a veritable cavalcade of clowns. Thus, Romney appears to be a giant but only when compared to the dwarfs who oppose him.

With the exception of moderate conservative and thoughtful, Jon Huntsman, who bet everything on New Hampshire and lost badly, the rest of Romney's opponents have caused the Economist Magazine to recently opine, “something has gone badly wrong with the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.”

Over the past few years the Republican party has lurched far to the right. And those who have opposed Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire are extremists who are obsessed with issues like abortion, gay marriage and gun control. In addition, they hold views on immigration, taxation, energy, the debt and deficit, global warming and foreign policy that a substantial majority of the American people find to be looney.

That is why Obama leads all Republican challengers in current polling. It’s extraordinary when you think about it. Under normal circumstances a president with an economy in the toilet stands no chance of reelection.

Whether Mitt Romney can reconstruct the Republican Humpty-Dumpty remains to be seen.

Please visit:  http://capau.org

THE DARK MARE

Incumbent Presidents are usually strongly positioned for reelection.  Look at FDR, IKE, LBJ (for JFK), NIXON, REAGAN, CLINTON, and BUSH 43.

And history teaches us that a challenge to a sitting President from within his own party usually divides the party and dooms it to defeat in the general election.  That’s what Senator Kennedy’s ill-fated challenge to President Carter did in 1980.  

Thus, it is not at all surprising that no challenge from within the Democratic Party has emerged to President Obama.  And I suppose the conventional wisdom will prevail and no such challenge will occur.

But 2012 is an unconventional year and perhaps it’s worth thinking some unconventional thoughts.  America faces enormous problems, and they are growing worse. Moreover, the American people know this, even if the political class denies it.  America is in decline.  That’s the heart of the message in Friedman and Mandelbaum’s book, That Used To Be Us, which I have begun to write about.

Large majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents know that the nation is not headed in the right direction.

That’s why the emerging contours of the 2012 Presidential contest are unconventional. One would expect that President Obama would by now be the underdog for reelection.  But, while his poll numbers are down, he still appears to have a better than even chance to win reelection.  And this is because the GOP appears likely to nominate a candidate incapable of defeating a President who has demonstrated that he can’t do the job.  There may be some who believe that President Obama, or Governor Perry, or former Governor Romney can get us out of the mess we’re in.  But most of us don’t. 

And that’s what makes 2012 an unconventional year.  So here’s an alternative.  For the record, it’s not one I like, but that’s no matter.

Think back to 2008.  There seemed to be little doubt that Senator Clinton had a clear path to the Democratic nomination and the White House.  Surely the upstart effort of Barack Obama posed no serious threat.  But Hillary’s hubris, coupled with her strategic error of ignoring the states that held caucuses rather than primaries, put her campaign in a hole from which she could not escape.

Since then, she has ably served as Secretary of State, a position that has isolated her from the economic and domestic mess that the rest of the Obama Administration has served up.

You can be certain that the BILLARIES, whose political ambitions have no end, are seeing an opening here, an opening created by a President who can’t do the job, and a set of Republican adversaries who can’t either. 

The question for the BILLARIES, and it’s a daunting question, is how to thread the eye of this needle. If the DARK MARE sticks her nose out of the barn, it will change everything.

LeRoy Goldman

September 23, 2011

Please visit:  http://capau.org

IN THE HUNT(sman)

Most Americans now believe the American Dream is slipping away. And while we know that the nation is not headed in a direction that gives hope to our children, most of us have failed to recognize that our own sloth and greed lie at the core of the problem.  Once a proud nation of savers and investors, America has become a complaining nation of spenders and debtors.

Thus, we should not be surprised that our political leaders have become a reflection of our own self-indulgent excesses.

If President Obama wins a second term, and he remains the favorite, he’ll have nobody to thank more for it than the Republicans. And for us it will be condign punishment indeed.

The GOP contest thus far is a grotesque caricature of Baskin Robbins “flavor of the month”.  The parade of GOP hopefuls who have melted over the past months is nothing short of laughable.

Palin, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and now Gingrich all have a couple of things in common.  None of them is qualified to be President of the United States, and, if nominated, none of them is electable. But their ephemeral popularity is significant in that it illuminates the GOP’s visceral distrust of their presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

And while it is a shame that far more qualified Republicans like Governors Christie, Daniels, and Bush have stayed on the sidelines, there remains one person in the GOP field who is qualified and, if nominated, could win—Jon Huntsman.

Jon Huntsman is smart, serious, wealthy, youthful, and politically skilled.  He has ably served four Presidents, including President Reagan, Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush, and was nominated and served as Ambassador to China by President Obama.  Huntsman was twice elected Governor of Utah in 2004 and 2008.  He is a right-center, Republican who is articulate, but unlike his flavor-of-the-month opponents, he’s not a “Foam at the Mouth”, Wingnut.

Yet thus far his candidacy has gone nowhere.  He’s been lucky to capture more than 3% in the polling of the GOP aspirants over the past several months. Most of the media and the political class in Washington have written him off.

