"Two Visions One Choice"

"I don't want to be a country where a shrinking number of people are doing really well and then a growing number are barely able to get by." - President Barack Obama

A fantastic video as to where President Obama and Governor Romney differ when it comes to education and opportunity.

The Denver Debate

It’s a disappointment to be disappointed. When your expectations - high as they might be - are not met. This is exactly how I felt last night while watching the first presidential debate between Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. Like, someone took a pin to my already lackluster balloon and popped it right in my face. I wanted more from the President though it was Romney’s to gain ground but the President seemed perturbed as if being there was the last thing he wanted to do on a Wednesday night. Though, I will give him some credit for spending an anniversary debating the minutiae of the Simpson-Bowles commission as opposed to enjoying a steak courtesy of Bobby Flay. But - and this is where I wanted to take him by the shoulders - that is his job. He needs to be out there, in front of the people, laying things out for them because far too many people are dependent upon this election and the fate of this country.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, was on point. The Governor had the most to lose with a base who has (well, had) all but thrown in the towel and shrugged off his candidacy. With one mistake after the other, Team Romney had to be in it to win it and they were. He looked strong while the President looked like he couldn’t be arsed. Actually, let me take back what I said; I’m not just disappointed but angry. I wanted for the President to deliver and he didn’t.

Beyond debate performance a few notes that you may agree or disagree so be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments:

Dodd-Frank and Simpson-Bowles: It is my belief that a debate not only gives the audience an opportunity to see how the candidates are on policy but also to have those policies broken down for them in bite size pieces that they can grasp. The whole “Dodd/Frank” “Simpson-Bowles” discussions while pertinent to how a budget is formed going forward and good for the inside the Beltway types went totally over the heads of the average American. Instead of referring to Dodd/Frank as Wall Street Reform and then having the opportunity to broaden upon that (which, dude, Jim Leher - I love you but you were the iceberg to this Titanic of a debate), the same with Simpson-Bowles which is a budget plan for deficit reduction but you wouldn’t know that from the wonkish back and forth. The third debate is town hall style which will give a sense of conversation between the candidates and the voters instead of between the candidates and a sleepy Jim Leher.

The Middle Class v. Upper Class: Mitt Romney had a really difficult time not giving a shout out to his upper echelon homies. I honestly do not think that Mitt Romney has any clue what goes on in the average American middle class family - the struggles they go through or that despite being middle class many are forced to live paycheck to paycheck. They continue to be squeezed and Mitt Romney says that tax relief will be provided. Interesting that tax relief will be provided to those in the middle while at the same time nothing changes for those in the upper tax brackets so the question is; where does the revenue come from? Unless of course the plan - and we’ll get to Romney’s plans or lack thereof in a minute - is to just go around cutting services and voucherizing education and Medicare until the budget is balanced? I’m no economist but that is a potential for disaster.

    Speaking of the middle class, Romney has long bugged me with his assumptions that folks can just ask their parents for a loan to attend college or start a business this came to a head last night when he suggested that private insurance is the way to go for Medicare beneficiaries. Forgetting, of course, that many of those on Medicare do not have that option. You see, Mitt Romney is so used to being able to pick and choose what he wants that he is no longer cognizant of the fact that not everyone is able to have the choices that he has. Those with choices and opportunities have those thanks to money. People on Medicare are usually on Medicare because of the need for assistance and if they could just scoot on over to Blue Cross, Blue Shield for their needs, I’m sure they would do so as the latter does provide the better service. But not everyone has that choice.


What’s in a plan: Governor Romney has a plan to provide tax relief to those in the middle class but not to reduce the taxes for those who are in upper brackets. He also has a plan to close tax loopholes and deductions. Then there’s his plan for younger people who will eventually need Social Security and Medicare. I’m gonna sit here and hold my breath while Mr. Romney explains this plans. Take your time, Mr. Romney, we’ve got another - checks calendar - five weeks. No pressure.

In which I need the assistance of an IRS auditor: Back to this debate being super wonkish and straight up nerdy, the part I had trouble following was on tax loopholes. Like, totally went over my head. And I’m assuming that if it went over my semi-smart head, the a lot of people just started staring at the screen blankly or changed the channel to like a Real Housewives franchise.
    
    See if you can follow along here: Romney is proposing to close tax loopholes and do away with some deductions and exemptions instead of a rate increase. The problem is that the deductions and loopholes he is proposing to close will have nothing to do with the wealthy. He is behaving as if he’s doing an across the board but he’s not. For example the mortgage interest deduction; right now you can deduct the interest on the mortgage of your residence if you have up to $1.1 million indebtedness. On mortgages over that amount you cannot deduct the interest. Who are the owners of homes worth under $1.1 million? THE MIDDLE CLASS. Basically all of these loopholes and deductions that Mitt Romney is so eager to rid us of will only hurt the middle class. The biggest deduction for the middle class is a mortgage deduction so to close it would essentially screw them over.
 

