Posted on 02/22/2010 12:14:16 PM PST by rabscuttle385
BOSTON -- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is stepping back into the public spotlight after spending two years behind the scenes laying the groundwork for a second presidential campaign.
(snip)
Romney has shifted from social issues that brought accusations of flip-flopping and undermined his 2008 White House bid. With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, his new focus is on economic themes and fix-it skills he claims as a former businessman. That plays to what some observers believe would be his strength in a second race.
They could also distinguish him from potential rivals such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who enjoys widespread grass-roots support but doubts about her mastery of policy, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who, like Romney was four years ago, is untested on the national political scene.
(snip)
Romney called for lower taxes, more teacher accountability and state-by-state instead of national health insurance expansion, similar to the nearly universal coverage plan he instituted in Massachusetts in 2006.
"There's much more on our positive, intellectually rigorous conservative agenda," he said. "Not all of it is popular. But the American people have shown that they are ready for truth to trump hope. The truth is that government is not the solution to all our problems."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
George Bernard Shaw
And here is some real knowledge, if you care:
Mitt "Backstabber" Romney-care was a piss-poor Governor.
Romney got a "C" rating from CATO. And that was BEFORE
Romney's Socialized medicine and coverup of the BIGdig kicked in.
Here are the facts from CATO.
"As U.S. real output grew 13 percent between 2002 and 2006, Massachusetts trailed at 9 percent.
* Manufacturing employment fell 7 percent nationwide those years, but sank 14 percent under Romney, placing Massachusetts 48th among the states.
* Between fall 2003 and autumn 2006, U.S. job growth averaged 5.4 percent, nearly three times Massachusetts' anemic 1.9 percent pace.
* While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.
"Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," professors Sum and McLaughlin concluded.
In an April 2003 meeting with the Massachusetts congressional delegation in Washington, Romney failed to endorse President Bush's $726 billion tax-cut proposal."
[Cato Institute annual Fiscal Policy Report Card - America's Governors, 2004.]
That also includes that which you impart, regardless of the shrillness, or aggressiveness of your posts. Such tactics normally indicates that you are not getting the response you wish and, like a petulant child, wish to escalate your response to get everyone’s attention.
Those who use your tactics are seldom effective and are, at best, receive a derisive footnote in history.
You could, on occasion, quit yelling at what you’re against and actually present your views and tell us who support. Of course that could take some effort, as well thought, posting the same trite insults is much easier.
Good evening.
Having treated you with respect
even after you insulted other FReepers,
and then receiving your nasty response — void of truth —
shows you are nothing but a RomneyBOT,
demonstrating a typical RomneyBOTs (non)response
laced with ad hominems, all for Mitt RomneyCARE.
State by state socialism, then consolidation.
Thanks Mitt.
“shows you are nothing but a RomneyBOT,
demonstrating a typical RomneyBOTs (non)response
laced with ad hominems, all for Mitt RomneyCARE.”
This shows the caliber and accuracy of your posts. Anyone that takes issue with your mindless posts is a ___BOT, that is for RomneyCARE and you accuse them of ad hominem attacks that are your signature.
I don’t think Romney will win the nomination, I hope that Gov. Barbour or Gov. Riley will run. I am sure that will also make me a BOT of some kind, or at least a RINO.
I do wonder about you if Romney should win, will you “Go Postal” or will you have accomplished your goal, it’s hard to tell.
Wall Street Journal( famous commie rag )* JULY 11, 2009
The Massachusetts Health Mess
Massachusetts shows how ObamaCare would really work.
In a rational world, the prognosis for ObamaCare would wait on the evidence in Massachusetts, given that the commonwealth’s 2006 program closely resembles what Democrats are trying to do in Washington. If the results were widely known, it might be dead on arrival.
[Review & Outlook] Getty Images
The Massachusetts law, which was championed by former GOP Governor Mitt Romney, imposed an individual mandate, requiring nearly all residents to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty. (The exceptions are those who qualify for the state’s public program.) This was supposed to cover everybody and save money too. We’ve written before about how costs have exploded, but it also turns out that consumers have other ideas.
For 15 years Massachusetts has also imposed mandates known as guaranteed issue and community rating — meaning that insurers must cover anyone who applies, regardless of health or pre-existing conditions, and also charge everyone the same premium (or close to it). Yet these mandates allow people to wait until they’re sick, or just before they’re about to incur major medical expenses, to buy insurance. This drives up costs for everyone else, which helps explain why small-group coverage in Massachusetts is so much more expensive than in most of the country. Mr. Romney argued — as Democrats are arguing now — that the individual mandate would make that problem disappear, since everyone is always supposed to be covered.
Well, the returns are rolling in, and a useful case study comes from the community-based health plan Harvard-Pilgrim. CEO Charlie Baker reports that his company has seen an “astonishing” uptick in people buying coverage for a few months at a time, running up high medical bills, and then dumping the policy after treatment is completed and paid for. Harvard-Pilgrim estimates that between April 2008 and March 2009, about 40% of its new enrollees stayed with it for fewer than five months and on average incurred about $2,400 per person in monthly medical expenses. That’s about 600% higher than Harvard-Pilgrim would have otherwise expected.
The individual mandate penalty for not having coverage is only about $900, so people seem to be gaming the Massachusetts system. “This is a problem,” Mr. Baker writes on his blog, in the understatement of the year. “It is raising the prices paid by individuals and small businesses who are doing the right thing by purchasing twelve months of health insurance, and it’s turning the whole notion of shared responsibility on its ear.”
