Why I Won't Vote Republican

In May of this year, I began writing on this blog about why I won't vote Republican. I had intended to carry that explanation through several blog posts, but here I'm keeping my reasons to a list:

• I don't believe in governments' torturing prisoners of war, or any other type of prisoner. Mitt Romney's national advisers are some of the same assholes who advised the Bush administration to torture prisoners.  [See Charlie Savage's article in The New York Times: "Election May Decide When Interrogation Amounts to Torture," 27 September 2012.] While I am not at all happy with how President Obama has continued some of the Bush national security policies, I know that a Republican-led government would not improve on these issues. President Obama has, at least, banned "enhanced interrogation" (torture!) and closed the CIA black sites. A second Democratic presidency will give us the opportunity to argue for re-examining those other issues. In addition, Mitt Romney's foreign policy technique, as illustrated by his visit to Great Britain during the London Olympics, dispels confidence in his ability to represent our country.

•  I don't trust a party that refuses to compromise for the good of the country, that is so focused on gaining power for itself that it is willing to damage or to destroy the lives of its citizens. I have written more about that here: "Reasons not to Vote Republican: Part 1."

• I believe that we are ALL mutually interdependent upon government (which is WE, the people).  This idea so loudly trumpeted by Republicans that citizens are divided between the Makers and the Takers, between those who are dependent upon government and those who are independent Boot-strappers-by-God-built-that-myself-ers is a skewed perception of democracy. As my husband so eloquently puts it: "That whole world view is bullshit!"  (This world view is particularly laughable in that all those titans of finance who imagine themselves "Makers" took a lot--even individuals' life savings--from folks to whom they condescend and just about bankrupted the country. WHY DO PEOPLE NOT REMEMBER THIS?) Public education that provides people with knowledge to become workers and business owners; police forces that maintain law and order; state and interstate highways (subsidized with our taxes) that guarantee national commerce;  a coast guard to protect those waters full of off-shore drilling rigs, commercial fishing boats, and pleasure and sport craft; a huge military complex that provides protection to many U.S. businesses abroad as well as those of us at home--these are just a few things from which we all profit, even the 1%. So, no, I don't support someone who denies this interdependency by disparaging, condescending to, or demonizing those who are so poor they don't pay federal income taxes (though they pay other taxes--state taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes). [See David Corn's article in Mother Jones, "Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors what He Really Thinks of Obama Voters," 17 September 2012.] And Romney's last minute apology about his categorization of half of the U.S. is not convincing, especially since he double-downed on that statement several times immediately after it became public.

• Along with the condescending attitude toward the poor comes a willingness to deprive the poor of government support in healthcare. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian culture that promoted the idea that one was required to help those less fortunate, and so I don't get all bent out of shape about my taxes' going to welfare programs, such as Medicaid. Though I no longer participate in organized religion (a disaffection that came to a head during the Bush administration, as I witnessed church leaders and their congregations hurrahing torture and a war based on lies), I still believe in the ethic to care for those who cannot care for themselves, and I think government (which means US--corporations, whose wealth depends upon a stable government, and citizens) has a moral obligation to help those in need. One of my grandmothers spent her last years in a nursing home, her care supported by Medicaid. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would gut Medicaid. [See Kevin Drum's comments here: "The Romney-Ryan Plan to Obliterate Medicaid."] Medicaid is not just there for the very poor; it's available for the elderly who live middle-class lives and who find their life's savings destroyed by medical costs as they age. Mitt Romney's statement that the poor can always get medical care in the emergency room is bitterly out-of-touch. President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction in providing healthcare for most Americans and in reducing costs of healthcare. Mitt Romney has promised to repeal what could use some tweaking, not destroying.

•  I am dismayed by the increasing hostility toward science in the Republican Party. From climate change to contraception, Republicans have loudly and vociferously denied scientific research and the consensus of scientists. In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney criticized over and over President Barack Obama's economic support of green energy, and his running mate, Paul Ryan,

  has consistently voted against government efforts to tackle climate change. Like many House Republicans, he has voted to block efforts by the EPA to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. He approved an amendment that would bar the Department of Agriculture from studying how best to adapt to a warmer planet. Ryan voted to defund various climate-advisory positions within the White House. He also voted for an amendment, proposed by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), to cut $50 million from funding for ARPA-E, which funds long-shot energy research and development. [Brad Plumer, on Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, 14 August 2012]

  I mean, really.... voting to bar studies and research to determine how we can adapt to a warmer planet? How short-sighted is that!?

