In her column Saturday, Gail Collins calls Americans Elect "the worst idea." How sad. Gail is a terrific columnist, one of my favorites. She has a marvelous and devastating sense of humor and can make mince meat of politicians' hypocrisy and pretensions. She's also on the right side on virtually all issues.
But she's clearly terrified that President Obama will lose the election to Mitt Romney. Hence, she asserted that Americans Elect -- an open movement to get a non-partisan or bi-partisan ticket on the presidential ballot in November -- which could draw votes from the president (but apparently not Romney? -- is a terrible thing.
I'm running for Americans Elect's nomination, so I was naturally very unhappy to read Gail's column. Surely Gail realizes that same old, same old, when it comes to politics will mean four more years of dysfunctional government with each party blocking the other's agenda. Meanwhile, the patient, our economy and its fiscal policies, will get far worse. The patient is already on his death bed and can only be saved by policies that the extremes of both parties will reject.
But the president is catering to his extreme left wing, offering no credible solution to the nation's runaway deficits, or to out-of-control spending on health care, or to our gravely insolvent, user nightmare called the Social Security system. He's left Wall Street to run rough shod over Main Street, and has no plans to fix our awful personal income tax system beyond raising its top rate. His well intentioned Affordable Care Act may be overturned because it used politically expedient, but potentially un-Constitutional language. Energy policy remains incoherent, immigration policy is on hold, and education policy is failing. The president has done well to extract us from Iraq, but is leaving us in Afghanistan for two years to no clear purpose, but with sure loss of life and limb among our brave young servicemen and servicewomen, not to mention Afghan civilians.
"Yes we can." has turned into "No we can't." And this is what Gail is desperate to preserve?
As for the presumptive heir to the Republican party, Mr. Romney, we have a man with no discernable beliefs that aren't up for auction. A man who will say anything to get elected is a man who may do anything in office if he is. His message to the nation's 50 million uninsured appears to be, "Don't get sick." His tax proposals appear, at least on first glance, to help the rich, himself included. His Social Security plans are vague and appear to do far too little far too late to keep the system, which is in the worst fiscal shape in its history, solvent. His energy policy is drill and pollute till the cows come crawling home on their last breath. His take on Wall Street is it can do no harm, when the harm it's done is in plain and horrible sight. And he'd apparently leave us in Afghanistan for the next 50 years to show he's as tough as whom? George W. Bush?
Worse yet, from Gail's perspective, were Romney elected, she'd have to start each column with a reference to Romney's driving his car with this dog strapped to the roof. Having written umpteen columns making this point, there'd be no way for her to stop and her readers would finally say "enough."
Gail, let me talk to you directly -- one grownup to another. Fear is no basis for choosing our leaders. Americans Elect may be the country's only hope of staving off indefinite political gridlock and watching the country continue to slide down hill. You are a serious person, not just a funny person. You need to suspend your humor and your focus on personalities, primadonnas, sexual escapades, and politicians who speak for God, and write about something boring, but useful, for a change.
For starters you could look at the policies I lay out at www.kotlikoff2012.org and www.thepurpleplans.org. You should also look at the policy plans of the other declared candidates on Americans Elect. In short, you need to darken up. America's future is no joke. President Obama is no savior. If he were, we'd not have 27 million Americans out of work or short on work, a banking system that's worse than when he took office, a Social Security system whose present value funding shortfall is larger than when he took office, a federal debt that's growing exponentially, an ever worsening environment, a failing education system, a health care system that's driving us broke, a tax system that's a travesty, a mounting death and injury toll in Afghanistan, and an ever increasing chance of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.
Our county is in terrible trouble. And Gail, as much as I love you, if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
Follow Laurence J. Kotlikoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kotlikoff
Of course, it also bears mention that the position Americans Elect is designed around--ending budget deficits via massive austerity--is a seriously wrong-headed one. After all, these ideas have been tried across the Atlantic. And Europe's experiment with this lunacy was a monumental failure.
There are lots of practical problems with Larry's ideas, but the biggest, most glaring issue with the purple plans, is the complete omission of monetary policy. Given that Larry is an economist, this is odd. It's even stranger given that this is the one area of the economy that the executive branch really does have some control over. Of course, since monetary policy can solve the debt problem all by itself without wrecking the economy in the process, it makes sense that it's been left off. Quantitative easing reduces the debt, stimulates the economy, and (like liberal economists predicted) doesn't cause very much inflation. It is the only responsible way to solve the debt problem. The problem is that it's easy and has no real consequences, so politicians hate it. It doesn't let them use the deficit as a cudgel to slash the social spending they hate. And that's what this whole mess is really about.
But the president is catering to his extreme left wing? And we're supposed to take you seriously making an asinine statement like that?
