By RP Nation, on Tue Oct 30, 2012 at 2:15 PM ET Everyone says – and the polls suggest – that this year’s election is going to be close. Normally any candidate who keeps his money overseas and who has made his living sending jobs overseas wouldn’t even stand a chance of being elected to the highest office in the land, especially at a time of grim economic times.
Romney may win this election, despite all of his flaws, mainly because Obama has done such a mediocre job the last four years at best.
Instead of dismantling all of the Bush Era policies, he let them all ride. Many of my Democratic friends are less than enthusiastic about their President because of this.
But, I would simply point out to the American people, especially the undecided voters to think about the points that I considered before making up my own mind.
- Obama did inherit the worst economy since the Great Depression. George W. Bush took a 5 Billion dollar surplus that Clinton left him and in his first few months in office, squandered it all and turned it into a 5 TRILLION DOLLAR Deficit. The only way he could have ruined the country this badly is if it were intentional. I believe, Bush was the worst President in US History for that reason. To me, it was even a treasonous Presidency far worse than any other treason in our history. And the damage that Bush did is still not fully appreciated. The Wall Street FatCats that sold the world trillions in fraudulent paper are still doing it. Another shoe is yet to drop.
- Obama faced the greatest resistance to getting any of his bills passed than any other President in history and I believe it was a Racial Bias on the part of the Republican Party. They even admit that their primary job was to defeat Obama. Actually their job is to get things done and try to fix problems. SO, in effect, the Republicans were the BIGGEST protaganists of EXTENDING the Bush Treason.
- Obama is an imperfect man. He would be the first to admit it. I think his humility is his greatest downfall. But, I believe that his experience in his first term has honed him, like a sword that is forged in the fires of the Hell and that he now has the strength and wisdom to make his second term astonishingly good.
- And, last but not least, you must consider this: Whoever gains the White House will inherit the worst economy since the one Bush handed to Obama.
The challenges will be extreme. The next administration will have to make huge cuts in everything. Do you want a Republican making the cuts, which will be mainly in social programs. OR would you prefer the cuts to be in THE PENTAGON, Oil Company Subsidies, Tax cuts for the wealthy and HUGE WASTEFUL programs like that? The choice is really that simple.
Do you want more of your countrymen to go hungry, lose their homes, suffer and die? If you do, vote for Romney because he says he will increase Defense spending. That will only come from the Social Programs and also ultimately RAISE your taxes.
OR would you rather take money from the guys who wasted TRILLIONS of your money in Viet Nam and Iraq, Afghanistan, etc? IF you are not a war-mongerer, like the Republicans then you must vote for Obama.
The choices are GRIM either way. It’s only what you feel you can support as the least grim choices we must make.
That is the way you should make your decision this year. And it always helps to remember at election time. Which side of the bread is your butter? Do Republicans ever give you or your family anything to make your lives a little better?
Or is it the Democrats who do that?
THINK about your own family for a while before going to the polls.
Mike Mathiesen is the Founder of Go Foods Global, Santa Cruz, CA
By RP Nation, on Tue Oct 30, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET My fellow Americans,
We face serious challenges that demand all our efforts as citizens working together to build a brighter future for our nation, to ensure prosperity, wellbeing and safety for all our people. I pledge to work tirelessly and seek solutions that are sound today and instill hope for our children’s tomorrow. Three areas of primary concern to me are jobs, access to health care and keeping America safe.
I believe that our troops and their families must be cared for. When wounded soldiers return, we must provide them the best possible care in a timely manner.
It is not in the interest of national security to engage in military actions without thoughtful discussion and solid funding. America is not safe without financial stability. Staggering deficits serve to mortgage our children’s and grandchildren’s future.
Concern for our nation’s safety must rise above partisanship. I believe that the people must have faith that our government will do its job, and that the people’s representatives in Washington will stop the politics that end in gridlock and waste. Partisan politics endangers progress and interferes with oversight of the agencies that monitor the safety of food and drugs, cars, trains and planes, and workplaces.
It is extremely important to have a healthy, growing economy. First, we must keep the jobs we have. National policy must be fair to our workers.
I pledge to support policies that help working families. Opportunities for job training, re-training and lifelong learning are essential to economic stability in our country. Improving our infrastructure will provide much needed jobs. I will be vigilant in seeking resources to bring new technologies to compete with and lead the world in innovation and securing our growing energy needs. Access to affordable health care should be a given in this country. Healthy citizens are more able to make positive contributions to this nation. I support making affordable health insurance possible for everyone. The middle class have been burden with skyrocketing healthcare costs for over a decade and it has stagnated wages for the middle class. With a thriving middle class, we will be able to start really reducing our deficit and stop just kicking the can down the road. It is our civic duty as a nation, to build the middle class back up along with allowing prosperity to flourish in a free market society. Because when you have a strong middle class, you have a stronger nation.
