Friday, September 30, 2011

My Take on Newt's NEW Contract...

One of my Facebook friends posted a link to a video with a pretty huge claim “This is THE man that knows how to put America back on a path to growth and prosperity.”, he said. He also said that he would really like to know if anyone disagreed, and why. It turns out that the video was Newt Gingrich presenting his “21st Century Contract with America”. It's a long list, but here it is. I will quote Mr. Gingrich's proposals directly from his website.

1. Repeal Obamacare and pass a replacement that saves lives and money by empowering patients and doctors, not bureaucrats and politicians.

This appears to nothing more than leaving the heath insurance companies in charge of medical care in America and make it easier for them to do so. It also does nothing to help the millions of working poor that cannot afford any kind of health insurance even if deducted from their income tax. I think that the meager health care reform that made it through Congress didn't go nearly far enough. I support single-payer health care, the so-called “Medicare Part E (as in Everyone)” Health insurance companies spend 12.5-30% of premiums on administration costs and profits. Medicare? A paltry 3-5.5%. There's where you eliminate waste.

2. Return to robust job creation with a bold set of tax cuts and regulatory reforms that will free American entrepreneurs to invest and hire, as well as by reforming the Federal Reserve and creating a training requirement for extended federal unemployment benefits to encourage work and improve the quality of our workforce.

In this clause, Gingrich wants to replace the National Labor Relations Board, repeal Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley (passed by Congress to combat corporate corruption) and lower corporate taxes even further as well as abolishing the Estate Tax. He also wants to mandate job training programs for extended unemployment qualification, but thinks that “This program should be delegated to the 50 states so each can experiment with the best way to use unemployment compensation as a job training program.” Can you say, “unfunded mandate”? He also wants to reform the Federal Reserve, blaming them for the mortgage crisis when it was in fact greedy and unregulated mortgage lenders packaging and selling junk mortgages that sent the market spiraling out of control. This is nothing more than a naked attempt to give the mega-corporations even more freedom to profit at the expense of American workers.

3. Unleash America’s full energy production potential in oil, natural gas, coal, biofuels, wind, nuclear oil shale and more, creating jobs, stimulating a sustainable manufacturing boom, lowering gasoline and other energy prices, increasing government revenues, strengthening the dollar, and bolstering national security.

This is nothing more than “Drill baby, drill!” without giving a damn about the land, water or air that the oil, natural gas or coal lies beneath. The American bio fuels industry is hopelessly married to corn even after scientists have proven that you can get FIVE times more energy from switchgrass. Gotta keep those corn farmers happy. Nuclear energy is only going to work if folks want a potential Fukushima reactor in their area. Oil shale is still a non-renewable resource. When it's gone, it's gone for good. This clause of the contract also calls for the replacement of the EPA with something less “anti-job”. The EPA isn't there to protect jobs, it's there to protect the environment from those who would destroy it for profit. One could add that I am unaware of anything called “nuclear oil shale”, but that would be petty.

4. Save Medicare and Social Security by giving Americans more choices and tools to live longer, healthier lives with greater financial independence.

Privatize Medicare and Social Security? Again? Place American retirement funds in the hands of “the free market”? Do the names Enron and Tyco ring a bell? How about the current market volatility that has caused massive swings in not just American, but world markets? Do you really want to trust the same fine people that gave you the mortgage crisis? Count me out.

5. Balance the federal budget by freeing job-creators to grow the economy, reforming entitlements, and implementing productivity improvement systems, such as Lean Six Sigma, to eliminate waste and fraud. Pass a balanced budget amendment to keep it balanced.

I actually agree that we need to balance the federal budget. Instead of doing it on the backs of the lower 99%, lets let the top 1% do the patriotic thing and pay their fair share of taxes. Let's implement productivity improvement systems, but start with the biggest discretionary spenders in the budget first. That would be Defense for those keeping score. Then we can go to Medicare and Social Security. The problem that I have with most of the “balanced budget” proposals that I have heard is that they demand that the government never spend more than it has, even for disaster relief. Everyone from families to businesses to the government has to sometimes spend money not on hand. If you do so unwisely, like starting two wars at the same time you cut taxes, you are going to run into debt issues. Remember, we had a budget surplus when President Clinton left office.