• Despite the financial crisis of 2007-2008, created in large part by the high-risk excesses of Wall Street and a corresponding lack of regulation, the Republican platform still calls for minimum regulation of Wall Street. I guess this explains why a CNNMoney Survey found that "[a]n overwhelming majority — 70 percent — of investment strategists and money managers in the survey say a Republican president would be better for the stock market"--even though, "as CNNMoney notes, stocks have historically performed better during Democratic administrations" [Michael Kling, "CNNMoney Survey: Wall Street Wants a Republican in the White House," 6 April 2012.]  See also how Republicans have worked to prevent implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank's Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by slashing the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission: Jack Kemp, "Wall Street and Republicans Team Up to Curb CFTC," Reuters, 7 June 2012.  Or you can read Public Citizen's report of May 2012: "Forgotten Lessons of Deregulation: Rolling Back Dodd-Frank's Derivatives Rules Would Repeat a Mistake that Led to the Financial Crisis."

•  Barack Obama and Joe Biden are not perfect men or perfect leaders, but I am not going to vote for president of this country a man who made millions of dollars saddling companies with debt. You can do a song and dance about that choice of careers all you want, claim that it's all-American in its worship of profit for investors (while workers lose their jobs), but I can't admire it. I'll choose the community organizer, conciliator, post-post partisan, introverted lawyer and current president. Also, as his chameleon performance in the first presidential debate illustrates, Mitt Romney's real beliefs are tough to pin down. Romney governed as a moderate Republican in Massachusetts but became increasingly more conservative on the campaign trail, eschewing even his own Massachusetts healthcare plan. Then, in the debate, he suddenly became moderate again, walking back on claims he had made over and over in the previous months. His running mate? Paul Ryan's world view seems to have been too much influenced by Ayn Rand. And, really, is Paul Ryan vice-presidential material, a heartbeat away from the White House?

•  I support environmental regulations; the Republican party would like to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. [See: David Roberts, "The Environment," in The Washington Monthly; Politico's "Mitt Romney Intensifies EPA Attacks"; and Think Progress' response to the Politico article, "Things Mainstream Reporters Can't Say: Mitt Romney is Lying about the Environmental Protection Agency".] Anyone who lived through the 1960s and 1970s (even I, who was only just old enough to vote in 1976) remembers the ecological damage that our country suffered--acid rain, polluted rivers, chemically-fogged skies, Love Canal, lead gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency gives government a necessary tool to regulate pollution and to prepare for climate change (if we and our leaders only had the political will to do the latter).

•  I am a strong supporter of public lands; today's Republican Party (no longer the party of Teddy Roosevelt) and Mitt Romney are not so much. [See Timothy Egan's "The Geography of Nope; "Giving Reins to States over Drilling," in The New York Times; "Conservation Update: Romney Energy Plan Would Give Drilling Control on Federal Lands to States," in Field and Stream.]

• I am appalled by the Republican tactics of voter suppression. See Ruth Rosen's piece at George Mason University's History News Network: "Voter Suppression: The Unraveling of American Democracy." Or listen to local voices, such as those of The Plain Dealer's editorial board in Cleveland, Ohio: "Republicans want to limit last-minute early voting, which in 2008 was most heavily used by less-affluent, minority voters." Or listen to the voices of state Republican leaders--links in Timothy Noah's piece: "'47 Percent'--Voter ID Link Proved." See The Atlantic's piece on True the Vote: "The Ballot Cops,"; Common Cause's "Bullies at the Ballot Box"; Justin Levitt's "The Truth About Voter Fraud," on the Brennan Center for Justice website.  Get updates on voter ID laws here: "Voter Identification Requirements," on the website of The National Conference of State Legislatures.

• I support marriage equality. Making it legal for adults of the same sex to marry neither threatens our democracy nor my own (34-year) heterosexual marriage, and it provides legal protection for gays and lesbians who want to raise families, to support one another financially, and to care for one another in sickness and health. Although there may be "a growing awareness among prominent Republicans that embracing marriage equality could broaden the party’s base and soften the party’s image in crucial ways," the leaders now on marriage equality are Democrats [Frank Bruni, "The G. O. P.'s Gay Trajectory," The New York Times, 9 June 2012].

