Tag: Mitt Romney

Categories
Accountability political challengers

The FUBAR State

Newt Gingrich came from behind for a smashing victory in South Carolina’s primary last Saturday. And yet a more interesting story may be emerging in Iowa: Rick Santorum, not Romney, is apparently the Republican caucus winner. Though that’s not counting the eight precincts whose official results forms went missing.Iowa counties

This could be just another typical screw-​up. Democracy means “rule by the people,” and “the people” aren’t perfect.

Foul-​ups happen.

On the other hand, the whole thing smacks of back-​room manipulation. The fact that the official tabulations were moved away from the traditional site, GOP state party headquarters, to an undisclosed location — allegedly to “protect” the vote-​counting from Occupy protest influence — makes the uncertain results all the more suspect.

And Republicans can’t blame this on Occupiers.

The winner may have been the biggest loser. Santorum got the proverbial bump from the initial Iowa results — losing by a mere handful, it was reported — but Romney received a bump from it too, simply by being declared a winner in the closest caucus race in American history. By “losing control” of the actual count, the Republican Party of Iowa skewed the national election.

Leading into the caucuses, Ron Paul’s supporters sniffed something conspiratorial in the vote count location switch, complaining that such a move could help “disenfranchise” Paul’s supporters, knowing that GOP caucus officials were not at all friendly toward his candidacy.

You’re probably familiar with Stalin’s most famous quote about democracy: “It’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.”

In Iowa, Stalin’s shade sports a mischievous grin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture political challengers

New Orbits for Old

A recent study using something called “gravitational microlensing” suggests that every star has at least one planet. There are a lot of planets out there. So there “must” be Earth-​similar planets. And “therefore” life. Intelligent life. And, and, and …

Back on Earth, the search for intelligence amongst the Republican presidential candidates (not to mention the Democratic incumbent) is a more haphazard affair. We lack that crucial microlensing.
Mars, the red planet
Yesterday I noted a peculiar alignment: Ron Paul defending Mitt Romney, with the other Republican wannabes piling against Romney in a disgraceful showing of anti-​capitalism. Rep. Paul defended Romney not out of Republican loyalty, but out of principle. Does this suggest an affinity between the two, heretofore unnoticed?

Maybe. On the face of it, Romney doesn’t seem all that dissimilar from Barack Obama – not in foreign policy, surely not in big government instincts (the purveyors of unconstitutional medical regulations, each) — but his work in business does suggest that Romney might be an improvement on Obama, if elected. Marginally moving towards Paul’s apogee.

But the country needs more than just a marginal improvement, right now. Another centrist — even one who understands the social utility of the hostile takeover — won’t balance budgets. Not when the Washington orbit remains retrograde, unable to stop spending and borrowing like tomorrow is somebody else’s problem.

Which is why Ron Paul’s candidacy will retain traction for many primaries to come. Since our problems are the mainstream, Paul fills the need for something extra-mainstream — and, to normal political folks, that will undoubtedly seem “extra-​terrestrial.”

In Washington, all intelligent life lies beyond the usual orbits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

Firing People for Fun & Profit

After winning the New Hampshire primary last night, Mitt Romney charged that “some desperate Republicans” have joined forces with President Obama “to put free enterprise on trial.”

Newt Gingrich calls Romney a “vulture capitalist” and blasted his work as CEO of Bain Capital as “bankrupting companies and laying off employees.” Rick Perry snidely attacked Mitt for “all the jobs that he killed,” adding “I’m sure he was worried he would run out of pink slips.”
Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney
A Wall Street Journal report quoted Jon Huntsman: “What is clear is [Mr. Romney] likes firing people.”

So, did Romney say “I like being able to fire people”? What he said was, “I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

I, too, like being able to fire companies who don’t adequately supply the services I demand.

Yet, what about Romney’s work at Bain Capital?

Bain Capital took firms having trouble making a profit and attempted to make them more profitable. Sometimes that meant cutting back the work force to avoid bankruptcy, where everyone would lose their jobs. Sometimes it meant cutting up a company and its assets and selling them to entrepreneurs who could do better.

Not all businesses succeed. No surprise, then, that politicians used to spending a seemingly unlimited supply of other people’s money regardless of performance fail to understand this simple reality.

