Regardless of position, using facts and not fiction in debate is expected of our civic leaders. When someone purposefully veers into outright deception and spreading false claims to build support for one’s particular position, it is disservice to Maine citizens. Argue with passion, debate vigorously, but tell the truth.
LD 1376 which reduces Maine citizens’ access to the polls by denying them the continuation of same day registration unanimously enacted by a Republican legislature in 1973 and continually used by Republicans, Democrats, and unenrolled voters without problem is a case in point. For partisan and rhetorical reasons Maine’s GOP joined the national trend to restrict ballot access using sound bite and talk radio reasoning.
Most disheartening is the largely unchallenged and I contend false assertion made by State Republican Chairman, Charlie Webster, published on June 27th regarding “witnessed busloads of new voters who register Election Day, folks most of us have never met and frankly most of us may never see again.”
I’ll be upfront; I do not believe Mr. Webster. The sad element in this affair is that his motivation seems to be to spread fear of people who for understandable reasons register at election time rather than welcoming greater involvement in our electoral process.
Mr. Webster ought to post videos of the busloads of undesirable voters swamping polls online. Surely the Republican Chairman has photos, news stories, and hard evidence to make such a charge. He should place sworn affidavits by reliable witnesses in front of us. In other words, prove it Charlie.
If proof is not forthcoming then Mr. Webster ought to apologize or the Republican State Committee ought to admonish him. If neither is forthcoming, then we as voters will need to admonish the GOP ourselves next election because truth is important.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Lie of Equivalency
Representative Paul Ryan puts 47 million Americans on welfare. *
Simplistic repetition of rhetoric in politics regardless of issue facts or complexity is a tool that has been used with great success on the right to deceive citizens into supporting actions counter to their own interests. It raises its head frequently in the fiscal posturing machinations of today’s über-conservatives’ attacks on progressive taxation, spending that benefits people over political profits, and the mindless worship of the free market which really stands for corporations being free to harm common citizens.
Getting the lie of equivalency into circulation is the very first step. Whether it is hanging a banner on Maine’s GOP headquarters saying “Working People Vote Republican” to create an unbalanced perception or planting the specter of a mushroom cloud in the public’s mind to get the nation’s war blood up, this deceptive and simplistic approach is used time and time again to our detriment. And so the images of Republicans “having ladders on their trucks” and Iraq attacking with nuclear weapons us if we do not attack them first are evoked to push actions which makes no sense. Their objective is to ignore the core truth by using a lie of equivalency that only serves to heighten partisanship and destroy consensus, compromise, or cooperation.
A now a brand new lie of equivalency is being tested by Republican Paul Ryan as detailed at Talking Points Memo:
Ryan and his allies trotted the concept of changing Medicare to a voucher program that would put one of the most popular, effective, and needed entitlements on the pathway to filling private insurance company profit coffers and diminishing the level of effective help to citizens by both that action and allowing the benefit to shrink over time in relation to rising health care costs. Ryan and company got a strong negative reaction from across the political and public spectrum and even many Republicans raced to distance themselves from the rapid Ryan repulsion reaction.
Ryan didn’t have a good lie in place and just got the obligatory “at least he’s trying to do something and put something out there so we can chat about something and water down something so it looks like we do something” banter. But the powers to be do not want to address the deficit with appropriate progressive tax structures and tough decisions around exorbitant defense spending exemptions from reality. With quick turnaround, a GOP desirable lie is being auditioned to equate Medicare with welfare.
Thus cutting Medicare equals strengthening welfare for those who need it. “Those who need it” will be subject to strict and stern definition. In one fell swoop Medicare is the same as welfare and should now guide the future of the program. First there might be WelfareMedicare vouchers, followed perhaps by WelfareMedicare means testing, and of course finally elimination of the WelfareMedicare nanny state.
Medicare evokes a positive image of government serving all people well for their societal betterment, the essence of an advantageous entitlement because you are fortunate enough to be a United States citizen. The image of welfare in this context is designed to do precisely the opposite and reinforced by the misleading argument of need as a tepid low value positive over entitlement as an outright negative connotation. Ryan’s pairing of the two, a lie of equivalency, is poised now for rhetorical repeating and will be coming to a GOP theater near you.
