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Romney Breaks With Every GOP President, Pledges To Never Criticize Israel

By Zack Beauchamp on Jul 29, 2012 at 3:45 pm

Fresh off of telling the United Kingdom that it wasn’t ready for the Olympics during an tour of London, Romney unsubtly jabbed President Obama in Jerusalem this Sunday — as he often does on U.S. soil — for criticizing Israeli policy. Romney suggested that any public criticism of Israel in public would be off-limits in a Romney Presidency:

We cannot stand silent as those who seek to undermine Israel voice their criticisms. And we certainly should not join in that criticism. Diplomatic distance in our public between our nations emboldens Israel’s adversaries.

Watch it:

Romney regularly attacks While Romney is right to say that Israel is a close American ally that deserves our support, that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t ever publicly criticize Israel when we believe it to be in American (or Israeli) interests. Indeed, though Romney said the United States and Israel have “been the most natural of allies” since 1948, every Republican President since then has publicly criticized Israeli policies:

  • George W. Bush: President Bush, who once said “it is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation,” rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for announcing construction in the West Bank town Ma’ale Adumim, saying “the road map calls for no expansion of the settlements.”

  • George H.W. Bush: Like his son, Bush Sr. condemned settlement activity, saying “we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.” He also pushed Israel to stay out of the first Gulf War.

  • Ronald Reagan: After Israel attacked Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, Reagan’s administration voted to condemn Israel in the U.N. Security Council. Reagan also temporarily halted security cooperation with Israel after its 1981 annexation of the Golan heights.

  • Gerald Ford: Ford promised a “reassessment” of US-Israel relations after failed US diplomacy with respect to an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

  • Richard Nixon: In a United Nations debate, George H.W. Bush (then representing Nixon at the U.N.) said, with respect to settlements, “We regret Israel’s failure to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and the spirit of this convention.”

  • Dwight Eisenhower: The first Republican President to handle diplomacy with Israel threatened it with sanctions as a consequence of its actions in the 1956 Suez Crisis, and told Americans in a radio address that “It was a matter of keen disappointment to us that the Government of Israel, despite the United Nations action, still felt unwilling to withdraw” from territory taken in the war.

    • Setting aside the merits of the GOP’s historical criticism, it’s clear that past Republican presidents didn’t shirk from publicly finding fault with Israel when they felt it was necessary. Romney, then, is repudiating his party’s traditional approach to handling the US-Israeli relationship. This suggests either that previous Republican Presidents have “emboldened Israel’s enemies” or that Israel’s ties with America are strong enough to weather occasional public disagreement.

    Though Romney has criticized Obama’s handling of relations between the two countries as hostile towards the Jewish state, Israeli officials beg to differ: the Obama Administration has stepped up security cooperation with Israel and put unprecedented pressure on Iran’s threatening nuclear program. It does make one wonder what Romney means when he says he would “do the opposite” of Obama on Israel.

    Update

    Romney explicitly extended his comments to the settlement issue in an interview with CNN, telling Wolf Blitzer that settlements “are something that should be discussed in private by the American president and our allies.”

    Politics

    STUDY: NBC More Likely To Cover Men’s Olympic Events, Show Women In Sports With Minimal Clothing

    By Jeff Spross on Jul 29, 2012 at 3:38 pm

    Fencing gold-medalist Mariel Zagunis, at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

    Writing in the Pacific Standard recently, Tom Jacobs pointed to two new studies that reveal a decidedly mixed picture of NBC’s prime-time Olympic coverage when it comes to gender equitability.

    The first study, out of the University of Delaware, found that in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics men received almost 23 hours of prime-time coverage, versus a little less than 13 hours for women. The second study, from the University of North Carolina, look at the Summer Olympics in 2008 as well as previous years, and discovered a more equitable balance: 46.3 percent of air time went to women in 2008, and 47.9 percent in 2004. However, coverage of women’s events tilted heavily towards what the researchers termed “socially acceptable” sports for women, and sports with minimal clothing where women can be displayed as physically attractive:

    [N]early three-quarters of the women’s coverage was devoted to gymnastics, swimming, diving and beach volleyball.

