The Trump/Pence Regime Is Clueless About Americans' Finances

Steven Mnuchin -  utterly clueless.

Perhaps it's the result of loading one's regime ("administration" is too complimentary a term) with rapacious billionaires and ideologues who worship vulture capitalism, but whatever the cause the Trump/Pence regime is proving itself utterly clueless as to the finances and lives of average Americans, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck.  Among the most clueless is Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin seemed to imply that $1,200 stimulus checks would be enough to tide American families over until the coronavirus pandemic crisis passed.  One has to wonder what planet these clueless and uncaring monsters are from.  With 22 million people seeking unemployment benefits over the last three weeks, perhaps Republicans will get a glimpse at how their reverse Robin Hood agenda has harmed so many Americans.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the depths of the Trump/Pence regime's callousness.  Here are highlights:

Earlier this week, a video of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaking on “Face the Nation” late last month began making the rounds. Mnuchin seemed to imply that the government’s current financial support system — the temporary boost to unemployment benefits, the small business lending program and the $1,200 stimulus check — would be enough to tide American families over until the coronavirus pandemic crisis passed.  This is all ludicrously, offensively inaccurate.

There are at least 22 million people who lost their jobs within the past month — and that’s what we know of. Antiquated state unemployment systems cannot keep up with the demand. And despite the fact that gig workers are supposed to be covered — for the first time ever — the Trump administration’s Labor Department is attempting to issue regulations to get around that directive. “We want workers to have work, not to become dependent on the unemployment system,” Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Small Business Administration head Jovita Carranza wrote in an op-ed published by Fox Business (where else?) this week.

No surprise, thousands upon thousands of people are lining up at food banks, desperately seeking help — and the cost of staples such as eggs is soaring. Food banks, in turn, are increasingly concerned about running out of food, money or both. Meanwhile, the Trump administration needed to be publicly shamed into backing off an attempt to impose work requirements on food stamp recipients, even as jobs have disappeared.

As for the small business loan program designed to keep people employed — the Paycheck Protection Program — it was so underfunded that it ran out of money within days of opening up for applications.

More finance facts: According to the real estate site RENTCafé, the average rent in the United States is more than $1,400, over $200 more than our one-time $1,200 stimulus check. In many cities — including hard-hit New York — it’s more than $2,000. Almost a third of renters didn’t pay their rent bill for April, not because they were suddenly financially irresponsible, but because they didn’t have the money. They lived paycheck to paycheck, and when that paycheck suddenly vanished, so did their financial resources. Those Americans need a rent freeze, not a measly handout designed to make the narcissistic President Trump appear beneficent.

And that check? The American Prospect, in a great scoop, revealed that Mnuchin’s Treasury Department gave banks permission to seize the money if the account holder had outstanding balances for anything ranging from a past-due loan to an overdraft. Moreover, Trump’s insistence on putting his name on the checks means a delay in sending them to people who don’t have a bank account — that is the poorest, most financially desperate Americans.

But what would Trump care about that? He’s a man of inherited wealth who has fooled no small number of voters into believing he assembled his vast fortune all by himself. As president, he then went on to put together the wealthiest presidential Cabinet ever known. Mnuchin — estimated net worth $300 million — is all too typical. . . . Among Mnuchin’s pre-Trump claims to fame: foreclosing on the homes of financially desperate people during the financial crisis.

So instead of meaningful help, Americans get pep talks. Trump, Mnuchin and the Republican Party pursue a financial relief plan that showers gains on Wall Street and corporations, while leaving smaller businesses and individual Americans fighting for mere scraps. No amount of financial literacy is going to fix this bad penny of an administration.

