Des Moines (Iowa) Register’s lies about Romney and Obama

October 30, 2012 / Posted in  GOP, Iowa, Koch Brothers, Ku Klux Klan, Labor, Nazis, Outsourcing, Poverty, Republican Party, Tea Party

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whom some have described as acting as a former member of the KKK (reigniting issues that were popular in the 1950s-1970s, cp. here and here with note by Bob Currie, with a video on rewriting the Constitution with receptive points here and a personal account by a man familiar with McConnell here exposing the Senator’s racist epithets) and avowed racist (read here and here and here and watch here), maintained that the Republicans’ number one goal remains the defeat of President Obama.  For much of the past two months Democrats accused the Republican of holding the country “hostage” in the debt ceiling fight. According to the Democrats, the Republicans had routinely raised the debt limit with no accompanying spending cuts under President Bush, but had suddenly decided to hold America’s economy hostage until their demands were met under President Obama. For a while Republicans expressed outrage at this accusation, saying they were simply trying to bring some “fiscal sanity” to Washington and express the “will of the people.” However, yesterday Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was bold enough as to openly detail the Republican hostage taking strategy. In an interview in The Washington Post McConnell admitted that many of his members were actually willing to let the country default, “I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting.”

The odious opportunism of Speaker John Andrew Boehner (8th District Ohio) matches the raw rhetoric of McConnell and will do anything to defeat Obama even if it means destroying the USA’s advance towards greater human rights and civil liberties.  Boehner’s bipartisan support is only for media attention with no plans to implement it immediately.  Boehner, a die-hard racist (read here and read and watch here) catering to a 89.2% white majority in his district (although Caucasians make up only 66% of the population, and non-white births now surpass white births) and ignoring the minority constituents in his district, said in front of Congress that he was not going to pass anything that would help Obama get re-elected. The wealthy white males must win and control the USA at any cost.  With partisanship and racism as his two alter-egos, “Weeping” (as he is found to be called on the Internet) deliberately killed three million construction jobs, claims that the health care in the USA is “the best in the world” (it actually is 37th; the USA has the fourth worst rate for infant mortality in the OECD, is third-to-last in terms of mortality for children under 20, 12th from the bottom when it comes to child suicide, has the second-highest teen birth rate, is eighth from last on overall life expectancy at birth, and tied with Slovenia for third-worst place in terms of doctor density — a count of how many doctors are available per 1,000 citizens), lied that “Obama wants to kill your grandma” and more.

Not far from his side politically or morally is the trooper Eric Cantor, former (?) Klansman and open racist (read here and here and here) representing the 7th district of Virginia as the only Jew in the anti-semitic Republican Party in the House.  Cantor is a fringe-member of the Republican Party out of touch with reality and claimed that at one KKK gathering where Teabaggers were carrying hate signs, that Democrats had supplied the signs (watch here). Cantor assails the “Imperial Presidency” of Obama yet finds nothing amiss with the plutocracy of Nixon or the Bush dynasty. 

Cantor with Rove and the Koch Brothers (the Koch Brothers’ father attempted to overthrow democracy in the USA with the invention of the John Birch Society, support for the McCarthy-Nixon hearings, blacklisted actors, teachers, and public figures, pledged to buy the media in order to overthrow democracy in the USA and create a government of, by, and for business, with Karl Rove who led the attack on labor, teachers, police, firemen, nurses and other professionals in the state of Wisconsin, vowing to buy Iowa and key swing states mass media to ensure Romney is endorsed and wins the presidency

(read here and here). Four citizens of Iowa who opposed Rove’s Palmegate crimes (cf. Joseph C. Wilson 4th, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”, The New York Times, July 6, 2003) tried to arrest Rove were arrested by Rove-bribed Des Moines police. The Des Moines Register used fabrications of the event in printing the story with no true journalistic responsibility in presenting all sides.