    […]

    Track and field, where the clothing is almost as minimal, made up another 13 percent of the women’s prime-time coverage. “The remaining sports represented—rowing, cycling, and fencing—are not, by traditional standards, ‘socially acceptable’ sports for women, and make up approximately 2 percent of coverage,” the researchers write.

    “Women who take part in sports that involve either power or hard-body contact are particularly unlikely to receive media coverage. When women engage in stereotypical feminine events, or look pretty or graceful, they will receive coverage, but they risk being shunned if they venture from that space.”

    For example, the women’s court volleyball competition received no coverage in 2004 — despite the American team winning the silver medal — while the coverage of men’s volleyball was split almost equally between court and beach. This emphasis on the portrayal of women’s attractiveness and gendered qualities may also provide context for the much more male-centric coverage in the 2010 Winter Olympics, as winter sports by their nature generally provide women fewer opportunities to fit into these categories.

    The make-up of the audience whom NBC is trying to please, however, provides a more complicated narrative than mere pandering to male sports fans: For the Summer Olympics in 2008, women over 18 totaled 49 percent of viewers while men over 18 came in at only 41 percent. The top-rated events for that year were women’s gymnastics, with men’s and women’s swimming events coming in second.

    Security

    Group Of House Republicans Stand By Islamophobic Witch Hunt

    By Travis Waldron on Jul 29, 2012 at 11:53 am

    Despite criticism from leading Republicans over their attacks on a notable senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a group of House Republicans conducting a witch hunt on government officials supposedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood are doubling down on their accusations.

    The group, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), has yet to provide actual evidence of the “infiltration” they say is occurring, and the attacks on Huma Abedin, a long-time and well-known Clinton aide, drew ridicule from across Washington and highlighted the shoddiness of the entire report. But the lawmakers aren’t giving up, The Hill reports:

    Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) told The Hill that the media’s focus on Abedin was a “deliberate effort to change the subject.”

    “The focus in the media has been on one sentence in one of those letters, and … they have the right to do that,” Franks said. “But it certainly doesn’t serve the American people when they overlook the central focus of the letters to try to take out of context one element of it that seems to be the only thing the left can aim at.”

    Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) all made similar points in refusing to apologize for their comments, and Bachmann went a step farther Thursday, launching a new attack on Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has led the fight against the group of lawmakers’ ridiculous report.

    While Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have dismissed Bachmann’s absurd attacks on Abedin and others as the witchhunt it is, others, like Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) have backed the group as being “concern[ed] about the security of the country.”

    Tell Speaker Boehner to remove Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee before her reckless politics damage our national security.

    Tell Speaker Boehner: Rep. Michele Bachmann doesn’t belong on the House Intelligence Committee.

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    Health

    How Obamacare Will Help Mississippi (And America) Implement Lessons From Iranian Healthcare

    By Ali Gharib on Jul 29, 2012 at 11:17 am

    With one of the most dire healthcare situations in America, advocates for healthcare reform in Mississippi are turning to an unexpected source for inspiration: The Islamic Republic of Iran. Like Mississippi, pre-revolutionary Iran did little in terms of providing healthcare services to rural areas. But after the 1979 Islamist takeover, Iran installed a system of community health centers and workers who give primary care with a focus on preventative medicine.

    In a fascinating story for the New York Times Magazine, journalist Suzy Hansen explored how advocates in Mississippi are drawing on lessons of the Iranian experience to improve rural healthcare in their own state. One such advocate, a consultant to the Mississippi project name James Miller, told Hansen:

    When the Iranian system was developed in the 1980s, there were no doctors in rural Iran. And this is similar to the problem in the [Mississippi] delta today.