Trump’s Deranged Thirst for a Clash of Civilizations

If one looks at Donald Trump's business career, other than inherited wealth, his rise has depended in considerable measure in lying, cheating others, threats, seeking confrontation, being a bully, skirting the law and dealing with undesirable personages ranging from Mafia figures to Russian Mafia figures. Contracts mean nothing to the man - and by extension, the same seems to hold for international treaties - and his word means little.  The only thing that can be relied upon is that he will lie and boast about himself while feeding his insatiable ego.  Now, thanks to the dereliction of its duty by the Electoral College, Trump finds him holding the office of president of the United States and he seemed poised to bring all of his distasteful repertoire to the world stage.  Compounding the toxicity is his apparent embrace of the Christofascists' desire to impose their beliefs and "culture" on the rest of the world.  His current trip to Poland and the G20 summit is no exception.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Trump's alternate universe and thirst for conflict.  Here are highlights:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” wrote the poet Alexander Pope. Three centuries later, Pope’s aphorism perfectly — and dangerously — describes President Trump’s understanding of history as a zero-sum clash of civilizations in which “the West” can triumph by imposing its will.

The speech Trump delivered Thursday in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square might have been appropriate when Britannia ruled the waves and Europe’s great powers held dominion over “lesser” peoples around the globe. It had nothing useful to say about today’s interconnected world in which goods, people and ideas have contempt for borders.
 Trump added what he probably thought of as a Churchillian flourish: “I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.”

Triumph over whom? Trump mentioned “radical Islamic terrorism” as one of the enemies posing “dire threats to our security and to our way of life,” but he didn’t stop there. He went on to add Russia and — weirdly — “the steady creep of government bureaucracy” to the list.

But what does Trump mean when he speaks of “the West” and its civilization? “Americans, Poles and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty,” he said. “We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.

If the president read a few history books, he’d know that for most of the past 2,000 years, China and India were the world’s leading economic powers and Europe was a relatively primitive backwater. He’d know that Europe rose to dominance not by erecting walls but by opening itself to the rest of the world — its resources, products and people.

There is nothing pure about Western civilization. Its ability to absorb and incorporate outside influences has proved a great strength, not a weakness. Imagine Italy without tomato sauce, a gift from the New World — or the United States without the high-tech companies founded by immigrants, gifts from the Old.

Of course Trump is right to call for a united front against terrorism. But the solution, in a globalized world, cannot be to hunker behind walls . . . . Global issues, such as nuclear proliferation and climate change, demand global solutions. Like it or not, we are all in this together.

The correct response to the terrorism threat, which is real, is to isolate it as an abomination that is as much a grievous insult to Islam as to any other faith — and that has taken the lives of far more Muslims than non-Muslims. The wrong response is to posit that “the West” is besieged by, and therefore at war with, a hostile civilization.

But viewing the fight against terrorism as some kind of civilizational Armageddon is wrong. Trump seems to view himself as the West’s defender against 1.6 billion Muslims, almost all of whom want only to live in peace. We need a capable president, not a crusader in chief.

George W. Bush saw the Iraq War as a crusade of sorts.  In the end, it ended little better than some of the failed Crusades of the 11th and 13th Centuries but had one thing in common with the: thousands lost their lies needlessly.  One can only cringe in fear of what batshitery Trump may unleash.  

House Republicans Meet at a Former Slave Plantation to Practice Talking to Black People

UPDATED: NBC News has also picked up on the irony of where the House Republicans are meeting to discuss how to better attract minority voters.  One GOP spokesman described the party's problems as follows:

the GOP had a “good message” for minorities but had suffered from a recent "bad communications."

When are these people going to stop drinking Kool-Aid and face reality?

