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His Supreme Shrillness sorts out Romney’s “I’m not concerned… ” bullshit:
… [J]ust a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”
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This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?
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Also, given this whopper about how safety-net programs actually work, how credible was Mr. Romney’s assertion, after expressing his lack of concern about the poor, that if the safety net needs a repair, “I’ll fix it”?…
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Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in financing compared with current law.
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So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy.
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Still, I believe Mr. Romney when he says he isn’t concerned about the poor. What I don’t believe is his assertion that he’s equally unconcerned about the rich, who are “doing fine.” After all, if that’s what he really feels, why does he propose showering them with money?
Go read the whole thing, get yourself in the right fighting frame of mind for a new day, maybe forward it to some of your low-information FB acquaintances who don’t understand why everyone keeps saying mean things about that nice Romney fella.
Also, what Mr. Pierce said:
… We are falling like dim children, like the suckers we always are, to the notion of the deserving and undeserving poor, the have-less-and-lesses are being pitted against the have-littles, and the have-nots. That’s what Willard Romney’s been about the last couple of days. He wants to find a way to harness the fear people have of becoming poor to his advantage at the expense of the people who actually are. That is the basis of the entire public career of Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, and the whole party has signed the guestbook into his little S&M parlor of a budget.
What else is on the agenda for this Friday in February?
Raven
I’ve got to make the track to Kennesaw for a conference and the only way to make sure I’m there my 9 is to leave at 5:30 for a damn 70 mile drive! boo
Geoduck
Wow. There are people who actually call Mitt Romney “nice”?
A lot of folks are willing to hold their nose and vote for for the man, but I thought one of his major problems was that pretty much everybody realizes what a transparent flip-flopping phoney he is.
burnspbesq
A full day of worship at the Church of the Almighty Billable Hour. This is not a bad thing when 100 percent of the proceeds go into your oen pocket.
Barkeep, another round of shrill for the house. And make it the Nobel-prize-winning varietal. None of that cheap rotgut for my friends.
PeakVT
At this rate, we may soon have [Republican] politicians who admit what has been obvious all along: … that they aren’t concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans, and never were.
The honesty would be refreshing.
ETA: I wonder who left out the obvious word.
burnspbesq
From the department of Don’t You Have Better Things to Do, Officer Krupke?
irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0203/1224311174883.html
Waldo
I’ve alway said Krugman is da bomb. Now I have visual.
TheColourfield
Zombie-eyed Granny-Starvers ?
Didn’t I see them at CBGBs opening for the Talking Heads?
c u n d gulag
What we should be focusing on, is that Mitt finally uttered a TRUE statement:
“I’m not concerned about the poor…”
That’s 1% speak for “I don’t give a shit!”
Everything after that, was back to his usual bullshit.
Especially, about not being concerned about the rich.
That’s all he does care about. All he ever did. And all he ever will.
Ditto the Conservatives and Republicans.
middlewest
@burnspbesq: Oh, the poor Catholic church, what did they ever do to deserve this?!
Hey, how is that global strike going? You know, the one where the majority of Catholics all over the world are withholding their participation and their tithes from the church until their leaders come completely clean about their global conspiracy to cover up and enable the rape and abuse of children?
Oh, right. Catholics are doing no such thing. My bad.
RossInDetroit
Krugman’s been getting remarkably blunt this year. Clear, plain and unambiguous statements of what he sees. I’m very glad someone is but isn’t it odd that it’s an Economist, a member of a profession known for writing dense and obscure papers that only their colleagues can understand?
It’s just odd that this is our standard bearer for sensible discourse at this point.
kansi
I am wondering when the “Gore-ish” label serial exaggerator, aka liar, will take firm hold in the media. Mitt is way beyond being a flip-flipper into being the flim flam man.
Linda
Kansi:
The media is already deciding they don’t like him, but it’s firming up around “rich snot” as opposed to flip-flopper. The media people are like mean kids in middle school. If they don’t like you (for instance, John Kerry or Al Gore) and think they can push you around, they pull pranks on you, but if you are unbeatable, they kiss your ass. Right now, they don’t like him, and think he’s beatable. If he really shits the bed in popularity in the next few months, they’ll be kissing Obama’s ass.
FlipYrWhig
IMHO, contra Krugman, Romney’s comments aren’t self-contradictory if he sees the biggest issue with social welfare programs as their over-generosity and if by “fix” them he means destroying them in order to preserve them.
And I think that’s precisely what he means. He’s not concerned about the very poor because they have, he thinks, an all too lavish amount of benefits these days; to “fix” or “strengthen” a program like Medicaid or Social Security or food stamps can easily mean to shore up its balance sheet by cutting those benefits.
Mark S.
I had a different take from Romney’s statement: that he thought that the middle class was 90-95% of the population. That’s pretty damn clueless and out of touch.
Well, and the part about if there are any problems with the safety net, he’ll fix it. He’s been running for president for the past decade but he hasn’t really looked into the issue yet. That really sounded like something W would say.
rikryah
I have to say, the Krugman from Syriana poster always cracks me up.
Frankensteinbeck
Oh, good. Do please endorse Vouchercare, Romney. That plan is as popular as venereal disease.
...now I try to be amused
Meanwhile, the percentage of corporate revenues reaching the workers steadily declines.
SW
It is very simple really. And the data shows it (by the way this is why they try to convince us that there is something fishy about people like scientists who keep going on about pointy headed things like data). The insecure lower middle class has been systematically robbed by the wealthy over the past thirty years. They have done this by gaming the political system. The politicians have then rigged the economic game in their favor. Tilting the board and draining the national wealth into the pockets of the very wealthy.
The trick that they have used to get away with it is to convince the lower middle classes that their problem originates not from the classes above them but from those below them. This is relatively easy for them to do since they control the media. Everyone wants to be on TV. They glamorize the rich. They vilify the poor. And familiarity breeds contempt. Everyone rubs elbows with the poor. There is the fear factor. Resentment of the other. All the primitive psychological lizard brain functions are working in their direction.
Luthe
Once again, I call for Mitt Romney to be known as “The Most Inconsistent Man in the World.” It would make for a great ad campaign.
burnspbesq
Congratulations on completely missing the point.
PeakVT
@RossInDetroit: The whole pundit thing is essentially a hobby/passion for Krugman. Friedman probably doesn’t have to work now, as his wife’s family is still well off (though they are destitute compared to their paper wealth back in 2007). But he started out that way. All of the rest of the pundits make a living at writing AFAIK. I’m sure Krugman enjoys the cash from the pundit gig, but he doesn’t strictly need it since he has a day job as a Nobel prize-winning economist.
Ken
how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?
He’s a sociopath that doesn’t distinguish – is incapable of distinguishing – between truth and falsity, and only says what will most benefit him at the current moment?