    Hansen described an Iranian system of building “health houses” that served anyone within an hour’s walking distance. She wrote:

    Today, 17,000 health houses serve 23 million rural Iranians. Health disparities between rural and urban Iranians have narrowed; the Iranians have reduced rural infant mortality by 75 percent and lowered the birthrate.

    Health statistics reveal an abysmal situation in rural Mississippi, with high infant mortality and teen birth rates, little access to nutritional food, deaths due to AIDS at rates 64 percent higher than the U.S. average, and the lowest ratio of doctors to residents in the country. As with many of the nation’s poor, Mississippians without insurance go to emergency rooms for primary care when health problems arise — and many don’t pay, increasing the burden on taxpayers.

    That’s why Dr. Aaron Shirley helped found HealthConnect, a community-based healthcare system inspired by Iran’s reforms, in 2010. The budding community centers — where trained staff administer primary care, make home visits and encourage patients to undertake crucial preventative steps toward more healthy lives — are an inexpensive to set-up and operate, but pay huge dividends in savings on health care costs.

    Hansen noted that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — commonly known as “Obamacare” — stands to benefit “8,300 centers serving 20 million” across the country, including in Mississippi:

    [T]he Affordable Care Act will give $11 billion to community health centers, a sum that will double the numbers and capacity of centers nationwide….

    The Affordable Care Act has created “accountable care organizations” that include doctors, social workers, nurses and pharmacists working together to serve patients. Since May, also as part of health care reform, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced more than 100 multimillion-dollar grants to organizations that proposed new ways to prevent illness and save money. Its Innovation Center awarded grants to a large number of experimental programs that involve community health workers.

    By harnessing these innovations in healthcare from abroad with a 30-year working track record, the ACA stands to both improve health care and reduce the costs of reactive care for the uninsured.

    Climate Progress

    Many Happy Returns for Big Oil: Romney’s Policies Could Hand Oil Companies Another $4 Billion A Year

    By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 29, 2012 at 10:36 am

    by Daniel J. Weiss and Seth Hanlon

    Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s economic plan slashes corporate tax rates while failing to identify a single corporate tax loophole to eliminate. Highly profitable large oil companies that already enjoy lucrative tax breaks stand to receive some of the biggest benefits from Gov. Romney’s plan.

    The world’s five biggest public oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—would keep special tax breaks worth $2.4 billion each year. And by cutting corporate tax rates, the Romney plan could lower the companies’ annual tax bill by another $2.3 billion, based on an analysis of the companies’ tax expense for 2011. The special tax breaks, supplemented by Gov. Romney’s lower corporate rates, could benefit the oil companies by more than $4 billion annually.

    As we will show, these five companies are hardly in need of a tax cut: They earned a combined record profit of $137 billion in 2011 due to high oil and gasoline prices.

    Breaking down Gov. Romney’s tax breaks for Big Oil

    Gov. Romney’s economic plan proposes to cut the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent—nearly a one-third reduction. That could provide a combined tax cut of at least $2.3 billion annually to the five largest publicly owned oil companies, according to an analysis of their 2011 public financial statements. That includes $1.5 billion for the three domestic oil companies and $800 million for the two foreign-owned companies. Since it is of course impossible to predict their future profits, this estimate is based on their 2011 financial data, including their U.S. federal income tax expense. (See the methodology section for more information.)

    In addition, existing oil tax breaks would be protected under Gov. Romney’s plan. Though he has spoken in general terms about broadening the tax base, he has failed to name even one corporate tax loophole he would eliminate. His campaign has specifically criticized President Barack Obama’s efforts to close oil tax loopholes. And his chief energy advisor, oil executive and Romney super PAC donor Harold Hamm, has urged Congress to maintain the oil industry’s special tax breaks.

    Preserving Big Oil’s existing tax breaks would save the five companies $2.4 billion annually, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. The value of these tax breaks for each company is not public. But using the rough proxy of apportioning them according to the companies’ U.S. revenue, the three American companies receive approximately $1.9 billion of these tax breaks while the two foreign companies receive $500 million.