I ask for your support in becoming your United States President.
By Zac Byer, on Tue Oct 30, 2012 at 9:15 AM ET Our resident Gen Y “He Said; She Said” team — Jordan Stivers and Zac Byer (who also happen to be dating) offer their closing arguments for the presidential candidates. Click here to read Jordan’s piece. And Gen Y’s unofficial Hollywood spokeswoman, actor, writer and director Lena Dunham, weighs in here.
Here’s Zac:
 Can America really afford to continue down the path we are on?
Can we afford to continue with the same policies that have left 23 million Americans unemployed? That have resulted in the smallest labor force in over thirty years? That have ballooned our national debt over $16 trillion – $5 trillion of which has been added in the last four years alone?
Forget about whether or not you’re satisfied with those numbers – I can’t believe you are. So, the better question is whether you accept those numbers? I sure hope you don’t.
We must bring real accountability to Washington. Politicians don’t deserve free passes, especially when they pile even more debt on an already burdened public. The cost of living is too high, and our national morale is too low. Short-sighted, quick-fix economic policies and Washington solutions do not have to become the new normal. Neither does the excuse-me-blame-him strategy. We shouldn’t – and we won’t – accept that.
That’s why we shouldn’t accept four more years of poor prioritization, insincere excuses, and half-baked leadership. It’s why we shouldn’t accept four more years of Barack Obama.
***
 I won’t argue that the economy was in a good place on January 20, 2009. The Bush Administration gave us a lot to pay for: two wars, a new prescription drug subsidy, TARP, lower tax rates. While his conservatism may have been compassionate, it certainly wasn’t cash-conscious.
And President Obama means well. While I didn’t vote for him four years ago, I wanted him to succeed as much as his most loyal supporter. When we wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night, we are still Americans…and we are all in this together.
But in the last four years, Obama’s hope has changed to disappointment.
Take the 2012 fiscal year. The government taxed us to the tune of $2.5 trillion to operate the country. Whether you think the 16th Amendment is the best or worst component of the Constitution, I hope you’ll agree that $2.5 trillion is a lot of money. And yet, $2.5 trillion wasn’t enough for Obama’s government. They spent $3.5 trillion – 44% more than they brought in! Not only is that unsustainable, but in Mitt Romney’s words, that’s immoral.
Americans all across the country work hard to stick to a budget. We live within our means, and we don’t spend more than we can afford. If we can do it, why can’t Washington? Why shouldn’t Washington?
***
Read the rest of…
Zac Byer: Gen Y He Said — Closing Argument for Mitt Romney
By Jordan Stivers, on Tue Oct 30, 2012 at 9:00 AM ET Many virtual trees have fallen in examining Gen Y’s involvement in Campaign 2012. Seen as an excited, game-changing voting bloc in 2008 for Barack Obama, much has changed during the job-challenged recovery of the past few years.
Our resident Gen Y “He Said; She Said” team — Jordan Stivers and Zac Byer (who also happen to be dating) weighs in. Click here to read Zac’s piece. And Gen Y’s unofficial Hollywood spokeswoman, actor, writer and director Lena Dunham, weighs in here.
 In 2008, I was a junior at the University of Kentucky and it was my first time voting in a presidential election. I found it so exciting that my first ballot ever cast was for Barack Obama, a candidate so different from any I had ever seen or heard about, not only in terms of race or background, but in what he stood for – equality, opportunity, and working together. As I walked around my fairly conservative campus the day after the election, wearing my Obama 08’ shirt and getting dirty looks from other students, I felt so proud that our country had come together and decided to go in a new direction.
I admit that a lot has changed since 2008, not only in my life, but in the country and in President Obama’s White House as well. I’ve graduated from college, worked for two years, and started law school. I’ve become an adult and realized that the state of the economy affects me and that it is vitally important for our national wellbeing. The country has come down from the high it was on after the 2008 election, and because of the difficult recovery from the even more difficult financial situation Obama inherited, many have become disillusioned with the President. But I don’t think this is a result of failed leadership of the President, but a result of our having impossibly high expectations of Obama, and a lack of understanding of the depth of the problems he has had to solve.
