This is Mitt Romney in a nutshell

Posted by noonante on May 18, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , . Leave a Comment

We are all complex individuals, so it may not be fair to distill someone’s character to five sentences spoken by them.  But for someone aspiring to be President, this morning’s piece on NPR may just say it all.

For reasons that escape me, a rich right-winger wants to revive the story of the relationship Barack Obama had with a former pastor of his, Jeremiah Wright, with some Super-PAC ads.  This had become controversial in 2008, and there are many who think that one of Obama’s finest moments as a candidate was when he distanced himself from the intolerance spewed by Wright.

On Thursday, Romney disapproved of the plan, saying:

 I hope that our campaigns can respectively be about the future and about issues and about a vision for America. 

Then, he was asked about a statement he made on Sean Hannity’s show in February.  Here is his response, as reported by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman on Politico.com:

I’m actually — I’m not familiar with precisely, exactly what I said. But I stand by what I said, whatever it was.  And with regards to — I’ll  go back and take a look at what was said there.

Here is the statement from Hannity’s show:

I’m not sure what is worse, him [Obama] listening to Reverend Wright or him saying we must be a less Christian nation. 

So, over the course of a mere five sentences, we go from what, on its face, is a resonsible and reasonable sentiment to an absolute lie  -  Obama wants to make the United States a “less Christian nation?”  In between, we have what could be Romney’s campaign slogan:  “I stand by what I said, whatever it was.” 

Something fishy about NYRA controversy?

Posted by noonante on May 18, 2012
Posted in: Horse Racing, Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , . 4 comments

I was quite surprised when I learned of the controversy concerning the New York Racing Association’s failure to adjust a takeout rate to conform with a statute.  Surprise turned to concern, however, when I looked into the details.

For those not familiar with racing jargon, “takeout” is the percentage of wagered money that is retained by the track.  The takeout percentages may vary by bet type, with win wagers having a lower takeout than “exotic” wagers  -  those involving multiple races or multiple horses in a single race.  In an effort to assist the struggling New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation, the Legislature raised the maximum takeout on exotic wagers from 25% to 26%, with a provision that the change would expire two years later, on September 15, 2010.

On April 26 of this year, New York’s Racing and Wagering Board  -  one of four state agencies with some level of oversight responsibility for NYRA  -  released an interim audit concluding that NYRA’s CEO Charles Hayward knew of the violation and continued to collect the extra takeout despite that knowledge.  The audit conclusions were reported in both local and industry media, and several days later the NYRA Board fired Hayward and NYRA’s General Counsel Patrick Kehoe.

NYRA’s Board replaced Hayward as President of the Board with NYRA’s Chief Operating Officer Ellen McClain, and Kehoe with Kenneth Handal as Secretary of the Board.  On May 15, the head of the Racing and Wagering Board and the head of the Franchise Oversight Board, who happens to be Governor Cuomo’s Budget Director, sent the NYRA Board Chairman a scathing letter saying the NYRA Board lacked the authority to take this action and threatened revocation of NYRA’s franchise to run New York racing.  The pair reached these conclusions even though McClain was not mentioned in the audit report, and Handal was not connected to NYRA during the period under review.  In a further remarkable statement, the letter raised the possibility that members of the NYRA Board could be in a conflict of interest because they had “financial interests in horse racing.”  The Board responded by asserting its authority to make the appointments.

Since media accounts tend to rely on press releases and Executive Summaries, and then feed on one another by parroting what they read elsewhere, I searched in vain for the actual audit.  Surprisingly, I could not find it on the site of the Racing and Wagering Board even though it is updated daily, and the report itself was released as interim because of the “seriousness of the findings.”   I finally found it by chance on Google while looking for a related matter.  Here are some of the surprising items I found in the report:

