Romneycare

13 April 2011 |permalink | email article

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, kicked off his presidential exploratory committee pitch this week with a video message that omitted one key issue: health care reform which could sink his chances for the GOP nomination.

Not lost among the political cognoscenti was that five years ago yesterday Romney signed into law a Massachusetts health care reform that bears uncanny similarities with the national law that President Obama championed in 2010. The president has been only too happy to compare Romneycare with Obamacare.

To make the point even more graphic the Democratic National Committee sent out emails including Romney signing the health care law with former Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy prominently in the shot as the ABC New political unit pointed out. Romney has “front-runner” status but it many not last. 

Balanced Budget Myth

Michael Kinsley, who writes a column for Politico, had an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times which is well worth reading. He states House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan continues the GOP tradition of never producing a balanced budget His thoughts purport to be something that’s been missing since Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address in 1981. Republicans for 30 years have demanded a balanced budget without ever producing one, even on paper. Ryan continues the GOP tradition of evasion, and suggests how he built his reputation as a hero of fiscal discipline. “If you boiled all the self congratulation out of Ryan’s 60-page document, you’d save a lot of paper.”   

The Fountainhead is Back

“While I was away, Alan Greenspan wrote a remarkable piece in the Financial Times criticizing the Dodd-Frank reform bill…Having admitted in 2008 that the financial crisis had revealed a “flaw” in his free-market ideology, Greenspan has now reverted to full-on Ayn Rand Objectivism…Given the disastrous policy errors that he presided over, I can’t help recalling Clement Atlee’s famous remark about Harold Laski, another ideologue, during the 1945 British election: “A period of silence from you would be welcome.” – John Cassidy, in The New Yorker.

Quotable

Gov. Jerry Brown spent the 100th day of his third term in a self-congratulatory mood. He’s been less crusty with lawmakers and observers alike with his accessibility, lack of entourage, corgi dog and, yes, a sudden penchant for brown suits. “I think it’s gone remarkably well. We’ve got half the budget deficit cured two months early,” the Sacramento Bee reported. His problem: still no budget deal.   

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