Debate One. Just the Facts

 OK, first debate over. No getting around it, Romney did a terrific job. He looked and sounded calm and confident. President Obama, while a great orator, is not always a terrific debater but last night was poor. Wish I could say otherwise! 

However, Mitt's facts' did not meet the level of his performance. As he himself told the President, "you aren't entitled to your own facts". So here's a review of a few of the claims made in last nights debate. I highly recommend factcheck.org for any political claims or ads you want to verify. They are terrific.

Medicare

 Claim: Romney said Obama's health care law cuts $716 billion from Medicare which will hurt current beneficiaries.

Facts: This has been one of Romney's favorite lines of attack, but his claim that Obama's health care law cuts $716 billion in benefits for current Medicare beneficiaries is not true. The health care law will limit payments to health care providers and insurers — not senior citizens' benefits — as part of an effort to rein in costs over the course of the next decade. The fact is, the money isn’t being taken away from Medicare. Instead, Medicare would spend it, but over a longer period of time than was expected before the health care law. The law extends the solvency of the Medicare Part A trust fund.

HealthCare Board

Romney claimed a new board established by the Affordable Care Act is “going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Not true. The board is a 15-member panel that’s tasked with finding ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending. So, its work concerns Medicare, not everyone seeking health care. The board only recommends cost-saving measures for Medicare, and is legally forbidden to ration care or reduce benefits.

Tax cuts

 Claim: Obama says Romney's tax plan would cut taxes by $5 trillion over 10 years, inflating the deficit.

Facts: Romney said his plan will be paid for by curtailing tax deductions, Romney has declined to say what tax deductions he would end. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center has contended that middle-class families would see taxes rise about $2,000 a year under Romney's plan if he keeps his promise to make the tax reform revenue-neutral, arguing that it can't be done without ending popular middle-class deductions on mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

Private-sector job gains

 Claim: Obama said the U.S. economy has created 5 million private-sector jobs the past 30 months.

Facts: After the economy plummeted in late 2007 and throughout 2009, the United States has gained 4.6 million private-sector jobs since the labor market bottomed in February 2010 — or 5.1 million under preliminary revisions released last week that are not part of the official tally by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Clean energy
Claim: Romney said clean energy interests got $90 billion in tax breaks under Obama, and that half of those companies receiving breaks went out of business.

Facts: The president's 2009 stimulus bill included a combination of over $90 billion in spending, financing and tax breaks for clean energy investments, but it's false that half of the companies went broke. Some of the Energy Department's loans went to firms that failed, but Romney's claim that half of the companies went broke is inaccurate. In a 2011 story, USA TODAY reported that the stocks of many of 45 publicly traded companies receiving stimulus funds had outperformed the stock market, despite Solyndra and other, smaller failures. The money, mostly in loans and loan guarantees, are helping build factories for companies such as Ford, Nissan and Tesla Motor. One beneficiary is health care technology company Athenahealth, whose shares have more than doubled. Its CEO, Jonathan Bush, is a first cousin of President George W. Bush.

Rising health care costs
Claim: Health care costs have risen $2,500 per family per year under Obama.

Facts: Partly true, but health care inflation has slowed notably under Obama. Health insurance costs rose 4% last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That rate is far below the 10% to 13% seen in 2003 and 2004

Deficit

It’s not true that Obama “doubled” the deficit. He inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit and deficits have remained at or above that level, as Romney said, every year since then.

Will your Vote effect the Supreme Court? And does that matter?

Are you sick of the influence of money in politics? Or about the gun violence in our country?

Want to make sure that rape and incest victims don’t have to carry their babies to term?

Then think twice about whom you vote for in the upcoming presidential election. Because, Yes, your vote really does matter.

Here are some excerpts from a recent article in the LA Times. A link to the full article is at the end.

The Supreme Court is not on the ballot in November, but its future direction on issues such as abortion, gay rights, gun rights, voting laws and the role of money in politics depends on who is elected president for the next four years.

Given one more liberal vote, the court would likely switch directions on campaign money and uphold laws that limit election spending and require the full disclosure of donors. With an extra conservative vote, however, the justices on the right are likely to go further and free big donors — including corporations — to give money directly to candidates and parties.

The law on abortion could also switch with a change of one justice.

With an extra vote on the right, the six Republican appointees would likely uphold strict regulation of abortion, and possibly a criminal ban.

The justices are closely split along ideological lines. The court's makeup means that a President Mitt Romney could tip the court decisively to the right

"A change in the ideology of only one justice could have a profound impact on the course of constitutional law," said professor Geoffrey Stone at the University of Chicago Law School.

Clint Bolick, a lawyer for the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, is not rooting for an Obama victory, but he agrees the election could have a lasting effect on a closely split court.

"The average justice remains in office nearly 25 years — more than six presidential terms. Supreme Court nominations are one of most enduring legacies a president has," he said.