I’ve been hearing a lot of Republicans, and Mitt Romney himself, talking smugly about how young people are not as excited about Obama this time around, as if they’re saying, “I told you so, now you know better than to have any optimism about government and the good things it can achieve.” This is so cynical. The mood is different this time, but that’s natural. The President has had the hard job of actually governing for the past four years, and some of the sexiness has worn off. But this doesn’t mean that young people do not believe that President Obama is still the candidate with our best interests in mind. Because of the President’s policies, I’ve been able to stay on my parents’ health insurance through my transition from school to work, then back to law school. He’s supported many of my friends and colleagues who are gay by declaring that they should have the same rights as everyone else. He has kept student loan rates down so that we can pursue higher education. He’s allowed those of us who have grown up in the U.S. but are still not considered citizens to make it official. And let’s not forget how strongly he has represented the U.S. in foreign policy by killing Osama Bin Laden.
Read the rest of…
Jordan Stivers: Gen Y She Said — Closing Argument for Obama
By Greg Harris, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET  Insurance Executive: We don’t like Obamacare. Before Obama, our control over the health industry gave us great license to do everything we wanted to do in order to make big bucks. A person on one of our polices who gets really sick and expensive to cover? Throw them off. A child with a pre-existing condition who will cost more to insure over a lifetime? Deny her coverage. Can’t afford coverage? Sucks to be you.
We also became very adept at spending more on ourselves and our middle-men than spending on healthcare. Obama now isn’t letting us do that. We actually have to send rebates to the people we insure if we spend more on ourselves than on their health! And his purchasing cooperatives will make us compete with private insurers in cities and in some cases, entire states, in areas where we once had absolute monopolies, which will make us lower prices to be competitive. Yeah, we price out about 50 million people, but that’s free enterprise! Vote Romney!
 Plutocrat: Obama will appoint Supreme Court Justices that will most certainly overturn Citizens United. My ability to anonymously fund Super PAC’s with unlimited dollars is my right because the Supreme Court says spending and speech are one in the same. Indeed, rich people are now much freer than everyday people. Let’s keep it that way. I spent $20 million helping Romney via my Super PAC; but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to tax cuts I will receive if Romney prevails. And some of my wealth will even trickle down to the lowly 47%, so everybody wins! Vote Romney!
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Greg Harris: Closing Argument for Mitt Romney — Views from his Base
By RP Nation, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET Quite simply, one has to ask before pulling the lever: Do I want this man to be president?
Do I want my candidate to win, or simply the other man to lose?
I know when I voted for the president’s re-election that I would be getting a return to fair taxation, a continued drawdown of foreign wars, the rights of women respected fully, and a continuation of a recovery program that has taken us from hemorrhaging 700000 jobs a month to gaining thousands more.
Still, the right has vilified this man from jump street. Their stated top priority on his election day was not to help the country right itself after the failure of their rule, but to defeat the president. For four years they have stood in the way of growth for their own political ends. They have blocked every measure they could that would improve the economy and to top it off, they are now running a candidate without a single firm position other than, “I’m not the guy your radio tells you to hate.”
Will you reward them?
Will you elect a man who has presented no ideas?
Will you hand power back to those who have so recently and so fully abused it?
By Artur Davis, on Mon Oct 29, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET  If it turns out the life of Barack Obama’s presidency is measured in months, left-leaning analysts will agonize over what went so wrong. Their explanations will range from confusion over how a stunningly gifted orator never mastered the greatest national pulpit, to consternation about the intransigence of Republicans and the eruption of the Tea Party, to sober hand-wringing about the intractable nature of 21st Century democracy.
But the mourning will not match the genuine misery and perplexity many Americans feel regarding the state of the nation. For all the explanations of how Obama has fallen short of his promise, the simplest one is in the discontent of those 23 million plus individuals who are under or unemployed, some for such long stretches that they have fallen through the cracks of the government’s official statistics. These men and women are the source of a national fury over why things are the way they are, and they and the Americans who know them have proved resistant to deflecting responsibility or changing the subject.
To be sure, as his defenders never cease to point out, Obama was greeted with the debris of a national calamity. The country seemed to be teetering on the edge of depression for stretches in late 2008 and early 2009, a casualty of a Washington environment that privileged and made unaccountable the giant government sponsored housing enterprises and a reckless Wall Street culture that took the risk out of lending for the mortgagor. But rather than tackle the crisis with single-mindedness, Obama veered off in too many scattered directions: a stimulus whose legacy is a slew of poor returns on investments in alternative energy and uncompleted construction projects, a partisan healthcare law that drained off a year of the administration’s efforts, a massive overhaul of the carbon producing economy that was too unwieldy for even many Democrats to embrace, a financial industry bill that has not stopped excessive leveraging in the capital markets. The portfolio is one that Obama and his allies have strained to explain, much less justify.
Read the rest of…
Artur Davis: A Closing Argument for Mitt Romney
By Paul Hodes, on Thu Oct 18, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET  We believe in Freedom and Equal Opportunity. We are optimists. We are idealists, not ideologues. We believe in American ingenuity.
