Why Mitt Romney won't get specific
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop, Tuesday, May 15, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa.
/ AP Photo/Charlie NeibergallPresumptive Republican presidential Mitt Romney on Wednesday offered up a plan to expand school choice by tying federal funds to students, not schools. While the plan would presumably mean significant changes, the details about implementation were scant: A fact sheet released by the campaign, which you can see here, offered little clarity over how exactly it would work. Instead, it offered broad calls to consolidate duplicative programs, make federal funding "portable" in an unspecified way and provide more federal funds to develop successful charter schools. A long white paper released by the campaign is similarly short on specifics.
The lack of detail was not much of a surprise - Romney has made a habit of offering few specifics about his proposals. As we noted last week, he has yet to lay out the deductions and loopholes that he says he will eliminate from the tax code in order to offset his proposed tax cuts. He is vowing to repeal and replace President Obama's health care plan, but he has yet to spell out what he will replace it with. And Romney's Hispanic outreach director caused the campaign a headache when she told reporters that he "is still deciding what his position on immigration is," a comment that reflected the fact that Romney's stance on immigration is less than clear.
The explanation for why Romney is keeping things hazy is simple: He want the election to be a referendum on a president who has not been able to return the economy to where it was before the financial crisis. Detailed policy proposals make that more difficult because they (a) shift the spotlight away from the president and (b) potentially give voters a reason to vote against Romney. The former Massachusetts governor is best served by offering up a vague message of competence, not the sort of specifics that could alienate swing voters who examine them closely.
Romney will face some pressure to explain the details of his proposals as the campaign continues, of course. But the media tends to focus far more on nasty rhetoric, sideshows and the horserace than on the substantive details of policy. Romney reportedly plans to lay out his campaign themes in a series of speeches in the coming weeks. By offering up even the most general of proposals, he may well get away with leaving out many of the details needed to fill them in.
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LOL!
So we need a leader that will manage his own spectical and assend above us to watch us watching him.........
While I completely disagree with your right-wing assessment since we've had class WARfare for the past 30 years of GOP "supply-side economic insanity," and the figures and graphs are quite clear to anyone that wants to know the truth.
The middle class has been evaporating and has seen very little increase in income over the entire past 30 years, whereas the top 1% saw their incomes double from just 2001 to 2006, and in that same time period, the top 0.1% saw their incomes triple -- all the while their income tax rates have plummeted!
History has proven that trickle-down only works for those at the very top, and in recent years they have been investing abroad, and certainly not helping economic growth or job creation here in the US.
We have a consumer-based economy with the middle class being the true JOB CREATORS through their DEMAND, and with more disposable income, that DEMAND grows and business owners and investors see higher profits.
While republicans continue to bash the working poor and poor retirees for not paying income tax and for supposedly all being on the "dole," they actually do pay a higher percentage in payroll taxes and spend their entire income immediately into our consumer-based economy.
Now, willard romney wants to give those that have seen their incomes soar while their tax rates have plummeted, even more tax cuts just like the ryan plan, it makes absolutely no economic sense for a country that needs to increase economic growth and job creation, since we should be helping the largest number of consumers to help grow our economy and put more people to work through DEMAND!
Under romney's "supply side economic lunacy" on steroids, those in the top 1%, and especially those in the top 0.1%, would see their incomes rise significantly while their tax rates plummet, and the middle class would evaporate even quicker.
The bible does not trump the Constitution. The vatican does not rule the white house. (yet).
There are more Catholic Ds, than Rs. Vote all Catholics out to restore the Constitution.
Vote every Catholic out and restore the Constitution.
Gee bubba, I just don't know where to start with your ranting and raving about President Obama; your worship of the top 1% in the oligarchic plutocracy; or your george wmd bush apologist tone.
It's clear you and I will never agree on anything, and your history revision sure proves that the fox/rush parrots are guzzlin' the GOP Koolaid in ever-larger quantities, so that your "facts" agree with their endless right-wing propaganda and republican talking points!
Here, read this by a conservative republican policy-maker:
Are the Bush Tax Cuts the Root of Our Fiscal Problem?