Presidential race may leave lasting imprint on Supreme Court by By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times

http://soc.li/WDoYO0M

very funny wedding article

Great article in this months Vanity Fair called Can this Wedding Be Saved? by A.A. Gill  Worth reading the whole thing. But here's some of the funniest parts.

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A wedding is like porn in that it promises far more than it’s ever going to deliver; unlike porn, we witness this scene with our grandparents and our kids.

Some tongue-tied, giddy swain slumps to one knee and tugs a velveteen box from his pocket, and his sweetheart, who up to this very moment has quite liked him, is more acutely embarrassed than she ever thought humanly possible. She stares at the pitiful diamond. The engagement ring is the ugliest, gaudiest piece of jewelry most women will ever wear. It sets in motion the most stressful and tearful year of their lives.

Then you look at the clothes and you wonder why any human would want to appear dressed like that in front of a crowd of people, most of whom they’re going to have to see again.

She has to wear “The Dress.” The first bride to popularize white wedding dresses was Queen Victoria. She was a tiny, round, plain girl with a nose like a claw hammer and less chin than a terrapin. Charitably, the best thing you could say for her on her wedding day was that she looked like an ornamental toilet-tissue cover. 

It’s universally said that all brides look beautiful. Every bride is told repeatedly that she is breathtaking, but white is an unforgiving un-color unless you’re a baby or a corpse. White is particularly bad on pale, pinkish people, but not quite as bad as on sprayed-orange people.

Wedding dresses are a collective blind spot, an aesthetic dead zone. We are brainwashed to believe that a wedding dress is magic, that it has the ability to transform everyone into a raging, shaggable piece of hot, virginal, must-have, never-been-had gorgeousness. But, like all fairy spells, it only works for one day.

In any other context, a wedding dress makes you look like a transvestite, which is presumably why the groom isn’t allowed to see it before it’s too late to change his mind.

How wonderful the bride looks in her dress isn’t the only lie told at weddings. The happy couple is wafted up the aisle in a fog, a cacophony of lies. There are lies about the in-laws, about gaining sons and daughters, and about not having slept with any of the bridesmaids. 

We lie that we like the cake, we lie that the best man’s speech was funny, and we lie that this was the best wedding ever.

Viewed from the pews, weddings are theater produced by straight amateurs using their own money. The resulting spectacle is what a dog show would be like if it were organized by the dogs.

Who is Paul Ryan?

Who is 42 year-old Republican Congressman Paul Ryan from Wisconsin? Here’s some info.

Ryan co-sponsored a “personhood” amendment, an extreme anti-abortion measure. Ryan joined 62 other Republicans in co-sponsoring the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which declares that a fertilized egg “shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” This would outlaw abortion, some forms of contraception and in vitro fertilization.

 Ryan  is considered the architect of the GOP budget. His economic views are especially interesting if you’re a senior, or know a senior, or plan on becoming one someday….

Ryan wants to end Medicare, and replace it with a voucher system. All future retirees would receive a government contribution to purchase insurance. But since the $ amount does not keep up with increasing health care costs, the Congressional Budget Offices estimates that new beneficiaries could pay up to $1,200 more by 2030 and more than $5,900 more by 2050.

A recent study also found that had the plan been implemented in 2009, 24 million beneficiaries enrolled in the program would have paid higher premiums to maintain their choice of plan and doctors.

Ryan would also raise Medicare’s age of eligibility to 67.

In September of 2011, Ryan agreed with Rick Perry’s characterization of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” and since 2005 has advocated for privatizing the retirement benefit and investing it in stocks and bonds. The economic crisis of 2008 should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who thinks hinging Americans’ retirement to the stock market is a good idea.

Ryan wants to eliminate Pell Grants for more than 1 million students. He wants to cut the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could “ultimately knock more than one million students off the program over the next 10 years.

Ryan supports $40 billion in subsides for big oil. In 2011, Ryan joined all House Republicans and 13 Democrats in his vote to keep Big Oil tax loopholes and oil tax breaks as part of the 2011 spending bill.

He did this while cutting billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil. 

He does, however, have very nice hair. 

Jewish Values & Politics

Last night was the Jewish Americans for Obama event at KI which I was lucky enough to not only attend but help work. It was scheduled for 7:30 and it was decided to open the doors at 7:00, perhaps 6:45 if necessary. By 6:00 people started arriving, by 6:30 we had to open the curtain to double the room size, and by 7:00 we were scrounging up every last chair the synagogue had. There were over 1000 chairs, all filled, and both sides of the room were packed with standing people. It was amazing. 