As this election season draws towards its conclusion, Democrats need to talk about our beliefs, our moral values, and what and who we care about.
At our recent Democratic National Convention, Democrats delivered moving messages based on moral values. The diversity of the speakers and participants emphasized over and over: “We’re all in this together.” The stories on-stage supported “We care about each other.” The economic theme emphasized “middle class expansion, not top down” and was based on the moral value, “equal opportunity.” The Convention was purposely short on policy, and long on visual images complete with verbal cues that emotionally touched the American people.
We, Democrats, in our hearts understand that no one makes it on his own without help from all of us. The stories around health care, women’s rights, sexual preference, discrimination — all spoke to our belief in the core values of Freedom and Equal opportunity: freedom from insurance company abuse, freedom from government intrusion into personal lives, freedom and equal opportunity to love and be loved.
Democrats love policy. We believe that if we simply explain issues, folks will understand. What we need now is to inspire people. What President Obama did when he made that historic run for President – stir the heart and soul of people who fundamentally believe in freedom, opportunity, ingenuity and optimism.
Here at the Economic Innovation Action Fund, we believe that a progressive economic agenda of growth and innovation and public-private partnerships is based on moral values. Education, Innovation and Infrastructure are not just policies. They are the foundation for the rebirth of our Democratic Party:
We believe in a better, more secure economic future;
We believe that every child should have an equal opportunity for a decent education;
Read the rest of…
Paul Hodes: A Message About the Democratic Narrative
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Oct 8, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET  We’re in trouble. And the people we sent to Congress to solve America’s biggest problems are completely stuck.
On January 1, unless our leaders stop the partisan brawling and focus on solutions, we’ll face massive budget cuts and tax increases that could send the U.S. economy back into a tailspin.
We all remember what economic meltdown is like. None of us — in any party — want to go through it again. We can head this crisis off at the pass, but not unless we fix the Senate filibuster. If we don’t, then we can assume that any policy solution will be sabotaged through the filibuster process.
No Labels is pressing our leaders to stop the bickering and gridlock, but we need you to join us to make sure they stop fighting and start fixing.
Click here to join thousands of No Labels supporters in demanding that our leaders in the Senate stop fighting and start fixing.
The filibuster is used in the Senate now more than ever before — in part, because it’s easier to do than it used to be. A senator doesn’t even have to hold the floor to force a filibuster anymore. Often, all a senator has to do is signal that he or she intends to filibuster a bill to bring the whole process to a dead stop.
Just one senator can take the whole body hostage — and he or she can do it in secret without ever having to make his or her case.
It’s outrageous. And because elected officials are using it to block legislation introduced by their opposing parties, it’s preventing potential solutions from receiving due consideration in Washington.
Our Senate leaders can help stop the gridlock by putting limits on how and when the filibuster can be used when legislators return to Washington in January. But they won’t — not unless they feel the heat from all of us.
Thousands of people have already taken action, but we need you to join them. Please don’t wait. This is too important and too urgent.
Click here to demand an end to the partisan bickering and gridlock.
Let’s keep the pressure on, and prevent a real economic disaster in January.
By RP Staff, on Thu Oct 4, 2012 at 9:15 AM ET In his latest column for The Huffington Post, The RP discusses the work of a new grassroots movement that, like No Labels, brings Democrats and Republicans together to address our nation’s critical problems. It is called “Fix the Debt,” and it already involves more than 100,000 Americans in urging fiscal sanity on our national leaders.
Please join the great work of “Fix the Debt” by clicking here.
Here’s an excerpt of the RP’s column:
Already, the fear of the fiscal cliff has caused businesses to slow hiring and investments, and Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, has stated that it will consider downgrading our credit rating if responsible actions to begin bringing down the debt are not taken as part of an effort to avoid the cliff.
Our political leadership needs to take action before the debt becomes so burdensome that it severely hampers our country’s ability to compete, maintain our social safety net or create jobs.
However, there is hope.
Already, a group of former lawmakers, experts, business leaders, and concerned citizens from across the political spectrum have come together, putting their ideological differences aside, in pursuit of a common-sense plan.
This new bipartisan group, called the Campaign to Fix The Debt — chaired nationally by former Sen. Alan Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles — has already received support from over 180,000 Americans in a petition drive to hold elected officials accountable, demanding that our nation’s fiscal path remains front and center in the public discourse.
Of course, generating a solid plan to reduce our national debt — without knee-jerk reactions or extreme measures — is an uphill climb, to say the least.
But initiatives like the Campaign to Fix the Debt prove that we do have leaders willing to look at both sides of the ledger — spending and revenue — in order to find a deal.
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