Tagg Romney Says He Wants To ‘Take A Swing’ At Obama

By Judd Legum on Oct 17, 2012 at 9:23 pm

Appearing on the Bill Lumaye Show, a North Carolina radio program, Tagg Romney — one of Mitt Romney’s five sons — said that he wanted to rush the stage and “take a swing” at President Obama during the debates. Transcript:

BILL LUMAYE: I’m going to ask something I think a lot of people want to know, or at least I do. What is it like for you to hear the President of the United States call your dad a liar. How do you react to that?

TAGG ROMNEY: Jump out of your seat and you want to rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him. But you know you can’t do that because… Well, first there is a lot of Secret Service between you and him but also because this is the nature of the process.

Listen to the full interview:

[HT: McCay Coppins]

()

Climate Progress

Bill Clinton’s Message: ‘Saving The Planet Is Better Economics Than Burning It Up’

By Joe Romm on Oct 17, 2012 at 8:25 pm

Clinton: “If you’re an American, the best thing you can do is to make it politically unacceptable for people to engage in denial. I mean, it makes us — we look like a joke, right? You can’t win the nomination of one of the major parties in our country if you admit that the scientists are right? That disqualifies you from doing it? You could really help us there. It’s really tragic because we need a debate in America, and in every country, between people who are a little bit to the right and people who are a little bit to the left about what the best way is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. What is the most economical way to do it? What will get more done quicker? There are all these things that in any other country would occupy a lot of space on the ideological spectrum from right to left, and we can’t have this conversation because you’ve got to deny it?”

John Wihbey has a good collection of Clinton quotes on climate at The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media, in his piece, “How President Clinton, ‘Explainer-in-Chief,’ Frames Climate Change.”

The quote above is from last year’s Clinton Global Initiative (9-21-11). Here’s another, from a talk at the London School of Economics (7-12-12):

“My strategy on [engaging deniers] is very simple. Some people who are climate skeptics are climate skeptics because it’s in their interest to be. They just want to preserve the old energy economy, and there’s not much I can do about that. But what I am trying to do, literally all the time, is to prove that saving the planet is better economics than burning it up. Not 10 or 20 or 50 years from now — [but] now. There are a lot of climate skeptics but their reasons are being chipped away…. There are a lot of people who have a different view. Their view is, ‘Look, this may be good, this may be bad. But God almighty the world is coming apart at the seams economically and we’ve got other fish to fry. We have to deal with other things.’ [For] those people, you must prove it is good economics to change the way we produce and pursue energy…. So what I do to try to overcome the climate skeptics is to figure out how to solve the financing problems, because fundamentally all the financing problems look alike. Whether you’re dealing with clean energy or energy efficiency, the costs are all up-front and the savings are all in the back….”

No question Clinton has the arithmetic right:

Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar
Scientists find “net present value of climate change impacts” of $1240 TRILLION on current emissions path, making mitigation to under 450 ppm a must

One final quote, also from LSE this year:

“Every now and then I’ll give a speech on this … but I try not to give many speeches on this energy stuff, the environment. I just try to do one project after another. I figure if we just keep lining ‘em up and pushing ‘em down, and lining ‘em up and pushing ‘em down, at some point denial will no longer be an effective strategy. And that’s what I recommend to you: Do something, no matter how small it is.”

Hear! Hear!

(35)

Election

Leaked Audio Captures Romney Asking Employers To Tell Their Employees How To Vote

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Oct 17, 2012 at 7:00 pm

Newly-discovered audio from a conference call in June captures Mitt Romney asking business owners to urge their employees to vote for him.

Romney, speaking on a call to the very conservative National Federation of Independent Business, tells a group of business owners that they should “make it very clear” how they feel about the candidates. The audio, discovered by In These Times, also captures Romney telling the business owners to “pass… along to your employees” how their jobs might be affected by who wins in November:

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.

Listen at 26:44:

There have already been some reports of employers suggesting how their employees should cast their ballots. A CEO of a Florida resort company threatened to fire his employees if Obama won. The CEO of a timeshare company did the same. And the famous right-wing Koch brothers warned of “consequences” of not voting for Romney.

()

Health

State Budget Cuts Force West Texas Planned Parenthood Clinic To Close

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Oct 17, 2012 at 6:35 pm

When Texas Republicans succeeded in defunding Planned Parenthood by cutting the women’s health group and other “affiliates of abortion providers” out of the Women’s Health Program, doctors and advocates warned that this would hurt health care for low-income women in the state. Without Planned Parenthood clinics in the Medicaid-funded health program, providers will have to take up to five times the number of patients they currently serve. More than 100,000 women will lose their access to preventive health care.

