'President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster growth.' (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
[Gazette Blog Editor's note: Local Blog readers know me and know what I stand for as a journalist. You know I was fired by the Payson Roundup for telling the truth no matter where it led. You know the Rim Country Gazette has always stood for the truth, even in a conservative community. I am proud to say I learned my journalistic integrity in part by reading the nation's best newspaper - The New York Times.
As journalism students in college, we were required to subscribe to one of the Top 10 newspapers for a month to figure out what good journalism was all about. The newspaper that always topped the list as number 1 was, and remains, The New York Times. This is a significant and thoughtful endorsement that all voters should read before casting a ballot:]
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economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country
could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold. The
United States is embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode
into full-blown disaster. An ideological assault from the right has
started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those
forces are eroding women's access to health care, and their right to
control their lives. Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights
Act, all Americans' rights are cheapened by the right wing's
determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us.
Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.
28 October 12
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economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country
could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold. The
United States is embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode
into full-blown disaster. An ideological assault from the right has
started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those
forces are eroding women's access to health care, and their right to
control their lives. Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights
Act, all Americans' rights are cheapened by the right wing's
determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us.
Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.
That is the context for the Nov. 6 election, and as stark as it is, the choice is just as clear.
President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using
government to help foster growth. He has formed sensible budget policies
that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to
save the social safety net to protect the powerless. Mr. Obama has
impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected
by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked
pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and
hobbled economic recovery.
Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has
gotten this far with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks
an audience wants to hear. But he has tied himself to the
ultraconservative forces that control the Republican Party and embraced
their policies, including reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old,
discredited trickle-down ideas. Voters may still be confused about Mr.
Romney's true identity, but they know the Republican Party, and a Romney
administration would reflect its agenda. Mr. Romney's choice of
Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate says volumes about that.
We have criticized individual policy choices that Mr.
Obama has made over the last four years, and have been impatient with
his unwillingness to throw himself into the political fight. But he has
shaken off the hesitancy that cost him the first debate, and he
approaches the election clearly ready for the partisan battles that
would follow his victory.
We are confident he would challenge the Republicans in
the "fiscal cliff" battle even if it meant calling their bluff, letting
the Bush tax cuts expire and forcing them to confront the budget
sequester they created. Electing Mr. Romney would eliminate any hope of
deficit reduction that included increased revenues.
In the poisonous atmosphere of this campaign, it may
be easy to overlook Mr. Obama's many important achievements, including
carrying out the economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving
fuel efficiency standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court
appointments.
Health Care
Mr. Obama has achieved the most sweeping health care
reforms since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform
law takes a big step toward universal health coverage, a final piece in
the social contract.
It was astonishing that Mr. Obama and the Democrats in
Congress were able to get a bill past the Republican opposition. But
the Republicans' propagandistic distortions of the new law helped them
wrest back control of the House, and they are determined now to repeal
the law.
That would eliminate the many benefits the reform has
already brought: allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents'
policies; lower drug costs for people on Medicare who are heavy users of
prescription drugs; free immunizations, mammograms and contraceptives; a
ban on lifetime limits on insurance payments. Insurance companies
cannot deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Starting
in 2014, insurers must accept all applicants. Once fully in effect, the
new law would start to control health care costs.
Mr. Romney has no plan for covering the uninsured
beyond his callous assumption that they will use emergency rooms. He
wants to use voucher programs to shift more Medicare costs to
beneficiaries and block grants to shift more Medicaid costs to the
states.
The Economy
Mr. Obama prevented another Great Depression. The
economy was cratering when he took office in January 2009. By that June
it was growing, and it has been ever since (although at a rate that
disappoints everyone), thanks in large part to interventions Mr. Obama
championed, like the $840 billion stimulus bill. Republicans say it
failed, but it created and preserved 2.5 million jobs and prevented
unemployment from reaching 12 percent. Poverty would have been much
worse without the billions spent on Medicaid, food stamps and jobless
benefits.
Last year, Mr. Obama introduced a jobs plan that
included spending on school renovations, repair projects for roads and
bridges, aid to states, and more. It was stymied by Republicans.
Contrary to Mr. Romney's claims, Mr. Obama has done good things for
small businesses - like pushing through more tax write-offs for new
equipment and temporary tax cuts for hiring the unemployed.