* Based on 2010 estimated Medicare enrollment.
Simplistic repetition of rhetoric in politics regardless of issue facts or complexity is a tool that has been used with great success on the right to deceive citizens into supporting actions counter to their own interests. It raises its head frequently in the fiscal posturing machinations of today’s über-conservatives’ attacks on progressive taxation, spending that benefits people over political profits, and the mindless worship of the free market which really stands for corporations being free to harm common citizens.
Getting the lie of equivalency into circulation is the very first step. Whether it is hanging a banner on Maine’s GOP headquarters saying “Working People Vote Republican” to create an unbalanced perception or planting the specter of a mushroom cloud in the public’s mind to get the nation’s war blood up, this deceptive and simplistic approach is used time and time again to our detriment. And so the images of Republicans “having ladders on their trucks” and Iraq attacking with nuclear weapons us if we do not attack them first are evoked to push actions which makes no sense. Their objective is to ignore the core truth by using a lie of equivalency that only serves to heighten partisanship and destroy consensus, compromise, or cooperation.
A now a brand new lie of equivalency is being tested by Republican Paul Ryan as detailed at Talking Points Memo:
…Ryan reframed the entitlement cuts in his budget as "strengthen[ing] welfare for those who need it,"…
Ryan and his allies trotted the concept of changing Medicare to a voucher program that would put one of the most popular, effective, and needed entitlements on the pathway to filling private insurance company profit coffers and diminishing the level of effective help to citizens by both that action and allowing the benefit to shrink over time in relation to rising health care costs. Ryan and company got a strong negative reaction from across the political and public spectrum and even many Republicans raced to distance themselves from the rapid Ryan repulsion reaction.
Ryan didn’t have a good lie in place and just got the obligatory “at least he’s trying to do something and put something out there so we can chat about something and water down something so it looks like we do something” banter. But the powers to be do not want to address the deficit with appropriate progressive tax structures and tough decisions around exorbitant defense spending exemptions from reality. With quick turnaround, a GOP desirable lie is being auditioned to equate Medicare with welfare.
Thus cutting Medicare equals strengthening welfare for those who need it. “Those who need it” will be subject to strict and stern definition. In one fell swoop Medicare is the same as welfare and should now guide the future of the program. First there might be WelfareMedicare vouchers, followed perhaps by WelfareMedicare means testing, and of course finally elimination of the WelfareMedicare nanny state.
Medicare evokes a positive image of government serving all people well for their societal betterment, the essence of an advantageous entitlement because you are fortunate enough to be a United States citizen. The image of welfare in this context is designed to do precisely the opposite and reinforced by the misleading argument of need as a tepid low value positive over entitlement as an outright negative connotation. Ryan’s pairing of the two, a lie of equivalency, is poised now for rhetorical repeating and will be coming to a GOP theater near you.
* Based on 2010 estimated Medicare enrollment.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Percentage Perspectives
Congratulations Senator Dill! You have won a special election by a landslide that if it had gone to the GOP would have led their claims of support for Governor Paul LePage and his right wing agenda. I'm sure they had their downplaying the results spin ready just in case you nosed over the line in a photo finish but alas, they'll need to rewrite it to account for a trouncing that dismisses the idea of referendum on Maine’s direction. Speaking of mandates, you enter into office with a majority 68% win unlike Paul LePage who was sworn in after a 38% plurality of votes cast. As for the *GOTP, let the excuses begin!
* Grand Old Tea Party
* Grand Old Tea Party
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Death Vouchers
“Do you realize that your leadership is asking you to cast a vote today to abolish Medicare as we know it?”
– Nancy Pelosi, April 15, 2011
The convoluted logic went like this. We were going to take something away in our existing health care system, we were going to have to reduce what was covered, some procedure choices would be pushed out of reach, some spending on inefficient older bodies and minds would need to be trimmed, some people would need to be judged in a faceless bureaucratic court of cost, and health care rationing would be introduced. The empanelled bureaucrats charged with weighing your life’s worthiness of repair would make up a cold hearted “death panel.”