6. Control the border by January 1, 2014 and establish English as the official language of government; reform the legal visa system, and make it much easier to deport criminals and gang members while making it easier for law abiding visitors to come to the US.

As I recall, the United States has TWO borders and and three seacoasts. I have to assume that Gingrich is talking about the US/Mexico border. America's immigration system is broken. I don't know how to fix it. Newt talks about what needs to happen, but says not one concrete word about how to do it. Since 2005, the Republican solution for control of the Mexican border is a series of walls and fences blocking nearly 2,000 miles of border. Wasn't it President Reagan that said, "Mr.Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”? Why are Republicans so hot to build their own walls? As far as English-only laws go, what happens to the vast number of legal immigrants and citizens that speak the language poorly or not at all? English-only would effectively disenfranchise the citizens and deprive the legal immigrants of government services. Please remember that we are now and always have been a nation of immigrants.

7. Revitalize our national security system to meet 21st century threats by restructuring and adequately funding our security agencies to function within a grand strategy for victory over those who seek to kill us or to limit American freedom.

Let's cut everything else but spend more on Defense? Wrong again, Newt! Let's run the Defense Department through the “productivity improvement systems” you mention in clause 5, find a way to pay our brave men and women in uniform a decent wage, fully fund the VA care that they deserve and re-tool our military to adapt to the current world situation. The days of standing armies slugging it out toe-to-toe are over. Modern war is guerrilla tactics, armed militias (Libya, anyone?) and small-unit actions. Less General Patton and more Seal Team 6.

8. Maximize the speed and impact of medical breakthroughs by removing unnecessary obstacles that block new treatments from reaching patients and emphasizing research spending toward urgent national priorities, like brain science with its impact on Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, mental health and other conditions that knowledge of the brain will help solve.

This from the same party that blocked the single most promising avenue of research into multitudes of medical conditions? I speak of stem-cell research, of course. Do I support new avenues of research? Hell, yes! Would I support a virtual gutting of the FDA to do so? Hell, no! I am a diabetic. I used to take a particular drug to help control my diabetes. It turns out that the drug's manufacturer wasn't quite forthcoming on ALL the studies to the FDA, and some of those studies found that the drug increased risks of heart failure, stroke and death. The reports were so strong that my doctor pulled me off the drug immediately. I am talking about Avandia. Without the FDA, these studies might never have been discovered and I might still be taking a dangerous drug. I'll keep the FDA and its' regulations, thanks.

9. Restore the proper role of the judicial branch by using the clearly delineated powers available to the president and Congress to correct, limit, or replace judges who violate the Constitution.

There is a reason why Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life. It's because if a Justice can be removed as a result of an unpopular ruling, said Justice would be tempted to frame their decisions in the light of whatever ideology happened to be in power at the time. The Supreme Court is supposed to disagree with the Legislative and Executive branches when they are wrong. That's what they are there for. Tampering with that would unravel the entire “checks and balances” required by the Constitution.

10. Enforce the Tenth Amendment by starting an orderly transfer of power and responsibility from the federal government back “to the states, respectively, or to the people,” as the Constitution requires. Over the next year, state and local officials and citizens will be asked to identify the areas which can be transferred back home.

Let the states decide? We've tried that before as well. Remember the Civil War? That started as a debate over whether the states or the federal government should decide which human beings were people and which were property. We had the same problem with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Some states just didn't want to apply the law fairly, if at all. If a nationwide program is going to be administered fairly to all Americans, it cannot be left up to the states to decide how to administer it. This makes as little sense as letting the various state National Guards handle national defense. If you want all Americans to be treated equally, federal authority is necessary.

Anyone that wants to know why I disagree with this political platform should now understand. If left in the hands of a corporate America that has steadfastly refused to police itself and is interested in nothing more than naked greed, average Americans will be driven farther into economic serfdom than they already are. Mr. Gingrich's first contract didn't work. I fail to see how his second one is any better.