Saturday, February 04, 2012
Komen - It's A Matter Of Trust Now
Fortunately many individuals stepped up to the plate and donated over $650,000 to Planned Parenthood to save the early screening program (even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put his politics aside and donated $250,000). But these donations from other Americans don't mitigate the action of the Komen Foundation. Their move to put politics over saving lives was despicable.
For a couple of days the leaders of the Komen Foundation tried to quell the backlash to their action by claiming they were receiving overwhelming support for their political move. That was laughable. A perusal of their own website showed most commenters were angry, not supportive. When the backlash continued to grow, the Komen Foundation finally realized what a mess they had created for themselves. Personally, I think they finally woke up to the financial reality of the situation (some sources were predicting their contributions could be cut in half). They have now apologized, saying:
We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives. The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not. [...]
We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair. [...]
Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.
I guess they are now hoping everyone will forgive them and forget their action and everything will go back to the way it was before. Unfortunately it's just not that simple. The Komen Foundation has seriously damaged the trust they had built up over the years. Do they really mean what they say now? Or are they just trying to save themselves and their financial prospects? I have to admit that I don't trust them right now. Consider the following:
* The only promise the organization made in its apology was to "continue to fund existing grants". Those were never in question, since it was future grants that they were going to cut off for Planned Parenthood.
* They assured everyone that Planned Parenthood is eligible to apply for future grants. The problem is that being eligible to apply is a long way from having an application approved for a grant. They could cut off future funds for Planned Parenthood and still be living up to their above statement (since all they promised is to let them apply).
* Even if some future funds are approved for Planned Parenthood, how can we know those funds won't be cut each year until they no longer exist? That would be an "under-the-radar" way to cut off the funds without incurring the bad publicity and huge backlash.
* The right-wing nut-job who instituted the cut-off of funds for Planned Parenthood, Karen Handel (Senior Vice-President of Public Policy), is still employed by the Komen Foundation. She has not apologized or said she would follow a different policy than the one she announced. How can we trust the Komen Foundation as long as she retains a position of power within that organization?
The apology was a good thing, but it was only a very tiny baby-step toward making things right again. Words are nice, but concrete actions are necessary. Trust can be restored, but it won't be easy or fast.
Unemployment Shows Small Improvement
This is good news for Democrats, since a falling unemployment rate means the chances for President Obama being re-elected is improved -- and it would be vastly improved if the rate could drop below 8% in the coming months. If January is an indicator, that could be a real possibility. But while the numbers are good politically and show some movement in the right direction, it is not nearly enough to quickly solve our unemployment problem.
At the rate of only 243,000 jobs a month being created, it would take many years to get the unemployment rate back down to 3% or 4% (which is considered full employment). The government needs to take some serious action to encourage a lot more job creation a lot quicker. As long as we have many millions of unemployed and underemployed people, our economy will continue to suffer (except for the rich, who are doing great).
How many people are out of work. The U.S. government puts the official unemployment figure at 12.8 million. Of course that is an undercount since the government only counts those people who have actively looked for work in the last four weeks. There are other that have given up trying to find work or run out of places to apply for work. The government puts their number at about 2.8 million (also undoubtably an undercount since these people are harder to account for). But just accepting the government numbers, that means there at least 15.6 million people unemployed in the United States.
But that 15.6 million doesn't tell the whole story either. There are another 8.2 million people who are working part-time because they can't find full-time jobs. They would like to work full-time, but the jobs don't exist to allow them to do that. When you add them to the unemployed, you come up with a figure of 23.8 million. That's the number of Americans who would like to have full-time work but can't find it. That's the number of jobs that needs to be created in this country. And at 243,000 jobs a month, it's going to take a very long time to do that.
The January numbers were an improvement, but only a tiny improvement. Much more is needed, and that means some way is going to have to be found to get around the obstructionism of congressional Republican. The best way is to vote them out of office in November. If that doesn't happen, it's going to be a long and tough slog to improve the economy and create enough jobs.
Wall Street Willie Says. . .
Friday, February 03, 2012
Donald Trump Feeds His Ego
There were those who thought that Trump would endorse Gingrich. After all, Gingrich was willing to attend Trump's ill-fated debate while Romney was not. But Trump's ego wouldn't let him endorse someone who was not likely to win, so in spite of all the nasty things Trump had said about Romney in the past, he gave his endorsement to the race leader (and his fellow Wall Street mogul) Willard Mitt Romney.
Now if Romney wins (as it looks like he is probably going to do), Trump can claim it was his support that put him over the top. He almost did that anyway, telling a group of reporters after the endorsement, "I bring a lot of people with me." I think he misunderstands a lot of the public attention he gets, with it being much more like gawkers at an accident than adoring fans. I doubt that the Trump endorsement will make any difference in the race at all.
That view is backed up by a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. The survey found that endorsement make little, if any, difference in a political campaign -- and that some endorsements can actually hurt much more than they help. The survey asked how the endorsement of several individual might affect the way a person votes, and Trump didn't come out so good. Among Republicans, 13% said a Trump endorsement would make them more likely to vote for a candidate while 20% said it would make them less likely. In a general election the numbers are even worse -- with 8% saying more likely and 28% saying less likely.
Frankly, I think Trump's big endorsement fed his own ego much more than it will help Romney. But that was the real reason for it anyway, so I guess he can go home happy now.
Maine & Nevada Are Next - Romney Leads
Rick Santorum has absolutely no support here - most of the Republicans are just to the right of center (like our senators), and aren't buying his hate-infested nonsense talk. I know Ron Paul is currently (or just finished up) touring the state, and he's really popular with the college kids who don't quite get everything he's about. I myself like some of his ideas, but he's just far too twisted for my taste. Maine will either go to Gingrich or Romney. I'm betting on the latter.
