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Economy

Romney Has ‘No Idea’ About Outsourcing Tax Breaks, But His Economic Plan Makes Them Worse

By Guest Blogger on Oct 5, 2012 at 2:30 pm

Our guest blogger is David Abromowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Of all the many claims that Mitt Romney pitched to the American public with such confidence that most viewers declared him the “winner” during Wednesday night’s debate, few were as brashly misleading as his response to the President’s objection to tax breaks that enable outsourcing jobs overseas. “Look, I’ve been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant,” Romney said. “But the idea that you get a break for shipping jobs overseas is simply not the case.”

But even Fox News acknowledges that “companies can claim a deduction for the costs associated with moving jobs overseas.” The idea that former Bain CEO Romney wouldn’t know this is simply not believable. Instead, his advisers have argued that this isn’t a “special” tax break for outsourcing — it’s just a deduction like any other cost of doing business.

But beyond any semantic argument, Romney certainly would know that just this summer, Republicans in the Senate (with three exceptions) blocked a bill to eliminate this deduction when the expenses are for relocating jobs out of the US. As ABC New reported, “Under existing law, employers may take tax deductions for the costs associated with moving jobs out of the country. The proposed legislation would have eliminated that, and used the resulting new revenue to fund a 20 percent tax credit for the costs companies run up ‘insourcing’ labor back into the U.S.”

The biggest rebuttal to Romney’s claim of not having a clue of what the President was talking about, however, is Romney’s own tax plan. It actually includes a far more favorable tax break that would increase incentives for American companies to move operations overseas. As the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Seth Hanlon has explained in detail, Romney’s tax plan “pledges to move the United States toward a ‘territorial’ tax system. What this means is that instead of paying a deferred tax on their foreign profits, U.S. corporations would pay no U.S. tax. Exempting overseas profits from tax would be a tax cut for multinational corporations of $130 billion over 10 years.”

Climate Progress

American Newspapers Give Far More Coverage To Climate Deniers And Skeptics Than Other Countries

By Stephen Lacey on Oct 5, 2012 at 2:30 pm

America is unique when it comes to giving a platform to climate deniers and skeptics.

According to a new analysis of data released last year, American newspapers are far more likely to publish uncontested claims from climate deniers, many of whom challenge whether the planet is warming at all and are “almost exclusively found” in the U.S. media. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The researchers were trying to answer three important questions: Is climate denial and disinformation as prevalent in the newspapers outside America? Is it mostly right-wing papers publishing these pieces? And what types of skeptics are being published in different countries?

In all three categories, the U.S. emerged as a unique leader in promoting climate denial in the press.

The newspapers surveyed were Folha de São Paulo and Estado de São Paulo in Brazil; People’s Daily and Beijing Evening News in China;  Le Monde and Le Figaro in France; The Hindu and Times of India in India; the Guardian/Observer and the Daily/Sunday Telegraph in the United Kingdom; and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in America. The researchers looked at stories between 2009 and 2010, when the so-called “climategate” story was unfolding. They also compared their findings to coverage in 2007, when the IPCC released its assessment of climate science.
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Health

Why Romney Doesn’t ‘Preserve’ Traditional Medicare

By Sy Mukherjee on Oct 5, 2012 at 2:15 pm

During Wednesday night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney tried his very best to convince American seniors and future beneficiaries that his Medicare reform plan would not fundamentally alter the longstanding safety-net program’s structure. The Republican nominee painted his plan as a well-meaning experiment meant to inject some much-needed marketplace capitalism into the Medicare system, theoretically lowering the program’s cost and offering flexible, quality coverage options to future Americans, all while maintaining the benefits of traditional Medicare.

But Romney consistently obfuscated the details of his plan, which would actually result in massive cost-shifting onto consumers and fundamentally weaken the traditional Medicare entitlement. Here is what Romney said about Medicare Wednesday night:

…Number two is for people coming along that are young. What I’d do to make sure that we can keep Medicare in place for them is to allow them either to choose the current Medicare program or a private plan — their choice.They get to — and they’ll have at least two plans that will be entirely at no cost to them. So they don’t have to pay additional money, no additional $6,000. That’s not going to happen.

Setting aside the fact that Romney’s own stated desire to repeal Obamacare would raise the price of prescription drugs, preventative care, and Medicare Advantage premiums on current as well as future beneficiaries, Romney’s statements underplay just how radically his proposal — and the plan laid out by running mate Paul Ryan — would change Medicare for beneficiaries in 2023 and beyond.

From his comments during the debate, you would think that his plan is a simple alteration in Medicare’s funding mechanism, or an expansion of the kinds of private coverage plans available under Medicare Advantage. But that’s just not true. The Romney/Ryan plan would take Medicare, which is a “defined benefit” program, and turn it into a “defined contribution” program.