  • The audit was based on a review of 5,000 NYRA documents;  the Board also says that NYRA has not provided all requested documents.
  • It appears that no one was interviewed, including Hayward and Kehoe, even though there are also other NYRA employees identified in emails who had knowledge of the issue.
  • Three auditors responsible for providing independent reviews of either NYRA or the company that processes bets did not identify the issue.  One of the auditors actually identified the correct statutory takeout rate as well as the incorrect actual rate, but did not raise the issue.
  • The Office of State Comptroller is identified in the Interim Audit as the “primary governmental agency responsible for auditing NYRA.”  Even though the Racing and Wagering Board found that OSC reviewed NYRA’s “detailed financial records, including future cash flow projections” around the time the higher takeout rate expired, “the Board has not examined OSC’s work papers to determine if OSC had reviewed the takeout rates.”
  • Another of the state oversight agencies, the Franchise Oversight Board, headed by Governor Cuomo’s Budget Director, has no full-time staff and could not be expected to perform a detailed analysis.
  • The Racing and Wagering Board annually “reviews the complete volume of the Racing Law for provisions that may sunset….  The Board performed this review in 2010 but did not identify the relevant NYRA takeout section as expiring.  However, it was not standard practice to identify expiring provisions of law when revering sections were in place.”
  • Emails play a significant role in “who knew what” and “when did they know it.”  There is an email from a bettor to Hayward questioning the takeout rate in September 2010;  there is another from the Daily Racing Form‘s Stephen Crist in August 2011;  and, there is an allegation that someone emailed the Board in January 2011.  The emails to Hayward represent a sizeable portion of the Board’s case against Hayward.  The Interim Audit reports that the Wagering Board could not find the email supposedly sent to them, postulating that it was kicked out for having a virus or being spam.

I had initially decided to write a post on the NYRA issue when I read the report in Friday’s Saratogian by Paul Post (who is doing an excellent job reporting this) that the Governor was considering adding more state-appointed members to NYRA’s Board.  My only thought was “are you kidding me?”  As someone who spent an entire career working for government, I am not one of those who reflexively reject government involvement.  But let’s look at just two recent examples concerning horse racing in New York (and ignore others, including the prolonged effort to award the franchise now held by NYRA).

First, we had the bankruptcy of the  New York City Off-Track Betting agency.  Now how does an entity that collects bets and has a guaranteed share of the wagers (see discussion of “takeout”) go bankrupt, particularly in New York City?  You have fixed costs such as rent and computers (and if you have ever been to an OTB you know there aren’t any amenities above that), and labor costs.  Yet this one needed a state bail-out (the one that began this controversy) and still could not cut it.

Then there was the fiasco with the public bidding for the Video Lottery Terminals to be placed at Aqueduct Race Track that resulted in a 300-page audit by the Comptroller in 2010.  For those who would like to forget, VLT’s were initially authorized in 1991, and a company was to be selected by the Governor, Speaker of the House and Senate President.  Nineteen years later, the then-Governor and Speaker of the House stepped aside and allowed the Senate to work its will.  The result of this “process” was so odoriferous that it had to be withdrawn.  It was only when the procurement was sent to professionals in the budget office that we got a speedy and solid result.  While revenue from the VLT’s has long been viewed as essential to NYRA’s financial stability, the revenue was going to contribute billions of dollars to the state’s educational system.  Despite the financial significance of getting the VLT’s up and running, it took almost two decades to get it done, and had to be delayed further because of what can only be described  -  at best  -   as gross incompetence by the most powerful public officials in the state.

So there is not exactly a stellar record when it comes to the state’s involvement in horse racing affairs.  The current law provides that NYRA’s 25-member Board shall have nine state appointments.  As noted above, there are four state agencies with oversight responsibility, and two of them did not exactly cover themselves with glory in the current matter.  So there is, by law, a significant involvement by state government in the conduct of racing in New York.  In my years of following both horse racing and politics, I have not detected a high level of interest in racing by anyone in power until, of course, it comes time to award a trophy at Saratoga.

But I do not think it is the interests of horse racing that is the motivation for the growing conflagration that again engulfs New York racing.  If there are two things one can say about Charles Hayward, they are that he is an experienced business executive and that he loves the sport.  In his tenure with NYRA, he has improved the integrity of an operation that once had pending criminal charges, brought a measure of financial stability to the organization, and managed the extension of the franchise.  Let’s not forget that a year ago at this time there were questions about whether there would actually be a race meet at Saratoga.

I am not defending the failure to adjust the takeout race.  In Hayward’s email to Stephen Crist he stated NYRA was working on making the necessary adjustments, but he was concerned about political fallout, both from the Governor and  particularly from the OTB outlets in New York who would be losing the extra revenue.  While this may not have been the best course of action, Hayward certainly looks prescient in assessing the political landscape.  Incidentally, keeping the takeout rate at the higher level did not result in what one would call a windfall for NYRA.  According to the Interim Audit, the total excess income realized by NYRA during the roughly 15 months the higher rate was in effect was $1.1 million, more than half of which has been reimbursed to bettors.  By way of comparison, NYRA has received $22 million from VLT revenues since the Aqueduct casino opened October 30, 2011, according to the Daily Racing Form‘s Matt Hegarty.