The Dodd-Frank financial regulation was an important
milestone. It is still a work in progress, but it established the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, initiated reform of the
derivatives market, and imposed higher capital requirements for banks.
Mr. Romney wants to repeal it.
If re-elected, Mr. Obama would be in position to shape
the "grand bargain" that could finally combine stimulus like the jobs
bill with long-term deficit reduction that includes letting the high-end
Bush-era tax cuts expire. Stimulus should come first, and deficit
reduction as the economy strengthens. Mr. Obama has not been as
aggressive as we would have liked in addressing the housing crisis, but
he has increased efforts in refinancing and loan modifications.
Mr. Romney's economic plan, as much as we know about
it, is regressive, relying on big tax cuts and deregulation. That kind
of plan was not the answer after the financial crisis, and it will not
create broad prosperity.
Foreign Affairs
Mr. Obama and his administration have been resolute in
attacking Al Qaeda's leadership, including the killing of Osama bin
Laden. He has ended the war in Iraq. Mr. Romney, however, has said he
would have insisted on leaving thousands of American soldiers there. He
has surrounded himself with Bush administration neocons who helped to
engineer the Iraq war, and adopted their militaristic talk in a way that
makes a Romney administration's foreign policies a frightening
prospect.
Mr. Obama negotiated a much tougher regime of
multilateral economic sanctions on Iran. Mr. Romney likes to say the
president was ineffective on Iran, but at the final debate he agreed
with Mr. Obama's policies. Mr. Obama deserves credit for his handling of
the Arab Spring. The killing goes on in Syria, but the administration
is working to identify and support moderate insurgent forces there. At
the last debate, Mr. Romney talked about funneling arms through Saudi
Arabia and Qatar, which are funneling arms to jihadist groups.
Mr. Obama gathered international backing for
airstrikes during the Libyan uprising, and kept American military forces
in a background role. It was smart policy.
In the broadest terms, he introduced a measure of
military restraint after the Bush years and helped repair America's
badly damaged reputation in many countries from the low levels to which
it had sunk by 2008.
The Supreme Court
The future of the nation's highest court hangs in the
balance in this election - and along with it, reproductive freedom for
American women and voting rights for all, to name just two issues.
Whoever is president after the election will make at least one
appointment to the court, and many more to federal appeals courts and
district courts.
Mr. Obama, who appointed the impressive Justices Elena
Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, understands how severely damaging
conservative activism has been in areas like campaign spending. He would
appoint justices and judges who understand that landmarks of equality
like the Voting Rights Act must be defended against the steady attack
from the right.
Mr. Romney's campaign Web site says he will "nominate
judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas
and Alito," among the most conservative justices in the past 75 years.
There is no doubt that he would appoint justices who would seek to
overturn Roe v. Wade.
Civil Rights
The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama's 2008 election
did not usher in a new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent
of racism in national politics is truly disturbing. Mr. Obama, however,
has reversed Bush administration policies that chipped away at
minorities' voting rights and has fought laws, like the ones in Arizona,
that seek to turn undocumented immigrants into a class of criminals.
The military's odious "don't ask, don't tell" rule was
finally legislated out of existence, under the Obama administration's
leadership. There are still big hurdles to equality to be brought down,
including the Defense of Marriage Act, the outrageous federal law that
undermines the rights of gay men and lesbians, even in states that
recognize those rights.
Though it took Mr. Obama some time to do it, he
overcame his hesitation about same-sex marriage and declared his
support. That support has helped spur marriage-equality movements around
the country. His Justice Department has also stopped defending the
Defense of Marriage Act against constitutional challenges.
Mr. Romney opposes same-sex marriage and supports the
federal act, which not only denies federal benefits and recognition to
same-sex couples but allows states to ignore marriages made in other
states. His campaign declared that Mr. Romney would not object if states
also banned adoption by same-sex couples and restricted their rights to
hospital visitation and other privileges.
Mr. Romney has been careful to avoid the efforts of
some Republicans to criminalize abortion even in the case of women who
had been raped, including by family members. He says he is not opposed
to contraception, but he has promised to deny federal money to Planned
Parenthood, on which millions of women depend for family planning.
For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically
endorse President Barack Obama for a second term, and express the hope
that his victory will be accompanied by a new Congress willing to work
for policies that Americans need.
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