So far, at least 50 health clinics unaffiliated with Planned Parenthood have been forced to close. Now, Carla Hovela of Planned Parenthood of West Texas said the budget cuts are forcing another Planned Parenthood clinic to close in Abilene, Texas:

Holeva said having to close the Abilene facility is the result of cuts to a women’s health care program by Gov. Rick Perry.

Approximately 160,000 women across Texas have relied on the program’s funding, including about 1,500 annually at the Abilene center, Holeva said, noting the program provided pap smears, breast exams and birth control for participants.

“It (the program) has absolutely no connection to abortion,” Holeva said.

One day a month for the past few years, the clinic has provided medication abortions, but the practice was stopped last week. Women who seek abortion care or services like pap smears or STD testing will have to travel elsewhere. The clinic’s patient records will be transferred to Planned Parenthood West Texas’s San Angelo Health Center, which is almost 100 miles away.

()

NEWS FLASH

Immigration Question Sparks Most Tweets During Presidential Debate | Out of the 7.2 million tweets sent during last night’s presidential debate, the reaction on Twitter peaked with 109,560 tweets per minute after the question about immigration. An audience member asked Mitt Romney what he planned to do about the undocumented immigrants who are living and working in the United States. Romney explained that he won’t grant amnesty and how he wouldn’t put in “magnets” that attract “people coming here illegally,” echoing the self-deportation immigration policy he laid out during the GOP primary.

Security

Anti-Muslim Ad War Escalates In DC Metro

By Hayes Brown on Oct 17, 2012 at 6:15 pm

Pamela Geller has opted to continue her anti-Muslim campaign in a new extremely incensing advertisement that she has submit to the Washington Metro Transit Authority. The new ad, funded by her American Freedom Defense Initiative, depicts the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001 , alongside a contentious verse from the Qu’ran:

Geller — featured prominently in the CAP’s report on Islamophobia in the U.S. — explained the impetus for the new ads on her blog:

Citing the quran, are we? I think that’s a grand idea. AFDI is launching a new ad campaign much like Hamas-CAIR’s. Here is the ad we have submitted to WMATA. I want to thank Hamas-CAIR. What a wonderful way to educate millions of Americans on what is that book. We hope to feature all of the verses that call for jihad.

Geller’s new ad is in direct response to an ad launched by the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR). In CAIR’s banners, a young woman wearing a hijab is depicted with the words “Show forgiveness, speak for justice, ignore the ignorant.”

The proposed ad marks a new round in what is becoming an escalating messaging war between Gellar and various religious groups. While counter-ads have been posted in response to Geller’s “savages” ad in New York City as well, D.C. is the first city to earn a response by the AFDI to these groups’ rebuttal.

()

Alyssa

The Complicated Tragedy Of Lance Armstrong

By Travis Waldron on Oct 17, 2012 at 6:13 pm

What do you say about a man who conquered cancer, won seven world championships, used his profile as one of the world’s greatest athletes to raise and donate millions of dollars to cancer research, and had the most crippling fall from grace perhaps any American athlete has ever had? What do you say about a man who is an outstanding narcissist in an industry full of narcissists, but cared enough about the awful disease that nearly took his life that he devoted the rest of his to making other lives better?

Is he a fraud, a self-serving cheat, a professional scam? Is he a tragic hero, a flawed champion, an inspiration to millions of people who might follow him out of the depths? Is he both?

We may never get a bigger admission that Lance Armstrong cheated his way to his seven Tour de France titles than we got today, when he stepped down from Livestrong, the cancer foundation he started, and lost his contract with Nike, a company that stood by beleaguered superstars like Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant and even Lance Armstrong. That even Nike, the company with the biggest financial stake in maintaining Armstrong’s innocence, has given up the cause makes it seem that this is real, and that believing in Armstrong took the same level of naivete it took to believe in Barry Bonds.

According to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Armstrong was part of “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” Armstrong is not just a cheater. He may be the biggest dope in the history of sports.

But what about all the people Armstrong helped? According to its web site, Livestrong has raised more than $470 million since it started in 1997. It has donated to 550 separate cancer research organizations, and 81 cents of every dollar it gets goes toward services for survivors. A third of its fundraising comes from individuals, another fifth comes from merchandise, the ubiquitous yellow bracelets and Livestrong branded gear. That money has undoubtedly helped millions of people fight cancer and deal with its effects.