The most disturbing part of this whole controversy, however, is not the behavior of NYRA officials, but that of New York political leaders including the Governor and his high level staff.  Yes, the failure to address the takeout rate is a matter that warrants investigation, but it was identified and corrected a full five months before the Interim Audit was released.  The purported reason for the Racing and Wagering Board’s release of an interim report is the “seriousness of the findings.”  Yet the auditors did not bother to even interview Charles Hayward, and if they actually interviewed anyone else it is not disclosed in the report.  When the report was released by the Wagering Board, it had to have been with the knowledge that the likely result would be a firestorm surrounding NYRA, and the opportunity for some serious political posturing.

While NYRA was going to the most obvious target of media coverage, the role played by state actors has been overlooked.  There is no mention that 9 members of the 25-member NYRA Board are state government appointees.  While the report does mention that four state agencies have oversight responsibility for NYRA, the auditors did not check to see if the Office of State Comptroller  -  the “primary governmental agency responsible for auditing NYRA”  -  even checked the applicable takeout rates when reviewing the books.  A second agency, the Franchise Oversight Board headed by the Governor’s Budget Director, was given a free pass because they lacked staff.  While I am not completely familiar with New York’s government, I would be willing to wager that the Budget Director is widely viewed as the second most powerful person in any Governor’s administration.  So if he needed some help, he could probably get it.  Also, the inability to closely monitor a situation did not prevent him from signing the May 15 letter disapproving of the NYRA Board’s appointment of a President and Secretary, or from threatening to revoke the franchise of NYRA and determining whether the right of individual Board members to “participate in horse racing” should be revoked.  Finally, the Racing and Wagering Board gave itself a pass because of the legal sophistry described above where it claimed it did not have the responsibility to evaluate all the statutory changes applicable to New York racing.  None of these shortcomings, however, has been considered a sufficient reason to delay what looks like an unnecessary rush to judgment.

I don’t know what is going on here, whether it is a personal vendetta, a power play, or an attempt to cover up governmental ineptitude by focusing all the blame on a single individual and a group of citizens who do not get paid for their service on the NYRA Board.  What I am fairly certain of, however, is that it has little to do with what is in the best interests of horse racing in New York.

Does Romney’s high school behavior matter today?

Posted by noonante on May 12, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , . Leave a Comment

My most recent post discussed an incident from Mitt Romney’s prep school days where he was offended by the hair style of a younger schoolmate.  As reported by Jason Horowitz of The Washington Post, when the student, thought to possibly be gay, returned from a vacation with bleached-blond hair hanging over an eye, the offended scion said to a friend, “He can’t look like that.  That’s wrong.  Just look at him.”  He proceeded to gather a group of friends who overcame the younger student while Romney cut the hair of the screaming and crying kid.  Romney has said he doesn’t remember the incident even though five of his friends at the time, including participants, have corroborated independently the allegation.  He actually laughs about it when questioned.

We are now going to hear the predictable “boys will be boys,” as well as comments that it was a different time and that what happened 50 years ago is not relevant.  As a contemporary of Romney, I can attest that, yes, it was different 50 years ago if one means that intolerance of homosexuality was more acceptable back then.  What is not different, however, is that a gang assault on a vulnerable individual was just that  -  and act of cruelty or viciousness that was not excusable because the victim belonged to a disfavored group.  If the victim were black, one would not hear the excuse that racism back then was OK.

But is it relevant in terms of what it says about the character of the individual?  One detail from the Horowitz piece has not been widely reported.  This had to do with what Romney did to a faculty member who was blind.  After holding a door open for the teacher, Romney then gestured him through the next set of doors, which Romney had left closed.  The teacher walked into the next set of doors and hilarity ensued, unless, of course, you were the victim.

That was still 50 years ago.  Is there current relevance?  I think there are two areas where details of Romney’s more recent adult past are going to cause him some difficulty along the same lines.  One was during his tenure as a stakes bishop in the Boston area Mormon church.  While it has been reported that Romney displayed acts of compassion and kindness for members of his flock, The Real Romney, a book by two Boston Globe reporters, also describes less flattering aspects during his leadership. An excerpt from Vanity Fair cites incidents where his behavior towards some women, in the words of the authors, “was the product of a hidebound, patriarchal structure, inflexible and insensitive in delicate situations and dismissive of those who didn’t share his perspective.”  Among the named women who were quoted, was an unmarried pregnant woman who believed that Romney, in his capacity as a church leader, threatened her with excommunication if she did not put the baby up for adoption.  Romney denies having done this.