    Under reasonable assumptions, the five oil companies’ total annual tax bills would be $4.2 billion less than they would be without the special tax breaks that Gov. Romney would preserve and without Gov. Romney’s corporate tax rate cut. (This is less than the sum of the estimates of the two elements of Gov. Romney’s plan because of interactions between them—reducing tax rates lowers the value of deductions.)

    None of these figures includes the impact of Gov. Romney’s proposals to exempt overseas profits from U.S. taxes or to allow existing overseas profits to be repatriated at a special low tax rate. The three U.S. companies—ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips—stashed away a combined $76 billion in profits overseas at the end of 2011. Adding in the benefits to the oil companies of these parts of the Romney plan could greatly increase their largess from a Romney presidency.

    The oil tax windfall would be the same under the House-passed fiscal year 2013 budget resolution sponsored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), which Gov. Romney endorsed. The Ryan budget also lowers the corporate rate to 25 percent while keeping the existing tax breaks for these five companies. Gov. Romney heartily endorsed the Ryan budget plan, saying, “I applaud it. It’s an excellent piece of work, and very much needed.”

    The chart below shows the oil companies’ average annual tax breaks and their new cuts under the Romney-Ryan plan in addition to their profits last year.

    Big Oil companies are the last ones that should be getting tax cuts

    Read more

    Justice

    Scalia Suggests ‘Hand-Held Rocket Launchers’ Are Protected Under Second Amendment

    By Zack Ford on Jul 29, 2012 at 10:26 am

    This morning on Fox News Sunday, Justice Antonin Scalia reiterated just how extremely his Constitutional originalism can be applied. Referring to the recent shooting in Aurora, CO, host Chris Wallace asked the Supreme Court Justice about gun control, and whether the Second Amendment allows for any limitations to gun rights. Scalia admitted there could be, such as “frighting” (carrying a big ax just to scare people), but they would still have to be determined with an 18th-Century perspective in mind. According to his originalism, if a weapon can be hand-held, though, it probably still falls under the right to “bear arms”:

    WALLACE: What about… a weapon that can fire a hundred shots in a minute?

    SCALIA: We’ll see. Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.

    WALLACE: How do you decide that if you’re a textualist?

    SCALIA: Very carefully.

    Watch it:

    Scalia’s across-the-board defense of weapon-carrying laws is not new, having been at the heart of his majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which protected an individual’s right to possess firearms. However, his nonchalant suggestion that private citizens could legally carry rocket launchers so long as they’re “hand-held” suggests just how willing he is to protect an armed nation.

    Such originalism is a dangerous distortion of 21st-Century reality. There is no conceivable way to apply the Founding Fathers’ understanding of a  ”well-regulated militia” armed with slow-to-load, hard-to-aim muskets to today’s weapon technology. Arguably, the full extent of alleged gunman James Holmes’ munitions could have easily decimated an entire brigade of musketeers before they’d even loaded their first ball.

    Security

    Romney Lowers Threshold For Military Involvement In Iran, Says He’d Back Israeli Strike

    By Ali Gharib on Jul 29, 2012 at 10:05 am

    Romney, Senor and Netanyahu

    Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, a top foreign policy advier to Mitt Romney said the GOP presidential nominee would support an Israeli decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program. The right-wing adviser Dan Senor said Iran should not be able to attain a nuclear “capability” — a significant break in language from state U.S. policy.

    Senor told reporters:

    If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing the capability, the governor would respect that decision.

    In a follow-up statement, Senor said, “We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is his fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so,” but that an American attack should remain an option.

    While Obama has said an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable,” declaring a nuclear “capability” an American “red line” that would trigger war sets a lower threshold for U.S. military involvement. The CIA has laid out a specific definition, but the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Senate’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.” Hawks in Congress pushed a bill this year to shift the official U.S. “red line” to a nuclear “capability.”