Education!: Unfortunately for a debate that was focused on domestic policy the education talk was few and far between. There were mentions of the administration’s pet project, Race to the Top and the Education Jobs Fund but I have yet to see a concrete plan from either candidate on what to do about the albatross hanging around the neck of public education in this country with is No Child Left Behind. While the President recently handed out waivers to several states so that they could get around mandates for Adequate Yearly Progress and allow for multiple measures in testing, it’s still the elephant in the room for many educators. NCLB is ten years old and thus far no real steps have been made to change it or reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. While RTTT has led to reforms in 46 states (including NY - HOLLA!) as well as bringing all education stakeholders together I wouldn’t call it a rousing success. In a round about way the strike in Chicago was due to new teacher evaluation systems that were implemented thanks to RTTT and the NCLB waivers.
    
   What really struck me about Governor Romney’s ‘plan’ was not that he feels that education should be dealt with on a state/local level but that students receiving funding for IDEA or Title I (these are special education students and under privileged students, respectively), well, their dollars shouldn’t be given via formula funding to a state or a school but the money should follow the child. Here’s that pesky ‘voucher’ word again - each student should have a voucher and the funding should follow the child. Of course neglecting to remember that by allowing the funding to follow a child the public school in question will either have no funding whatsoever and become insolvent or what about the rest of the children? As not every child at a low performing school will be able to be moved to an area school because of space issues. So what happens then? Again with that whole plan thing. Romney’s got five weeks to figure it out.

What did you think of the debate? Did you watch? Did either candidate ‘speak’ to you and your concerns for the country going forward? What would you like to see in their next time out?

Full debate transcript

Wonkbook: Everything you need to know about the first debate

Obama campaign: Adjustments will be made in debate strategy

The Thing About Todd Akin

via Think ProgressI’ve been writing dribs and drabs about Todd Akin. Save for a few tweets most of my thoughts are scattered across a number of notebooks and Google documents. My thoughts haven’t met the light of day not because I’m not angry. I am very angry. Possibly more angry than I should be and every time I think that the anger has subsided it’s there again. My thoughts have been numerous but I keep coming back to one glaring thing that we really need to discuss: You see, the thing about Todd Akin isn’t that he makes  ignorant and harmful statements. It isn’t his woeful disrespect towards women whose anger, in response to his statements, he believes to be a fabrication of the liberal media as opposed to ‘legitimate’ statements of disdain and disgust towards him and the office he holds. The problem with Todd isn’t that he said he misspoke which is really code for “I let my true colors show. Oops! My bad!”.

The think about Todd Akin is that he’s not the only elected representative who believes that women are second class citizens. To the Todd Akins of the world, a zygote is more significant than the person who houses it. He’s not the only one who believes that it’s OK to legislate what a woman does with her body. He’s not the only one to be flippant about the severity of sexual assault against women. He’s not the only one to think that we women are a hysterical bunch and we’re overreacting upon hearing such comments.

Todd Akin is not the only one and he will certainly not be the last.

The thing about Todd Akin is that it seems that we need someone like him to speak his mind in order to get us to wake up. I’m not just speaking to the women, but to all of us who care about the people who make up 51% of this country but have unequal representation. Think about it; do you think we would be having this conversation if more women held office? Do you think we’d have to endure parsing the definition of rape for days on end (“Is it legitimate? or is it forcible? Either way,  they don’t need to have a voice”). I strongly doubt it. But more than that the thing about Todd Akin is that his views express a more prevalent issue far bigger than a single congressman from Missouri. He’s just a piece of a machine that believes that men should be making the choices for the type of health care are able to receive and it makes me absolutely crazy. The thing about Todd Akin is that at least he gets us thinking about the issue of being a woman in a country where men get to make these decisions.

We are better than that.

There are issues that I love to discuss to death like education funding v. defense spending what I do not love is the continuous conversation of how men essentially get to legislate women’s bodies and yet we will gladly do something about the education funding but never about this. That’s my problem. I hate to bring it back to political engagement and democracy but so many of these issues that ebb and flow in and out of our collective - the country’s - consciousness when it comes to women could be abated by occupying a voting booth.

While I tire of having this conversation, I have no intentions of stopping. If that means spending the rest of my life keeping women informed and pointing to this incident - Akingate - as a warning then I will. Because it’s not going to end. The anti-choice crowd isn’t going to stop. So, why would we?