This article in Gawker was just too good to pass up because it underscores how clueless the Republican party is when it comes to facing the reality of why minorities are voting for Democrats by huge margins.  The conventional wisdom in the GOP - if one can credit any form of wisdom to today's GOP - is that the party has a messaging problem.  Never mind that it is the GOP's POLICIES and open racism and bigotry that are the real problem, not poor "messaging."  Efforts to disenfranchise non-whites, slash programs that disproportionately aid minorities and the admission of those who can only be described as white supremacists into positions within the GOP have nothing to do with the Party's problem of attracting minority votes in the minds of these greed and religious extremism drive party apparatchiks.  So as the House Republicans gather to discuss their so-called messaging problem, where better to meet than at a posh resort located on a former slave plantation near Williamsburg, Virginia.  For those not familiar with this area, the Kingsmill Resort and its affiliated gated community, are very nice - and very, very white with most minorities to be seen only working as servants or waitstaff (some things never really change in Virginia) - and it is located on lands once part of a slave owning James River plantation. Here's how Gawker describes the GOP soul searching gathering:

The House Republicans are holding their annual winter retreat in quaint tourist village Williamsburg, Virginia, this weekend in order to recuperate and prepare for upcoming legislative battles. Besides partaking in discussions about the debt ceiling and gun restrictions, GOP congressmen and women will also be getting schooled in the fine art of how to have "successful communication with minorities and women."

One might presume that people elected to high office in America have at least a general understanding of how to talk to and about minorities and women without saying unimaginably offensive things, but one would be wrong. Far too many Republicans have a remarkable way of saying the absolutely worst thing time and again about everything from rape to Kwanzaa. Sadly, a lesson about why it's wrong to equivocate about a woman being raped or why it's not a great idea to make all your House committee chairs white men is exactly what the GOP needs.

And what better place to talk about making inroads with oppressed groups than in a room named after a famous Williamsburg plantation [i.e., Burwell Plantation], located in the tony Kingsmill Resort, which itself is on the site of another plantation? The GOP has heard your complaints, blacks and Latinos and women, and they're going to try to suss it out while sitting atop dead slave bones.

The link in the article takes you to a page from the Colonial Williamsburg website that looks at the slave owning Burwell family.  One part of the right up is telling: "The seven lists of slaves recorded by four members of the Burwell family between 1746 and 1839 fill ten pages in the Ann Powell Burwell Commonplace Book." Another telling passage:

[T]he widow Burwell noted the births of five children born to four of her enslaved women in Williamsburg between March 1754 and May 1756. She made these entries on the same page that Armistead Burwell used to list “my house Negro’s” in July 1746. There is no evidence that either Armistead or Christian Burwell purchased slaves for their Williamsburg household. The number of urban slaves grew through natural increase. Christian Burwell added a comment below her husband’s 1746 list of “Negro’s sent to Roanoke.” She noted, “The Negroe’s in Lunnenburg 1764 are 18 men and 17 Women.” There were also an unknown number of enslaved children on the family’s Southside property. 

In short the Burwell Plantation Room couldn't be a more appropriate place for the House Republicans to meet since many likely yearn for the "good old days" when the Burwell family was at the height of its wealth and power.

Out of Touch Romney Calls $200,000 - $250,000 "Middle Income"

This blog has noted time and time again Mitt Romney's utter inability to grasp much less feel the slightest  empathy for the lives of most Americans  He and his wife truly are today's version of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of the American political world.  And now Romney has underscored this reality yet again when he said during a :Good Morning America" interview that "middle income" as income of $200,000 to $250,000.  Perhaps in Mr. Romney's world of great wealth and privilege, but in low wage Hampton Roads that income bracket would put one among the wealthy. Back in the real world the U.S. Census Bureau reports that median income is $50,000 - that's right, a mere one-quarter of what Romney sees as "middle income."   The Washington Post looks a Romney's latest "sliver foot in his mouth" moment.  Here are excerpts:

Mitt Romney is promising to reduce taxes on middle-income Americans.  But how does he define “middle-income”? The Republican presidential nominee defined it Friday as income of $200,000 to $250,000 a year and less.

Romney’s comments came an interview broadcast Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“No one can say my plan is going to raise taxes on middle-income people, because principle number one is (to) keep the burden down on middle-income taxpayers,” Romney told host George Stephanopoulos.

“Is $100,000 middle income?” Stephanopoulos asked.  “No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less,” Romney responded.