Basically, instead of the federal government guaranteeing that beneficiaries receive a host of defined services — as it does now — the federal government would instead set a hard budget for Medicare and then toss a chunk of cash at beneficiaries and let them choose from a host of private plans or traditional fee-for-service Medicare to get coverage. This means that if the calculated “premium support” subsidies for insurance and benchmark plans under the Romney/Ryan proposal do not cover all of a beneficiary’s needs, consumers would be forced to pay the difference out of pocket to get a plan that does. As health care costs rise, that will shift more and more financial burden onto consumers while their federal subsidies grow at a rate that simply can’t keep up with medical inflation.

As this Center for American Progress Action Fund study demonstrates, Romney/Ryan’s proposed voucher system would also weaken the traditional Medicare program, raising premiums as seniors spill over into private plans intentionally designed to attract healthier populations by providing cheaper benefits like preventative care, while leaving out more expensive benefits for the elderly such as long-term or intensive medical care. The existing Medicare pool, which would be left with a sicker population that needs Medicare’s expansive benefits, would consequently have much higher medical costs and rising premiums.

NEWS FLASH

Canadian Supreme Court Upholds But Narrows HIV Criminalization | The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that failing to disclose one’s HIV status to a sexual partner is not always a crime, but has maintained that the criminalizing law can be enforced. According to the Court, sex partners with a low viral load who wear a condom are not committing a crime if they hide their HIV status. Despite this legal wiggle room, HIV advocates are disappointed that laws against rape are still being used to stigmatize people with HIV. Various studies have shown that HIV criminalization laws discourage many people from getting tested, seeking care, or using protection during sex.

Alyssa

‘Escape Fire’ Director Matthew Heineman On What Comes After Health Care Reform

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 5, 2012 at 2:04 pm

One of the best documentaries I saw at the Sundance Film Festival in January was Escape Fire, a look at doctors, patients, and hospital administrators who are trying to bend the curve on health care, both by looking at costs and insurance, but even more importantly, at what we get for our money and our insurance. From Sgt. Robert Yates, who makes the decision to kick his addiction to pain medication after suffering serious combat injuries in Afghanistan and recovers with the help of alternative therapies as part of the military’s grappling with overprescription, to Dr. Erin Martin, who moves from clinic to clinic looking for a way to practice patient-centric medicine and to focus on outcomes rather than services, the movie raises questions far beyond the problems addressed by the Affordable Care Act. I spoke with the movie’s co-director Matthew Heineman about how to tackle some of the biggest, hardest changes in health care. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

There are a lot of different stories in this movie—in a way, it reminded me of reading through Atul Gwande’s archives at The New Yorker. How did you find your subjects for the movie? And here there any who didn’t make the cut?

I think from day one, Susan [Frömke, Heinman's co-director] and I started making the film about three years ago as the health care debate was heating up. Like so many Americans, we were so confused about all the rhetoric, all the hyperbole. Health care was dividing our country. We wanted to cut through that and find out why our system was so broken, and who was out there trying to change it? We ddn’t want to make a film that was just about the problem, we wanted to be about solutions. We found characters and storylines who looked at the story through different angles…Like many films that we’ve done, we spent six to eight months doing research before we even turned on the camera…It was a pretty organic process. We met a few of our experts early on in that process, Dr. Andy Weil and Dr. Dean Ornish, and through them met some of our subjects…It’s a really complicated, wonky subject. So we know we also had to make it interesting, make it entertaining. We didn’t just want to make a film with a bunch of talking heads. We knew we wanted powerful, human stories that would carry the narrative, so at all times, that was in the back of our heads, how can we find characters that tell larger truths about our health care system, but that also have some sort of narrative arc. We found that in Dr. Martin, the primary care physician that’s struggling in a system that’s preventing her from practicing the way she wants to practice, and to find a place where she can practice the kind of medicine she wants to, [in] Sgt. Yates.

So much of the focus of our debate over health care reform is about getting people the insurance that will let them pay for care. But Escape Fire seems to be oriented towards the next debate: what it is that we’re paying for in the first place. I loved Sgt. Yates story because it got at the heart of what our expectations are for our care, and what we’re open to.

Completely. I think health care is incredibly, incredibly important. But i think the key question that our film presents is access to what? Access to a disease care or a health care system? Access to expensive care, to high-tech care, or oriented towards health care and patient-centered care? So many of these films are preach to the choir and are so partisan. We really didn’t want to make a partisan film. We wanted to make a film that would bring all stake-holders to the table…We screened the film at 62 medical schools. Last week we screened it at the Pentagon. And I think what we’ve found is that change doesn’t really have to come from Washington, change can really come at the local level, community by community, and hospital by hospital.
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Security

Connection Between Al Qaeda And Embassy Attacks Remains Unproven

By Hayes Brown on Oct 5, 2012 at 1:38 pm

(Photo: Reuters)

On Thursday, an essay published at the Weekly Standard website alleged that “al Qaeda attacked multiple American assets around the world” in attacks on diplomatic posts in Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt. The article, penned by Thomas Joscelyn, is part of a larger, unproven narrative that the threat of terrorism has been largely ignored recently by the Obama Administration as a threat.