Our county is in terrible trouble. And you aren't part of the solution, you're the problem.
"The thing that makes our current politics particularly awful isn’t procedural. It’s that the Republican Party has become over-the-top extreme. You can try to fix that by working from within to groom a more sensible pack of future candidates, or from without by voting against the Republicans’ nominees until they agree to shape up.
Otherwise, no Web site in the world will cure what ails us. "
This writer lost me when he mindlessly blamed Obama for the country's woes, without recognizing the role that the obstructionist Party of No has played in preventing work on the issues mentioned by Kotlikoff (really, immigration? Did he not see how *W* could not get anywhere on that issue when the right wingers in his party started screaming about amnesty.) But thanks to the progress that Obama has made in spite of them (preventing a second Great Depression, getting bin Laden, and fighting back against the attacks on women's health to name three), I will gladly vote for him this year.
Americans Elect is an impressive non-partisan vehicle for providing a choice to voters in America who desire pragamatic, common-sensical, non-hyper ideological leadership that will strive to do whats best for the country not their party and will not have a perpetual campaign focus to tearing down the other side.
It has been amusing reading bloggers/commenters from both the Right and the Left complain that Americans Elect will "throw" the election to the other side. Not to mention the conspiracy theorists that say it is has also been planned that way from the very beginning. Suffice to say these left/right antics will continue. Voters like me will disregard their circus and focus on electing a unity ticket that will have a focus on solving the significant problems faced by our country.
How about you take off your partisan hat and take Mr Kotlikoff at his word.
This whole thing is nothing more than an attempt by clownish rich guys to try to raise taxes on the lower classes and call them a "fair tax."
Since our two parties in Congress are both conservative – one extreme, the other moderate – I don’t know how you propose to fit in between them. Isn’t that what President Obama was trying to do, meet halfway in good faith, only to be rebuffed every time? We don’t need a third conservative party. We need to return to having a progressive Democratic Party and a conservative, but sane, Republican Party.
The way to restore functional government is to help the Democrats hand the Republicans such a beating all the way down the ticket that they would have to reconsider their extremism; and if they didn’t, you could work for Americans Elect to become the sane conservative alternative.
Look, maybe I should have used different words to describe both parties because you and others are very protective of the President, who, I agree, has had a very tough go with the opposition. But had every member of Congress been Democrat, virtually all of our critical problems would not have been solved. Wall Street would not have been fixed, Social Security would not have been fixed, Medicare's cost would not have been contained, Medicaid's cost would not have been contained, our tax system would not have been fundamentally fixed, and our kids would have faced, as they do now, astronomical bills. The President's policies are miles from www.thepurpleplans.org, which is what we need to really fix the country. best, Larry
The op. ed. by Gail is so obviously slanted to protect her political ideology that anyone who does not see this must obviously share that interest as well.
Hmmmmmm. You should rethink this.
Think back to the year 2000, Al Gore vs. George W. Bush. The Nader voters in Florida are what threw that state into question and resulted in George W. Bush being appointed to the presidency by the Republican Supreme Court, the subseuent invasions of Iraw and Afghanistan and hte great economic collapse. A couple thousand Nader voters in Florida, voters who would otherwise have been in the Democratic column are in a real sense responsible for the appointment of George W. Bush to the presidency.
Kotlikoff is either delusion or well-paid, and in any event, here he is another right-wing patriarch trying to silence a woman's voice and tell women what to think. Fat chance, dude. Obama will be re-elected. Get over it.
F/F
Sorry Laurence by making statements like the one above - you're the one without the credibility. I looked at your plans and you have some good ideas, too bad you stooped to making up stuff about the President just like the Republicans. Hopefully an honest candidate will get nominated.
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=81§iontree=5,81
501(c)(4) organizations are not required to disclose their donors, and there are plenty of legitimate reasons why real nonprofits would decline to publicize their funding.
But Americans Elect isn’t acting as a nonprofit; it’s a political committee. Its sole function is to nominate candidates for president and vice president of the United States, and then get them as many votes as possible. Nonprofits abiding by IRS regulations may not engage in political candidate activities as their primary activity. (Rev. Rul. 81-95, 1981-1 C.B. 332; Sec. 1.501(c)(4)-1(a)(2)(i-ii)).
Americans Elect has enough money to potentially sway the presidential election, likely by siphoning off votes from one of the two major parties. Doesn’t the public have a right to know who’s backing this political party?
Perhaps even more disturbing, Americans Elect’s own bylaws undermine their claim that the process and decisions are up to the public. Join us back here for follow-up posts on the “extraordinary” authority of the board of directors and more information about who’s behind this group—including troubling information about who’s gathering their signatures in Oregon.
The ticket must be split 1 Republican and 1 Democrat. That in itself negates any ability for so called bias.