Romney, himself, sequestering, hiding, and not paying taxes on more than $17 million in income (read here and here and here), boasted he could buy Iowa (read here and here). The Republicans did buy Iowa, buying the most corrupt of all pseudo-journalists in the state of Iowa when they purchased (read here and here) using millions of Koch Brothers money to entrench their threats of laying off nearly 50,000 employees (read here and here) telling Iowa media and the editorial board of the Des Moines Register (a Gannett paper that had to question how Obama had not turned around the economy; with The Tennessean writing: “it is far less of an endorsement of Romney than a lack of endorsement of President Obama…” , under similar pressure experienced by the Register:  editors had to demonstrate their support if they wanted to keep their jobs (Gannett has already cut 700 jobs) and . 

Bob Dickey, president of the Gannett community papers division, said: “While we are seeing improved circulation results and audience growth, weakness in the real estate sector, slow job creation and now softer auto ad demand continue to challenge revenue growth in the division,” Dickey said. “National advertising remains soft and with many of our local advertisers reducing their overall budgets, we need to take further steps to align our costs with the current revenue trends.”  With the news of Romney’s endorsement by the Des Moines Register, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Indianapolis Star, its stop closed up 40 cents compared to 6.2–the endorsements were political blackmail and had nothing to do with reality.

The Republican / Tea Party is the most corrupt organization today in the USA, funded by Adelston of Las Vegas, and even my the owners of Gold’s Gym that made money with federal handouts.  It is revitalizing the Khristian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), American Nazi Movement, Sovereign Citizen, and all white supremacist groups—and the

most racist fringe elements in evangelical extremism.  The KKK and neo-Nazis making a significant comeback, fueled by anti-immigrant hate (read here and here, with growth in central Iowa especially in Waterloo-Cedar Falls (University of Northern Iowa: read here and here) with a strong show of support for Mitt Romney and banners that read “Romney is one of us”), the University of Iowa at Iowa

City and university towns.  The main Klan cauldron is in Boone, Iowa—not far from Iowa State University.  The KKK is headquartered in Charles City, but the Iowa Nazis are directed out of Cedar Valley. Iowa.  This racism and the greed in the editorial staff at the Des Moines Register are appalling and thinly veiled.

Racism is both the backbone of the Tea Party and its foster-child: the Republican Party.  This can be seen in its many attacks on Obama’s race (with photographs as Obama being a Kenya medicine man) with those suffering from mental neurosis: becoming distrustful and considering everyone a possible enemy, becoming overly interested in other people’s opinion about them, are usually bored and dissatisfied, accept irrational problems to solutions, and rapidly spread falsehoods and fabrications especially by means of the Internet, as with such neurotic ranting racists as Vic of Ames, Iowa, Lucia of Carrollton, Texas, and others who are more famous, especially Republican Party and Romney aide John Sununu who claimed that Former Chief of Staff and later Secretary of State for George Bush, Colin Powell, endorsed Obama because the President is black: video and transcript

here.  

Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told Ed Schultz (watch here and read here) responded to Sununu’s racial card succinctly:

My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people — not all of them, but most of them — who are still basing their positions on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that’s despicable.  … to say that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama because of his skin color is like saying Mother Theresa worked for profit.

Despite the overt racism generated by threats of being fired at the Des Moines Register, the Register’s reprehensible lies are worth noting—and worth nothing–but they reflect the growing racism within the editorial staff and the paper itself—threatened with loss of job and future opportunities, threatened by people of color as well as the LGBT and other marginalized communities who might merit their positions, and the Gannett purge of staff.  The editorial, representing the bigotry of old white men and evangelical extremists reads, in parts, similar to other Gannett papers following Bob Dickey’s ukase to curry favor with the Koch Brothers and other billionaires:

American voters are deeply divided about this race. The Register’s editorial board, as it should, had a vigorous [it was not, according to inside sources who have asked not to be named] debate over this endorsement. Our discussion repeatedly circled back to the nation’s single most important challenge: pulling the economy out of the doldrums, getting more Americans back in the workforce in meaningful jobs with promising futures, and getting the federal government on a track to balance the budget in a bipartisan manner that the country demands [Romney’s close ties with the Koch Brothers] is about cutting salaries, increasing workloads, and denying collective bargaining rights.

Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? [The Register conveniently ignored the repeated entreaties for bipartisanship: read here for Obama’s quest for a spending freeze ; and here to curb debt, invest in education, high-speed rail and internet, etc; upgrading the nation’s infrastructure; etc. all that the motley crew at the Register conveniently forgot and refused to even acknowledge: watch and read here]. When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate [actually, Romney is weaker, increasing spending in Massachusetts (if Romney would be president, military spending would jump another $2.1 trillion), doing little for education in Massachusetts (read here;  Romney used Bain Capital personnel to think how Massachusetts could improve its education system, and they failed miserably:  as the Chronicle of Higher Education noted, Romney and Bain Capital were “out of touch” with the realities of education and what was needed: read here; cp. here for a full fact-check ), and doing next to nothing for the infrastructure in Massachusetts (read here and here for spending twice what was needed on road repairs, giving contracts to cronies—which is one of the many reasons he wisely decided against a second term in office]. 

The Des Moines Register editors did little to no homework on issues critical to Iowa and the USA as a whole but gave into the big bucks and bluster of the super rich controlling the state and nation.  The Register continued its screed:

The former governor and business executive has a strong record of achievement in both the private and the public sectors [this is one of the Register’s editors biggest lies. When Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the state fell to number 47 in the record of jobs creation; Romney had no power nor influence in the private sector, where Bain Capital outsourced more jobs than it created; during the Second Presidential Debate, Romney kept repeating:

“Government does not create jobs. Government does not create jobs.” Romney is especially against any appreciable investment in science, a rejection widely criticized in the scientific community where Neal F. Lane, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University (Texas) who previously headed the National Science Foundation and was science adviser to President Bill Clinton noted:

Scientific knowledge and new technologies are the building blocks for long-term economic growth — “the key to a 21st-century economy,” as President Obama said in the final debate.

So it is astonishing that Mr. Romney talks about economic growth while planning deep cuts in investment in science, technology and education. They are among the discretionary items for which spending could be cut 22 percent or more under the Republican budget plan, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

He was an accomplished governor in a liberal state [another lie, as Romney pushed through cuts in state spending by putting added pressure on localities to reduce services or raise property taxes, and the share of town and city revenues coming from property taxes rose from 49 to 53 percent and greedy venture capitalist whose firm cut jobs and slashed salaries at companies it took over. Angry workers from an Indiana plant even trekked to Massachusetts to dog Romney, who never quite recovered from the negative onslaught.]  Massachusetts combined state and local tax burden

increased during Romney’s governorship [Romney raised property taxes from 49% to 53%, cut small business initiatives, and left new unemployed Massachusetts residents without prospects for replacement jobs and while Obama cut small business taxes 18 times, Romney did not have an equal record during his only term as governor of Massachusetts]. He founded and ran a successful business that turned around failing companies [No.  Bain Capital bought up struggling companies, outsourced jobs then put the companies out of business; read here and here and here and watch here]. He successfully managed the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City [this is only partially true, as there are and were in 2002 two budgets: The budget Romney is talking about is the first one, covering Olympic operations and he balanced that budget was balanced and ended up with a surplus of about $100 million. The second budget, that was for $240 million for security (the games came shortly after 9/11, heightening costs) and $160 million for core transportation upgrades, such as interstate interchanges, and to that $400 million it is necessary to add at least $400 million was spent on a light-rail system. In Romney’s 2004 book, Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership and the Olympic Games, he wrote that he asked his lobbyist “to bring in more federal funding than had ever been appropriated for any Olympics, summer or winter.” The committee employed five federal lobbying firms beyond his in-house lobbying office, spending $3.5 million in all, NBC News reported earlier this year. “Romney is right on a technicality that misses the major issue about financing any Olympics,” said Roger G. Noll, a Stanford University economist who has studied large public infrastructure projects, including stadiums. “Romney saved the Salt Lake City Olympics by regaining political support. One way he did this was to reduce costs below the plan, but the main reason is that Romney succeeded in getting a huge subsidy from the federal government.”  One way he did that was by charging employees a dollar a slice for pizza (served on paper plates) and 25 cents for sodas; adding charges for other items that were or below cost, and advocating for more federal money.  At the same time he has claimed, repeatedly, that he opposes federal assistance and “ear-marks” for special events such as the Olympics.

….