The Census Bureau reported this week that the median household income — the midpoint for the nation — is just over $50,000.

Obama wants to extend Bush-era tax cuts for those making less than $250,000, while Romney wants to extend the tax cuts for everyone.

Romney has not explained how he would keep his plan from growing the nation’s deficit.

Romney: What Does He Really Believe?

As a Politico article discusses, the GOP continues to fret over Mitt Romney's "image."   The key problem according to Politico:

Romney’s inability so far to counter President Barack Obama’s efforts to portray him as an out-of-touch elitist who got rich through predatory business practices is perhaps his biggest general election hurdle, many top Republicans here said Monday.

Perhaps the core of the problem is that Romney IS what the Obama campaign has sought to depict him to be.  It does seem that money is the only thing that gets Romney passionate.  That and avoiding taxes in any and every way possible.  And Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney isn't much better.  A thoughtful article by The Economist tries to decipher what Romney really believes in and that august business magazine  found it was an impossible task:

WHEN Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things.

All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr Romney could win an Olympic medal in it (see article).

But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop . . . 

There are some areas where Mr Romney has shuffled to the right unnecessarily. In America’s culture wars he has followed the Republican trend of adopting ever more socially conservative positions.

The damage done to a Romney presidency by his courting of the isolationist right in the primaries could prove more substantial. He has threatened to label China as a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency. Even if it is unclear what would follow from that, risking a trade war with one of America’s largest trading partners when the recovery is so sickly seems especially mindless. Some of his anti-immigration policies won’t help, either. And his attempts to lure American Jews with near-racist talk about Arabs and belligerence against Iran could ill serve the interests of his country (and, for that matter, Israel’s).

In theory, Mr Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions (indeed, “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex).

Which bits of Mr Ryan’s scheme does he agree with? It is a little odd that the number two has a plan and his boss doesn’t. And it is all very well promising to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care plan and the equally gargantuan Dodd-Frank act on financial regulation, but what exactly will Mr Romney replace them with—unless, of course, he thinks Wall Street was well-regulated before Lehman went bust?

Mr Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: the faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is.

[H]e has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.

He does indeed, and I'm not expecting to see any honest or revealing answers.  Whatever comes down, will be more cynically calculated PR propaganda.

Nuns Challenge Romney To Spend A Day With Them To Learn About Plight Of America’s Poor

You know it's bad when Catholic nuns - some of the few Catholic Church clergy who seem to believe in the true Gospel message -  are deriding Mitt Romney for being insensitive and clueless about the plight of the poor.  Worse yet, they call the Paul Ryan GOP budget which Romney has endorsed to be immoral and contrary to Catholic social justice principles.  Romney may have resorted to running ads featuring the late Pope John Paul II as an attack of Obama - apparently forgetting that John Paul II's legacy includes massive cover ups of sexual abuse literally around the globe - but he's clueless on social justice issues.  Enter the nuns who have invited Romney to join their bus tour so that he can be educated about reality.  Will Romney accept the invitation?  I seriously doubt it.  Here are some excerpts from a Think Progress post:

The group behind the Nuns On A Bus tour that highlighted the ill-effects of the House Republican budget in congressional districts across the country is now setting its sights on the party’s presidential candidate, inviting Mitt Romney to spend a day with the nuns to learn about the plight of America’s poorest citizens.
.   .   .   .   The group is specifically targeting Romney a day after his campaign released a misleading ad about welfare reform that Sister Simone Campbell, NETWORK’s executive director, said “demonize[s] families in poverty” and shows Romney’s “ignorance about the challenges” the poor face in America:

“Recent advertisements and statements from the campaign of Governor Romney demonize families in poverty and reflect woeful ignorance about the challenges faced by tens of millions of American families in these tough economic times,” stated Sister Simone Campbell. .  .  .  . 