The kind and loving face of the right had once again worked overtime injecting fear into the debate of President Obama’s health care reform. Yet whether one agrees with the result or not, there were not, are not, and will not be death panels in the loosest sense. The aim was to cover more people with insurance. Death panels were a leap of hyperbole about rationing.
An interesting component of rationing is the use of coupons or vouchers to give everyone the same slice of little. Vouchers are a device that invokes getting a tangible just due reward that one can spend as one sees fit. Misunderstood is that vouchers are also the device to get government money into private business hands with the least amount of government and voter controls. And like a coupon, vouchers are not necessarily intended to cover all costs, just the basics in part with you throwing in the difference. Now if coming up with the difference is a problem, and it will be, for many elderly Americans then the result is…surprise…rationing health care.
Senior fixed budgets will be subjected ever greater pressures to choose among the necessities of food, shelter, and health care in a process that is simultaneously going to be inadequate, confusing, and subject to market whims. On the political front it will be easier to reign in spending by trimming coupons a bit here and there depending on who is in power. The ability to indirectly cut Medicare as we knew it by hacking at it one remove away at the voucher level brings to mind reducing what will be covered, pushing some procedure choices out of reach, forcing decisions on spending on inefficient older bodies and minds onto the voucher recipients, leaving some people to be judged in a faceless bureaucratic market of cost, and thus introducing full blown health care rationing for older citizens. One might even call this weighing your life’s worthiness of repair the determinate factor in how one might elect to spend their inadequate cold hearted “death voucher.”
Medicare as we know it may face spending structural issues but the essential factor in the midst of all the economic debt fear of the future being spread by the right who want their profits now is ultimately about choice. We need only climb onto a tank and waive a corporate tax file to present our petition.
– Nancy Pelosi, April 15, 2011
The convoluted logic went like this. We were going to take something away in our existing health care system, we were going to have to reduce what was covered, some procedure choices would be pushed out of reach, some spending on inefficient older bodies and minds would need to be trimmed, some people would need to be judged in a faceless bureaucratic court of cost, and health care rationing would be introduced. The empanelled bureaucrats charged with weighing your life’s worthiness of repair would make up a cold hearted “death panel.”
The kind and loving face of the right had once again worked overtime injecting fear into the debate of President Obama’s health care reform. Yet whether one agrees with the result or not, there were not, are not, and will not be death panels in the loosest sense. The aim was to cover more people with insurance. Death panels were a leap of hyperbole about rationing.
An interesting component of rationing is the use of coupons or vouchers to give everyone the same slice of little. Vouchers are a device that invokes getting a tangible just due reward that one can spend as one sees fit. Misunderstood is that vouchers are also the device to get government money into private business hands with the least amount of government and voter controls. And like a coupon, vouchers are not necessarily intended to cover all costs, just the basics in part with you throwing in the difference. Now if coming up with the difference is a problem, and it will be, for many elderly Americans then the result is…surprise…rationing health care.
Senior fixed budgets will be subjected ever greater pressures to choose among the necessities of food, shelter, and health care in a process that is simultaneously going to be inadequate, confusing, and subject to market whims. On the political front it will be easier to reign in spending by trimming coupons a bit here and there depending on who is in power. The ability to indirectly cut Medicare as we knew it by hacking at it one remove away at the voucher level brings to mind reducing what will be covered, pushing some procedure choices out of reach, forcing decisions on spending on inefficient older bodies and minds onto the voucher recipients, leaving some people to be judged in a faceless bureaucratic market of cost, and thus introducing full blown health care rationing for older citizens. One might even call this weighing your life’s worthiness of repair the determinate factor in how one might elect to spend their inadequate cold hearted “death voucher.”
Medicare as we know it may face spending structural issues but the essential factor in the midst of all the economic debt fear of the future being spread by the right who want their profits now is ultimately about choice. We need only climb onto a tank and waive a corporate tax file to present our petition.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Dear Senator;
I read the op-ed piece written by Senators Katz and Langley that you co-signed in today’s newspaper. I very much appreciate the sentiment expressed that Governor Paul LePage’s tone, demeanor, and belittling comments have no place in Maine political discourse. Putting people down, dismissing their concerns, and removing expressions of their aspirations absolutely do not serve Maine citizens.