Maybe so, but I don’t buy it. His newly released financial reform plan is a breath of fresh air when contrasted to the pandering from his GOP rivals and President Obama.  Huntsman would end Too Big To Fail on Wall Street, mandate transparency in derivative trading, end Wall Street’s reliance on excessive short-term leverage, repeal the incomprehensible Dodd-Frank legislation, and shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

If Huntsman breaks through in the New Hampshire primary, watch out.

LeRoy Goldman

December 2, 2011

Please visit:  http://capau.org

  

That Used To Be Us

Friedman and Mandelbaum in their book, That Used To Be Us, are convinced that, as the Baby Boomer Generation supplanted the Greatest Generation, America began to suffer from an insidious erosion of our values.  Because that erosion of values happened incrementally, we did not appreciate its corrosive effects until the housing bubble burst in 2008.

The authors believe that America has come unstuck from its core values.  We have forsaken long-term investment and delayed gratification for a get-it-now-while-you-can lifestyle.  We have lost confidence in the authority of the institutions in our society that have previously been our leaders, especially in enabling us to take collective action in the face of huge challenges, and finally they believe that the nation is losing its sense of shared national purpose.

The United States used to be the best nation in the world for business of any type.  Our open markets, legal system, property rights, financial system, and robust investment in research and development made us the envy of the world.  But now the American people in ever-larger numbers believe that is all slipping away.

American Exceptionalism is under assault.  Simply asserting our supremacy does not sustain it.  The inadequacy of our ability to meet the four challenges that Friedman and Mandelbaum describe, globalization, the IT revolution, our debt and deficit, and our appetite for fossil fuels, paint a bleak portrait indeed.  The authors argue that, “not enough Americans seem to understand the first two and too many want to deny the necessity of addressing the second two”.

All of this is made significantly worse by the fact that our political system has broken down.  It’s paralyzed in partisan rancor.  Our two political parties are both deeply and closely divided.  Because of that reality we are caught in a cul-de-sac in which we bounce back and forth between the extreme positions of both the Democrats and the Republicans.  It used to be the case that “wave” elections where one party annihilated the other were infrequent.  Not so, any more. The Democrats pounded the Republicans in 2006 and 2008.  The GOP returned the favor in 2010.  And now it looks like both parties may be in for a shellacking in 2012.

But the only way to address the problems we face, reining in our exploding debt, creating an educational system that equips our young people with the tools that will enable them to compete and lead in the 21^st century, drilling for more oil and gas while imposing a carbon tax, and reforming the tax code and raising the taxes that will be required to restore our supremacy, can only be accomplished by combining the best of both the Left and the Right.

Friedman and Mandelbaum believe that one way or another America is going to be shocked into this painful and sacrificial reality.  They believe that either world markets or Mother Nature will administer the shock in a brutal and unpredictable way or it will come from the middle of the American political spectrum.  They hope it will be the latter.  So should we all.

LeRoy Goldman

October 6, 2011

Please visit:  http://capau.org

Borrowing instead of reform sinking America

Friedman and Mandelbaum’s powerful new book, That Used To Be Us, tells us that the nation has blundered badly with respect to our ballooning deficit and our energy crisis.

Regarding deficits they tell us that either we will cut spending, increase taxes, and start investing in our economic future all at the same time or we will lose our supremacy, transfer crushing debt to our children and grandchildren, and literally mortgage our future.

Seventy-seven million baby boomers have begun to retire.  Without reform of both Social Security and Medicare the costs of those two entitlement programs are on course to rise by 70% and 79% respectively by 2020.  These growth rates will kill our economy.  They will kill the American dream.  They will kill hope.   

But instead of facing the necessity of entitlement reform the nation has chosen to adopt a course of action that invites catastrophe—borrowing from countries like China.   That perilous strategy has enabled America to overborrow and China to overconsume.  Friedman and Mandelbuam state that, “we’re like two drunks leaning on each other without a lamppost”.

The authors tell us that America must reduce our use of fossil fuels significantly and rapidly. They also tell us that rather than debating HOW to do this, we are mindlessly debating WHETHER to do it.  Rather than accepting the reality of settled science, we are denying the fact that our addiction to fossil fuels harms our economy, our air, and our national security.

They believe that clean energy will follow information technology as the next industry upon which economic growth will depend.  And in this respect China is already far ahead of the United States.  They have made huge investments in solar energy, have surpassed us as the largest builder and installer of wind turbines, and are building more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined.

The authors believe that we have no choice but to put a price on carbon—that’s right, Cap and Trade.  Did you know that Cap and Trade was introduced by President George H. W. Bush in 1989? That’s right, a Republican, introduced Cap and Trade!

But since then we’ve gone backwards.  Pricing carbon has been held hostage to the politics of paralysis that dominate Washington. For example, 70% of Tea Party Republicans believe there is no solid evidence of global warming.  And, according to the authors, with the 2012 election approaching, President Obama “chose to read the polls, not try to change them” on this issue.