Consumers must feel more confident about their own economic futures to begin spending on the products and services that power the economy [but it rose over the last two years under Obama]. A renewed sense of confidence will spark renewed investment by American companies. Industry will return to full production and hiring will

begin again [this blatant lie is exposed with Romney’s Bain Capital putting Delphi Auto out of business, firing 25,000 employees in Troy, Michigan, at the end of October 2012, and buying up businesses in China.  Most of his money is invested in China and offshore islands where there is no income tax that he has to pay–like other citizens of the USA pay].

That should come with Mitt Romney in the White House. [It already has in the auto industry under Obama; Romney twisted the story by wrongfully claiming that Jeep was moving to China, that had as an initial source the Bloomberg Review.  Oil drilling has increased under Obama, and gun sales and the gun industry is thriving and is the NRA, which makes it ridiculous since gun owners and the NRA oppose Obama].

There is not a lot of difference between the two candidates’ short-term economic plans, as both are heavy on a promise of tax cuts for the middle class but short on details. Romney’s plan, however, goes beyond helping the middle class with tax breaks [another Register lie in part, as the Romney plan is to end benefits for low and middle class workers, as PolitiFacts notes that Romney’s plans will end Earned Child Income (ECI) for lower-income taxpayers, delete mortgage interest deductions, and rescind child care (IRS Form 2441)  benefits, and cancel education interest deductions].

Throughout the campaign, he [actually both Romney and Obama have, but Romney is especially focused on private: for disaster relief; (religious and home-schooling) education, and health care, while Obama sees the private sector creating and sustainingjobs as industries and agriculture, increasing aid to public schools

and institutions] has expressed faith in the private sector to fuel a more robust economic recovery if it has more confidence that the federal government will not be an obstacle. Romney has a strategy for job growth through tax and regulatory relief for small businesses, encouraging all forms of domestic energy production, education that prepares graduates with job skills, expanding foreign trade and reducing the burden of federal deficits

[Romney cofounded Bain Capital as the antithesis of this lie (Romney told the New York Times “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”, and has put more businesses out of production (Sarah Palin said, on Fox News, that Romney needs a “Bain show and Tell”), outsourced more jobs, while increasing taxes on small businesses and on the middle class and poor: read here and here and here].

One of the biggest obstacles either candidate faces is partisan gridlock in Congress [Romney has no record of “reaching across the aisle” or “spanning the political divide” not even as governor of Massachusetts: ; Obama, on the other hand, did attempt bipartisanship numerous times; the lack of bipartisanship is with Congress, not with Obama]. It appears unlikely either party will have enough votes to have its own way without bringing over members from across the aisle.

Early in his administration, President Obama reached out to Republicans but was rebuffed [true and it continued with the protestations from Boehner that he would make sure that Obama’s “agenda” would fail; with Eric Cantor’s proclamation that he would do all in his power to stop any compromise between the House and the White House (read here and here); and for the Tea Party to offer any support in bailing out a dying USA]. Since then, he has abandoned the effort, and the partisan divide has hardened. That has hampered not only the economy [Romney lies about taxes, claiming he will seek each person (and corporation) to pay a fair share, but as governor of Massachusetts went after business when the diminishing middle class was near poverty, but the entire country]. We remain a nation of red states and blue states (it will always be that way as it always has been in any democracy).

Romney succeeded as governor in Massachusetts where he faced Democratic majorities in the legislature (no he did not, Romney alienated nearly everyone with his flip-flops: from endorsing same-sex marriage to opposing it. In 2004 he initially instructed town clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex unions (Abraham, Yvonne; Phillips, Frank (May 19, 2004). “Romney Eyes Order on Licenses; Seeks to Halt Marriage of Gay Outsiders”. The Boston Globe.),

but then he endorsed a petition effort led by the Coalition for Marriage & Family that would have banned same-sex marriage and made no provisions for civil unions. In 2004 and 2006, he urged the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Then in 2012 signed National Organization for Marriage (NOM) draconian bill to illegalize same-sex marriages and forbid them nationally; and in 2006, as governor, Romney declared that any form of contraception (including homosexuality was aimed at destroying the “family” that had as its primary purpose procreation in a world of dwindling natural resources].  If elected, he would have an opportunity to renew the effort. He would begin with an advantage in the House, where a Republican majority is likely to remain after the election. The challenge will be in the Senate, where it takes a super-majority to pass anything of substance.