•  I believe that abortion should be legal and that the decision to have an abortion be a private matter between a woman, her medical provider, and her own conscience. The Republican Party's platform states that "the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed" and that "the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children."  That strongly-worded statement pretty much turns over a pregnant woman's decision making to the federal government. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or mother's medical condition. Imagine the consequences if such a view became law. 

• I am mightily suspicious of the support of these guys and these guys of the Republican Party. What they expect to gain can only hurt the rest of us democratic, freedom-of-religion types.

•  We had eight years of a disastrous Republican presidency under George W. Bush. Mitt Romney is proposing nothing substantially different from a Bush presidency.  His message contains the same warmongering, regulation cutting, tax cutting mantra that brought us two wars, a horrendous deficit, and a financial crisis that almost blew up the country. As my husband says, "Willard" is just W-2.

Following the Money

Until the financial crisis of 2008, regulations such as the Glass-Steagall Act (and its demise under the Clinton administration--courtesy of Phil Graham of my home state of Texas) had barely registered on my radar. I had certainly seen how lack of sufficient regulation caused all kinds of problems (I did read history), but the political maneuvering that created an environment ripe for the financial predator and toxic for the ordinary citizen was in that realm of eye-glazing statutes that I was required to recall for government and civics classes and that I then promptly forgot. Since 2008, however, I've been paying a lot more attention to the Republican claim that markets should be less regulated than they currently are and to the influence of the wealthy people who benefit from that lack of regulation.

Now that the Supreme Court has more thoroughly provided ammunition for the wealthy in its ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, my eyesight has sharpened, and it has begun following the money much more closely. Wealthy individuals and corporations have even more opportunities to influence elections and government legislation. As John Dunbar and Michael Beckel write in Forbes, in its Citizens United decision,

[t]he conservative majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled that spending on independent messages that support or oppose federal candidates by corporations and labor unions does not lead to corruption. A few months later, a federal court cited this rationale in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission. That decision led directly to the creation of super PACs. It said that outside spending groups — like American Crossroads, for example — could accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals to be spent on political ads. Previously, if a group wanted to expressly advocate for or against a federal candidate, it could only collect $5,000 per person per year. If an independent group were to raise $5 million for high-profile TV ad campaign advocating against the president or members of Congress, it would need at least 1,000 donors in a year to give the legal maximum. Now, one wealthy individual can single-handedly give a super PAC the cash it needs — and change the political dynamics of a race overnight. [in "Top ten donors make up a third of donations to super pacs," 16 April 2012]

That kind of big money, most of it from Republican donors, is already having a huge impact on elections. Take, for instance, the recall election of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Most of the money for Walker's fight against recall came from out-of-state very wealthy individuals. Just look at the roll call of wealthy contributors, from the $100,000 contribution of billionaire hedge-fund trader Louis Bacon to the $490,000 contribution from Houston home builder Bob Perry, along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from members of the Koch brothers' million dollar club. As Clare O'Connor wrote in Forbes before Walker's successful fight against recall:

If Scott Walker wins Tuesday’s recall election, he’ll have 14 of America’s richest people to thank. Wisconsin’s Governor has out-raised opponent Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee, by almost 8 to one: $30.5 million to Barrett’s $3.9 million. Of that huge haul, $1.68 million — or, almost half Barrett’s total — came from 14 members of the Forbes billionaires list, all but one of whom live outside Wisconsin. [Clare O'Connor, "Gov. Scott Walker's Big Money Backers Include 13 Out-of-State Billionaires," Forbes 5 June 2012]

These contributions are disclosed, but you can bet, however, that wealthy individuals are looking for ways to support the candidates who will legislate their views without having to disclose their contributions, as Alec McGillis points out in The New Republic:

[I]t's likely that more and more mega-donors indeed are going to seek out ways to give that are undisclosed—it is the reason why Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS group is raising so much, because, as a group that focuses on “issues,” not “elections,” it does not have to name its donors. But this shift is a travesty, not a solution, and it's why anti-disclosure loopholes like the “issues” groups need to be closed. [in "About that Obama Enemies List," posted 16 May 2012]

Many of the extremely wealthy individuals who are now donating so generously to political campaigns have in the past remained out of the usual limelight. Some, such as Louis Bacon, have a reputation for being reclusive. (Bacon, in fact, sued in a London high-court to get several publishers--Wikipedia, WordPress, and the Denver Post--to track down and to reveal the identities of folks who had posted online what he determined to be libelous comments about him.) Yet, as Alec McGillis also rightly reminds us:

When you are giving on the level that Citizens United and related rulings allow you to give, you not only invite scrutiny, you demand it. When you are giving at levels hundreds of times larger than the $2,500 maximum for a regular donation to a campaign, or thousands of times larger than the size checks regular people send to candidates, then you are setting yourself apart. And the only thing that the rest of the citizenry has left to right the balance even slightly is to give you some added scrutiny—to see what personal interests, biases, you name it, might be prompting you to influence the political system in such an outsized way. It's all we've got, really—the Internet, the phone call, the visit to the courthouse. And yes, this applies to everyone. Why does everyone on the right know so much about George Soros? Because they were outraged at the scale of his giving in 2004 and 2006 and dug up everything they could on him. As is only right and proper. And now people are going to look into Frank VanderSloot, Harold Simmons and Paul Singer and the rest of Romney's million-dollar club.

As more and more news organizations are cutting back--for instance, the New Orleans Times Picayune is planning to publish only three days a week and is cutting half of its newsroom staff--the eyes doing the research and following the money are being severely curtailed. So it's up to us ordinary citizens to be alert, to determine how our government is being influenced by those with almost unlimited supplies of money.

For instance, it's important to know that nearly half of the money that the Mitt Romney Super-Pac Restore Our Future has raised has come from Wall Street contributors. According to OpenSecrets.org, Restore our Future is at the tip-top of the list of money-raising Super-Pacs. Organizations such as OpenSecrets give us some insight into how wealthy individuals spread their influence. You can track individual contributors to see where their political allegiance lies and to surmise, perhaps, what those contributors hope to gain from their out-sized contributions.

Try it. Your eyes may glaze over with the information, but you'll be a better citizen for it. Or maybe you'll just be depressed. 

See also:
Dave Weigel, "Pity the Poor Multimillionaire Campaign Donor," posted on Slate, 15 May 2012.
Stephanie Mencimer, "Get-Rich-Quick Profiteers Love Mitt Romney, and He Loves Them Back," in Mother Jones, May/June 2012 issue.
Benjy Sarlin, "Whitehouse: 'Very Little Hope' for Bipartisan Push to Roll Back Citizens United," TPM, posted 18 June 2012.
Monika Bauerline and Clara Jeffery, "How to Sweep Dark Money out of Politics," Mother Jones, July/August 2012 issue.

Let's Quit Sucking up to Wall Street!

Okay, I know that campaigns are expensive to run, that politicians running for office need money. I know that with the Supreme Court's Supremely Sucky decision on Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, huge amounts of Super Pac money are flowing into campaign coffers, and politicians hesitate to bite the golden hands that wave from the windows of Wall Street.  But, crap, will no one put country first and stand up for the millions of Americans who suffered and continue to suffer from the financial crisis of 2008?  Bill Clinton is praising the likes of Donald Trump and soft-soaping Wall Street, because, well, as Joan Walsh points out, Clinton's philanthropic enterprise depends upon deep pockets of the very rich. And I hear Republicans saying again and again that financial systems need LESS regulation--while again and again we learn more details of what inadequate regulation has done to us.

The latest reveal of the dirty tricks of finance? Top executives at Bank of America withheld from the bank's shareholders information that indicated how an acquisition of Merrill Lynch would negatively affect the organization:

Days before Bank of America shareholders approved the bank’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch in December 2008, top bank executives were advised that losses at the investment firm would most likely hammer the combined companies’ earnings in the years to come. But shareholders were not told about the looming losses...[snip]

....The bank’s purchase of Merrill, struck during the depths of the financial crisis, was the culmination of an acquisition binge by Mr. Lewis [CEO] that transformed Bank of America from its base in North Carolina into a financial behemoth that could compete head-to-head with the biggest institutions on Wall Street. 