Joscelyn’s assertion on the role of al Qaeda is strongest when he points to Libya:

Multiple al Qaeda-affiliated groups have been linked to the complex assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. These groups include al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Ansar al Sharia militia, which is headed by an ex-Guantanamo detainee and known al Qaeda operative named Sufyan Ben Qumu. Members of the Ansar al Sharia militia were in contact with AQIM in the hours after the attack, Eli Lake reported at The Daily Beast.

The State Department and other parts of the U.S. government are currently investigating the full role that AQIM had in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of four Americans. However, direct link between the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and AQIM has yet to be fully verified.

No U.S. government officials have put forward any of the other links that Joscelyn highlights in the violence in Tunis, Cairo, and Sanaa. Joscelyn himself hedges that the connection between al Qaeda and Gamaa Islamiya in Egypt is something that “one could speculate”.

Will McCants, research analyst at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Center for Naval Analysis and author of the website Jihadica, says of the claims, “There are two problems with the article: factual inaccuracies and guilt by association. The two problems reinforce each other throughout. For example, the author states that Gama`a Islamiyya is a “close ally of al-Qaeda.” That is absolutely untrue. Years ago the former jihadi group completely rejected al-Qaeda’s program and has become a mainstream political actor in Egypt.”

“The article reads like the counterterrorism equivalent of the Kevin Bacon Game,” McCants continued, “This guy is connected to this guy who once saw another guy who was the brother of some other guy. You can make anyone a threat. I have been namechecked by Zawahiri several times. Am I threat? By the author’s reasoning, I may have even had something to do with the embassy riots and just don’t know it.”

Joscelyn’s article fits within a larger narrative that has only grown since the attack in Benghazi that the Obama Administration has vastly underestimated the threat of terrorism and al Qaeda in the wake of the Arab Spring. In an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, former United Nations Ambassador, and Romney campaign surrogate, John Bolton decried what he labeled as a White House “ideology” that believes that the United States is no longer threatened by terrorism.

Republican leadership in the House Government and Oversight Committee is currently touting a letter from the State Department to the U.S. mission in Libya, denying a DC-3 as evidence that the security situation within Libya was vastly underestimated. However, the DC-3 is a smaller transport plane, which in and of itself would not have been particularly useful during the assault on the consulate.

The Obama Administration is pushing back against this narrative, with targeted articles noting its growing focus on AQIM. The United States recently slightly shifted its position towards approving an African coalition to intervene in Mali, where AQIM has established a stronghold. In recent weeks, the possibility of unilaterally striking at AQIM in Mali has been discussed as well.

Al Qaeda’s current strength, and its affiliates’, is currently hotly debated within counterterrorism spheres. Certainty on the exact nature and cause of the September assaults likewise remains elusive.

Climate Progress

The New Values Voters: Faith Groups And Climate Change

By Climate Guest Blogger on Oct 5, 2012 at 1:30 pm

by Catherine Woodiwiss

For years, polling analysis on the environment has been grouped with other policy concerns like the economy and national security, rather than with “culture” issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. But when the idea of environmental stewardship and care for the earth is articulated as a moral concern, this takes priority with voters above those traditionally listed culture issues. For their part, faith groups on both sides of the aisle are becoming bolder in their commitment to tackling climate change as a moral issue.

All faiths work for a healthier planet

There is no doubt that the economy is the first priority of this election. But a grassroots movement at the nexus of science and faith has been growing across party lines in an effort to tackle climate change.

Due in large part to economic concerns, climate change, energy, and environmental issues had declined somewhat in priority among polled Americans since 2008. But numbers are rebounding, and the organizing energy at the grassroots—especially among faith groups—helps tell us why.

Unified faith-climate activism has recently been in abundance—from the more than 60 religious leaders putting themselves at risk of arrest in Washington, D.C., at the Keystone XL protest in August 2011 to faith groups kicking off the first-ever nationwide antifracking rally in July 2012. Earth Week 2012 boasted meetings, rallies, lobbying, and services from interfaith and multifaith action groups as well as denomination-specific conferences and prayer breakfasts. And new coalitions have sprung up this year—among them the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action and the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate—that represent newly energized faith communities and a new willingness to work across different political and religious sensibilities in tackling the common challenge of climate change.