The other area of concern is Romney’s Bain Capital experience.  He likes to describe himself as a job creator in contrast to the “incompetent” Obama, and there is no question that jobs were created in some of his investments.  But creating jobs was not his goal.  His goal was making money for his investors, not that there is anything wrong with that.  If jobs were created, however, that would be incidental to his mission.  If jobs were lost in order to return millions of dollars to his investors, as many assuredly were, well that is an unfortunate part of our system of capitalism.

I do not think we have heard the last of either of these topics, and the image of a joyful Romney pinning down a helpless kid will be in the back of many minds.

A week for issues concerning gays

Posted by noonante on May 11, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

First we had the disturbing news that an overwhelming percentage of those North Carolinians who voted did so to enshrine bigotry against same-sex couples in their state constitution.  While polls showed that the ballot provision would be approved, the same polls indicated that roughly the same percentage approved of civil unions but not marriage.  The approved amendment to the Constitution, of course, outlawed civil unions as well as marriage.  It is difficult to come up with a silver lining to either the approved bigotry or the awareness that voters did not know what they were voting on.

The next day, President Obama came out in support of gay and lesbian couples having the same right to marry as heterosexual couples.  Predictably, the response from the Main Stream Media and much of the blogosphere has centered on the political consequences and whether it was a moment of courage or political calculation.  Having a high regard for the President’s political skills, I think there was without doubt an element of calculation, not exactly a shocking revelation regarding an incumbent president running for reelection.  But I also think there was a moment of real leadership there.  While cynics may dispute whether he had actually “evolved” on the issue, how many of us who now support marriage equality did so even 10 years ago?

Yesterday brought us a piece by Jason Horowitz in The Washington Post about Mitt Romney’s prep school days.  In Horowitz’ article, he describes an incident in which the 18-year old Romney was offended that a schoolmate had bleached blond hair that hung down over one eye.  He assembled a posse that went to the youngster’s room, where he was tackled and subdued so Romney could cut his hair as the kid screamed and cried. Romney then led a triumphant group back to his room to celebrate.  The victim of this assault, who later came out as gay, is now deceased.  The article also cites the sources saying that Romney would shout “Atta girl” when a then-closeted gay student would speak during class.  I assume because there were five sources (four identified) for Horowitz’ article, Romney did not deny the facts of the story, but did say he did not remember them. He proceeded to issue the politician’s pro forma apology:

Back in high school, I did some dumb things and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize.  I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school and some might have gone too far and for that, I apologize.  I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual.  That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960′s. 

(Emphasis added.)  Now, I have done and said more than my fair share of stupid things for which I am embarrassed, and not all of them occurred when I was a callow teenager.  But Romney and I are about the same age, and I can say authoritatively that homosexuality was something one was well aware of even back in the 60′s.  Not everyone had what we could call an enlightened view of homosexuals back then;  indeed, the opposite was more likely the norm.  That’s a far cry, however, from actively engaging in persecuting someone.  While Romney may characterize these incidents as “hijinks” or “pranks,” I think a more apt description would be “bullying.”

I do not believe Romney when he says that he does not remember these incidents.  Back in the day when I was employed gainfully, one of my responsibilities was to investigate employee misconduct.  A sure-fire indicator that someone was lying was when they did not deny a significant accusation, but instead stated “I don’t remember.”  Some of those quoted in the Horowitz article who participated with Romney in assaulting the kid not only have a vivid memory, but the appropriate level of remorse for engaging in an act of cruelty.

But let’s end on a positive note.  Here is what the President said in explaining his position on marriage equality in his interview on ABC News.  The quote is taken from Andrew Sullivan’s post on The Daily Beast.

In the end the values that I care most deeply about and [Michelle] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.

