President Obama could learn a thing or two from Mitt Romney’s speechwriters based on yesterday’s speech Mr. Romney gave to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
While Mitt Romney slipped into Obamaisms of carving out exceptions to enforcing laws against illegal immigrants, in general he committed to upholding laws and improving legal immigration paths as opposed to rewarding illegal immigrants with amnesty.
The Democrats, in a space of liberal fantasy that is resulting in more institutionalized unfairness than one could imagine have dug in their heels and supported President Obama’s belligerent decision to chuck traditional process and use an Executive Order to do “the right thing.”
The “right thing” is not good justification for national policies in a political environment that has justified its every move based on scarcity. Scarcity means that if one person or group gets something another does without because there’s not enough for everyone. Republicans have a meaner message--everyone should be free to get theirs. In an environment that markets and sells scarcity, this message makes more sense.
Understand that it’s not more honest. Both sides are dismally dishonest. Neither side has taken the millions we hear about in campaign contributions and advised their donors to contribute to charities or food banks or to buy insurance for one year for the uninsured. Neither side has ignored lobbyists and refused to use government to influence those whose approval they seek. Republicans who argue against big government use that same government as the support for tax policy and laws that favors their views, the same as Democrats.
What the Republicans are tapping better than the Democrats is the meanness in America created by an environment that has and is selling scarcity, “We can’t do it all.” Republicans are up-front--they’ll try to use government laws and policies to throw the poor and the elderly and middle class under the bus. The Democrats are sneakier, they’ll ask for support from all Americans for policies that favor some so that basically good people consent to being thrown under the bus. Both sides will use government, big, expensive government to enact laws that will bolster their vision of America.
In this new meaner America of scarcity, both candidates need to retire the old lines about the “right thing” and all attempts to define “what America is.” We are a new meaner country. The old expressions of what America is don’t apply. Look at our healthcare crisis. In the new mean America we are a nation that chooses because we can’t do it all. We SHIFT costs among ordinary citizens rather than address costs in this America of scarcity.
President Obama who touts his Healthcare legislation as an accomplishment while we await judgment as to its legality and read with horror that physicians will get more money if they use technology while citizens who don’t buy health insurance will be fined. People who smoke, are fat, have certain chronic illnesses will be asked to pay more so that healthy people can pay less in health insurance premiums (until they get sick of course). People who need certain medications and treatments will be unable to afford them while those who do not will get to pay for prescription coverage that luckily they don’t need (YET). It doesn’t make sense except that it allows us to justify shifting costs rather than implementing cost controls on a bloated industry that profits regardless of the experience of its users.
Republicans would emphasize personal responsibility and the free market ignoring years of legislation that has implemented laws that make it easier for physicians to get rich via income tax laws and businesses to get rich from tax laws and lobbyist-sponsored laws that benefit insurance companies. Republicans SHIFT cost from wealthy and powerful to less wealthy and less powerful without carving out separate groups among the masses.
But there’s a problem because the “free market” supported by government legislation designed to favor healthcare industry and providers resulted in costs that keep rising and incomes that keep rising and more people who cannot afford to get needed medical care for treatment (NOT WELLNESS).
Similarly, cost shifting and weeding out the sick and charging them more has not relieved the increasing costs and salaries of healthcare providers and professionals that leaves Americans in a losing game of never being able to catch up with uncontrolled costs and prices.
In any other science or field or industry such fantastic failure would warrant a reexamination of the hypothesis: Is scarcity the problem if by addressing scarcity we see no lessening of the problem?
Instead government continues its actions based on the problem as identified, scarcity. For Democrats that means hammering out new ways to provide healthcare for some by reducing benefits paid for by older Americans for their entire working lives towards Medicare and Social Security or by charging people for becoming ill for whatever reason. Republican answers to scarcity are to let the “market” handle things without mention of rescinding health laws and tax laws that encouraged the astronomical rise in industry rates by the very companies charging more. Both sides have used government for their own ends.
Yet now we are supposed to toss the years of words, the endless discussion of scarcity and buy into an America that is open to illegal immigration? President Obama has given the option of in-state tuition to families who have broken the law AND in many cases failed to pay taxes into the very state coffers that support the institutions that charge in-state tuition? While tuition rises for citizens, he makes no provision for collecting years of back taxes as a requirement for those illegal immigrants who wish to benefit from in-state tuition? It is more COST SHIFTING, taking from one to provide to another.
Mitt Romney also gave indication he would pursue this cost-shifting approach by carving out exceptions. Both sides ignore our meaner America. What moral imperative is there that taking from legal citizens to support illegal immigrants is the “right thing”? And as for the Republicans, why not enforce E-verify and impose fines on corporations that hire illegal immigrants before spending citizen money to build a better fence?
In meaner America it is time to take care of our own first. Illegal immigrants, those who are unlawfully here often have bad experiences in the job market, so do millions of college graduate US citizens, former lawbreaking US citizens with educations. It is not the right thing to choose other countries’ citizens over our own in a world of scarcity where you getting some means we get less.
If Mitt Romney is better suited to a boardroom than the White House, perhaps President Obama is more suited to becoming UN Goodwill Ambassador rather than President. They’re both bad choices but in a meaner America Mr. Romney is currently more on target.