Romney has endorsed the House GOP budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). It was that plan, which includes deep cuts to food stamps and other safety net programs that benefit the middle class, that NETWORK’s Nuns On A Bus tour targeted, with Campbell and other sisters blasting it as “immoral” at the tour’s conclusion in Washington D.C. Romney has also proposed massive tax cuts for the rich that would likely come at the expense of lower- and middle-class families, which would see higher taxes or significant cuts to the programs they depend on.

Those policies, Campbell told ThinkProgress, show that Romney “doesn’t have clue” about the struggles the poor face. “The fact is, his policies shift wealth to the upper class,” she said. “Yes, it hurts the middle class, but it devastates those at the margins of our society.” If Romney were to accept their invitation, Campbell said she would take him to places like St. Augustine’s in Cleveland, where food programs “provide a hand up” to the community’s neediest members. “He thinks they’re lazy,” Campbell said, in reference to Romney’s misleading welfare reform ad. “It is hard work to keep things together when you’re poor. He doesn’t have a clue. Let him talk to them, and maybe they’ll touch his heart. And his mind too.”

Mitt Romney's Cultural Illiteracy

I have to admit it: I love seeing Mitt Romney continually pummeled for his asinine statements made during his failed overseas charm offensive.  Rather than showing himself as remotely competent on foreign policy issues, Romney mainly showed himself to be offensive and out of touch.  Fareed Zakaria has a column in the Washington Post that looks at Romney's cluelessness and cultural insensitivity - even prejudice if you will - and ignorance about larger economic issues.  Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Romney just doesn't understand what makes most people - or most countries - tick.   As I have noted before, the more I see of the man, the more contempt I have for him.  Here are some column excerpts:

“Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said at a fundraiser in Israel, comparing the country’s economic vitality to Palestinian poverty. Certainly there is a pedigree for this idea. Romney cited David Landes, an economics historian. He could have cited Max Weber, the great German scholar who first made this claim 100 years ago in his book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” which argued that Protestant values were the most important fuel for economic progress.

 

The problem is that Weber singled out two cultures as being particularly prone to poverty and stagnation, those of China and Japan. But these have been the world’s fastest-growing large economies over the past five decades. Over the past two decades, the other powerhouse has been India, which was also described for years as having a culture incompatible with economic success — hence the phrase “the Hindu rate of growth,” to describe the country’s once-moribund state.

Had Romney spent more time reading Milton Friedman, he would have realized that historically the key driver for economic growth has been the adoption of capitalism and its related institutions and policies across diverse cultures.

The link between economic policies and performance can be seen even in the country on which Romney was lavishing praise. Israel had many admirable traits in its early decades, but no one would have called it an economic miracle.  .  .  .  .  The miracle Romney was praising had to do with new policies rather than deep culture.

Despite all this evidence, most people still believe that two cultures in particular, African and Islamic, inhibit economic development. But the two countries that will next achieve a gross domestic product of $1 trillion are both Muslim democracies — Turkey and Indonesia. Of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world today, seven are African. The world is changing, and holding on to fixed views of culture means you will miss its changing dynamics.

Will Americans Elect a Jerk to the White House?

There was a time when I actually thought that Mitt Romney might be somewhat acceptable as president.  Unfortunately, the more I've learned about him, the more mistaken I realized I was - the guy, in truth is a total unfeeling jerk.  And the stories about his gay bashing and abuse in high school was the final straw.  That's not to say that I'm in love with Barack Obama, but despite his failings, he's not a creep who has not empathy for others and is clueless as to the daily challenges most Americans have to deal with.  And then there's the issues of gay marriage and gay adoption.  Romney basically cannot even accept my common humanity nor can he admit that gays have lives, loves and children just like everyone else.  A column in The Daily Beast looks at Romney's "jerk factor."  Here are excerpts:

Very few votes are going to be cast on the basis of what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do to John Lauber in 1965. So that, per se, isn’t Romney’s problem. But this is: The story lands as another brick on pile of evidence amassing that he’s just a disagreeable human being. A few days ago I wrote about Barack Obama’s biggest problem, which is that despite all the many areas in which Americans rate him higher than Romney, the one on which they give Romney the edge happens to be pretty important: handling the economy. Now we get to Romney’s biggest problem. The likability factor. He ain’t got it. And he ain’t got much of a way to get it.