    During an appearance with Romney in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu said he agreed with Romney’s approach, falsely claiming that “all the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota.” U.N. sanctions have delayed Iran’s nuclear progress. A U.N. ban on selling Iran weapons technologies appears to have set back their ballistic missile programs as well.

    President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis. Obama has also reaffirmed Israel’s “sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”

    Romney has long supported military involvement in the Middle East and still defends President Bush’s preventative invasion in Iraq. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Romney said, “President Bush took action which he believed, based upon the information that was available to him, both from British intelligence and intelligence in our country and around the world, that Saddam Hussein presented a very serious threat to the world, including the potential of weapons of mass destruction.”

    Update

    The New York Times has a more full transcript of Senor’s comments, emphasizing the shift to “capability” as a U.S. “red line”:

    It is not enough just to stop Iran from developing a nuclear program. The capability, even if that capability is short of weaponization, is a pathway to weaponization, and the capability gives Iran the power it needs to wreak havoc in the region and around the world.

    Climate Progress

    Green-Certified Homes Get 9% Higher Sales Price in California

    By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 29, 2012 at 10:04 am

    Daniel Bowen, via Flickr

    by Rona Fried, via Sustainable Business

    Having a green certified home adds 9% to its appraised sales value in California, finds a new study.

    The study is the first rigorous, large-scale economic analysis of the value of green home labels in California and was conducted by state university professors.

    Researchers conducted a pricing analysis of all 1.6 million single-family home sales in California from 2007-2012, controlling for all other variables that typically influence selling price, such as location, size, age and amenities.

    They documented that homes labeled with Energy Star, LEED or Greenpoint Rated (California’s label) sell for a premium of 9% compared to average similar homes.

    The average sales price of a non-certified California home is $400,000. Green certification raises the price by more than $34,800.

    Interesting that the sales premium is greater than the cost of the green features people are paying for and it’s greater than resulting utility savings. The most common green features are insulation and air sealing of attic and walls, weather stripping and efficient HVAC – none of which are particularly expensive.

    The authors conclude that part of the premium is the certification itself – the premium is highest in areas of California that also have the highest sales of hybrid cars. People will pay more to buy a house that’s green-certified because it fits their values.

    They also found premiums to be higher in parts of the state that tend to have hotter climates, indicating that people valued these certifications as reassurance that their homes would stay cooler without more energy costs.

    A report released last year by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab showed that having solar PV boosted the sales price in California. The premium was about the same as the cost of the solar system.

    In Los Angeles County, the sales price of three homes was compared before and after they got green certification, and found a rise of 5.5-9%.

    “Green upgrades aren’t usually tracked as home features on real estate listing services, which makes it challenging for appraisers to determine the monetary value of the upgrades,” says Debra Little, the appraiser. “We used methodologies beyond the typical appraisal scope, taking into account the energy efficiency benefits as well as factors such as healthier indoor air quality and sealing air leaks – which improves the durability and effective life of a home. We ultimately determined that the many benefits of green homes do lead to higher home values in the local market.”

    Home #1, Whittier, CA

    Read more

    NEWS FLASH

    Romney Doesn’t Know If He Paid A Tax Rate Lower Than 13.9% | Mitt Romney has thus far refused to heed the call from a growing number of people within the Republican party to release more tax returns. And during an interview with ABC’s David Muir from Israel, the former Massachusetts governor revealed that the documents may show that he paid very little in taxes:

    NEWS FLASH

    Conservative Columnist: Early Voting Is ‘Deplorable’ | Conservative columnist George Will described early voting as “deplorable” during ABC’s This Week, arguing that the phenomena “complicates” campaigning for the presidential candidates. Democratic strategist Donna Brazile responded with, “I’m glad that we still have early voting, George, because that means there won’t be a lot of congestion on Election Day. We should have more accessibility.” Watch it:

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