Political Fracas 2012: Candor in politics? Believe it and weep
Yep, that’s me
At least right out of the starting gate, the contest between Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Todd Akin for the U.S. Senate seat from Missouri offers a refreshing change of pace.
None of this whining about an opponent “distorting my record.”
Confronted with McCaskill’s accusation that he had compared federal student loans to stage three cancer, Akin told a reporter, “I called a spade a spade,” thereby compounding a truly far-out position with a racially questionable idiom.
Akin, a congressman from St. Louis, was just as sanguine when McCaskill, the incumbent senator, criticized his opposition to federal funding for school lunches.
“I think the federal government should be out of the education business,” Akin said.
He allowed that it would be OK for states to pay for meals for low-income students, which for cash-strapped states would probably mean choosing between lunches and books. And students in one state shouldn’t go hungry while a more generous legislature opts to fund lunches.
Akin gets some credit for sticking to his principles, even though he’s wrong.
Regarding those malignant federally-backed college loans, about 160,000 Missouri families use them to help with college costs, and they entail much less risk than private bank loans.
And the National School Lunch Program provides about 650,000 meals a day through the use of cash assistance and surplus food. In districts like the Kansas City Public Schools and Hickman Mills, eight of 10 students benefit from the program. Even in a more affluent district like Lee’s Summit, almost one in five children qualify for the benefits. Being hungry to learn is a good thing; learning while hungry is something else entirely.
Running mates unleashed
The two men hoping to be the vice president in 2013 both stepped in it this week.
At a Virginia campaign rally, Democratic incumbent Joe Biden told his audience that Mitt Romney “said in the first 100 days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, ‘unchain Wall Street.’ They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
Given that Biden was addressing an audience that included a large number of blacks, the remark came across loaded with inappropriate racial overtones.
President Barack Obama and other Democrats, including Kansas City Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, quickly jumped in to clarify what Biden supposedly meant to say, never a good sign. They claimed he had actually wanted to use the term “unshackle” Wall Street.
But with Biden, who often speaks from the heart, it was a tough case to make. Most likely he meant what he said, and he shouldn’t have said it.
Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, who is Romney’s pick for the number two spot, asserted that his hands were clean of those dreaded stimulus funds that tea party types so profoundly detest. Never had he asked for a penny of them, he told reporters.
Oops. Media organizations found several letters signed by Ryan requesting millions of dollars in stimulus money for two companies in his Wisconsin district.
Even worse news for Ryan devotees: The letters were sent on behalf of energy conservation companies, one of those GOP-despised liberal efforts to green up America.
Ryan had to acknowledge his mistaken — and hypocritical — assertions on Thursday.
Maybe he should have just stuck with the truth, that he wrote the letters because the stimulus money could create jobs in his state, just like Obama said it would.
That taxing question
Mitt Romney is digging in. No way will he and wife Ann release any more tax returns, even though his vice presidential prospects had to disclose several years’ worth during the vetting process.
OK, then. Romney should have coughed up 10 years’ worth of returns and gotten this issue off the table months ago. But since he hasn’t, and says he won’t, we are left to wonder why.
Into the information vacuum pops imagined embarrassments: Is a charitable donation to some pinko, liberal outfit buried somewhere in those files? A dependent horse tax break? Did he claim the upkeep of Seamus as a business expense?
None of the above, we reckon. But Americans do have a right to learn how the man who might become the nation’s leader made his money, and how much he paid into the U.S. Treasury.
Romney’s assertion this week that he never paid less than 13 percent of his income is hardly reassurance to the multitudes of middle-income taxpayers who pay a much higher rate.
Shelley Powers
9 months, 1 week agoI wouldn’t count on Akin sticking to his guns. Just saw an ad where he repeated the Republican talking points: he’s defended Social Security and Medicare, Obama is the one that cut 700 million—and btw McCaskill didn’t pay the taxes on her plane (yeah, that one’s a pants on fire out and out lie).
George Hunsucker
Northland
9 months, 1 week agoMake that 716,000,000,000 Shelley as in 716 BILLION!!!
George Hunsucker
Northland
9 months, 1 week agoBut chazzy, the big 0 is soooooooooooooooooooooooo wonderful that we don’t need no stinkin’ history. Why just look at how with his porkulus bill he has lowered unemployment to below 6%(oops), and how he has 5 TRILLION in new debt(oops).
He is our first half-white president, and that is enough!!!!
Kevin Sheely
9 months, 1 week agoWe can live in government housing, eat government food, send our kids to government schools, and soon we will be seeing government doctors. The government took over the student loan business and will soon take over the medical insurance business. And what a swell job they do managing it all, as our federal debt has ballooned from 10 trillion to 16 trillion in the last four years. Obama and his rubberstamp Claire McCaskill have no plan to fix any of this beyond more spending and more government.
America suffers from stage three cancer of socialism. The only thing ‘far-out’ about this statement is hearing a politician actually say something so honest and obvious. He called a spade a spade, an idiom which BTW has been in continuous use for almost 5 centuries which is about 4 1/2 centuries longer than ‘spade’ has been used as a racial slur, a factoid which I’m sure the eggheads at the Star’s editorial board know full well. But of course throwing around casual and lazy accusations of racism is central to the Democrats electoral strategy. Now more than ever. It’s going to be a long 11 weeks.
Kent Mueller
9 months, 1 week agoStar…..so many things to counter, but I’ll limit it to two….
First. You, KC Star should be absolutely embarrassed for having gone to the 21st century rendition of Joseph McCarthy. If Harry Reid had not had someone, who he won’t disclose, tell him that Romney didn’t pay taxes on each of the ten prior years, this wouldn’t be a talking point from the White House/Left/Main Stream Media/Kc Star. Even Harry says he can’t say if it’s true or not. What this does is place this country as a place where you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. That describes the worst countries in the world. But, that is where Harry Reid and the KC Star is taking us. Yes, the cover is that now that it’s out there, Romney should just take care of it. But that is completely baseless. That is McCarthy at it’s worst. Do I dare say that McCarthyism of the 20th century is being replaced with McClatchyism of the 21st century? Think about it. It fits.
OK, second. This is a challenge to the Star. The Star said that multitudes of taxpayers pay a higher tax rate than Romney. Multitudes? Very, very, very few people pay a higher effective tax rate than Romney. Very few. Not even Buffet’s secretary. The Star needs to back up what they said. Show us the multitudes that pay a higher effective federal income tax rate than Romney has. You can show us in the percentage of Americans, or you can list then names, whichever is easier. It would be a very short list.