But the transaction, which was ultimately encouraged by government officials who were concerned about the impact on the financial system of a foundering Merrill Lynch, also saddled the bank with billions in losses and required an additional $20 billion from taxpayers on top of an earlier bailout it received in 2008. [my emphasis] [from: Gretchen Morgenson, "Merrill Losses were Withheld before Bank of America Deal," The New York Times, 3 June 2012]

Jeffrey J. Brown, Bank of America's treasurer at the time, warned Joe L. Price, Bank of America's chief financial officer at the time, "that the failure to disclose [the extent of Merrill Lynch's losses to shareholders before the vote] 'could be a criminal offense, stating that he did not want to be ‘talking through a glass wall over a telephone’ if no disclosure was made.”["Merrill Losses were Withheld before Bank of America Deal"] Wow. How was Brown to know just how misplaced his fear of criminal charges was?  The SEC failed to prosecute those most responsible for the financial crisis--executives with Bank of America (which acquired Countrywide and Merrill Lynch), Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc., all those folks who continue to wield way too much power in this country.

In a blog post, Matt Taibbi, who has investigated and written extensively on the crimes of Wall Street, succinctly lists and describes those regulatory failures of the SEC: "SEC: Taking on Big Firms is 'Tempting,' but We Prefer Picking on Little Guys." Even when warned by insiders of massive fraud, the SEC failed to act. 

You can read Taibbi's article "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform," on the Rolling Stone website, and you can sign up to join Matt Taibbi's "Thunderclap" here to add your tweet to the angry tweets of other citizens disgusted with how our government has let Wall Street get away with financial crimes and continue to use its influence to de-fang regulation meant to put the poison to malfeasance.

As Taibbi demonstrates in "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform," the CEOs of those institutions, with their lawyers and their lobbyists, have way too much influence. Just look at what happened recently with J.P. Morgan. CEO Jamie Dimon and his aides were able to convince regulators to include loopholes in the regulatory laws passed after the financial crisis, laws that enabled J.P. Morgan to do the kind of risky trading that led to the bank's recent $2 billion loss. And don't count on shareholders to hold their executive officers responsible. Even after this latest crisis at J.P. Morgan (which had managed to escape damage in the 2008 financial meltdown), Jamie Dimon "survived a pair of key shareholder votes [on May 15th] on his pay and job responsibilities. [He] won an endorsement of his pay package, which was reportedly $23 million last year. He also can retain his second title as chair of the banking giant."

So don't believe anyone who says that Wall Street needs LESS regulation. Experience proves otherwise.

What Others Are Saying

Another hot day is warming up in South Louisiana, and we have a guest arriving this evening, providing he can get a flight on student standby, so this morning, I'm just linking to some posts and articles that caught my attention:

• Margaret Talbot opines about the Catholic Church's suing the Obama Administration over insurance coverage for birth control, in "Why is the Catholic Church Going to Court?," on The New Yorker website.  Bottom line:

  No one is challenging the rights of those Catholics who object to birth control to eschew it themselves, and to denounce it in public. But the lawsuit proposes something different: namely, that religious freedom means they can deny access to birth control to people who don’t share their faith or that article of it. It doesn’t.

• Heather Digby Parton, guest blogging for Kevin Drum, reflects my own cynicism about the lack of political will of our politicians in reigning in the power of Wall Street. (And now that the Supreme Court has added to the problem with its decision of Citizen's United, what little spine was left in our politicians has been, perhaps, permanently removed.) Adding to my depression about how Wall Street's trade in toxic derivatives screwed millions of Americans while the perpetrators of that financial disaster seem to have become even more politically powerful are these posts to which Parton links: Thomas Edsall's May 26th opinion piece in The New York Times and Mark Taibbi's article "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform," in Rolling Stone. Here's a lovely quote from Taibbi's article:

  The fate of Dodd-Frank over the past two years is an object lesson in the government's inability to institute even the simplest and most obvious reforms, especially if those reforms happen to clash with powerful financial interests. From the moment it was signed into law, lobbyists and lawyers have fought regulators over every line in the rulemaking process. Congressmen and presidents may be able to get a law passed once in a while – but they can no longer make sure it stays passed. You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again.

• A recent study suggests that exercise may actually hurt some folks with heart risks, as Gina Kolata reports in her New York Time's article, "For Some, Exercise May Increase Heart Risk," 30 May 2012. Oh, well. We know we all are going to die, anyway, right? No sweat.
  
  
  
• I'll end with this great Pig at the Trough homage to a Ronald Reagan ad (and a poke at Wall Street) that James Fallows shares this morning on his blog: "The Bear vs. the Pig: A Great Reagan Ad Updated."
  
  ....things to do.....
 

oh, and "oink, oink": "Honeywell CEO Says the Corporate Tax Rate Should be Zero"