We need to price carbon, increase energy efficiency standards, and raise the tax on gasoline.  Doing those things will create the conditions in the private marketplace that will enable the United States to lead in the creation of the world’s next major industry—clean energy.  And that creates jobs—lots of jobs.

Instead, according to Friedman and Mandelbaum, “the Democrats were cowardly, and the Republicans were crazy.”  They’re right.

LeRoy Goldman

September 30, 2011

Please visit:  http://capau.org

America has fallen asleep at the switch

America has fallen asleep at the switch, and Friedman and Mandelbaum in their book, That Used To Be Us, make clear that it’s because that we have not grasped the significance of the merger between globalization and the Information Technology revolution.  There are 6.8 billion people in the world and two thirds of them now have cell phones.  The authors argue that the world has become hyper-connected and that has profound implications.  They tell us that this turning point in communications, innovation, and commerce is nothing less than the revolution brought about by the Guttenberg printing press in 1440.  To succeed a company must now source, manufacture and sell everywhere.  A CEO’s office has become his iPad!

In other words everything has changed. That’s why corporate profits and productivity have risen and so has unemployment.  The old jobs that have been lost are forever lost.  America didn’t realize how fast the world was changing.  But when the housing and credit bubbles exploded a few years ago, the carnage was plainly visible. 

The new labor market is one that places a premium on workers with college and graduate level degrees.  Forget blue-collar/white-collar, the authors argue, the new paradigm has become one of creators/servers.  To succeed we need to train a nation of creators.  Summing it up, the authors give us Carlson’s Law, from Curtis Carlson, the CEO of SRI International:  “Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb.  Innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart”.  And that shines a bright light on the inadequacies of our educational system.

Because of globalization and the IT revolution, raising math, science, reading and creativity in ALL American schools is a must.  Education, Friedman and Mandelbaum insist, has become a matter of economic survival.  All of us need more education AND better education.  They state, “We need to lift the bottom faster and the top higher.”

They give us a new definition of stress:  It’s what you’ll feel when you can’t understand the Chinese accent of your first boss out of college.  The point they are making is that we need to realize that we can no longer maintain our economic supremacy by simply attempting to maintain traditional blue and white collar jobs in today’s hyper-connected world.  To grow and prosper in the new world order we have no choice but to educate our citizens to hold jobs that don’t exist yet.  In addition, we have to equip our young people to invent those jobs. If we don’t, other nations will fill that vacuum.

And so they see a world divided between “high-imagination-enabling countries and low-imagination-enabling countries.” Only the former gets us to decent paying jobs going forward.  Friedman and Mandelbaum have put a warning shot across America’s bow. We will heed its warning or pay a terrible price.

LeRoy Goldman

September 27, 2011

Please visit:  http://capau.org

  

Shared sacrifices inevitable

Friedman and Mandelbaum’s remarkable diagnosis of America’s decline in, That Used To Be Us, opens at the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China in 2010.  It was held in the sparkling new Tianjin Convention Center, a center of over 2.5 million square feet that was constructed in eight months.  The authors contrast that accomplishment with the inability of Washington’s Metrorail authority to repair broken escalators in its Bethesda station. 

To drive the point home the authors state, “ We are nearly complete in our evolution from Lewis and Clark into Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam”.  Many Americans believe that the 21^st century will belong to the Chinese.  And, thus, our job is to imitate them.  Right?  No, say Friedman and Mandelbaum. They believe what we must to do is recapture our ability to take large actions on a collective scale.

They believe that America’s slow-motion decline has four root causes:  We have lost sight of how the world has changed and how we must adapt to that change, we have failed to address education, debt, and energy and climate change, we have stopped investing in our nation’s formula for greatness, and we now have a political system that is paralyzed.

In other words we have lost our self-confidence and we’ve gotten lazy. 

When we won the Cold War twenty years ago we wrongly assumed that the clear and present danger to our supremacy was gone.  We were wrong.  We’ve missed how rapidly the world was about to change as billions of people began to practice capitalism.  A worldwide explosion of pent up aspiration for prosperity replaced the demise of the communist threat.  Missing that reality was a colossal American blunder.

Friedman and Mandelbaum believe that the new world in which we live poses four central challenges:  globalization, the Information Technology revolution, our massive national debt, and the threat of our reliance on fossil fuels. The authors state that we have responded to these four challenges “with the vigor and determination of a lollipop”.

There is no way that we can respond to these challenges without collective sacrifice.  For example, the debt can’t be reduced without our being willing to accept reduced benefits AND paying higher taxes. In addition, as unpleasant as it is to accept, we will also have to realize that higher fuel bills will be GOOD for America. 

Thus, national sacrifice is inevitable.  The debate will be about how it is to be shared.

That debate, the authors believe, should focus upon America’s five pillars of prosperity, all of which involve partnership between government and the private sector.  They are:  our inadequate system of public education, our crumbling infrastructure, our counterproductive immigration policy, our inadequate support for research and development, and our unwillingness to properly regulate private economic activity.

Either we will rise to these challenges, or it’s curtains for America.

To be continued.

LeRoy Goldman

September 19, 2010

Please visit:  http://capau.org