Derby recap

Posted by noonante on May 8, 2012
Posted in: Horse Racing. Leave a Comment

Some random thoughts on this year’s Kentucky Derby:

  • Wow!!  That is some horse.  Not the winner, I’ll Have Another, but second-place finisher Bodemeister.  As he was carving out some of the fastest fractions in Derby history  -  22 1/5, 45 1/5, 109 4/5  -  I was thinking “he won’t be around at the end.”  At the top of the stretch as he opened a 3-length lead, I switched to “this will be one of the most impressive wins ever.”  Alas, he was caught by I’ll Have Another and the superb ride given him by first-time Derby jockey Mario Gutierrez.  I hope he doesn’t run in the Preakness.  I realize that a classic win does a lot for breeding value, but this guy is clearly the best of his generation, a potential superstar who could be Horse of the Year.  After not racing at two, and then scintillating efforts in the Arkansas and Kentucky Derbies, he could use a small break.
  • So just how good was this Derby field?  The conventional wisdom before the race was that this was one of the best fields in years.  While I thought it was one of the most competitive ones in my memory, I had serious questions about how good it was.  Only four members of the field had ever run a triple digit Beyer speed figure, with Bodemeister’s three such races equaling the total from the rest of the starters.  Only six had a last-race figure higher than 95 in their last start.  Go back to last year’s Derby and we see a remarkably similar pattern, with the sole exception being Bodemeister’s Arkansas Derby 0f 108.  Andy Beyer’s take on the 2011 field was that it “could be the worst in decades….  not one of the starters would be a serious contender in an average Derby.”  The winning number this year?  101.  And keep in mind that only one of 19 entrants could catch the enervated Bodemeister.
  • Big props to the Oaks and Derby coverage of NBCSC, formerly Versus.  I bad-mouthed the decision to go with the network when it was announced a year ago, but it was the best horse racing telecast I have seen.  Jerry Bailey is a tremendous analyst whose assessment of the trip needed by Union Rags convinced me to not wager a nickel on the horse who was the favorite almost to post-time.  I’m even reconciled to the NBC coverage.  Even though the Derby broadcast began with a half-hour of asking “celebrities” where they got their outfits, I realized that few serious bettors are tuning in right before the race goes off to get serious information.  And in what may be a first, they actually showed the turf race that precedes the Derby.
  • And speaking of the Oaks, major props to Rosie Napravnik who is the first woman rider to win the race for three-year old fillies.  She just missed winning last year, and this time brought 14-1 shot Believe You Can home, edging John Velazquez in the process.

Don’t forget to look for the Blue Ribbon Analysis on this site before the Preakness.

Stupid commercials and stupid products

Posted by noonante on May 5, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary. Leave a Comment

Mother’s Day cannot come soon enough.  I have commented on horrible commercials in the past.  Part of my pique is annoyance at myself because I did not make a living producing absolutely worthless dreck and getting paid handsomely for it.  But now we have one of the worst ever.  If you watch any commercial TV you have seen this one.  It is a mother and daughter crying uncontrollably because the daughter is moving (4.2 miles?) away from the mother.  I had that fingernails against the blackboard experience the first time I saw it and cannot bear to watch it any longer.  Why would anyone be moved to buy this product after suffering through this commercial?  I hope it will go away once Mother’s Day has come and gone.

On to the stupid products department.  Back in the day, if one wanted to enjoy a can of beer one needed a product known as a church key.  This enabled the thirsty consumer to punch a hole in one part of the can, and then punch a smaller hole opposite the first one to allow some air in and encourage the free flow of the liquid.  Then the pop-top was invented.  No need for said church key because the lone hole was large enough to allow in the necessary air.  Now we have the producer of a light beer touting the ability to punch a second (and unnecessary) hole in the can.  Now I can understand why makers of light beers need creative ideas to sell their product.  They are watery and tasteless, so we have one beer that markets the can turning blue so the consumer knows when the beer is cold enough.  While this benefits those who are unaware that placing the can in a refrigerator or, even better, a cooler full of ice will make the product cold, it is as useless as the second hole.  And someone got paid for both of these stupid ideas.

Mitt Romney’s “principles”: May 2 edition

Posted by noonante on May 2, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

Yesterday’s news brought us two more examples of how a Romney administration might look.

Ric Grenell, Romney’s spokesperson-to-be on foreign policy issues resigned because of a constant barrage of criticism and vitriol from Romney’s new friends on the “Christian” right.  What is his offense?  He is openly gay (or as the right might say “an avowed homosexual”) who supports equal marriage rights.  Bryan Fischer, a ”family values” activist who once blamed gays for the Holocaust, described the reason for the right’s outrage:  “Given the propensity for members of the homosexual community to engage in frequent and anonymous sexual encounters, the risk to national security of having a homosexual in a high-ranking position with access to secret information is obvious.”  (From Evan McMorris-Santoro at Talking Points Memo.)  Other than the rote statement from a campaign figure, I have not seen any statement from Romney himself defending the staffer.