Romney should not squander an opportunity to build consensus in Washington by wasting time on issues that animate many in his party. We cannot rewind the clock on progress for minorities, women, gays and lesbians. We must make it easier for immigrants to come here to live and work legally [getting–and maintaining–a job would, however, be difficult, especially since Romney encourages “self-deportation”] and stop making criminals of those who are living here lawfully, paying taxes and raising families. The federal government must continue to insist on clean air and water and encourage clean and renewable energy[wishful illusionary thinking as such is in direct opposition to Koch

Industry practices, as with Coffee Creek in Arkansas, denouement of the rain forests for Georgia-Pacific in Perú and Brasil, etc, and more so, because Romney has opposed each of these ideals].

Taking bribes in political times is normal, and graft is common, especially in the media (as seen with the rising cost of political ads).  However, taking under-the-table money from the Koch Brothers, Donald Trump, the sinister and nefarious National Chamber of Commerce that represents no small businesses and is a front for Koch

Industries (owned and controlled by Charles and his wife Elizabeth, and David and his wife Julia), and other Super-PACS has reached a new high with the editors of the Des Moines Register registering a new low in the sale of support against the best interest of Iowans (read here  and here and here) with the despicable US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) that

any rational person would hold in total contempt, prohibiting limits on corporate spending to influence voters. Iowans must boycott the Des Moines Register (influenced by Romney’s Super-PAC Restore Our Future which corrupted any independent journalismthat existed by threatening journals, editors, linemen, and other workers with loss of jobs, foreclosure on homes, and the other draconian promises Romney made to his elite club of

billionaires when he said he did not and would not represent the 47% who “paid no taxes [sic]”:  with foreign cash representing foreign interest influencing judgments and endorsements) .  It represents everything that is opposed to the better welfare and advance of the people and is a cover for the interests of oligarchs. 

Former US Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) paid $1 million to Bob Vander Plaatsfor his endorsement for the presidency. I wonder how much the Romney camp paid the editors of the Des Moines Register for their the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome endorsement of one of the most

pandering predatory prevarications passing promises plucked from perdition prance pandering pontificating parched sentences to intimidate and scare Americans as the article supporting Romney is without facts and narrows naked partisanship.  With Antonin Scalia in charge of the actual operations of the US Supreme Court and lining his pockets with Koch money, the USA is doomed to a plutocracy.  Additional research, I fear I will

find it was no golden purse that bribed the Des Moines Register editors but at most a feigned promise of job retention so that the wealth that would trickle into the wallet of Bob Dickey and stockholders at Gannett could become fatter at the expense of the workers who are the true source of their wealth that they did nothing to earn, but that comes with money made off of the work of other people less fortunate.

I was born and educated in Iowa. The Des Moines Register’s new gaggle of spineless editors makes me ashamed of that inerasable fact.  Almost seventy years ago I was taught to tell the truth, and I taught that to my students and to my clients when I was forced to resign my job in Ames for upsetting the hierarchy that did not want their own deviousness and corruption to be exposed.  I could not be bought then, anymore than I am for sale now.  I retired back to Radcliffe to survive in my little business.  Today’s editorial staff at the Des Moines Register has not learned that old and outdated value we read in John 8:32: καὶ γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς or in the languages of my ancestors: und werdet die Wahrheit erkennen; und die Wahrheit wird euch freimachen. (Luther, 1545), or og I skal kjenne sannheten, og sannheten skal frigjøre eder ( Der Norsk Bibelselskap 1930), and for my students: y conoceréis la Verdad, y la Verdad os libertará. (Sagradas Escrituras, 1569); the noun in Arabic حقيقة has the same message–but a message that cannot be found in the Des Moines Register of today.  The Gannett publisher is responsible, and this individual merits no praise nor recognition, for he is like the publishers in the Third Reich who printed that misinformation that the government of autocrats and fascists demanded as is required by the Koch Brothers and their goose-stepping goons in their billionaires club.