However, the op-ed piece strongly endorses the policies and programs that the Governor is pushing and I find that message disheartening. The deeply concerned reaction by many of your constituents to the Governor’s antics also applies to his anticipated actions. It is not only Paul LePage’s tone that has been offensive but it is also the tone of his agenda that is disturbing.
Should Paul LePage’s agenda as stated by him on the campaign trail and reiterated by him many times as Governor be enacted without significant compromise and moderation, the negative attitude he has exhibited toward many Maine citizens will be translated into an official negative attitude of our State toward your constituents.
Deep cuts in social services set an ill tone toward those who need society’s assistance. Stripping environmental and worker protections from our laws codifies a negative demeanor toward Maine’s most important resources. Unfair payroll taxation of State employees and teachers belittles their important contributions to Maine. Each is just as troublesome as negative public discourse.
Again, thank you for taking a public stand in this letter on Governor LePage’s harmful behavior, I urge you to also step forward to stand up to those aspects of his policy and program proposals that will effectively harm the people of Maine.
Respectfully;
Bruce Bourgoine
However, the op-ed piece strongly endorses the policies and programs that the Governor is pushing and I find that message disheartening. The deeply concerned reaction by many of your constituents to the Governor’s antics also applies to his anticipated actions. It is not only Paul LePage’s tone that has been offensive but it is also the tone of his agenda that is disturbing.
Should Paul LePage’s agenda as stated by him on the campaign trail and reiterated by him many times as Governor be enacted without significant compromise and moderation, the negative attitude he has exhibited toward many Maine citizens will be translated into an official negative attitude of our State toward your constituents.
Deep cuts in social services set an ill tone toward those who need society’s assistance. Stripping environmental and worker protections from our laws codifies a negative demeanor toward Maine’s most important resources. Unfair payroll taxation of State employees and teachers belittles their important contributions to Maine. Each is just as troublesome as negative public discourse.
Again, thank you for taking a public stand in this letter on Governor LePage’s harmful behavior, I urge you to also step forward to stand up to those aspects of his policy and program proposals that will effectively harm the people of Maine.
Respectfully;
Bruce Bourgoine
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Why Business Should Condemn LePage's Hubris
The moral mural position and self interest ought to trump petty triumphalism.
When businesses, large or small, sit down at the table with a union representative or an employee not a member of a labor union to work on some employer/employee impasse or issue, a climate of collaboration is essential to success. Paul LePage's mural madness may seem remote to those discussions in the future but the Governor has with distain added his bit of poison into what ought to be atmosphere of respect for workers, open-minded discussions, and mutual purpose.
Businesses currently in Maine are invested for perhaps reasonable or rueful reasons but understandable ones in the red tape roll back and they are also focused on emergence from recession. Adding a bit of employer versus employee toxicity is hardly in their interest. And having the addition of it made in a heavy handed "I'm the boss" approach, based on a feeble flippant fax, for an in-your-face symbolic sophomoric stunt, is counterproductive to a relationship that needs some attention already.
Workers should not only feel respected for their work contribution but should also feel they hold personal worth and dignity as more than mere cogs in the wheels of commerce. Removing artwork on labor history from the Maine Department of Labor is very much the wrong message delivered in a brusque, bossy, and bullying matter. It says, "Your history is unimportant, your heroes are rubbish, and your connection here is severed."
I contend that it truly does not represent what reasonable employers, business leaders, industry groups, entrepreneurs, and even businesses that might be looking at the state for possible investment and expansion want. Why would the clumsy slap down by a third party of people one needs to partner with be welcome? Why would the intrusion into existing balanced relationships be helpful? Why would one invest to relocate a business to Maine in an atmosphere with unpredictable elements?
In closing, businesses in this state have a lot of priorities, and one is not symbolically beating down workers. In fact some of their priorities are the opposite, to increase employer/employee collaboration for best results, to uplift and improve workforce quality built on good relations, and to build a great reputation for attracting topnotch employees, consumer marketing purposes, and being pillars of our communities. "Made in Maine" means, "Made by Mainers."
Business leaders should openly condemn Governor Paul LePage's unproductive attack on their employees. I urge them to speak out clearly rather than faxing.