Would any of that have been possible without Armstrong, without his success, however tainted it was? And is that a bigger, somehow a more moral, question than how many lives Armstrong affected in cycling?

After all, while Armstrong was raising money to fight cancer, USADA says he not only used performance-enhancing drugs but distributed them as well, and that the scheme he was a part of “was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs.” Improper usage of EPO, the drug Armstrong allegedly used extensively, has been linked to heart disease, stroke, embolisms, and immunodeficiency disorders. While he was helping people fight one disease, Armstrong was putting himself and his teammates at risk of others.

So is Lance Armstrong a fraud, a cheat, and a villain, the worst example of how the quest to win at all costs can distort our priorities? Or is Lance Armstrong is a friend, an inspiration, and a hero, the best example of how success can be used to change the world around us. Can’t he be both?

()

Economy

America Did Progressive Economic Policy Better Than Europe And Got A Better Recovery

By Jeff Spross on Oct 17, 2012 at 6:00 pm

While America’s recovery from the 2008 recession has hardly been booming — economic growth remains sluggish and unemployment is still a discouragingly high 7.8 percent — it’s actually been better than Europe’s. “The economy of the European Union will shrink by 0.2 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. It is smaller than it was five years ago, while the American economy is 2.9 percent bigger,” noted New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter. Even two of Europe’s most impressive economies, Germany and Austria, are predicted to grow at half the U.S. rate over the next two years.

More strikingly, for all the stereotypes of Europe as a liberal haven, the United States actually hewed closer to the activist, Keynesian responses advocated by the American left-wing than did European policy makers:

Germany’s insistence that indebted Mediterranean countries cut government spending deepened recessions in those nations. [...]

[The United States Federal Reserve was] far more aggressive than the European Central Bank, quicker to drop interest rates to zero and pump money into the economy, buying government debt and other bonds. Fiscal stimulus — an initial $800 billion package in 2009 followed by about $600 billion in payroll tax cuts and other efforts — was bigger and more sustained than in other advanced countries. Banks in the United States were forced to raise billions in new capital, which allowed them to cope with the turbulent financial markets better than their European peers. [...]

Today, most economists say they believe that these policies provided vital support to the economy. In its most recent World Economic Outlook, published this month, the I.M.F. acknowledged that the fiscal stimulus was probably much more effective at bolstering growth than it had previously allowed.

While the sample size of developed western countries is small, comparing the different stimulus packages as a share of the economy with how much economic growth followed produces a positive correlation.

Of course, the effects of the 2008 crash were not distributed evenly across the international stage, and a few countries have bounced back faster than the United States. But those nations tend to be outliers in terms of their banking system or their reliance on exports. The Times article cites recent work by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, which attempts to disentangle economies that suffered a systemic financial crisis from ones that merely suffered a boderline crisis. Under that apples-to-apples comparison, America’s per capita GDP has done noticeably better.

Higher economic growth does not necessarily translate directly into higher job growth, and as Porter also observes, one area where the United States has generally underperformed Europe is employment. But that’s largely because Europe has stronger unions, more regulations making it harder to fire workers, and because several European countries subsidize wages or subsidize companies to encourage them to keep workers on — hardly approaches advocated by American critics of left-wing economic policy.

Generally speaking, while the United States’ policy response to the recession was a watered-down version of what left-wing economists and advocates preferred, it came closer to meeting that model than the European response — which hewed closer to the right-wing austerity model. And since then, the U.S. recovery has noticeably outperformed Europe’s.

()

Justice

Pennsylvania Utility Company Admits Newsletter Contains Wrong Voter ID Information, Keeps Sending It Anyway

By Aviva Shen on Oct 17, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Pennsylvania’s biggest utility company, PECO, has admitted to sending incorrect voter ID information to 1.3 million customers in 7 Pennsylvania counties. Despite the recent suspension of the state’s strict voter ID law, PECO’s newsletter warned voters that they must present a valid photo ID in order to vote on Election Day. When customers complained about the inaccurate mailing, a PECO spokesperson explained the mailing was approved a week before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sent the law back to the Commonwealth Court to reconsider the risk of disenfranchisement for low-income, minority, and elderly voters. “We were trying to do a service for our customers in Pennsylvania, to get the word out. Because of the press time of this particular publication, unfortunately the information in there is not entirely correct,” PECO rep Ben Armstrong told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Though the mailing may have been a simple technical mistake, PECO plans to keep distributing its newsletter unchanged through October 28:

Armstrong said Peco intended to continue distribution of the faulty newsletter through its October billing cycle, running through Oct. 28. It’s not possible for its printer to schedule a corrected run, he said, and the newsletter contains information on other programs “that needs to get” to customers.