To his credit, Ron Paul defended Romney, saying of Gingrich, Huntsman and Perry, “I think they’re wrong. They are either just demagoguing or they don’t have the vaguest idea how the market works.”

Or both.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture tax policy

Greed and Bigotry on the Campaign Trail

On the video page featuring Mitt Romney’s notorious “corporations are people” comment — the one I clicked to, anyway — every comment was negative, with jokes like “Did you hear that S&P downgraded the Tea Party credit grade to KK+?” and economically illiterate whoppers like “Corporations do not help anyone except those who own them or do what they say.” It’s saddening to see ignorance and bigotry so self-​righteously maintained by everyday Americans.

Yes, bigotry.

For Romney was right: Corporations are made of people. Those who roil with hatred for corporations, singling them out for more regulation or greater taxation, are attacking actual living, breathing people, who, as Milton Friedman pointed out, are made up of three classes of just plain folks: the owners, the shareholders, who are people; the corporation’s hired workers and managers, who are people; and served customers, that is, people who have chosen, sans duress, to buy stuff from the corporations. 

Economist Steven Horwitz, writing in the Buffalo News, cited one study that estimated that “45 percent to 75 percent of the burden of a corporate tax increase is borne by workers,” and noted that, if profits fall, fewer dividends would go to stockholders.

And “stockholders” are often nothing other than workers’ retirement funds. 

Yeah, soak the older people. That should make corporation-​haters feel good.

Setting aside “some other people” to hate is exactly what anti-​corporatists are doing. It’s bigotry. And it’s ugly … and de-humanizing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Hewitt-​Romney Rationalization

Those who insist that RomneyCare isn’t as bad as ObamaCare need a reality check.

Both impose new price controls; both impose new taxpayer-​funded subsidies; both force people to buy health insurance; both massively expand government interference in our lives.

Former Governor Mitt Romney seemed to acknowledge the similarities when he suggested, shortly after Obamacare had passed, that he’d “be happy to take credit” for the president’s accomplishment. Now, though, with the glaring parallels so politically inconvenient, he pretends that parsecs of distance separate the two plans.

RomneyCare apologist Hugh Hewitt says that RomneyCare’s mandate forcing people to buy health insurance offends only “a handful of libertarian purists.” (Which I’d submit is far better than being a pure socialist or even a half-​and-​half socialist.) According to Hewitt, if we have no great objection to, say, smog-​emission mandates, what’s the big deal about being compelled to buy a product?! Anyway, he adds, states have the right to impose such mandates, whereas the federal government is constitutionally barred from doing so.

Regardless of how we assess particular attempts to combat pollution, pollution at least conceivably violates the rights of others. Your not buying something does not violate anybody else’s rights; being compelled to buy something does violate somebody’s rights — yours. 

Sure, RomneyCare affects “only” 6.5 million people, whereas ObamaCare affects some 300 million. But expanding governmental interference in the medical industry and into the lives of everyone is, either way, destructive and immoral.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

RomneyScare

As a candidate for the presidency, Mitt Romney has a number of things going for him. He’s rich, handsome, and has a funny first name.

Perhaps more importantly, he’s neither Donald Trump nor Newt Gingrich.

But still, he does have a niggly problem: His experience. He was the Massachusetts governor who signed a medical care reform law that provided the blueprint for the Democrats’ national version, now known (un)popularly as “ObamaCare.”

One of the best reasons to vote “Republican” next year would be to oust the politician who gave us such a bad bill. But, on matters of “health care,” Romney comes off as nothing less than the generic knock-​off of Obama. 

The Wall Street Journal recently published a critique of Romney’s Massachusetts fix, highlighting its “technocratic” (decidedly not “market-​based”) nature, individual mandate, and consequent necessary government mandate to subsidize the uninsurable. Plus, of course, its spectacular lack of cost containment. 

The one thing in the reform’s favor is that the ranks of those covered by medical insurance has grown. 

But that the state’s pre-​reform, utility-​like regulation of the insurance industry had priced so many out of the market? That somehow doesn’t get addressed — most certainly not by the program’s defenders or by Romney himself. Or many others. Pity.

Mitt gave a major speech last night, defending his “RomneyCare,” saying that his position “is not going to satisfy everybody.”

How can it satisfy anyone but big-​government partisans?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.