Many mainline denominations have advocated environmental stewardship for decades, but polarizing political rhetoric and misconceptions in some conservative circles arguing that caring for the earth is a substitute for religion has kept this issue highly divisive among America’s faithful. In the past this has often resulted in religious groups attempting to address environmental stewardship while shying away from any hint of partisanship and struggling to agree on substantive policy goals.

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Economy

Middle Class Families Could See Big Increases Under Romney’s Modified Tax Proposal

By Travis Waldron on Oct 5, 2012 at 1:20 pm

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, facing criticism over how he would keep his tax plan from adding to the deficit or raising taxes on the middle class, this week proposed a new feature: he would cap the amount of tax deductions that could be claimed at $17,000. But that idea still doesn’t make the math work for Romney’s plan, according to Tax Policy Center economist William Gale, who worked on the original TPC report that showed Romney’s plan couldn’t possibly achieve all of his outlined goals.

And even as Romney’s new feature won’t “come close” to paying for his plan, it could also lead to additional tax increases on families who wrote off more than Romney’s cap, unless it exempts common deductions for the middle class (like health care and home mortgage interest), Bloomberg reports:

That won’t bring in enough revenue to make up for almost $5 trillion the government will lose over 10 years once tax rates are reduced by 20 percent as Romney has proposed, according to economist William Gale of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“It doesn’t come close to paying for the $5 trillion,” said Gale, who co-authored a study of Romney’s tax plan for the non-partisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

At least 3.7 million U.S. taxpayers last year reported deductions of $25,000 or more. About 10 million others wrote off $15,000 to $25,000. Romney says their taxes wouldn’t go up, and in fact would decline, under his 20 percent across-the-board tax rate cut.

Romney has made several promises about his plan: it won’t add to the deficit, it won’t reduce the share of taxes paid by the rich, and it won’t raise taxes on the middle class. The original Tax Policy Center report found that Romney couldn’t possibly keep all three of those promises if he cut rates by 20 percent across the board, as he says he will.

In the abstract, capping deductions is not necessarily a bad idea, and could cut taxes for some middle class families. But for others, it could lead to a higher tax bill. Deductions popular with both parties, like the home mortgage interest deduction and the deduction for health care costs, could also be limited by Romney’s plan, eating up large chunks of the amount middle class families are able to write off each year.

Justice

Wolverines! — Iowa Rep. Steve King Claims Gun Laws Must Be Blocked To Prevent Invasion Of America

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 5, 2012 at 1:10 pm

The 1984 film Red Dawn is a classic in the genre of paranoid Cold War guns fantasy, where a group of armed high school students fend off an invading Soviet army and eventually “g[i]ve up their lives… so that this nation shall not perish from the earth.” Rep. Steve King (R-IA), however, seems to believe it is a manual for federal firearms policy:

King said during a debate last week in Orange City that the original purpose of the Second Amendment was not to assure hunting rights or allow people to provide for self-protection. The purpose was “to guard against tyranny because our Founding Fathers understood that if we did not have an armed populace, an armed tyrant could take over America,” King said.

When asked whether such a threat was legitimate in 2012, he said, “We don’t have that threat now because we have an armed populace, and we don’t have to worry about that because of an armed populace.” . . .

When asked if the “armed tyrant” was an outside threat or even the U.S. government, King said, “I don’t see it as our own federal government. I wouldn’t rule it out down the line in a generation or two. I wouldn’t say that’s not part of it. I don’t see it today, and I don’t anticipate that that’s the case.”

Watch it:

Setting aside King’s suggestion that invading armies have thus far steered clear of American soil because they fear reprisal from a ragtag band of civilian Wolverines, there are potentially serious policy implications to King’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. A foreign army would certainly deploy the tools of modern warfare if it chose to capture American soil, so a misfit band of patriotic teenagers would need to arm themselves with similar weapons in order to provide a meaningful deterrent to such forces.

Needless to say, this is not what the Second Amendment provides. As conservative Justice Scalia explained in District of Columbia v. Heller, “dangerous and unusual weapons” are not protected by the Constitution. More recently, a federal appeals court explained in an opinion by a George W. Bush-appointed judge that “[s]hort of bombs, missiles, and biochemical agents, we can conceive of few weapons that are more dangerous than machine guns,” and thus all of these weapons can be banned under the Second Amendment.

NEWS FLASH

Vancouver High School Apologizes To Man Whose Yearbook Printed A Gay Slur Under His Name | Forty-two years after Robert Tomlin’s high school yearbook published the word “fag” under his name, the North Vancouver School District has formally apologized. Tomlin, who is dying of terminal liver disease, told CBC News he was physically threatened and badly bullied after the yearbook came out. The school had previously asked him to sign an agreement not to sue them or make the story public in exchange for an apology. Now that CBC News has publicized the story, the superintendent’s letter offers “a sincere apology on behalf of the entire North Vancouver School District” and invites Tomlin to a face-to-face meeting.

Watch it:

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