The other items this month include information on the utility’s home energy audits, how to make donations to its Matching Energy Assistance Fund, Fire Safety Month, and a cutout for customers to get discounts at the Please Touch Museum.

Peco’s next billing cycle begins Oct. 29, a week before the election, but the company has no plans to deal with voter ID in its next newsletter, Armstrong said.

One reason PECO has been slow to correct the error may have to do with the energy company’s CEO, Denis O’Brien. O’Brien has contributed to the campaigns of Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-PA), who was “a key force in enacting the law,” and House Leader Mike Turzai (R-PA), who quickly became notorious after boasting that the ID law would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” PECO’s President, Craig Adams, also donated to Pileggi’s campaign this year.

PECO isn’t the only source disseminating confusing information to Pennsylvanian voters. For a week after the court order suspended the ID requirement, at least 5 counties stated on their websites that voters must show an eligible ID to vote. A billboard targeting Spanish speakers as well as television ads continued to promote the ID requirement for at least a week after the law was invalidated.

()

Alyssa

‘American Horror Story: Asylum’ Makes A Monster Of Repression

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 17, 2012 at 5:07 pm

This post discusses some extremely basic plot points for American Horror Story: Asylum.

Of all the genres I wish I appreciated more, the one I have the most regret about is horror. An early encounter with an extremely violent graphic novel version of Frankenstein gave me childhood nightmares and a life-long aversion to being deeply frightened by my entertainment. I mustered up the courage to see my first horror movie, Drag Me To Hell, several years ago for a long piece on the recession in movies, but nothing’s pulled me back since. I’m aware that in staying away from horror, I’m cutting myself off from a tradition that’s rich with explorations of our darkest social anxieties and pathologies, from violence against women to immigration. But it’s been very difficult for me to justify subjecting myself to images that upset me so deeply to get to the substantive ideas expressed by them.

Somewhat to my surprise, this season of FX’s anthology series, American Horror Story, is prompting me to try again. The second mini-series from creator Ryan Murphy, this time set at an insane asylum in 1964 New England overseen by the Catholic church, with its central mystery the identity of a killer of women who skins his victims, is at the very outer limits of my tolerance for violence. But its exploration of sexual taboos and repressed desires is more deeply felt and certainly as frightening as Bloody Face, as the killer’s been dubbed by a morbidly obsessed public, and much more interesting than the buckets of blood and organs sloshing around in the space between those themes.

At first glance, it looks like American Horror Story is pitting the mostly-innocent and not necessarily insane inmates of Briarcliff Asylum against its proprietors, most notably the severe Sister Jude (Jessica Lange). There’s Shelley (Chloe Sevigny), incarcerated as a nymphomaniac, her head shaved for punishment, mostly on the grounds that she has a high sex drive. “Men like sex and no one calls them whores. I hate that word. It’s so ugly,” she tells Dr. Arthur Arden (James Cromwell), who appears to have a more serious set of problems than some of his patients. “I like sex. It’s my crime.” Kit Walker (Evan Peters, one of the few returning members of the original American Horror Story cast) is a young man, newly and secretly married to his African-American wife, when he experiences what appears to be an alien abduction, she is brutally murdered, and he is arrested on suspicion of being Bloody Face. “Did her dark meat slide off the bone easier than any of the other victims?” Sister Jude asks him nastily at his intake session.

And then there’s Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), a journalist relegated to the recipe column who comes to Briarcliff, ostensibly to write up Sister Jude’s famous bread bakery, but is using the assignment as cover to try to get a coop on the Bloody Face story. After an accident at the asylum, Sister Jude has her put in a cell, first telling Lana it’s so she can recover, but later blackmailing Sarah’s lover, Wendy (Clea Duvall), a young school teacher who fears having her sexual orientation exposed and being fired, into having Lana committed. “You have no legal standing,” Sister Jude tells Wendy. “I have a moral standing,” Wendy protests, seeing defeat already but determined to have her say. “Moral. That’s an interesting word,” Sister Jude tells her. The heartbreak of that decision, which Wendy immediately recognizes as an error, is the truest emotional beat in a new season with a fair number of them, mostly because it relies on real social conditions rather than lights in the sky or people made up as freaks to achieve a profound sense of fear and despair.
Read more

()