I should never watch the debates. It drives home the imperfections of our system . It frustrates me that I don’t have a real command of what our government does except in a general way. In years past, I’ve never found such steady use of fact checkers to be a necessity. During this campaign, you can’t do without them if you expect to be informed. The one I use most is:
http://www.factcheck.org/
It is from the respected Annenberg Public Policy Center.
We, the 99% may not know exactly what is going on in the halls of congress, but, you can count on the 1% to have the resources to know what goes on in the halls of congress.
Obama certainly did a better job at the debates, but he had to use the same tactics that Romney introduced in the first debate. Interrupting, talking over his opponent and the moderator, ignoring the time limits and leaving civility behind, as did Joe Biden in the vice-presidential debates. I guess this signals a new low for debates to follow. Am I the only one who would like to see a return to civility?
Romney continually hammered on jobs as the cure-all for the economy, and rightly so. He just doesn’t make a credible plan for how he will create those jobs. His numbers don’t add up. But we do know he will take away my tax deductions. Now he says I can personally take $2,500 in tax deductions, period. But nobody will have to pay taxes on their dividends and capital gains. The 1% hold the mega portfolios and stand to gain huge benefits from that plan. That leaves out most of the middle class who don’t have grand portfolios.
Obama and Romney were both weak on the immigration question and gun control. Romney allowed the National Rifle Association to meet with sportsmen and they agreed on their principles of gun control for Massachusetts. Basically, whatever you want, guys! Obama says enforce the laws we have on gun control. That would help, but it doesn’t happen. Maybe it is a state thing?
Obama has suggested amnesty for immigrants who have been here and worked and contributed to social security. And, to make it easier for immigrants to come here legally. That is not a very popular idea among most people.
Romney wants businesses to police immigrants with a green card. Unfortunately, green cards are easily manufactured and are useless. Businesses depend on immigrant workers to do the jobs they can’t hire anyone else to do. In Alabama, farmers have lost crops because they could not hire anyone to harvest them when they instituted new immigration laws. The new laws basically legalized racial profiling by police and teachers.
The first fact checker says Romney has more Pinocchios in his rhetoric. (And, once and for all, I wish people would quit sending me emails claiming Obama allows Illegal Immigrants to collect social security. It isn’t’ true.)
The town hall questions were good ones, but, not one question on climate change, or the environment. For climate change deniers, maybe they should look at islands in Fiji, the Solomons, Tuvalu, where water threatens to flood them out of existence. In Kiribati, 102,000 people have been evacuated to a nearby Island because of climate change flooding.
There was a passing reference to green jobs and energy. I did learn that both Obama and Romney are heavily supportive of oil and coal. What a disappointment. Drilling in the Antarctic? Maybe they should both take a trip north and see what is happening there and study how unsafe the off shore drilling rigs are. Study how much oil companies spend on safety and clean-up capabilities. Obama sites oil independence as a way to transition to green energy at home and has supported that technology in a big way. I don’t like it, but I understand that you can’t overnight turn us into a green energy nation. Even so, I hated hearing them brag about pipelines and drilling. (No mention of fracking.) Romney equally supports that idea as far as I could tell.
I don’t choose to spend my time being a fact checker on everything our government does. But, the truth be told, government is far too complex for an ordinary person to really keep up with everything that affects us. And this year, with corporations flooding the airwaves with distorted and misleading ads, it seems our only defense.
For a sample of what a Romney President might be like check this site:
There are many Fact checkers out there on every subject. Fact Checking, the new business driving our economy? Fact Checkers R Us!
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