Historical question: When is the last time the clearly less likeable candidate beat the clearly more likeable one for the White House? The answer is, a long time. I put the question to Gallup, which didn’t have historical numbers at hand. But doing some noodling around on my own suggests that you have to go back to 1968 to find such a result.

This is the biggest washout of modern times, folks. Gallup just this week put the likeability ratings at Obama 60, Romney 31. It’s not that Obama’s number is unusually high.  .  .  .   they Do. Not. Like. Mitt. Romney.  .   .   .  Every time he says something off the cuff he says something obnoxious. Corporations are people, pal. I like firing people. Where on earth did you get those Godforsaken cookies?

He also—and this actually is interesting, because it’s something our normal public discourse does not like to admit or allow for—is way too rich. We’re constantly told that Americans don’t have any class envy, and compared to some European nations they don’t. But even Americans have limits. A few million, even $50 million; okay. But a quarter billion dollars? A house with an elevator . . . for the cars? It also matters to people how the money was made. It’s okay to be worth a gajillion dollars if you’re Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and have made everyone’s lives more interesting and cooler. But what’s Mitt Romney done?

[H]e has no grasp of the one crucial reality of class in America: you can be filthy rich as long as you don’t look or act like it. Gates doesn’t comb his hair, much. Jobs wore sneakers. Romney just looks too pressed.

And this brings us back to the Cranbrook School incident. We might have learned from The Washington Post this week that Romney gallantly interceded on poor Lauber’s behalf. Or even, maybe, that he did the awful deed, but a few years later he got in touch with Lauber to say, “Gee, old scout, went a bit overboard there.” Or even that he acknowledged to one of his confederates that he regretted the incident. In other words, we might have learned something that showed he knows he behaved like an asshole. But all we learned is that he behaved like an asshole and is now pretending to forget it. A jerk is one thing. But a jerk who takes no responsibility for his jerkitude is pretty much the definition of an unlikeable person.

[T]here’s something very reassuring about this country reposing in those numbers, that the black guy with the weird name who’s been called everything under the sun is twice as likeable as the rich white guy. This is the America that drives the wingers crazy, but that the rest of us—the majority—live in, and love.

Romney Would Savage "Safety Net" for the Poor

The utterly out of touch Mitt Romney continues to attempt damage control after his incredibly insensitive - and stupid - remark that he wasn't concerned about the poor. Yet the very safety net that he claims protects them is under attack by Romney's fellow Republicans as are programs for poor children. One can already picture Obama ads running clips of Romney's statement over and over again in the fall campaign if Romney is the eventually GOP nominee. Paul Krugman in the New York Times looks further at Romney's clueless statement and what Romney's policies might bring. Here are highlights:

If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. . . . . how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

[T]he truth is that the safety net does need repair. It provides a lot of help to the poor, but not enough. Medicaid, for example, provides essential health care to millions of unlucky citizens, children especially, but many people still fall through the cracks: among Americans with annual incomes under $25,000, more than a quarter — 28.7 percent — don’t have any kind of health insurance. And, no, they can’t make up for that lack of coverage by going to emergency rooms.

Similarly, food aid programs help a lot, but one in six Americans living below the poverty line suffers from “low food security.” This is officially defined as involving situations in which “food intake was reduced at times during the year because [households] had insufficient money or other resources for food” — in other words, hunger.

Mr. Romney, however, wants to make the safety net weaker instead. Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in financing compared with current law.