He is probably right about the winner, but I still think the caucus system is tailor-made for Ron Paul and he seems to consistently over-perform in them. He could cut into the share of the other candidates significantly -- in both Maine and Nevada. meanwhile, nevada holds its caucus tomorrow, and by late Saturday night we should know how the delegate allocation is going to shake out there (a least in rough terms).
Right now things are looking pretty good for Willard Mitt (Wall Street Willie) Romney. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has released a new poll done for them, and it shows Romney with a big lead in Nevada. Here are the poll results:
Mitt Romney...............45%
Newt Gingrich...............25%
Rick Santorum...............11%
Ron Paul...............9%
Other/Undecided...............10%
Again, I think the poll underestimates the ability of Paul to turn out his supporters. I don't think Paul will win, but I do think he'll outperform Santorum and cut into the strength of both Gingrich and Romney. But whether I'm wrong or right, we'll know in just one more day.
Komen Foundation Has Abandoned Its Principles For Its New Political Ideology
Planned Parenthood never misused the funds they received from the Komen Foundation. Since 2005, they have used those funds to do 170,000 breast exams and over 6,400 mammogram referrals -- undoubtably saving the lives of many women who could not afford to go elsewhere and pay for those exams and mammograms.
But the Komen Foundation has found something they think is more important than saving the lives of poor women by the early detection of breast cancer -- their new right-wing ideology. After hiring Karen Handel, a right-wing anti-choice activist from Georgia, the Komen Foundation decided that they would no longer fund the breast cancer screenings done by Planned Parenthood. Although they are now trying to deny it, the once non-partisan cancer foundation has put themselves squarely in the political arena and decided that denying cancer screenings to poor women is the politically-correct thing to do.
Like many others, I am shocked by this obviously political power-play by the Komen Foundation. My own mother was a victim of breast cancer and had a double-mastectomy. In the past, I have supported the Komen Foundation because I believed their goal was worthy. I now have serious doubts about the organization, and I will no longer support their efforts. I still think the fight against breast cancer is a very worthy fight and I hope it can soon be won. But the Komen Foundation is far from the only organization waging that fight. For those of you who agree, here is a website of organizations involved in this effort, and most or all of them try to avoid the politics now being engaged in by the Komen Foundation.
There are also a lot of corporate entities that support the Komen Foundation. They need to be encouraged to change that support to a non-partisan breast cancer group. This can be done by writing to these companies and by boycotting their products until they do so. They can be easily identified, because they all have a pick ribbon on their products. I urge you to do this. Cancer prevention, treatment, and cure is too important to be the plaything of any political ideology.
(Graphic above is from the excellent blog What Would Jack Do?)
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Buying Victory
Yesterday I remarked in a post that since Romney has been unable to win the hearts of Republican voters, he has decided to try and buy the election. I've also taken to calling him Wall Street Willie, because most of his money is coming from corporations and other denizens of Wall Street. Some of you may think I was joking. I wasn't. I believe both of those statements to be true.
Let us first examine the charge that Romney bought the victory in Florida. In South Carolina, the Romney forces spent only slightly more than the Gingrich forces -- and he lost by a large margin. It became obvious that Romney has not won the hearts of Republican voters -- far from it. And going into Florida after that crushing defeat, Romney found himself down significantly in the polls to Gingrich. What was he to do the regain the advantage?
What he did was outspend Gingrich by a four to one margin on TV advertising (with Romney and his super-PAC spending about $16 million, while Gingrich and his super-PAC could only muster $4 million). And 99% of that spending on behalf of Romney was on negative ads directed toward his major opponent, Gingrich. Romney literally carpet-bombed Gingrich with negative ads in Florida.
Did this huge amount of negative advertising have an effect on the outcome. Of course it did. Romney used it to turn a double-digit deficit into a double-digit win. This is verified by exit polling done by NBC News in Florida. About 71% of the Republicans polled said the TV ads were a factor in their decision on who to vote for, and 41% said it was an important factor.
And where did all the money come from to do that enormous spending in Florida. It came from Wall Street and other corporate entities. The financial services industry alone (Wall Street) has given Romney over $12 million -- more than twice what they have given to all other candidates combined (including President Obama). In fact, the Wall Street financial sector donated more that 20% of all the funds received by the Romney campaign in 2011. It's pretty obvious that the financial industry knows that if they could get Romney elected, it would mean a return to the "good old days" of "anything goes" for Wall Street (just like under President Bush).
And it wasn't just to the Romney campaign that Wall Street has been donating. They are also filling the coffers of his super-PAC. In just the last half of 2011, more than $18 million dollars were donate to the super-PAC -- by only 200 contributors. These are obviously not ordinary middle-class Americans making these huge donations. I wasn't joking at all by referring to Romney as "Wall Street Willie". He has been bought and paid for by Wall Street.
Now he takes that money to the caucus states of the next couple of weeks (and has already spent over $1 million in Nevada). It looks like Romney will just continue his "carpet-bombing" of his Republican opponents -- none of whom can come close to matching him in ad buys.
The only good thing about all of Romney huge spending to buy the Republican nomination is that the money spent now will not be available for the general election. And in the general election, he will not be facing an under-funded opponent. Obama raised $224.6 million in 2011. Romney cannot hope to raise enough money in his campaign to equal Obama's war chest. But Romney will have the advantage in outside spending. Karl Rove's PAC alone raised $51 million in 2011 and hopes to bump that to $200 million -- while Democratic PACs raised only about $19 million in 2011.
It's obviously going to be an expensive general election campaign. But it won't be as one-sided as the spending in the Republican primary campaign (where Romney has a huge financial advantage thanks to Wall Street).
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