Lots of speeches, all of which were just the right length and combination of humor and passion. We got to hear our own Dan Siegel who was terrific and then Pa Treasurer Rob McCord, (Jewish, who knew!) State Senator Daylon Leach( yes, also Jewish!) , County Commissioner Josh Shapiro, Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz and the Chair of the Dem National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
They represented a broad spectrum of Jewish practice from Josh Shapiro who was educated in Jewish day schools and educates his 4 children the same, to the speaker who summarized his Jewish upbringing as 'read the new york times and go to an ivy league college'.

But they had one unifying message. As committed Jews, they could not and would not support any president who was not 100% supportive of Israel. More on that near the end. 

The speakers also touched on something I think is often over shadowed by the emotional hot button of Israel. They spoke of the need for their politics to reflect their Jewish values. The concept of electing officials who reflect our Jewish morals and values is something we need to think about and talk about more often.

What are some of these values?
 
Tikkun olam; to repair the world. This is the idea that as Jews we have a responsibility not only to ourselves and our families but are also responsible for the welfare of the society at large.

The separation of church and state. It is essential that the next President appoints Supreme Court Justices who understand the importance that religious doctrine have no place in our schools, and in our laws.

Never again, never forget.  These words strike a chord deep in Jewish hearts. How do we best honor their meaning? By protecting and fighting for the rights of others. There is nothing Jewish about discrimination. There is nothing Jewish about laws meant to restrict the rights and the lives of others, whether they are Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, or women.

Ok, back to Israel. All the speakers listed many facts to illustrate the Presidents unequivocal support for Israel.  Remember facts? The news used to include them.
One quickie:
President Obama has sent record levels of security assistance to Israel and has increased the amount requested each year since taking office. In 2013, President Obama requested $3.1 billion—the largest security assistance package to Israel ever-and has armed Israel with the most advanced military hardware and missile defense systems.

The best place to find more facts and help in separating the myths from facts is on
www.barackobama.com/jewish-americans

Affordable HealthCare !

Great news today from the Supreme Court! Restores ones faith in those black robes , especially after their horrid Citizens United decision. In light of today's decision I though I would re-print my March blog post on the health care bill and what it does for you.

After you've (re)read it check out this very cool tool on BarackObama.com. You enter your personal circumstances; working, kids, retired...and it tells you how the bill will personally effect you. Isn't technology fun? http://www.barackobama.com/health-care?source=health-care-soundbite

ObamaCare; Why should I Care? aka Whats in it for me?

Why should I care if the Presidents Affordable Care Act gets repealed? What’s in it for me?

Are you a Senior?
Obamacare will close the famed Medicare prescription drug "doughnut hole," which forces some seniors to pay thousands of dollars for prescription medications out of pocket.

Have you ever been sick? What about your kid?

Under Obamacare people can no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. What's considered a pre-existing condition? Everything from high blood pressure to asthma to cancer or heart disease. If the law is overturned, up to 129 million people would be at risk of being denied insurance due to pre-existing conditions.

Do you get a mammogram, or a flu shot?

If Obamacare is repealed, one of the first things to go is coverage for preventive care. Preventive services include mammograms, cancer screenings, blood pressure tests, flu shots and bone density tests for osteoporosis. These services can prevent sickness, and also catch it early -- making treatment easier and less invasive.

Do you have a kid under the age of 26? Are you under 26?

Before the affordable care act, young people could be kicked off their parents’ insurance when they turn 18 or graduate from college. I’m sure its not shocking news that many recent college graduates do not have jobs that offer health care coverage. Now, your kids can stay on your insurance until they are 26.

So, do you care now?

Fired Up and Ready to Go

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending an all day training conference given by the Obama campaign. It was held for active volunteers from all over the state of Pa and Montgomery County was selected as the location. There were several amazing things about it, perhaps none more than the attendees themselves. Over 500 people came from all over the state. Many drove five hours and slept on the sofas and floor of local volunteers. The range of people was astonishing; people who in any of circumstances would go their entire lives without meeting each other. In one room were high school students, recent college grads,and senior citizens. A young girl with ripped jeans and high top sneakers sat next to a older man in a wheel chair, both listening to a young mans story of how he went from a homeless kid with an addicted mother to a respected staff member of the Obama campaign. While being in that room was inspiring enough we also got to hear some rousing speeches from several key members of the Presidents campaign staff. Here's some of my favorite excerpts. Feel free to use them! And forgive me if I repeat them over the next few months in my tweets. You do follow me on twitter, right? In 2008 we changed the guard. In 2012 we need to guard the change Obama represents the politics of conscious, not the politics of convenience. On the economy: First President Obama stopped us from falling deeper and deeper into the hole. Then he helped us begin to climb out. Now we need to give him the time to finish the job. Romney is a guy who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. The second day was training for the Obama Organizing Fellows, a dedicated group of people who were selected to participate in a 12 week internship program. I had a terrifically fun day helping the wonderfully organized John work the kitchen and feed lunch to the over 100 fellows plus staff. Setting up a buffet for over a 100 people kept me in fighting shape for the next family seders!