The other example is from Romney’s criticism of the Obama campaign ad quoting Romney saying he would not have invested the time or money in searching for Osama bin Laden.  Romney criticized Obama for his “inappropriate” politicizing of the successful action.  Where did he make his comments about inappropriate politicizing?  At a firehouse in New York City where he and Rudy Giuliani delivered pizza.  I am not making this up.  If the right-wingers upset about a same-sex marriage proponent being a part of Romney campaign now criticize Romney for associating with a person whose own marital history is  –  shall we say  — interesting, we wonder if Romney will throw Guiliani under the next bus.  Of course that is unlikely to happen since to the “family values conservatives” it is only gays and lesbians who threaten traditional marriage and not the likes of Giuliani or Newt Gingrich.

Republicans want to talk the real issues?

Posted by noonante on April 29, 2012
Posted in: Political/Social commentary, Politics. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

If there is any agreement among the polarized factions in the current political spectrum, it is that this year’s crop of Republican candidates for the Presidency is one of the weakest in years.  That Mitt Romney could not immediately dispatch the likes of Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich leads one to question his strength in the general election.  Whatever you think of Barack Obama, he has demonstrated that he is one tough, savvy politician.  GOP characterizations of him as a “Chicago politician” would only seem to underscore that point.

So we should expect that the eventual GOP nominee is going to deal with an opponent who will not favor colonizing the moon, banning contraception or being able to identify agencies of the United States government or countries where American service people are involved.  It is becoming apparent that any effort by the President to raise an issue will be met by the rote response that it is not a “real issue,” an argument that may not be that far removed from the efforts to suggest that Obama is not a “real American.”  Here are some of the issues that are not “real:”

  • Rights of women:  If memory serves (and it often does not), when the “Tea Party Congress” came to office in 2011, one of their main issues was limiting the right of women to choose an abortion.  While they had not campaigned on this, preferring instead (and inconsistently) to focus on too much “big government,” abortion rights became a major matter.  We have since seen a flurry of activity on this, including the repulsively intrusive requirement that women undergo vaginal ultrasounds before exercising a Constitutionally-protected right to terminate a pregnancy.  Then there was the flap over whether an employer (not just those affiliated with a religious institution) could prevent insurance carriers from covering contraceptive services, which 98 per cent of American women of child-bearing age have received.  What was the GOP response?  John McCain, as quoted by Irin Carmom in Salon, said this “distract[s] citizens from real issues that really matter.”  Upset about vaginal intrusions?  Romney backer Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania advised women to “close your eyes.”  (From Evan McMorris-Santoro in Talking Points Memo.)
  • Fairness of tax code:  While there may be universal agreement on the need to change our tax code, there are sharp differences between the parties on the best way to do that.  The President has proposed the “Buffet rule” that would ensure that millionaires pay at least as much as middle-income tax payers now do.  When confronted on PBS’ NewsHour with the statistic that the top 400 earners in America pay an average rate of 18%  –  less than many middle-income earners  –  Republican strategist Douglas Holtz-Eakin who was a top adviser to George W. Bush and the McCain campaign  –  decried the “pointless battle about fairness.”  And let us not forget Mitt Romney’s statement that the growing inequality among Americans is a matter best discussed in “quiet rooms.”
  • Interest rates on college loans:  I found it remarkable when I learned that the total indebtedness on college loans now exceeds that of credit card obligations.  It is well-established that the unemployment rate for recent college grads exceeds that of the population in general, so the notion that interest rates would double on July 1 would seem to warrant some discussion.  Not to House Speaker John Boehner who referred to the President’s speeches at college campuses last week as a “fake fight,” ”pathetic” and “beneath the dignity of the White House.”  Speaking to voters on an issue that affects them is “beneath the dignity” of the President?  Perhaps he shares Romney’s concern that such matters only be discussed in the “quiet rooms” frequented by Republican donors.

There is, of course, a raft of nonsense that passes for political discourse in our country.  While selection of Romney’s choice for the Vice-Presidency is a significant matter  –  just look at the last two Republican nominees  –  there is no news about it, just pointless speculation.  That beats, however, the complete foolishness about who will be the parties’ nominees in 2016.  Chris Matthews was positively giddy in raising the possibility that Hilary Clinton would face off with Rick Santorum.  All of this is much easier than an informed, fact-based discussion of real issues, even those Republicans would like to ignore because they are inconvenient.