Mr. Baker is right, though he underestimates the extent to which it is rational for people to do this, considering the government-mandated incentives. To one degree or another all insurance pools require the younger and healthier to subsidize the older and sicker, though part of the risk-sharing bargain is the hedge against unanticipated or future health problems — i.e., true insurance. The combination of guaranteed issue and community rating actively encourages parts of the healthier population to forgo coverage and thus blow up voluntary risk pools. No doubt our politicians will conclude that the solution is to raise the penalty for going uninsured, though it would be easier and more rational to let insurance markets function without mandates.
For many Democrats, none of this is really a surprise, or even important. Their Rube Goldberg rules are meant to transfer the costs of health care away from individuals and onto someone else — private companies like Harvard-Pilgrim in the short term, and over time onto taxpayers. Why lobbyist Karen Ignagni is still putting the health-insurance industry’s head on the Washington chopping block is a mystery for the ages.
“meaning that insurers must cover anyone who applies, regardless of health or pre-existing conditions, and also charge everyone the same premium (or close to it).”
This is idiotic and is the same thing that was done with mortgages that has decimated the housing market.
Rush said something, recently, that should be the standard for heath care. Medical care should be determined by the doctor/medical facility and the patient, with no outside authority dictating it or restricting it.
There are two things that have to be addressed before this health care mess can even begin to be repaired. The first is tort reform, this is a Band-Aid fix but will at least have some effect. The real problem is the abuse of the judiciary, a harder problem to correct.
The second thing is the guarantee of medical treatment (no one can be turned away) this mean that , if insurance or the patient doesn’t pay for the treatment, the government pays for it or the medical facility is force to absorb it (which has caused facilities to close. We have to decide if it is even feasible to guarantee treatment to everyone and how it is to be paid for, if we do.
It doesn’t seem that most people in a position to fix the problems with health care understand the problems, much less fix, or have no interest in actually fixing them.
That is called, and is, 'involuntary servitude'. Slavery.
The whole thing, taxes, the welfare state, the Federal Reserve, fiat money, is just a big pile of umba gumba justifying slavery in a different form. We don't' have Pharaoh, or kings, we have Congress.
Looking for liberty from your slave master is delusional.
“Looking for liberty from your slave master is delusional. “
We are, at least to some extent, still a nation governed by the people. You have to ever solve problems, within the purview of government, within the government or cast off government for a more perfect system... who is capable of that. Not sure you have a clear view of what you want nor how to get there.
We need wise people with courage and virtue if we are going to restore our government to it’s intended role, don’t see many at this point. We do have an overabundance of people who rail against “the system” without any concept of how to restore it.. press on.
Well, thank you master dis’ that’s mighty fine of you. /sarc
We’ve had two wars of killing the Americans who were the problem. I’m betting on a third, which I think is natural in the progression of things, and morally and ethically proper.
I see a great awakening, at the worst time for the power structure, when it is it’s most incompetent, broke and discredited. A perfect political/economic storm as it were.
Clausewitz described war as politics by other means. Well then politics is war by other means. And, commonly converge.
You could use some pointers http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html , on your “slave speak”. got it from TV I suppose.
As for this “great awakening”, do you see it as spiritual, political or just your garden variety revolution where the “new boss same as the old boss”. What do you see in the aftermath.
Wrong, RomneyBOT. The posts were not "mindless"
but had FACTS (post #41) which you, Mitt, could not rebut.
So you did what all RomneyBOTs do, you attacked and
changed the subject (post #42).
Good luck promoting Mitt Romney-care. [/s]
Better if you considered what Sam Adams said:
"Public officials should not be chosen if they are lacking in experience,
training, proven virtue, and demonstrated wisdom."
To: Diogenesis
Interesting what did Sam Adams say about ___BOTs and RINOs?
I agree with your quotation, lets find those people and support them, shall we... errr do you have any in mind, or are you stuck on what you don’t want.
Your posts are very enlightening, I have gained a better understanding of how we have people like Obama in positions of leadership. Top of the day, Old Chap.
I see all three, for years now.
We’ve had waves of religious revival. I think the uber intellectual wave is very elderly( literally ) now. You see the liberal/leftist churches declining. Even the Catholic Church, in it’s glacier pace is fighting back.
Materially a lot of people are realizing they are working for their stuff, not stuff for them. ( This of course creates a problem for government as there is no, not much taxes in thrift, and just at a time where the government is desperate for any revenue. )
I’d like to see a nation wide tax strike myself. If( whom am I kidding ) government won’t control itself, then we can do it by other means via the tax strike. Already I have read the insurance on US Treasuy bonds has climbed. Which tells you that the flinty eyed unromantic investors smell the rot. I think it is rational to suspect that as American population realizes the burdens, debts placed on them, they will be less supporting, hence risk.
Just think how much much friction is right now. But we have multi trillion dollar shortfalls every year coming, for years. The governments are going to suck dry everyone they can get their hands on, even though those of us productive are effectively handing over half of what we earn. In other words we work half the year for a government that is destroying us.
So, in short, less materialism, more politics and economic participation, more desire for non material events, weather it is religions or liberty.
“Mitt again, Romney re-emerges for likely WH bid (he is still pushing Romneycare!)”
Between this and his endorsement of McCain I’d sooner vote for Obama.
I just came across this book review, but it ball parks what I previously posted, and what I feel in general. You might like it.
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/bc0212gr.html
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