2012 Election To Be Outcome Determined By Working Middle Class Acceptance of Truth or Myth

[egbertowillies]

Original Post HERE.

Politicians always stretch the truth. They do that in an attempt to maximize the contrast between themselves and their opponent. A large percentage of voters are savvy to that and generally use the misleading commercials to do further research to get the accurate story. Low information voters generally take commercials at face value tending to believe the candidate closest to their own ideology.

What should be disconcerting is that this year there are commercials that are provably devoid of truth. Mitt Romney recently released a political ad that accuses President Obama of reversing one of Clinton’s signature achievements which was to require a work component to welfare recipients. His ad uses all the code words to give the implication that the President is supporting policies that gives hard working Americans’ monies to free loaders. We all know the stereotype he is attempting to play in to.

What is ironic is that the change came about partly because Republican governors requested it as stated by President Clinton

From: Huffington Post

While the Romney campaign has suggested the Obama administration made its welfare decision to foster a Democratic "culture of dependency" by making it easier for people to stay on welfare, Clinton pointed out that two Republican-controlled states had requested the waivers.

Statement by President Bill Clinton on Governor Mitt Romney's New Television Advertisement

New York, NY -- Governor Romney released an ad today alleging that the Obama administration had weakened the work requirements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. That is not true.

The act emerged after years of experiments at the state level, including my work as Governor of Arkansas beginning in 1980. When I became President, I granted waivers from the old law to 44 states to implement welfare to work strategies before welfare reform passed.

After the law was enacted, every state was required to design a plan to move people into the workforce, along with more funds to help pay for training, childcare and transportation. As a result, millions of people moved from welfare to work.

The recently announced waiver policy was originally requested by the Republican governors of Utah and Nevada to achieve more flexibility in designing programs more likely to work in this challenging environment. The Administration has taken important steps to ensure that the work requirement is retained and that waivers will be granted only if a state can demonstrate that more people will be moved into work under its new approach. The welfare time limits, another important feature of the 1996 act, will not be waived.

The Romney ad is especially disappointing because, as governor of Massachusetts, he requested changes in the welfare reform laws that could have eliminated time limits altogether. We need a bipartisan consensus to continue to help people move from welfare to work even during these hard times, not more misleading campaign ads.

For the duration of the healthcare debate, those opposing healthcare have lied about the contents of the bill. The biggest of course was that government was taking over our healthcare system. Every savvy American must ask, if private insurance are still paying the bill, doctors are still private, hospitals are still private, and drug companies are still private, how can this be a take over? The issue is that government “we the people” entered the fray to ensure that we move towards healthcare coverage for all Americans and that these private entities are unable to take advantage of average Americans. Many corporate concerns would rather no regulations which have allowed them to pilfer the middle class for years. I have done many blog posts (and here) on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

One of the biggest lies out there is that the current president has raised taxes on the middle class or that he is responsible for the budget deficit. The biggest causes of our budget deficit are in fact 2 unfunded wars, an unfunded prescription drug bill, and two huge unfunded tax cuts all passed by the previous administration. That created a structural deficit that any president would have had the day they stepped into office. Pair that with a cataclysmic depression inflicted on us by the excesses of our poorly regulated financial sector and one gets our current economic malaise. Until those that have benefited the most and those that have pilfered the middle class over the last 30 years pay their fair share of taxes our condition will remain gloomy.

Do not be fooled. The wealthy are not the job creators many claim. After all they have been showered with low taxes and loose regulation. For that they have exported our jobs, invested overseas, and depressed American wages. The middle class are the job creators.

We must have policies that create jobs. If the private sector won’t (they are sitting in trillions of dollars) then the government must. There are children that need educating, airports, roads, and bridges that need building, alternative energy that must be developed, and much more.

This is an important election. It is important that you are informed. Do not sit and believe commercials. Come to this site and other sites that provide truthful and verifiable information. Vote for all candidates that demonstrably show a positive bias towards the middle class.

[spotlight]

1. The Ignorance of Voters

This is great advice that will not be heeded, because the people reading it here and in other publications are ALSO the people who are already educating themselves to the truth.

The ones who need to hear it go by myth and emotion and "everybody says". This is a large chunk of our American population.

The raising and educating of informed citizens is about the lowest priority parents and teachers have, and they have succeeded.