I believe Mr. Romney when he says he isn’t concerned about the poor. What I don’t believe is his assertion that he’s equally unconcerned about the rich, who are “doing fine.” After all, if that’s what he really feels, why does he propose showering them with money? And we’re talking about a lot of money. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Romney’s tax plan would actually raise taxes on many lower-income Americans, while sharply cutting taxes at the top end.

He is opening up new frontiers in American politics. Even conservative politicians used to find it necessary to pretend that they cared about the poor. Remember “compassionate conservatism”? Mr. Romney has, however, done away with that pretense.

At this rate, we may soon have politicians who admit what has been obvious all along: that they don’t care about the middle class either, that they aren’t concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans, and never were.

McCain’s Health Coverage Plan - No One Benefits

As Joe Biden made note in the vice presidential debate last week, the McCain/Palin health care plan is largely dead on arrival and neither employees nor employers are happy with what can only be described as a bad plan. Of course McCain, married to an heiress, in addition to having the health care perks of a U. S. Senator is clueless on this real world issue. As for Sarah Palin, shes just plain clueless on all counts. Other than housing costs, health care costs are one of the biggest concerns for both employees who desperately need to keep their families with coverage and employers who must carry a portion of the coast burden. Now, the New York Times has a story looking at the deficiencies of the McCain proposal. It is noteworthy that McCain wants the private market place to be controlling - the same market place that has brought us the current financial catastrophe. Moreover, the tax credits McCain would offer go nowhere near offsetting the costs of coverage (as a small business owner, my family coverage cost nearly $16,000 last year). Lastly, the proposal completely ignores the fact that due to pre-existing conditions, many individuals cannot get coverage at any price. Here are some highlights:

*

American business, typically a reliable Republican cheerleader, is decidedly lukewarm about Senator John McCain’s proposal to overhaul the health care system by revamping the tax treatment of health benefits, officials with leading trade groups say. The officials, with organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Federation of Independent Business, predicted in recent interviews that the McCain plan, which eliminates the exclusion of health benefits from income taxes, would accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance and do little to reduce the number of uninsured from 45 million.

*

That is largely the argument made in recent days by Mr. McCain’s opponent, Senator Barack Obama, who has revived a dormant campaign debate over health care with an intensified attack on the McCain plan. . . . . Over the weekend, Mr. Obama more accurately characterized the McCain plan as a swap but one that would work to the detriment of millions. Middle-class families, he said, would “watch the system they rely on begin to unravel before their eyes.” The business leaders said that was also their fear.

*

The business leaders forecast that Mr. McCain’s free-market approach would impose particular burdens on small businesses and old-line manufacturers that are already struggling. “To some in the business community, this is very discomforting,” said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the Chamber of Commerce. “The private marketplace, in my opinion, is ill prepared today with an infrastructure for an individual-based health insurance system.”

*

The centerpiece of Mr. McCain’s plan is the elimination of the provision that has, since 1954, excluded the value of employer-sponsored health benefits from a worker’s taxable income. The exclusion can be worth thousands of dollars for some workers. In its place, Mr. McCain would offer all Americans income tax credits of $2,500 per person or $5,000 per family for heath coverage, regardless of how they bought it.

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But with the average employer-sponsored family policy costing $12,680 this year, other workers would find the exchange a losing proposition. They would either have to spend more, reduce their coverage or persuade employers to make up the difference. Officials with eight business trade groups contacted by The New York Times predicted the McCain plan would raise costs and force some employers to stop providing health benefits.

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“There are huge questions about the $5,000 per family being an insufficient amount in terms of being able to purchase the same coverage,” said Mr. Josten with the Chamber of Commerce. Helen B. Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of 300 companies, agreed that many workers would face a net loss. “The last thing you want to do to the average working person, especially when you’re bailing out big financial companies, is take something they hold near and dear partially away,” Ms. Darling said.

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Economists forecast that the problem would worsen over time because Mr. McCain, according to advisers, would index his tax credits to overall inflation. Health insurance premiums have grown four times faster than inflation since 1999.