Every election in America brings with it a set of
images that make their way into the archives and remain there forever. The
election of 2012 is no different in that it is at this moment developing an
image which is forcing its way onto the stage of the everlasting. It is the
image of the flip-flopper who teamed up with the kicker of cans to pull a fast
one on both the elders and the youngsters of America .
Mitt Romney who flip-flopped on everything except the belief
that it is acceptable to accumulate wealth anyway you can as long as you do it
with a stealthy hand that does not get caught, is running for the presidency of
the United States .
He chose Paul Ryan to be his running mate for reasons of his own, but what is
clear to the observer is that he chose someone whose training was done in the
congress of the United
States of America where he spent 14 years
learning how to kick the can down the road and get away with it.
No one disputes the fact that the biggest problem facing America today
is the accumulated national debt which is caused by a runaway yearly deficit
which itself is aggravated by a set of ballooning entitlements. Among these is
the healthcare complex comprising Medicaid, Medicare and what came to be called
ObamaCare. The latter was given this name because it was conceived by President
Obama who saw the bill through both houses of Congress then signed it into law.
Almost immediately after that, the party of the people who are now challenging
the President for his position in the highest office in the land, took the law
to the constitutional court to have it struck down but failed in their attempt.
Normally, matters would end here in America but not
this time. Unable to accept what the political and judicial processes had
wrought, those people staged a process of primaries at the end of which they
picked Mitt Romney to run against the President in the hope that a set of
arguments they developed will allow them to stitch together a narrative that
will distort the truth and maintain it in a distorted condition long enough for
them to win the upcoming election and do away with ObamaCare. More than that,
the Romney people see themselves as being in a position to accomplish the
bigger plan they always had at the back of the head.
And what is back there is the view that a world which is now
globalized in the business sense has become their oyster. This gave them the
idea that the world is a place where America no longer occupies a
special place. They came to this conclusion despite the fact that America was
the land that gave them the opportunity to develop, to grow and to be who they
are in the eyes of that same world – one that is welcoming them not because of
who they are but because of what they bring to them from America.
What the Romney people plan to do is fleece America of its
capital -- much as they have been doing for years -- and transfer as much as
they can to places around the world where they expect to see a higher return on
their investment. To do this, they first need to get the man himself elected
president; and for this to happen, they need to capture the youth vote,
something that has eluded them in the past. But with the addition of the
youthful Paul Ryan to the ticket, they see themselves as being in a better
position than ever before to achieve that goal. What they needed now was a
narrative that would allow them to win the young vote without losing that of
the elders. And so, the people of the Romney campaign came up with a devilishly
crafted narrative.
What they said was that if their team were to be elected,
they will not touch Medicaid, will not alter Medicare for those who are now 55
years of age or older, but will scrap ObamaCare altogether. To replace Medicare
and ObamaCare, they will put together a voucher system whereby everyone's
premium will be subsidized up to a point beyond which the insured themselves
will pay for the difference if they chose an expensive plan. And so, the Romney
people went to the elders and told them to rest reassured because nothing will
change as far as they are concerned. And they went to the younger crowd and
told them the following:
Trust that we shall do the right thing for you when the time
will come even though it looks now like we are doing what Ryan did for 14 years
which is to kick the can down the road for ever and ever. All you have to do is
give us your vote, and watch us rebuild America 's glorious past by doing
the reverse of what was done then. That is, instead of the world sending their
capital to America like it
used to be, we shall be sending America 's
capital to the world like Mitt Romney has been doing most of his life. And this
will be the best testimony as to his acumen in business because he will have
proven that he can do more than walk and chew gun; he can walk backward and
take America
sideways -- and do all this without having to chew gum.
To add credibility to what they say, the Romney people tell
the part of Canada 's
story that suits them but not the whole truth. They do not mention that Canada has had
a national healthcare system covering everyone for nearly half a century. They
do not reveal that on a per capita basis, the Canadian system costs about half
as much as the American because it has a board of professional bureaucrats who
earn their keep by discharging their duty faithfully, not by kicking the can
down the road as do the elected and always unreliable politicians.
Thus, the American public still does not know what the big
American corporations do which is that the healthcare system is what encourages
the American manufacturers to open plants in Canada . This is especially true of
the auto companies (American and others) who produce more cars in the Province of Ontario
than in the State of Michigan .
These industrialists appreciate the fact that they are not burdened with having
to pay for the healthcare of their employees.
The other consequence resulting from the Canadian system is
that the economy is doing much better than all the advanced economies, having
neither a debt problem nor one of deficit. And this is why it happened that
during the tough times through which the rest of the world is passing, Canada was able
to reduce the tax rate down to 15 percent.
But instead of saying let us have a healthcare system that
looks like that of Canada to be in a position to build an economy that is as
good as theirs, the Romney people turned things upside down. They failed to
mention Canada 's healthcare
system but revealed the fact that the taxes were lowered, and then suggested
that America
do the same. They skipped the portion which explains that Canada was able
to lower the taxes because it has the healthcare system that it has.
There should be no doubt now that the Romney people are
vultures in a dove's plumage. All they want is get into the seat of power where
they plan to keep kicking the can down the road while hollowing out the rest of
America to send all that
they can abroad and compete as equals with the newly forming moguls of Asia . And damn the American middle class.
What this class should be aware of is that such a trend used
to take place in the Third World countries,
practiced as it was by their own people and by the foreigners who declared war
on the middle class there too. And this is the reason why these countries were left
behind in a backward state.
Likewise, the Romney people who had a dry run practicing the
same sort of operations now wish to make it legal and official by calling it
the legitimate practice of free and unshackled capitalism. In the end – if they
have it their way -- there will be no work for Americans to do, no Medicaid or
Medicare to protect them, and nowhere to hide their poverty.