Not addressed in this piece is the role many companies and business leaders in this state take in promoting the arts. I never fail to appreciate and often patronize the sponsors noted for exhibitions at museums and the underwriting of play productions and concerts in Maine. To these sponsors of the arts, this is also an affront of petty censorship and artistic expression that they wisely support.
When businesses, large or small, sit down at the table with a union representative or an employee not a member of a labor union to work on some employer/employee impasse or issue, a climate of collaboration is essential to success. Paul LePage's mural madness may seem remote to those discussions in the future but the Governor has with distain added his bit of poison into what ought to be atmosphere of respect for workers, open-minded discussions, and mutual purpose.
Businesses currently in Maine are invested for perhaps reasonable or rueful reasons but understandable ones in the red tape roll back and they are also focused on emergence from recession. Adding a bit of employer versus employee toxicity is hardly in their interest. And having the addition of it made in a heavy handed "I'm the boss" approach, based on a feeble flippant fax, for an in-your-face symbolic sophomoric stunt, is counterproductive to a relationship that needs some attention already.
Workers should not only feel respected for their work contribution but should also feel they hold personal worth and dignity as more than mere cogs in the wheels of commerce. Removing artwork on labor history from the Maine Department of Labor is very much the wrong message delivered in a brusque, bossy, and bullying matter. It says, "Your history is unimportant, your heroes are rubbish, and your connection here is severed."
I contend that it truly does not represent what reasonable employers, business leaders, industry groups, entrepreneurs, and even businesses that might be looking at the state for possible investment and expansion want. Why would the clumsy slap down by a third party of people one needs to partner with be welcome? Why would the intrusion into existing balanced relationships be helpful? Why would one invest to relocate a business to Maine in an atmosphere with unpredictable elements?
In closing, businesses in this state have a lot of priorities, and one is not symbolically beating down workers. In fact some of their priorities are the opposite, to increase employer/employee collaboration for best results, to uplift and improve workforce quality built on good relations, and to build a great reputation for attracting topnotch employees, consumer marketing purposes, and being pillars of our communities. "Made in Maine" means, "Made by Mainers."
Business leaders should openly condemn Governor Paul LePage's unproductive attack on their employees. I urge them to speak out clearly rather than faxing.
Not addressed in this piece is the role many companies and business leaders in this state take in promoting the arts. I never fail to appreciate and often patronize the sponsors noted for exhibitions at museums and the underwriting of play productions and concerts in Maine. To these sponsors of the arts, this is also an affront of petty censorship and artistic expression that they wisely support.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Triumphalism
We now have a bill (LD 583 & Sponsors) that will create a NRA specialty plate. This is clearly what can be called “triumphalism” when a proposal of this sort is put forth.
Such a bill is not about governing, it is about ruling. Have you heard the outcry your fellow citizens seeking that this measure be promulgated and passed into law? Of course not because there is neither rational nor demand for this action. There is only the message; “we will do this because we can.”
The NRA specialty plate is pure triumphalism theater. Indeed it can be seen as similar to committing an “excessive celebration” penalty in the NFL. Yes, your team scored but rubbing the opposition’s nose in it to a disproportionate degree is unproductive at best and mean spirited at worse.
Our politics have no immediate penalty for “excessive celebration” and in the larger scheme of two coming years of fiscal action, policy realignment, and political redirection; this measure will eventually seem minor in nature. But at present, because no valid reason exists for this action, it speaks volumes in terms of the relationship we can expect from those elected and sworn in to serve all their constituents and their true attitude toward citizens in the minority.
Additionally it may just set up a divisive situation where none was sought or desired. This action strikes one as an attempt at taunting; it adds to the right-left gulf instead of working toward a political environment of benefiting all in Maine. There will be denials of such as intentions but this is truly a case of where actions speak louder than words.
It bodes ill for Maine when our elected representatives misguidedly engage in political theater that is clearly “in your face” unproductive posturing. That it will send money to a controversial advocacy group politically aligned with the right will be the recurring slap on the other cheek.
However, there has been one prevailing historical lesson for those who stridently engage in triumphalism; the willingness to alienate, the dedication to gesture not substance, and the deafness of self-righteousness generally leads to downfall.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)