By Bruce Bartlett, July 26, 2011
Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul.
Federal taxes as a share of gross domestic product were at their lowest level in generations. The Congressional Budget Office expects revenue to be just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year; the last year it was lower was 1950, when revenue amounted to 14.4 percent of G.D.P.
But revenue has been below 15 percent of G.D.P. since 2009, and the last time we had three years in a row when revenue as a share of G.D.P. was that low was 1941 to 1943.
Revenue has averaged 18 percent of G.D.P. since 1970 and a little more than that in the postwar era. At a similar stage in previous business cycles, two years past the trough, revenue was considerably higher: 18 percent of G.D.P. in 1977 after the 1973-75 recession; 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984 after the 1981-82 recession, and 17.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1993 after the 1990-91 recession. Revenue was markedly lower, however, at this point after the 2001 recession and was just 16.2 percent of G.D.P. in 2003.
The reason, of course, is that taxes were cut in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006.
It would have been one thing if the Bush tax cuts had at least bought the country a higher rate of economic growth, even temporarily. They did not. Real G.D.P. growth peaked at just 3.6 percent in 2004 before fading rapidly. Even before the crisis hit, real G.D.P. was growing less than 2 percent a year.
---
What will happen at the end of next year when the Bush tax cuts expire is already a matter of intense budget negotiations. Perhaps the whole point of the apparent Republican disinformation effort to deny that the Bush tax cuts reduced federal revenue is to make the reverse argument next year -- allowing them to expire will not raise revenue.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/are-the-bush-tax-cuts-the-root-of-our-fiscal-problem/
This is very true, and exactly what the republican leaders, pundits and far-right extremists have been saying since DAY ONE, and just like you said, there would never be any accountability for the GOP destruction that would follow, just like george wmd bush!
Typical conservatroll attack on President Obama and the unions, without realizing there are good points and bad points of vouchers:
MYTH: Students who receive vouchers do better academically than their public school peers.
That depends on the measure. Overall the test scores of students who use vouchers are largely indistinguishable from students who stay behind in public schools. On the other hand, parent satisfaction is generally greater among parents whose children received vouchers. And while it's too soon to tell for sure, there is some evidence that other outcomes, for instance graduation rates, may be better for students who receive vouchers. Bottom line: Vouchers certainly do not hurt students, but promises of dramatic improvement are not supported by the overall evidence.
MYTH: Vouchers make all schools get better because they have to compete for students.
It seems logical to assume that forcing schools to vie for students will improve quality. But schools are not economic entities like a store and respond differently to competition - for instance by going to court or to lobby state legislators. There have been vouchers for years in Cleveland and Milwaukee yet the schools there are still generally poor quality. In Washington almost a third of the city's students were using various choice options (mostly charter schools) before the public schools began to make real changes. But, we're still learning.
MYTH: Private, parochial, or even public charter schools are better than regular public schools.
Parents should worry a lot less about the legal status of a particular school than whether it's the right school for their child. A good fit depends on a host of factors including a strong academic program, successful outcomes, a clear curriculum, areas of emphasis like arts or technology, and even lifestyle factors such as limiting time spent in transit or a year-round schedule. Just because a school is private doesn't mean it is better overall or better for your child and even in places where the public schools are struggling overall there are often hidden gems.
Andrew J. Rotherham is on the advisory and review boards for the School Choice Demonstration Project as well as the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), writes the blog Eduwonk, is a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, a nonprofit working to improve educational outcomes for low-income students.
The jury is still out, even with "graduation rates," which is why I don't have a problem with the experiment to continue, but in my estimation, we need to do much more with our educational system as well as our health care system, to attain the level that the rest of the industrialized world has already attained today.
They learned from us, by using the best parts of our system, and flew by us while our country falls into disrepair like our crumbling infrastructure, since our dysfunctional congresscritters would rather fight amongst themselves for bigger tax cuts for themselves in the top 1% and taxpayer subsidized health care!
While I don't think it should be entirely up to the parents, I think they should be a part of the equation too, and I just wish that the GOP would stop using all their usual scapegoats to frame every argument they have!
Stick with the topic for once, instead of disrupting as usual.